Guild Wars 2

I will admit I’ve only killed thieves that allow me to kill them, who don’t stealth and reset the fight. There’s really no counter to that (besides teleporting the moment you drop combat, because you can’t outrun them), I have to use all my cooldowns to kill them, they aren’t available for a second fight.

But I will offer two pieces of advice:

1. If you think a thief is near, and your pet is on passive, set it to aggressive right away. A pet on passive that loses its target won’t attack anymore. If you slip and you don’t hit F1 again, your pet will not help you, just sit around while you fight. By the time you notice this it might be too late. You need your pet to be on aggressive.

2. Split up your conditions. I drop Frost Trap/Viper’s Nest and stand in them the moment I see a thief stealth—but I save Entangle for later. I don’t know the thief’s exact methods of condition removal (so input on this would be cool) but if they have the ability to remove all conditions at once, which is what I suspect from several encounters.. you want to save your most powerful one, the immob, for after that’s over. No thief wants to fight while chilled, they will probably remove it.

This is without a doubt the most annoying thing in this game. What’s causing this nickname wipe? You don’t save this information? Start saving it!

I nickname people who I know are doing certain dungeons, people who I know give great dye advice, people who I meet in WvW, and the nicknames are how I remember them! Not character name, not account name, nickname. And when you wipe them, I’m left with either a guessing game to find out who’s who (obviously not an acceptable choice), or I just hope that person sends me a whisper sometime, that their nicknames haven’t been wiped.

There aren’t any words that won’t get feline-transformed to describe how I feel about this.

I don’t care what my enemies’ names are. If they are not from the Coast, they’re nothing but barbaric invader scum, they probably don’t even use names where they’re from, just grunting sounds or something.

That aside, I heard there were Archmages in this thread? It has been entirely too long since I ah.. Enjoyed one.

There’s a commander on SoR who does this too. Didn’t take note of the guild tag (very unfortunately.. but I’ll probably see them again) but they’re a blue sylvari guardian, runs a very defensive spec, hard to kill, never seems to stay in any CC. Was fighting at the one supply camp Tarnished Coast owned on SoR Borderlands earlier today, it was a long siege, I’m sure a bunch of you were there.

This guy was in the habit of pushing, and using those annoying bubbles and walls to prevent us from retreating, and once, pushed all the way into the camp to kill the ballista that I was operating at the time. Doing this attracted the damage of just about everyone in the camp, and we downed him.

Vanished -immediately- afterward. Just gone.

So if you SoR people know who I’m talking about (since they have a commander tag, you should be at least somewhat familiar), you’re being led by a disconnect-on-down coward. Hope you’re cool with that.

Absolutely not to longbow #4.
When jumping up onto a keep wall to spike someone off a cliff (location example: Dawn’s Eyrie and similar borderlands keeps) quickly before getting destroyed by AoE, I don’t have time to charge anything, I need the knockback right now.

Increasing the time to get the effect on anything is not a good idea for WvW. Someone dangerous rushing you and just pressing and releasing 4 with no charge doesn’t knock them back? No thanks.

I think a lot of the people in this thread are missing the point, maybe because they’ve never lived in hurricane affected areas so they don’t understand how this works.

They aren’t being outrageous for worrying about not getting to see the event. It’s because they don’t live in the “destruction” zone to speak, just the “our power is going to be out for what could possibly be a long time” zone. This make sense? They’re not worrying about losing their homes or families because that’s probably not going to happen. Just going to have really, really horrible weather that causes electrical problems.

Does anyone have a screenshot of an Asura with the ghastly event shield?

I just want to see what that looks like, how it scales.

Superior Energy all the way. Saved my life so many times.

I actually have had fun playing around with pig pets in PvE. And the buffs provided, especially the plasma that grants all boons, would be nice to have around in WvW. (can’t speak for pvp)

But they just are not practical. You have to order the pig to do it’s F2, and make sure you don’t have anything targeted because sometimes when you do he bugs out and starts running toward the enemy instead. Okay, assuming that didn’t happen, now you have to wait for him to remember how to manifest items.. Few seconds of animation and there’s your item. Now all you have to do is move to it, pick it up, and then use it.

In other words, there’s no time for all that in a real battle. And you can’t even guarantee you get the buff you need at the time. Pigs are a novelty at best, in every situation.

But you always get fun comments if you have one with you, that might make it worthwhile!

