Guild Wars 2

I voted for Ellen Kiel because:

- I like the character.
- I like her story so far.
- I want to see more of her story.

I did not vote for Ellen Kiel because:

- Cheaper waypoints.
- I hate Guild Wars 1 lore.
- Because she has breasts.

I did not vote for Evon Gnashblade because:

- If I wanted to see a brief glimpse of Guild Wars 1 content, I would play Guild Wars 1.
- I rarely buy Black Lion Keys.
- I do not like his story.

Gnash lost; now I drink your tears.

#TeamKiel

Same issue, in the tunnel just after she opens the door from the jumping puzzle. Day two, but still disappointing that I can’t finish this dungeon because of her.

Mathematically impossible to complete these events now without a massive group effort. Southsun is overrun now!

The events are not scaling to population as other dynamic events and that’s an issue.

Pro Tip: Don’t wait around with a dozen people for one hologram. Go out into the world, play the game, enjoy the sights… and look for the Dragon Hologram icon on your mini map!

In the charr starting area, there were dozens – literally dozens – of uncamped holograms! In zones like Sparkfly Fen, Mount Maelstrom and Brisban Wildlands, holograms unclaimed as far as the eye can see!

Six forbid you actually play a game you paid for instead of short-cutting around with the rest of the herd.

Well, to be “fair,” 2 candy and a chance at a rare…

…but what it really comes down to is not playing the game for the sake of fun, but for dem achievie points!

(/sarcasm off, I really enjoy the game for what it is. Its those who play the game to earn their kitten achievement points then leave that get me.)

Got a few boxes from the Southsun events (which, by the way, are still going) and got a skin ticket.

Bought 5 boxes from the gemstore; got one more.

Your bad luck is not a reflection of everyone else.

Given how Living Stories aren’t full-on expansions, I’m very impressed with how a small development team can push this content. They are progressively getting better (from the magnificent return of The Mad King to the devastatingly disappointing Lost Shores) at releasing this small content. Southsun is now so rife with activity and players that I find myself going there to participate in events even after I’ve completed my dailies!

So while its not a heavy lore expansion, its good for keeping things alive until said expansion.

Haven’t noticed it yet, so I took the liberty of plugging your build into GW2buildcraft’s calculator:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ranger/?6.0|c.1f.0.f.1f.0|7.1f.0.8.1f.0|1f.71d.1f.71d.1f.71d.1f.71d.1f.71d.1f.71d|31m.d15.21m.d1b.31m.d15.21m.d1b.31m.d1b.2w.d1b|0.0.u47c.a3.u45c|1k.e|4j.4w.4r.4q.54|e

Stats reflected include food buffs and 25 stacks of Healing sigil. Based on your screenshot, I assume you have not upgraded any of your Ascended items, but instead used Fine Infusions.

I did NOT include sigils in this link because I’ve no idea what (other than Healing) or where they are.

Same error I have, only in WvW as well.

Same. Frequent crashes during intense encounters, even with all graphics and sound settings bottomed out. My system is as follows:

Processor 2 × 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Memory 20 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB

On the outside of the Super Adventure Box, the control station resembles a Nintendo controller.

You, ArenaNet, won all the April Fool’s.

Well done, cinematics department!

After playing a Necromancer, I love “boonhate.”

Muahahahaha! Yes. Yesss! Excellent, my predictable little Guardian/Elementalist. Cast all your boons. Let me corrupt them into conditions. Muahaha! MUAHAHAHA HA HAAAA!

In short, seeing a Guardian pop Save Yourselves! Is like Wintersday for me while playing a Necro. I wish I could do something like “boon hate” on my Ranger or Thief.

My Ranger is my “main,” and if you want to talk about lack of synergy and variety then Necros do not fit in that definition.

I am having an absolute blast with my Necromancer. I really enjoy the condition AoE spreading which is absolutely devastating and doesn’t compare to a Trapper built Ranger. A Necromancer in a WvW group provides amazing group support and AoE damage.

