Guild Wars 2

Just out of curiosity, how are thieves stacking up in PvE and WvW nowadays? Loved playing my thief, and would consider going back for the ability to continue through Season 2 content as an "expansion".

What they've said about Living story season 2 implies they are cutting back on the open world stuff and instancing more of the content. Not sure if I like that. On the other hand I do like that I dont feel pressured into doing it "now or never". I expect season 2 to be as focused on achievements and some skins/titles, unfortunately. Wish they would pick up GW1's skill gathering aspect as a way to add some depth and rewards.

Btw one thing that hasnt been mentioned about rangers is that they are fun to play. Just in case something retarded like that figures into the decision

Ranger / Necro are my favorite classes, but I rarely run dungeons and do WvW even less.

I'll be very, very disappointed if this Season 2 doesn't open up lands to the West (more Maguma Jungle / Maguma Wastes), and lead us to an encounter with an Elder Dragon. This Living Story seems like a perfect way for ANet to open up more lands, and expand on the main story of the game...the threat of the Elder Dragons.

Mist_sl said:

Ranger is pretty much the worst class in everything.

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Bad meme is bad.

While not the strongest at anything, and support skills are lacking, a well-played Ranger is an asset to anything, and we are particularly good when the shit hits the fan;particularlyVERY good when the shit hits the fan.

I'm not sure how the meme got started, or how it is still perpetuated...maybe all the Bearbow nitwits out there, but the 100's of hours of pvp on my end proves otherwise. Outisde of Guardians, there are no classes that I cannot easily handle in pvp. I'm not a gamergod, nor do I claim to be, but Rangers are pretty good at tearing people's faces off and shoving them up their asses. Again, I stress Well Played Ranger. Rangers aren't a derpfet DPS monster with no skills like most Warriors are. Just a *little* skill, and Rangers really excel.

When I see someone claiming that Rangers suck, either they don't PVP at all, or they just read forum posts in lieu of being a good player in game, and hope that someone believes their baloney.

I don't know what's changed over the last 12 months but it used to be that Engie stood out for spamming AE. Elementalist and Rangers get AEs but they have cooldowns and can't be spammed. For WvW 2-3 Engies can own walls when sieging like nothing else. It's not glamorous, it doesn't net you many kills - because enemy literally can't get on their walls - so you need disciplined players but it's massive in terms of keeping enemy off walls and taking positions.

Oblio_sl said:

I want to run a Ranger with at least one ranged weapon, is that viable? Seems like I keep reading GS and Sword with Horn. If I cannot blow shift up with my Boss the I might as well play a melee heavy prof.

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Ranger is a good class, but not the best. If you want to run PvE dungeons and public events, it's good and does a good amount of dps, less than elementalists and thieves, but good nonetheless. Brings crit and frost spirit, plus ae heal+condition curing.
In PvP they are strong, in solo they are very strong, they lack in WvW unless you play roamer and even there, don't go alone, in small teams they can be very helpful, but you have to use decent pets (dogs for example for knockdown and fear).

Rangers can be good, and again in the right hands, the problem is they're played mostly by lazy players, I'll let my pet tank while I pluck my bow, fucking even when you tell people not to hit a door in wvw you'll still find the one ranger plucking their bow at the door. It's like how hunters were when wow first came out, hence why we got the term huntards, so many of them but only a couple actually play them to their full potential. Their traits were a mess at release as well, pet builds, spirit builds, range builds, condi builds were all over the fucking place, which they cleaned up a bit a while back. There's also the other problem that there are other classes that can do a better job than what a ranger can provide.

Engineers can be insane with condi bomb builds, they're good for roaming and small groups. Requires a lot of button pushing but they can be excellent to a skilled player, gotten my ass surprised blown up a couple times by them in wvw and spvp. I think grenades took a slight nerf some time ago so you don't usually see nade spams as much.

Thieves are still annoying as shit, just about unlimited stealth and fight resets available. Even though crit dmg took a hit in the april patch they can hit you pretty hard still especially since a lot of dps'er are getting less tanky and converting to berserker stats, and I hear condi thieves are just plain sick, they just don't get to contest points while in stealth anymore. In wvw they're the main roamer you will meet, followed by mesmers. They're also on pick teams in wvw and gvg (small group from the main that will pressure range enemies and finish players off).

