Guild Wars 2

i also just returned to the game. im on SBI and it’s a nice community with decent coverage and plenty of fights.

I have to say that engies have been rather underwhelming overall, despite the seemingly incredible buffs. strangely, I haven’t gotten killed yet by a barrage, despite the bug. ive gotten hit by it a few times, takes me down to about 8k from 26k hp. I find the engies trying to run this build just die so quickly. when this bug is fixed, I doubt we’ll see too many running this and I guess that’s what your point is.

again, youre writing so much yet saying so little, like a broken record. it’s pretty much impossible to have a discussion with you, so you can just walk away feeling better about yourself and i’ll go on my way, with my build and my decent success in a high MMR bracket. and you seem incapable of accepting something that’s different from your point of view which is a shame. i want to stop derailing this thread, and you may have the last word. peace

^ it works more often than not

blitzkrieg.2451:

but you will fail 90% of the time against top tier players .

i haven’t been, and i wont. ive been brawling with all the esport kiddies (me in soloq) since the patch launched, and ive easily been winning over 60% of my games using a valk/survival/BW lb/gs build. ive also crushed every single ranger ive come across including some well-known names, most of them on outdated power builds. in these games, as you supposedly know, it’s not really possible to get carried.

im pretty sure I know who im playing against, i dont need you to tell me. im not coming from fantasy, but application. I honestly don’t care what you believe or don’t believe. im trying to help new players out, not convince you. you think youre being a realist, but tbh youre sounding more like a 1) bad, or a 2) troll (you type a lot of empty words), or 3) just extremely jaded and frustrated with the profession in which case you need to take a break

maul is easily landed:
1) from stealth
2) with quickness
3) on a CC’d target
4) on an enemy with no CD’s left

it’s a repeatable combo, Remorseless is up all the time. much of the success of the combo is attributable to 1) taunt being up often and 2) QZ, which is now a solid utility. it’s also easy to juke bad and good players by holstering. i wouldn’t say this was an effective combo at all, prior to the patch because QZ wasn’t really a viable utility, we didn’t have taunt, and we didn’t have Remorseless for the spike.

sinject.4607:

ranger:
taunt can’t be evaded, invuln’d, blocked, or otherwise avoided. like i mentioned with blinding dissipation, nothing should be allowed to go through evades or invulns, taunting through blocks is fine though.

taunt has counterplay, it’s called paying attention to the ranger’s swap timer, what pet is out, and having a stun break.

I didn’t realize taunt went through invulns. and it also shouldn’t go through evades. but due to the prevalence of blocks, it should go through blocks.

Klonko.8341:

We havent got any power spike in this patch. Every other class got a power spike. I guess we doing really bad. Sure we got improved support but we lost our title of dps in pve, spvp and wvw. So i guess its a 5/10 because of some nice addition (taunt).

QZ + taunt + bird f2 (3-4k) + hilt bash + remorseless maul (6k) + rapid fire (6k) + random autoattack from you and bird (3k) – this is all an easily repeated combo that pops people for almost 20k in under 3 seconds. um, spike-wise, u can do bird taunt + swoop + maul for about 12k on light armor, followed up by the LB combo. you can chain-CC glass specs and instadown if they don’t have blink/stun breaker, which is often because ure taunting every 15s. ive occasionally even won against average cele eles, but u cant make a mistake and get hit by their fire combo. you just need to be playin the right build. remember, u have 3 hard CC’s so if you chain them well with quickness, it’s over for just about anyone.

I haven’t found mesmers too bad on my ranger. skilled ones can pop people for a ton, but theyre killed easily if stun-locked. it’s truly a lot easier now with taunt + hilt bash combo. u don’t play passively or defensively against these guys, u gotta go at them 100%, time your blocks and stun breakers well.

Durzlla.6295:

Hell, rolling it into Axe Mastery would actually make the trait good enough to warrant it being a GM.

no it wouldn’t. virtually no iteration of honed axes would make it more useful than BW.

if they made whirling defense a 2s channel and evade castable while moving, axes would be much more appealing. and then maybe honed axes would be interesting.

the range nerf that hurts us the most is probably bonfire’s radius reduction.

LB got buffed. whats the problem here exactly? LB/GS is our only viable power option.

we pretty much need to have a condi cleanse saved, otherwise RIP.

