Guild Wars 2

Oh my ….
What Anet is doing to rangers is, frankly, unbelievable. I lost hope for this class months ago, but never expected something like this.

Anet might as well delete this class from the game,

Get some of these …

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bank_Access_Express

Arc DLad.2194:

bri.2359:

So no, there is nothing in game that reflects my ‘personality’ because the game mechanics do not allow for it.

true the game designates the skills for you, but once you’ve done (or abandoned) the story, every choice after that is what reflects you:
- i’ll pick this armour because i feel my charactor looks better in it – thats my style
- I’ll use these skills because i want to beable to do A,B,C instead of D,E,F.
- I travel alone on the map and don’t like parties or i always look for a group because.
- i decided to take up a crafting instead of exploring the world or vice versa.
your personality isn’t just defined by your class, its by the choise you’ve made, whether that varies from day to day, thats tells us thats the kind of person you are.

Interesting … I thought the personal story was the one and only place in GW2 where an in-game decision you made actually had some impact, but brief one, at least within the personal story.

• i’ll pick this armour because i feel my charactor looks better in it – thats my style*

lol! I happen to find all the armour in this game terribly ugly. My choices are solely governed by what is least painful on my eyes. In fact all my armour is mix-and-match! The style of armour I think suitable for any of my toons does not exist in the game. Please, tell me what kind of person am I from this??

• I’ll use these skills because i want to be able to do A,B,C instead of D,E,F.*

I use skills A.B.C because of game mechanics and the meta-game decisions I made, and has nothing to do with the kind of person I am. You are really stretching things here ..

• I travel alone on the map and don’t like parties or i always look for a group because.*

A decision to solo or group is dependent on so many external factors, such as who else is on-line at the time, who else is doing he same things ,etc. Again, you cannot infer a players personality based on this. There might be players who would like to group but cannot because no one else is around or wants to. Does that make these players ‘loners’?? Does it make players who do not want to group anti-social??

• i decided to take up a crafting instead of exploring the world or vice versa.*

Well, I have done both so what kind of person does that make me??
See my previous post re schizophrenia …

Sure, you can assume all sorts of things about any player based on their meta-game decisions. Whether your assumptions are accurate or not is another issue.

The point I am trying to make, relative to the OP, is this is impossible to do based on in-game decisions a player makes, because there are no in-game mechanics that allows for player decision to impact the game. For example, there is no way you can know what decisions I made during the personal story. You cannot even tell what faction I joined.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Well, to elaborate what I mean.. I’ll use specific examples.

@bri: You made a Guardian and Ranger, why not Mesmer? Ele? Engineer, ect? Theres something within those playstyles that draw you over the other styles, which is a reflection of your likes and dislikes. You pay attention to details that other people tend to overlook (I didn’t even realize Rangers are slaughtering innocent animals around Tyria)

I do have a Mesmer, I just didn’t use it in the example I gave. I do not play the other classes you mentioned because I do not like their class mechanics.

With all due respect, I think you are attempting to ‘psychoanalyise’ too much through my class choices. My GW2 class preferences are meta-game decisions and have nothing to do my personality. Taking your analysis to the extreme, the fact I play both a ranged class and a melee class does not mean I am schizophrenic …

Star Ace.5207:

I respectfully disagree: you can RP all you want, it’s in your mind, and you play whichever role you want without anyone holding you back.

Yes, of course anyone can role play in their head and in-game all they want . However, the decision to role play in GW2 is a meta-game decision you make. The fact you need to find certain guilds on certain servers stresses the fact there are no in-game features that rely on role-play.

Spiderwick.1879:

Do YOU play that way? If you have a “main” and you like to play him, would you leave him behind if he got nerfed or is not that strong anymore, compared to some class/classes.

Already have … My main, since launch, use to be a ranger …

I left the ranger because the class has been systematically destroyed and was no longer fun to play. It became worse and worse after each so called ‘balance’ patch with the quickness nerf being the last straw for me. I could no longer run dungeons without gimping the entire party.

