I'm looking at the GW2 wiki and reading on necro abilities. It sounds like they're set up to get conditions on themselves and then spread it to mobs... Am I reading this correctly?
They have a set of skills ("Corruption") that do that, yes. But they can also do stuff with conditions on the mob or on themselves (heal themselves, spread conditions around, draw them from allies, etc)
Necros have alot of conditions and alot of ways to manipulate conditions and then they also have minions.
Alot of Condition builds are centred around applying a bunch of conditions to a mob and then spreading them around to all the other mobs and then eating the conditions this gives to you.
You can sum up necros and conditions in one Utility skill:
Plague Signet.
Plague Signet's passive draws conditions from your nearby allies to you. The active sends all conditions on you to your target.
I find that sums up the concept of necro condition builds pretty well.
Also, Blood is Power + Plague Signet + Epidemic = epic lawlz.
I'm looking at the GW2 wiki and reading on necro abilities. It sounds like they're set up to get conditions on themselves and then spread it to mobs... Am I reading this correctly?
They have a set of skills ("Corruption") that do that, yes. But they can also do stuff with conditions on the mob or on themselves (heal themselves, spread conditions around, draw them from allies, etc)
Necros have alot of conditions and alot of ways to manipulate conditions and then they also have minions.
Alot of Condition builds are centred around applying a bunch of conditions to a mob and then spreading them around to all the other mobs and then eating the conditions this gives to you.
Hmm. Guess I have to hunt a guide down.
At the moment I have a Mesmer that I'm actually really enjoying, and a Ranger. I just started an Elementalist (which looks so overwhelming but I'm guessing it's gonna be fun figuring that one out), and then I was gonna look at the Necromancer.
Not really interested in either soldier profession, and I'm not sure about Engineer.
Is there a general leveling guide somewhere, by the way? I'm going through... is it Queensland? With my (human) Mesmer, and I've somehow gone from the level 10 area straight to the level 14 one.
I'm looking at the GW2 wiki and reading on necro abilities. It sounds like they're set up to get conditions on themselves and then spread it to mobs... Am I reading this correctly?
They have a set of skills ("Corruption") that do that, yes. But they can also do stuff with conditions on the mob or on themselves (heal themselves, spread conditions around, draw them from allies, etc)
Necros have alot of conditions and alot of ways to manipulate conditions and then they also have minions.
Alot of Condition builds are centred around applying a bunch of conditions to a mob and then spreading them around to all the other mobs and then eating the conditions this gives to you.
You can sum up necros and conditions in one Utility skill:
Plague Signet.
Plague Signet's passive draws conditions from your nearby allies to you. The active sends all conditions on you to your target.
I find that sums up the concept of necro condition builds pretty well.
Also, Blood is Power + Plague Signet + Epidemic = epic lawlz.
It's great, but risky. According to the wiki, Plague Signet is still bugged. That is, it will replicate any conditions on nearby allies but does not remove them. Still a good way of loading up on conditions to spread around, though it makes blinds and such very dangerous to the necro, as a failed attempt to offload the conditions basically causes the signet to increase the enemy team's damage output.
Re: The Culling™, I'm bouncing between GW2, WoW and Borderlands 2 at the moment so I've not been logged in as often/long as I was a bit ago, but I am absolutely not leaving the game. I've just been enjoying it at a slower pace. With regard to participation, I'm really not into PvP (did WvW enough to get the requisite 50 kills for the monthly achievement and absolutely didn't care for it) and while I would love to do the dungeons, I've heard enough about how brutal they are to want to stay away for a bit, at least until I'm better geared. However I have and still do participate in many group events with and try to help out other NICE folks whenever I see them around. Mostly though I have enjoyed just chatting with folks and having a information resource in case I have questions, which I usually do.
All that said, I'll happily step out for another, more active player if the guild needs it. Account is Necrys.5820. Thanks very much for having me.
If you're still active and playing I don't see why we'd need to cull you.
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Personally, I go Ockham's razor in these situations.
They are kinda digging themselves a hole right now. I pointed out that their activity of camping a supply with siege and ALL their zerg means that people who want to actually WvW and take stuff are unable to and thats why they feel they are underpopulated. Someone replied, but right after a person from their own server confirmed what I said:
I intially just told them, having their entire forces in a single spot is why they are losing, period. But they only want to complain that they are underpopulated and we hack.
Meh.. internet forums, opinions... blah.
I think you have cause and effect reversed. Or rather, you're missing the beginning portion of a feedback loop.
They already felt they were losing from early in the matchup. Reading the SA forums, they admitted that they had to improve their tactics, as while their public mumble server was great for big zergs of pubbies against lower tier servers, it couldn't compete with FA's small groups spreading out and capturing points, plus they were getting spy issues. But this is something they're working on and not really a short term fix anyway.
I believe the turning point happened when we full capped the map. That's when they started talking about their fair weather pubbies (and honestly, I'd find that pretty demoralizing myself) and decided to start doing the supply camp events as a thing because hey, it's fun.
