Guild Wars 2

IMO, its best for a commander to be able to fight on the front lines and lead large groups in battle. I have level 80 ranger, guard and war, also high level on ele and necro. My ranger would be the last one of my chars I’d want to make into a commander. Rangers excel at single target pressure from range. Your front line fighters can’t see you if you are behind them so a ranger isn’t going to be the best at inspiring troops in battle or leading pushes. Guard would be my first choice since they benefit the most from having allies nearby and allies benefit from being near them as well.

Its better than it was but many weapon skills, utilities and traits still need work. Some good quality of life improvements in the last patch, but doesn’t change the fact that damage is still a bit too low on most ranger weapons and build options are limited due to many bad utilities and lackluster traits.

I started a necro last week, up to level 44 now. I like it ok so far. The weapon options are a bit limiting and the shadow form mechanic is a bit lackluster But it is strong in PvE. Much more forgiving than d/d ele and you can clear mobs about as fast.

Guards have poor mobility even if you have near 100% swiftness uptime because the only reliable movement skill we have is greatsword leap, 600 range on a 15 sec cooldown. Guards are made for group fights; they aren’t good at roaming.

I’m not sure where this notion that TC has queues on all four maps came from. 4 map queues might occur for a bit right after new match-ups start, but that’s about it. I can’t remember the last time I saw a 4 map queue and I play a lot.

Heal on crit food will most likely be nerfed in upcoming patches, but it could work well while it lasts.

FascistMuffin.2956:

I’m sure FA and CD would have way more points if TC didn’t have a max population that filled all BL nearly 100% of the time.

Every night TC gets ahead by an additional 10k+ points. It’d be fun to actually have a 1v1v1 instead of a fight for second.

I’ve played on TC since release and I can’t remember a single time that I’ve not been able to get into at least one of the WvW maps without a queue. We do get queues occasionally on borderland maps during prime time NA playing hours, but they usually don’t last more than a couple of minutes. EB queues rarely last more than 10 minutes even during prime time and most of the time even EB has no queue.

@ Agadar.4931

It does not reflect projectiles, it only blocks them. There is a big difference.

GS damage isn’t that bad and the mobility/evasion makes it worth using as a secondary to shortbow.

Dayra.7405:

fishergrip.4082:

The biggest issue for me is you die if you jump to a different WvW map while in combat.

It was never possible (and still is not) to teleport to another map nor to any spawn point on your map while you are in combat.
So it doesn’t matter if you DC during Map change, you cannot be in combat while doing so.

Yes it is. If you join the queue to enter a WvW map that is full and the queue pops while you are in combat, you can click the button to travel there, even during combat. I’m not talking about trying to click on a portal during combat.

The biggest issue for me is you die if you jump to a different WvW map while in combat. Sometimes you are in a big fight, fighting a strong NPC etc, where you can’t necessarily get out of combat quickly, so you either jump to the map you want to play and die in the process or you have to re-enter the queue.

wookalar.8952:

It’s the most damaging offhand for the guardian. I can get 4k hits with it for a few hits towrards the end of the #5 skill. So the only real use for it is boosting the sucky ranged dps of scepter. So, all in all, I use it only when I must range and don’t need a knockback/reflect.

I think you are confused about how multi-hit abilities work. When you see a bunch of numbers pop up from one ability that get larger and larger, that is the cumulative damage for the entire skill. You aren’t doing 4k damage multiple times at the end, the whole skill is doing 4k damage over the duration of the channel.

Nirvash.3018:

Honestly, that trait was OP at the cost of only 5 points. AH is still good in big fights.

Its still OP now, just in a different way. Its basically perma vigor for anyone with halfway decent crit chance.

That’s a pretty hefty nerf to AH. Probably around 300 healing per second worth of nerf for my build in a big fight.

Grimpaw.7493:

No, jayderyu is right. I was thinking about this today too. The ranking algorithm needs to focus on one aspect only, whether or not you should move up 1 tier, stay in the same tier or move down 1 (or possibly 2) tiers. It should do that as directly as possible, the current system is far too indirect and we’re seeing servers within a tier being more closely grouped in points rather than promoting consistent top place finishes into a higher tier and consistent 3rd place finishes into the lower. Consider a naive but simple algorithm: 2 consecutive first place finishes, switch with 3rd place in higher tier who has at least 2 losses in that tier. (i.e. you could flip between tiers every 2 matches if you always win the lower and always lose the higher). That with some special cases for blowouts and other rare situations might work better than the current system.

I don’t have time to write up a detailed post, but someone should start a new thread on it. I bet we could come up with something really simple and more effective. Just focus on moving winners up and losers down.

Lovin’ the Yak Walk idea, hopefully I can get on for that.

