Guild Wars 2

Hi, I’m pretty knowledgeable about WvW in general, but I haven’t really played my ranger there that much yet, but I will when the patch makes things a bit more viable.

Okay so first off, what server or tier are you on? Fights in WvW will be a lot easier if you’re not in T1 or T2.

Oh I see you want to roam… which is not my specialty since roaming is rather boring to me but I understand the appeal. For roaming on ranger I’d suggest a condition tank build with high regen potential, such as the roaming regen builds on youtube, that use Axe/dagger and sword/torch and have tons of settler/apothecary gear to basically never die. That does not use longbow though, but you could do a glassier GS/LB roaming build, which is less ideal than the condition tank build but will be more viable when the next patch hits.

For large group play in WvW/GvGs (although you really can’t bring a ranger to GvG, but more casual WvW is fine), which I mainly do on necromancer, I’d say that the most important thing about rangers that they offer is entangle, and it will be much better when the patch hits and you’ll be able to use it multiple times per fight, but be sure to always time it with your driver (person in charge) so that you immobolize either right as a bomb happens or right after guardian binding blade pulls go down. Other classes don’t have as strong of an AoE immobolize. The next thing you’ll want to do is incorporate your healing spring in your groups ele water rotation. It’ll be a tad limited because its not ground targetted, but it lasts long (more blasts!) and cleanses conditions, which is really helpful to your group. My guild as a joke runs circle of life on our ranger build, although we only have a few rangers that we sometimes run.

For weapons in large group play when the patch hits, I’d honestly run axe/x and GS (or sword/axe). The longbow has the problem of putting you away from your group, which is really bad, because enemy groups have gank squads of thieves, D/D eles, eviscerate warriors and shatter mesmers that will isolate and burst you down if you’re too far from your group, and you’ll also be unable to share recovery boons or use entangle from too far away. If you want to pug, I guess it works, but for organized groups, I wouldn’t suggest going more than 2 dodges away from your driver for too long, since if they peel back or move away, you can easily be left in the dust.

Anyway I think Axe, with warhorn or another axe will be the ideal ranged set for group fights in WvW since you cleave so much and build so much might automatically, and splitblade can help tag and winter’s bite can help lock down a target thats out of position by preventing them from getting back in position. GS, provides great melee cleave, defense, and mobility which is very useful as long as you can predict and dodge bombs and hammer trains, but you’d need to gear reasonably tanky. Sword/Axe is a bit better for locking down targets with path of scars’ pull and the high powered auto, but thats only ideal if you run a ranger as gank, which is completely suboptimal to thieves, shatter mesmers, evsicerate wars, and D/D eles.

Anyway, keep in mind that these are my thoughts on Rangers in WvW, and I don’t have the experience to back it up (yet).

As for WvW tips, I’d just say: helping your team is more important than helping yourself (for fights not sieging/PPT), positioning will determine whether you live or die, and most importantly, do not be a rallybot for another group. Ever.

Still karma armor is essentially worthless to me as it cannot be salvaged…

The only case I would ever use it would be if melandru light had a stat combo I could actually use on my necro in WvW (for the free runes) and if its still magi’s, then GG anet.

Eliesume.1687:

sirrealist.1360:

When is this patch supposed to drop?

Anytime from next week to October. ANET decided to randomly YOLO on which class gets discussed each time.

It will most likely happen in September. As for the mesmer preview of the patch notes, it could be next friday or either of the fridays on two week intervals after that.

And honestly though, it’ll take a miracle of a patch to make me even consider playing mesmer again. Even playing kittening Ranger of all things has become more fun for me and in spvp/pve, I feel like I actually contribute more even if my stupid pet blindly charges into AoE.

Paz Shadow.9715:

The new Meta for rangers in zergs is commander hunting, serious. KA a JQ guild does it along with a few others and I have had the pleasure of being a part of the experience at times. It is deadly. A group of five rangers running with a zerg, they target the commander and run lb with piercing arrows and eagle eye, and all single target dps the opposing commander. Forces the commander to blow all his skills and play defensively or get downed. It is extremely successful in large zerg warfare since it is five people constantly single targeting the commander. Plus as a ranger you can do it from 1500 range where you are safe from harm.

This is a good idea although necros arguably do it better simply because of corrupt boon and high damage life blasts.

I normally play necro, but I plan on bringing ranger sometimes when this patch hits. Probably Axe/Axe for mid range AoE and might, and then either GS for psuedo-melee or longbow for sniping. My guild’s ranger build is a bit of a joke atm though, its sword/axe longbow and emphasizes the trait circle of life… because if you play your ranger right with this trait in WvW, you should be able to give way more water fields than an ele!

Also for this thread in general, to all the people saying that longbow’s range makes them “safe”, well clearly you don’t run on T2 where gank squads are a thing. If theives, DD eles, shatter mesmers, and eviscerate wars see anyone too far away from their group, and using the longbow will make you too far away, they can and will focus you, and you’ll be too far away from your groups heals/recovery, boons (stability especially) and banners as you’ll probably need one if you’re that out of position. Axe may be lower damage, but its essentially ranged cleave. It will allow you to stay with your group better and do gradual damage to enemies as well as hybrid condi damage. The offhand is debatable, but axe makes the most sense for path of scars.

I am honestly disgusted and enraged by Anet’s approach to this bullkitten amber reward system.

