Guild Wars 2

I previously leveled ranger and guardian to 80. Ranger and guard were fun to level, mesmer was terrible.

I gave up at lvl 20 and crafted for the next 40 levels. At lvl 62 I started running the Queensdale champ train with a full zerker shatter build until lvl 80.
This is how I leveled my mesmer …

I’m from Canada also, but I want a beaver pet so it can go harvest all the wood nodes, and in fights it can clamp on to enemy ankles and b*tch slap them with it’s tail …

I’m a relatively new mesmer but shatter all the way.

I found Kai’s Lazy Mesmer guide before I had a mesmer, and was so taken by the description of the play style, I created one just to give it a go. Hit level 80 just last week,

Schatter is the only mesmer play style I know, with full zerker trinkets, weapons and armour with centaur runes. Also pick-up a pvt armour set with melandru runes in case I want to do something else.

Solandri.9640:

So now we have a situation where spiders are better both offensively and defensively, and there’s no reason to ever use a devourer (well, maybe if you’re doing a PvE encounter with no condition damage, if that even exists).

Wow, did not realise this .. Thanks!

I stopped using devourers back in Feb/March when I switched to cats. I mostly run sword/xx in PvE now, so not much need for a ranged pet anymore. Will try spiders again if the need arises.

I find it quite extraordinary someone would bother collecting mini pets, let alone grinding to spend 100’s of gold on acquiring them. At least with collecting dyes, another endless cosmetic pursuit, you can use them, while minis do nothing!

If we could have more than one mini out at a time, at least my 25+ mini Balthz priest army would be a laugh for 30 secs …

I opened 60 BLC’s with the recent key sale and I recall seeing at least 2 of the Caith minis and perhaps a Scarlet one pop out as well. My interest in them was such that I didn’t even bother checking if they were tradable, let alone have any value!
I just sent them to my bank and forgot they dropped until I saw this thread.

There are no specific UK servers, however many EU servers are primarily English-speaking. My server (Gunnar’s Hold) is one of them.
Others include: Gandarra, Piken Square, Seafarer’s Rest, Far Shiverpeaks.

Best to guest on a few for awhile before committing to a switch.

Gunnar’s Hold is english-speaking and at medium population.

I don’t do PvP and only go into WvW to spend badges on occasion. There is no waiting queue for WvW, so that might be good or bad depending on what you are looking for.

PvE is pretty active, but even maxed pop PvE servers do not have players is every map at all times. Low and mid level maps with world bosses and/or lots of champion mobs are always more popular.

Be prepared to solo, or find a guild to help you, if planning on doing a lot of map exploration.

Been playing a ranger since launch and I have never used a pig …

As for spiders vs devourers for a ranged pet, devourers win hands down. I tried both and really wanted to like spiders, but always ended up replacing them with a devourer (carrion and/or lashtail).

Devourers are tough, have a reasonably good evade AI, have both a knockdown and AoE attacks. They are one of the very few pets that can make it though most dungeons.

Well, depends on what a lot of gold is for you …
You can check prices for all sizes if invisable bags/boxes on the TP, then place a bid on one you can afford.

Or, you can craft one yourself under leatherworking, but the expensive part is the rune of holding.

EDIT: armoursmith and tailor can also craft boxes and bags …

Oh, invisible bags/safe boxes are very useful!

All you need is one 18 slot invisible bags/safe box as your last bag for each toon. This way you can carry all your class weapons and full set of different stat armour without worry.

I play a 20/25/0/5/20

The ideal armor is berserker + scholar runes (ruby orbs if you can’t afford scholar). but mixing in some knights pieces (do this on armor not on trinkets – also the higher toughness of knights will make any passive healing from life steal food/VoR stronger then soliders would without sacrificing as much DPS) will help you to avoid feeling like glass while your learning how to cycle your blinds/aegis/shelter/renewed focus/dodges/reflects to avoid damage.

For sigils, it is up to you, but I like stacking might. I use sigils of strength (stacks might on crits) on my GS and main-hand weapons (sword, scepter). Off-hand weapons have sigils of accuracy. Staff has a sigil of fire.

