Guild Wars 2

Thank you thank you thank you for finally putting this into the store! You have no idea now happy this makes me…now I can down people with unicorns and then further humiliate them by murdering them with one! It whinnies and everything

Never thought I would buy a finisher but you guys just did an amazing job. Well worth the gems. Now make a pink unicorn mini already!

I’d like a white set of the current Black Feather back piece. It’s so much easier to match dyes with a lighter color than the black set (not to mention a lot of the game is running around in black dyes, looking all emo like because of the black wings). So long as they are celestial white and not a dirty dingy looking color.

What about the Legendaries that don’t give an aura/effect other than the foot prints? I’d love for my Dreamer to give me that purple aura Quip has…or something…

Thief. Shadow Refuge makes map completion a breeze, nothing like being able to ignore the vets guarding the skills points/vistas. And SB 5 makes wandering so much easier

As someone who owns Dreamer…I kitten hope so! Unicorns EVERYWHERE!!!

Sebrent.3625:

Dreamer on a Thief is the funniest thing ever … bouncing unicorns! yes, please! :-)

Even better than bouncing unicorns are unicorns raining death and bleeding from the sky. Having that unicorn shooting off for SB 2 helps a lot, you know right where that arrow is at any point during the flight so you know where to split it if you want to detonate. Unicorns really are a thief’s best friend

Been playing a thief for almost two years now, haven’t had anyone complain about me using a SB. Sure hope this won’t spread through the community…we all know how dumb ideas get passed around because of one ignorant player.

P/P thieves. Just seeing one makes my eye twitch. We get it, you want to look cool with your two pistols (and probably annoying the crap out of the group with your dual Quips) but dude, you aren’t bringing anything useful. Yeah, you can drop the Black Powder but so can a D/P thief and they can make use out of that field. A S/P can cleave into whole mobs, where the P/P thief is single targeting the whole time. Put away the main hand pistol and be useful!

Sorry to anyone who mains a P/P thief…I just think anything is better to bring into a dungeon than that set. Also I am still a little upset that pistols got a range boost instead of SB. SB is so much more useful!

This is why I made my one and only legendary Dreamer…because SB is so kitten awesome. I don’t run anything else in the second weapon slot because nothing else provides an on demand blast finisher, a way to get around maps quicker and easy bleed stacks. If he’s saying stuff like that…I doubt he ‘mains’ a thief.

I have both.

Ele is my favorite by far. It’s a profession that makes you think about you are doing, instead of mindless mashing buttons. You have a variety of fields and finishers so your skills are never boring or the same old routine. You can give your party might, fury, various auras, you can heal, you can give them ice bow/flaming greatswords (not hammers…those are for the ele!). Each fight is as different as you want to make it. It’s a very mobile profession, able to dart forward or move backwards. The skills are fun to look at too!

Ranger has group perks that are unique. You can trait for spirits and have frost spirit giving the group a damage buff and you can take spotter for the precision buff. But the pet is a liability more than an asset when in dungeons if you don’t know how to have full control over those F buttons. Healing spring is nice too for a group healing. The animations are fun to watch as well.

I do enjoy ranger, mostly when I am map completing on my own or gathering materials. However, if I had to pick one…I’d go with ele hands down.

My first 80 was a thief, mostly because I was enamored with Dreamer and wanted a character who could make the most use out of it. I main an elementalist now, I am in complete and total love with the profession.

I have all three of the light and medium armor professions up to 80 (no heavies, I find them painfully boring) but I kept going back to Elementalist.

Don’t give up! It took me 6 different tries at this profession to ‘get it’. It is frustrating but once you understand how each attunment works and what buttons to press at what time to get the most out of it, it will come naturally.

This isn’t the profession to button spam and hope for the best! You have to know what skills provide a combo field and what skills provide a finisher and use them accordingly. Don’t just spam 1-5 just because you can, and don’t attunement swap unless there is a reason to.