I agree that it’s pretty lame to set up siege outside the spawn.. Bunch of ugly winners doing that. But what am I to expect from those with filthy common blood? Not everyone can be fortunate enough to be from our noble Coast.

I do enjoy using my trained Signet of Stone and high dps pets to kill them though. Please employ this strategy, fellow rangers. Just sit in the invulnerable area and kill their siege. Sure you’ll lose your pet multiple times, so use something like birds which are harder to notice, or a Jaguar you can stealth in. Every chip of damage to the siege is permanent. Eventually you’ll have cleared out the field. And that usually causes a push if you have enough allies around…

“Not to be disrespectful but let me just say that I’m bored with the competition, and let me mention that I “expected more”, and then let me imply that there’s nothing more worthwhile going on until next week."

Okay.

TC is definitely the toughest server. We will have our revenge on Blackgate, just wait.

I’m not sure how I feel about this idea. AI will always be AI, it’s going to have problems, and I do NOT want this class to end up in a position where all our most powerful and useful specs don’t use the pet, instead trading it for a buff. I love the pet mechanic, and I would HATE to feel like I was deliberately limiting my potential by sticking to it.

It also would encourage the “NO PETS OUT!!” crowd of idiots in dungeons, that we’ve seen posts about. Imagine only being accepted to a dungeon group if you spec no pet.. And that’s not your main spec.

Turn your dialogue volume all the way down. I have a thing about repetitive NPCs too, and even player characters. It does eventually get annoying. You can turn it back up when you want to, though I’ve found.. I never want to.

Like many of you, I’ve switched to using the Raven for my burst dps pet. And it’s pretty amazing.
But I’d been using the Eagle as my off pet, and what I’d started to notice while fighting, either in WvW or PvE, is that I preferred using my Eagle, to my Raven.

What, you may ask? But the damage is inferior!
It is. But what isn’t inferior, is the cooldown difference on their F2s. With Beastmastery reduction traits, the Raven’s is up every 15 or so seconds, the. Eagle’s is up every 4. That’s right, you can use the Eagle’s F2, which still HURTS, especially if you grab the 30% more pet crit damage trait, twice definitely, and possibly even 3 times within the span of time you’d be waiting for Raven to be ready. Which is more useful? Less burst more often or more burst less often?

I don’t have numbers because I’m posting from a phone while lying in bed, lol, but you numbers people can feel free to crunch Raven vs. Eagle F2 output within the span of the Raven cooldown. Keep in mind that Eagle also applies 2 stacks of bleed, for what that’s worth.

But I’ve already made my decision. I went out and got a Hawk from Iron Marches, which I’d been missing, and is identical to Eagle in terms of attack, and I’m using 2x that lovely short cooldown Lacerating Slash.

Or have pets be able to detect stealthed enemies. You could make it into a skill “Sniff ’em Out” or something like that.

You could think of our class as an anti-burst class. With the ability to take no damage at all (for either you or your pet) with a traited Signet of Stone, on top of Protect Me, you can make it very hard for anyone to kill you. Having 2 “oh kitten” buttons is really nice, and can make 1v1s very, very lopsided for your opponent. Of course, there still is the issue that we need to have enough damage to actually kill (or very much injure) our enemies in that time span, or all that time taking no damage was pointless.. that’s where pets come in, really. I’ve started using 2x birds instead of drakes like I was before, because while River Drake’s Lightning Breath hits very hard, it has the dumbest wind up animation ever and the bad pathing causes him to not aim at the target quite often. Birds on the other hand, much better.. and while only the Raven’s F2 can really compare to the sheer damage output of Lightning Breath, it still hurts. In fact, with full Beastmastery, it hurts a whole lot.

Another thing I highly recommend, if you are having trouble getting out of the front lines after you extend, is Superior Energy sigils. I run one on each weapon set. This gives you back 50% of your endurance on swap. Essentially, if you are at full endurance and your swap is up, this allows you to make 3 consecutive dodge rolls. 3 rolls backward should get you out of the front lines for a hasty retreat, and is really good in every single situation ever. Whatever you think you’re giving up to use these sigils.. you’re not. Try them out!