My PvE zerker ranger is a might stacking machine. This is what I use:

Pet:
Jungle stalker, and I trait to share boons with the pet.

Runes:
Superior Runes of Hoelbrak (increases might duration)

Sigils:
My 2 bows both have sigils of battle that stack might on swap, and when using them, I swap them a lot. My greatsword also has a sigil of battle, if I run LB/GS or SB/GS.

My main-hand sword and axe both have sigils of strength (30% chance of might on crit) and my off-hand dagger, axe, and warhorn all have sigils of accuracy.

I have 3 lvl 80"s, the last one just this week.

I completed the PS on my first 2 but probably won’t on my 3rd.
Arah story mode is long but not that difficult. If you skip the cutscenes, it goes much quicker and is far easier than the exp paths. The most difficult part is finding 4 other players to do it with you!

If you select a different race and faction each time, then the first PS bits are at least different from each other, but yes, overall it is boring, terribly written and very anti-climatic. Also the final rewards are dreadful for what you have to put up with.

Thanks Morrigan, will check these out better when I get home!

EDIT
Ok, had a better look …
My problem is I really do not like the light armour skirt/robe look.
I had this problem with medium (coats) and heavy armour as well.
Having said that, I do not like any of the sylvari T1 light pieces. Not a fan of the T2 skirt, but your 2nd image is not bad. I do not like T3 either, plus the T3 chest looks completely out of place.

The image below is the sort of thing I would like to do, but this is medium.

I will probably just buy some cheap Student set.
Shame the light cultural is so bad…

I just leveled a female sylvari mesmer to 80 and began looking at light armour options.

The only sylvari cultural armour that looks half-decent is the medium, particularly T1.
Why is the cultural light so crap??

And before anyone suggests mix-and-match, I have gone though this very extensively already on both my human ranger and norn guardian. All I want this time is something easy, that goes with the nature aspect of the race, and not involve grinding dungeons.

I welcome any suggestions …

EDIT: I am currently in Zhed’s armour set only for the stats and runes. Cheaper buying this than crafting zerker, but it looks terrible ..

This bait and switch fiasco makes buying BLC keys and playing the RNG game a fantastic deal !

Best to re-map Ctrl Shift H to a single key

First image are my two lvl 80’s, very soon I will have a third.

Left;
Human ranger
Berserker set: All dualist, except for the T1 boots
Dyes: Cinders and Midnight Gold

Right:
Norn guardian
Berserker set: Draconic top, glovers and boots; AC shoulders, Invaders legs
Dyes: Deep Glacial Sky and Midnight Sky

Second image
Alternate armour set for my ranger
T2 coat, shoulders and legs; Vigil boots; gloves are from a map karma/heart vendor (cannot remember where)
Dyes: Cinder, Midnight Fire, Abyss, Burnished Steel

Sorry, I could not care less about this new armour set.

To me it a bad reskin of some of the worst looking armour in the game. The medium and heavy are simply atrocious, with the human t3 light not much better.

If human t3 light wearers have their knickers in a bunch over this, then their problem was paying 100+ gold for it in the first place, while there are much cheaper and arguably better looking light armour options around.

I would not use any of this new set if given out for free …

Even the light and heavy versions of this armour are atrocious …
As for medium, the last thing we need is yet another bloody trench coat …

Dreadful stuff …

PopeUrban.2578:

Also, yes, guardians are magic users. In that they use magic. Heavily. Like half of their skills. Are Magic. They shoot magical bubbles from a stick, and set things on fire by yelling at them. That’s a magic user.

Lol!
My guardian doesn’t yell, she just glares menacingly and then things burst into flames! It’s a psychotic disorder, has nothing to do with magic .. And she hates that bubble making thing, she is a pointy-stick lass ..

As to point of discussion, have all crafts and yes, I agree with you artificer has received more consumable crafting than the other crafts…

I had a Vial of Condensed mist drop in a lvl 2 fractal once, and I very rarely do fractals.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

bri.2359:

And, why isn’t dagger and pistol crafting in here as well?? Having artificer craft 6 weapons would make more sense.