So 1) I believe they do actually have generally fewer population in wvw regardless of the existence of goon events 2) Their goon events actually have a purpose. It makes their server more fun and helps with recruitment. It's making lemons out of lemonade, and I agree with that.
OK so these outlines are what I have so far for levelling builds:
Elementalist: Dagger/dagger or staff-fire.
Thief: Dagger/pistol and shortbow
Engineer: Pistol/pistol or rifle. Generally explosive.
Mesmer: Scept I mean staff and 1H-sword/pistol.
Ranger: ?
Guardian: ?
Any Guardians or Rangers out there want to share their levelling experiences? Guardian hammer has been the most fun up to lv10 but I don't know how it will pan out.
So long as we're talking about alts, right now I have a mesmer main and thief, elementalist, and engineer alts. I want my last alt to be heavy armor class. What's more fun, warrior or guardian?
So long as we're talking about alts, right now I have a mesmer main and thief, elementalist, and engineer alts. I want my last alt to be heavy armor class. What's more fun, warrior or guardian?
Not that I've played it for very long, but warrior so far. Pick up a greatsword, trait to give yourself the +precision for every unused signet adept major trait, use 100 blades and never look back. Rifle for a bit of range!
So long as we're talking about alts, right now I have a mesmer main and thief, elementalist, and engineer alts. I want my last alt to be heavy armor class. What's more fun, warrior or guardian?
I prefered guardian. If you stack Toughness/Vitality and can faceroll on yuor keyobard, you become all-but-unkillable. You won't be bursting things down, but it's still decent DPS and you _will_ win (eventually). My coworker was just sharing a story of a 5v1 he did last night in wuvwuv (he was the solo). Glass cannon builds are super common these days; even sub-par DPS makes them cry, and with all that mitigation, they can't do squat in return.
I'm predicting a shift in meta towards defense-heavy builds in the next month.
So long as we're talking about alts, right now I have a mesmer main and thief, elementalist, and engineer alts. I want my last alt to be heavy armor class. What's more fun, warrior or guardian?
What do you want? I have an 80 warrior and a 53 guardian. The guardian feels more to me like a caster in plate; I feel like there's enourmous synergies between their weapons and skills if used correctly, while the warrior is pretty much straight up jump in and hope they run out of blood before you do.
Granted, both are fun, but the guardian probably has a little more "depth" to it than the warrior.
But if you like just being tough...you can't go wrong with either.
EDIT: And let me put it this way. If you enjoy jumping into a big group of enemies, doing a fuckload of damage and not dying, go warrior. If you're looking for a class that has much greater potential for support and teamplay, go guardian. Of course, there's a lot to be said for having a team plyer who can jump into a big group of enemies and do a fuckload of damage.
So long as we're talking about alts, right now I have a mesmer main and thief, elementalist, and engineer alts. I want my last alt to be heavy armor class. What's more fun, warrior or guardian?
Not that I've played it for very long, but warrior so far. Pick up a greatsword, trait to give yourself the +precision for every unused signet adept major trait, use 100 blades and never look back. Rifle for a bit of range!
Please don't run this build. It's so goddamn stupid. (And yeah, probably pretty enjoyable, but there's not a lot of play to it)
Warriors are real fun, though, and there's a ton of potential variety in how to build them.
EDIT: Warriors have the option to take ton of crowd-control skills or a ton of support skills if they want. You can build for ridiculously high burst/crit damage, or very high survivability (thanks, 18k base HP!) , or anywhere in between.
So something I've noticed about the special edition of the game.
Every character you create gets a 5 day golem banker. The banker appears to be account-bound. Seems like you can basically create and delete an alt every 5 days to get unlimited access to your bank. You do have to do that opening sequence on every character I think though.
I noticed that as well. If there wasn't already bank access pretty much everywhere, or just a short waypoint teleport away that may actually be worth the time, as it is though I've never really felt like it was difficult to get access to my bank in a pretty convenient fashion.
The personal banker is actually character-bound, although it states it is account-bound. Who knows which one is intended. Just wanted to let you know you cannot do this right now.
My mesmer is not supporty, and none of my alts are really (though I haven't settled on builds for them yet). I scratch my "fuck zergs up" itch with my main so I'll probably go guardian.
So long as we're talking about alts, right now I have a mesmer main and thief, elementalist, and engineer alts. I want my last alt to be heavy armor class. What's more fun, warrior or guardian?
Not that I've played it for very long, but warrior so far. Pick up a greatsword, trait to give yourself the +precision for every unused signet adept major trait, use 100 blades and never look back. Rifle for a bit of range!
Please don't run this build. It's so goddamn stupid. (And yeah, probably pretty enjoyable, but there's not a lot of play to it)
Warriors are real fun, though, and there's a ton of potential variety in how to build them.
EDIT: Warriors have the option to take ton of crowd-control skills or a ton of support skills if they want. You can build for ridiculously high burst/crit damage, or very high survivability (thanks, 18k base HP!) , or anywhere in between.
