Guild Wars 2

I’m fine with more or less. I’m completely impartial to this debate and always will be.

To those bringing sexism and real life matters in to this debate I just want to say: This is a fantasy video game where people shoot lighting from their finger tips, giant 10 foot tall cats are driving war machines, dragons are walking, talking and casting magic and gods once walked the earth. There is nothing realistic about it and you should view the game as it is, a fantasy game. I don’t look at it as though “this is how men/women should/shouldn’t dress IRL” I look at it as “that’s a nice/isn’t nice outfit.” Because I know what a realistic standard is and what a fantasy standard is.

I’m never going to wrap my head around the folks who are concerned with what people are wearing in games that are completely unrealistic with every other aspect of that in-game world. It’s like complaining that we’re allowed to fall from so high up without dying because -50% fall damage reduction and claiming it’s dangerous to put such an image in video games. Let the lemmings filter themselves out. Sad that humanity can’t just enjoy themselves once in a while by allowing their imaginations to run wild. Instead something’s always gotta be sexist or morally wrong even though it’s freaking fantasy and it’s supposed to be there for entertainment value.

I’m sure ANet doesn’t design these outfits thinking “oh all our male players will love this and will think that this is how women should look IRL.”

If I got paid for all the scouting I’ve done in my time in WvW I’d have another legendary by now.

Justine.6351:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

She’s also already said that she understands a full Berserker build would be better.

woah what? I said I wouldn’t defend rampagers vs berserkers. I didn’t say zerker is better. Rampagers is clearly the correct choice for the build. You can run berserkers but you pretty much need to rewrite the build to remove the condition element.

No, I meant that a full zerk build would be better, not that zerk would be better for this specific build. Trading Rampagers stats for zerk with the traits and what not that you have chosen would definitely be worse.

I’ve been using a Master Of Corruption build since it was reworked, pretty much. And I don’t want it changed. I’ve been planning on making a short video to showcase what it can do to players in WvW now that I have a computer capable of supporting recording programs.

MoC is a punishing trait to take but it’s also very powerful if used properly. I want conditions on me as a corruptomancer and MoC is a nice way to do that. The more conditions you stack on me (within reason of course) the more ammunition I have to blow people up.

Also, the positive outcome is major. Being able to stack double the amount of conditions on people.

It’s just a very highly risk/reward type of gamble much like a Quickness P/P Thief. If I miss my transfers, I can kill myself with my own conditions. If I land them, I do an insane amount of damage. And trust me with the burst this build can do, I am far beyond caring how risky it is to play. It’s just too satisfying to be able to nearly insta-stack 8+ conditions on someone without Signet of Spite.

bigo.9037:

Justine.6351:

I won’t defend zerker vs rampager as the build has never been about the be all end all.

I will defend the sharpening stone over sos though.
Sos is a relic from 2012-2014. There is little to no reason to run it anymore short of not running wilderness or nature magic or beast mastery (shouts) or the signet trait.

The reason to run sharpening stone is beyond the 5 bleeds you can do at 2k range. Fury/condition removal and insta cast. Its utility in both defense and offense makes it a solid skill for the build.

As for condition removal, lol,
Bleeding
Poison
Torment
Cripple
Vulnerability
Immobilize

If someone purges that mess good for them, cause the bleeds don’t stop coming, and poison, torment, vulnerability are right behind it.

where does your torment come from again?
you will rarely have all these conditions on your enemy at the same time, so cleansing some of them at a time will be enough. its true the bleeds will keep getting reapplied but the dmg from the bleeds themselves just takes too long to be worth it.

i dont use SoS either cus the cooldown is way too long for only 6 seconds of physical immunity. i use SoW instead without popping it. i just let it stay passively to get my astral regen. it helps enough to be worth it imo, as celestial avatar = stun break, 100 % condi cleanse, heals and stealth. all this is possible every 10 seconds if you have enough astral regen.

OP isn’t trying to min/max or to be meta. She’s playing what she enjoys and showcasing how well she plays it.

She’s also already said that she understands a full Berserker build would be better.

As someone who very much enjoys using niche builds, I totally understand not caring about being 100% effective. As long as it’s fun to play and you’re comfortable with playing it, who cares. I still kill tons of people with niche builds and clearly OP does as well.

Not really answering the question of the OP, but I expect WvW fight guilds to be tight. As in they’re effective at moving as a ball when needed and have good sustained presence. Most guilds I see only have the advantage of knowing each other well when versus PUG zergs. They’re only very slightly more co-ordinated. A good fight guild should be highly co-ordinated and capable of making zergs twice their size to feel intimidated.

I’ve seen it done a number of times but not nearly as much as I’d expect. One of the more memorable times I saw this was when [Woe] was holding off two full zergs because they were all so hard to kill and stayed so tightly together. It was a perfect phalanx and that’s how I believe a good fight guild should be but most of them are minute men. They come in guns blazing, take out half the zerg then run away.

Melee Brawler

I used something very similar to this in PvP when I was working towards my Champion Hunter title a long time ago. Though, it was long before HoT release so I didn’t have Tiger.

I transferred the build to WvW and it works pretty nicely for roaming although not as much as it used to. Even with a total heap of Toughness and evades, certain builds can still cut through me like butter.

That said, it’s still my favorite build even if it hasn’t aged well. I can generally tank a ton of damage and I’m incredibly slippery. The damage isn’t amazing but with Opening Strike + easy access to Fury it’s not bad at all either. I mean sword AA’s are usually doing 2.5k which is pretty awesome with how low Power is on this build and that it has base Ferocity.

Again, it’s not nearly as good as it used to be but it’s still my favorite. I just really enjoy how durable it is while still being able to do totally acceptable damage.

I do enjoy the ideas, they’re creative and sound fun.

That said, I would honestly drop the profession if they removed pets. They’re not the reason I play Ranger but they are absolutely a big part of it, despite their many flaws. I love my pets and I love even more when they land the killing blow. Just gives me a massive grin of satisfaction. Like that time I was starting to lose the battle against a Thief I had been fighting for 5 minutes and I saw him about to initiate the final Backstab. He Pistol #5’d and got caught mid Dagger #2 animation by a might-stacked F2 crit from my Tiger which hit him for 9k. Frigging best kill ever.