Well, Marks, Plague, Epidemic, Deathshroud are all just a few examples of how much better a condition Necromancer is compared to any condition-built Ranger. With Bleed Duration, a Necro can sacrifice condition damage for higher, longer stacks of Bleed – a Ranger can’t stack nearly as high nor as quickly.

Pet skills not properly staying on their cooldowns between swaps was a bug – we’ve just been lying to ourselves it was a “feature.”

#dealwithit

And the Ranger would do what, exactly, when they pop out of this utility? Exploit the element of surprise and kill their target— Pffffcchht! I’m sorry, I couldn’t finish that with a straight face!

…adding stealth to the Ranger doesn’t fix their problem.

These are really good suggestions and the theorycrafting coincide with mechanics found on other professions. Anything higher thakitten% crit chance shows little return. Power is the most favorable stat and crit damage should be aimed around 60%.

I like these ideas! It would be nice to sit in a chair and wear the amazing clothing I see NPCs wandering around with (those dresses the Noble Women wear…hawt).

I do like the “hoodies” and the riding clothes, but they simply aren’t like the stuff we saw at promo.

Chris,

I used your build in sPvP. I was helping a friend test her mesmer PvP skills when a Warrior came into our server and wanted to 1v1 us. Needless to say, he got pretty upset that he couldn’t kill me – not even close.

In WvW, I encountered another Guardian who seemed to be using a similar build with Hammer + Mace/Focus. It was an incredibly tedious fight with nether one of us getting anywhere fast. After about 10 minutes, two Thieves from his server found us and I found myself on a slow decent to defeat. I almost killed one of the Thieves, but as you mentioned, Permastealth classes are a pain.

Thanks again for all your videos and effort! Cheers!

Wall of Reflection. GG.

I’d hardly consider Sword 2 a true Evade. The Evade mechanic triggers halfway through the backward leap, which is 1.5 seconds into the casting animation – its extremely difficult to rely on. Additionally, its not friendly with ledges around.

I wouldn’t commit solely to Axe off-hand, either. Axe-offhand is still very situational – especially in this case when its acting as a defensive tool. Consider a Dagger: combo’d with Sword 3 its 6 seconds of being untouchable (remember that the Evade occurs during the entire animation of these two abilities – unlike Sword 2). Swap to an Axe off-hand when projectiles are a thing.

I wouldn’t bother with a Jaguar with this build and, instead, favor a Wolf for its knockdown CC’s. In fact, I’d run double wolf as they have the same Toughness and Vitality as a pig with superior F2s and CC and good damage.

Edit: Oh, and Swoop is a Leap Finisher, which means its not an AoE heal – it just heals you.

Blast is the AoE heal finisher for Water, which Rangers only have with a Drake pet (and that can’t be controlled).
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Water_Field

While I agree that the crit chance and crit damage are below my personal preference for any sort of direct damage build (I prefer 50% chance and 60% damage), this is a decent starter build for new rangers. Nice post!

I’m really having problems as a small team/roamer. Often my team of 4 or 5 will decide to engage a camp or group only to learn too late that we were in the middle of a culled zerg!

Its become very difficult for small teams to roam the map because we can’t accurately assess the situation before making a move.

Both Jons said it themselves that they “don’t want to play whack-a-mole” with each build people find that works. In fact, it seemed they want to keep it the way it is and bring the other potentially viable builds up to par with the Trapper Ranger.

This is a good plan if they execute it. Instead of lowering the bar for everyone you bring the bar up. To borrow a phrase from The Incredibles, “If everyone is super then nobody is.” That is to say if every build is “overpowered” then none of them are and they all become good choices.

Can this thread just be locked already? It has gone completely off topic.

And what would you being doing as a player to contribute to the fight? What would you be doing to defend against an attacker?

As a PvPer I’ll speak in PvP terms: when targeting a pet class the first thing to die is generally the pet’s master! Sometimes priority is placed upon the pet, but ultimately the [Ranger] is the one that needs to die.

