Guild Wars 2

That’s for longbow users, I use shortbow. But i’ll keep that in mind:>

I tried it. I got bruises on my bruises. While that’s result of this build being quite different from my own, there’s undeniably one thing that went south with your version – you replaced Quickening Zephyr with lightining reflexes, killing the build’s only burst button.

With cele’s moderate offensive stats, quickness is a game maker for me – entangle, quickness + weapon swap for fury, then flank them with as much shortbow bleeds as possible. With quickness this turns into swift execution, without it it lacks the punch to deliver before they catch on and stop the “burst”.

Also sword completely changes the build’s role and style. it’s a great pursuit/disengage tool, with best raw damage, but it’s defense is nowhere near the gs. I ate quite a lot of nasty ele damage, because auto attack rooted my #2 evade and i leaped backwards only after eating most of it.

I take it that’s the reason lightning reflexes took over quickening zephyr in your version. Also MoC is not used for 50% damage boost if i land an interrupt, but for doubling the amount my daze/stuns last. With shortbow concussion shot and gs hilt bash i’m looking at some quality cc time. Ofc with sword instead of gs that is indeed a useless trait and spotter is a much better fit there if that’s the case.

Fire+Air sigils on shortbow are one evil idea! I’ll play around more with those.
Thanks for the feeback, but you got it wrong – that’s not almost same build – that’t totally different build you got there! Yours is a skirmishing roamer, mine is more of point holder;)

Well i’m putting my money on zone control + torment + boon strip
or zone control + boon machine

Well i did change sigils as indeed the gs ones were…just to put something there. Now it’s sigil of intelligence and sigil of rage. I’ll add some more on that once i got some experience with that.

Also my build it has both power and condi pressure. with weapon swapping you get fury from minor trait and for 5s get around 66% crit chance. And celestial gives high ferocity.
Sure there could be more crit, more power or more condi damage, but question is – at what price? Cele amulet keep this build’s defense at reasonable levels, and as for rune – mad king’s rune provides the badly needed power, greatly boosts your bleeds (via 40% duration buff), and it’s mass hunter’s call after entangle is really a game changer.

So until i find better i’m sticking with this one – it serves me well.

So we have here two commenters saying that it wouldn’t work and won’t try it vs me who actually plays it and it works…hm….

Sorry to say this but from my experience this game suffers some serious issues that make it a snooze fest and nowhere near the fun that conquest maps provide. Here are my gripes:

1. lanes. Those two boring, dogfight lanes.

In conquest there are at least 2 paths to each point which leads to some successful sneaking around to decap a point, roaming to defend it, or some unexpected encounters between them. Things are bit tactical, fun and bit unpredictable, leading to varied action non-stop.

Not in conquest! All happens in a straight, pretty open dogfight lane. Either you take yours to defend base and make match last an eternity, or take their to race who kills lord first. Not enough tactics, no “more then one way to skin a cat” like in conquest.

2. Paper, Scissors &…wth? Rock, where did you go?

You can spawn doorbreakers and archers. But once you lose a door guard it’s over and done. No refunds. I know it’s for sake of the game having any chance at ending before timer is up, but still there’s something fundamentally wrong with rock paper scissors setup where one of them cannot be refreshed unlike the other two.

3. too much open space.

Lanes are too open! Result? Ranger galore. Why bother with melee character when you can snipe them down to half health before they even reach you. Ofc i’m exagerrating, but the bottom line here is there’s hardly any LoS or sharp curves to let a melee char get in close without looking like a hedgehog.

4. Lack of proper mobile guarding skills.

I’m talking stuff like revenant moving projectile block, and similar skill on dragon hunter spec. If we’re to protect npcs and ranged fire from enemy is 95% certain we need skills that can protect those NPC on the move, and not be useful for 1-2s that they need to walk out of immobile protection zone.

5. choke points. – that’s the flaw stemming from 2 lane design. You don’t need any strategy to know where to stand if you want to defend your base. There’s only one point, and that’s your gate and later inner gate. There is no guesswork, no strategy in determining how to sneak into enemy base and wreck havoc. Everyone knows where the enemy will come from before the game even starts.

6. NPC spam. These doorbreakers can breed like…skritt. Seriously i’d like to see some leash put on that to the point where you have to care to escort your doorbreakers, rarther then zerging your way through with npcs, with little consideration for the 80% that will die before they get there.

So in short – lotsa work ahead for stronghold in my honest opinion.

It’s loooong. Too long. I had two matches literally ending near last minute or two. And quite probably with at least me getting so bored that i stopped acting strategically and just went into a duel thinking “i don’t care who wins or looses, as long as it’s over!”

