Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I just started playing SPVP with my girlfriend a couple of days ago.

She uses a ranger (LB/GS power build) while I used a thief (DP/SB power build) but I feel like both of us working together might be too squishy since we are both bad against Warriors/Guardians.

Is it just my imagination or is there another class that could work better with a Ranger?

Thanks!

Thief hard counters warrior. The only problem you’re going to run into is condi teams, medi guards, cele engineers, and of course other thieves and rangers that can burst you down first. This roaming combo counters out warriors, ele, mesmers, and Necros.
If you see 2+ guardians, have the ranger swap to a condition build or something. And maybe you swap to s/d. Medi guard is the real terror for a comp with zerker ranger and thief

If you want something that synergizes better with ranger, try power necro. You guys will have mad aoe pressure for team fights and you can peal for her better with fears and immobs. Play it with barbarians amulet for a few games to get the hang of it, then swap to zerkers once you’re comfortable.

Here’s how team fights should go; you run in, pop death shroud 5, fear the most bursty person targeting you or her, after the immob kicks in she drops lb5 and you drop your wells on everyone. Have her use entangle to keep everyone locked in your wells for full duration while you pop lich and kill them (they won’t be able to dodge). At this point, she should start pealing for you with lb 4, pet cc skills, gs 5 and 4. Immediately pop death shroud out of lich and spam 1 on the target with the lowest health, throw in a fear to keep them from healing while you finish them off. If you are low, save the last bit of life force to run away to safety and heal up. If either of you gets immobilized, be sure to cleanse it with staff 4.

Zodian.6597:

Thief hard counters warrior. The only problem you’re going to run into is condi teams, medi guards, cele engineers, and of course other thieves and rangers that can burst you down first. This roaming combo counters out warriors, else, mesmers, and Necros.
If you see 2+ guardians, have the ranger swap to a condition build or something. And maybe you swap to s/d. Medi guard is the real terror for a comp with zerker ranger and thief

No Thief doesn’t hard counter Warrior. Have you ever fought a shoutbow without screwing up on Thief? It’s annoying as hell. If it was a hard counter Thief would have a favorable match up with against ALL builds but it doesn’t do that well vs. shoutbow by itself. If you’re saying this from a 2v1 gank perspective, that just means Thief is good at plussing for when it counts.

You’re probably talking about a different build, but it’s not hard to kill most Thieves on that easy shoutbow build.

Zodian.6597:

If you want something that synergizes better with ranger, try power necro. You guys will have mad aoe pressure for team fights and you can peal for her better with fears and immobs. Play it with barbarians amulet for a few games to get the hang of it, then swap to zerkers once you’re comfortable.

Here’s how team fights should go; you run in, pop death shroud 5, fear the most bursty person targeting you or her, after the immob kicks in she drops lb5 and you drop your wells on everyone. Have her use entangle to keep everyone locked in your wells for full duration while you pop lich and kill them (they won’t be able to dodge). At this point, she should start pealing for you with lb 4, pet cc skills, gs 5 and 4. Immediately pop death shroud out of lich and spam 1 on the target with the lowest health, throw in a fear to keep them from healing while you finish them off. If you are low, save the last bit of life force to run away to safety and heal up. If either of you gets immobilized, be sure to cleanse it with staff 4.

Thanks! We will try it out tonight)))

Any other suggestions is appreciated!

BlackTruth.6813:

Zodian.6597:

Thief hard counters warrior. The only problem you’re going to run into is condi teams, medi guards, cele engineers, and of course other thieves and rangers that can burst you down first. This roaming combo counters out warriors, else, mesmers, and Necros.
If you see 2+ guardians, have the ranger swap to a condition build or something. And maybe you swap to s/d. Medi guard is the real terror for a comp with zerker ranger and thief

No Thief doesn’t hard counter Warrior. Have you ever fought a shoutbow without screwing up on Thief? It’s annoying as hell. If it was a hard counter Thief would have a favorable match up with against ALL builds but it doesn’t do that well vs. shoutbow by itself. If you’re saying this from a 2v1 gank perspective, that just means Thief is good at plussing for when it counts.

You’re probably talking about a different build, but it’s not hard to kill most Thieves on that easy shoutbow build.

Yeah, I guess shoutbow at higher mmr can be a hard matchup for d/p thief. But he said he just started playing, so he’s probably going to be more commonly in matchups where he can just steal into a black powder and win vs warrior. Personally, I don’t even see many ppl running shouts outside of tryhards in team queue because of how boring it is. And I fell like with thief you should still be able to win in this matchup by simply blind spamming the final thrusts and ripping might stacks with steal it’s just a long fight.

Zodian.6597:

BlackTruth.6813:

Zodian.6597:

Thief hard counters warrior. The only problem you’re going to run into is condi teams, medi guards, cele engineers, and of course other thieves and rangers that can burst you down first. This roaming combo counters out warriors, else, mesmers, and Necros.
If you see 2+ guardians, have the ranger swap to a condition build or something. And maybe you swap to s/d. Medi guard is the real terror for a comp with zerker ranger and thief

No Thief doesn’t hard counter Warrior. Have you ever fought a shoutbow without screwing up on Thief? It’s annoying as hell. If it was a hard counter Thief would have a favorable match up with against ALL builds but it doesn’t do that well vs. shoutbow by itself. If you’re saying this from a 2v1 gank perspective, that just means Thief is good at plussing for when it counts.