SilentKill.9586:

Complain all you want about blocks, invulns, or evades. Until you get rid of condi trash who never learned to play a class at all I’m going to block, invuln, and evade you till you learn to play a class right.

Haha, I love the people who call condi builds “trash” and yet 99% of the time, the same people have no clue how to fight condi builds. They’re all chest thumping glass cannons. Oh yeah, look at them 10k crits. I have no defensive abilities but condition builds are OP because they take advantage of my unwillingness to be prepared for different situations.

Condition builds are not OP nor are they easy to play ( in most cases. There are at least a few condition builds that are faceroll ) despite what so many claim. Being able to press 1 a bunch and doing 3 – 5k auto attacks with a power build is equally as faceroll.

I’m gonna say it every time someone QQ’s about condition builds until people get it branded in to their brains: People only hate conditions because they get to think about it before they die.

Basilisk, Skelk (preferably Lurker), Minotaur, Griffon, Ornery Crab.

Basilisk
F2: Turn target to stone + immobilize for 2seconds. 900 range.
Stats similar to Drakes. High power, medium precision, medium toughness and vitality, lots of cleave. Also since Basilisks in-game have evades, I think they should have a similar built in evade in their attack chains.

Skelk Lurker
F2: Shadow step to target for a guaranteed critical hit. 1,200 range.
Amphibious.
Stats similar to Felines. Medium power, high precision, low toughness, medium vitality. Perhaps allow them the ability to stealth during their own attack chains to allow them to more easily avoid damage.

Minotaur
F2: Tackle target with a successive CC. Can remove 2 stacks of Stability as it hits twice. 600 range.
Stats similar to Canines. High power, medium precision, toughness and vitality. Make them fast our fastest pet, capable of sticking on top of people who have swiftness.

Griffon
F2: Fly, avoid all attacks for 6seconds, swooping every 2seconds.
Stats similar to Moas. Medium power, precision, toughness and high vitality. Make them like bears in the sense that they have a lot of defensive options in their attack chains but better damage. Maybe they have a heal type ability that activates when they get low health.

Ornery Crab
F2: Shelter, become immune to all damage while reflecting projectiles for 6seconds.
Stats similar to Bristlebacks. High power, medium precision, high toughness, medium vitality. Make them a reliable source of reflects and soft CC. F2 reflects + an attack of their own that also reflects. Maybe one that applies a lengthy cripple as well.

Of course most of these aren’t ideal pets but I wouldn’t want to just list a bunch of glass cannons. That and I really want a Skelk and Basilisk, lol.

This isn’t going to help the thread any but in regard to “Pet Sustainability”, I’ve been using Devourers a lot lately.

I believe they are our worst species of pet speaking in terms of damage but the more I use them the more I’m finding they are very effective at staying alive.

They have high toughness to deal with phsyical damage, they have a retreat skill which at least 50% of the time they will use as soon as something is within melee range and they also have a knockback which they will again use when something is in melee range.

Since their auto attack has a chance at applying poison and Refined Toxins applies poison every 10seconds, they’re also quite good at keeping nearly a permanent poison status on your opponent, even if they don’t do great damage otherwise.

I’m seriously starting to like them more and more and wishing that other pets had self-defense mechanisms similar to Devourers. It makes life a lot easier when you don’t have to constantly be concerned with the well being of your pet because it does a decent job at taking care of itself.

Speaking in terms of WvW and not PvE by the way.

aristotle.2813:

Xyppi.8061:

When I bring up the topic of defense in WvW I understand I am speaking for the minority here. Maybe more people would do it if it was more plausible. When I say defense, I mean holding objectives such as towers to the castle.

Don’t you agree that maybe only 5% of the WvW community in every server are concerned and make every effort to fortify and hold what they have? As for the rest of the 95%, capping, body loot and everything else has more priorities. Who cares about losing a camp/fort/keep as long as they are there for re-capping. It’s a game of musical chairs as there are no incentives nor rewards. To them, let the fools do all the work defending and if they are free they will help out but please do your best to defend as we are busy capping yet another camp/fort/keep elsewhere.

And you know what? The longer you stay in forts and keeps with time and effort wasted to prepare their defense, the less rewarding it will be for you.

I’ve done a lot of scouting and defending in my time with Gw2 and you know what I’ve learned?

Don’t put the time and effort in to anything you’re not prepared to lose. Everything will fall eventually, there’s no point in mourning it.

For myself, all I care is that there’s a fight involved in defending it. I don’t care if I put hours and hours and a heap of gold in to upgrading something, as long as there’s a fun fight in/outside of it. It’s when things are taken without any kind of real struggle for the attackers that I get upset. Because it’s boring face v gate for them and it’s wasted time/money for me.

Most people prefer a more offensive and careless kind of WvW where they can follow a tag and spam 1 a lot. No one should hold a grudge against the zerglings for doing what they do because it’s only a game at the end of the day. What they find most fun is all that matters. Commanders however should learn to be concerned with their scouts. If they’re not bringing the blob to help out with defense, they’re not doing their job to protect their territory and to support their scouts.

I scout out of personal enjoyment and by choice. No one forces me to do it so I can’t yell at people if no one wants to help. But if a commander is ignoring me when I’ve given live and detailed information, I think that’s when it’s acceptable to get a bit aggressive.

Jelly Pain.8027:

I could not have put that better. That is why the core has stayed.

<— Carmen Stacy.