In Jan/Feb I leveled a guardian, so had that to fall back on. The guardian is my main now. I use the ranger only for easy PvE stuff, some dailies and the like. If not for having 100% world on the ranger, I would have deleted it by now.

I come from a single-player RPG background where character custonisation and decisions you made have some impact in game. You can ‘roll-play’ whatever you want to see the impact of different decisions. How much or how little this reflects you own personality is up to you. The success of many titles is related the this aspect and the amount of ‘replay’ value.

I was shocked to discover GW2 has none of this. GW2 is all about meta-gaming, the builds, cosmetics, ranks, achievements, titles, etc. Nothing you bring to the game has any impact what so ever in the game.

You choose classes based on combat preferences. and/or some mechanic or utility. I ‘play’ my guardian the same way I play my ranger. I just use different tools and press 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in a different order. That is it. My guardian does not take on some added ‘goodness’ just as my ranger does not spare the rabbits on indiscriminate kill dailies.

Same goes for helping or rezing downed players. If I want to stop and help or rez, i will, if not, I carry on. This has nothing to do if I am playing my guardian or ranger.

So no, there is nothing in game that reflects my ‘personality’ because the game mechanics do not allow for it.

Playing a ranger you should not have problems dealing with risen.

Both your bows have cripples (longbow is an aoe), shortbow has a stun as well, and longbow has a knock-back. You have pets that can cripple, chill, fear, etc. You have all this without even resorting to traps.

The key is knowing where and when to start the fight so you don’t get overwhelmed.

Best to learn this now and enjoy beating on risen, because the concentration of them will increase as you advance into higher-level maps and personal story. They also get tougher with more varied attacks including pulls and stuns.

If you need any specific info on PvE ranger builds, weapons and playing tactics, I suggest you check out the ranger sub-forum.

Sometimes I wonder if I am playing the same game as others on here ….

I happen to love Orr!
I think it has the most interesting map areas and environments. There are some amazing nooks and crannies to discover both on land and underwater. After Anet cleared up some of the murk, I would often stop and take it all in. I still do, although I am in there less often now.

Yeah, the theme is undead, so what? No worse than the endless centaurs or dredge, or flame legion you get in the other areas. At least the undead used to give you a decent fight, now even that is gone ..

Sorry, but any player that cannot solo explore or travel through Orr after all the nerfs needs to learn how play and build a toon. Orr is easier than being a lvl 80 downscaled in a mid-level map. Orr is no longer an end-game area.

As for the events, I have done many solo. Obviously not the group temple events, but certainly most of the escort events. I have done Lyssa with 5 players. Defending penit/shelter/jofast can easily be done with 3-4 players, and is actually fun to do!

The saddest thing for me in this game is seeing what Anet has done to Orr …

Terrible bows in this game, although not as bad as some of the greatswords … ugh!

Over the 10 months, I have used these:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aureate_Longbow
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bandit_Longbow
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Droknar%27s_Recurve_Bow
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Krytan_Bow

Used the bandit bow the longest until I was lucky with the Flame & Frost RNG chests and was able to get both the fused longbow and shortbow

IndigoSundown.5419:

The farming nerf has affected me, along with the promotion of events to “more interesting” status. I once would run around CS and ML, harvesting and doing most every event I ran across. I found this fun. Seems like I could almost always count on a Penitent, Jofast’s, or Shelter being up, along with many other events. Now, all I see are a few [Group Events] with no one in attendance. Much less fun.

I make only slightly less gold than I once did in Orr. However, I’m having a lot less fun there. It wasn’t a farming nerf to me, it was a fun nerf.

Pretty much this^

I didn’t mind the promotion of events to “more interesting” status. This got rid of the MF-wearing leechers and kept the players who actually enjoyed doing these events.

Defending Penitent/Shelter/Jofast with 4 good players is a lot of fun, and with this few players, champs were rare spawns.

CS was fun for awhile, I didn’t care about the loot drop nerfs cos there were more than enough mobs for the fewer players. My gold and mats intake actually increased compared to when there were zergs around.

