Guild Wars 2

I personally love the downed mechanic and think it is a great addition to the game. It creates all kind of depth in both WvW and sPvP. If you are having problems finishing people than you just need to bring a thief and learn the fine art of stealth stomping.. My role in WvW is to run at the fringes picking people off and finishing them through stealth stomps.

You were mistaken.. it wasn’t 10 thieves.. it was only one. Muhahahaha

Thief and loving it. Better roamer, better burst, better battle control, better AOE defense of tower.. not going back unless the nerf bat swings the other way. Not playing the faceroll build so I hope my thief sticks around. The +25% run speed signet should have been given to a ranger..

Zorlak.7926:

Wow, never take someone else’s golem, that’s just being a kitten.
Anyway, from what I’ve seen so far the RUIN guys are a nice bunch of people.
Glad they decided to join Desolation, I hope they stay. All I hope is they branch out to the borderlands.

We had your back tonight.. love rolling with you IRON folks and really enjoying Deso so far. I don’t think the NA folks understand how much better the PvP is over here. We were just chatting tonight about how we had to change our tactics and we just can’t faceroll through doors. I mean my god how much siege do the French build for crying out loud! I kill just as many arrow carts as I do players.

Thanks for the battles and thanks for making us feel welcome! Now pass me a pint..

This is what I’m playing post-patch:

Spider Venom, Devourer Venom, Signet of Shadows, Thieves Guild

30 Shadow Arts (Cloaked in Shadow, Leeching Venoms, Venomous Aura)
20 Deadly Arts (Mug, Quick Venoms)
20 Acrobatics (Vigorous Recovery, Pain Response)

Dredj.4025:

Shortbow and Longbow play 2 very different ways to me. Shortbow is for Condition builds so Pow/Prec/Cond and Longbow more focused on Pow/Prec/Crit. Geared up like that my Shortbow crits about 750 and my Longbow crits for 3k.

I’m still in the process of converting my Ranger to a Longbow build so some of my armour and accessories are Condition based and none of it Rare or even Exotic, I have roughly 2600 attack but not sure on my crit damage, and I pulled off a 3k Longshot.

I’ve rerolled Necro now for my guild but won’t be abandoning my Ranger.

I’m also a WvW player.

This is not correct. Use a shortbow in your power/prec/crit gear and it will out DPS a longbow this has been proven over and over.

mouse.1689:

I really hate to say this, but you’re doing it wrong. Ranger is one of the better 1v1 classes in the game. Mesmers should be the only class that gives you consistent trouble 1v1. Thieves can be difficult as well if they have all their cooldowns up, but are still beatable if you know what you’re doing.

Before assuming that the class is broken and demanding an explanation from the devs, why don’t you tell us what build you’re using, and explain specifically what classes are giving you problems so we can provide you some feedback that will help you?

Yeah I hate to say too it but it is a L2P issue and the above poster hit it spot on. Outside of a mesmer I haven’t lost a 1v1 fight in a very long time. The trick to being a strong ranger is to not go glass cannon. I bet you will find that most of the posters here that are saying we are fine are NOT playing glass cannon builds and have some form of defense (protect me, signet of stone, lots of toughness/vitality, condition removal, etc.). As I’ve tweaked my build and raised my personal skill cap I have even started doing very well in 1v2 and 1v3. I also play a thief and while stealth is nice, rangers have a disgusting amount of evasion.

In addition to the invisible armies which I’ve just adjusted to constantly shooting when I run because you never know when there is a zerg out there.. the thing that annoys the hell out of me is the INPUT LAG when you get into a big fight.. nothing like slamming your heal button and it going off like 30 seconds later. Half my skills don’t work when I get into a huge 3 faction battle in Stonemist. Invisible armies are one thing, my character not responding to my commands is just kitten in this day and age. It’s killing WvW guys.. gotta fix it.

