Guild Wars 2

Mcrocha.3891:

Crapgame.6519:

Anyway – Give the guardians a break – first two beta weekends the LB was bad. Just bad.

Oh don’t misunderstand. I completely agree with the changes and enjoy the fact that Guardians are getting what they asked for because it indicates that the devs are actually listening with the especs.

Once again though, it is just funny because LB on Ranger was very bad for like 2 years. Rapid Fire was a DPS decrease, hunters shot didn’t have stealth and Barrage tickled people (still does), all the projectiles were essentially strafe-able before the implementation of Read the Wind which eventually became baseline, Auto was ok, but it got a lot better with more recent changes.

Woah, that’s so weird! Hunter’s shot didn’t have stealth? What did it even do then? Just give speed to your pets?

Fluffball.8307:

Who knows. There was this weird thing were if you killed a GW1 druid spirit, a bunch of ‘forest guardian’ spirits showed up and slaughtered you. They shared the same model as some of the demons from the under world elite area. I still think the devs will look at gameplay before lore, although they did say they wanted a few of the specializations to be very GW lore-based.

That would be…interesting. I can see it now. “Vengeful Spirits: Upon being downed, summon a host of spirits to congregate around your body. Spirits self-destruct dealing AOE damage to enemies while granting boons to allies. 180s CD”

Fluffball.8307:

GW2 druids are based on the GW1 druids according to Colin when they were first revealed. It’s some of the cooler lore from the first game (I guess because it was very mysterious). This should be more enlightening than the real world Wiki.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Druid

Oh snap. I had a gut feeling that Druid would be heavily based on spirits since they gutted spirits. Especially given that they gutted the acro line for thieves and gave it back to them in the form of Daredevil…

Then when the data miners showed aspects, I kept thinking we might have something like Aspect of the Sun Spirit, or Aspect of the Water Spirit….and have glyphs that change along with whatever Spirit aspect we had.

Now that wiki just makes me feel spirits are going to play a big role in Druid.

Zatoichi.1049:

Cynz.9437:

my only issue with it is that it is unavoidable….
and can’t be blinded :/

A taunt is not a physical attack against a target, its an AOE gesture that emanates from the body.

So is wolf fear and warrior’s fear me, but those can still be blinded (at least I’m 90% sure they can). I mean it doesn’t make sense, the wolf howl is a sound, so blind shouldn’t affect it, but that’s the way it works.

The way I see it, taunt is basically the same as fear, and should have the same effects as it. Meaning it shouldn’t go through blinds, evades, and (as sad as I am to say it) blocks.

Wondrouswall.7169:

They could have released Clarion Bond with a “Lesser” Call of the Wild that had shorter boon duration than the original and tag a 15s ICD so it can proc every pet swap, but yeah…

That is a really, really, good idea. Cut the base cooldown in half to 15 secs and all the boon duration to 7.5 seconds to match. Or just sync it up to pet swap to make it easier for people to keep track of then. Having shorter boon duration would also be great synergy Remorseless since it’d be a guaranteed fury proc for every pet swap then.

Puck.9612:

bloodpyrope.8630:

If he’s also running Traveler’s Runes or consuming boon duration foods it’s also possible.

Travelers runes are unlikely but pack runes work really well for shout rangers. It’s what I used to run before switching to trooper.

Eh I’ve seen it before. People try to adapt their PvP builds for WvW, so they try to do the whole 00666 build with Travelers Runes. But yeah, pack runes might be better.

If he’s also running Traveler’s Runes or consuming boon duration foods it’s also possible.

EnderzShadow.2506:

Last thing, go read reviews about ANET on Glassdoor. I don’t think it’s a good company to work for.

Woah ok, the way Anet is handling things isn’t ideal, but lets not not bring glassdoor into this. For one that site’s rating is highly subjective (my old company was terrible, but the reviews were highly inflated since management was writing positive reviews for themselves everyday. Similarly, one dissatisfied employee can repeatedly spam negative reviews). If we see a sudden spike in negative reviews, then yes it might be going in a bad direction, but so far there is only 1 negative review as of this month. The rest date back to July and all appear fairly positive. You have to pay attention to dates if you want to accurately judge the current environment of a company.

Aside from that off topic rant. It’s possible that devs are not allowed to engage with the community. They may be barred behind NDA’s, or management flat out told them to stay away until after elite specs were revealed for fear of spoilers or something. Not to mention, the way people have been posting has become increasingly…aggressive. Players are understandably frustrated and are taking out their frustrations in posts, but even a harshly worded criticisms gives devs an excuse to NOT engage. It’s stated right their in their “How to Give Good Feedback” thread

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-Give-Good-Feedback/first#post3383470

Now admittedly being the epitome of politeness might not garner a response, but not following their stipulations is basically guaranteeing no response.