Oh hell, wouldn't dream of running it in a dungeon or wuvwuv. I was talking about levelling builds in PvE! Given the +precision for that trait doesn't scale I imagine it becomes less and less effective as you level beyond lv20.
OK so these outlines are what I have so far for levelling builds:
Elementalist: Dagger/dagger or staff-fire.
Thief: Dagger/pistol and shortbow
Engineer: Pistol/pistol or rifle. Generally explosive.
Mesmer: Scept I mean staff and 1H-sword/pistol.
Ranger: ?
Guardian: ?
Any Guardians or Rangers out there want to share their levelling experiences? Guardian hammer has been the most fun up to lv10 but I don't know how it will pan out.
Let me put in a vote for Pistol/shield with the engineer. You gain so much CC from the combo it's pretty amazing. Both shield skills have a second trigger.
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
OK so these outlines are what I have so far for levelling builds:
Elementalist: Dagger/dagger or staff-fire.
Thief: Dagger/pistol and shortbow
Engineer: Pistol/pistol or rifle. Generally explosive.
Mesmer: Scept I mean staff and 1H-sword/pistol.
Ranger: ?
Guardian: ?
Any Guardians or Rangers out there want to share their levelling experiences? Guardian hammer has been the most fun up to lv10 but I don't know how it will pan out.
Any Guardians or Rangers out there want to share their levelling experiences? Guardian hammer has been the most fun up to lv10 but I don't know how it will pan out.
I dinged 80 with my Ranger a couple weeks ago and overall it was a pretty easy and fun experience. I solo'd 100% map completion and am nearly done soloing my personal story line. Pretty much can go anywhere and do anything without having to worry about getting into too much trouble (except trying to run all over Orr grabbing crafting mats. Damn cursed.)
The choice is basically between longbow/shortbow for ranged and greatsword/dual wielding for melee. There are some who are running two melee weapon sets which may make sense in some cases (like PvP) but I do not recommend it for PvE.
My preference is for longbow and greatsword combo. With a pet to tank (which works great up until about level 60 and then they start to lose ability to maintain agro) the longbow is what I used nearly all the time. Longbow fires pretty slow but does good dam per hit (esp on crits) so it's geared towards a precision/crit build and keeping your distance. Open with #3 (a debuff for mob and buff for your pet), hit #2 (rapid fire), repeat. If mob leaves pet and agros you, you can hit #4 to knock them back to max bow range or switch to melee. #5 is a decent AOE. When going to melee, it's usually when a target is already mostly dead so the greatsword is good for just powering them down quickly.
Shortbow fires much faster than longbow but less damage per hit. Shortbow skills are more focused on condition and especially bleed builds. You also need to move a lot more with strafing using a shortbow to take advantage of flanking bonuses from side/back while mob is engaged with pet. The condition/bleed preference also leads to more of a use of axes or axe/dagger combo for your melee setup. But warhorn is pretty good too.
I basically went with longbow or shortbow depending on what was the best bow I could find at the time. Same with melee. Never really bothered to spent karma or coin on gear, just ran with drops. Leveled too fast to really need to pay a lot of attention to gear.
As for other skills, I found Signet of Hunt (passive: 10% bonus to run speed, active: more dam from next pet attack) to be useful, although I hardly ever activated it. Signet of Wild (passive: health regen, active: pet gets bigger and strong) is pretty awesome. Healing spring is a great healing skill - good initial burst to both you and pet and AOE regen over pretty good-sized area.
For PvE, I found Charzooka to be my favorite elite skill. But as I've recently switched to a WvW I've switched it out for Rampage as One.
I never really found much use for spirits or traps in PvE. I've heard of traps being useful in PvP but haven't really played with them yet.
Hope this helps, and I think asking the question of the right ranger build/setup for WvW is much tougher. I've been concentrating on that for a couple weeks now and finding that while I can do a lot of things, I'm not really great at any one thing (except dying). Seems a lot of opponents have the ability to go stealth/invuln all the time or do more damage than me. I'm not doing too bad in decent-sized scrums (managed 50 kills in a few hours work) but 1v1 or 2v2 I'm finding it hard to hold my own. So lots of work left to do.
---
Thanos Warbow
In game: Lvl 80 Ranger, 400 Leatherworker, Huntsman, Jeweler and Chef
I heard you should go Beastmaster on Rangers, and it is absolutely true. Get the trait that gives you Quickness every time you swap pets and just murder everything.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
So long as we're talking about alts, right now I have a mesmer main and thief, elementalist, and engineer alts. I want my last alt to be heavy armor class. What's more fun, warrior or guardian?
Not that I've played it for very long, but warrior so far. Pick up a greatsword, trait to give yourself the +precision for every unused signet adept major trait, use 100 blades and never look back. Rifle for a bit of range!
Please don't run this build. It's so goddamn stupid. (And yeah, probably pretty enjoyable, but there's not a lot of play to it)
Warriors are real fun, though, and there's a ton of potential variety in how to build them.