Also tons of rangers inside (myself included). the straight open paths make it way too easy to grab a ranged job and not care. At least until revenant and some other moving projectile blocks appear.

Well i use this build for holding a point, and indeed in duels it does great. When it’s a zerg vs me then yeah i won’t hold on forever though calling it squishy is going overboard.

2873 armor, protection on dodge, greatsword defenses + shortbow evade and signet of stone active when in a pinch are definetely not squishy. Unless my team’s brain dead i manage to hold it long enough for backup to arrive on point and prevent it from getting decapped.

And yes I do focus on crits! with high ferocity and gs being power not condi weapon, and shortbow being half power and half condi, but both reliant on crits (damage modifier from crit and bleeds on crit trait) precision matters a lot!

That’s why i also suggest taking superior rune of the pack as an alternative to mad king’s if you need more fury uptime badly and are willing to give up on that birds bleed+damage burst.

The worst are guys on your own team who whine and kitten about your performance (which wasn’t horrible by any account) during and after a WON match.

It seems my zombineer ranger rubbed off on me when it come to choosing playstyle for my ranger and i ended up with this hybrid build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJAVRjMqUxaDLmsQ1aAChYVQ74yU2FRPlsimA-TZRAABfcIAG4KAAwDAIw9HGrMAA

On the surface it’s a condi ranger. But under the hood that’s not the case. This build is very balanced. It has condi pressure from shortbow, sharpened edges, cave spider pet and most importantly rune of the mad king + entangle, which turns your elite into Hitchkitten’s classic. be sure to swap your weapon right after connecting with entangle for that tasty fury for your little beaked friends (more damage+more bleeds from sharpened edges!) The TERROR is PRICELESS!

After swap you’ll either power your way through their hp or condi their rear – choice is yours.

Another benefit of mad king’s rune is extra power and +40% duration on bleeds. If you want to hunt them down with condies you can. The cave spider is there for that additional condi pressure from it’s F2 skill, giving you weakness and vulni on opponent right after entangle, so they won’t wiggle their way out of your horror show with any old cheap condi cleanse.

On the other side of the fence you got greatsword for some power damage. It’s nowhere near the output of class zerk/assasin ranger, but it still hurts, and those evades, block and 3s daze/stun on hiltbash work wonders in defense.

Both shortbow and gs benefit from moment of clarity and respectable shorter cooldown traits – giving you some respectable cc options, along with your wolf.

Defense also has not been neglected. There’s emphatic bond and healing spring for condi cleanse. signet of stone boosts your armor to 2.8k when not on cooldown and every ranger knows it’s active is a lovely panic button if there’s a need.

Signet of the wild gives you a little passive regen and some stomp stability/extra movement speed for few seconds when in dire need of them.

Quickening zephyr is mostly there for the elite+rune of mad king follow up. Shortbow flanking follow up. But it still is your only stunbreak so use it wisely.

Overall you got yourself a mean all-rounder here. The damage may not be through the roof, but you got all your bases covered, more or less, and it works kitten well in practice – least for me.

And here’s my genius asura pirate – Jekk the Corsair! Known as the most intellectually and visually gifted asura of the 7 seas!

I run into staff eles quite often in my matches. Probs cause for some baffling reason turret engis are still a thing (if they call for bakcup that is).

Ah true, they didn’t reveal all revenant weapons. I suppose they now spread revenant into 3 reveals to buy time. One for ventari, one for shiro and one for glint.

Now if only i was a tiniest bit hyped about the revenant, unlike the actual druid…

such huge pets would cause massive screen clutter. also how would they move through narrow passages? Certain aoes that benefit from size target (looking at staff ele) would destroy the pet far easier then it’s small counterpart.

And that wouldn’t do much to fix issues of regular pets which would still make 90% of your pet options.

If it’s just the revenant then it’s a kitten small reveal. Remember that ventari is not an elite spec. There are no alterations to profession mechanic with this one, no new weapon skills. Just one traitline and 5 skills (heal, 3 utils, elite)

I focus on control during events. So i take intimidation training and pull out drakehound for some sweet, short cd aoe cripple. For second pet i like to take wolf or black bear, generally something with aoe F2 and short cooldown if possible. And hey if it’s got control of it’s own, awesome.

Then there’s muddy terrain, barrage and entangle. And if that still doesn’t strike your sadistic fancy, there are traps too, particularly frost trap and spike trap.

You may also choose to take boar for some interrupts instead of movement control.
As far as we’re going there i’d suggest shortbow as 2nd weapon if you intend to keep your distance. A fast,reliable cc on #5 for those annoying leechers or any danger that can’t wait, and short, but also very fast cripple on #4.