So while you’re making shadow puppets, what exactly will you be doing to defend yourself if a Thief decides you’re a tastier treat than your beast? Make sign language to your pet to intercede? Remember, you only have 5 slots to fill with abilities and they’ll likely have cooldowns.

Lastly, you’re suggesting introducing a new weapon. In this game, weapons are shared by a variety of classes so who else is going to share it? If you’re considering using one of the unused weapons by our profession, how do you suggest that would work? Currently we can’t use pistols, rifles, shields, scepters, maces or staffs.

The Guardian certainly feels like a teamplayer and a leader/paladin role. Because of all the boon-giving Shouts and Virtues, a Guardian is dangerous alone but is far more powerful in a group! This definitely fits the role as a self-sacrificing individual capable of dishing out righteous judgement.

Liked, as always! Keep up the amazing work, Sol!

No one really mentions that projectiles aim for the base of a target, not center mass or the head. This makes sieging or counter-sieging very difficult. Often you can’t destroy a massive trebuchet or oil vat because your arrows are aiming at the very base of the target and hitting the lip of a wall.

Also, do siege weapons suffer from condition damage? I don’t think they do; and if that’s so, that throws our traps right out the window, too.

Either precision or condition damage, depending on what you want to do.

You either mix Power/Toughness/Precision/Crit% for direct damage or…
You mix Power/Toughness/Condition/Precision for condition damage.

You get the mix by having your armor be primarily one stat (i.e. Knight’s, crafted), your weapons another (i.e. Condition or Berserker for ranged; Knight, Soldier, Condition or Berserker on melee) and your jewelery/back pieces another stat.

archerT.1935:

Hornet’s Sting is much more situational than dodge-rolling due to terrain restraints and the need to use its follow-up skill as a leap back in to combat.

Six-forbid you attempt to Monarch Leap from a higher elevation. You end up missing the target completely and not getting a combo finisher – but the same is also true for Warrior’s Sword 2.

What really annoys me about people who say our Sword 2 is an evade is the delay in Hornet’s Sting. The “evade” portion of it triggers 1 second after the initial attack animation (the bees stinging). This is not an “on-demand” evade in any sense of the word.

“Oh, but deep, you need to time it be—” SHUT THE KITTEN UP! How am I suppose to time an opponent’s attack that takes less than a second to fire off? Spider Sense? When I want to dodge a Thief’s Heartseeker or a Warrior’s Hundred Blades, I don’t want to be taking my sweat time throwing bees in his face and THEN leaping to safety. I want that safety part FIRST!

DancinPuppeh.8421:

(Tip: Disable the auto attack and it’s not as bad when you need to dodge or heal)

I’d like to assume everyone and their mother knows about this “tip.”

What I’d like to say here is that it still adds up to a sorry work-around for a mechanic that shouldn’t be there in the first place. As a PvPer, my fingers are already working overtime to manage both movement/abilities on my keyboard and abilities/camera on my mouse. I don’t need the extra carpal tunnel risks induced by mashing a key.

“Auto attack off” is just a band-aid on an open wound.

Vitality is arguably one of the least favorable stats. Before the ragers jump on this post, let me explain a few things:

Vitality raises your healthpool but a common misunderstanding is that a larger HP is a counter to burst damage. Any GW2 PvP worth their digital weight in salt will tell you that Toughness is the counter to burst damage (around 1600-1800).

Your HP is static and once its gone its gone. Healing power acts as a sort of “soft healthpool.” Guardians use Healing Power to great effect to counter their profession’s lowest health in the game – and I believe that’s intentional by the developers. Rangers are on average with HP size but we lack the number healing abilities like Guardians or Warriors have.

I would recommend staying away from both Healing Power and Vitality. If you must, put on enough Vitality via gems and runes to get you to around 16,000 or 17,000. Stacking upwards of 20,000 means you’re suffering in your damage output.