Now, I just do the node harvesting and leave. No one stays around, apart from the now very obvious bots. Yes, there are still bots running the penit/shelter loop ..

cygnus.8913:

I’d like to know how DR works more specifically, because you can be in an area for half an hour without farming. Is it account wide and to that area only, or to any other areas you go to?

I have noticed DR setting after 15-20 min. I don’t know where the 30 min or 1 hour came from I see people referring to all the time.

This has occurred at different times while completing slayer achievements. If I see I am a few kills (less than 100) short of a slayer achievement, I will go to an area where I know the particular creature spawns.

After 15 min of working the area. there is always noticeable shift in both the quality and quantity of loot, regardless of the map level or the number of creature I have killed up to that point.

I have done this enough times to notice the pattern.

What I don’t understand is the hell-bent rush to get this achievement!
Players are camping these things like world events now …

If any player cannot kill 300 holo’s over the month while playing normally, then the player needs to find another game.

Guesting on a low pop server in order to kill 300 in 1 hr is, frankly, obsessive, and says so much about the state of the game and player base.

This is really depressing ..

@OP
I agree with what Jagoten wrote, but would add one thing.

If you want to do dungeons and world events, I would advise you to open up all the wp’s to access these first. No need to explore all of these maps at this point, just do a bee-line run to these particular wp’s, then come back later to explore the entire map when you want.

Some of the dungeon entrance wp’s are regularly contested, so you might want to open one or two more near by as well.

BeardMonk.1749:

Ok, iv been playing GW2 for about 6 months now. Iv finally settled on a character (having had a few false starts) and now have my mesmer up to L42.

My issues is this. I can never make ANY gold. The most I have ever had has been just south of 5G. How the Kitten are people making 60/70/100/200G? Im doing everything i can, doing all my dailys and monthly, world events, crafting items then selling them but im still only just keeping my head above water.

Can anybody point out to me what im doing wrong? Should I be trying to do more dungeons or something?

Thanks

Note, I have never, nor will I ever, buy gems with real money.

First, you are only level 42, so having 60/70/100/200G is indeed impossible for you at this point.

Second, crafting items to sell is a loosing proposition. You make more gold selling the individual mats than the completed item. Even with a craft maxed to 400, very few crafted items will make you a profit. To make gold through crafting takes a lot of time and effort in studying the TP market.

Through leveling my first toon to 80, I managed to save 15g. I did this by avoiding wp travel, keeping repair cost low and having a vendor/salvage system. I also harvested every node I came across. I didn’t do a dungeon until well after reaching lvl 80.

At lvl 42, you don’t have access to maps with higher value harvest nodes .Well, you can try, but you will be dead before you can find enough of them to make it worth your while. Once you hit 80, you have many more options to make gold and it will come in pretty fast.

Building your own PC is easy

Here is a link to some very useful information and guides
http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/

Looks like something out of Blade Runner ..
This is more futuristic, sci-fi looking, don’t see this as something for GW2.

I thought much the same as the OP for a long time.

I had been collecting laurels from dailies and monthlies since they were introduced, and could not justify using them on consumables. I had around 160 of them when I decided to look more closely at the ascended items. I rarely do fractals, so this was really the only way to acquire these.

When I added up the combined stats from 5 items, it made more sense to me to use the laurels for these. I had enough on hand to immediately get an amulet, 2 accessories and 1 ring for my guardian. This made a pretty big difference. I just got the other ring after finishing my June monthly, so the set is complete, apart from the back-piece.

Fenrir.3609:

The ecto salvage change and the talk of up and coming changes is a positive thing.

Sorry, but I see nothing positive in either the so called ‘fix’ (that didn’t address the root causes of the problem) nor the talk of future changes.

Given Anet’s track record, particularly with respect to Orr, what makes you think future changes will be positive for the player base? To me. it is more likely things will get worse, apart from the TP traders and flippers who always seem to come out on top.