EDIT: Warriors have the option to take ton of crowd-control skills or a ton of support skills if they want. You can build for ridiculously high burst/crit damage, or very high survivability (thanks, 18k base HP!) , or anywhere in between.
Oh hell, wouldn't dream of running it in a dungeon or wuvwuv. I was talking about levelling builds in PvE! Given the +precision for that trait doesn't scale I imagine it becomes less and less effective as you level beyond lv20.
Word! Didn't mean to be dismissive of your build for leveling.
There's no shortage of five-signet greatsword warriors at 80, and that upsets me.
OK so these outlines are what I have so far for levelling builds:
Elementalist: Dagger/dagger or staff-fire.
Thief: Dagger/pistol and shortbow
Engineer: Pistol/pistol or rifle. Generally explosive.
Mesmer: Scept I mean staff and 1H-sword/pistol.
Ranger: ?
Guardian: ?
Any Guardians or Rangers out there want to share their levelling experiences? Guardian hammer has been the most fun up to lv10 but I don't know how it will pan out.
Let me put in a vote for Pistol/shield with the engineer. You gain so much CC from the combo it's pretty amazing. Both shield skills have a second trigger.
Guardian with two handed sword is very nice. So is sword and torch. My combo goes:
Leap (blind), signet (aoe DoT) spin attack (aoe), a few regular attacks. Buy that time most enemies are balled up nicely. Then roll out and switch to sword/torch.
Beam sword projectile (ranged), torch (ranged aoe), and teleport stab (blind) back into the fray if anything is left standing. Use Reaper of Grenth for extra conditions and damage.
Aegis and blind means most heavy hitting enemies have to go through two attacks before they can even hit you.
This works on pretty much any normal mob, and 90% of veteran mobs. Granted, I'm only 35, but I can solo most events in my level range. I'm currently specced for max vitality.
Hammer is fun, and I love to use it with a sword for its teleport follow-up to the hammer's massive knockback attack.
OK so these outlines are what I have so far for levelling builds:
Elementalist: Dagger/dagger or staff-fire.
Thief: Dagger/pistol and shortbow
Engineer: Pistol/pistol or rifle. Generally explosive.
Mesmer: Scept I mean staff and 1H-sword/pistol.
Ranger: ?
Guardian: ?
Any Guardians or Rangers out there want to share their levelling experiences? Guardian hammer has been the most fun up to lv10 but I don't know how it will pan out.
Ranger is a pretty solid class, but doesn't quite excel in ranged combat compared to say a gun warrior. We're kind of a middle-ground class, but hopefully they get around to buffing the class like I've heard was said. The longbow is good for siege in wuvwuv, but overall the shortbow has far better dps as you don't lose that much per hit, but get a constant barrage of fire. After the latest nerf the shortbow does shoot slower (evidently a bug to be fixed "soon"), but it still outpaces the longbow. You gain benefits from power, precision, condition, and just about every other stat so you are able to customize things pretty much to however you want to play it. I usually run shortbow and longbow/axe and warhorn, with the 2nd weapon depending on what I need at the time (stand-off and shoot at range vs. aoe with speed buff); whereas for abilities I run flame trap, quickening zephyr and lightning reflexes (for the stun break and extra avoidance). http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMMQNBlODbkoquOyyyC1OAsUkXgNFcKJ7hiM6YJjqJ is a basic look at what I run (though the pet abilities aren't accurate, seems they forgot that part).
Personally, I go Ockham's razor in these situations.
They are kinda digging themselves a hole right now. I pointed out that their activity of camping a supply with siege and ALL their zerg means that people who want to actually WvW and take stuff are unable to and thats why they feel they are underpopulated. Someone replied, but right after a person from their own server confirmed what I said:
I intially just told them, having their entire forces in a single spot is why they are losing, period. But they only want to complain that they are underpopulated and we hack.
Meh.. internet forums, opinions... blah.
I think you have cause and effect reversed. Or rather, you're missing the beginning portion of a feedback loop.
They already felt they were losing from early in the matchup. Reading the SA forums, they admitted that they had to improve their tactics, as while their public mumble server was great for big zergs of pubbies against lower tier servers, it couldn't compete with FA's small groups spreading out and capturing points, plus they were getting spy issues. But this is something they're working on and not really a short term fix anyway.
I believe the turning point happened when we full capped the map. That's when they started talking about their fair weather pubbies (and honestly, I'd find that pretty demoralizing myself) and decided to start doing the supply camp events as a thing because hey, it's fun.
So 1) I believe they do actually have generally fewer population in wvw regardless of the existence of goon events 2) Their goon events actually have a purpose. It makes their server more fun and helps with recruitment. It's making lemons out of lemonade, and I agree with that.
the problem is the claims that they outskill us and win unfavorable situations due to oh who the fuck cares, it's a load of shit. they weren't outnumbered on the weekend and in the end lost handily. at the start of that thread there is maguumans admitting that our coordination is the determining factor in us being able to develop commanding leads. they're NA just like us, they have the same primetime as us, and as expressed, they do in fact have queues during primetime, just like us.
they're getting their teeth kicked in so they're doing fun activities for themselves now, and that's fine, but they are using the excuse of their terrible participation NOW and retroactively applying it to the whole matchup, which is bullshit.
i've only run in to a queue a couple times i've tried to wvw the last 3 days so it's not like we have 100 people in every borderland ruining everyone's fun.