If you are going d/f, you should be using air attunement for your default auto attacks. Fire will provide you the fire fields for blasting into. Water gives you two blast finishers, Earth gives you a condi clear and blast finisher along with a nice invulnerability as well. Before combat you should place the Fire 4 down, swap to Water, use 3 skill to blast, swap to earth, use the 4 skill to blast, if you have Arcane wave or the heal Arcane Brilliance, blast those as well. Then move into combat with your stacks of might. It should make leveling a little easier.

Also, conjures. Lightning hammer will be your best friend while leveling. Ice Bow is equally as amazing. Use them as you level!

Just try to get it to 80 and you will see how amazing this profession is!

D/F will help with the mitigation, so giving it a try should help. I just got used to dropping, my party expects me to anyway. Most players know that an Ele can do down by being looked at funny by some bosses/mobs.

Staff can be brutal when stacking, you lack a lot of self helps other than the water heals.

I know it’s not meta, but lava tomb has helped me more than any other trait. When we are stacking and I happen to do down because of a lot of mobs…it will usually do the damage needed to help me rally.

I like the costumes when they first started releasing them. Now, they are sort of meh. I don’t even use the ones I bought…they give little to no customization (lets be real, this game is all about the dress up with skins). Only having 4 dye slots is another costume killer for me. I have all those lovely dyes and can only use 4? No thank you.

Next costume I’d by would have to be something so spectacular that it makes me literally say ‘I must have that’. Nothing since the Noble outfit has done that.

As an Ele main, I love having a thief in my fractal party. You are great at removing that pesky defiance quickly and efficiently so the other person holding my ice bow can freeze again. This alone means I’d rather have a thief over something else.

Finally got myself onto an active WvW server and am interested in running d/d roaming with my little guild group who like to go. I am usually a PvEr so all my stuff is set up for fractals and dungeons, which is why I am coming here to ask this.

Right now I have two rings and an amulet that dropped from fractals that are celestial. So I almost have a full set of trinkets, would just need to spend the guild accommodations for the last two pieces. Having said that, here’s my question:

Should I get the last two pieces of celestial and pick up knight’s armor? Or should I take the effort of making a full celestial set of exotic armor (I don’t have the patience or money to make another light ascended set just for WvW) and pick up knight’s trinkets instead?

The first option is clearly the least expensive, as I already have most of the celestial set and I can go to the SE dungeon for the tokens for the knight’s armor. However, I’d like to know if it’s the better option to go?

Depends on how important having the ‘human model’ armors are to you. Human/Norn/Sylvari female armors are amazingly gorgeous and it’s hard going from them to some of the dumpier versions that the Charr and Asura have. (Though there are some nicer looking versions, it’s harder to play dress up with them). This is why I have two Ele, one Asura and one Human.

Watching an Asura Ele is so entertaining. They just move with such fluidity through the attunement dance and have a lot of actions with said movement. Also, the Asura elemental attunement swapping phrases are a lot less annoying to me than the other races. Of course that’s just personal preference

I’d say make one, test it out in the starter area. If you don’t enjoy watching the animations right away, delete and make another.

21,000 people die each day from not having food to eat. Your point being?

Tragic yes but not something they could have foreseen months ago when adding it to the roster of things to add in game. Get over it. Real life doesn’t mix well with a game, try to keep it separate ok?

Sorry if you already know about this, but after posting it on a Thief thread, someone mentioned not knowing about it before. Figured I’d post it here on the ranger forum for anyone who didn’t know this:

I am not sure if it works with all tonics as some change you back when you take damage, but I own a Cat Tonic and works just fine with it.

With the Cat Tonic/any tonic that you can take damage and not be kicked from the tonic to your regular form…you effectively perma stow your pet for dungeon skips. While you are in the other form, your pet disappears and will only show up when you press the 6 key to revert back to your original form. You can be stealthed while in this form as well, so you can easily do the skips without your pet showing up when you take falling damage/whatever.

Warning, be careful when taking too much damage as the tonic locks you out of skills! I know 100% that the Cat Tonic works while in combat as well, so I can get out of the Tonic form, heal and go back into it to stow my pet again. I don’t know about the other tonics, maybe someone who has others can test it?

Gokil.2543:

I dunno why people never mention this, but running lava tomb is seriously legit.

