Guild Wars 2

i’m quite sure you cannot trait sharpen images at lvl 30? or am i wrong here?

@Brutaly

thanks for the quick reply, thats awesome to know.Time to make a new guardian

sorry to nudge in on your technical discussion( i have no clue what was discussed on the few posts before this :P) but after reading your guide i feel like starting a guardian so my question is simple, does your build work for levelling? or should i go some other path then change to AH when i get to 60 ?

i just tested and yeah i guess there is a slight reach for the back animation which i didnt notice since i used shortbows but it does become obvious when using longbows

problem with having a quiver is our bow shooting animation, notice how the ranger always has one hand on the bow and 1 hand on the string? so if u had a quiver anywhere it would just be a decoration as the ranger does not draw an arrow from anywhere, they just draw the bow and an arrow will appear, kinda reminds me of the quincy from bleach :p

nice to see this thread keep going and even though i have settled on the trapper path its nice to see ppl posting other useful builds that would serve as a nice reference for others in the future so keep it up

well so far i’m lvl 18 and still purely running PvE and i like long bow mainly for 1 reason, barrage :P i dont even run around with the long bow out instead for normal mobs i just use sword/torch but when up against a veteran or champion or something i like to whip out the long bow out of combat, send my pet in, barrage and use that skill 3 that stack vulnerability then dash in with sword/torch skill 3, throw out 4,5 and toss in fire and poison traps, use sword 2 for the finisher then start 1 spam. now usually the vulnerability ends when i’m tossing out the traps but if i start close enough to the target( not stand at 1200 and start barrage) sometiimes it holds until i start 1 spam so yeah… its more of an opener weapon for me against big stuff
so i tried the various weapons and first was GS which i felt was cumbersome and attacks are slow so…. pass, then was axe which is….. lacking in alot of ways, the #3 is… i dunno.. chilled dosent really do anything since the mob is usually already standing still smacking my pet, #2 dmg is crazy low and at my lvl the bleeds are….well lets just say they are completely outdone by my burning and 1….. sometimes the bloody thing dosent bounce right, i mean if theres just 2 mobs sometimes it will bounce between them, sometimes it hit (a) then (b) then stops and worst is sometimes it hits (a) then for some reason bounces to my pet?!?!?! and stops so yeah i dun like it compared to sword and as for warhorn, it may be good for party are zerks but for solo levelling, meh :P i like torch better now, even though ppl say its great for running across maps but i’m the kind of person who stops at every resource node i see so….yeah swiftness is kinda wasted on me :P but i will not completely refute the above weapons cuz i know they are useful for different stuff but for solo leveling, sword/torch works best for me
so anyway now that i’m reaching lvl 20 and i[m wondering whats the first trait to get in skirmishing since i decided to start with that line to get the most out of the early precision boost, i’m stuck between the pet boosters and the crit boosters, any suggestions ?

ok before this escalates, everyone chill with the pvp thing, i kinda expected this to happen if pvp came into the picture so i requested to ignore pvp. i am new to ranger but i did have a guardian so i have seen rangers do well and not so well in pvp with or without pets.

so back to the topic, i have seen suggestions of torch but i guess my building to be a trapper would not really see it as the better offhand due to the availability of fire trap which i feel is the most damaging trap among the 4 so yeah torch is good but with fire trap having lower cd(i think half if traited) and that burning dosent stack intensity i guess the benefit of warhorn outweighs torch in a trapper build.

As for the mainhand…. i’m still swapping between sword and axe as the playstyles of both interest me but i admit sword is better in terms of dmg to single targets however if my bear manages to draw 2 mobs or more i feel axe starts to perform simply due to the bouncing effect, combine with a fire field due to fire trap and axe really shines so yeah… i’m still stuck :P

Firstly, thanks for all the replies, its nice to see all these constructive suggestion when i first made this topic i was afraid some…. kittens will come in and tell me the pros of all the other classes and tell me to leave ranger alone :P
So far from all the posts i see that sword is the most favoured main hand with warhorn being the more favoured off hand, my question about this is why? sword is melee and offers loads of jumping into fights but can a ranger survive that? i mean sure 2 and 3 are evades but to use the sword right u gotta be in melee range and yeah i’m kinda worried about survival. And hence a sub question is why is axe so…. not in favour?(additional info: i’m going longbow cuz i like its skills better :P)

As for builds the one that most interests me is trapper, with the traits you can toss traps like a ranged aoe which seems awesome when dealing with DEs and possibly zerks in W3 so that kinda locks in the tier 2 and 3 skirmishing traits so i’m caught between going for pets stuff(BM),bow stuff (marksmenship) or wilderness stuff to reduce cd of survival and warhorn skills (i guess i want entangle and QZ to go with 2 traps, most likely fire and spike),any advice from experienced trappers?

