Mootillay

Since arenanet was determined to make classes a bit ambiguous role-wise in order to break free from the heavy, burdened chains of the "trinity" I've had some issues figuring out how I should play my ranger in PvE.  Oddly, I had this issue in GW1 too because it was sort of a midline CC class that offered a kind of CC that was far more effective against other players than PvE foes.  This is not the same ranger class--at all--but the question remains.. how do I play it in PvE?

Taking up the role of DPS sounded appealing, but the class lacks strong burst(a la warrior's eviscerate or 100b) and damage coefficients appear to be relatively low.  So try as you might to stack offensive stats, you will be disappointed because while you might be dealing more damage you will not see huge returns on your investments and survivability will go down the toilet.  Thus I came to the conclusion that while I'd like to contribute at least *some* damage it's not worth it to go full retard(glass cannon).

So if I'm not going to run DPS.. what's left? CC and support.  Frankly, ranger CC is mostly movement control with aoe snares.. not exactly super valuable in PvE.  The best skill(entangle) has an inhibitive cooldown and dungeon foes almost instantly break through the binding roots.  It's much better in most cases for a heavy to soak up aggro and bring foes together(a la guardian greatsword) than have a ranger attempt to mickey mouse snare everything together.

That leaves me with support.  There's the obvious option, that being spirits.  I tried this on for a bit, frost/stone spirit provide decent benefits.. but there is the crux of keeping spirits alive.  You can trait heavy for ranger spirit survival(extra health, movement) and they will still die because armor is low and pve foes slice them up.  In the end I decided that spirit of nature was worthwhile but only because it can heal/res people and the other elites seemed suspect.  The cooldown for the skill is inhibitive so it's more or less my choice because it's the lesser evil.

So the key element of the ranger support line? out the window.  I settled on boon spam instead.  Healing spring is actually a pretty good skill, it's a 15 second water field(finishers galore) and it provides condi removal with regeneration--which can be boosted greatly with the nature magic trait line.  What's not to like about it in a (typically) stationary PvE scenario?  In addition to this I can sport runes of altruism and trait vigorous renewal which will provide ally-wide might/fury/vigor on healing spring usage.  Extra boon duration via the runes and nature magic trait line make these boons go a little bit farther.  I threw in the warhorn for even more offensive boon stuffs.

The pet is a wildcard, you can use a pet that provides a number of different boons or perhaps a tanking pet to maintain aggro.. although, these pets are not as good at keeping themselves alive as human controlled heavy armor classes.  There are also pets that put down combo fields and provide finishers.  I'm thinking of using the red moa for additional fury.

Anyway, this is my sort of concept build for the moment; http://en.gw2skills....jVNLp6aYaYCyA-e

The idea is to linger around in semi-melee range to lay down healing spring and maintain call of the wild while chucking axes and arrows at things.  Feedback appreciated.

Don't ever let anyone tell you 5 warriors can't cruise through Arah's worst.

5x FGJ, a few OMM and GS spam is pretty absurd damage(constant uptime for fury and 25 stacks of might) along with decent support via soldier runes and healing shouts.

We are a PvX guild that aims to recruit casual and dedicated players.  We have a dedicated PvP contingent and hold long term goals for organized WvW and sPvP play.  We prefer the 'small but active' profile and players 18 years of age or older.  We don't want to be inclusive to a fault and we don't want to babysit, we just want to play and enjoy the game with common sense, lax rules and a competitive edge.

We have a mumble server for voice chat and our forums are located at http://pockettheory.forumatic.com .

Our members are primarily North American but our schedules vary.  We can and will group with Europeans as well as Australians and people in similar time zones.  Most of us are based in Fort Aspenwood, but being a member of this 'world' is not a prerequisite to join.

IGN: Mooty Goes Bananas / available PST afternoons

Just a few thoughts on SE(one of my favorite instances) post update.

I tried Path 1 last night, which was definitely in need of an update to lengthen the path as well as remove a certain 'platforming' exploit which was used to glitch Nokk and fight the boss more comfortably.  They've prevented players from using the exploit, which is all good and well, but after we killed the first golem boss, my party was overrun by an insurmountable mob of inquest.  Did we miss something, did anet drop the ball or do they just secretly not want us to run path 1 until a later date?

I read that previously, you could just wait 15 minutes and the grenadiers would stop coming, that might still work.. but that seems like a silly way to play through an instance.

Tonight I tried path 2.  This path is essentially the same as it was before except they made the electrical fields from the mark 2 golem far more deadly.  I haven't done path 2 too many times, so I'm not completely sure, but I think prior to the update the electrical fields only damaged players around the edges.  It could be they now damage players more often, but I think they just made it one large aoe area instead of the outside edge of a circle.  The golem fires these projectiles pretty often so they're not easy to consistently dodge.  Do we need aegis?  Are guardians now a required class for this run?

I really don't understand this change to path 2 at all.  People refused to run path 2 because it was a bit longer than the others, not because it was too easy.  So.. make it harder, maybe nigh impossible?