Agreed. When you look at this week’s points and rankings, its clear that the current system is flawed. In the first 4 tiers, the top ranked team is winning and yet each is projected to lose ranking points. The current system makes it almost impossible for servers to move up without major blowouts, which isn’t really possible now that server populations have stabilized. The first 4 tiers seem to be frozen in a ranking points equilibrium, where no server gains or loses many points. It could very well be that all the servers in the top 4 tiers or so are where they should be in the rankings, but it makes for stale match-ups to face the same servers every week and we don’t know for sure that the rankings are accurate unless there is some movement of servers between tiers.

As a guardian, this makes me sad. Its already near impossible for a guardian to stop an enemy from running away now they will all be dancing around with perma 25% move speed.

Kahrgan.7401:

Why would you say precision is better than power if building for self healing? for the might stack?

Me personally I’m full clerics gear. Power is persistent dmg, and doesnt have to depend on crits.

Altruistic healing can heal you for 200-500hp per second with a high crit rate when you’re using vigor on crit/might on crit. Throw in superior sigil of blood and lifesteal on crit food and you can get 1000 healing per second from crits. The healing is somewhat dependent on the situation: more targets and more party members = more healing.

I’d say for pretty much any offensive character that isn’t going heavy into condition damage, you need a balance of power, precision and +crit damage. Precision is better than power if you are building for self healing.

I don’t really want to go up to T2, but I do think its kind of absurd you can win your matchup for 2 months straight and still not be close to moving up. Losing points when you win your matchup is a bit dumb.

Guardians are in a pretty good place right now honestly. Certain things are annoying like lack of good ranged skills, mobility, sluggish feeling to certain skills, lackluster coefficients on healing power etc. but its not too bad.

Lack of mobility the only thing big issue.

Its not something you build around for PvE, its more like a bonus if you happen to have it.

I have full sets of knight’s on my ranger, warrior and partial set on my guardian(got some karma gear to add HP on guardian). Knight’s has an amazing balance of damage and durability.

If you get a combination of knight’s gear and karma gear with Vit, Prec and Healing you can get around 50% crit rate without putting a single point into the Radiance trait line, allowing you to use your traits to make whatever tanky build you want.

7-8% damage nerf to shortbow and 25% nerf to shortbow with QZ happened.

But in seriousness, nothing has happened aside, perhaps, from the people realizing that full glass cannon-ie full berskerkers-is not necessarily optimal. I’m sure many rangers run 30 marks, some skirmish etc. builds, since signet of stone is probably the best WvW skill we have.

I highly recommend going 20 marksmanship for piercing arrows. It is absolutely amazing for pve.

I have an 80 warrior and 80 guardian now. I still like my ranger but I wanted to try some other classes while they worked on ranger buffs. Warrior is very efficient in PvE, but I find guardian is better for WvW, which is where I spend most of my time. The self healing/tankyness of the guardian is borderline op, although the lack of mobility is somewhat annoying.

I’ll probably pick up my ranger for a while after the patch.

I might have to dust off my 80 ranger that I shelved.

As someone with a level 80 warrior and level 80 guardian, I’d say my guardian would probably beat my warrior. Its hard to make 1 specific build to counter a guardian because the way to counter them depends somewhat on the build they are using.

On my guardian I find I have most trouble dealing with interrupts combined with very high burst damage and highly mobile ranged attackers. I also don’t do well against powerful conditions because of the way I built my char, but most guardians will be able to remove conditions pretty easily so don’t count on a condition build to work.

To whoever said sword does not have good direct damage, you are wrong. It actually has very strong normal damage on its auto attack chain. It just lacks the burst of 100b and whirlwind.

I use sanctuary with the 2 traits related to consecration skills and it has a lot of uses. For whatever reason, using both consecration traits with sanctuary increases its duration from 6 seconds to round 12 seconds or so and reduces the casting time from over a second to almost instant. These effects are not stated in the tooltips, but they make it much more useful, in addition to the reduced cooldown and ground targeting with 900 range. Some uses I’ve found other than the standard self-protection:

-Cast it on downed enemy at range to prevent his friends from rezzing him.
-Cast it on an ally about to be finished by an enemy.
-Cast on a keep/tower door to prevent fleeing enemy from entering the tower.
-Cast in front of an enemy that is running away.
-Cast on a narrow bridge or in a doorway to prevent enemies from passing through for a while.

Maybe I was thinking about the ranger swords ranges. Either way guardian sword has pretty has poor multi target damage. I used 1h sword/focus for leveling along with with staff because you do a lot of single mob fights in PvE, but I dropped it for GS when I started doing WvW where 1v1 fights are not a priority.

Omnomberry Pie is the most overpowered food in the game by a lot.

Sword shines fighting a single enemy, especially a strong enemy in PvE. Once you throw in multiple mobs or go into a WvW situation, it is much less useful. Sword has no control abilities, so you can’t stop someone from running away and its not great against 2+ enemies because the arc and range on the auto attack is not great, the third attack can only hit one target and both the other attacks are also single target.