Artificers are “magic” crafters. Pistols and daggers aren’t magical.

Humm …
So, a dagger in the hands of an Elementalist can be a fire or lightening weapon. A pistol in the hands of a Mesmer creates illusions. How are these not ‘magical’??

In this game, the actual weapon has nothing to do with it’s magical status. It is the class weapons skills that govern the magic of the weapon. A warrior’s longbow is a fire weapon, my mesmer’s greatsword shoots beams and creates illusions. Need I go on??

Again, shifting dagger and pistol crafting to artificer would make this craft more useful.

Artificer is definitely the ‘odd’ crafting profession in this game. As a weapon crafting profession, it is pretty lame with only 4 weapons, and these are not just for ‘magic using’ classes.

My guardian uses all of them: staff, scepter, focus and trident, and I would not consider a guardian the same as an ele or mesmer. And, why isn’t dagger and pistol crafting in here as well?? Having artificer craft 6 weapons would make more sense.

As for potion/tonic crafting, this seems tacked on to artificer and very poorly thought out. This is should be with chef.

EgonVenkman.1907:

Stumbled across this the other day when doing the Mystic Forge Daily.

Throw lvl 80 greens into Forge, get yellow.
Salvage Yellow, get Ecto. (or get lucky and get more)

Seems to be cheaper than just buying yellows for the same purpose. Even at the 20% conversion rate, 20 green on average = 1 yellow. Which seems to be around, if not lower than the cost of 1 yellow.

I used to do this when farming the Scarlet invasions back in the summer. However, I sold the rares that were worth more on the TP than the going price of 1 ecto. I salvaged those worth less. So, made a few gold while getting some ecto.

When essence of luck was introduced I stopped doing this and began salvaging all blues/greens from drops to build up account MF. I am at 100% MF now, planning to get to 150%, then go back to my previous method.

I do this in diessa plateau, plus mats from the iron and softwood nodes are in high demand. Also vets are easy to find and lots of variety for kills.

simmie.7402:

Anet’s meddling before has got us here now, They have promised to listen to our concerns, this makes me slightly optimistic. lets hope they make the ranger better to play.

At this point, the only way to make the ranger better to play is to completely re-design the class from the ground up. The game will be long dead before this happens ..

Particle effects are one thing, the sword’s skin is another. My guardian uses Cobalt not only because of the particle effects, but because it is one of the few nice, uncluttered, ‘slim’ blade GS’s around. Also the sword’s colour matches well with a blue-themed guardian.

I had Lord Taeres’s Shadow drop a few weeks ago, and immediately sold it because I found it very ugly. Not a big fan of Breath of Jormag for similar reasons, plus 50 corrupted lodestones are not cheap. If it was more sword-like and had less spiky bits, I would be more inclined to justify the 50 lodestones.

So my guardian uses Cane’s Justice, a nice, simple sword from a heart vendor in Harathi Hinterlands, and my ranger uses Bonetti’s Rapier.

First off, the serious gold making in this game is from playing the TP. If you want to stop prices rising and afford your shineys, then go whinge in the BLT sub-forum where all the market capitalists and manipulators hang out. Running champ trains for a few silver a pop has nothing on this, so stop with the sky is falling BS and how this is ruining PvE.

Second, from the posts in the thread, seems many of you have never been on a champ train. On my server (medium pop) the Frostgorge champ ‘train’ is usually no more than 4-8 players, and yes these can be much longer fights and not just a 1, 1, 1 spamfest. So no, I don’t want champs to be nerfed. In fact the coin drops should be returned to the way they were before they were stealth nerfed!

The Queensdale champ train is a joke. It is more about new players learning what to do and experienced players leveling alts. It is something to do while waiting for SB to spawn. No lvl 80 should waste time with this, and only goes to show how Anet kittened up the risk/reward system in this game.

Look, all I want is Cursed Shore to be the way it used to be 9-10 months ago. I liked the placed and enjoyed running the DE’s there until Anet destroyed it for the sake of ‘moving players to other zones’.