I’ve thought about coming back despite the population discrepancy but I’m not 100% certain yet. The whole reason I left was because some of the people I talked to the most/was closest to also left and I wanted to go where they went. I’m not terribly sure that I like the servers I’ve been on since I left DH though so I may move back anyway. Not that I contribute much in a zerg but at least I’m a good scout (:

Akkeros.1675:

I like DH.
Always outnumbered but always fight with what they have.
Numbers-wise, cannot compete with NSP or HoD, skill-wise…equal or better (especially NSP, their roamers are awful……jk…….well sorta)

This is why I was on DH for longer than any other server. They go out with a bang even when the odds are against them. I don’t know how certain personality traits are born on different servers like that but fearless fighters to the death is something DH has had as long as I’ve known them. Makes them both fun to fight and fun to be a part of because unlike a lot of other servers, they don’t (generally) rely on turtling in towers with a bunch of siege. But every server does that now and again.

drcraig.9403:

If I have to stop interrupting duels so duelers will stop being rude then I guess duelers will always be rude to me LOL. Dueling is not as spontaneous as you say so you’re either a liar or just don’t know what you’re talking about. Go to the front of SMC sometime. I see the same dorks hanging out there on a regular basis. “STOP DUEL”….you know what I say to that? LOL

Uh huh… I don’t doubt that I know what I’m talking about. But the salt in you tells me you might want to start doubting yourself.

babazhook.6805:

Incorrect. My P/P thief has 2800+ armor , a 42 percent base crit rate 18k vitality and a crit of over 200 percent base. This is marginally less then a thief in dire and he pumps out way more damage than that thief in dire. Those 10K unloads happen in WvW.

That armor/vitality certainly adds survivablity but he still dies just because other classes can pump out enough damage to overcome that armor in short order. This p/p thief outdamages any thief using conditions in Dire and has marginally less armor.

Go to that dire thief relying on conditions. In order for him to kill that power thief he needs to get a LOT more attacks off utilizing INI. His 200 extra armor is not going to save him or make that much a difference. Three+ unloads that hit he is dead whereas my power thief can easily take 3+ of the condition builds most powerful attacks.

Dire armor is not an issue. Enough power can be generated by most any build to eat through its advantage in short order and it has no more added survival against conditions than a power build in Valkyrie.

If, as claimed, Condition builds rampant what advantage does an person wearing Dire have over a person in Valkyrie against those conditions?

Dire armor is not an issue.

Agreed with this. As I’d said in the comment above, health and toughness aren’t much of an advantage anymore. It used to be more problematic but with the damage you can pump out on just about any profession, no amount of health and toughness are going to save you unless you’re full bunk. Even then, you can get destroyed. I was running a full bunker Druid a few months ago and this glassy Tempest obliterated me so fast I may as well have been naked.

It does sound unbalanced that Dire/Trailblazer can pump out so much damage while also having a lot of health and toughness but their damage isn’t instant. It has a wind up and most power builds don’t need that wind up time. As always, it’s about not playing shot for shot with condition builds. You should be going fully aggressive to chew through their defenses before they can chew through yours. If you’re using an offensive build, it shouldn’t be hard to pressure them.

Think of it like your opponent has a small razor and light armor and you’re naked with a sword. You can let your opponent slash at your bare skin a bunch until you bleed out while you decide where you want to stab them or you can just cut them the hell in half.

Dire/Trailblazer is an issue on Mesmers and Thieves because of how easily they can reset. Besides that, the high toughness and health are hardly an issue. With the amount of damage that came with elite specs and other buffs, no degree of health or toughness can save you at this point. Sure, you might be able to tank a few more hits if you’re not full glass, but it’s not nearly as bad as it used to be.

I run a full Trailblazer core Corruptomancer and although I have a heap of health (28k) and 3.2k armor, Warriors, Heralds, Mesmers, Thieves, Tempests and Dragonhunters, can cut through me like butter if they’re built for DPS.

Again, it’s really only an issue on Mesmer and Thief because of how easily they can reset if they mess up. On anything else, you shouldn’t be having a problem with them unless you’re built heavily in to defensives. In which case, you probably shouldn’t be roaming since roaming is pretty much about who’s gonna burst who first. Full offensive or GTFO.

As for Perplexity, I agree with some of the others. It’s not as bad as it used to be. I do however think the change to how Confusion functions was a poor choice. It does pretty significant damage even when you’re not attacking and I don’t think that’s fair considering it’s supposed to be a more strategically used condition.

What ever the case, I don’t think either of them need to be nerfed. Perhaps Confusion should have it’s functionality reverted but besides that, they’re both fine. You’re not going to be able to kill everything you encounter, some things aren’t worth your time simply because they have too much of an advantage. I don’t have much sustained condition removal on my Ranger for example (because I don’t use Druid) so I do my best to avoid 1v1’s against condition heavy opponents unless I have no choice. Avoiding a fight with someone who you know has a large advantage isn’t cowardice, wrong, bad or what ever else you want to call it. If Perplexity and Dire are giving you trouble, re-think your build to better deal with it or do your best to avoid it.

A few things.

Duelling is spontanious. Very rarely do you plan to duel. Most times, it just happens when you either meet someone who’s looking to have friendly practice or someone who ///// respects your skill/you respect theirs and want to mess around together. Often times you won’t even speak with the person other than sometimes whispering them to type “r” for “ready.” Between the spontaniety and little communication besides body language, this usually causes duels to happen in strange places. Most people who enjoy duels know of the common places however and try to keep their antics refined to said areas.

EOTM next to the Needle generator is a poor place but like many of the other duelling areas, it’s where it is so that others can see it and join. It can’t be too far out of the way or no one new will join and it can’t be too in the open or you’ll face getting run over by zergs constantly. In EOTM, there are very few places that meet the criteria needed to welcome more duellers without being directly in the path of a zerg. EOTM zergs tend to cover just about every inch of the map, I know this because I command there a fair bit.

That said, the duellers in EOTM are often pretty hostile. Although I don’t like when zergs intentionally run through duelling groups, it doesn’t bother me nearly as much when it’s in EOTM. Those duellers will usually gank stragglers and that’s not what a dueller should be doing.

Duels happen and that’s a fact of WvW life. Some people enjoy that kind of sportsmanship and opportunity to hone their skills. Purposefully going out of your way to interrupt it is as rude as it is for the duellers to berate you for doing so. It’s a free country, leave the duelists to do as they please and they’ll leave you to do as you please. No one hurts anyone.

