jaif.3518

I want to emphasize this - if you ain't dyin', you ain't tryin'. Don't be stupid, but don't be silly cautious. Learn your limits, swap skills and traits, and so on. I suspect in your case that timing is everything. Get online at reset, squeeze into your home BL or EB, and you'll likely find 2 or 3 tag, one of which at least is a pug tag. Many servers use voice chat and will verify you so you can listen. Off-hours you'll need to be patient. One of the best ways to learn is retaking camps and towers with other players, so scan the maps for those opportunities, and try to answer calls for help. -Jeff

My favorite memories are big zerg fights in comms, esp defending garrison against two enemy zergs. I also enjoy the call-to-arms from other maps, with mad rush to get somewhere in enough force to stop them, while they try to beat the clock knocking the lord down. You just never know how it's going to end, and it's a chaotic affair the whole way through. Respect to the pugmanders out there, friend or foe! -Jeff P.S. Smart roamers hang around those big fights and take out targets of opportunity. The best of them (not me!) burst into the backline, take out and stomp someone, and get away despite all the ranged pressure around them.

Race war! Pick the most popular race (I assume asura) in one corner, than break up the other 4 into 2 groups, then have it!

I've been playing with these numbers today. Per the wiki, troll unguent is 88 + Level^2 * 0.119 = 6797 total heal over 8s without healing power. We heal as one is 6520 all at once, and copies boons, and has a recharge of 20 v 25 for TU. Other than 1s vs .75s cast time, we heal as one is strictly better from what I've seen. Even if the numbers on the wiki are off, a general rule is that a heal all at once is better than a heal over time, so the HoT needs to be substantially more per second to make up for it.

I want to use my shortbow with my ranger for those off-hours times when our small group has irregular fights against their small group. I'm not concerned about being the best duellist, nor am I concerned about fighting zergs (I have other characters with big team builds for those fights). What's a good build for this? Bonus points for being strong in story/open world. -Jeff P.S. I've seen the trapper on metabattle, and it's interesting but I don't quite get it. Hoping for something else.

I've been running the holy warlock build against t1 zergs as a scum-pugging casual, not even joining squads a lot of the time. What you write above does not match my experience at all, and they certainly have plenty of competent groups. Do I die? Sure - I zag wrong, make a mistake, I die. But I get bags and situations very much like those vids too, and it happens a lot once you understand the positioning and cooldowns. This is not a roaming build - it's totally about positioning and understanding the flow of zergs. TBH, a cloud of rangers, mesmers, and thieves are vastly more dangerous to this build than the standard meta build, but that's old news - there's no "one true build". Again, not my experience. Especially when there's a significant number of rangers around (when aren't there? ), once you create a bunch of downs on the flanks or backline, they die fast. There's a lot of people with good reactions just waiting for an edge, and this build creates a lot of opportunities. The build makes a difference, it is not negligible. -Jeff

Please let us change characters on the map, or even while queued! Sometimes I'm on my roaming character, things heat up, and now I'll have to lose my position on the map just to get my zerg character. Or maybe I'm queued up, and want to PvE with another character while I wait. -Jeff

People are going to play games over the word "total", but I think it's much closer to that than to "tweak". I think the single biggest change needed is to go with PvP builds/amulets. No ascended, no food. This will limit some of the more grotesque disparities.

OP, I read some of your other threads - if you don't like mounts, and want fights, why the heck don't you go to PvP? There's lots of fights in PvP, the players are all there for the fights, and the gear is equalized? All of your complaining here seems pointless - even without mounts you'll get far more fights in PvP than WvW.

I like the build. I like the theme. I like how you managed a condi build good for zergs. However, your videos make it look easy. :-) Reality is that most people don't stand still into bunch, so you get a whole lot of running around and misses before you can get them in the choke and really blow them up. Covering downs is a great idea, though. I used to put poison on them with (others), hitting them with flame does get a fair share of secondary downs.

Core rifle is problematic. The burst is just a terrible skill, probably not worth using in any game mode except for amusement. The talent, crack shot, is in the trait line that rewards switching weapons. They should move the talent to a different trait line, and change the burst skill to something like "full auto", a conic aoe. Then it would have real use. -Jeff P.S. I too have a build for rifle warrior, but it's just for the imagery. My engineer and deadeye can use a rifle much better.

I only recently started playing my guardian full tilt (I dabbled a bit with burn builds in past years). I think bow #3 is too weak for a skill shot. If I were to make one tweak, I would have a successful hit result in a retaliation buff so it meshes well with other guardian traits. -Jeff

You don't have to stand inside the blob and fire inside the other blob, esp as a LB ranger, to succeed here. A zerg is a moving terrain feature that attracts numerous opportunities for roamers to make a kill...and to be killed. -Jeff