Guild Wars 2

JonPeters.5630:

Some ranger discussion.

Natural Vigor
Starting here because I think it requires the most discussion. This, simply put, was a wildly overpowered trait. I tell people not to compare one profession to another, but Engineer has this trait as a major grandmaster. It was simply too easy to put 5 points in this line and then be able to dodge every 6.67 seconds. As it stands after the change this still allows you to splash 5 points and dodge every 8 seconds. I don’t think this will ruin survivability, and I think by buff other traits further down this line it will encourge rangers who are looking to survive to go further into this trait line.

With all due respect, i think this is a rather poor design choice. I’d rather see every class look at the other and see “wildly overpowered” traits and skills than see every major trick taken down so that classes only end up different because of a couple vaguely different numbers.

In the case of the ranger, we had a good few aces in our sleeve to bring something unique to the table. We had cheap on-demand short access to quickness, which gave us a little extra burst every now and then and made me one of the best options for “stomping duty” in wvw. That’s been taken away. Our pets could scale wall to harass defenders and siege, that’s gone. We could send the pets down the walls to attack siege, that’s gone. Our pets could be sent to attack at large distances in wvw to chase away pursuers or attack far away siege engines, that’s gone too. Our pets despite their failings had a hard rez, it’s gone. We had an extra long cripple field, it’s been cut in half. The 15s water field? Trimmed down and accelerated to be more bursty like everything else in this game. Two different styles for 1200 range combat? Make that one.

What’s left now? The various pet changes have reduced the pet to basically some random additional melee range damage. All utility is gone, it’s just about DPS. Even better, to use one of the buffs we should be grateful for, we have to spam Guard and force our pet to disengage/reengage all the time. The pet is supposed to be our main class mechanic, but it’s been reduced to the sorry state of a vaguely controlled weapon.

Now the endurance. Meh. It’s not even that i find it to hurt that much, frankly, i don’t think it’s going to be that huge, but there’s that feeling that once again, one of the few things left making a ranger is taking a hit. Yes we had pretty good endurance. So? What’s wrong with a class having better/cheaper endurance than the others? Should we have as much boon access as guardians then?

Mesmers have the incredible time warp, thieves can disengage at will, guardians have the cheapish vigor uptime ever, warriors can tank/dps/cc all at once, etc. That’s the whole point of classes. We should be jealous of the good stuff of all the others, but be able to say “well, sure, but then i wouldn’t give away [this] for it”. The more it goes, the less [this] i have on the ranger that makes me think that yes, i’ve got my tricks too. I’ve got a Mesmer, a Warrior and an Engi at 80 in addition to the ranger, there’s lots of stuff i love on each. I don’t like the seemingly constant streamlining that seems to be your approach to balance. It feels like you’re trying too hard to drag down classes to a common flavourless denominator.

You’ll find plenty of advice all around the place, but honestly, if you just started, you should just start with enjoying it yourself and discovering the weapons/skills/traits as you unlock them. It’ll be a little while until you unlock all utility slots, let alone the grandmaster traits.

Girion.5483:

Ithe current active effect of SotH is so negliglible that I know of no Ranger player who’d actually ever activate this signet

The SotH active lasts 16 minutes. There is no reason not to activate it every time you have some downtime (and ideally, some swiftness while the passive recharges). Why you’d deprive yourself of +50% damage on your pet’s opening in your next combat is beyond me.

How big is your ego to make you believe that despite 2 servers officially allied against you, your mad skills still got you less than 3k off 2nd place?

Mate, if you ever get double teamed for real, it’s not 3k behind you’ll be. XD

Piscore.6934:

Vizunah [FR] vs Jade Sea [FR] vs Baruch Bay [SP]

2 vs 1 all the time France vs Spain

I’ve seen a server (Vizunah) that protects the other (Jade Sea) to conquer fortresses of Baruch bay, as a server is already winning (Vizunah), helps the other server of your homeland (Jade Sea).

PD: I hope you understand my bad English.

Baruch Bay must be the best server this game has ever seen then, if in an organised permanent 2v1 you still tick at +190 and are only 3k behind 2nd place on the thursday.

Seriously mate, i hope you never get double teamed outside of your dreams, because your pride won’t be able to survive it.

Substance E.4852:

Ele’s can shoot a pillar of lava directly at something they can’t even see but I have to be looking at the guy the entire time so the birds know where to go despite their being several already attached to his face?

Mesmers need LOS for mind-bending too. Figure that one out…

Two servers taking advantage of a perceived weak target? In a 1v1v1? Stop the press!