And for anyone who wants to complain that they “take up space”, there are plenty of people who AFK at waypoints that are being less active than the duelists. Not only that, but most duelling circles only last for an hour or so. They might take up space in a Q but it’s rare that a group of duellers exceeds 10 people so I’d hardly call it significant enough to warrant chasing them off the map.

I don’t often duel myself but I enjoy watching them. I don’t see the harm in practicing where builds are more diverse and the environment is more unforgiving. The only time any issues come of it are when someone starts to complain about it which unfortunately happens just about every single kitten time. People just can’t let them do their thing without sticking their noses in it.

EDIT: Also about the inviting someone to your guild arena; that’s not always an option nor is it terribly appealing. You might enjoy fighting the people you’re fighting but you’re not always on the greatest terms with these people. It’d be like inviting someone in to your house after they break your nose and key your car. You probably want to keep your squabbles in a less personal space, as friendly as the competition might otherwise be. And again, duels are often spontanious and want others to join. If you go to a duelling arena in your guild hall, no one else can just stroll by and decide to join.

People are always gonna cry about it but the duellers are only going to be rude about the interruptions until people stop interrupting them. It’s not a hard concept to grasp. Leave each other alone. Most duellers with the exception of the aggressive circles in EOTM don’t hurt anyone who doesn’t hurt them.

Jente.1479:

“Coming from Darkhaven, the server I was on the longest, SoS is not even close to dead or a “ghost town.” Darkhaven was doing fine before the world links but because they got paired with a very low population server versus servers that DH had trouble with alone, everything just kind of went down hill from there. Think of it like 6 people playing football, each of these people get a partner. There are 5 grown men and one child. DH gets paired with the child and subsequently gets destroyed because their partner simply doesn’t have enough presence.”

You know, the irony to this is, I tried to follow a DH commander. I didn’t join squad, because we are the subpar server, I just tried to follow the mindless killing blob. And you know what happened? The commander stopped the Zerg in the middle of heading somewhere to say “wait? We have an FC person with us? Ewwwww! Dang it! Now we can not be zerghaven”. Then random people starting telling me to leave. So, I map hopped and saw a keep we had was under attack. But you know what? I wasn’t getting anything out of defending it, or calling for backup. Maybe the above situation could be why FC doesn’t have much of a presence?!

Don’t hate on me. I wasn’t around during the initial server merging so I didn’t get to welcome all of the FC community. It wasn’t until about a month down the road that I got to say hi to everyone.

I had heard that DH was being rude to the FC’s and I don’t know why. But it doesn’t concern me much anymore because all the people I cared about on DH have moved to different servers. That’s why I left. It’s the people that make the server, not the name. No sense staying where my friends aren’t.

I’m sorry that you were treated that way. Had I been around for it, I’m sure I’d have tried to redeem the idiocy of the others.

RodOfDeath.5247:

A stack of mithril ore says Mag server lol

I tried to discuss some of what I’ve said here last night in chat with SoS but they wouldn’t have any of it. It is very clearly a casual server.

As someone who’s never in a guild and primarily scouts or roams, I totally understand why people don’t want to use TS and why they just want to have fun. It is a game after all and fun is important. But at the same time, these same people are upset that their server is always losing, but they’re not taking any steps to change it. You can’t be casual and still be the best, you know?

Oh well. I told them what I thought and although I don’t think I’m liked because of it, at least they didn’t tear me apart either. Like I said, it’s a good community. It just needs a stronger core because 75% of the players are PPT’ers who can’t/won’t use TS and don’t pay attention when it’s necessary in a fight.

I had a weird dream the other night… Lightning Reflexes had a 32second cooldown base and 24 when traited (I did say it was a weird dream, lol).

If the damage were removed (since it’s pretty much pointless + can cause you to get stunned a second time in some situations. Looking at you Shocking Aura) and the Vigor were reduced maybe to 6 or 8seconds? I think this would be a reasonable change.

Considering Thieves have Withdraw, although yes a different profession, I can’t see why Lightning Reflexes should be left with such a long cooldown on a profession with less dodges and a similar health pool. I mean Withdraw can; Remove conditions + evade + Vigor (with trait) + other nifty things with other traits like laying Needle Trap or granting more Initiative.

Lightning Reflexes is an amazing utility and I have a hard time not taking it. That said, the cooldown always turns me off regardless of whether I’m taking Wilderness Knowledge or not. It just seems a bit long for Vigor and a stunbreak/evade.

Justine.6351:

Salamander.2504:

As of 4 months ago, the Devourer F2 wouldn’t act as a combo field, so it’s good that they fixed that bug.

um no, I was using carrion devourer for 2 years, it was working just fine.

OP, I run “condi longbow” and ya I used to pewpew through the poison field too.

Rampagers/ sharpening stone/ sun spirit/ carrion devourer
would just stand on walls and blast roamers walking past with rapid fire putting ridiculous stack of conditions on them ;-)

Hm… Are you on NA and a female Sylvari? I forget which server, but I generally have a good memory for people I encounter while roaming. And I specifically recall fighting this Ranger a number of times that was using a very strange build. Greatsword and either Shortbow or Longbow, 1 or 2 traps + Trapper runes, Carrion Devourer and condition damage foods. Whether it was or wasn’t you, they were quite good and I remember being interested in the build they were using.

It’s fun to experiment and find what suits you, likewise to fight what people consider comfortable to play.

That’s interesting to hear though. I’ve recently had a… Mid-profession crisis? Where I’m not sure what I want to do with my Ranger anymore. I’ve tried heaps of different builds in the past and have always settled on something that I enjoyed for a while before finding something else. I’m currently at a point where I just don’t know what I like anymore though so I’ve been changing my build around basically every week struggling to find something fun. Maybe I’ll give that Rampager’s build of yours a try!

Gonna step in and add my two cents on the matter since I’m currently on SoS.

I’ve been on nearly a dozen servers between EU and NA so I’ve fought or been on every server (NA) at least once and have experienced every tier.