Furthermore any talk of future loot revamp only adds fuel to speculation and rumor, and we know what effect that has on the economy. And now this will drag over the next 3 months, lovely.

Between this and the so-called ‘balance patch’ due later this month, June 2013 could become as infamous as Nov 2012 for this game ..

@Geotherma

Don’t listen to them, the screenie you posted taken with fraps is much closer to the way I set the visuals in all my games.

If people prefer over-saturated, contrasty visuals, that is there problem …

I installed SweetFX last evening (all the files in the zip download go into your GW2 dir where the game’s .exe lives). I also used one the pre-sets listed in the SweetFX database for GW2.

What a huge difference! Got rid of the constant foggy/fuzzyness and sharpened up textures and detail without any over-saturation or brightness/contrast changes.

Everything, included maps and loading screens, are much more detailed and clearer, and underwater looks great now.

As for monitor calibration, I also use a 32inch HDTV as my monitor. These can be complicated to calibrate because you need to consider back-lighing as well as screen settings. To get this ‘right’ takes time and I never use calibration tools.

I have spent most of life working with images, both print and digital. I trust my own eyes to determine brightness/contrast/saturation and detail rendering. Once the device screen settings are to my liking, I leave them alone.

Next step is checking through the video driver utility the brightness/contrast/saturation levels in case any further tweaking is necessary.

Now, the monitor is set for general purpose computer applications. Next comes the games.

In my experience, it is extremely rare for a game to render they way I like right after installation. There are always tweaks required to the in-game gamma/brightness/contrast. I generally prefer less contrast and saturation for a more ‘open’ atmospheric feel. I prefer to see detail in shadows than just black, without having over bright highlights or washed out sunlit scenes. It takes me a few hours of game play to see most of the different lighting conditions and set this to my liking.

@OP
I can relate …

Mained my ranger from launch until Jan when I realised anet was slowly killing off this class. I know, it took me awhile …

I created a guardian and leveled to 80 and was very glad I did. Ranger has only gotten worse and would have left the game if not for the guardian.

I do dailies and the dragon/world events on the ranger, and do dungeons and Orr events on my guardian so the time spent on both is fairly even.

Since then I created a mesmer, but just don’t have time for it. Been stuck at lvl 61 for quite sometime.

Armour is a ‘sign’ of a player skill now??

I happen to think most of the armour in this game looks horrendous, particularly the dungeon sets, including Arah. I would never, ever kit any of my toons in Arah skins regardless of how many tokens I have and whatever ‘prestige’ they might bring.

Going by posts here if terrible-looking armour means you are a skilled player, I must be a pretty bad player! lol!

I posted this is another thread:

I have been using the 0/15/30/20/5 in PvE since Feb. I also use an amour mix of Knight/Valkyrie with a full set of soldier runes. Weapons and trinkets (ascended) are all berserker, back-piece is rabid (exotic) with a rabid crest.

For traits:
Radiance: II
Valor – V, VI, XI
Honor – II, VIII

I mainly use greatsword and staff, sometimes swapping out staff for scepter/focus if range is necessary.

Staff sigil is Fire, greatsword sigil is Force (cannot decide on anything else …)

For the vet karka’s and queen I use scepter/focus, most everything else I use greatsword. I use sigils of force in both scepter and focus, again because I haven’t decided on anything else.

My usually PvE utilities are:
Signet of Resolve
Signet of Judgement
Stand your Ground
This slot I swap various utilities depending on where and what I am doing:
Retreat, or Wall of Reflection, or Save Yourselves, etc
Elite is Renewed Focus

cesmode.4257:

Some of which got a precursor when they were handing them out at the first karka event, where these same people abused the login design of the game and stayed in their party at the end of the event to login to as many characters as possible and run up to the chest from the big karka boss to get multiple precursors in one sitting.

Then they proceed to come onto these forums and place farmers in the same likeness as gold sellers. It’s sickening.