I would happily do the pent/shelter/jofast events again, even run the temples if the events actually rewarded something besides the odd porous bone. Besides this is where lvl 80’s should be, and not champ farming in Queensdale.

As for the LS … meh. Lost interest in this months ago. Did the pavilion events and ran the invasion trains back in the summer. Now, cannot be bothered and Scarlet and her pals have become very old ..

I did the Frostgorge champ train last evening for 30 min.
I received. 1 core each of molten, charged, glacial, and 2 corrupted,. I also got a glacial lodestone.

Belzebu.3912:

Trench coats are nice, the problem is almost all medium armors are trench coats, from the top of my head I can only think of human T3 and Hall of Monuments set that aren’t trench coats.

You can add the medium Dualist armour on the TP. This is not a trench coat and I use this for one of my armour sets.

Oh, and the trench coats in this game are the worst implemented design for medium armour I have ever seen. The only ‘coat’ I use is the human T2 cultural, it is the only one I can live with ..

@Lady
If you ran the Scarlet invasions a few months back, cores and lodestones of all types were dropping out of champ bags like crazy. This lowered the TP prices for awhile since there was so much supply available.

Still, the Frostgorge champ train is decent source of cores and the odd lodestone ,particularly corrupted and glacial.

Wow, goes to show different strokes …

I find the all the axes dreadfully ugly in this game.
The skins have no relation to their function as ranged (throwing) weapons. Some are as bulky as a mace!

Where are the sleek, honed throwing axes you see in other games??

@OP

You colour scheme is somewhat similar to my guardian.

I use the Cobalt greatsword, it is a nice slim blade with a bluish sheen and has a bright blue flame when wielded.

I use the Bloodseeker focus. It is small and very red. It will shows nicely against blue kit.

Swords are a problem because there so few nice ones. I do not like any big bulky looking swords even on my guardian.

My ranger uses Bonetti’s Rapier and my guardian uses Cane’s Justice. Cane’s Justice is from a karma (heart) vendor in Shieldbluff Point (Harathi Hinterlands). Do the quest and the npc will sell to you.

Regarding the disappearance of Jon Peter from this thread.

Most likely he has been told by the higher-ups to stop posting. I suspect that publicly admitting the borked pet issues cannot/will not be fixed opened an internal can-of-worms at Anet. It makes whatever future tweaks Anet had planned for the class, and whatever suggestions we come up with, pretty insignificant and meaningless in light of this.

Anet steadfastly refuses to do what is necessary, they will not fix the broken pet mechanic, nor make it optional, nor delete it entirely for some other mechanic.

I suggested awhile back that the proper thing for Anet to now is to allow any account playing a ranger to be able to transfer all soubound kit, unlocked dyes, unused skill points, crafting professions, etc., to any other character. If Anet did this, I would delete my ranger in an instant, and I assume many others would a well.

Until then I am stuck with a class I stopped enjoying playing over 6 months ago.

Dawdler.8521:

The lower range “exotic” weapon skins in this game range from about 30-200+ gold (400-3000+ gems),

The most I ever paid for a skin was 26g for Bonetti’s Rapier shortly after it was introduced. To me that is very ‘high end’ and the only reason I bought it was because I had a drop I sold for 68g, and it was perfect for my ranger….

Apart from that, a couple of rare times I paid around 3-4g for a particular skin I liked on the TP, and thought that was expensive. Many of the skins I have I bought from various karma vendors, a few others I got with dungeon tokens, Otherwise I go with whatever drops for me that I like.

So yes, to me 600 gems is much too expensive for a one-time use skin ..

Malin.2490:

bri.2359:

I was out-of-game for 6 weeks when Anet revamped Teq. My server (Gunnar’s Hold) did it a coupe of times back then, but no more.

I happened to be in Sparkfly once when Teq spawned and it was so odd seeing no one else around. I even asked in LA last weekend if the server does Teq anymore, and the response was a rather emphatic “no” …

Would like to give it a go, but I do not know of any EU server or guild that does Teq.

Far Shiverpeaks does it mostly daily, we even have a special teamspeak channel set up for it. It is great fun! On the weekends we have even had two overflows…

Thanks for the info!