I think the fast button smashing of WoW has also jaded people a little. IMHO the combat in GW2 is much more fluid and allows you to exercise a little patience when fighting. It isn’t he who smashes button the fastest wins.. it is he who presses the right buttons at the right time wins. Pay attention to the animations because instead of a casting bar type system GW2 uses animations to communicate what is the right button to press. And again.. the problem is the sword on auto attack.. so you take it off auto attack and MANY of the problems go away.. not to mention it will make you a better player especially in melee. As another poster said embrace your inner ninja with the sword because once you do you will have that enlightened moment.

Take the #1 off auto attack and the sword becomes a much better weapon. I no longer get stuck in the animations when I’m controlling the attack and the “stickiness” of the sword attacks is very nice. #2 and #3 are like 2 free dodge rolls.. one with a poison no less and make for some very interesting mobility scenarios (when you are strafing in line with someone to the right you can hit serp strike and pretty much it will roll you right on them).

Sword auto attack sucks.. but when you take off auto attack (I run sword/warhorn and I put the bird attack on auto attack) it is much more manageable and gives you a TON of mobility.

SpectacularYak.6518:

Morgash.3165:

Sure in massive wvw zergs you can plink away with a longbow. Your not gong to bring people down though. I used to be a 100% longbow user. Just experance has shown me that its not nearlly as effective as a short bow. Granted you have to be built for the short bow, con-damage is a huge part of the build. It cost me a pretty penny to regear for short bow but it has been worth it.

This is the part I don’t understand. My feeling on the Shortbow has also been that it is a condition damage weapon, primarily, so to use it to full effect, you need to be stacking condition damage…which scales linearly, and can be cleansed. Do you not have to sacrifice one of crit, power or crit damage in order to stack that condition damage? How, upon doing that, are you still doing comparable physical damage to someone running a more conventional Berserker setup?

This is why I want to see actual math. I want to see what builds are being used for results, and where the damage is coming from. I want to see the cooldown and channel times on attacks. I want to know what kind of difference armor makes (because I most certainly DO kill people in WvWvW) . I want to see more FACTS and NUMBERS, and less anecdotal experiences.

And that is the mistake people in this thread are making. The math shows (link below) that shortbow out damages a longbow when stacking POWER AND CRIT which is normally what you would do for the longbow. I don’t run a condition based spec.. I stack power, crit, toughness, vitality and the shortbow puts out more damage than the longbow because of the auto attack. When the experienced rangers here are saying the shortbow out damages the longbow we are talking about when you are in a longbow SPEC of high power and precision/crit. The bleeds from the shortbow are icing on the cake! This was due to them nerfing the damage of the longbow and buffing the auto attack speed of the shortbow right before launch.

Link to the math threads -

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/57386-longbow-vs-shortbow-dps-speed-etc/

http://mmo-mechanics.com/forums/topic/1002-shortbow-vs-longbow/

Also JROH did an awesome job of summarizing the viable specs in this thread – http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/67191-so-it-appears-that-our-strongest-builds/

Skolvikings.5132:

I’m honestly scared to death of a shortbow nerf.

If this happens it will pretty much shelve my ranger. Rangers are tough in 1v1 situations and I never feel under powered going into a fight with any other class and that is probably our only saving grace. The problem is the class is becoming pretty boring. We only have 3-4 viable specs and really most of our weapons are broke. LB and GS got nerfed into the ground at the end of beta’s which pretty much leaves shortbow and axe/horn or sword/horn (my preferred since it provides much more evasion in WvW.. take the #1 off auto attack and it is a glorious weapon combo). Only time I use longbow is when I’m assaulting or defending in WvW or farming in Orr… otherwise it sits in my bag.

emoleas.4309:

Monday continued

Sometime around this point I took a break, but had comms still running and was sitting idle in QL in case HoD forces began another siege. However, this did not happen. Instead, HoD forces turned their sights on Stonemist Castle. I’m not quite sure on the time scale, but HoD was inside Stonemist Castle in not much time and working on the inner gate. SBI forces took this opportunity to begin their own siege on Stonemist Castle, getting the southern wall knocked down while HoD was already working on the inner gate.