Ive been here since beta..2 or something. Head start and all. I simply missed the karka event that weekend because I had a lot going on THAT weekend. And out of all of the weekends throughout the year, that had to be the weekend where bugs were soaring and as a result, precursors were given out like candy on haloween..and yes, I had to miss that.
My luck..along with the rest of my bad luck in getting a precursor to drop from a mob or chest.

Not all got precursors from that event … I certainly didn’t ..

Really, you did not miss much, the entire event was an epic fail, with tremendous lagging, and numerous disconnects.

The most interesting part was all the raging on the forum for days after. The moderators were kept very busy …

Mirta.5029:

If the price climbs high enough people will just go to Orr to kill random mobs and farm it this way. I see people seeking lodestones in a similar desperate way right now.

T6 dust would need to reach onyx or charged lodestone prices for this to take place.

[quote=2159008;aspirine.6852:

Or the prices of dust will be so high that people see money in the farms again. Both things could happen.

[/quote]

You cannot farm something that is not there …

Fewer events means fewer mobs, means fewer drops, means less T6 dust.

AndrewSX.3794:

Palu.3405:

Hopefully the price of dust will fall once people stop farming Southsun and return to Orr

It won’t.

Because even if all the farmers get back to Orr, events have been nerfed to the ground.

They spawn more rarely

This^

I was in penit/shelter last Sat., and over the course of 1hr only these spawned
escort the historian – 2
defend shelter – 1
defend penitent – 1
Jofast wp was constantly open because risen were not attacking the base.

The lack of events was so noticeable I took to making note of what was going on (in this, what was not going on …). Just a few weeks ago, you would have had such constant event spawning you couldn’t keep up with it all.

The frightening thing is, I doubt Anet will change penit/shelter/jofast back to the way it was before the Southsun Living Story content appeared.

Now, the only reason to go to Cursed Shore and Malchor’s Leap is to harvest the omnom, ori and sapling nodes, then leave. If anything, T6 dust will become more scarce over time because no one will stay, or go back, to do what few events there are.

Valanga.5942:

Vayne.8563:

laokoko.7403:

Vayne.8563:

Now, this COULD be an abberation because I don’t do it that often, but for my money, I’ve personally made more money farming the armored scales.

Some people say they can make 9g/h with skelk on another post.

I didn’t know you can make that much on armor scales. So how many scale you get an hour? like 30?

I don’t know. I got 10 in about 15 minutes…but it might just be an aberration.

Actually, this time Vayne is almost right.
I just got out from the shark spot near Crab Toss island with 5 armored scales in 15-20 minutes…
So he probably overexagerate to prove his point, but i can confirm that’s one got spot for farm.

Wich now will be nerfed to death because ANet want us all autoattacking dragons and behemoth in their “revolutionary” Dinamic Events…

Lol!

I tried this last evening, with only the 200% MF Southsun buff.

Got 2 armored scales in 15min. Tried it again around 2hrs later on a different toon, again 2 armored scales in 15min. These drop rates are what I would expect.

I didn’t ‘farm’ any longer because in my experience DR sets in after 15 min,

Sorry, but I don’t believe either of you

I have been using the 0/15/30/20/5 in PvE since Feb. I also use an amour mix of Knight/Valkyrie with a full set of soldier runes. Weapons and trinkets (ascended) are all berserker, back-piece is rabid (exotic) with a rabid crest.

For traits:
Radiance: II
Valor – V, VI, XI
Honor – II, VIII

I mainly use greatsword and staff, sometimes swapping out staff for scepter/focus if range is absolutely necessary.

Staff sigil is Fire, greatsword sigil is Force (cannot decide on anything else …)

I have not taken this build in WvW, so don’t know how well it works in there, but for PvE it is very nice. For dungeons, I swap to p/v/t armour with runes of Melandru

Two things to remember about temple armour vendors:

1- No vendor sells an entire set of armour with the same stats. You will need to visit at least 2 different vendors for all the pieces with the same stats

2. You can get only 5 armour pieces. Each armour type is missing 1 piece

The reason why no one wants rangers in dungeons is because too many are using bad builds. Your flavour-of-the-month WvW / PvP builds are crap in dungeons, with condition and BM builds being the worst of the lot.