If this is really about min/maxing, why not putting the superior sigils of stacks onto swap weapons? Since the stacks stay anyway, there’s no good reason to have those sigils on your real weapons. Get a yellow sword and axe, drop bloodlust on one, perception on the other, get those 25 stacks, then change to your real weapons with Force/Accuracy.

I’d totally roll a Grub Ranger immediately if it was available. Guess which one’s the ranger, which one’s the pet, haha! Well, of course, we’d need Juvenile Grubs as pets too, for full effect, i guess. Unless Grubs would get to tame Juvenile Humans/Norns/Charrs/etc?

As for:

a t s e.9614:

The only problem would be the armor but i’m sure it’s not that hard to design .

I guess it could be done just like for Charr: let the armour model scale and clip, and call it finished. :p

Terkov.4138:

Umm… guys. It’s 8 moths old topic, and author last posts are also from 8 months ago. I wouldn’t wait for any videos or responce from him.

Haha, good catch. ^^

LB/GS is my wvw default gear these days, on a signet build with predominantly soldier gear and a couple knight and zerker bits. I find it decent-ish at everything, i like it.

Traited LB provides range and decent lootbag tagging when near the zerg, and GS/soldier stats/signet of stone provide the survival when needed, including becoming part of the melee train when needed, with a cleaving weapon in hand.

The skirmishing is sub-par due to low damage, but doable, in a very attritional style, making the most of the evade and CC provided by the weapons. As often in this game, it comes down to not spamming skills. Careful use of the stealth/knockback/cripple of the LB and the leap/block/daze of the GS goes a long way to keep you alive while nibbling away with pet and arrows. On pets, i often run jungle spider and wolf, for more time-wasting as well as both melee/ranged options.

Off topic, but I started to enjoy the norn Bear Form as an elite recently, for the sheer HP sponge you become. As well as that sprint to contest a camp or run away.

Achievement Wars 2

Provost.6210:

azizul.8469:

IT IS NOT A QUEUE.

IT IS A POOL.

Please elaborate, and provide quotes or links if you’re saying what I believe you are saying. It’s my experience that it’s first-in-first-out, I’d like to see if you can demonstrate that it’s not.

Let me tell you your experience is very atypical then. From day one, people have been complaining about guildies queuing later and getting in earlier. If anything i’d love a pure FIFO queue that would be immune to the exploiting that some guilds use to jump the queue at the expense of the rest of us. Also, a FIFO queue could tell you exactly where you stand in the queue, which would help to ease the frustration an awful lot.

That’s basically why wvw anonymity is one of the things Anet did right (though the report function breaks it up but…). Over there, you’re spared most of the childishness. No such luck in this format sadly.

It’s just about breaking down anything long-lasting, see Muddy Terrain. We already had Heal as One for instant heal, and Troll Unguent for 10s of strong regen. So anyone that wanted faster heals had them available (and with no fire field overwriting too!). But no, the slower, longer lasting skill had to be accelerated so it fits better with the rest of the short-lived effects in this game.

I think you’re just underestimating the amount of gold some people have. There’s some near-monopolies on the TP. The game just seems to be scaled with these people as the benchmark. See the cost of ascended crafting for another example.

Ranger
Remove the pet leash.
That’s for pve/wvw. Do whatever you want for spvp, just keep it on their side of the game.

I love my pet so much that i decided not to allow it to move away from me any further than 2000 range.

Forget the shortbow, i want my pet leash range back.

•“Sic ’Em”: This shout now applies 4 seconds of revealed on the targeted enemy. Updated the range skill fact to 2000 to match the maximum usable distance of this skill.

Gotta love when even buffs come with a kick in the balls. “Remember how we nerfed your pet leash range last time ’round? lolz, we do!”.

Big bowl of ‘meh’ otherwise, apart from the HS change which drags yet another skill (hello Muddy Terrain) into the direction of everything else in this game: short and fast.

Still don’t like the new healing spring. Personally, I tend to use it either when movement pretty much doesn’t matter (2s/3s pulse or 10s/15s isn’t a problem) or as a combo field to blast/leap in. In that second case, the spring pop is an instant heal with boons, in which i may blast or leap out of, and fight around so i can leap back into it when needed. My experience is that i often find myself getting that ‘last second’ leap for an extra heal.

My feeling is that it’s being taken down to drag everything closer to the instant/short duration effects the game seems to be focused on (4s reveal eh?). Muddy Terrain already paid that price, now the Healing Spring gets it.