You’re probably talking about a different build, but it’s not hard to kill most Thieves on that easy shoutbow build.

Yeah, I guess shoutbow at higher mmr can be a hard matchup for d/p thief. But he said he just started playing, so he’s probably going to be more commonly in matchups where he can just steal into a black powder and win vs warrior. Personally, I don’t even see many ppl running shouts outside of tryhards in team queue because of how boring it is. And in my experience, you can still win in this matchup by simply blind spamming the final thrusts and ripping might stacks with steal it’s just a long fight.

Hey,

Since you seem to know quite a bit about the subject, can I ask you another question?

When should you use a finisher on the opponent? Should it always be a priority or is it more of a “only do it when it’s easy to do”(no enemies around) kind of thing?

Thanks!

Kount.5704:

Hey,

Since you seem to know quite a bit about the subject, can I ask you another question?

When should you use a finisher on the opponent? Should it always be a priority or is it more of a “only do it when it’s easy to do”(no enemies around) kind of thing?

Thanks!

As a thief, you can get away with stomping in a lot of situations other classes can’t by either going stealth, dropping a black powder on the downed body, or exploiting shadowstep. The class you’ll really need to drop black powder for is guardian, since their aoe knockback doesn’t require a target. If you’re in a teamfight against a comp with limited aoe dps, use blackpowder -> heartseaker combo on top of the body to blind enemy teammates and stealth stomp. If you’re trying to stomp on a team with lots of Aoe (see hammer warrior); start the stomp, then shadowstep out of the fight while channeling the animation, stepping back in to complete the stomp.

Never stomp an ele, thief, or mesmer in a team fight unless they are being rezed in an x Vs. 2 situation (sometimes you can get the thief if you’re quick with shadowstep, but aoe will usually burst their body down anyways); these classes will always just port away. Always stomp warriors, rangers, turret engis, and (minion mancer) necros because these classes have the easiest time getting back up with self rez or rally if left unchecked for more than like 10 seconds. If you see enemy team rezzing, you can use pistol 4 to interrupt their rez, and sb 4 + cluster bomb spam to slow it down significantly.

For other classes, stomping is largely dependent on stablility. When you stomp in a teamfight, everyone is going to try and interupt you. Since you can stealth, this counters like 1/2 the main CC skills in the game, only leaving you vulnerable to higher CD aoe interrupts like mesmer’s GS 5 and necro’s staff fear. Hammer warriors can have a lot of aoe CC, though, which is why you must use shadow step if a hammer warrior is present. In higher MMR, rangers will use their pet’s to CC you while they are downed. Ranger has the most devastating downed state in the game if played correctly, with 4 CC skills and a self rez via pet. Shadow step away to dodge the wolf fear if you’re playing against a decent ranger.

tldr;
don’t stomp in teamfight: thief, ele, mesmer.
MUST stomp in teamfight: ranger, warrior, mm necro, turret engi. Drop black powder, heartseeker through it and stomp.
If outside teamfight: drop black powder on body works for everything but ranger. You might want to stealth stomp thief, ele, mesmer to save time.
Vs hammer warrior in teamfight: shadow step away while your stomp is channeling then step back in to complete it and avoid aoe dmg/cc interrupts.

This is the dream! Well… maybe not. Here are my favorite combos with ranger:
Ranger + PoC necro
Ranger + s/x ele
Ranger + thief

As long as the thief calls his refuge and his black powder I can often use it to reset the fight with the thief (standing in refuge or swooping through black powder). Moreover, once stealthed in a situation like that we can use my pet to lock down a target (using canines) and then burst together. It’s actually REALLY nice in 2 v 2s to be paired with a thief imo because both the ranger and the thief can kite and wait for the opportunities they need. You can also do things like split up… so if they have 2 people on the node and the theif is on one side and the ranger is on the other they can’t look at both high dps enemies at once which can make it really easy for the thief to do its job.

+ With great coordination you can do healing spring + cluster bombs to reset or just be more selfish and use troll but have SoR for condi clear for the thief (as well as yourself).

Power ranger + DPS is my favorite combos. I thin you’re doing it right.

Eurantien.4632:

As long as the thief calls his refuge and his black powder I can often use it to reset the fight with the thief (standing in refuge or swooping through black powder). Moreover, once stealthed in a situation like that we can use my pet to lock down a target (using canines) and then burst together. It’s actually REALLY nice in 2 v 2s to be paired with a thief imo because both the ranger and the thief can kite and wait for the opportunities they need.

+ With great coordination you can do healing spring + cluster bombs to reset or just be more selfish and use troll but have SoR for condi clear for the thief (as well as yourself).