So, please, for the sake of the other players in your dungeon group, do not bring a condition ranger into a dungeon.

If you want to contribute something, then go power/crit. use ranged pets on passive, and make sure you can stay alive

I spent over 2hrs in Cursed Shore on Saturday, was there again on Sunday. My guardian is perma-stationed there.

Temples are still being cleared and I still see other players around, so on my server it is not abandoned. Yes, the 200% MF in Southsun has drawn away some players, but not all.

Lambent.6375:

Armored scale? barracuda/sharks in frostgorge and southsun

jellyfish …

@Flissy
I have over 1400 hrs on my ranger (main since game launch), and did quite a few dungeons as a full ‘zerker’ dual-bow glass cannon ranger. I used 2 devourers on passive mode. I saw my roll as providing a steady stream of ranged DPS, with some greatsword melee as required, and to stay alive. I did a pretty good job at this while managing my pets, and yes, I did do CoE.

Yes, there are some ‘bad’ rangers out there, but far less then ‘bad’ warriors. I lost count the number of times I had to rez warriors in dungeons. In my experience, warriors are a liability and because there are too many bad ones I don’t dungeon with them anymore.

After I leveled my guardian (4 months ago), I stopped bringing my ranger into dungeons. I prefer what my guardian brings than my ranger. However, I don’t mind other rangers in dungeons, providing they know what they are doing. Being very familiar with the class, I can offer suggestions.

Warriors, on the other hand, are still on my avoidance list. They expect guardians to carry them because most warrior players never bothered to learn how play the class. They read or hear ‘warriors rule PvE’, so figure they don’t need to do anything except show up, and hope there is a guardian around ..

I often wondered about the 5% damage bonus from runes of the ranger being applied to pets as well ..

My ranger and my guardian

draxynnic.3719:

Lisa.6102:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Darx.9842:

Just goes to show Anet does NOT want us farming.

Have you been to Ember Passage lately?

That’s where all the karka hang out now…

Yeah I got my face sucked off by young karka waiting for a party to join…. Not happy!

Did the karka get a party?

(Sorry, I couldn’t resist…)

young karka 1: hey bro’s, where’s it at??
young karka 2: lookit over there, stupid human standing around!
young karka 3: mmm tasty! i likes human face!
young karka 4: lets go get some!
young karka (all together): party time!!

Just to add, here is a good guide for all your high-level items:

http://dulfy.net/2012/10/03/gw2-endgame-gearing-guide/

and specifically for the karma armour
http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-templegod-karma-armor-sets/

I had one drop off a vet karka last evening …

I checked the selling price after it dropped, and it was 3g 50s.

Tarsius.3170:

yeah I was waiting to test that – I see rangers have had projectile speed buffs ( fingers crossed )

Yeah … to our underwater harpoon kitten

So don’t get your knickers in a knot over this, unless a ranger lures you into the water lol!

For general PvE I use a mix of crafted Knight and Valkyrie armour (3 pieces each), for dungeons I use a full set of p/v/t. I don’t do PvP ..

I believe Ebony is among the starter dyes, so you should have this already.

All the ‘midnight’ dyes have a colour tint. Depending on your monitor, graphics card/shaders, in game graphics settings, lighting conditions, armour type and specific armour section, the tint can be more noticeable.

For neutral dark, stay in the black-grey-white spectrum of hues.

Yes, many greatsword skins in the game, but most of them are dreadful. I prefer greatswords to look like greatswords and not a whale being swung by it’s tail.

I have both Kryosaor and Skybringer sitting my bank unused. My guardian uses Kymswarden, and my ranger uses the human T2 Highlander.

As for staves …
Bramblethorn, Delusion, and Silence seem ok, at least in the galley images.
My guardian uses the Fused staff skin. one of the few F&F skins that I liked.

What to do with karma?