As for season 2, sounds like you have will have to play through the entire story in order to get the big reward in the end for that living story rather than just doing the meta achievement, which is what I've been doing. Previous living story events will now be available for the low cost of 200 gems per episode. I'm not getting my hopes up like everything else that they will bring a bunch of new zones for the living story.

Lastly I've played most of the classes to 80, (my thief only made it to around 20, engineer around 65) I tend to play ranged classes, so I pretty much will only play a necro in wvw and mesmer in spvp now. Necros have a lot of survivability and ranged options, they do lack some mobility, hard to run away sometimes if you need to. You can do power well bombs build for group zergs, or condi builds for roaming and to a lesser degree zerging. Eles are good for roaming and zerg play, and always needed for water heals and meteornados.

Oblio if you really enjoy the paladin type class you can play the guardian they're all round good for whatever you may want to do, pve, spvp, or wvw.

Mist_sl said:

Would you ever rather have a ranger than anything else in PvE though? I understand that rangers are fine in SPvP but outside of that I can't really see where I'd actively want a ranger.

In WvW they have the worst ranged attacks in the game.

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Any class is fine in PvE really, assuming all are played well. Rangers aren't pwnies like warriors, but they aren't really lacking.

No doubt, Rangers don't have strong ranged in PvP...but that's not the thrust of the class. I have lost count of the times that it was just me and a Guardian as the only ones left standing after a particularly brutal fight; If you are in melee range of me, you are in real danger of getting your shit kicked in. 99 times out of 100, I'm going to choke you to death with your own asshole. Most of the time, rangers are played by children who love bearbowing and absolutely shit themselves at the first sign of danger. Hell, I go after these first when I'm on my guard or mesmer...easy pickins. Most of them are shit. I will, however, run away from any well played ranger, and I will never ever let them get into melee range.

Ukerric_sl said:

There's been a couple changes during the lull between Season 1 and the upcoming season 2. Notably, they've made almost everything account-wide (dyes are account-wide, wardrobe of transmogs is account-wide), they've switched the "you have access to all traits" to "choose to do this event to get this trait, or pay skill points+gold". And well, they added Ascended after the launch as well.

But in regard of class dynamics, no. Nothing changed. I don't think they can change anything without throwing the entire combat system in the drain and rebuilding it, which I guess would probably be as well received by the current playerbase as NGE was.

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They changed a fair bit of things like that throughout 2013 too. The problem is that after all this time (nearly 2 years), they added very little content outside of the bi-weekly temp crap. They added ONE dungeon path in all this time, and to make it worse they deleted another one to keep the same number. Growing the available content must be a big No-no in their office. The only worthwhile, non-temp PVE addition since release was fractals (and southsun cove but it stillfeels half-finished even after the revamp). PVP-wise the only addition were some maps I think, and WvW finally had an overflow map added. That's about all, and even slow-as-shit Blizzard can manage a new continent with 5-10 dungeons/raids in 2 years. Under that light Anet's bi-weekly busy-work looks like wasted effort.

Ukerric_sl said:

Well, theoretically Season 1 ends up with awakening Mordremoth, which is Maguuma-based (what? you didn't knew that the Lion Arch drilling led to that? Well, neither did I).

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Predictions for season 2:

- opens one (1) new map (Maguuma jungle or wastes), potentially in 2-3 parts spread across 6+ months.
- 30 minutes of solo instance story stuff every 2 weeks, with the option of repeating it for 10 hours to get a special achievement.
- new cosmetic skin to grind in the open world zone every 2 weeks, takes 5ish hours to get.
- some armors and lots of weapon skins (must be easier to make) added to the gem store every month, plus misc crap like finishers, quaggan dolls and pan flutes.
- Anet will call this "an expansion worth of content" like they did with the first season, and it'll be as laughable then as it was in 2013
- the finale will actually ramp up to an interesting fight, but will be served with a side dish of grinding like the escape and battle for LA


I'll definitely check it out regardless of those low expectations. I guess there is a small glimmer of hope that they improve on their season 1 performance.

I'll end up playing this game again if they ever added a class or new weapons.