Let me give you an example of how you can play your Ranger in WvW. I changed my spec yesterday (I do it a lot…) and for the first time I actually felt like I had a real impact on zerg v zerg combat. (I usually judge my specs purely on their solo roaming/ganking aspects because that’s what I try to gear toward)

I have the extra range longbow trait, and I’m using a Raven pet. What you want to do is hang out near the front lines of your zerg, but not right up front. Scout around for a target at about half health, or anyone pushing. Use longbow 3 to speed up your pet (even if you can’t hit the target, you’re using it for the speed boost primarily) and send it in by pressing F2, so that the first thing it does is use the skill. As your pet is advancing, you want to be sneaking forward. You will need to practice, play around with the max range longbow so you get a feel for how far away you can be and still hit your target. When your pet gets close enough to land the F2, hit your longbow 2. This should result in a massive spike of damage, and will either down or severely wound a target at half health, or on a target pushing, immediately put them into panic mode/retreat. Either way, you will want to call your pet back right away. You’re playing this as a controller, not a killer, so unless you really hate your target, don’t get overzealous and keep your pet on them.. that will just get you a dead pet. What you want to do is pick off anyone low. Down as many people as you can.

With Beastmastery reductions in F2 recharge, you can do this combo fairly often, and it also works (though with less spike damage) with an Eagle or Hawk, which have a ridiculously fast F2 recharge rate.

Now I only have experience playing with longbow, don’t ask me how to use this combo with shortbow, if you want to do that, test it out yourself. As for non ranged situations.. you can seriously just win against anyone melee with whatever you want if your pets hit hard and you have your cooldowns. When they get on you, Entangle so they don’t leave… traited Signet of Stone, QZ right after (when used together this forms a QZ with no drawback), spam spam, Raven F2 or River Drake F2 or whatever F2 you want as long as it’s a burst one, spam, dead. If they are somehow still alive, you still have Protect Me and your heal. Try to poison your opponent somewhere in there so they don’t heal for full.

The only fights you won’t win 100% are vs Thieves (because they will leave) and sometimes Mesmers without 100% world completion.

…this is a long post. I hope you can take it apart and find some parts of it useful. I don’t think ranger is underpowered at all. There are just some things that are absolutely broken. (Spirits, for example, pet animations and pathing) But you can overcome them.

You mean this?
http://www.guildhead.com/item/34767/ravaging-verdant-bow-of-battle#.
(also try using that site many more 3D previews of weapons)

That’s a common graphic. Search the TP for “Verdant” to find all the Sylvari weapon skins. Also probably available from karma vendors in Sylvari zones, at least I think I remember seeing them. Should be cheap.

I usually undercut by a decent amount. Because I only sell things that cost me barely anything to make, and I’m usually making 2x the cost put into the item, anyway. So why waste time, I want the profit right away… more money you have on hand, the more you can make.

I like to price my items low enough that people who are buying feel pressed to make the purchase before that one low item is gone, or to appeal to people who want to relist, and more importantly, low enough so that people who pay attention and see that all the other items are much higher, will opt not to undercut me, and instead, wait for mine to be gone so that they can then 1c undercut the next lowest item.

Played around with a spirit build all day yesterday. This morning, specced back out of it.

Totally and completely useless.

The spirits have some really nice utility, the effects themselves are good…
But a spirit will not last in any combat situation longer than 10 seconds. Everything ever uses AoE and they have NO health.

What about the double health trait? What about it. You get 3 of them and I’m not taking Nature Magic and NOT taking the protection on incoming burst trait. Leaving me with 2 slots to fit spirits can follow you, spirits use their effects more often and… wait. Oh I guess there’s no room for double health.

Not that it would even matter. What’s 2 times a sneeze… A strong cough? A gentle summer’s breeze?

Spirits need to be completely reworked. They either need to have their health drastically increased or changed to not being able to be damaged at all. I’ve had (many) instances where I summon a spirit and it dies.. the very next second.

What I’d really love, is if someone at Arenanet sat down and actually played a Nature Magic Spirit spec Ranger for a day, like I did. And just count how many times you actually got to use your spirit for the full duration. For half of its duration, even.

Fix our horde of glowy treebeasts!