Ambrecombe.4398:

I personnaly use Runes of Altruism. I can refresh fury every 16sec when I use my shout to heal myself and my pet.

the only problem here is the healing power would be a bit of a wasted stat. it’s a really nice rune though.

nerfing BW in this way would be a bad move on their part. we need this because there are too many blocks in the game. but it being evade-able isn’t a problem really. running my build I haven’t felt like a liability YET, even against coordinated premades, mind you not full premades. ive survived thief + Mesmer spikes using a stunbreak and taunt. im sure you guys can figure it out.

blitzkrieg.2451:

Rangers lack a unique usefulness to top tier team play because most of what they can do can already be accomplished by other classes that provide much more to the team…

Power builds do ALRIGHT in legacy but once focused (usually by a thief) then you put their edge out of play because they need to focus on the thief now.

i haven’t lost a 1v1 to a thief since i got the hang of using beastly warden, and yes im in the top MMR bracket playing with the best of them, not that i wanna be here anyway but it’s where the matchmaker puts me every game. also BW brings a huge amount of utility for interrupting rezzes, heals, etc.

i think power rangers right now are running inefficient builds. people are still trying to figure things out, fair enough. but too many are stuck on signets, which is completely unnecessary. QZ is probably our most efficient utility right now when traited, and a must on any power ranger imo. and im still seeing too many people not slotting SotP which is another downfall.

also any ranger not traiting for BW put their team at a huge disadvantage. the taunt changes our entire flow and mechanic, as well as QZ. QZ fixes a lot of our drawbacks, such as lengthy animations, lack of true spike damage, and an on-demand gtfo.

^ that’s possible yeah, I was probably swooping. it does seem that the root HP got massively buffed. sometimes it takes 2-3 seconds to get out and often that means death.

current PVE content, record runs, etc are completely irrelevant imo, with all the sweeping changes coming in HoT. something tells me people wont be able to run full glass in Maguuma jungle.

honestly this just needs to die. why are people complaining about this? you still get a blast finisher and fury for free every 30s. are you complaining u cant abuse it any longer?

hi guys, post patch, entangle seems to be behaving very strangely. the roots tank over 6k damage (a maul for example doesn’t always kill the roots), very hard to break. condi clears also often don’t work, and im quite sure I got locked out of my abilities a few times too (without another source of CC, like taunt or fear, etc.). when I slotted entangle on my condi builds, I noticed people struggling to get out of it as well, much moreso than before the patch.

did anyone run into this as well or am I just a bad?

big entangle problems:

post patch, entangle seems to be behaving very strangely. the roots tank over 6k damage (an entire maul crti for example doesn’t always kill the roots), very hard to break. condi clears also often don’t work, and im quite sure I got locked out of my abilities a few times too (without another source of CC, like taunt or fear, etc.)

you can also use wurm runes. u get some fero from that and more HP. u should be getting fury from 2 survival utilities, SotP, Clarion Call, and GS attacks. that’s probably the best way to play Remorseless. signets are inefficient IMO

blitzkrieg.2451:

mistsim.2748:

blitzkrieg.2451:

When I talk about top tier, I’m talking about going against championship winners of the PvP tourney,

why do you talk about that which you’ve little clue about? stop throwing names around and living vicariously through others, and do some investigation.

I practice with top teams just about everyday lol… We test builds out regularly as it’s necessary to do that. I’m not throwing names out or living vicariously through anybody… I just happen to know good players and we practice together. Is there a problem with that? I don’t even know Phanta personally, but we do inner scrims all the time for practice because it’s easier to setup than finding each other in ranked arena.

kay. keep up the good work, and keep the dream alive =)

blitzkrieg.2451:

When I talk about top tier, I’m talking about going against championship winners of the PvP tourney,

why do you talk about that which you’ve little clue about? stop throwing names around, being a sheep, and living vicariously through others. do some investigation yourself. besides, that’s all a bunch of us are doing because, as you said, the ranger hasn’t been that strong top plays. so we try to figure out what works

right now, there are a handful of very broken builds that people are starting to investigate/abuse, as they should. so until some things are patched, we cant really call out what’s going to be meta and what’s not. traps, or otherwise.

some of us are making traps work for our builds, very effectively too. that being said, spike trap CD needs to be brought down and serpent trap needs to target 5 people instead of 3.

I would only like to add that not a single ranger has managed to make spirits work in spvp, not in any effective way. their redesign was a complete miss. boons pulse for inconsequential amounts, they die too quickly. actives are of average utility.

other important things:
- we have 3 shouts that aren’t useful in high tier pvp; only WHaO and SotP are slotted
- we have two offhands that are underwhelming and not used in any viable build currently: WH and OH axe; more specifically, Hunter’s Call and Whirling Defense are ineffective skills
- power builds are pigeon-holed into using LB/GS due to the burst, utility and mobility of these weapons
- various underwhelming GM’s, worst offenders being: MDG, invigorating bond, poison master, honed axes, and nature’s vengeance (due to spirits being bad); that’s a lot of GM’s not being slotted in pvp
- bonfire radius was nerfed for no reason, needs to be brought back to 240

oh nice, didn’t even see that. thanks. I tried running this with BM. it has more utility, but not tanky enough. I did have orrian runes originally, switched to afflicted because it still has some poison duration on it, while greatly buffing the bleeds.