SoS, although not as highly populated as some of the offending servers, also greatly lacks organization. It’s a server that relies heavily on the definition of zerging and likely only maintains their place in the current tier thanks to what coverage they can manage.

There is a squad that everyone is invited to, very few people on TS, very few organized guilds running, a single commander that’s tagged basically 24/7 and defends all maps and PUG commanders that fight open field maybe 10% of the time.

Although the community on SoS is pretty welcoming, it is not a skilled server and it suffers in the tier that it’s in because of it. The only time I see SoS winning fights is when numbers are on their side, siege is on their side or they just simply get lucky in the chaos of battle.

Coming from Darkhaven, the server I was on the longest, SoS is not even close to dead or a “ghost town.” Darkhaven was doing fine before the world links but because they got paired with a very low population server versus servers that DH had trouble with alone, everything just kind of went down hill from there. Think of it like 6 people playing football, each of these people get a partner. There are 5 grown men and one child. DH gets paired with the child and subsequently gets destroyed because their partner simply doesn’t have enough presence.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trash talking FC or SoS. I like both of the servers and I enjoyed my time on them both. They both have/had great communities, these are just the conclusions I’ve made after my experience on various servers.

SoS is definitely under-manned but they are not dead or even close to it and more players wouldn’t do much to help SoS’s near total lack of discipline.

Prior to moving to SoS, I was on Fort Aspenwood. That server has at least one commander at nearly any given hour, requires TS to join squads, runs multiple separate squads and often has havoc guilds/roamers. It’s really not much of a wonder that FA destroys SoS so often, they are simply more serious about WvW.

Now that I’ve said all that, SoS has been a decent community. I enjoy the people and I’m not having the worst time I’ve had. I won’t be staying, just because I take WvW more seriously than the majority of SoS does, but I won’t regret my time here either.

Just be glad that you can go in to WvW at most hours to find at least a few small groups here and there and that there’s a commander who’s dedicated enough to be tagged for hours and hours at a time. I seriously think SoS might fall apart if that one person left/stopped playing and that really says something about the community.

Artaz.3819:

Zlater.6789:

Remember that 2 + 3 is aoe retal ;D

It’s surprising people don’t know there combo fields.

In WvW,
Use 2 + 3 on people using siege if under fire (can also be used while moving towards the ally) + follow up with 4

3 + 5 + 3 is useful for camps/tower lord rooms (takes down breakbar some and usually plenty of fields to blast)

Use 4 only whenever you see an ally group running from action (on the commander tag works great) – usually follow up with a 3 and get out of Celestial after.

There are also situations when in smaller groups/zergs and you are taking out siege on ramparts and under fire that you’ll want to stop and use (staff 5-3/Celestial 3-4-3) on the group to counter arrow cart/cannon pressure.

I never have time to use 1 before CA time expires because it is so little and so slow…

IMO, Verdant Etching is meh compared to a lot of other options for building Astral Force. To me, it would make more sense that any CC effect applied or taken by the Druid would also build Astral Force with the Verdant Etching trait and then it would be much more worthy of a choice (CC trigger theme fits Druid trait line).

Clarion Bond + Rejuvenating Tides is also good.

I change my traits around quite often but when I’m using Druid and Marksmanship at the same time, I always remember to slot Clarion Bond for that combo.

This will probably be un-exciting for most people but I found it pretty interesting.

I had been running without Beastmastery and was messing around with different pet combinations. Trying to find a happy medium between tanky and DPSy without having F2’s that had really long cooldowns or useless effects.

While doing so, I landed on Forest Spider and decided to slot Expertise Training since it had quite a bit of access to Poison and since I was using Refined Toxins.

I wound up stacking a bunch of Poison on someone (WvW) and was kind of like whoa, combo fields yeah, I guess that makes sense. But I decided to explore it a bit further and also slotted Carrion Devourer (F2 Poison Field).

Just land a good Poison field either from the Devourer F2 or the Spider’s usual attacks, combo it with Rapid Fire and you can get up to 8 – 10 Poison stacks ticking for between 800 and 1,000. I assume the damage is using my pets Condition Damage since my build has none.

But comboing projectiles with my pets Poison fields has been working pretty nicely to cushion their lack of damage from not taking Beastmastery.

Again it’s nothing exciting and that a lot of people probably already know but I thought I’d share my experience. I’ve been playing Ranger for well over 2 years now and have tinkered with different pets and builds. It’s just been quite some time since I’ve tried any pets besides my favorites (Salamander Drake, Bristleback, Tiger, Smokeskale, Jaguar, Wolf and Owl) and when I realized how significantly I could stack Poison I was pretty wow’d by it.

I don’t like them either but for a different reason.

I actually enjoy harvesting. I’m one of those freaks that could just spend hours floating from node to node gathering items. It’s relaxing. And I dislike that all the nodes are in one place in WvW since WvW is 90% of what I do.

I miss being able to roam around when I was bored and there were no fights just gathering things.

Dawdler.8521:

Not even close. Scrappers cant outrun you.

In terms of troll builds, there are four kings:
Permastealth tanky Thief as above mentioned.
Stealth/reflect oriented tanky Chronomancer.
Tankyandhealingasallkitten Tempest.
Evasion/disengage based Druid.

I would include Nike Warrior but after HoT it just doesnt match other trollers.

You wont be able to kill any of these if they know what they are doing because even if you get them low they will just run away.

Accurate.

There was a Tempest a few weeks back that was trolling a group of about maybe 6 of us? We were catapulting Durios and this guy just walks right up to us totally unafraid. A few people start attacking him and when they find out he’s like immortal we eventually all start to attack him. Pretty sure we wound up fighting the guy for a good 15minutes, all 6 of us versus 1 person. It wasn’t until I said screw this and got on my Necromancer and came back that he finally died. He was running Diamond Skin but fortunately I’m familiar with dealing with it.

Anyway that was probably one of, if not the most tanky player I’ve ever fought. He had zero concern for fighting a group that just about anyone else would consider suicide so he was obviously aware of how tanky he was. I’ve only seen a very small handfull of players take on a group of that size alone and not almost immediately die let alone stay around for 15minutes.