As I pointed out, even their own forums they agreed FA had superior tactics and needed to learn from it. Don't take one silly goose's exaggerated boasting as representing the entire server. That kind of thing is par for course for this type of game mode. It's just cognitive dissonance.
To be honest, I think the most fun I've had in this game so far is running a Warrior with Greatsword/1h-sword+Mace combo in PvE. And running around in places that's a level or two higher than what I really should be in. To survive and conquer I have to exploit all the mobility and CC in the kit while nailing all my dodges, as even one missed one usually results in a death. For a long time I ran 'Feel no Pain' as a crutch for sticky situations, but now I usually only put it on against Champion bosses. To be honest my utilities are usually in a state of flux as I try different things, but the Signet that gives increased endurance regeneration is usually on my bar.
Speccing heavily into survivability with some power on the side. Personal challenge: Fighting the Champion Giant in the Diessa Plateau without missing any dodges. Last time I was there I missed six or seven.
To be honest, I think the most fun I've had in this game so far is running a Warrior with Greatsword/1h-sword+Mace combo in PvE. And running around in places that's a level or two higher than what I really should be in. To survive and conquer I have to exploit all the mobility and CC in the kit while nailing all my dodges, as even one missed one usually results in a death. For a long time I ran 'Feel no Pain' as a crutch for sticky situations, but now I usually only put it on against Champion bosses. To be honest my utilities are usually in a state of flux as I try different things, but the Signet that gives increased endurance regeneration is usually on my bar.
Speccing heavily into survivability with some power on the side. Personal challenge: Fighting the Champion Giant in the Diessa Plateau without missing any dodges. Last time I was there I missed six or seven.
That is a fun fight. You always see the corpses of players around his feet and people in the /say channel complaining that you have to use ranged against him.
And then you see a lone Asura Guardian smashing his feet with a mace, never once retreating.
I actually took the time after the fight to explain the dodge system to people and how to use it to be able to melee that guy. It was a good time all around
NNID: delphinidaes Official PA Forums FFXIV:ARR Free Company <GHOST> gitl.enjin.com Join us on Sargatanas!
To be honest, I think the most fun I've had in this game so far is running a Warrior with Greatsword/1h-sword+Mace combo in PvE. And running around in places that's a level or two higher than what I really should be in. To survive and conquer I have to exploit all the mobility and CC in the kit while nailing all my dodges, as even one missed one usually results in a death. For a long time I ran 'Feel no Pain' as a crutch for sticky situations, but now I usually only put it on against Champion bosses. To be honest my utilities are usually in a state of flux as I try different things, but the Signet that gives increased endurance regeneration is usually on my bar.
Speccing heavily into survivability with some power on the side. Personal challenge: Fighting the Champion Giant in the Diessa Plateau without missing any dodges. Last time I was there I missed six or seven.
That is a fun fight. You always see the corpses of players around his feet and people in the /say channel complaining that you have to use ranged against him.
And then you see a lone Asura Guardian smashing his feet with a mace, never once retreating.
I actually took the time after the fight to explain the dodge system to people and how to use it to be able to melee that guy. It was a good time all around
Sounds like fun times
I think I'll be changing up my weapons every now and then, but since I found the rifle and longbow rather boring, project 'Melee Everything' is go.
While people are talking about Rangers, I'm using shortbow/longbow and letting my pet do all the tanking. Good idea/bad idea? I've tried the other weapons and maybe I just don't get them, but I don't see why I should be in melee range...
For ranger I went Shortbow + Axe/Torch and used traps in all my utility slots (elite was entangle). Build for precision (30 points in skirmishing? to get all the trap traits) and condition damage then give everyone in a pretty large radius all of the conditions.
While people are talking about Rangers, I'm using shortbow/longbow and letting my pet do all the tanking. Good idea/bad idea? I've tried the other weapons and maybe I just don't get them, but I don't see why I should be in melee range...
It works. It just gets heinously boring 80 levels later.
Hmm, I don't apparently do enough gathering to keep up with both my crafting disciplines to have them keep up with my level. Spent all my money last night attempting to do so.
Since I do so much WvW, maybe I should buy one of those high-end tools so I can gather the stuff there.
While I certainly don’t like to jump the gun on making claims, our next patch SHOULD include a newly developed reward system for people who couldn’t make it to the end that should alleviate a bit of this “walking away with nothing” feeling you have.
Personally, I love that my content kills players and challenges them. I feel pretty kitteny though when my content beats someone into the ground and takes their lunch money. I at least want you to walk away with something more than a repair bill and some random blues, and folks here are working on that very thing.