remorseless ranger should never ever complain about not having enough sources of fury kitten (pvp)

you can just move out of ground targeted burns. they don’t need nerfs. ele’s fire combo – yes. it’s totally insane with condi stats.

dudes, relax. it’s just an adept. still useful, u still get the blast finisher. 30s is fine.

changed build to use runes of afflicted. any extra poison helps. I call it the bunker buster now because it slices through staff eles, necros and guards like hot knife through butter.

it sucks getting hit by it, but honestly you SHOULD be able to see the telegraph and dodge. this kinda build completely relies on those nades hitting, and often they just don’t. if you see the engie stealth, just evade like mad or leave the area.

someone had to do it I suppose. I wanted to take a break from the exceptionally effective power build ive been running to experiment with this. it was on my theorycrafting list before patch hit, so I wanted to cross it off:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-JV-F3;0wEky-x2ZDF-0;9F3R;1Za_;0257237148;4U-m6V;1dZH9dZH99u

cant speak on too many extreme situations because I haven’t run into them yet. I don’t like quickdraw because it’s a little situational with this weapon set (im swapping a lot, so I cant wait for certain skills to come off CD). LOYF is…actually really nice boost to the SB, and I almost always have that +10% bonus. this bonus applies to the other weapon set as well, not just SB. also, piercing poison volley is nasty! I selected my pets carefully for what I need, so I wouldn’t change them. maybe spider or wolf instead of blue moa. but the heal from the moa is quite huge

some good things:

- 15-20 stacks of poison while running around facerolling, and usually 15-17 stacks of bleeds…this is what I see when the guy is about to die; there’s no need for burns, damage is good.
- 3 evades on the sword, 2 evades on the SB with the energy sigils
- this is a SETTLER build, and I don’t think it would work well on rabid; so that healing spring is so money. it’s water field is huuuuge and by the end of it, I get healed for close to 18k total if I get a leap or two in
- perma-prot! with the 8s from moa, protective ward, and companion’s defense
- you may disagree, but I find condi removal “sufficient”; wouldn’t 1v1 a necro, but I can easily kill other condi rangers and engies – it’s nasty
- crushes bunkers, engies, and slow-hitting builds; no problems so far with warriors either, and thieves die so fast
- we don’t give a kitten about condi masking, because no matter how many cleanses your opponent has, he is always poisoned and you are always stacking poison in gratuitous amounts; if somebody were to run into the spike and poison traps per chance, trigger them and fall down, it’s pretty much a guaranteed kill with a well timed concussive shot.

some bad things:

- horrid mobility
- I haven’t gotten kitten on by a Mesmer + thief yet, but I imagine it would be bad.
- only one stun break, no stab, no invuln (ouch)
- very high skill cap
- very team-oriented, with situational 1v1 capability; shines in small fights though
- low HP pool

make of it what you want! just something to play around with. it got my attention after a few hours of testing so I will continue until I deem it viable or not. help me make it better!

p.s. also, we might wanna see some of druid’s new toys before dismissing Poison Master

p.p.s. just try the build the way I laid it out before dismissing, u might be surprised.

Rogue Potato.4723:

and people say rangers suck…

it’s been a while since people stopped saying this.

yeah I was just testing it. changed my mind, needs moar targets. make sure to report in bug forum, ranger thread

indeed, it is only 3. I imagine if it affected all 5, it would be OP.

traps are for team fights, not “dueling phanta or whoever the kitten else”. the frost trap can pretty much shut down a fight in your favour, stacking up to 9s of chill if people don’t have condi cleanses; poison trap is probably ideal for killing bunkers. the aoe is huge so if they wanna keep the cap, they have to stay on the fields.

they have to be careful when buffing traps because they can get out of hand quickly, at least in conquest. spike trap probably needs to have a 25-30s CD traited, and cast time for laying down a trap needs a slightly lower CD, maybe 0.25s. otherwise theyre fine. ranger is very survivable with rabid gear, slotting 1-2 traps. Id say the trapper’s “role” is to kill bunkers and put immense condi pressure on a point.

the other change that would bolster traps is reverting bonfire range to 240, which would then make it possible to not slot the fire trap and go utility with frost or poison.

I don’t have a problem with insane burns on non-spammy burn builds. Against a physical build, if I stand in front of a zerker warriorr not doing anything, I’ll get hit for 7k, 9k, 8k, dead. Same with dedicated burn builds – if I’m not cleansing, I’ll get hit for 7k, 7k. 7k, dead.

However what I’m NOT cool with is a spammy, hybrid, tanky build melting me with continuous reapplied 3-6 stacks of burns. Yes I’m talking about the cele ele. Engies are totally manageable because they aren’t tanky at all. And shoutbows, they can’t apply as many burns.