Plus all those bleeds you can rack up from auto attack vs those annoying husks.

Ah also, i did forget earlier. Another of ranger’s dead zones is boon removal. Might be druids will have some serious options for that and not just 1v1 wise.

Yeah they better give us guild hall customization options! And by that i mean the visuals!
I’m growing my 2 man guild for the sake of jungle themed guild hall. And i better get my jungle themed guild hall option when i buy HoT!

5 sec kd? Gooood:>

The point is to teach you that cc aren’t to be ignored and you should take care and have your stunbreaks, stability and learn to DOOOOOOOOOOODGEEEEE!

Since in pvp ppl hit fast and in pve mobs attack at a slow rate, the cc on mobs is longer to make it a threat enough for you to start caring and take countermesures.

kick

Make it activate on using the burst, and not on hitting with burst, have it eat up to 2 bars of adrenaline for each condi removed.

As it is it strongly forces usage of aoe burst weapons (especially hammer & bow) while screwing over skillshot burst builds (mace, sword, axe).

Condi removal trait should not lock build diveristy, unless it’s specifically adressed for a given weapon (and not via discriminating burst mechanic).

I think a following trait (can be master tier in curses) would be awesome:

New curses master tier trait – Panic: applying fear applies 8 stacks of confusion for 4s.

Simple – when enemies are feared they just run and can’t perform any actions. And that’s fine. If they choose to do something like stunbreak or condi cleanse, they’ll eat the confusion spike penalty.

Now there is still little isssue of passive condi cleases, but those aren’t that controllable nor strong as the active ones. Also if you cover that fear and confusion with more conditions…well it might get fun;)

ok my bad. Axe does have horrid auto damage. Guess it’s cause i played axe on power setting, and scepter on condi…..which makes scepter more viable as ranged hybrid weapon rather then pure condi. Well there goes that dream.

So ok axe needs some serious attention and scepter some condi-burst love.

In defense of axe. Being often dodged = dodge bait. And that’s a huge value on it’s own. Especially given the reallly short cd on it when traited.

As for scepter – you have to do little better then single target, 900 range, very poor direct damage and slow condi buildup to rank as viable support in my book. Just ask yourself if you’d go scepter + dagger/staff into pvp, knowing things might get up close and personal more then once.

I’m not biased, a-net is.

Axe is a 1v1 power weapon and what it does, it does well. There’s a sick burst under #2, some decent damage and vulni stacking under auto, and some retal under 3. These skills make sense and axe is a viable, dangerous weapon for a power necro.

Scepter is a viable, dangerous condi weapon…on a mesmer. Just take a look at their scepter to see how it’s done. On necro it’s a sloooooow damage build up, 0 defense, semi-ranged 1v1 weapon. Not even able to see the dirt behind axe in terms of practical combat.

We all know where necro stands in spvp, and this is a post about one of the many things that make necro bottom tier, yet is not often mentioned – the weapons. Plain and simple – their design and synergies are often bad or unbalanced. Or both.
So without further introductions, let old dr Zef diagnose this dead patient:

1. The Dagger – unlike most things necro this weapon’s sin is being OP. Powerful melee damage, cleaves, fast mulitple hits for triggering on hit effects, great life force build up on auto, solid hp leech on #2, very good immobilize on 3, and both #2 and #3 having 600 range.

It’s near impossible to not go dagger when playing necro.

Rating: 4.5/5

2. The scepter And here comes the redhaired fat stepchild with crooked teeth. The scepter is hands down the worst weapon in necro’s kitten nal. What is supposed to be a sustained ranged condi weapon in reality is a deathwish,

Crimes of the scepter are numerous. Firstly for a ranged 1v1 weapon it lacks the power to be such. There is no direct nor condi burst to make you a threat before opponent grows a beard and you’re long dead. If you’re looking for defensive option, like on mesmer’s scepter – good luck! There ain’t none here, unless you’re talking cripple from grasping dead, but that has to land first, and it’s one chance per 10s.
Nail to it’s coffin is the 900 range, which kills it’s chances to be a viable condi-snipe tool (welll that and lack of burst).

Scepter has no place in battle with opponent who is fighting you and not running away or not aware you’re there picking him off.

Rating: 1.5/5

Staff – imagine you have 5 skills. None of them good. Wasted 10s is how i feel about the staff. 4 outta 5 skills are marks, which unless used directly on enemy are a waste of a cast. They’re visible from a mile and a simple dodgeroll solves all the mark problems for the enemy. When that’s done and avoided what you’re left with is most often putrid mark for condi cleanse and slow, power based auto. I won’t say auto-attack is bad, it’s far better then scepter and has 1200 range. But it’s still not very strong, and very brain dead. Ranger’s bow auto attacks heavily reward positioning making them far less boring. With staff it’s a snoozefest.