Now when I see these weapons, I no longer see the amber fossilmancer I once wanted to be, now I only see people running around with ORANGE PIECES OF kitten.

I need a backpiece for my sylvari necromancer.

Right now I have the toxic spore skin, but since today’s release of the mysterious vine backpiece, I’ve been tempted to make that instead. However I’m not sure because it looks a tad mesmeric in color. The other option is the shadow of grenth skin, but I’m afraid it might look too human/norn appropriate for a mostly planty necromancer.

I’m also making frostfang as my next legendary so be aware of that when giving me advice.

Also if there are other backpack skins I haven’t considered yet, please suggest them to me!

And here are screenshots of my character.

I’d rather have this idea implemented with a crafting process that incorporates all of the piles of bloodstone and dragonite we have on our mules. So, like a gift of achievement given every 10K AP, and you would mystic forge that along with say 25 or 50 vision crystals and 250 of the weapon type exotic crafting components (ie orichalcum axe blades and small ancient hafts). The crafting components would rise in price but you can acquire those through the world and naturally through normal gameplay. And the finished precursor should be account bound to minimize the impact on the economy… although T6 could rise in a related fashion.

Anyway sorry to hijack your thread. Also look up the VIP box precursor method thats in the china version of this game too.

I WANT THE SAB BACK RIGHT MEOW MEOW

I totally feel you on mesmer. I made one as my first character soley because it was different from other MMOS and the clones and purple butterflies were pretty. But that class is currently a total disapointment even if it pretty!

Anyway when I used to pve on my ele, I did things very simply since I’m kazual at pve. I just did one of each weapon with force/accuracy and only ran staff, D/F S/D or S/F, with the sigils spread across them so they don’t double up.

The last MMO I played was called Allods Online. Their mage class had 3 elements to use spells from: fire, lightning, and ice/frost. I can’t remember exactly, but I think fire/lightning was a PvE spec for AoE and single target damage while Frost was used with one of the other two in PvP for its control effects. Every class in the game had 3 talent grids, and for the mage the talent grids each represented an element. The class mechanic for the mage was entropy, in which using your elemental spells built up energy in the entropy slot for that element, and you could use them for a myriad of effects when they filled. In the talent grid there were traits called frostfire or icelightning or whatnot that would double your entropy gain for those elements but completely disable the third element, both in your ability to use spells from the third element or gain entropy towards it. It seemed odd to me at the time, but that was how you optimized your builds in that game.

I don’t think I’d like to see a similar system in GW2. I like being rewarded (in pvp anayway) for being relatively well rounded, but thats not to say that high risk/high reward doesn’t have its place.

I disagree with the OP saying that some legendaries aren’t worth it. I made howler, one of the cheaper and lesser legendaries for my necro, and I absolutely LOVE it. Its gotten me hooked on making expensive awseome skins to show off so I’m going to make frostfang next since they match so well, and so I can run around with dual frostfang on ranger when the next balance patch hits. After that I’m probably not going to make anymore legendaries for necro since I don’t like the dagger (marjory’s dagger>Incin) the staff (yumm rainbow pineapple?) or the scepter (I’ve basically stopped playing ele so I’d rather just farm for a scepter of the sunless). I might make rodgort after frostfang so I can have all the legendaries with beastly faces! Or bolt perhaps for ranger/mesmer, but only if mesmer gets less craptastic in the next patch.

Basically the things I like about GW2 are 1. WvW/GvG. 2. Making the best appearance possible and crafting legendaries. 3. Solo queue on ranger/necro, but it can be frustrating :p

I think removing firey rush’s bug would help make PvE healthier again, but eles still ahve ice bow 4, so it wouldn’t be too huge of a change.

Honestly I’d rather see mesmer/ranger/necro be given more ways to do more damage/utility in PvE so people would actually want to take them over a 2nd ele.

OP, I can honestly say that you’re being very immature and disrespectful. What you’re saying is like saying that gays don’t deserve civil rights progress because blacks (in America) have needed it for longer, or that there are more blacks than gays so gays shouldn’t complain because blacks are worse off. This is just an anology, but honestly this is what it sounds like you’re saying.

I play both mesmer and ranger. And necro. They all need buffs in different areas and I honestly feel like the developers have lagged behind in balancing or caring for them in comparison to their favored heavies and eles.

Anyway here is what I can say. Balancing mesmer and ranger is difficult because the pet component is a fundamental part of both of each class, as deathshroud is to necros. Its very easy to make these mechanics too strong in terms of balance, but at the moment the mesmer/ranger mechanics are hampered by AI and AoE, inadverdently making simpler mechanics like warrior burst or guardian virtues much stronger. A lot of mesmer mechanics are prone to bugs because of their emphasis on teleportation and AI. Rangers and mesmers are both severely underpowered for many of their roles.

In PvE I view them as fundamentally equivalent in value as to what they can provide, rangers with post might DPS buffing, and mesmers with high reflect uptimes which may not always be useful, and rangers can perform similarly when needed with axe 5. Time warp and portal are in my opinion trivial utilities and the last one is for lazy people who can’t jump or dodge fireballs or can’t survive trash runs.