That being said, our next patch SHOULD contain some revamped loot drops from bosses that have the chance of giving small token rewards (among other things), which should help alleviate that.
We are looking into an additional reward system to add to bosses so that killing a single boss feels a lot more rewarding than it does right now. We are gathering data internally on it and will release information on it as it gets closer to being implemented.
While people are talking about Rangers, I'm using shortbow/longbow and letting my pet do all the tanking. Good idea/bad idea? I've tried the other weapons and maybe I just don't get them, but I don't see why I should be in melee range...
Personally I don't see the point, unless it's just to have more stuff to pop on cooldown. They are the same range and are not different enough to make either situationally better. Longbow has the weakness of being worse at close range, so you want something that you can either create range with or just fall back on in your second spot. I suppose a shortbow might be as good a choice as any, although I would probably go with something like Ax/Warhorn myself.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
0
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
Shortbow used to be far better before the last patch, which reduced its DPS under QZ by something like 35% when considering the reduced amount of crits and condition stacks. Now its fairly on par with the longbow. The problem is the shortbow wasn't the problem - people weren't using it because it was too good, they were using it because the longbow is pretty bad.
Personally, I still use only bows, because I use a ranger to use bows, so I switch between longbow/shortbow depending on my mood. They definitely have different roles though. If you want your pet to tank, spec into beastmastery and into... marksmanship? The one that gives you peircing. Then hang back and peirce the shit out of everything with the longbow under rapid fire and QZ, then drop Barrage, and any enemies that get near you, hit them with Point Blank to knock them back to the pet, who should regain their aggro.
Shortbows are a lot more aggressive, and you'll out-DPS your pet, which will pull the aggro to you. They're very different types of play. With the shortbow you want to preferably flank an enemy to stack bleeding as well as poison and cripple, so you're always on the move. With longbow, you sit back and peg away at enemies and only really move if you somehow pull aggro off your pet.
Personally I'm not a fan of sword for a ranger, I absolutely hate that the #1 on auto will jump you back into range unless you hit esc. to cancel it. Sure it's great if you're chasing someone/something and you can therefore keep hitting them but with my current build I don't want to be in melee range for too long and sword #1 constantly brings you back into that range if you try to get away and create some distance.
Posts
You can sum up necros and conditions in one Utility skill:
Plague Signet.
Plague Signet's passive draws conditions from your nearby allies to you. The active sends all conditions on you to your target.
I find that sums up the concept of necro condition builds pretty well.
Also, Blood is Power + Plague Signet + Epidemic = epic lawlz.
Hmm. Guess I have to hunt a guide down.
At the moment I have a Mesmer that I'm actually really enjoying, and a Ranger. I just started an Elementalist (which looks so overwhelming but I'm guessing it's gonna be fun figuring that one out), and then I was gonna look at the Necromancer.
Not really interested in either soldier profession, and I'm not sure about Engineer.
Is there a general leveling guide somewhere, by the way? I'm going through... is it Queensland? With my (human) Mesmer, and I've somehow gone from the level 10 area straight to the level 14 one.
If you're still active and playing I don't see why we'd need to cull you.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
They already felt they were losing from early in the matchup. Reading the SA forums, they admitted that they had to improve their tactics, as while their public mumble server was great for big zergs of pubbies against lower tier servers, it couldn't compete with FA's small groups spreading out and capturing points, plus they were getting spy issues. But this is something they're working on and not really a short term fix anyway.
I believe the turning point happened when we full capped the map. That's when they started talking about their fair weather pubbies (and honestly, I'd find that pretty demoralizing myself) and decided to start doing the supply camp events as a thing because hey, it's fun.
So 1) I believe they do actually have generally fewer population in wvw regardless of the existence of goon events 2) Their goon events actually have a purpose. It makes their server more fun and helps with recruitment. It's making lemons out of lemonade, and I agree with that.
Switch: US 1651-2551-4335 JP 6310-4664-2624
MH3U Monster Cheat Sheet / MH3U Veggie Elder Ticket Guide
Elementalist: Dagger/dagger or staff-fire.
Thief: Dagger/pistol and shortbow
Engineer: Pistol/pistol or rifle. Generally explosive.
Mesmer: Scept I mean staff and 1H-sword/pistol.
Ranger: ?
Guardian: ?
Any Guardians or Rangers out there want to share their levelling experiences? Guardian hammer has been the most fun up to lv10 but I don't know how it will pan out.
Not that I've played it for very long, but warrior so far. Pick up a greatsword, trait to give yourself the +precision for every unused signet adept major trait, use 100 blades and never look back. Rifle for a bit of range!
I prefered guardian. If you stack Toughness/Vitality and can faceroll on yuor keyobard, you become all-but-unkillable. You won't be bursting things down, but it's still decent DPS and you _will_ win (eventually). My coworker was just sharing a story of a 5v1 he did last night in wuvwuv (he was the solo). Glass cannon builds are super common these days; even sub-par DPS makes them cry, and with all that mitigation, they can't do squat in return.