Looking forward to the bears buffs though. With more HP and a better F2 that brown bear may become a handy condition cure option by itself, and a mighty one when tooled up with trait/signet.

Errrr, finished the Maw too. Basically chatting with guildies while the character was auto-attacking without moving an inch. Then since it still wasn’t dead, started chatting on /s with the rest of the static autoattacking crowd about how ‘exciting’ that revamp was.

Oh for sure it was longer.

I guess I know what event i’ll attend next time i have some household chores that prevent me from being in front of the keyboard.

Wouldn’t the thief just shadowstep out of it?

Kingface.9781:

Thanks to Piken guys to camp ruin’s points with groups and AC while only solo roamers from VS and AR are actives on morning. We were good without you for 1 hour. Why not sticking your zerg as usual?

You’re on the right way to become like your big brother SFR tho.

Seeing the latest bandwagon, we’re more the new Desolation.

Chopps.5047:

cafard.8953:

If my ranger ever gets a staff, i want a skill set to wield it like a pure melee quarterstaff, Robin Hood style! I may even start camping bridges…

Relevant quote from Men in Tights

Robin Hood: Kindly let me pass.
Little John: Uh, no. Sorry, but a toll is a toll, and a roll is a roll, and if we don’t get no tolls, then we don’t eat no rolls.
[Proudly]
Little John: I made that up.
Robin Hood: It’s very fascinating. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to hurt you.

I’m off already to craft some rolls.

If my ranger ever gets a staff, i want a skill set to wield it like a pure melee quarterstaff, Robin Hood style! I may even start camping bridges…

Check the Trading Post too, to see what you’ve been selling recently, and what you may still be currently selling.

Lawn (Moa)
Snoop (Dog)
Blast Finisher (Drake)

Recycle.5493:

• What if Healing Spring last shorter, but regen pulses faster?

Then we’d have 5s less for blasting/leaping/whirling/shooting in it. A combo field duration nerf by 33%. On what is probably the one single “my class does it better than yours” thing a ranger brings to a party.

If i wanted more heals faster, i’d use one of the two other healing skills. Who ever complained about HS being too slow anyway?

And what if Vigorous Renewal no longer gives vigor on each pulse?

Rangers do way too much DPS i guess, so it makes sense that they should not be allowed to evade too often.

I would also wish a warm welcome to the new ranger dev:

In wvw, the longbow stealth synergizes very nicely with the GS leap for getting an escape run headstart.

Good Tofu.9376:

Are rangers a viable PvE class to do dungeons/WvW with?

Viable, yes. Enjoyable too. However, apart from roaming in wvw, there’s nothing you can do that some other class can’t do better.

In dungeons, i’d forget about conditions, due to the caps being reached so easily if there’s already another condition class in the group. Power should bring better sustained DPS which is what you want on the bosses. Then bring some support: search and rescue is always handy, as is a well placed Frost Spirit. Rampage as one will provide you with your own long stability when needed, which will spare you some embarassing deaths.

In WvW, if you’re roaming alone or in a small group, you can have fun with plenty of build types. Beastmaster is fun, traps is fun, conditions work nicely (and synergize very well with traps), power can be an option too, the longbow stealth providing some very useful recovery time now, and in a small party, spirits will distract and buff.

WvW in or around the zerg is something else entirely. You have no real big aoe burst and not much decent spammable aoe dps. Piercing arrows help after a fashion, and greatsword can be half decent in the melee train. Conditions are hit and miss, as on the positive, lots of them are AoE, but on the downside, a decent zerg will pack tons of condition clear so a lot of your skills will be cancelled out fast. Whichever way you go though (in or around), you need to pack as much survival as you can. You will be cc’ed to death and nuked before you know it, so make sure you give yourself a chance.

My recommendation when starting to wvw is to start with easily obtainable pow/vit/tou armour (4/6 from karma in orr, the rest from badges or ascalonian catacombs) and jewellry, cheap soldier runes, and go from there. It works well by default with a power build (longbow+greatsword is a nice mix of range/close and offense/defense), and you can switch pieces as you feel comfortable to increase your DPS. Jewellry slots tends to give you the most oomph for zerker stats.

tldr: not the best class to do it, but it’s doable and fun. A P/V/T gear set is never wasted, so start with it and switch as you go.

I’m in the same boat. Even though i found the start glacially slow (fix signposts for a month?), the fire and frost story line is the only one i actually followed. There was plenty of time to do it even slow paced, and it felt like being part of the story, unlike the current “2 weeks to do 20 times this DE and play this minigame 14 times”. It feels tediously like work, and that’s not why i log in after a working day so i just don’t bother anymore and just enjoy the new scenery every now and then.