With regards to Toughness, as BroScientist mentioned above, 2000 is overkill. I’ve run with that much before and it can be fun but I noticed a significant deficit in my damage output. I keep mine around 1500-1600 while holding a ranged weapon and 1700-1800 while holding melee weapons.

As a Roamer and small team skirmisher on a Tier 2 server, I stand by my statement that Toughness is King in WvW. The zerglings can run with their glass cannon builds while I’m off solo capping supply camps against two thieves.

At the height of my rage against ArenaNet, I decided to roll a Guardian. Ended up really enjoying it.

Then I made a Rifle Warrior. Really enjoyed that, too! Got both the Warrior AND the Guardian in two full sets of exotics and run dungeons and WvW with them frequently.

What I found for myself, however, is how much I still enjoyed my Ranger. I still see flaws that need to be improved (dodge roll interrupting Sword 1 chain, please; Longbow, enough said) but I’m not as enamored by the other classes anymore. In fact on my Warrior I’m downed more often because I lack the means to escape – unlike my Ranger. On my Guardian I have more uptime but severely lack in crit chance – unlike my Ranger.

Its great to see how the other classes compare and ultimately I love my Ranger the most but still wish to see some improvements to the class…although, not as many as I once believed.

Just allow us to have dodge rolls interrupt the chain. That’s all I ask.

If we can’t move normally because we’re “stuck” to a target, fine. I get that. In fact, I like being stuck to my target. All I ask is that if other abilities can stop the chain, why can’t a dodge roll?

I’m very surprised by the range of opinions here. I’ll toss in my own for kicks.

My first character was a Ranger and after level 30 I began to notice where the profession was lacking. I’ve worked hard to find ways to enjoy the class and to this day I’m still proud to say its my main character but I’ll still deter newer players from rolling one.

I recently rolled a Warrior to 80 in full exotics. The damage output from a Rifle build is staggering! A Rifle Warrior is a strong contender for best ranged DPS, but here are my opinions on the matter when compared to a Ranger:

- Rifle Warriors lack the surprising amount of evasion a Ranger has. A traited Ranger has a far better Endurance regeneration, even when compared to a Warrior who’s using a Warhorn.

- A Ranger can also trait for Protection on a Dodge roll, where as a Warrior does an AoE damage (which causes more threat).

- Rangers can swap to weapons which gives them even more ways to evade damage. Warriors can swap to weapons that can block or mitigate damage, but have a longer cooldown compared to the Ranger’s.

From experience in Dungeons and WvW, I find a Rifle Warrior has a harder time escaping damage than a Ranger. Despite having more armor than my Ranger, I end up Downed more often on my Warrior (its very embarrassing because I know I’m a better player than that).

With that said, Longbow is by and large my most hated weapon on a Ranger. Its autoattack is pitifully slow and its damage is dreadful. If a Rifle Warrior and Longbow Ranger of equal skill were to face-off, I’d put my money on the Warrior simply because of the auto-attack. While both Rapid Fire and Killshot are easy to recognize and dodge, the Rifle’s auto-attack is faster, hits harder, applies a bleed (which, when traited, increases all damage by 10%) and has no diminishing damage based on range.

Hey Oozo! Huge fan and subscriber of your channel! Always looking forward to your new videos to watch during lunch.

I absolutely love your build and spent hours (before the Prelude patch) to get my Lyssa runes, but I’m still puzzled how the rest of your stats add up. I realize your build has a high learning curve and is best suited for coordinated teamplay, but do you have any advice on how my stats should look? More Toughness? A certain degree of crit chance? Anything that could help me in the right direction would be appreciated.

Thanks, and good luck after the Reset!

Love this build, Christos! I’m hesitant to change the weapons though because I feel all three (Greatsword, Sword, Focus) really create a strong backbone for this build. Greatsword to leap, spin-to-win, retaliation (which you’ve said on multiple occasions is key to this build) and CC; Sword is great for its teleport and ranged block; and Focus for its condition removal and block. All of these weapons cause Blindness which really appeals to me.