Since I haven’t played Shortbow, I can’t comment about that nerf, but for me, as a melee ranger, the biggest problem with the class is Pet responsiveness. (or really, the total lack of)

For example, Lightning Breath is a huge burst move. It deals loads of damage. If you don’t use it with QZ or immobilizes (both really..) you’re never going to hit anything in pvp with it, because no one’s going to stand still long enough for your lizard to:

1. cancel it the first time, because you hit it during an animation it was already doing, causing it to go on a short cooldown
2. finally decide to do it, and then have a little pause to think about how to do the attack, then remember it involves taking a deep breath
3. inhale and maybe (Maybe!) face toward the enemy (why do they sometimes get stuck firing in the wrong direction! We can’t turn our pets manually, the pathing really needs to be cleaned up)
4. aaaaand zapzapzap
5. What? Oh he isn’t there anymore? Well hey, what do I care, your fight not mine

I really think that those wind-up animations should be removed or drastically shortened. Pets are our mechanic, and for the very mechanic of your class to not be an on demand, “when I hit the button it happens” thing?

I know they’re working on it, and I admit I have fewer F2 cancels than I used to. But it still is not, and never is on demand. And I still get those times where pets just will not do their moves.

Is it no longer possible to read the forum without being logged in? No guest views?
I swear before you could read without logging in, just not post. But now to so much as see it, it prompts a login.

Why the change? It’s kind of annoying, all I want to do is browse around on my phone before I fall asleep, hehe

QZ + Lightning Breath.

Incredible burst but due to F2’s general unreliability to fire, a frustrating combo to pull off. Drops an invader dead when the lizard wants to do it though.

+9001
Totally for this. Of course there’s a billion things that require more priority.. But the moment the art team has some free time…

what are you talking about, bad at 1v1?
Traited Signet of Stone + Protect Me.

It’s like making your opponent fight you twice.

And yes, to echo what others are saying.. Mesmers will be your bane. They’re entirely annoying. So don’t fight them. I’ve never had a mesmer be able to catch me.

Thanks for coming out everyone, but this contest is over.

Actually it’s Rangers that look a lot like Witch Hunters.. Especially since they get torches, and can wear that same hat and armor. No pistol though, but I bet a Sword/Torch setup would look close enough.

Mine actually has the unfortunate side effect of reminding me of those damnable hunters every now and then, just because of the hat and torch.. But I forgive him since I know he would never worship a false god like Sigmar…

Is this the thread to post our WvW builds in?

This is the one I use:
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#MVozcc0z9qxx0aoaqcksV

Note: Hide in Plain Sight+Shared Anguish is the best trait combo you can have in WvW, in my opinion. People want you dead and control is how they will do it. Free negation+stealth for escapes or repositioning is just wonderful.

Pets are Hyena and Raven, though the Raven is mostly a placeholder, if I could dual Hyenas I would.

Skills: Heal as One, Protect Me, Spike Trap, Frost Trap, Entangle

also HIGHLY recommend putting a Major/Superior Sigil of Energy on your bow, and on one of your mainhand weapons. The reason for this is, if you need to get OUT of somewhere, you can use 2 dodge rolls, swap weapons, and get swiftness + an extra dodge roll on top of it. In many cases, you will need it.

Your main stat should be condition damage. as much of it as possible.

Strategy is simple, you want to chill people with Axe#3, and load as much bleeding and burning as possible. Remember that Bonfire is a combo field, you don’t have to try to drop it on your opponent—just use it to light your Axe spammable on fire.

Stay as close to your target as possible, and keep them locked down. You want to be close enough so that you can drop your traps and have them instantly trigger them, which keeps them slow. Build works very well against melee but does have trouble catching ranged if they decide to run, since all your chills/cripples are trap/melee range/pet based.

Alright, let me explain where Hyena comes in. You should ALWAYS strive to pre-pop its F2. Don’t use it when you’re already in the fight, use it as you are approaching your opponent. It has the same annoying animation delay that all dog howls have, and while you’re in combat you don’t have time to waste. Unlike other howls though, this one summons something that will follow you—meaning pre-popping it is viable and should be done. But only right before entering combat.. it WILL despawn if there are no attack targets for it.