Definitely focus. Focus is good for offense and defense. The explosion on #5 does a ton of damage if it goes off, damage 4 ain’t half bad either and both provide amazing defense as well. Shield would definitely by last on my list for normal PvE as it doesn’t add any damage. I don’t like torch much because you can burn pretty much 100% without it, the dps on #5 is not spectacular and it provides no defense.

The difference between ascended gear and exotic gear is not insignificant. Once there are ascended items out for all slots, there will be a very noticeable difference in power between an exotic equipped and ascended equipped character.

Also, it does matter if casual players quit the game. They might not buy micro transaction items in large amounts, but they do buy expansion packs.

The guardian has absurd tankyness and self healing if you build for it, but they do suffer from relatively poor mobility. Its a tradeoff I’m willing to accept because I like to be able to take hits.

Aytrix.4059:

TC is by far the zergiest server I’ve ever played against. Skill wise the people in the zerg are less skilled then people on other servers, but my god there is always just so many of them.

Don’t take this personal, just an observation.

When you get into higher tiers, you face servers with higher population. That should be a no-brainer.

Your argument is a standard argument used by bad players and low morale players. Zergs always have some bad/low lev players an some good players. If you are that good, you can find places to get kills solo or in a small group and stay away from zergs for the most part.

If you think you have it bad, you haven’t had many tough fights in WvW. TC has had its fair share of getting totally zerged since release by servers like Dragonbrand, SoR, Blackgate, etc. (way worse than what you guys are experiencing, I’m talking like 400k to 30k score.). This is actually probably the most balanced matchup we’ve had since release.

The difference is WvW does not require you to get a group and you can get the monthly achievement done in about 30 mins.

Condition damage is the worst stat for guardians.

Rangers serve several roles in WvW fairly capably.

1. Decent single target and aoe ranged damage for keep defense
2. Aoe damage for attacking keeps. Unfortunately its on a fairly long CD.
3. Decent single target, ranged damage for skirmishing and large zerg fights in the field. Fairly easy to contribute damage without taking much damage.
4. Strong at taking supply camps solo.
5. Aoe regen, condition removal and long duration water field.

Durzlla.6295:

fishergrip.4082:

All I can say is you are fighting noobs. A ranger will never beat 2 competent level 80s in a 2v1, especially not a thief and guardian duo.

I’ve done this on a regular basis in tPvP, maybe a BAD ranger can’t, but a good ranger sure as hell can.

Or more likely, the people you are fighting are the bad ones.

Ranger dps is actually pretty good. Rangers are very solid on the PvE side of things. PvP is where they lack because pet dps is not consistent and its harder to achieve flanking.

All I can say is you are fighting noobs. A ranger will never beat 2 competent level 80s in a 2v1, especially not a thief and guardian duo.

HabibLoew.2590:

Currently WvW uses the same skills as PvE, so PvP balance changes do not have an impact on WvW.

You guys should consider extending the sPvP rules to WvW. There’s a lot of stuff that’s overpowered/messed up in WvW because you continue to use PvE rules instead of sPvP rules, which are actually balanced for, you know, fighting other players.

Its well documented that aggro follows no logic in this game. Mobs just attack whoever the heck they feel like, usually someone with really high dps gear or very tanky gear.

The GS changes are the only really positive thing to come out of this patch, I’ll give you that. I actually think GS is a decent weapon and I’ve been using it as secondary for the evasion and swoop. All it really needs to make it good is a bit of a damage boost.

JonPeters.5630:

Maybe you want more than honesty but that is what I currently have to offer.

Jon

No Jon, we just want honesty and you’ve failed to deliver even that.

Jon.

Players realize that you can’t always get to everything, but you must realize that you can’t promise “significant changes” in the next patch on a whole range of issues from signets and traits to pets and weapons, completely and utterly fail to deliver, and expect to retain players.

If you don’t have time to make changes in time for a patch, don’t promise players that you are going to make them for next patch. Feeding us misinformation while making stealth nerfs will only work so long until people are fed up. You’re destroying your company’s credibility.

If that’s true, that single nerf is 100x worse than any buffs we got.

nldixon.8514:

lagrangeify.5641:

Oh…..dear.

I’ve only just started my ranger. Guess I should have rolled an engineer after all.

Despite all the bellyaching, Ranger is still a pretty good profession. It’s excellent for PvE and with the right builds can be effective in dungeons, W3, and sPvP.

It’s just that we were promised something that wasn’t delivered. Just a little disappointing. Most people are just angry right now.

Its a lot more than a little disappointing to most of us.

Guys I think you missed this:

Dual Shot: This skill’s damage has been increased by 10%.

Oh wait, that’s a 10% buff for Warrior’s longbow not Ranger…