Nevertheless, I really love the Hammer gameplay, especially after watching Oozo’s videos. JI with a ring is just pure fun. If I wanted to swap a Hammer in, I don’t know what I would replace or how to adjust the playstyle accordingly. Any advice? Or should I just leave well enough alone?

While I was farming for ore, a player fell from the cliff overhead onto a ledge next to me. When you die from a fall, you do not enter Downed state – you are fully defeated. I switched a utility and sent my pet up to revive him, and it worked.

Search & Rescue can revive a defeated player: Confirmed!

Add “allow me to dodge roll at any point during a Sword 1 chain attack” and I’ll be happy.

Never rely on a single ability to compensate for a passive stat like Toughness.

If you read any guide/blog from any the well-respected, highly-talented Guild Wars 2 PvPers, they will all say one thing: Toughness is king in WvW.

As a WvW Roamer, its easy to spot who’s not running with 1700+ Toughness. In the case of Rangers using Greatsword, I’ve seen many who attempt to use 3. While Greatsword 3 is an amazing ability, its also very easy to recognize. Once the ability has been used the target is easy prey and downed before they can use the ability again.

Do not rely on one single ability to survive in WvW.

With that said, there is no such thing (for a Ranger) that is an All-Around PvE/WvW/high-level Fractal build. While you might be able to use the same build in WvW and PvE, 10+ Fractals require exact traits for your exact role. Fractals and PvE are two different games; Fractals and WvW aren’t even in the same league.

Short answer: there is no One Build; at least, not for Rangers. Warriors, maybe, but not us.

Boomstin.3460:

Too bad for us who want to avoid the horrible flavor dungeons don’t even have a way to get a quiver skin.
Or is there?

Mystic Forge. See my post to the Wikis above.

Edit: In fact, that’s the only way to get a quiver skin – no dungeons required!

somsom.5201:

vitigis.4160:

How about taking all that time that could be spent on making awesome new quiver models and using it to make pets that don’t suck in all types of PVP?

I vote for that

+1

Not just PvP, but fix ALL of the pet classes regardless of PvE, PvP, or WvW.

If you want a quiver, do like we all did and pony up the gold for one.

-1

Two completely different teams of people with completely different skillsets.

A graphic artist does not equal a programer.

With 1700-2000 Toughness (DPS, not bunker), I generally work best with Ungent, I just have to be proactive in using it instead of reactive and always, always beware of when to use QZ.

Save dem 50 Globs of Ectoplasm, son.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endless_Quiver
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quiver_of_a_Thousand_Arrows
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quiver_of_Swift_Flight

Posting to confirm that despite the cooldown overlay, the F2 ability still fires off after a swap.

This seems to be less about an actual nerf and instead a GUI glitch.

iCryptik.1496:

Can’t a guy have high hopes?

High hopes are so October 2012, before the Short Bow “fix.”

In this day an age, a Guild Wars 2 Ranger is at best optimistically skeptical and at worst completely in denial.

Here’s to holding out for optimistic skepticism in the February patch!

Frankly I’m not surprised. Didn’t seem right to have a long cooldown, like 40 seconds, reduced to 15 or 20 seconds (for each swap). Perhaps now I’ll look at those two traits in the Beastmaster tree with a bit more consideration.

I’m guessing this is true for the non-F2 abilities as well?

Hello, Guardians, just wanted to welcome you folks aboard the same boat us Rangers and Necromancers enjoy!

I’m sure we’ll be seeing the Warrior’s and their banners joining us soon; so, in the meantime, have a drink on us (made from our very own tears) and be careful of my Spirits – one sneeze will kill them all.

Dagger for a condition build is great!

Dagger for a power build is for utility and should be swapped in and out based on the needs of the encounter.

One forum poster gave me a great response: carry multiple weapons and plan accordingly.