HoD quickly got inside the lord room and began the fight. SBI forces followed shortly after for a 3-way lag fest. There were several moments where SBI or HoD had the circle 50%+ capped but the castle lord got revived. During this time, it was noticed that stonemist supply was going back up. A yak killing force was quickly dispatched to resolve the issue.

Within 20 minutes of yak killing forces being dispatched; SBI noticed an odd occurence: our waypoint was disabled, in addition to ETs waypoint being disabled. Once we saw this we knew immediately what was going on: small HoD forces had been dispatched to contest the waypoint to buy themselves more time. SBI forces quickly reacted and dispatched their own waypoint contesters.

From here, it was a battle who can contest the waypoint using the fewest forces. I believe SBI forces won this fight, as it is extremely easy to disable Lowlands waypoint compared to the other two keeps’ waypoints. This continued for about 30-45 minutes, causing forces from all three servers to run back to Stonemist from the original waypoint.

It would appear that HoD was the first to get fed up with losing their keep waypoint as they seemed to be the first to pull out of stonemist. They also seemed to be pretty ticked off at Stonemist for efficiently disabling their waypoint.

Shortly after retreating from Stonemist, reports came in early of a massive HoD force moving through Hylek camp and SBI forces quickly rallied the troops inside. The wall reached ~70% before HoD forces were forced to retreat.

However, it was not over yet. Within 20 minute HoD forces returned and set up several offensive ballista with one goal in mind: to take out SBI defensive siege gear in QL. HoD ballista were successfully in taking down 2 SBI catapults, but SBI were quick to drop 3 new catapults and smash the invading forces siege gear. The siege was repelled.

It was at this point, I decided to call it a night. I lingered for the next 30 minutes to see what was going on, however no definitive action from any side was taking place. Just a small back and forth of supply camps. This concludes my recollection of the events that took place Monday.

I apologize for the length of this one. But this was quite a fun day of supply disruption despite our forces not taking full advantage what we had laid out in front of us.

Defending SM during this 3-way lag fest was some of the most fun I’ve had in WvW yet. I have no idea how we kept SM during that.. my repair bill was insane running back and forth and the idea to start blocking the waypoints was a brillant play. Good fighting of the invisible forces of SM!

Ljiona.9142:

Maybe I am in the minority, but I was surprised how helpful Ruin has been in WvW considering what I have read on these forums. I don’t see why they are so hated.

I used to be one of the so called loser PUGs that everyone seems to think RUIN hates so much. The difference? When they announced their teamspeak information in the battlegrounds I joined up to hear what was going on and the strategy. Turns out it is a lot easier to talk than type in map chat when you are in the middle of a huge battle.. imagine that. I hung around for a week or so being the leader of a small guild of RL friends that hadn’t leveled as fast as me and realized that they had their kitten together when it came to WvW. I joined up (thank god for multi guild!!) and haven’t thought it was a mistake yet. Sure I can’t say I get my kicks out of spawn camping servers, but after all the hate delivered on reddit and the forums I was happy to partake in the mass slaughter at the gates.

Reminds me of a good saying.. “Try not to awake the sleeping bear.. your gonna become a bloody pulp”

The reason people knock RUIN is because they don’t kiss anybody’skitten . they kick you in the mouth, they kick you when your down, they will even kick your puppy dog, all because they play to win. GW2 is a game to have fun in.. WvW is a game to win period. Contrary to all the crap posted here they do it without exploits or cheating too. It isn’t a win at any cost mentality.

And…

1. is it a game.. don’t take it so personal..
2. it is a war and you win wars by doing more than fighting and zerging at people.
3. don’t be fail.. listen and learn.. only way to get better at anything

Learned a ton in the first HOD matchup.. can’t wait for this one.. should be another epic war.

100% to crit when in stealth and attacking doesn’t break stealth. Trust me it is one of the best pets around for burst dmg.