In WvW, mesmer barely fits into the equation ever since the glamour spec got nerfed into the ground. Basically you veil and maybe portal, and spend the rest of the time running around in circles trying to kill eles/necros while avoiding thieves. Ranger on the other hand brings no value whatsoever to GvG teams, however its okay as a filler class and entagle bombs and extra water fields can be quite nice in more casual WvW, and the axe buffs could make them a bit better as a mid/psuedo frontline profession.

In PvP, both classes are lacking representation but are by no means terrible. Mesmer has the disadvantage of being unable to hold points reliably at all, and is even more netuered by AoE than ranger. Mesmers have to go full glass to be useful, and once you learn to fight a mesmer on any other power or burst based class, taking mesmers out 1v1 is trivially easy. Rangers in my opinion have far more viable tanky and condition builds than mesmers and can actually hold a point very well (I run settlers usually). The other day I solo Queed a team on skyhammer that had 3 mesmers on my condi tank spirit ranger. The only way all three of these mesmers together were able to kill me was by either Moaing me and immobolizing me in the cannon blast, or by pulling me to the glass wholes with focus 4. The rest of the time I just outregened them while they put up extremely high daze/stun pressure. I don’t think they were running boon removal so thats why probably, usually they’re a bit better against me for removing boons…

Anyway heres a final observation. On ranger, I feel like the ranger himself functions rather well, but the pet doesn’t and some of the traitlines don’t. On mesmer I feel like the mesmer himself doesn’t function rather well due to all the bugs and nerfs, and that the only way I get any form of damage, defense, or control is through illusions that die instantaneously. On Ranger, I at least feel like the ranger himself is strong, and self-reliant, and overall works like its supposed to. On mesmer, I just get frustrated and go play my necro or my ranger instead. If the ranger had no pet and the DPS to compensate, I’d have mained it long ago in a heartbeat. I like ranger because I like the playstyle of the ranger himself. I liked mesmer because I liked the design and aesthetics of the class, and while the mechanics seemed cool and unique, they honestly failed to impress me after playing other professions that are just as “bad” in terms of buffs that they need.

I’m not that knowledgable about soloing, and only moderately knowledgable about rangers, but I bet greatsword over axe/horn would be better in terms of damage/defense thanks to its blocks and evades, unless you really wanted axe to kite.

pandaexpress.1458:

Hi,

There isn’t a simple answer. A warrior can do a lot of melee damage. To fight melee, you must be close. On ranged weapons, warriors are weaker. Warriors have a lot of skills, scale well, and have very good armor. Many dungeon or fractal groups, where good equipment drops occur, want only berserker (zerker) geared warriors (or maybe sometimes a single guardian). As such, if you wish high level dungeons or fractals, a warrior will help. A group of well geared warriors, doing melee, can liquefy most bosses in dungeons or fractals. This makes running them faster and easier.

Necromancers are mostly ranged, and are very survivable, but are not great for damage. Necromancer pets which work in PvE, do not work as well in PvP or in Dungeons or Fractals (for the most part). Necromancers really need to know how to use their shadow form, and must trait their shadow form to last longer. I ckittene my Necromancer pets in low level fractals or dungeons, but at higher levels, pets are just about useless.

I have a level 80 of each class, and a warrior is best in groups, particularly with other warriors, however my Necromancer can survive stuff a warrior can’t.

Case in point, running a fractal last night, our warrior died in the Aether blade fractal via shock, as a Necromancer, going into shadow form, I just walked through it, ignoring the puzzle entirely. After I did it, on second though, I could have cast an pet wurm, and just teleported across the whole thing.

If you want to do world exploration, any class will do, probably a Necromancer is a bit easier than most, but any class can do it. I have explored all of Tyria, and have Been there Done That. The first class to run it on was my Necromancer, but it could have been as easily run on any other class.

Play what you like. The damage of a zerking warrior is amazing, but it’s also about enjoying your play. If you don’t enjoy it, try something else. When I feel burned out, my Mesmer is often just fun to play, though it isn’t as strong as a warrior or as survivable as a Necromancer.

1. Its called Death Shroud. Not"shadow form"
2. Traiting to make Death Shroud last longer is only really helpful for WvW, and maybe some pug builds, but even then its not even mandatory. In fact the top necro DPS build that does about as much single target damage as a banner warrior doesn’t even use death shroud other than to flash for tainted shackles and fury. And minions are bad for PvE unless for some instances when soloing it seems or to use the golem’s charge into a wall much like an ele would FGS.
3. While we do have a lot of ranged weapons, our one melee choice is our go to PvE weapon, as its very fast with very high single target damage. Axe is great in WvW for spamming damage from a short range away though.

Other than that your analysis is fine. Honestly OP, play the class you want and then pick the best builds/gear for each situation, which in PvE is always glass cannon. Also necro is god tier in WvW.

So lately I’ve been thinking about undergoing the challenge of soloing p2/3 or arah despite being a semi-awful pug there, because normal PvE has become pretty tiring to me to be honest. And I’m a cheapskate at heart who thinks people should be rewarded for doing more difficult things.., so if I do start soloing arah I’d like to sell the paths at the end so I can make a quite reasonable income from that, without taking too much time away from WvW, which is what I primarily do for “fun”.

Anyway my big question is, how common is path selling trolling? Will people commonly join your party and try to kick you and make all your hard work disappear? Also how long does it take to get a full party to sell? And this is a more noobish question, but when exactly in the run do you open things up for selling? Is there a little corner where you can hide and do it? Any responses would be very helpful, so I can judge whether or not this would be a rewarding use of my time or not, but it does seem like it would be fun regardless.