Most people just want a place to fight. We don’t care what the map looks like. Alpine is simple and wide open. It’s easy to see/find other zergs, easy to navigate and there are lots of open fields to engage each other in.

I believe the DBL was designed to prevent zerging and to encourage small group play but due to WvW’s current state, the overall lack of players, it’s simply not what WvW needs.

There’s also the aspect of mechanical gimmicks that a lot of people dislike. Again, most just want some where to have large scale battles. The DBL has places for that, sure, but mostly it’s a complicated maze that prevents other zergs from being able to easily find each other all the while placing new map mechanics between them.

dubstax.9102:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Reaper’s need some adjusting. Deathly Chill still needs to be nerfed again IMO (and that is a class specific nerf not a blanket nerf to all conditions) among other things.

I’m just curious why out of everything you pick “Deathly Chill” as needing another scale back. Why? Chill by itself is a rather easy condi to cleanse and I never notice (on players) the damage to be any worse than lets say burn. Another nerf to the damage of that trait and you will basically make it useless.

Because of the uptime. Have you fought a Burn Guard? They can keep Burning on you almost constantly. They apply it with nearly everything they do and it’s quite difficult to keep it off of you. Your best bet is to just save cleanses for when they try to Burn stack you and tank the smaller stacks because you won’t cleanse them all. The reason that’s okay is because Guards don’t have access to a ton of other cover conditions.

Reaper on the other hand, with enough condition damage, Chill can do upwards of 1k per tick and can be re-applied with just about any skill/trait. It’s the same idea as Burn Guard, you won’t cleanse it all and it has extremely high uptime. The difference is that Reaper has a ton of other cover conditions which means you’re only option is to not even let the Reaper hit you in the first place.

Either the access to Chill needs to be reduced or the damage needs to be reduced. We can’t have such easy access to a highly damaging condition when we have easy access to a ton of other conditions as well.

I’m not saying I want the trait to be useless. As someone who has been a condition Necromancer for over 2 years, I was really hyped when I heard about Deathly Chill. But IMHO… It is absolutely OP. Some people might disagree with that opinion but I just think that it has too much going for it (cover conditions, high damage, easy application, strong effects – movement reduced, cooldowns increased).

UmbraNoctis.1907:

-snip-

Nice to see someone here isn’t completely stupid.

Kudos for being sensible.

I absolutely understand why so many people hate conditions but said people need to learn that just because they hate them doesn’t mean they’re meta, doesn’t mean they’re OP, doesn’t mean they’re better than power and doesn’t mean ANet will just remove it from the game.

I hate Mesmers. Do I ask for them to be removed, nerfed constantly, claim they’re meta or OP? No… I just hate them because I dislike fighting them. You know what I do though? I make sure to be better at fighting Mesmers than I am at fighting anything else. That way even if I don’t enjoy fighting them, at least I can dispatch of them quickly and efficiently. People should be doing the same with condition builds but instead they take no cleanses, tank the major damaging conditions then come to the forums to complain and beg for nerfs when they could be practicing and getting better.

I find it really funny that people still complain about conditions.

There have been times when condition builds were plentiful but this is not one of those times. There are a lot of condition Reapers and some condition Mesmers/Chronos. If we exclude those two professions I’d wager 80% of everyone else are running a power build of some variant.

I roam plenty and I very rarely encounter condition builds that aren’t one of those two. Just because there are a lot of condition Reapers lurking about and some condition Mesmers/Chronos does not mean that it’s meta nor that conditions need a nerf.

Reaper’s need some adjusting. Deathly Chill still needs to be nerfed again IMO (and that is a class specific nerf not a blanket nerf to all conditions) among other things. Besides that, I very rarely have issues with condition builds and this is coming from someone who is active in all areas of WvW be it roaming, zerging, scouting, etc. and 95% of the time I roam I’m solo on a glass Ranger. If I’m not having problems with conditions… No one else should be.

Also protip for fighting condition Reapers: Kite for god sake. I swear just about everyone I see will either go melee or will be careless about letting the Reaper get close to them. Don’t let them get close to you and they’re cake. It’s really not hard to do. Force them to camp staff, bait their Shroud #2 (the only mobility they have) and range them to death.

The only people that claim condition builds are OP or are crying that there are too many condition builds around (especially right now…) are either a) not bringing enough cleanses or b) tanking conditions instead of dodging or kiting.

I think, surprisingly, one of my best memories was when I was on IoJ during one of it’s exodus’s.

We were against FA at the time, I believe in T3 or 4 maybe? And while I hated how sorely outnumbered we were at the time, I look back at how much fun I had being one of the few on the map fighting an army.

During one of those match ups I decided I’d make it my goal to get Mendon’s upgraded. So, naturally I had to start with supplies. I sat with Speldan until it was fully upgraded and defended it from roamers for at least an hour. Built a little bit of siege just to be safe and saw it through to 100%. Unfortunately, they started coming in waves so I didn’t get the chance to upgrade Mendon’s but I did have a ton of fun fights. I called all the help I could get and at one point it was like 4 of us versus maybe 10 – 12 FA. They wound up pulling the Champ Arborial Spirit to crush the camp and overwhelm us and we had to pull back to Mendon’s. We built a bit of defensive siege expecting them to come zerg the tower but they never came. We went back to Speldan to recap and lo and behold… They’re all still in Speldan with siege waiting for us, lol.

Picture #1 of that day attached below.

Fun time(s) I had was back before the movement nerfs and Trapper rune nerfs. Trapper Ranger was the only build I’ve used that was actually truly broken but it was just so kitten fun… When I was on SFR EU, I would roam about and solo towers all day long and escape from 50 person blobs because I had stupid high mobility. One of those times I got trapped inside SMC when Deso capped it and I had at least 20+ people chasing me around second and third floor for a good 30minutes. Sword/Dagger + Greatsword, Trapper Runes, Troll Unguent and Settler armor = insane mobility, super tank, lulz for days. Now I just run a semi-traditional pew pew Ranger.