^This. Lava tomb not only will help you get upright again but it saves your party members from having to ress you. And it provides another blast field so you are still being useful when you drop. It’s been the greatest asset to me in dungeons!

You guys are making a mountain out of a mole hill…stop trying to put today’s events into a computer game. Most of us are here to forget about the kitten awful world we live in for a few hours a day/week.

I keep hoping…not easter quite yet…y u no want my money ANet?

I’d pay gems to get to keep this as an emote…I love the little noises! Fantastic job ANet!

Sigh…poor Ranger has to be the scapegoat for everyone. Never mind that it provides unique buffs for the whole group and has an extra body for a round of attacks to take a hit over a party member. I mean, at least a ranger can bring more than dps to a group…unlike the necro.

And yet it is still told it doesn’t and will never belong in the ‘meta’…all because the bearbow trashed the image when the game first started.

I think I need this one…like need…

Sorry but to kick you for not stacking might is fault on them, not your build. You are clearly running staff (which is the superior dungeon tool…but I am biased!) and they should know that they need to help with the might stacking. All professions but necro can help with that. You have the easiest fire field to blast…

Don’t take this group’s actions to heart, you are fine in most situations!

Helly.2597:

You know you can stow pets right?

You know that when you take damage they come out right?

However, if I use my cat tonic, the pet is GONE. Like completely so if I take damage while stealth running (IE in Arah before Lupi when you jump down in stealth, the kitten pet pops out and screws everything up)…I stay a cat and the pet doesn’t pop ruining things.

Oh no…please don’t ‘fix’ this by disabling tonics in combat ANet. I need my cat tonic on my Ranger so I can stop my stupid pet from aggro-ing while we are stealth skipping

Guess what ANet? I got a 20 dollar bill with your name on it if you bring back those bunny ears…what do you say, huh? It’s a crisp, clean nice twenty too! It’s just waiting for you…

There are a couple of karka shell farmers who are regular. It’s mostly for the mats to make the infusions as the reason to go to that map. The passiflora flowers and karka shells can’t be found anywhere else.

I am sitting here…with a full wallet…just waiting to throw my money at the screen for the kitten bunny ears, and it’s like they don’t want it.

What’s wrong with my money Anet???

The first thing I had to learn while I was leveling is don’t use Blurred Frenzy as a DPS, use it as the evade. Keep it on cooldown until you need it. Learn how to use F4. And don’t level using a staff (that’s all I did for the first 30 levels and man I kept getting myself into trouble with that bounce!)

Mesmers have some of the best damage mitigation tools if you know how to use them. Try using an offhand sword instead of the pistol. And as someone mentioned before, GS is a good tool for leveling in PvE.

Mine is Tech Savvi. Obviously an Asura, I was so pleased with myself when I came up with it. It’s perfect on like 3 levels, it’s a technology pun, it’s a lore based Asura name and it’s befitting an engineer.

No vanilla/XxnamexX for me…all of my character’s names took me forever to come up with. I kept looking up lore appropriate ones and I am not even a RPer.

I prefer to run staff as having those two water fields is a boon for my squishy ele. D/F is fun to play but having no water fields hurts my game play style. I’ve become reliant on those fields lol

Carry all the weapons though, just because you run staff doesn’t mean you shouldn’t switch out to d/f or s/f…f in general can help you with the skips.

+1 to this. Please for the love of kittens bring those back!

There used to be a whole kitten load of silk on the market, it was useless before ascended crafting hit game. Because there was so much of it, they decided to have a silk sink. They haven’t fixed it now that all that silk is gone…wish they would -.-

My Elementalist (who I am thinking will be my main, playing this game for a year and a half and still can’t decide!)

Feathered Headpiece (though I usually have the ‘hat’ turned off)
Carapace Mantle (again, it’s off…not a fan of shoulder armor pieces really)
Heritage Greatcoat
Feathered Gloves
Magician Legs
Aurora Shoes
Black Feather Wings Backpack

I sometimes switch out the Magician legs for the other Heritage leggings piece but I like the skirt at the moment.

Bekkr.6192:

The weird bony bits ruin them all for me though.

^This. If they were completely made out of the shadowy black bits, I’d have been all over them…but as they stand, it’s just another ugly weapon skin I have no interest in.