Maybe rangers should do what the necros did for Robert Gee and make a specific thread asking for more transparency on development. There’s no guarantee we will get a response…but there is a precedent. But I honestly don’t think we’ll be hearing anything until Druids are released.

A while ago, there were attempts from Anet to create Profession Forum Specialists

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Forum-Specialist-Program/first

But it looks like it never got off the ground. I’m wondering if this would be a good time to bring that back? I’m not sure what that that…duty would consist of. But if it’s a way to have a liason between player and developers, it’s a lot better than what we currently have.

It at least solves the problem of needing a dev to read every post and respond to it if we had someone who could do summaries and respond on their behalf.

For your character to keep attacking your target, you have to not be pressing or holding down right click. Otherwise turning will cancel your attacks.

So for not cancelling target, check there for more info.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Options

Sounds like Stop Auto-Attacking On Target Change is disabled for you? Try playing around with the options to see if what you need is there. It sounds like in general you want Free Camera enabled.

Free camera. It’s one of the options in f11.

SkiTz.4590:

Taunt probably needs a look at but its not OP….

Rangers suck in PvP. Period. Just had another ESL without a single ranger even playing in the tournament.

Ehh not entirely true. Olrun, Caed and Shnicky all ran ranger at some point. Of course if you mean no ranger main, then yes you are correct.

Power ranger is pretty good for offense there, especially with piercing arrows down a lane! But not just power is good, condi trap is pretty amazing!

I play on the defensive side were you can set traps along the lane and have it ready and recharged by the time the first doorbreakers get there. NPC’s and even heroes melt pretty fast to condis and they never even have a chance to make it to the door.

Lots of good points and advice. Yeah, I have seen Eurantien’s build and I think it’s a bit above my skill level at the moment. It’s just so glassy, and even pre-patch I was never completely comfortable with the 66200 build. I was running 60260 and later on 20660 for an equal share of survivability and ok damage. That’s part of the reason why I instantly gravitated to the 00666 and then the valk build.

Not to mention, I tend to spend an equal amount of time in GS brawling on point as I do in LB sniping off point, so I prefer slightly tankier builds.

@jewishjoyride.4693
The only reason I started looking into quickdraw for more dps was because I had one match were I was fighting a warrior on point and no matter what, I just couldn’t finish him off and he only had just a LITTLE bit of health left. That fight lasted so long I found myself just wishing if I only had just a bit more dps I could’ve ended it earlier before I got +1, so I started looking for ways to add in more damage. Not to mention I had been eyeing the extra fury proc from weapon swap for a while. And the potential for chain stealth/knockbacks…

I did spend a lot of time trying to decide if survival skills were worth taking even though they weren’t traited anymore, and yeah. I think they really aren’t. It’s just QZ and LR have been on my utility bar for so long it feels weird to not have them there anymore.

Either way, I must’ve tested out a ton of different variants of builds today and I can only conclude sigils are not a reliable way to remove condis, and I wish soldiers runes removed condis before the shout and not after. Also, I totally underestimated how much barkskin shaved off burst damage until I had to go without. Never saw my health bar drop so fast before.

I wish I was smart enough to plan out my healing springs ahead of time, but man it is not easy :/

I guess I can’t have it all. Or at least at my current skill level I can’t have it all.

PS: I think we had a few games together, along with a certain thief who uh, had an aversion to us playing ranger :P

@mistsim

I think there’s starting to shape up a sort of divide between ranger builds. If 66006 is the off point powerhouse, then 00666 is a sort of a hybrid for on and off point playing. Your build is more of the latter, but it’s not as team supportive as 00666. It has more survivability and it’s great for uncoordinated solo queues, but if I were to play with an actual group, the pet res trait and the weakness on hits would be too good to give up.

Anyways, I’m also a little disappointed that your build was left out. I think most people saw valk runes and lost interest. Cycling though fury for constant remorseless proc isn’t as intuitive for some people I guess. It’s great for 1v1s and I had a blast with it in duel arenas. A lot of people asked me what build I was running there and I tried to spread it as much as I could. Heck, I liked it so much I even ended up crafting a whole set of valk armor just so I could bring it with me to WvW.

I knooow, but I want it all!

Yeah I considered taking healing spring since the trap trait was in MM anyways. I had forgotten clarion bond could also be a blast…whoops.