Rating: 2.5/5
Axe I stand corrected by community. Axe damage is horrid. It needs some serious buffing of it’s AA and #2 damage skill. Still while lacking in power the overall concept is good – vulni + burst + aoe retal. But those damage numbers needs some attention.

Rating: 2/5

warhorn – warhorn rocks, a control weapon with swiftness, lf gain and cripples. Made for moving around and melee combat., dagger’s best friend.
Rating: 5/5

offhand dagger – guess that’s supposed to be the offhand condi weapon. The condi cleanse with blind is nice, but enfleebling blood is a dissapointment for a #5 skill. Soon we’ll have that on a trait when entering ds (currently we get nerfed version), so that shows how trashy it is.

rating: 2.5/5

focus reaper’s scythe is nice for some fast vulni stacking and life force gain (+ regen). It’s a bit too visible, but still a good #4 skill. It’s the spinal shivers that give me the chills. 1.25s is a horrid cast time, and at best it strips 3 boons. On other character that may be impressive, but necro is known for corrupting boons, not just stripping them. And that trait that does the very same skill when opponent is below 50%. Shows how little spinal shivers are valued.

rating: 2.5/5

When it comes to weapons necromancer really got the short end of the short stick. Lack of defensive options (such as blocks or evades, or even a kitten blind (save single blind on offhand dagger), lack of solid condi burst (on character that’s supposed to be THE condi class), lack of good melee power cleave (reaper will adress that) and lack of a clear role for most of them (staff, scepter, focus), combined with some of them being ridicously op (dagger& warhorn) screwes necro in spvp even more.

I hope A-net will wake up and start thinking about how to adress these necro issues.

Not gonna happen as all skills that were uncategorized will be put into some category like it or not.

Survival is already taken by troll unguent, which fits there much better (it’ll be able to get small condi cleanse and fury when traited). Healing spring already has a condi cleanse and it’s own boon (regeneration). Making it a survival skill would be over the top vs other heals.

Also traps are known for having their own combo fields, and once again healing spring falls neatly into that category with it’s water field. I wonder what additions it’ll get as part of that trap improvement change, but i’ll just have to wait and see.

I’m also looking forward to what that “making up” for arming time of traps will be, including the healing spring if it’s thrown in there.

soo…anyone done some underwater pvp lately?

Stating the obvious, but since a-net devs were not sure what type of utility to make it, here’s my feedback;)

Well thing is i heard they are reworking it (along with mob ai as well). But silence since then.
I’d like some confirmation from a-net that that A.I. is still a thing and we are getting it.

Yeah, MM here too. Nothing like having my bone minions spectate from safe distance as i’m getting my rear handed to me by another player..

being good in downstate requires some investments. I’m very fond of downstate tactics and my character still being a threat in downstate. It’s up to the attacker to bring counters to downstate fighting and land that stomp, knock me out of the point or withdraw and let someone else finish me off.

Well that is a good history lesson for me. Not taking america’s n-th “peace keeping invasion” isn’t something I’d bash anyone about. Unlike the WWII. Though honestly i don’t hold a grudge that deep, but i sure like to poke fun at them;)

That aside i really feel something went awfully wrong in pvp today. Never have i seen so many quitters and complainers in one day..

Nothing big, as I currently enjoy playing a MM in pvp I would like a nice red post confirming that minion and pet A.I. are being worked on for HoT, so ranger and necros can put more trust into their little zoo when facing other players.

Looking forward to that option. Little time away from pvp would do them good. As for French – well i’m Polish. If anyone has the right to make fun of France for WWII it’s us (they bailed on us despite being part of mutual protection treaty). And us Poles have very very little tolerance for political correctness. Nearly 50 years of communistic censorship will do that to you:)

It’s an old running joke – the French are the first to run/give up at sign of trouble/conflict. And ironically enough the first game i had this happen to me today it was a french who gave up first and afk’d in base.

Seriously. Recenly out of roughly 50% of ranked games going south i’ve had one or more quitters or afk’er in base “cause it’s hopeless/team is noob” etc.

I don’t mind losing a match but i can’t stand these cowards/whiners. It’s killing the fun and leaves bad aftertaste.

ah pardon, my bad. I always took demo for gameplay, my mistake. Got carried away.

his elite is glint. Glint’s a dragon, so the closest weapon to that would be either torch (fire breathing), or a magical weapon (crystals) like staff/scepter/focus.