I’d love to be able to go back and do those stories at my pace later, but well, i guess they can’t cater to everyone at the same time, so fair enough.

Meglobob.8620:

You have died. You are no longer hardcore.

Do the decent thing, delete that character and start again…

How can you continue playing when you know you should be dead?

That.

Your accomplishments from now on are tainted. Delete the character.

I swear, some people really lack imagination.

Us rangers have kittening dogs! Dogs for crying out loud! Sure you can replace it with a stupid flamingo, but no-one else in this game can have a proper dog companion! And yes, in many ways, we fulfill the hunter archetype. Sure, warriors already have a rifle, but they’re moving around in full plate. Like the prey is gonna stand still while hearing loud-howard stalking through the woods in his plate armour…

Just think for a minute. Rifle 5: “Track’em!”. Opens up a little window with the list of all hostile targets in a radius of 2000/3000/5000/whatever-anyway-it-will-be-nerfed. Pick one, and no, you don’t get an obvious dot on your mini-map. However your dog (or flamingo if you really have to) gains swiftness and rushes straight to that target.

Bang. Unique mechanic? check. Slight counter to stealth? check. Little support through improved souting (counting the baddies in a given radius)? check. Pet synergy? you bet! Hunting flavour? well, duh.

Make the other 4 skills single target damage or cc to keep with the hunting rifle theme (not a frigging shotgun), include wacky Tyria stuff like the tranquiliser rounds the iron legion rangers use to capture large creature to make war beasts (ranged daze) or paint balls (puts a revealed debuff on target, just think of the forum QQ folks!) and you get a brand new hunting style that emphasizes the hunter/dog relationship.

Of course, I still want a quarterstaff to go along with my longbow so i can play Robin Hood with other merry rangers wearing green tights and spamming /laugh.

Us rangers are awesome. From the merry men in the woods to the light infantry elite corps through the shamanic woodland warrior and the deer hunter, there’s just nothing we can’t do. Well. Apart from getting picked for a dungeon.

Staff would be nice too indeed, provided it’s made as a melee/cc weapon.

We can already pick tight pants and dye them green.

We already have a longbow.

Gimme a quarterstaff to rule melee and i can finally go all Robin Hood on those Mists Invaders!

(and suffice to say, the Hood was ruling the ranger class well before Aragorn was even thought of)

It would be nice if it was filling a different ranged niche that our current options with bows.

A long range, big damage, low rate of fire option for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T66jwrrGDJM

Add a camo skill somewhere in the 1-5, as well as a flying pet air drop for rapid deployment, and we’ll finally be the elite light infantry corps that Rangers are supposed to be.

I believe this is the way Anet is going at any rate. I have it on good sources that ‘Commando’ is the Ranger’s 6th trait line in the next big update.

The daily stuff.

daily laurel
daily dungeon reward
daily fractal chest
daily crystal now

The sad part is that some of that stuff, i’m not too fussed with. The annoying thing is to know that the day i change my mind or they add a new use for laurels/crystals that i like, unless i religiously grinded my dailies to build a stock, i’ll be gated by a month.

Rednik.3809:

Building mastery have limited applications, though i don’t see any reason to get more than 2 ranks in it, there is ton of more useful things to spend points on. Repair mastery is utterly useless.

I see it the other way around. Build mastery has very limited use. Apart from faster building while in a tiny group, well, meh. In my small group adventures so far, instant siege building has never been an issue. Maybe for counter-trebbing in the open?

Repair mastery on the other hand, i can see used much more often. Plenty of times there’s a few people in a besieged tower waiting for the reinforcements. Repairing the gate is a great way to gain precious time, but it’s tough when there’s too much aoe on it. The repair mastery should help a lot in those situations. Otherwise you need stability and some huge damage mitigation/invulnerability to put in your 5 repair ticks, and then wait for those cooldowns to come back up.

Jayne.9251:

I’ll just leave this here:

That’s a bit of a deceitful picture, what with the Crazed Veteran Karka behind the camera.

Imho, in wvw you just can’t go wrong with full Soldier. Survival is really critical if you’re involved in medium/large battles. Soldier armour will give you the survival you need, as well as a reasonable amount of power. It’s also exceedingly easy to get through karma (various orr temples should give you 4 out of 6 armour pieces, and temple of grenth has the jewellry), badges or AC tokens. That should be your starting place.