I personally really like remorseless since it’s good for smaller fights and 1v1s. I find if I time things right with my pet, I can land enough of a burst to chase an ele off point. At least enough for a decap and pray for a +1.

MoC also works with PBS, and if I use it with quickdraw that’s either a PBS ever 6ish seconds or a 10 sec hiltbash. I think it also works on counterattack, but that’s super situational. Generally I try to avoid the seal trait since in my opinion, seals shouldn’t really be used that often. If I am forced to use them, I shouldn’t need them again that soon.

Also looked into Lyssa, but it only has 1 burst cleanse on your elite compared to troopers, where I could get a potential cleanse every 16 seconds from HaO. Though I have heard you can proc your elite and then cancel it, and the cleanse will still work. Not sure if it still works…

I guess I’ll just play around with the changes some more. I really wish we had access to Sigil of Cleansing in PvP. It would solve so many problems…and with condis becoming more prevalent/dangerous, it would definitely be useful.

An initial app is up!

http://mygw2.wvwintel.com/

Go there, enter your API key that has PvP permissions and you can see the scores of your past few games! No stats yet, but maybe that’ll come soon too.

I’ve been running a variant of mistsim’s valk remorseless build and it’s been working fine for me so far. But at the same time I really want to be able to take quickdraw because it just has so much damage/mobility/escape potential.

Since remorseless is the base of the build and taunt is just too good to give up, the only traitline I can really replace is Wilderness survival, but I’d have to give up my only source of condi clear. I’ve been playing around with runes and sigils to see if I can come up with something maybe feasible, and this is what I have so far.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-Jo-g;1sEFx-r2cDV-0;9-0E;1YZb;0257036246;4Lcl6P;1ZF18ZF184e

It’s kind of a mess right now and I’m not happy with it at all, so feedback would be appreciated. I was trying to maintain some sort of balance between good damage and survivability, but I’m wondering if I’m just crippling myself on both ends…

I chose sigil of purity over generosity since it states it procs on hits, not necessarily crits. I’ve never really used it before so I’m not 100% sure on how it’s supposed to work or how useful it actually is.

I don’t know if anyone here pays attention to API development, but we may be seeing past game info soon! (Soon as in months, not weeks)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/api/New-endpoints-pvp-and-char-specializations/first#post5451826

ronpierce.2760:

Ithilwen.1529:

I must admit, whenever I hear that the devs are talking about balance I expect my beloved Mesmer to be nerfed very heavily. Please don’t hit Mesmer again.

And maybe they can bring back clone death too! :}

Eh that will probably never happen. I think it was stated they didn’t want to encourage that sort of passive play…and can you imagine how much worse PU condi mesmers would be with clone death back?

>_> though I do miss my signet clone death build. It was stupid gimmicky but fun.

Oh ranger daily…

It’s going to be druid.

Source: A dev who worked on druid at PAX. No other info was given except for the fact that they are excited about it and it’s going to be great (according to them).

I was told to just report them for botting. I play ranked like 99% of the time, and the one time I ran into a blatant AFK guy was in unranked. He did exactly what you said, claimed home, ran there, and AFK there. Then when he was killed by a thief, he AFK at spawn. Then when we yelled at him, he ran out and AFK by the treb. According to a teammate, he’d been doing that for the past few games he was stuck with. I don’t know, trying to farm points for daily pvp reward earner or something.

I just posted in mapchat and asked everyone to report him. If people have a heart that means 9 players will report this one guy.

Heck I even checked his AP hoping he was maybe some noob who was just started, but nope this guy had 16k AP.

But man, you know it sucks when the enemy thief messages you after the game and apologizes to you for having a kittenty teammate.

Well, it would also explain why they made ranked arena locked til rank 20. If people got banned (I’m hoping Anet will pay a lot more attention to reports if they go F2P), they wouldn’t be able to just roll a new account and troll in ranked right away.

Swoop: Fixed a bug that caused this skill to trigger leap finishers twice. This skill now only triggers a leap finisher when the character jumps toward their target.

Wait, can someone test if we seriously need a target for the leap finisher? If so, how is that fair that thieves can still get a leap finisher on an untargetted heartseeker? Please tell me this is just bad wording on their part.

The game is now balanced. Thanks Anet, no need to fix this!

How are these alternate strategies? Aren’t these just normal strategies that you use when you have the chance?

Best combat system for PvP ever, awesome community and great guildies! I can’t wait for guild arenas, guild teams, leagues and the legendary backpiece!