I’m not sure i even want any beta access. I mean having whole pve spoiled for me is pretty much a buzzkill.

On condi front rangers lack any torment, while confusion is in short supply.
Torment is the biggest shocker, as ranger is hands down the most anti-enemy movement profession of all.

Confusion is next in line, especially since ranger has access to fast interrupting (point blank shot, concussion shot, hilt bash).

Another thing in short supply are aoe attacks. There’s barrage and that’s it. All else is either pet (crap damage), or conditions from traps (crap damage too). Nothing that would reallly give’m hell inside the red circle.

From top of my head:

1. Boons for minions. I’m happy we get that protection on DS leave trait soon, but retalliation is a huge hole in the wall. Unless i’m willing to lose 2 bone minions on a well of blood for 6s retal. Which I’m not.

2. Bone minions need love. Seriously, there’s no reason at all to not blow them up the second you can. Even lame jagged horror gets bleed on attack. Give me some incentive to try to keep my bone minions alive, a-net!

3. Flesh Golem charge is bad. Easily misses needs 3/4s cast time from necro himself, only 1s knockdown and 1 lousy stack of stability for 15s. This is gonna be a running joke for quite the time.
Change charge into a launch rather then kd. Instant cast, make it a stunbreak.
Instant cast for necro – golem itself can still have a visible windup for balance’s sake.

4. Flesh Wurm. Teleport is awesome, but the auto-attack is lacking. It’s strong but the cd is too big. Even if a bone fiend has less DPS it has a double projectile finisher with a faster cooldown. I suggest changing wurm’s aa to blast finisher and making it small AoE on impact.

Generally, while i know minions aren’t pets, i would still like to see a MM playstyle where fighting to keep your undead horrors….“alive” reaps viable rewards.

Maybe something along the lines of them getting stronger as fight progresses, or getting a powerful set of boon when combat starts, to give incentive to keep them around at least for a while.

Also a condi-heal minion would be nice. And i don’t mean that GM trait , that let’s be honest, under heavier fire will remove one to two condies every 10s (flesh golem and wurm), and that’s being opimistic.

And yeah, blood fiend needs some love, it’s non-scaling passive heal, 0 condi cleanse and party play make it a very unappealing option among necro heals.

Well i certainly don’t. Hated LA from day one.

And both chronomancer and reaper reveal were awesome and i have no complains there. Not saying Dragon Hunter was wasted time, i’m just not much into guardian.

I hope that’s not the case and the “special thing” to take place of specialization reveal this week is not LA…

1. chronomancer – the time mechanic!
2. reaper – that unstoppable power and multiple synergies for leeching and debilitating enemies!
3. Dragonhunter. Erm…it’s a guard…with bow…and traps…eeee….yeah.

Fear in itself is a control effect. It’s a condition too, but non damaging one unless terror is traited. That’s why terror is in curses, while master of terror in soul reaping that is generally about control aspect of necro (foot in grave, fear on downed, master of terror)

Nah, i main engi and ranger. I don’t plan to whine about reaper, looking forward to the challenge of facing him in pvp with my ranger/druid:)

Seeing the thread on improving death shroud it kinda hit me i would like something else – a state between full death shroud and no death shroud.

Enter the spectral shroud!

activation would be simple – press F1 once to enter spectral shroud, press it again to go into full death shroud.

Spectral shroud rather then replacing your weapon skills with ds ones, would enchance them based on full ds skills. So give more juice to base necro. However unlike DS it would do nothing for your defense. Life Force in spectral Shroud would not deteriorate on it’s own, instead each skill cast would consume appopriate amount of it. Getting hit would still deplete the Life Force pool, despite it not shielding you. Think of it as necro losing control over not too cooperative souls of fallen enemies.

Here’s an example how a dagger/warhorn necro would benefit from using Spectral Shroud in his fight:

1. auto attack range increased to 180, wider attack cone.
2. life siphon now leeching both hit points and life force (2% life force per hit)
3. dark pact would cause 1s fear on opponent at the start of cast ending it with it’s base immoblize (perfect for decaps).
4. veil of doom becomes circle aoe with 240 radius. A small healing for necro if you interrupt an enemy with it. Each successful interrupt is another heal.
5. locust swarm – on hitting enemy locusts bounce off and seek more targets, for up to 3 bounces. Opponets receive 8s torment (1 stack) per hit.

Of course each weapon would get it’s enchanced attack versions for spectral shroud. Feel free to comment and discuss:)

I’m happy to know i didn’t waste my hard earned gold buying stuff for my necro reaper look:>