Hi dungeon peoples, I’m the OP!

I’ve decided to not regularly pug fractals again after trying on my mesmer 2 days ago. I was in a less than perfect group for a level 29, and while we completed it, it took two hours, and it was honestly a painful, gut wrenching experience. Maybe it would’ve gone better on my necro, that I’m much more comfortable with. On the plus side I got the 5th Rurik’s Royal Signet Ring (uninfused) that I’ve gotten in the history of playing this game!

Maybe I’ll give faptals another shot in the future, but I’m too busy with WvW/GvG and doing more rewarding PvE to really worry about them right now. But thanks for all the advice!

Fluffball.8307:

Yes you can, but lupi is an exercise in frustration. Warriors have it so much easier with all their evades (ironically) and blocks.

There is a really old video on youtube of some ranger soloing lupi with mainhand axe. It looks a lot easier than melee, but it takes him like half an hour or something ridiculous.

The build is basically normal zerk, but for lupi you swap to offhand training on the axe, and there are a few other tweaks for content like that. But basically, yes, frost spirit and melee weapons, cat when you can, drake when you can’t.

It’s mostly not too bad, but lupi is infuriating.

Edit: Condi is probably totally doable as well.

Okay thanks! And are we able to heal through the orb in P3? And yeah the axe reflects would seem to be really nice for lupi. I’m thinking about which I class I want to solo with and I dont have a warrior or guardian so I’d rather work with what I have lol.

I recommend playing solo queue. The rewards are much better and its not a hot sweaty zergfest. Sometimes. And occasionally you’ll get a team that cares about tactics.

Oh and the team with more warriors/guardians/thieves seems to win from my observations.

I want to start getting into soloing and selling arah paths 2/3, and I’m trying to decide what classes to do it on which aren’t warriors or eles.

So how does ranger fare? Do rangers have anyway to solo the orb? (like with troll unugent/regen maybe?) Is GS swoop great for running past the instagib trash mobs? Is the standard zerk frost spotter build I deal for soloing or is condition workable?

Cufufalating.8479:

Proc’ing Nature’s Voice trait.

Really shouts should be next on ANets “to fix” list… one is just used to proc a trait, one is used for it’s secondary effect not its primary effect, one is about to be dwarfed by SoS and one is so bad I don’t think most people even know it exists.

Search and rescue… go lassie go!

Be a ranger. Not an archer.

ASP.8093:

nearlight.3064:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrpfPrWMRWo

I just randomly saw this linked in another thread. Sure it uses focus instead of pistol, but I’m not sure if having pistol would make it any stronger, but I’m not really sure.

I can’t say I like the build, but on top of that I think the mesmer is playing way too cautiously here. For example, they’re throwing away a ton of damage output by overkiting and not letting Sword #4 and Scepter #2 do their work.

Also, I do think Pistol would help here since it has a much, much easier time tracking moving targets. Warden is pretty much trash outside of PvE.

Yeah that makes sense. I havent tried a phantasm build outside of PvE before but I might try it just to see how it does. And yeah I just saw that link in a thread about profession balance where a ranger is whining about how much mesmers whine lol.

Fay.2357:

Jackums.3496:

Fay.2357:

Jackums.3496:

blackbolt.8160:

the way i see it, deceptive is better for the clone death of condi PU. this one uses direct damage

Don’t let me discourage you, play what you want, but to be forward there is no Mesmer spec without DE that’s going to be effective in PvP modes against competent players.

So that’s just blatantly false. Phantasm builds work just fine without DE. In fact, taking DE in a phantasm build is generally counterproductive due to destruction of phantasms.

Not only are phantasm builds simply mediocre right now in PvP modes, but no competent player of equal skill is going to lose to one without Deceptive Evasion. You’ll have absolutely no defense outside of a stealth skill or two. Even power PU phantasm specs without DE aren’t going to be efficient in killing a player with a good build.

Please spec (any build you want) without DE, then go into WvW and duel any other profession with a decent build and good player behind it, and record your win.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Overpowered-PvP-Phantasm-Build/page/7#post4162337

Have fun, I called it overpowered for a reason.

I just randomly saw this linked in another thread. Sure it uses focus instead of pistol, but I’m not sure if having pistol would make it any stronger, but I’m not really sure.

The sword/focus set on memser, once their bread and butter damage and utility weaponset is now a shadow of its former self and is the most nerfed weaponset in the game.

Hey everyone, so I’m interested in getting back into daily or semi daily fractal runs after quitting them for the past month and half so that I could grind the normal dungeons for my legendary, but I’m now interested in running fractals again once more for a number of reasons:
1. free 20 slots bags for all my alts
2. Need a zerker backpiece (been using ascended cavalier back all this time :o)
3. More fractal skins! Getting the fractal GS in a level 25 was awesome.
4. Ascended chests. I’m honestly too cheap to spend the gold to level my crafting disciplines just to make a couple of also expensive weapons. I’d honestly rather delete all my dragonite and bloodstone and just do fractals and hope I get enough drops, as I plan on making another legendary or two for my other characters as time goes by.