I'm predicting a shift in meta towards defense-heavy builds in the next month.
Guardian is like that, but with alot more blinds/blocks/funny shit sort of stuff in my experience.
What do you want? I have an 80 warrior and a 53 guardian. The guardian feels more to me like a caster in plate; I feel like there's enourmous synergies between their weapons and skills if used correctly, while the warrior is pretty much straight up jump in and hope they run out of blood before you do.
Granted, both are fun, but the guardian probably has a little more "depth" to it than the warrior.
But if you like just being tough...you can't go wrong with either.
EDIT: And let me put it this way. If you enjoy jumping into a big group of enemies, doing a fuckload of damage and not dying, go warrior. If you're looking for a class that has much greater potential for support and teamplay, go guardian. Of course, there's a lot to be said for having a team plyer who can jump into a big group of enemies and do a fuckload of damage.
Please don't run this build. It's so goddamn stupid. (And yeah, probably pretty enjoyable, but there's not a lot of play to it)
Warriors are real fun, though, and there's a ton of potential variety in how to build them.
EDIT: Warriors have the option to take ton of crowd-control skills or a ton of support skills if they want. You can build for ridiculously high burst/crit damage, or very high survivability (thanks, 18k base HP!) , or anywhere in between.
Path of Exile: snowcrash7
MTG Arena: Snow_Crash#34179
Battle.net: Snowcrash#1873
The personal banker is actually character-bound, although it states it is account-bound. Who knows which one is intended. Just wanted to let you know you cannot do this right now.
Oh hell, wouldn't dream of running it in a dungeon or wuvwuv. I was talking about levelling builds in PvE! Given the +precision for that trait doesn't scale I imagine it becomes less and less effective as you level beyond lv20.
Let me put in a vote for Pistol/shield with the engineer. You gain so much CC from the combo it's pretty amazing. Both shield skills have a second trigger.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
D/D thief worked well for me.
I dinged 80 with my Ranger a couple weeks ago and overall it was a pretty easy and fun experience. I solo'd 100% map completion and am nearly done soloing my personal story line. Pretty much can go anywhere and do anything without having to worry about getting into too much trouble (except trying to run all over Orr grabbing crafting mats. Damn cursed.)
The choice is basically between longbow/shortbow for ranged and greatsword/dual wielding for melee. There are some who are running two melee weapon sets which may make sense in some cases (like PvP) but I do not recommend it for PvE.
My preference is for longbow and greatsword combo. With a pet to tank (which works great up until about level 60 and then they start to lose ability to maintain agro) the longbow is what I used nearly all the time. Longbow fires pretty slow but does good dam per hit (esp on crits) so it's geared towards a precision/crit build and keeping your distance. Open with #3 (a debuff for mob and buff for your pet), hit #2 (rapid fire), repeat. If mob leaves pet and agros you, you can hit #4 to knock them back to max bow range or switch to melee. #5 is a decent AOE. When going to melee, it's usually when a target is already mostly dead so the greatsword is good for just powering them down quickly.
Shortbow fires much faster than longbow but less damage per hit. Shortbow skills are more focused on condition and especially bleed builds. You also need to move a lot more with strafing using a shortbow to take advantage of flanking bonuses from side/back while mob is engaged with pet. The condition/bleed preference also leads to more of a use of axes or axe/dagger combo for your melee setup. But warhorn is pretty good too.
I basically went with longbow or shortbow depending on what was the best bow I could find at the time. Same with melee. Never really bothered to spent karma or coin on gear, just ran with drops. Leveled too fast to really need to pay a lot of attention to gear.
As for other skills, I found Signet of Hunt (passive: 10% bonus to run speed, active: more dam from next pet attack) to be useful, although I hardly ever activated it. Signet of Wild (passive: health regen, active: pet gets bigger and strong) is pretty awesome. Healing spring is a great healing skill - good initial burst to both you and pet and AOE regen over pretty good-sized area.
For PvE, I found Charzooka to be my favorite elite skill. But as I've recently switched to a WvW I've switched it out for Rampage as One.
I never really found much use for spirits or traps in PvE. I've heard of traps being useful in PvP but haven't really played with them yet.
Hope this helps, and I think asking the question of the right ranger build/setup for WvW is much tougher. I've been concentrating on that for a couple weeks now and finding that while I can do a lot of things, I'm not really great at any one thing (except dying). Seems a lot of opponents have the ability to go stealth/invuln all the time or do more damage than me. I'm not doing too bad in decent-sized scrums (managed 50 kills in a few hours work) but 1v1 or 2v2 I'm finding it hard to hold my own. So lots of work left to do.
Thanos Warbow
In game: Lvl 80 Ranger, 400 Leatherworker, Huntsman, Jeweler and Chef
RL: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=15348585
Word! Didn't mean to be dismissive of your build for leveling.
There's no shortage of five-signet greatsword warriors at 80, and that upsets me.