Puck.9612:

I had a pvp match the other day with the worst thief I’ve ever seen, he instantly died when he tried to +1 fights, he never decapped empty points, at the start of the game he decided to jump on home even though someone already said they were grabbing it in team chat, he basically spent the whole game doing that, jumping on a point that was already being capped.

The real problem was he was going off in chat blaming everyone else that we were losing, when we would point out that he wasn’t doing anything useful he would say, ” then why do I have the highest points?”

@Op, congrats on getting the high score in pvp, it means so much.

kitten . Did we have the same thief on the team? Was he also AFK for the first minute of the match, run into a 1v3 at mid and die, and then when we told him off, he rage quit and AFK at base for the rest of the match?

90 ping is fine. What you have sounds similar to mine. I usually hover between 80-100 with occasional spikes up into 500-1000 if someone else decides to start streaming. Usually anything less than 100 is ok, at 100+ it starts interfering a bit and around 400+ it’ll start to be unplayable. Anything after and I apparently just start teleporting around the map or d/c.

DnT posted up the condi ranger build that’s apparently great for PvE. I haven’t tried it yet, but here it is.

https://www.reddit.com/r/guildwars2/comments/3faa2q/_/

Edit: Actually, after looking over that build, maybe it’s not what you’re looking for. It’s a super min/max dungeon speed clearing build. I don’t know what else I expected from DnT but yeah, probably not what you want if you just want casual play. But yes, that is the condi ranger build that out dps a power ranger with the right food and buffs.

I’m sorry what? Remorseless is in Marksmanship and doesn’t have a cooldown reduction? Did you mean something else? Quickdraw?

Why the focus on just captains eh? What about the rest of the teams?

Well if nothing else, power ranger is great for farming world bosses, alright in dungeons/fractals and any other money making activities. WvW is gets pretty expneisve when you’re buying food, siege, upgrading camps/keeps, etc.

And like other people have said, no reason why you can’t have both. I made my trap ranger after a few months of power ranger. I like both and the playstyle is very different and very fun on both.

But wow, have you seen Helseth’s arms lately? Dude has been working out!

Sure, power is probably a good choice if you want to do a bit of everything. Condi trap is pretty niche I feel, and it’s a pretty heavy investment to get all medium dire gear just to outfit a condi trap ranger that only performs a few specialized tasks. Dire is also harder to get than zerkers, the only dungeon vendor that gives out is CoE. Otherwise you’ll be crafting/buying it.

The only hesitations I have about your build is the fact that it’s pure glass. I know many players play with a mixture of soldiers and cavaliers just to up their survivability, and unless you are really, really good about positioning in a zerg, you might just end up as the hated rally bot. As for roaming, just give it a shot and see. I know a few people who roam in full zerk and seem successful, I’m just not one of them.

As an add in, you might want to consider bringing in sigil of bloodlust over fire or air on one of the weapons. You can kill 25 mobs easily and build up bloodlust fast. Just put one on your underwater weapon so you don’t lose your stacks when you go into water. It’s a cheaper alternative to fire/air, and with the recent nerfts, it might be stronger choice.

I actually use two builds that are actually very similar to the ones you posted!

For the condi trap one, I usually play that when I have ridiculous lag spikes since I find that the toughness basically allows me tank a lot of hits when flipping camps. Camps flip way faster with the condi build than the power one, just drag all the guards into a corner and spam traps and bonfire. I took quickdraw over LOTF so i could get double bonfires. I’d also recommend bringing at least one stunbreak, otherwise if you end up getting CCed or knocked down, it’s a bit harder to recover from.

I don’t really fight other players with the trap build, it’s basically the build I use to flip camps, tap keeps, scout, etc. I’ve have done a few small skirmishes with it, and it works pretty well. Destroys players that don’t bother to bring condi cleanses. It’s great for escaping too. If I know I’ll be on a server with a strong defense team, I bring the jaguar so that way I can stealth myself and my pet and gtfo. I’ve escaped many a zergs that way too.

I did use the full zerk power build for a while, but I’ve been adding pieces of valk and soldiers to give myself better survivability. This build depends a lot more on your skill level to survive when roaming. Since it’s so glassy, you’re really going to have to be good about dodging the big hits. Also I’ve gotten completely kitten on by condi PU mesmers with that build, but I think that’s just the problems everyone’s been having with mesmers lately.

It’s good for havocs and picking off other squishy backlines in a zerg. Also great for defending from towers/keeps. Since the arrow pierces, just select the target in the back and watch numbers explode all over your screen. Flips camps fine, but not as easily as the condi build.