Anyway, I have to pick a class to use for fractals. My official main is necro which I use mainly in WvW, and since they’re sadly ineficcient in dungeons unless the next patch gives them cleave, I’d have to use one of my alts for the best results. So I’m deciding between mesmer, ele, thief, and ranger. I’m leaning towards mesmer or ranger though, since I honestly hate playing ele now, and I feel like mesmer could be better in fractals just for the reflect potential. And ranger I might use because I have howler on my necromancer, so I could use it on my ranger for extra AR.

Also I left off at like level 28 fractal level or so. And this was before the mai trin buff, so I want to be equipped to handle her.

So any advice you guys have is appreciated!

Orion.3812:

As a ranger, or a guardian, or a thief, or… wait a second, what class doesn’t have a crowd control ability that can pull/push you off an edge in Skyhammer?

Every class has a way to knock you off. Some enjoy shorter cooldowns or more total cooldowns than others. Some have more stability available than others. Both are excellent ways to take control of the Skyhammer cannon, which is appropriately powerful and should not be nerfed in damage in any way, considering a healing guardian can easily stand in its fire.

Controlling an enemy’s physical position instead of just their ability to position themselves is a mechanic that is not unique to Guild Wars 2, but does play a larger role in this game than many others of the same genre. Skyhammer is not the only example of this, it may just be the most well-known place to exploit such mechanics to one’s obvious advantage.

This game does not need less Skyhammer. It needs more. We need more maps that give players a way to leverage specific skills or builds in unique ways to gain an advantage. The only problem with Skyhammer is that the right hit from any relevant point on the map can send you off the edge. Even B isn’t completely safe from instant death, but I think if someone causes you to fall from B to your death they deserve the credit.

Without Skyhammer, what is sPvP? Boring. Sure it’s fun when you first start playing it, and sometimes you get in a good fight but in the end the objective is exactly the same in every single sPvP map in this game: territories. There are mechanics that help you score points faster. There are mechanics that make it easier to hold territories. But ultimately, sPvP is territories.

Where is capture the flag? Hot potato? What about soccer, so we ckittene all those knockback moves on something that doesn’t whine in map chat every time it gets hit by them?

And most of all, where is death match? I don’t mean kill-as-many-as-you-can-for-points, I mean something meaningful where you pit two teams against each other and the last team with at least one member still alive wins.

I mean its a good idea in theory, but right now it just lends itself to classes with ridiculous AI camping the cannon, and requiring 2-3 people to take out the person on the cannon when an MM necro or Turret engi decides to sit there. The game shouldn’t be balanced around 1v1, but as we know, those builds are too strong in 1v1 so they can hold those structures and they divert considerable team resources to kill the AI spam class while the other 4 people on its team are free to cap everything or help the AI spam class…

Knocking people off the map is fine and all, but having a person OP in 1v1 situations holding it is a significant problem.

And not all of us play cleric guardians. Try playing anything either glass or with middling mobility and see how you feel about the cannon. The cannon is a problem because it allows one person to contribute MASSIVELY in team fights without the time delay between rotating points, and becuase AI builds can hold the cannon so well, that is obviously imbalanced. If glass eles sat on the cannon, that would be fine, but instead things that are too strong 1v1 take it and basically win the match for their whole team.

I typically just run consume conditions and staff #4 to deal with conditions, and I typically never have any issue for it. Fetid consumption would be a waste honestly even in a pure minion build. We have so much more health to outlast conditions too, so having a strong cleanse/transfer every 12 seconds or so is enough for sure. For pve its best to go with a mainhand dagger and max offensive gear, and I’m pretty sure you can roam in WvW with a minion build if you want, but I think condition builds are technically better for that overall. If you try to do zerg activities though the minions will die before they can do anything, so wells are preferred there.

bigmonto.4215:

Zacchary.6183:

There is a difference between “effective” and “forgiving”. “Forgiving” builds are builds that allow you to make mistakes while still being “effective”. Every thief build is more or less “effective” but the class as a whole is unforgiving because:

1.) The thief profession has arguably the worst condition removal, stun breaks and healing (unless you are a kitten with SoM). The profession doesn’t have very much cushioning when they take a hit, unlike warrior that can dance around banners in zerker armor and heal conditions when they slap F1. Onto #2…

2.) Since a thief’s damage mitigation is complete crap, it forces the profession to concentrate more on avoidance. For example blinds, dropping target and visuals via stealth and by timing evasion whereas the warrior can just scream his head off and get back health or wtfbbq their enemy and remove conditions. Thief’s damage avoidance can only last so long and do so much because #3…

3.) Thieves have a resource pool that allows everything aside from the auto attack to be usable. Most of the on-demand damage avoidance is tied to these skills and the rest are on moderate cooldowns. Not only that, the thief can’t just switch to the other weaponset and keep going when their initiative dries out because guess what… those skills use initiative aswell. No initiative = no on-demand avoidance = meat popcicle. Is a warrior screwed when he runs out of adrenaline? No, and even then they can get it back before the burst goes off cooldown.

Do you even play the Thief? Here is the stats on my Thief

3k armor
18k health
1.8k conditional damage

4 sec stealth, 1 condition cleanse going into stealth, 1 more 3 sec later
323 per sec healing in stealth (this is in addition to the healing skill, and shadow refuge)

Can go into stealth every 4 sec, which means I can hide in stealth forever, and can cleanse 2 conditions per stealth.