Path of Exile: snowcrash7
MTG Arena: Snow_Crash#34179
Battle.net: Snowcrash#1873
Guardian with two handed sword is very nice. So is sword and torch. My combo goes:
Leap (blind), signet (aoe DoT) spin attack (aoe), a few regular attacks. Buy that time most enemies are balled up nicely. Then roll out and switch to sword/torch.
Beam sword projectile (ranged), torch (ranged aoe), and teleport stab (blind) back into the fray if anything is left standing. Use Reaper of Grenth for extra conditions and damage.
Aegis and blind means most heavy hitting enemies have to go through two attacks before they can even hit you.
This works on pretty much any normal mob, and 90% of veteran mobs. Granted, I'm only 35, but I can solo most events in my level range. I'm currently specced for max vitality.
Hammer is fun, and I love to use it with a sword for its teleport follow-up to the hammer's massive knockback attack.
Ranger is a pretty solid class, but doesn't quite excel in ranged combat compared to say a gun warrior. We're kind of a middle-ground class, but hopefully they get around to buffing the class like I've heard was said. The longbow is good for siege in wuvwuv, but overall the shortbow has far better dps as you don't lose that much per hit, but get a constant barrage of fire. After the latest nerf the shortbow does shoot slower (evidently a bug to be fixed "soon"), but it still outpaces the longbow. You gain benefits from power, precision, condition, and just about every other stat so you are able to customize things pretty much to however you want to play it. I usually run shortbow and longbow/axe and warhorn, with the 2nd weapon depending on what I need at the time (stand-off and shoot at range vs. aoe with speed buff); whereas for abilities I run flame trap, quickening zephyr and lightning reflexes (for the stun break and extra avoidance). http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMMQNBlODbkoquOyyyC1OAsUkXgNFcKJ7hiM6YJjqJ is a basic look at what I run (though the pet abilities aren't accurate, seems they forgot that part).
the problem is the claims that they outskill us and win unfavorable situations due to oh who the fuck cares, it's a load of shit. they weren't outnumbered on the weekend and in the end lost handily. at the start of that thread there is maguumans admitting that our coordination is the determining factor in us being able to develop commanding leads. they're NA just like us, they have the same primetime as us, and as expressed, they do in fact have queues during primetime, just like us.
they're getting their teeth kicked in so they're doing fun activities for themselves now, and that's fine, but they are using the excuse of their terrible participation NOW and retroactively applying it to the whole matchup, which is bullshit.
i've only run in to a queue a couple times i've tried to wvw the last 3 days so it's not like we have 100 people in every borderland ruining everyone's fun.
Switch: US 1651-2551-4335 JP 6310-4664-2624
MH3U Monster Cheat Sheet / MH3U Veggie Elder Ticket Guide
Speccing heavily into survivability with some power on the side. Personal challenge: Fighting the Champion Giant in the Diessa Plateau without missing any dodges. Last time I was there I missed six or seven.
That is a fun fight. You always see the corpses of players around his feet and people in the /say channel complaining that you have to use ranged against him.
And then you see a lone Asura Guardian smashing his feet with a mace, never once retreating.
I actually took the time after the fight to explain the dodge system to people and how to use it to be able to melee that guy. It was a good time all around
Official PA Forums FFXIV:ARR Free Company <GHOST> gitl.enjin.com Join us on Sargatanas!
Sounds like fun times
I think I'll be changing up my weapons every now and then, but since I found the rifle and longbow rather boring, project 'Melee Everything' is go.
It works. It just gets heinously boring 80 levels later.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Since I do so much WvW, maybe I should buy one of those high-end tools so I can gather the stuff there.
Switch: US 1651-2551-4335 JP 6310-4664-2624
MH3U Monster Cheat Sheet / MH3U Veggie Elder Ticket Guide
On the same topic: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/dungeons/Laziness-or-ineptitude/first#post398312
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
Switch: US 1651-2551-4335 JP 6310-4664-2624
MH3U Monster Cheat Sheet / MH3U Veggie Elder Ticket Guide
Personally I don't see the point, unless it's just to have more stuff to pop on cooldown. They are the same range and are not different enough to make either situationally better. Longbow has the weakness of being worse at close range, so you want something that you can either create range with or just fall back on in your second spot. I suppose a shortbow might be as good a choice as any, although I would probably go with something like Ax/Warhorn myself.
Personally, I still use only bows, because I use a ranger to use bows, so I switch between longbow/shortbow depending on my mood. They definitely have different roles though. If you want your pet to tank, spec into beastmastery and into... marksmanship? The one that gives you peircing. Then hang back and peirce the shit out of everything with the longbow under rapid fire and QZ, then drop Barrage, and any enemies that get near you, hit them with Point Blank to knock them back to the pet, who should regain their aggro.
Shortbows are a lot more aggressive, and you'll out-DPS your pet, which will pull the aggro to you. They're very different types of play. With the shortbow you want to preferably flank an enemy to stack bleeding as well as poison and cripple, so you're always on the move. With longbow, you sit back and peg away at enemies and only really move if you somehow pull aggro off your pet.