And finally pets, from what i see different pets suit different times of playing, so i get that normal world roaming would see any pet doing well but different pets do different things and W3 i see the sense of jaguar and birds(ravens seem the best for this since they are tiny,black and debuff) so my issue is with dungeons and i guess world bosses in pve. From posts in this topic and others i see 2 camps, the double bear group and the ranged pet group, question is why dun just mix the 2 and use 1 bear(brown i guess) and 1 ranged( spider seems to be better)?

oh and a final technical question, the bm line adds +1 to each of pet attribute per trait point right? so if u max bm you only add 30 to all your pet’s attribute? seems kinda…. weak since wiki says pets get 1-2k stats( with bear having 4k in vit) at lvl 80

So i’ve been class hopping recently after retiring my crithammer guardian and i’ve finally come around to trying a ranged class( previously i’ve tried engi, warrior and a dash of mesmer) now i have seen the issues with ranger and i’ll be honest, i dun feel it because i have never played it before so i have no feelings about the state of rangers whatsoever.
Hence i come with a completely blank neutral view on the class and i would wanna try it and i just want to know that at the state ranger is in, what are the more viable weapons and build types for someone who is gonna mainly Pve and W3( i will mostly ignore pvp).
For PvE i guess i would like to do the standard world roaming doing hearts and DEs and dungeons at the later stages
oh and if you guys could suggest suitable pets it would be awesome too

well actually it makes sense that axes are more powered up than the other 2 1h choices, axes focus completely on dmg and nothing else, they dun get bleeds like swords do and they dun get cc like maces, so if they did dmg that was on par with the other 2…. well it wont make much sense to use em would there? as for whether they are overpowered…..well you trait differently to use each type as well as play differently and i dun think it’ll be fair to use a power trait to test all 3 type as you wont play to the advantage of sword and mace but then again this is just my thoughts and i am pretty new to warriors and i’m simply commenting based on what i see from other warriors when i pvped with my guardian

sayl.6307:

Q2: Most shout warriors I would imagine to use hammers, maces, longbows and warhorns as that is where they are most likely to find their traits. However axes have great power scaling and while clerics set does not provide particularly high power it does have power so you will get more damage than you normally would in exchange for awkardness of traits.

well thats nice to know since i’m already completely not traiting or planning to equip anything that mains precision and i dun really care much about the axe traits, thanks for the quick reply

this is an awesome guide to have for new players but i got a question too. From your experience, how far off “mainstream” can a player use a weapon and still be viable? right now i’m making a warrior only lvl 15 and i love dual axe. however my goal is to make a shout heal tank( 30 tactics 30 defense 10 strength i guess) but i still wanna use dual axe, i guess the image i have is barbarian from diablo :P so yeah, am i limited to which weapon to use by the role i wanna play? (mainly for pve and WvW)

ok i dont have a ranger yet so this is pure theory but i’m seeing alot of axe/warhorn combinations but no one is using axe/torch? i would think the skill 5 fire field would make an awesome setup for axe and shortbow? or am i missing something

hmm so i guess the utility skills for a turret build should be thumper, rocket and 1 other turret depending on the situation with supply drop for elite and heal turret as heal, and i tried pistol/shield, its kinda odd to use but i think i like it so thanks Shaunz and nepocrates for suggesting a weapon that i completely did not think of :P
So turrets arent so bad after all but they do need some love from devs, anet please

shield huh…. hmm never ever thought of that one… could be interesting to try all the weapon combinations, thanks for the tips
oh and what turrets do you guys usually run with? i am sure i want thumper and rocket but i cant choose between the other 3

well i guess i’ll keep going with this turret engi then, its nice to know it might be good and i hope anet does something about em turrets, thanks for all the replies guys

edit erm i forgot to add this but is rifle the best for turret engi? cuz i rarely see other engineers with rifles

so what about the mob ai thingy, is there something that determines which turret they strike first? cuz i dun get why it went for rifle turret first. The thumper was closest to it and has already gotten a couple of hits off and the rocket turret is by far the greater threat and all 6-7 of us were smacking it the whole time so i dunno… the mob priority confuses me

so coglin, are you saying that turrets can possibly do well? and i’m not really angry with the mob blowing my turret thing, its just that the first turret to hit it was the thumper, me and the other guys, i had used that knockback skill and got myself knocked back quite a bit too and i place the rifle and rocket turret back there, so what confuses me is that the mob chose to ignore the thumper, me and everyone else and head for the rifle turret which has barely started to shoot, oh and i traited into 30% dmg reduction first so i cant get that deploy turret thingy yet