Can do a burst of 5k bleed from range every 4 sec in additon to 1 to 2k torment (spammable) and 1.3k confusion.

Yeah you can say conditional bunker is OPed. This build can cleanse condition better than LB warrior. It gets almost as much armor, and can disengage at will. I cannot die 1v1, even in 1v5 I can always get away. You think this build is not “Forgiving”? You think warrior is more “Forgiving” than this build?

Easy + OP build is everywhere.

But seriously this is about Eviscerate and the OP is playing a mesmer. Why are you thief main come here to complain? Last I check there are just as many if not more threads about thief being OPed. And guess what you guys get to choose the fight, and there is ZERO risk for you to engage, after all you can always disengage. This is what I call truly “forgiving”.

Maybe coni-troll thief is more forgiving, but lets not forget effectiveness. Condition thief can’t hold a point in pvp, and is literally only useful in WvW roaming, which isn’t really a legitimate game mode (just a relatively trivial subset of one), more like something to do for fun and to alleviate boredom. Wouldn’t be kind of absurd if balance was based on roaming potential?

I run PU power sometimes in WvW (15-20 people) and it works wonders! I use GS and sword/torch myself. You could use pistol if you wanted use phantasms more offensively, but I discourage that in WvW because necro well bomb says hi.

Basically on power PU, your role is to stay alive, veil when needed, and focus targets that aren’t in the middle of a blob. I’ve found that torch helps immensely with this because enemy gank squads are a thing, and cycling the 3 stealths+blink to get away from them is all you need to stay alive. Focus would also be good in theory, but stability and its overall bugginess and a kitten y phantasm kill it for me unless you can take the reflect traits, which I can’t the way I’ve been running PU, but thats possible I guess. I also run centaur runes for a but of extra swiftness in fights when I can’t depend on getting said swiftness from my group, so I didn’t see much of a reason to use focus, unless it gets reworked or buffed considerably in the future.

As power PU I do shatter occasionally to help burst things down, but obviously its not as strong or as often as an actual shatter spec could do, but I do gain a ton of survivability.

In organized WvW, the GWEN classes are indeed the best, but thieves and mesmers are also viable too, albeit in smaller numbers. You won’t get as much loot but mesmers provide veil tactical support and can help the thieves with gank, which is basically protecting your squishies while trying to kill the enemies squishies.

You ckittene the ingame LFG feature if you want to look for people to hang out and level up with. Just go to the LFG tab in the contacts menu (Y is the button you press) and advertise what you want in open world content and you might be able to find people to play around with.

I recommend mostly zerker and then anywhere from 1.1-1.4 k toughness from trinkets, or putting 1 or 2 points in death magic or possibly from melandru runes (lifesaver rines). You shouldn’t really need a stunbreak if you’re in a good group, because unless you react very quickly the damage of the stun has been done, so mealndru, s duration would be more helpful imo. The top fighting guilds typically run triple wells on their necros and give them stability enough when it counts. Foot in the grave is very nice as well especially when you have very low FPS or lag.

Obviously it’s normal. Do you think a fossilized insect could make locust sounds?

Brother Grimm.5176:

I feel for those that are trying (too hard, IMO) to obtain these. If you seriously have kept a count of the # of chests, you might want to re-evaluate WHY you are playing the game to begin with…..not trying to be mean, just saying.

I have no idea how many I have opened and I have one bug in my bank (and I think I may have another on an Alt somewhere). The skins don’t interest me, so like others here, I wish I could get them (in some way) to another player.

Exactly! I agree with this completly, and thats why I’ve gotten so happier now that I’ve GIVEN UP!! Let it go, let it gooooooooooo

Compared to other games where an attack of similar damage roots you and has a 3+ second cast time and is easily interrupted and costs some imaginary “blue resource”, I’d say I’m more than happy with the way Life Blast works.

But I would enjoy making it feel a bit more fluid somehow, but its not a huge deal for me. Death perception builds make me feel like I’m a 1 man firing squad.

bigmonto.4215:

Zacchary.6183:

I don’t need to be on the warrior forums. In fact, I don’t want to go on the warrior forums because there is little to nothing that forum will do for me. It is filled with people crying for highly undeserved buffs (moar deeps), poor reasons to divert QQ away from the profession and players telling newbies that specific builds are the only viable ones available.

Now I am a theorycrafter by nature, I like to explore certain things instead of going off of people’s word and sticking with metas. I’ve already theorycrafted thief to hell and decided to expand on other professions. Warrior and mesmer happened to be the first candidates. Since then, I have yet to find any weakness a warrior may have that can not be easily covered through personal skill, skills or traits.

Comparing thief to the war, a thief can’t simply deal craploads of damage all of the time or simply recover mid combat or simply remove conditions or simply do whatever they feel like doing. Playing a thief is like solving a 3D puzzle and then playing Operation with it. You mess up a few times and you are dead.

With a war, its like all I really need to is gear glassy, spec tanky and then make sure I keep up the pressure. And that has quickly gotten boring. At least with a mesmer, I have some form of challenge trying to make certain builds work.

So do you actually play enough to actually verify your theorycrafting? What’s on paper != actually what happens in the game.