So with the current system we gotta make sure the burns aren’t spammable by certain specs. Doing a blanket burn nerf will make condi specs useless. So we need to go through this spec by spec. It’s super important that devs don’t kneejerk this into uselessness, as per usual.

I think it SHOULD go through blocks. if you think about it, u can’t “block” a taunt. it’s e mental thing =P

Anastasis.7258:

If they nerf the physical damage and condition damage, the fun will be gone.
So far this game is super duper fun to play. The skilled one will not get 1 shot by thief mesmer combo. Bunkers who really build into tankiness are really tanky. Zerkers who build themselves into bursty are super squishy.

Celestial amulet, aka hybrid build isn’t op anymore due to the condition changes + stats changes + boon duration changes +they will get easily shut down by a well-coordination burst combo. (Unlike pre-patch, a Celestial setup is tankier than any other builds that actually build directly for tankiness, and deals 100x more damage).

To be honest, the game is super fun now, and the patch only hits for like 3 days. Please stop complaining and let the meta roll for a while. Burning stacking might need to be looked at, and Mesmer’s Elite “Moa” should be able to moa rampages/tornado/plague/lich form these types of Elite skills to make counter play.

Right now, a well-coordination burst setup can possibility take out “real” bunkers within 30 sec. If the damage gets nerfed, I assume that the bunkers will never die. And that towards to another problem, Celestial rise again and people only will play low risk high reward builds.

Even now with the damage we have, Bunker Necromancer takes forever to kill.

Here is what I want to say, I hope devs saw this and hope they don’t do some bad decision.

I get these feeling from scrimming high-tier tPvP teams and that’s what I feel and what I can tell.

Peace.

Tarcis- Apex Prime

I mostly agree with but the burns on the cele eles are much too strong considering how tanky they are. and im sorry but Rampage needs it’s damage cut by about 15%, it’s just crazy now. grenade barrage as well. but overall I agree with your points.

so many good bunker builds kicking around now. guards, necros and staff eles are mega strong. I think ranger as well, with the right build. of course, any bunker should die to a 2v1 against very good opponents. that’s how it should be.

Wuselknusel.4082:

Why do you use flametrap? it brings only 1/3 of bonfire’s damage, both power and condi. The only benefits are a bigger AoE and slightly less cooldown.

uh more burn stacks I suppose? bonfire is so bad now with the reduced range. hopefully they revert this change.

lol really necros? Ive yet to see a condi necro. seen quite a few good bunker and power necros though.

Kamikazi.5380:

It’s 2012 launch burst meta all over again. Everyone’s kill everyone in seconds. Just wait for a while until Anet nerfs all the damage and then we’ll return to the bunker meta then the cycle will repeat until we return to the Cele meta.

well actually they didn’t do kitten to nerf d/d cele eles. theyre stronger than ever, hopefully the burn nerf will bring them in line.

problem is even though we have the 700 condi scaling thing, it doesn’t matter because all good d/d eles have perma 20-25 stacks of might and theyre still wrecking people. the kitten is that?

perfect suggestions, I have nothing to add. I especially like the trait to enhance whirling defense into something….more practical.

me? for traps, id run http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-JFk73;1Fky-t2JEF-0;9k2D;1Z_a;0256137237;4U-H7V;1fgm9fgm92T

it’s pretty strong, haven’t tested it enough as ive been too busy with my power build. but if youre going traps, I can confirm with complete certainty that you cannot run BM instead of the NM line, you simply wont have enough survivability. or maybe if ure amazing u can make it work. beastly warden is truly a game changer though

thing about the frost trap is that it’s pretty effective at shutting down an area, the chill stacks are deadly. so if u can do without the extra burning, id use that. poison trap as well would have quit a bit of utility.

the thing they need to do ASAP is increase bonfire’s range back to 240. they have to, have to, have to do it.

they need to bring back s/d, and make pistols viable for once

a handful of things are a little out of whack, but nothing too bad. youre being melodramatic.

or is it matching me well because there are a lot more people playing? I mean, my queue is still long but for the first time (ever?) I feel like im playing with people of equal or better MMR. haven’t run into a single “noob” since the patch launched. and ive had only two 5v4’s.

also any ETA on when we’ll be able to see our MMR?

I wont ever be running dungeons. im mostly thinking fractals and HoT open world content.

but what if the content is actually challenging? u’d have no defense with sinister.

is rabid ok? im thinking about putting together some rabid gear to do pve content with. also what are stats for sinister?

I was afraid of this. when I didn’t see them reveal spirits and traps before release, I got worried. I knew they wouldn’t be able to get it right without massive feedback from the ranger community. whoever tested this out internally didn’t do their jobs obviously.

on a more positive note, our two (or three) shouts and Resounding Timbre are pretty cool. despite the other 3 not getting the revamps they needed.