Picture #2 just the highest single damage attack I’ve done because I mini orgasmed when I did.

I don’t mean to discredit the video, because the last bit especially is impressive, but in numbers like that it’s also not impressive at the same time.

You need to know your class and I’ve no doubt you and your friends are talented but when facing groups of that size they tend to develop a zerg mentality. You and your friends are working together and communicating as well as reading people’s attacks and properly countering them while the one’s you’re fighting are just spamming damaging abilities.

It’s funny how 1v1/2/3 are quite hard but 3v/5/10 isn’t because smaller groups are paying more attention to what they’re fighting and how to fight it as well as probably working together better. Larger groups are just a “strength in numbers” thing where they expect to overwhelm smaller groups like yourselves.

Again, not to discredit just saying I know from experience how these situations feel. It’s really fun if you know your class well enough to exploit people’s ignorance.

Solo roaming at the very least is absolutely dead. Roaming over all is not, just that most people are in groups of between 3 and 6, which is in part why solo roaming is dead.

The size of the new borderland, the size of the groups most people roll in, structure defenses post HoT, sentry tracking and specialization power creep have pretty much obliterated solo roaming. Unless you’re a Dare Devil or a Scrapper, you’ll just get ganked constantly and will have nothing you can at least attempt to capture because it takes forever to solo upgraded towers now.

The stubborn ones like myself still roam alone. I’ll find the odd good fight but it’s hardly worth the frustration of all the deaths I suffer in the process. It’s just unfortunate that I dislike roaming with others and that roaming is my favorite thing to do in WvW because if you’re alone you won’t live long. Seems like 90% of the time you find a good 1v1/2 more people sprout out of the ground like weeds and you just get overwhelmed or zerged.

Poor JQ isn’t totally stacked and are facing challenges ): I’m sorry to hear of your hardships. Darn, just darn those guilds for wanting to play the game the way they enjoy it, right?!

Too many people in this thread have zero attention span and lose their patience as soon as they have to use their brains to develop a plan of action.

Seriously it shouldn’t surprise me with how many blobs are around and how few roamers/small groups still exist but actually seeing people complain about structure defense just makes me lol. I mean some of the post HoT buffs are definitely broken like Airship defense or Cloaking Waters but otherwise? It’s absolutely fine that things are difficult to capture. It means less face v gate and more “hm, how can we take this” while having lots of fights in the process.

I just can’t put myself in the shoes of someone who thinks like this:

Dusty Moon.4382:

Wow – clueless people here. You can place a ARC BEHIND the wall and hit the attackers and they can’t put an ARC down to hit yours. How fair is that.

It is already TOO easy to defend with: Chilling Fog, Dragon and Turtle Banners, Emergency WP’s, Enhanced buffs to defenders, etc. How is it hard to defend? Now you want to sit on the wall with impunity? That is ridiculous.

Wouldn’t it be crazy if these towers had no roofs, or if higher ground existed to build ballistas, or if trebuchets existed, or if there were multiple breakable walls, or if you could re-build siege that has been killed, or if you could build shield generators outside to prevent AC’s on your catas/rams, or if you could use a distraction group while another captures, or if there was something called using your brain instead of going full blob zombie?

I don’t know what WvW is like for you guys who are saying defending is easy but it’s about the same as it’s always been where I am…

The only time I complain about siege is when it’s open field. Otherwise, I expect there to be siege in anything we’re attacking. Does it bother me? Not really. That’s why it’s there, so attackers can’t blob everything down with no resistance.

If the blob is big enough, it doesn’t matter how much siege or how many guild buffs the structure has, they’ll still plow straight on through. If it’s only a small group? Then yeah, it’s more of an issue because there are a lot of things you have to work around. Is it impossible though? Not even close… Just don’t go “okay screw this” as soon as your rams or catas die. Can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen just give up as soon as their siege is killed. Like I said earlier, attackers have the advantage of time and resources. Go re-supply, keep pressuring. By quitting as soon as your siege dies all you’re doing is allowing time for that structure to refill, repair and re-prepare for attacks.

Anyway I can pretty much tell I won’t talk any sense in to the zerglings here. Probably have never defended or done strategic small group roaming in their lives, it’d be a waste of my time so… Keep QQ’ing about how easy it is to defend. I’ll be over here enjoying the engagements that come from the attacker and defender roles instead of getting my panties in a knot because it takes more than 3 minutes to capture something.

Here is my WvW variant that I have been using for solo/small scale for some time now.

Corrupt Boon → Blood Is Power → Enter Shroud which then activates Intelligence sigil to guarantee Plague Sending proc → Dark Path → Doom, your target now has 7stacks minimum of Bleed, Poison, 2 stacks of Torment, Fear, Chill, 3 stacks of Vulnerability + random conditions if they have boons on them prior to the transfer as a result of Signets Of Spite.

That’s 6 conditions with basically one attack. It’s a very solid burst and the build has some very nice sustained pressure as well, albeit very dangerous as if you don’t use your corruptions properly, they’ll end up being more of a burden than a help.

About the video though, I haven’t seen it used on Reaper yet so that was neat. I feel like Master Of Corruption is a bit of a waste with only 2 Corruption skills however but that’s just IMO.

X T D.6458:

Stand The Wall.6987:

its pretty ridiculous. walking up to a wall edge is a death sentence, cuz if you dont get pulled you will get bursted down in a few secs by random aoes.

would be really nice if this wasnt the case. defenders need not only incentives but actual mechanics that work in their favor.

What is ridiculous about it? Should attackers just politely stand there and let defenders attack them? Its just a ridiculous argument to make, if something doesn’t work for you, use better strategy. If you are in an exposed position do you honestly expect enemies not to use skills to attack you? What game mode are you playing exactly?

Lmfao, you and anyone else that think this isn’t an issue are just the karma farming tools that can’t peel through a gate fast enough.

Attackers have the advantage of resources and time. Defenders have nothing but what they’ve pre-built and back up defenders if there are enough people on the map/able to come to their aid.