The biggest misconception about warriors is that it has no weakness. There has been many discussion on this topic. But in truth warrior has access to a lot of builds, and each build actually have different weakness. Take Warrior Axe for example, is a rather limited weapon in terms of utility, its only damaging attack in pvp is evis. As it is a leap, it has its issues with any movement conditions. Warrior also dependent on it for conditional removal. It is also very susceptible to blind, and blocks. Even with GS, all you really have to watch out for is evis, shield bash, and bull charge. And the latter 2 is on long cooldowns. Yes not all build can counter it, but it can be counter by many in most situations. If you actually play one is sPvP or WvW, you will realize its not a easy build to play at all.

There are builds with thief and mesmer that are just as forgiving. The immortal p/d build or the infamous PU build to name a couple. There are also warrior builds that are tricky to pull off a win. AXE + GS actually is not a noob friendly build in most game modes. Unless against someone who doesn’t even build their character for pvp then yeah I guess 1-shot-kill could be a problem. I don’t know what you would call these, pve noobs?

2 things about this:
1. the perma stealth condition theives/mesmers can hardly kill anything, much less keep a point from being decapped, unless your enemy is too stupid to entertain your jumping around and never dying. Warriors on the other hand can both do damage and keep on a capture point and dominate said capture point all with a very low skill floor.

2. While its true that different warrior builds have different weaknesses, none of you are questioning whether or not that is fair or healthy. Most other classes have one universal weakness across all viable builds, like necros are always weak to focus fire/CC and engis are always weak to conditions/CC and mesmers are always weak to AoE, and Guardians and Eles are always weak to boon stripping/stealing/corruption. They can make certain choices and sacrifices to minimize or lessen some of those weaknesses but they cannot fully remove that universal class weakness. Warriors on the other hand can remove that universal class weakness so that its different from build to build, but theres no consistent weakness across each different viable build in the class.

I hope you understand my point because I’ve made it several times on thesee warrior threads, but NO ONE ever comments on it or responds or even tries to prove me wrong. They just ignore me, because they don’t want to give in to the argument of myself and others, not even a little bit.

Okay this advice is helpful. Although on Ranger I typically use a Settler’s amulet so I wouldn’t be able to do much damage to the turrets as I have minimum power and only some condition damage… so in that case would it be better to focus the Engi himself? Like do a torch throw into bonfire serpent’s strike combo before switchng to axe/dagger to use axe 2/3 and dagger 4’s poison/evade? And I usually use nature spirit instead of rampage as one, but I could test it out instead.

Then for mesmer might be okay as long as I try to stay max range with GS and hope I could get mindwracks off before the turrets destroy the clones from GS 2 and 4.

With condi necro I might be able to destroy the turrets if I go carrion and staff auto cleave them down from max range.. but Idk if this is a viable option.. but with SoS and corrupt boon I should be able to condi burst the engi if I can land everything but I’d have to practice it.

Usually I start off a day by running 2-7 dungeons on necro or ele (necro more these days cuz I’m a lazy leech). If I have time after that I’ll do a bit of solo Q on my necro, mesmer, or ranger. Then I do tequatl at reset but I get there early to get into a guild organized run and AFK while watching youtube videos or choreographing tap dance routines until teq is up. Then I WvW with my guild right after that for 2-3 hours and then I usually log off and go to sleep.

Lately I’ve noticed a lot of newish sandboxy MMOs that seem to be Korean p2win grindfests are releasing, while others are not, but a lot of these MMOs advertise the fact that they have a “player driven economy”.

And I’m not entirely sure what that means. To me it sounds like crafting and getting players involved in crafting, which is difficult in “themepark” MMOs. So then it got me thinking about what drives GW2’s economy in comparison, and whether having a player driven economy is a good or bad thing, and whether or not GW2’s economy is driven from a source that makes the game good. While I know much about real life economics, I’m not that knowledgable about MMO economies.

So lets discuss this, what are the implications of having a player driven economy, and how does GW2’s economy match up to that ideal? And is GW2’s system a good one?

I think we can have a very interesting discussion about this topic and I look forward to learning more about these terms and classifications and understanding these systems better.

The last thing mesmers need is a nerf OP. They’re already the most nerfed class in the game across the board..

Oh wow I just stumbled across this! I can’t even bear the thought of making an engineer simply for the reason of hobo sacks, as appearance is everything in this game.

Hi. I’m not the best player in the world, but lately in solo Q, I’ve been having trouble with some engineer specs and since I don’t have anymore character slots to make one and mess around with it, I thought I’d ask you guys for ways to counter Engineers. Particularly engineers that use turrets or supply crate in 1v1. While I’m not saying that those builds/elite are imbalanced, I feel like I might not be handling my approach to them the right way.

Anyway the classes/specs I usually play these days are: glkittenter mesmer (GS and either staff or sword/torch), Condition necro (0/6/4/0/4), and regen-condition tank spirit ranger (0/2/6/6/0) with Axe/dagger and Sword/torch. I seem to have the most luck with condition necro if I don’t get CCed and I can blow my boon corruption on the engi. With mesmer I can boonstrip, but since I’m paper, I can’t stay near the turret radius for too long and kiting doesn’t work since the Engi just sits on the point/cannon/treb. On ranger, I remember fighting a turret engi 1v1 yesterday that dropped a supply crate and my health barstarted depleting quite rapidly, so I just ran away. I fought another one without supply crate that had finished off a teammate but was low on health so I downed him right away and due to the stomp interrupts, by the time I finished him most of my health was gone.