so i’ve been messing with various classes to get an idea on what i wanna do and the most recent one is the engineer. i looked through the forums and youtube and even though ppl said that turrets arent very useful due to the cd and stuff like that but i thought it cant be that bad, and i really wanted to make a turret engi and stand by them with the rifle and own stuff.
So i got my engi to lvl 20 and got the 3rd utility slot and 30% dmg reduction for turrets.
So off i went to find a champion that was low levelled ( think i went to troll champion)
and it was there and a few peeps were standing around not wanting to attack it.
i went straight to it, plunked down my thumper turret, used the rifle knockback skill to get some distance and planted the rifle and rocket turret( i did take my time to go farm skill points to get the rocket turret) and the gangbang started.
First thing that went wrong occured right at the start of the battle, the troll IGNORED my thumper, me and everyone else who was hitting it, walked over and smacked my rifle turret, it went down in 1 hit, then it went to the rocket turret and did the same thing, finally it moved back to the thumper which mananged to hold it off for a bit before dying…

so…. there is really no hope for a turret build? and what the kitten is with the AI of mobs?

dam….. banners make sense since their regen is dependant on the warrior’s hp so you dun need much gear to make it good….hmm wait i think you can reset traits right? so maybe i’ll just go with banner regen first then switch over to shout healing when i get gear for it

hmm ic guess i’ll do just that, thanks

edit lol after messing with builds in the mist i ended up with 15/10/15/15/15 to take advantage of changing attunment from air to fire then to earth( for water i also took it to 15 and traited so that by just attuning to water i heal, cleanse and grant regen to allies) is this even feasible? feels wierd that my traits dont focus on any line

i have been thinking of starting a new ele but could not think of how, this thread has had many useful info about easier starting weapons and proper playstyle to ensure survival. But 1 thing that i dun know is the traits, unlike the other classes ele trait system seems to be so much more complicated, so can someone help with a basic trait setup for a new ele that has no clue what he wanna do? mainly pve though, i dun really like pvp though i dun mind WvW

wow…. awesome, thanks time to sit up and do some heavy reading

edit well,got done reading faster than i expected and it came up to the simple conclusion that shout builds do better with healing gear(full cleric) but banners do better if you dun got the gear….hmmmmm

smacking someone in the face with a banner sounds awesome :P anyway as i said i guess i will take 1 banner in the utility( maybe defence too :P since the great justice shout gives might and fury) and trait for both banner and shout cd but the grandmaster trait will be for shout heal
so now i was looking at weapon choices and i have no clue what would suit a support warrior. i looked at hammer first but i dun really wanna use it cuz i got a crithammer guardian already :P and i dun wanna use GS either cuz…. every warrior is using it and it feels like a power weapon to me
so i’m already traited 30 into the healing line so i guess this warrior isnt meant for much direct dmg so i was thinking of 20 into precision and 20 into toughness and using sword and shield, would that be any good for pve? in WvW i’m quite sure i wont be getting much direct action so lets ignore it for now :P

hmm i guess that just about settles it, thanks for all your replies and i guess a pure banner build is not practical, as life said,there isnt much point having more than 1 banner in utility as you can only take one along once you move, the point that rip and snow made about the healing pretty much makes banner regen useless next to shout healing so i guess i will go with tactic trait line that has 20% banner cd and 20% shout cd with healing shouts. On the other hand this does free up both hands as i wont use warhorn so maybe i will try hammer since the 1h combinations dont seem to interest me and seem to do better with condi, crit and power builds
So thank you all for your posts and helping me decide on the best path my support warrior will take

ok… i wanna make a support warrior and i have seen many builds that incorporate shouts
to do this. but i noticed that with so many shout warriors i have not seen a banner warrior? based on the traits i can see that the tactics trait line just about forces you to pick either banner or shouts( grandmaster trait choice of either banners or shouts heal)

so my question is which build is more viable in pve ( DE/dungeons and normal levelling)
and if possible which is better in WvW( not really a pvp person :P)

oh and finally i also saw that picking banners would allow me to get the trait for warhorn(master trait in tactic) which would have clashed with shouts so if i do go with banners/warhorn, whats the most suitable mainhand? and is there a need for a good swap weapon?

thank you

edit: oh and can someone tell me if banner cooldown starts when the banner is placed or only after it disappears? and can you plant multiple banners?

Awesome thank you, both of you

a couple of mechanics questions about mesmer illusions
1) if i summon a 4th illusion (clone/phantom) does it replace 1 of my 3 illusions? if it does, what are the priorities in replacement ( eg. replace oldest? clones replace phantoms? etc)
1a) if it does replace, does the one that gets replaced counts as dying and triggers traits such as Debilitating Dissipation?

thanks in advance if you can answer or point me somewhere that answers these questions.

On another note, i’m thinking of making a GS/Staff mesmer but it’ll be more GS orientated ( staff more for just casting storm and armor when needed)and i’m thinking of precision/condition dmg type so i was wondering if this is viable in end game pve and if so could you suggest suitable trait lines?

thanks again