If you care about big shiny weapons and armor, go with one of the bigger races…but the Asura animations are the best by far. I have both an human and an Asura…the human mostly for vanity’s sake (as the weapon/armor skins are best on humans…ANet loves the easy to design around race). So when I want to run around looking awesome, I’ll play the human but the Asura is my favorite.

Well…so long as you bring the Spotter trait and Frost Spirit is on your utility bar, you are good to go. Also, please keep your bear in his stable when you are dungeoning, bring the Jungle Stalker and the Red Moa (if you have a might/fury stacking ele in the party, switch those two out for the Jaguar and a drake of your choice). We are welcome in dungeons, so long as we aren’t running the ‘bearbow’ type that everyone hates.

Note…if you use a longbow, never ever ever EVER E-V-E-R use skill 4 called Point Blank Shot unless told to do so. You leave it off cooldown and pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s not worth the damage it does and it’s not worth ruining the whole group’s setup because you shoved the boss away. If you are trying to take down stacks of defiance, it’s fine…if you are pushing because the boss needs to be a certain place…once again…fine. Just don’t spam it because!

The Metabattle wiki has a good build for a PvE dungeon ranger: http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_S/A_LB_Spotter

As borked as they may be, I love my pets. It’s like I always have a buddy wandering around looking out for my back. Hoping they come out with more with HoT comes.

For all sword is worth to us, I love my greatsword. The different animal spirit attack animations are awesome looking and Swoop makes getting around a larger map that much easier. Ranger’s really do have some of the most graphically fun to watch attacks.

I like that we can provide a pure damage boost with Frost Spirit and a nice precision boost with Spotter, so we do rightfully have a place in dungeons. Slowly that bearbow mentality is dying

One more thing…be sure to map complete all the low level starter areas before you go onto to 15-25 maps. The 15-25 maps are very, very, veeeery different from the lower level areas and it helps to be a little over leveled before you start on those. They start hitting you with conditions and some, like Kessex Hills or Brisbane Wildlands, you will find just aren’t nice being at level to map complete.

To get to the other starter zones, you go into the town you started at (in Queensdale that’s Divinity’s Reach, in Caledon Forest that’s The Grove, in Plains of Ashford that’s The Black Citadel, and in Wayfarer Foothills that’s Hoelbrak). You will find a portal that says it goes to Lion’s Arch…from there you will find yourself in a little area with other portals. Those will take you to the other towns and you get to the other starter areas from there.

The dodge mechanic has ruined other games for me. I played GW2 for half a year and went to try to play another game I was casually playing at the time and all I kept trying to do was to dodge. It’s such a simple looking mechanic but man does it change my perspective of game play. I don’t want to stand there and out damage an enemy by soaking up health/mana potions anymore.

I agree with the OP…especially about the 100% crafting. Having to invest in items that lower a chance of crafting breakage, spending real money on these things, is absurd but that’s how those ‘free to play’ games work.

thefantasticg.3984:

Deleted the rest because it was irrelevant.

The flaw in your arguement is “average player”. What is the “average player”? Is this person mentally slow? Do they not have the capacity to learn? Does this person have the reaction time of 10+ year MMA fighter or an 90 year old great-great-grandma on DMT? Since you have not quantified what “average player” means it means nothing. What does have numbers and means something is DPS. When I refer to DPS it refers to the damage done per second. If this “average player” you are talking about doesn’t have the ability to learn the encounter, time their dodges, and has good reaction time, there shouldn’t be that much of a problem, if any. If you or anyone else is mentally unable to learn encounters, time your or their dodges, or has poor reaction time, you’re right: the sword is not for you and it will never be a good weapon for you… but… don’t be mad when you join a zerker group and they kick you for using GS or bearbow.

This profession doesn’t have a stellar track record and it’s being hurt worse by everyone forcing the player to use a weapon that can easily cause the player’s death. We all have been locked into stacking, which makes things hard to see enough as it is…much less let someone learn the boss mechanics, and then you equip a sword. This forces you to not only keep an eye on your own mechanics but the boss you are fighting as well. You have to time your steps and know exactly when to dodge at any given second. This makes the sword a dangerous weapon. You can easily end up off the stack, aggro-ing mobs, throwing yourself off a cliff, causing the boss to use it’s ranged mechanics because you broke stack. This is not fault of the ranger, because he clearly has the boss targeted, it’s the weapon and it’s wonky mechanics causing this problem.