I totally forgot ranger GS had the leap finisher casted to it. And it’s what like 10s cd? That’s a lot of stealth opportunities if well cordinated. You could peal simply by precasting black powder into a shadowstep and letting the ranger jump through the field and run away in stealth. I guess there’s a lot of synergy finisher/field wise, it just might be pretty hard to set up consistently in a real game.

Kount.5704:

Hi,

I just started playing SPVP with my girlfriend a couple of days ago.

She uses a ranger (LB/GS power build) while I used a thief (DP/SB power build) but I feel like both of us working together might be too squishy since we are both bad against Warriors/Guardians.

Is it just my imagination or is there another class that could work better with a Ranger?

Thanks!

For your GF,
Signet of Stone + Rampage as One
Those two alone should make a difference against a guardian (about 80% of them)
If She sees them run with a hammer, pop rampage as one and laugh.
If she notice shes running low on HP pop signet of stone and have her retreat back to you. (won’t make her immune to existing condi damage) OR if you are down, have her pop signet of stone to try and quickly res you back up.

Heal wise, I would suggest she brings Healing Spring
Water Field AoE heal that will heal her and you, you both have a couple skills to take advantage of the water field. As a thief, if you have short bow there’s the spam finisher. As a Ranger, she has Great Sword 3 “Swoop” which is a Leap Finisher. As long as her arrows go over the water field, LB 1+2+3+4 will have a chance at physical projectiles “Regeneration”.

She can use this same strategy with a couple of your combo fields: Shadow Refuge (Dark) + Smoke Screen (Smoke). If she uses GS 3 on your Shadow Refuge it will trigger Leap Finisher for 3 seconds of Blindness. If she shoots over Shadow Refuge, she has a chance to steal life with each shot. With Smoke field, she can gain 3 seconds of stealth with GS 3. If she decides to shoot over it, she has a chance to cause 3 seconds of blindness.

When it comes to Guardians, it should come down to one of two factors:
1) Is the guardian running Wall of Reflection?
A) If so, don’t use LB against one
~)Use Great Sword for damage, Rampage as one for stability, Signet of Stone as a SoS
B) If not, are they running pure burning?
~) Watch your status bar and work as a team
~) LB + GS can be used, you both should take advantage of the combos and just dps the guardian down as fast as possible withing respect of your teams situation. (no need to chase or lose a point for a kill)

Recommendation for one of her skills:
Signet of Renewal, the passive sucks “one condi every 10 seconds”
but she wouldn’t be running it for the passive, the active is what she
wants it for. “Your per pulls ALL conditions from NEARBY allies to itself”
It’s a great regrouping skill if you’re facing a nasty condi necro/ mesmer/ warrior. Sort of a Soft Reset on a fight

Pet wise:
Juvenile Wolf :
Fear
Knock Down

Since you both are running as a pair:

Fern Hound:
Regens on any allies within range
Knock Down

When i’m playing with my friend, I love it when she brings her Thief ^-^
If it’s just not doing it for you, you can try Guardian and keep applying boons.

I can’t thank you guys enough for all of this useful info!

We are definitively going to take the time and read up on this stuff.

Thanks a lot!

I’d actually discourage playing a thief, particularly with a LB ranger. There’s two main reasons for this:

1) A thief is best as a high mobility roamer that quickly takes advantage of any uncapped point and then leaves to the next place. This means you’ll either leave your GF alone a lot or you’ll not be playing your class to its full extent.

2) Thieves are squishy and when playing with a LB ranger, you’ll need someone to stand on the point (since LB does best off point sniping). While a S/D thief can survive in some team fights, it’s definitely not a great contender for someone to stay engaged with a fight while a teammate is off-point.

My recommendations would be Engineer, Power Necro, or D/D Ele. These classes can sit on a point and brawl while your gf snipes from a distance.

Zodian.6597:

Eurantien.4632:

As long as the thief calls his refuge and his black powder I can often use it to reset the fight with the thief (standing in refuge or swooping through black powder). Moreover, once stealthed in a situation like that we can use my pet to lock down a target (using canines) and then burst together. It’s actually REALLY nice in 2 v 2s to be paired with a thief imo because both the ranger and the thief can kite and wait for the opportunities they need.

+ With great coordination you can do healing spring + cluster bombs to reset or just be more selfish and use troll but have SoR for condi clear for the thief (as well as yourself).

I totally forgot ranger GS had the leap finisher casted to it. And it’s what like 10s cd? That’s a lot of stealth opportunities if well cordinated. You could peal simply by precasting black powder into a shadowstep and letting the ranger jump through the field and run away in stealth. I guess there’s a lot of synergy finisher/field wise, it just might be pretty hard to set up consistently in a real game.

I’ve done it pretty consistently, but it helps a TON when things are called because otherwise it rarely happens. + it can be a double leap finisher…. 6s of stealth… or 3 from hunter’s shot -> double leap… mmm, can you smell that esports?

I think my favorite 2 v 2 pair of all time had to be with a thief (Steb, the Prince of Downedstate). I know he wasn’t the greatest, but we sure had some epic 2 v 2s vs all sorts of things. Granted most of those fights were at far because of course with 2 dps you have to play to win the fight, not the node.