Another, even more important reason to pre-pop F2 is, if your target is the kind of class that will try to burst you in melee, you will need to use Protect Me, which turns off your pet’s attacks, and your pet will likely die, leaving you to swap to the next one. If you already have Hyena Ally out when you pop Protect Me and kill Hyena, it will do 2 things:

1. keep attacking during protect me when hyena isn’t
2. still be there after you swap

As SOON as you hit Protect Me, and your melee opponent is going to town trying to kill you and only killing your pet, you need to:

1. Drop all your traps on their feet
2. Drop Bonfire
3. Splitblade through Bonfire and proceed with whatever until dead

If you find yourself taking too much damage and you don’t have heals or both pets are dead or you’re in any situation which is unfavorable, you need to Entangle and get out. With the weaponswap swiftness trait, and energy sigils on both sets, this should be fairly easy. A big thing that will help you a lot is getting a sense of Entangle’s range. I used to only use it when enemies were right on top of me, but now I actually mix in using it to stop incoming enemies. It’s a very good defensive skill, same with traps. Learn how to use them both offensively (keep someone there to kill) and defensively (keep people away from you).

I don’t offer a lot about longbow here because it’s really only a backup weapon I use to plink into backs of people running or to AOE walls when it’s called for at keep takes. I’m a melee ranger mostly, that’s where I put my combat focus.

Oh, and last thing. Don’t use the ground target trap trait. YES, the bigger size of the traps is lovely. I used it for a while. But all it did was make me realize that 99.999% of the time, the place I wanted my traps down was.. right at my feet, and using the trait puts an extra step between pushing the button, and that happening. If you aren’t hyper-aware all the time, that trait can, and will get you killed.

You actually can knock people off cliffs with the longbow knockback. You just can’t do it to NPCs. On players however, they will go right off the edge.

Done it plenty of times in WvW.

Another thing is that Carrion Devourer is possibly the best underwater tank in the game. His F2 Regenerate just lets him sponge up hits from anything. Especially if you have passive regen on him as well.

I main 2x Devourers (Carrion/Lashtail) in PvE because I love them so much, they are super tanky, and will actually kite enemies a bit, with their retreat. The AI is oddly intelligent with them, I’ve found, they will actually retreat out of channeled attacks, things like that. (at least I have observed mine doing it)

But as much as I love my Devourers, I wouldn’t recommend them for non-PVE. (only done WvW can’t say much on pvp) On enemies that are running away, even with swiftness and petspeed tactic, they just can’t hit. They have to stop to fire, and so they stagger after enemies always catching up just enough to miss. I find that spiders do this too, actually, and they have the added annoyance of being incredibly squish.

I’ve had more luck using dogs, buffing their speed with longbow #3, sometimes they will manage to get off a cripple, but even if they don’t, when they (or any melee pet really) closes in on a running player, they can get a chomp in here and there when they are in range. Not so with Devourer.

But I STILL <3 them~!

I hope Tarnished Coast gets put up against stronger servers.

We have good leadership (at times) and we need to sharpen ourselves. I’ve seen us do some great things… We should be aiming to improve.

What we really need is to get some commander symbols on our actual commanders, not enough of them have it. I’ve donated but I encourage everyone else to do so as well. If you trust them with your character’s life, trust them with a bit of your money

+100 on this one.

I don’t have time to pick up those “Loot Bag” items. Or they spawn where I -was- when a player died, but now I’m not there. Over there may not be a safe spot anymore. I might need to stay with my group. The gate broke and it’s a bad idea to hang around outside the front of the keep since the vultures are out there looking for slow people to kill.

There’s so many reasons. Just put the loot in my inventory. If it’s full, notify me. (somewhere not obnoxious on the screen, just a little icon that says “HEY, clear out that inventory or you’re not getting anymore WvW loot!”)

Now I might be deemed an enemy of the people for even saying this next part.. but I think you could go ahead and remove loot from WvW altogether. Put somewhere on my character sheet or inventory where I can see my Badges of Honor, change it from a drop item to a currency value like gold and karma, and whenever I kill an enemy or participate in a kill, the current loot bag drop conditions, just add badges directly to my character. Put a little notification where the event one is that says something like +5 Badges of Honor! and done. Much cleaner, no use of the inventory… and the badges are the only items worth getting anyway.

Yeah, we need a “See Stats” option added to the pet roster or something.

And why did they remove instaswap out of combat on pets anyway? I read that it had something to do with people abusing it to stack buffs.. but they already know how to do this intelligently, you can instaswap weapons out of combat and when you do, the buffs associated don’t trigger. (for example: Ranger’s swiftness on weapon swap)

So why didn’t they just change the pet buffs so they didn’t activate on out of combat swaps? That would have been the right change to make. Or was it disabled for another reason.. was this change in the patch notes anywhere?

Here’s mine. He’s the hottest flower you’ll ever see. <3