I will try guesting on Far Shiverpeaks sometime, and I have TS if that helps.
I have a DPS guardian with both full zerker and PVT kit I can bring to the party …

I was out-of-game for 6 weeks when Anet revamped Teq. My server (Gunnar’s Hold) did it a coupe of times back then, but no more.

I happened to be in Sparkfly once when Teq spawned and it was so odd seeing no one else around. I even asked in LA last weekend if the server does Teq anymore, and the response was a rather emphatic “no” …

Would like to give it a go, but I do not know of any EU server or guild that does Teq.

I would consider spending 1000 gems only if it was for a full set (all 3) of permanent tools that had no animations. Until then, it seems like an utter waste of gems.

Well …
Seems everyone in this thread has forgotten something rather crucial with respect to rangers: 20-40% of the ranger damage is given over to the pet. So yes, all ranger weapons do crap damage because of this stupid class mechanic.

Having said that, the ranger sword is the best consistent DPS weapon out of the lot. The longbow is good only if traited for 1500 range and the targets stay at max range. Problem is at max range the ranger looses out on any group boons, so better off going melee to stay close to the group.

I have both a full berserker guardian and an full berserker ranger. My guardian does far more consistent melee damage than my ranger ever does. Also, despite having a much lower HP pool, my guardian can more easily survive boss melee encounters than my ranger.

Well, I have two:
human ranger on the left,
norn guardian on the right

My norn guardian

My human ranger with sword/dagger …

I am slowly leveling weaponsmithing on the cheap.

400-425
Refine ori and ancient wood. Harvest this yourself and use a crafting booster.

425-450
Here you need to discover/make some exotics. Seems celestial recipes do not give the same amount of XP as the traditional T6 inscriptions do, however, if you already have a bunch of those refined crystals around, then crafting celestial is cheaper than using T6 creature parts. Again use the T6 mats you already have.

450-?? I am currently at 465 and been refining all the various ascended ore I have collected and crafting the 2 time-gated components. So far I have refined 19 stacks of Bloodstone ore, 3 of Dragonite ore and some of the other material you get from JP chests and the like..

So far, I have not needed to buy anything, apart from some shards (used karma) and that crafting material from the master weaponsmith vendor.

Calae.1738:

8000 gems for 100$

Wow!
It’s been such a long time since I last bought gems with cash, I did not know this option was available ..

I am male, but if gender choice is available in a game, I always create female characters.

The main reason is that I will be with this character for many hours and I game with headphones. Headphones make the voice-overs very intimate, and I prefer hearing a female voice in my head than a male voice.

Also in 3rd person games, I will be looking at the backside of a character for a long time. The female form is more aesthetically pleasing to me and they always have more armour and style options.

Oh, and he finally admitted that the ranger pet AI is so borked due to technical issues that Anet cannot fix it.

So, whatever problems you might think plague guardians, they are small potatoes compared to the ranger’s class mechanic not working properly and will never be fixed.

@Jon Peters

I thank you for finally admitting (after over a year …) that the ranger class mechanic is broken, and effectively beyond your technical capability to repair. It is evident this class was poorly designed, developed and implemented.

However, now your PR needs to place a disclaimer beside the ranger class description saying: “warning, pets not working as intended”…

So, what happens now??

In my view any discussion on ranger traits, skills, weapons, etc are moot since the unrepairable broken class mechanic is now the elephant in the room. In my view ranger pets should be removed from the game. We can then begin a meaningful discussion on how to move the ranger forward without the pet.

Regarding the ranger GS …
After playing a guardian, IMO the ranger GS is so terrible, it is beyond improvement of any sort and should be dropped entirely. Improve the remaining ranger weapons instead, or give rangers a class specific weapon in replacement, i.e a whip or morning star, if you want another melee weapon.

Jon Peters is currently over in the Ranger sub-forum …

This is the last thing you need here …

JonPeters.5630:

I just had a wacky idea …

I just had a wacky idea also !

How about Anet re-building this profession from the ground up with proper traits, skills utilities and pet AI so it actually has a role in this game!!

Pretty wacky, eh??