If walls were made thicker or if AOE’s were changed or what ever solution were put in to place, it would not make attacking any more difficult. Find a hill, build a ballista, use a trebuchet, etc. Once that structure is drained of supplies or the defenders inside don’t have blueprints, there’s nothing more they can do to prevent the attackers from pushing through.

That’s the difference between attacker and defender. Defender can turtle all they want and hug all the siege they want but if the attackers are patient and smart, they can either kill all the siege with properly placed counter siege or they can continue to pressure the structure until there are no more supplies to sustain it.

Yes it takes time but why is that a problem? Some of the best fights are had trying to capture something from a defending onslaught. If you want fast karma and XP go to EOTM or develop some patience for actual strategy.

EDIT: Also on the note of “defending being made easy” as you’ve been saying about post HoT, so what? PPT doesn’t matter anymore right? That’s what everyone’s always saying? Then why does it matter if things are hard to take or not?

gennyt.3428:

The walls need to be thicker. Player weapon AoEs can just engulf the whole depth of the wall, making it a death trap and one of the reasons why I defend far less than I used to. It’s especially bad with the power creep.

Exactly. I’ve been saying this for ages any time defense threads come up.

Since OP did a nice job with paint, I thought I’d make my own example of how wall thickness should look.

How it should be on the left and how it is on the right. As you can see AOE’s represented by the red circle can cover almost the entire wall. Where as on the left it only covers half of it.

Stand The Wall.6987:

this looks like a legit wtf
also
i have to say it
dat burning doe
:\

edit
wait it looks like your screen doesnt sync with your attack. the burning in the log tic’d before your auto….

Actually I delayed that screenshot, it was applied right after my last Long Range Shot. I was just trying to get a screen quickly enough so that I could capture the burning in action. It only lasts like 1second so it was hard to capture it while it was still on the Doe.

Here’s another one that I took in EOTM. I didn’t post this one because there were players around me though. Wanted to try it when I hadn’t even been near anyone so the chances of it being a Guardian Virtue could be ruled out.

See combat log for Long Range Shot → Burning.

Gorani.7205:

Just to make sure
The sigils you have listed are really the sigils on your weapon? I mean, icons can look pretty similar and your Blood sigil might be a Fire one (which would explain the flame burst). Other than that, I don’t have an idea what is causing it.

I’m positive. Actually before I posted this screen I was thinking about taking others for proof but then I realized that’d be like 20 screenshots to go through traits, sigils, runes, food, etc. etc., lol.

The funny thing is, it only happens on my Ranger. So I really have no idea the cause but… I guess it’s just a mystery | :

Better than something that’s causing me to lose damage at least, lol.

Got a picture of it attached below.

I had just logged in, went to EBG, no one there at all because it’s Friday and our PPT has been stupid high all week so SF and CD aren’t even trying.

Hadn’t even been near another player so there’s no way it was a Guardian passive trait.

My build was linked earlier in the thread, nothing I have applies burning and I was just auto attacking this Doe.

CALL THE XFILES.

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

Could you print screen if it happens again? both combat log and when you apply burning to the enemy.

Never thought to check my combat log but yes, I’ll do this.

Will come back after the next time I’m on to share an image.

Daemonne.5018:

I have yet to level a ranger/druid, so I am a bit ignorant on this but, do you happen to be using a salamander drake for a pet? Or maybe any other pet with a fire ability?

Nope.

I’ve considered all the variables and the only things that come to mind are; hidden world bonus or Guardian’s Virtue Of Justice bugged/lingering.

I’ve been in the middle of no where, with no one around me, no guild buffs from objectives, no foods, pets on passive, no runes/sigils that might apply burning and no combo fields and have applied burning to NPC’s with every few hits.

I mean this isn’t a complaint thread as randomly applying Burn is beneficial but I just want to know why it’s happening, lol.

Cynz.9437:

clones/phantasm running at 200+% speed.

LMAO, I forgot about this one. I don’t so much find it annoying as I do hilarious. Any time I’m at a range from them and see their clones/phantasms running at me half the speed of light I just chuckle. It looks so ridiculous because no player can move even close to that speed.

Blurred Frenzy, Tides Of Time, Sneak Gyro, True Shot, Gunflame, “Chilled To The Bone!”, Vault, Coalescence Of Ruin, Chaotic Release (because it obliterates my FPS), Eye For An Eye and Overload Air.

All the skills/traits/utility I find annoying/dislike/my computer dislikes or feel too powerful.

Keviin Snow.5760:

after reset go in once capture all , that’s it wait for a week lol

That’s nearly the case as it currently is, lol. Our PPT is almost constantly at +400 – 450.

I’ve been mostly camping out in EOTM or not playing Gw2 at all this week because WvW is so boring. I’d much rather be on the losing server. It’s no fun to constantly steamroll everything unless you love to karma train and I absolutely do not the majority of the time.

It sucks to get crushed but on the plus side, there are tons of things to capture and plenty of people to fight. During weeks where our server was facing far greater odds, I had a lot of fun doing special ops type activities by attempting to re-take our keeps and towers or following small roam groups.

So although I’m sure it’s crappy to be so sorely outnumbered, just remember it means there’s more for you to do than your enemy. Most of my friends aren’t enjoying this week and have been seldom in EBG, mostly doing PvE crap or not signing on at all. As I’d said, for those of us who don’t like to PvD 24/7, weeks like this are the worst.

psizone.8437:

Can you post your build, weapons and pets just in case there’s something there you’re missing?

Fire aura is a lot less noticeable now, could you be applying that by accident and just missing it?

This is my exact build.

The only thing I can think of is that a Guardian is giving me that trait that allows allies to apply burning. But as I’d said in the OP, it has also happened with no one around and as far as I could tell, nothing to influence such a condition.

It happened a few times in EOTM last night too but in that case, I had plenty of people nearby so it’s absolutely possible someone was giving me that benefit like a Sun Spirit for example. Still, being somewhat apart from the group and attacking a sentry, every few hits I would apply burning for seemingly no reason.

Still scratching my head over this, lol.