Anyway what strategies and tactics would you suggest for these classes and builds to use against turret specs and engineers in general? Since I’ve had some trouble in the past fighting bursty power rangers too but I don’t see them as often.

Anyway, thanks Engis!

I sometimes run a similar or nearly identical trait set up to you, but I run it with zerker/assassins armor/weapons and zerker, cavalier, knights trinkets.

Celestial is only really good on eles and rangers, since we scale pretty poorly with healing power and you won’t need condition damage with your wells.

Also I wouldn’t take corrosive poison cloud, the self weakness is a bad idea. You’re better off taking a stunbreak or another well for that slot.

Hi again rangers, I’ve only really dabbled with this cool class in spvp, but since I’ve gotten an ascended apothecary and settler’s chest in the past week, I feel like Anet is calling me to run a condi regen tank ranger for WvW roaming eventually, and tpvp in the short term while I increase my rank and whatnot.

So what sort of things would you guys suggest to a settler’s stat combo Ranger? I’ve been using axe/dagger sword/torch with 0/2/6/6/0 in solo queue for like 3 matches and it seems pretty legit and holding points and being difficult to kill with tons of regen protection and evades and nice condi bombs! I know most of you guys are enamored with the celestial amulet, but I feel like I’d get more mileage out of min-maxing my sustainability. Anyway I’ve been using traited for regen guard and sun/stone spirits and the nature spirit elite but I’m not sure if entangle would be better. As for runes I’ve been using dwayna runes for extra regen uptime and healing but I might swithc to undead runes simply to make my conditions stronger. I’ve been running doom/energy sigils but renewal or geomancy might be more useful I guess.

So what advice would you guys give for this playstyle and build in pvp and wvw? As for specific enemys I’ve noticed I’ve had trouble with, how do you guys deal with faceroll AI builds? Mainly turret engi that drops supply crate, and MM necro to a lesser extent, especially where holding points or the skyhammer cannon is concerned. My other issues are burstier classes, but since using healing spring over troll unuegent, I seemed to have less trouble with them, but in particular thieves are an issue because they pressure me greatly when I move from point to point and can significantly CC and delay me from getting on a capture point or to a teamfight. During the teamfights themselves, the theives are fine as they’re kind of weak to condi bombs, as are mesmers, but if a glass thief and shatter mesmer focuses me then I won’t be able to disengage or regen through all the burst I’ve noticed. I play mesmer, so actually killing them is fine when they’re not good enough to actually kite. So.. tips, and advice?

Oswaldzl.3652:

hey guys I wanna ask how do I use parasitic contagion? it heals me for 5% of my condition damage…how do I use it well

Don’t

/15 chars

Sometimes, my guild will have GvG practice nights in EBG, where we only run with 15 people that are on the GvG team or backups for it and we work on basic strategies like movement, recovery, and coordinating bombs and whatnot. During these nights, which are only once or twice per week, we fight other guilds we come across in open field and don’t actively siege other structures, unless theres a lot of guilds in SM trying to take it, we might go there to fight them. Do you view this as a problem too? And typically its on weeknights where little to no queue exists on SoS NA for EBG anyway.

And also OP, what would you suggest that guilds do when the OS is in use? Just wait until its available? And considering we’re in T2 servers where most GvGs happen, thats unrealistic as 30 people (15 each side) can’t really be available for GvGs all night waiting their “turn” at the OS.

Hey thanks a lot for the replies. I tried using staff/GS but my skill level wasn’t really great enough to phase retreat up ledges and whatnot. I also use mesmer sometimes in WvW/GvG and sword seems to be more useful than staff there just so I can try to lock down targets that get out of their zergball. So far torch seemed to be the best choice for that so I could get enemy gank groups off me, and I’m artificially poor and using centaur runes so I don’t really need the focus but I might switch to a more offensive rune set in the future. Pistol seems like it would be helpful for locking targets down better though.

gennyt.3428:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

snip
…

Is it something in the water?

I don’t mind them playing how the hell they want as long as they play for the kitten puck (war score). What is so kitten confusing about it that it has to be told and retold in every possible ways?

Aaaand this is where you’re whole argument falls flat. You keep going on about logic but are unable to see the direct contradiction in what you’re touting. You have a choice, transfer to a server where PPT is the utmost goal or deal with the fact that you can’t change what people care about. Trying to act like others are “taking up space” and deliberately obstructing your fun by doing their own thing that does not-does not, let me say it again, does not involve you and and likening it to situations where people directly set out to interfere in others’ activities(via a gvg troll guild) is self important to say the least.

Exactly. This is what I’ve been arguing for the whole time.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

nearlight.3064:

Okay this thread is getting a little out of hand. At first the OP was nice and polite, but now hes gotten quite agressive about this. Plus he ignored my last post on this thread that frames this situation quite nicely.

But whatever, people don’t like their beliefs to be argued with. Anyway OP, this thread will accomplish nothing because nothing you ever say or do will be enough to sway those like myself that are in favor of GvGs.

No kidding! The OP was nice at first… I wonder why he ’s starting to loose his cool and barely manage to answer everybody… (where is the sarcasm EMote plz)

Wow, well aren’t you such a mature individual.

And btw :/ works fine for sarcasm in my opinion.