From there, just start mixing up slowly until you find a mix you like, starting with the jewellry. Green jewellry is dead cheap and a great way to experiment. For power builds, experiment with green knight or zerker jewellry and you should quickly reach your own sweet spot between survival/prec/critdmg.

I wouldn’t worry about changing the armour until after enough time in wvw with various jewellry. By then, you’ll have a better feel of what you like or not (prec? critdmg? healing? conditions?), and can decide you want to specialize even further. Until then, your Soldier set will have done the job more than adequately.

Played with it yesterday in wvw on my current LB/GS setup, and found it insanely good. It’s very very nice in 1v1 to regain distance and get that bit more time on regen, and it was incredible in open zerg fights to break target and move to the outskirts when i’d just have died otherwise. Traited, it’s a 9.5s cooldown “oh kitten” button.

All that said, and though i won’t refrain from using it, i find it sad that there’s one more stealth in this game. It’s a rather poor mechanic imho, and there wasn’t a need for yet another class having it as a tool to frustrate the other players…

Vena.8436:

Direwind.8409:

the WvW zones are too small meaning smaller groups get owned by zergs, the servers are too slow meaning you cant do a kitten thing while fighting a zerg or being part of one.

Our havoc group of 5 [HB] didn’t seem to have a problem not getting owned by zergs, though [TW] did give us a few chases and scares for our lives, and we managed to flip four towers before we were done.

So…? Were we playing a different game?

Maybe not a different game, but certainly a different kind of opposition [NOOB] if a group of 5 is allowed [SCOUT?] to flip 4 towers on your server.

I rarely run with it, but quick switching to Snow Leopard is handy to rush inside a tower or to quick contest a supply camp about to flip in the distance, while the non-norn zerg catches up.

Wave him back and be on my way.

Slowly.

Then as he catches up, knock him back to the level below.

/point /laugh use fireworks, take screenshot, and post on the matchup thread.

Harnel.6810:

Da Poolp.6809:

There is a mistake about cats & birds, I think.
Cats strike twice much faster, but with a single hit. Birds strike twice less faster, but 2 hits each time.
Cats is squishier than birds, birds got more vitality.

Upon further review, Birds have the exact same stats as cats. The only differences is that while cats attack faster, birds make up for it by doing doublestrikes, putting them in a higher DPS range, while having a smaller HP pool.

I still don’t really trust either of them, personally.

At least cats have a clear focus. Birds are never too sure whether the most critically important course of action is to DPS the bad guy or cast swiftness…

Something quite important (imho) that you may want to add to drakes: their tail swipe attack, which they like to use early in a fight, is the Ranger’s only Blast Finisher. Our large and long water field makes drakes a very good source of AoE healing. Drop field, F4 to drake, drake engages and blasts. In a tight group of 5 that drop lots of fields, the drake is a nice party addition.

As to the hyena, it can be hilarious in 1v1 with double the knockdowns. Very poor stats though, yes.

LJMaster.6214:

We had a good night last night, scored a lot of points, we managed to get a WP in SM

Dunno if you switched or had your guild split across map, but your lot was good fun yesterday evening on Kodash BL in and around the garrison. Some epic numbers on both sides, with also Kodash inviting themselves from time to time to the party, though with nowhere near the numbers us two invaders had.

Pity about the skill lag kicking in but it was still funny having all these numbers in that paper garrison pushing in and out. Culling was taken care of in the end, here’s hoping Anet can find their way around skill lag and get these server-crashes more interactive.

The MF is no help at all either. I dumped 2000 kittens in it to try and get a Legendary Jaguar whose stats would keep up with the moving top tier, but all i got was harassment by the LA branch of the Tyria’s Pet Lovers Society.

Can’t see why sPvP is just brushed away. If you want small-scale team based fights, it’s never been easier since custom arenas…

1) Pool up gold between the 5 of you
2) Buy gems
3) Get yourselves a custom arena
4) Set it to 5v5, put up a password, and invite like-minded teams to fight you in there, ignoring the caps
5) If you ever get more people, you can push it up to 10v10
6) Only downside, you’ll need to feed it gems regularly to keep it up

You get to choose the map, you get to choose the opposition, you get to set the numbers, you get as many rematches as you want without the need for anyone to respawn, you get every class/rune/sigil if you fancy a change…

Seriously, if you don’t care about the keeps/camps/points, and your favoured scale is 10v10 or less, you’re pretty much the perfect match for custom arena pvp.

Shows how little will change i guess, if they can afford the effort to maintain the two versions and it doesn’t impact their plans for the living story.