Do you have a set of p/v/t armour?
If not, then you should, it comes in handy when doing dungeons.
The temple karma merchants also have exotic backpieces, rings and accessories. Again, useful to have a second set with different stats.

Do you have cooking maxed?
Lots of recipe items can be bought in bulk with karma.

There are many arnour and weapons available from heart (karma) merchants once you do their quests. These can be bought for skins.

Anet will probably add more items as time goes on.

Currently I use 2 sigils of battle so I can stack might and fury on both toon and pet when I swap. However, this requires the trait that transfers boons onto pets as well …

When I ran a 30/30/x/x/x full zerker ranger, I used a sigil of perception in my LB (stacks precision) and a sigil of force in my SB. With a full stack, I had 60-70% crit chance.

Never fancied sigils that processed off crits. Between the chance of triggering and the internal cooldowns, they seemed too unreliable to me.

lLobo.7960:

Really farming those events is all about running fast from one spot to the next and tag as much mobs as you can before they melt down to the zerg…

When was the last time you were in Cursed Shore running penit/shelter??

Cursed Shore is no longer about tagging mobs. All the MF mob-tagging leechers left weeks ago. The players who can still farm there use DPS, stability and condition removers, all the things rangers don’t have. I don’t even bother bringing my ranger to Cursed Shore anymore.

The players doing this now are mainly warriors and guardians. Sometime is it just 3-5 of us (using my guardian). defending one of the bases, I often run the escort missions solo, or with 1 or 2 others.

I still see the odd ranger showing up, usually running a trap/condition build with a drake or spider. They must have missed the memo and they don’t stick around for very long …

Perhaps a 30/30/x/x/x full zerker dual bow ranger can still farm penit/shelter successfully, but seems these builds are not popular anymore, and for good reason.

If you were being smart and saving gold while leveling, you should have more than enough to buy exotic Valkyrie armour off the TP when you hit 80.

Also, consider a mix (3 pieces of each) of Valkyrie and Knight armour. I have a set of this for both my ranger and guardian.

As for the karma, at some point you might want/need a set of Soldiers stat (p/v/t) armour. You will need over 200k karma to get this, so do not waste karma until you are sure. Karma can be used to get exotic backpieces, rings, and accessories from the temple merchants as well.

I don’t do WvW / PvP and stopped bring my ranger into dungeons months ago.
My guardian does dungeons …

Having said that, in PvE I run a dual-bow hybrid BM with 2 cats:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMEQJATVjEVB2JWWWsWCi+BKxUcIG9UEL17P4/MuqEZRA-jAzAYLhMkGEJKQUhkl+EETgKrF1ioxqZwUmCpqzI7NIiq9BYA-e

This was originally based on a WvW cat beastmaster build. I tried 30 in BM and didn’t like it. My bows felt like pea-shooters because I gave up too much damage for Natural Healing, and IMO pets are still too broken to justify 30 points in BM. Also, I don’t use any other grandmaster traits.

With mixed armour and trinkets, this becomes a very balanced build. The link has my general PvE running armour, but I also swap to a Soldier (p/v/t) set with runes of Melandru for some content.

Play-style is to continuously swap bows while skills are on CD to stack might and fury on you and the pet. I also have greatsword with a sigil of Battle when melee is necessary.

This build can be modified for WvW or for dungeons. In dungeons, you obviously need to swap out one or both cats for something more survivable.

Gunnar’s Hold is primarily English, so would meet your language requirements.

I don’t do WvW or PvP, but there are players/guilds active in both. How good they are depends on who is playing.

More importantly, it is a pretty friendly server and for Medium pop. is active in all aspects of the game.

Try guesting to see if you like it before committing to a server switch.

Lots of maps around that show where the hearts are and the heart task, but none that I am aware of that includes the level for each heart. This would let you plan a completion route moving from lower to higher level zone within the map.

General rule is if you enter a new map from a lower level map. the first heart or hearts you come to are usually the lowest level for the new map. If you enter from a higher level map. then the hearts in the that area are usually the higher level ones.