I can’t say as much about the pure glass power build since I haven’t ran that in a while. I only use it when I know I’ll be playing with other people who can help watch my back and peel for me. These days I use a variation of Mistisim’s valk remorsesless build for solo roaming and looking for fights.

Sorry if this is a bit rambly, but I think both builds are good and it really depends what you’re looking for. Trap ranger for me is more solo play, with a focus on getting PPTs for my server. Power ranger is when I want to play with a group of people and do bigger things like defending and blobbing.

Would your proposed change also cancel whatever action your pet is doing? I can think of situations where I might want to dodge, but I want my pet to still keep attacking/use their skill and not cancel it with a dodge.

I mean I can see this being useful for PvE, but this might screw up a lot of things in PvP.

Why strider’s defense? It only affects the cooldowns on sword, not greatsword, unless you’re taking it for the projectile block which is really inconsistent.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the old barkskin was -50% damage for you and your pet at less than 25% health, which would not only stop you from getting oneshotted in the meta right now, but would also mitigate executioner from thief now that they can take that and panic strike.

I wish they didn’t change barkskin at all, it would’ve worked nicely with MDG.

DaShi.1368:

Rangers should spend less time asking for nerfs for other classes and focus on what their class needs improvement. Antagonizing other players is the main reason rangers aren’t well liked.

Excuse me? Have you been to the ranger forums at all? Half the first page is composed of threads pointing out bugs, suggestions to fix spirits, shouts, traps, increasing offhand range, etc. Suggestions on how to fix pets, or adding new pets. I don’t see ONE single thread about nerfing other classes. Yeah sure there are occasional complaints about about eles/mesmers or whatever, but the VAST majority are suggestions and bug tips.

Tao.1234:

Profession balance forum has been removed for a reason.

Oh we had one before? I probably wasn’t around for it then…did…players ruin it or something?

What’s killing me is the complete and utter silence coming from the devs. It would just be nice to get confirmation from then that these traits are/aren’t working as intended. If immediately after finding out that Taunt was going through invulns, the devs could’ve said “Hold up, that’s not how it should work, we’re working on a fix” and I feel it would’ve lessened the crying and builds built around it.

Or they could even say something like “Oops yeah, pets ARE supposed to get those +150, don’t worry about it, we’ll get to it eventually”

Now at this point I don’t know if the devs have forgotten, if they’ve changed their minds, or what! Are we EVER going to see those stats added to pets? Is Natural Healing SUPPOSED to be working as it is now? Or is it just a bug? Because if it’s working as intended, then TELL us. If it’s not and there’s a fix but won’t be out for a while, then TELL us.

At this point I’m just operating under the assumption that everything is working “as intended” for now, and any changes are going to be a pleasant (or unpleasant) surprise.

This isn’t even just a ranger problem. I bet a ton of other classes are dealing with the same thing. I know devs are super busy with a million bugs, but would it take that long to communicate with players? Evidently Grouch has enough time to look at and respond to the bug list supplied by Backpack and others, I wish they’d do that on an official channel and open it up to the wider community instead of just a select few.

I’m wondering since I can’t check now, but since the made our 1500 range baseline, did they also readjust the damage value based on range? So now we have to stand at max 1500 range to get the same amount of damage that we used to at 1200?

Eurantien.4632:

I was hoping to show some of it in action, but Zeromis (mesmer) and I (using this build) won a 2 v 2 tourney yesterday.

I actually saw those matches yesterday! It’s amazing how great of a peel spike trap is! And you guys had some pretty cool portal usages too.

A few questions. Were you still using travelers runes in the 2v2 fights? Were you seriously playing on 6 FPS the whole time?! And in an ordinary matches, would you still drop the HS for the 1min long regen or would you prefer might stacking from a fire field instead?

Anyways it was pretty cool watching your matches in action. Are you planning on competing in anything else that will be streamed? I only stumbled on that because I was hopping dueling arenas when I saw the 2v2 one up and hopped onto twitch to check it out.

Just a random thought, but how about something similar to the ele’s diamond skin? Something that either gives immunity to conditions after a certain health threshold, or removes or transfer conditions. Rangers could definitely use condi removal in other traitlines.

Oh that was one of the first things I wanted to try. My testing buddy said it broke stealth and he could see the Jaguar as he was auto attacking it.

Since stow pets now counts as pet swap, you can pull off crazy blasts like this:

I am getting this issue too! Making it very hard to keep track of my team… but I asked some of my buddies and they don’t have this issue.

Is anyone else wondering what will happen if you use f2 on your jaguar?

I wish they’d at least mixed in Hide In Plain sight with it. The stealth helps to break target and mitigate a lot of set up targeted bursts.