Not everyone has the nubile fingers of a 15 year old or the speed reaction timing of a ‘pro’. It doesn’t make us stupid, thank you very much for implying it btw, it makes us average. The bearbow ranger is pretty much dead (or at least I haven’t seen any join my parties so can we stop using it as a frame of reference?) I know the dungeon mechanics and the boss attacks and I still end up dead because to do damage with a sword you must be pressing 1. If you aren’t pressing 1 to wait for a dodge, you aren’t doing damage.

I mean look at CoE. Sword on Alpha’s AoE attack is seriously dangerous -.-

Xyonon.3987:

70 to 80 is easy darlin, use FT + bomb + EG or Mine and do a few dungeons until 80. Then get the actual equip.

^This. You can use those dungeon tokens to get your armor so you can kill two birds with one stone.

Well the good news is you don’t have to use the pig ever if you don’t want to Never hurts to have it already tamed though, just in case.

So when you tame an animal, you get the option of equipping it now with a pop up. Usually you press No so it won’t override the current pet you have selected.

If you are unsure of how to swap in pets. Press K (or whatever key you have bound to open the pet menu) and you can switch pets there.You will see the pet portraits and there is a little tab thing with an arrow above their heads. Press that and the list of pets you have available will all be in color. The ones you haven’t collected yet will be greyed out.

What’s the point of having higher dps with a sword if the average player ends up eating dirt because they cannot dodge? DPS numbers don’t seem take into account the ability or inability for staying alive. If one can’t use sword properly, they shouldn’t use it just because the meta-elites told them too. They will end up dead, and their DPS is 0. They get kicked for dying too much and the bad image of a ranger in dungeon continues on. Yeah…maybe we all should learn how to sword properly but even then…how many times has it just thrown you forward, even though you have a target selected? It never fails to do it to me, whether or not I have the autoattack on. Even if I am slowly and evenly pressing 1 (which is more irritating than using engi grenades) I can still randomly get thrown forward and past the target.

Not saying we shouldn’t use sword, the dps is nice…but in a dungeon run that extra 17% damage is probably only going to shave off a few seconds. Unless you are hardcore, want the fastest possible going for speed run record, a ranger should use what they are comfortable with.

The problem with adding dagger off hand is you are slotting a weapon in the off hand to mitigate damage being taken from simply using the auto attack on the main weapon. That seems ridiculous that a profession has to slot another weapon to over come the inability to dodge in a dodge mechanic-filled world. It gives you a fairly low cooldown evade to rely on, but you are still being forced to mash your 1 key to get anything done. And we all know that when you button mash you might as well just have the kitten auto-attack on. But if you aren’t button mashing, you aren’t doing enough damage for the sword to be worth taking over the greatsword.

Sword has it’s place, in pvp it’s a good sticking weapon for people running away. In PvE it’s not only hard to use, but it can and will get you killed…and potentially kicked from parties when you go flying off stack because the kitten targeting is borked and you aggro unintended mobs/get yourself dead by falling off a cliff. Yes it does a higher amount of damage, but that damage has consequences if you misstep just once.

It’s harder for the average player to use and I am sort of glad that GS is slowly being pushed into meta. I’d rather use a GS reliably and be able to dodge than to do 17% more damage and end up dead because I couldn’t dodge. What I wouldn’t give to just have the simple auto attack animation that a mesmer has for the sword!

Turning the auto attack off can help you to learn the mechanics, watch the three different animations and learn them well. You will be able to tell what you are doing at any given time and be able to dodge accordingly but you can still lock yourself into the non-dodge if you aren’t careful.

What I wish they’d fix is the random dart off into the abyss even though you are targeted on an enemy. It’s irritating to get sent off a cliff/off to aggro land because the sword threw you forward.

I am…panda! I love those wings on my asura…she is so kitten adorable