Guild Wars 2

Just finished watching PvP Season 2 NA Grand Final on YouTube (Congrats to Team PZ, BTW) and their roamers were a Thief and a Druid with Staff and S/D.

My main is a Druid and across open spaces and between nodes i think im pretty quick with traited GS #3 and Staff #3 skills, i often find im either slowing up or catching the lead front guys of a zerg.

For me, I play mostly EotM, fairly new at R58 so sorry if this has been discussed before but it fascinates me because ive only seen 2 classes consistently quicker or same in travelling/traversing speed, which were a crazy fast Thief and many Mesmers.

What do you guys think?
Id love to hear your thoughts / opinons on this as i dont play other classes.

Ive even written (not posted) a speed guide for Rangers/Druids, but put this in WvW because thats what i play and where it relates for me but also i find WvW use Speed a GREAT deal and in my eye, you guys are pretty pro.

Thief is the fastest with Unhindered Combatant, Shortbow 5 and Shadowstep. There’s no catching a Thief running these.

Druid is second with perma-swiftness and Staff 3 with Warrior coming third using Greatsword 3 and Sword 2 with 25% movement speed bonus.

My money is on Nike Warrior. Sword / Warhorn + Greatsword, plus Bulls Charge + that new leap skill from the elite spec.

Mesmer/Necro underwater champions.

Avigrus.2871:

My money is on Nike Warrior. Sword / Warhorn + Greatsword, plus Bulls Charge + that new leap skill from the elite spec.

Mesmer/Necro underwater champions.

Nope. Thief is faster. The swiftness change during combat made warrior even slower than druid I think.

Thief>Druid>Usain Warri

I have played every profession and elite spec and Daredevil (elite spec of thief) is by far the fastest. You can spam out shortbow #5 with locking ground target to max range and then trait your dodge to give you a little nudge foreward. You can also equip shadowstep, the initiative regeneration signet, the endurance restoring heal, and some other stuff. You also have Steal and 50% fast endurance regeneration.

The second fastest profession is not even close to Daredevil. If you want to know the second fastest profession, it’s Warrior with GS + Sw/W with permanent swiftness, reduced GS recharge, reduced sword recharge, bulls charge, reduced physical skill recharge.

After that it’s probably Druid with GS + Staff. After Druid, I’m not really sure what the remaining order would be. A mesmer with mimic + blink + temporal curtain, an ele with the movement signet + lightning flash + lightning hammer (skill 2 spam) + fiery greatsword are probably the next fastest.

OK, so we ALL agree Thief is Number 1!

I forgot about Ele, I watch Wooden Potato videos and he’s is super quick and seems to be always using skills too move.

As for non standard, Paul from Team PZ (PVP) looked to 180, Sword 2, 180, Sword 2, Dagger ?, Staff 3, that’s 4 leaps! He was quick.

I’ve not seen a warrior in the front of the zerg, I’ll have to look more closely next time, thanks for this.

But Mesmer? Only 3 leaps?

ShortnCurly.9018:

OK, so we ALL agree Thief is Number 1!

I forgot about Ele, I watch Wooden Potato videos and he’s is super quick and seems to be always using skills too move.

As for non standard, Paul from Team PZ (PVP) looked to 180, Sword 2, 180, Sword 2, Dagger ?, Staff 3, that’s 4 leaps! He was quick.

I’ve not seen a warrior in the front of the zerg, I’ll have to look more closely next time, thanks for this.

But Mesmer? Only 3 leaps?

Yeah, mesmer isn’t as fast as people keep claiming. The way you get 3 “leaps” is you use mimic while in continuum split to get its effect and then get to use blink, mimic, blink, blink for a pretty quick 3600 travel every 60-72s if traited for CD reduction on all. 50% swiftness uptime on signet of inspiration helps with the way temporal curtain now stacks properly too.

Though the better question to ask is what’s the fastest in viable roaming builds. Though it would still be thief, Druid, warrior but some of the other positions might change, like ele would probably be 4th due to FGS, reaper could do decently because of reaper shroud 2 with enough LF, engineers are pretty quick too and revenant with phase traversal on ambient mobs could do well.

+1 to Thief vote as best mobility…

Back in hot beta(before the nerfs to Phase Traversal)Shiro seemed to get you around about as fast if there were targets to PT towards. But like apharma said above, Mesmer has a massive port ability every minute or so. Like 4800ish? units with a staff equipped. But you don’t really see people do that combo. It isn’t practical. After that I’d say Nike Warrior, Druid, Ele, Scrapper and so on.

thief always outruns warrior if they are dedicated to it even if the warrior maxes all speed abilities out. I don’t get why nobody has mentioned revenant in this thread yet. I had one outrun my warrior running sword + gs…i think i might have even had been using bulllrush that time I can’t remember. I remember being utterly amazed the revenant was faster than me though.

With thief you can jump on targets and flee from and to miles within a second. Maybe you can hop 6000 unites within a second or two (3k in + 3k out) hit and instantly reset the fight if you are not wining. This is why thief is untouchable in wvw. This plus the invisibility is op in an open area game mode and this is why half of the roamers are thieves/daredeviles

Avigrus.2871:

My money is on Nike Warrior. Sword / Warhorn + Greatsword, plus Bulls Charge + that new leap skill from the elite spec.

Mesmer/Necro underwater champions.

Nice try. Maybe nxt time play the actual game before posting.

Silberfederling.9302:

Avigrus.2871:

My money is on Nike Warrior. Sword / Warhorn + Greatsword, plus Bulls Charge + that new leap skill from the elite spec.

Mesmer/Necro underwater champions.

Nice try. Maybe nxt time play the actual game before posting.

In his/her defense they are really fast when they spec for it and ‘up there’ in the speed ratings.

Thief for sure the fastest. Ranger #2 I think. I am not sure what the next would be, its either:

Warrior (GS/Sword+Shield)

Revenant (as long as they have a target in Assassin stance)

Guardian (No swiftness, but if they have a target with sword 2, judges intervention and GS3, they are pretty good gap closers.)

Either Thief with all their teleports + spammable initi skills otherwise nike Warrior GS + Sword leaps and bull’s charge etc.

Nike Warrior being faster than GS/Staff Druid is completely perception.

Rush and Whirlwind Attack is actually really slow (out of combat) since it is no longer affected by Swiftness which gave it extra distance travelled. Sword Leap 2 got slightly stronger with HoT since Sword finally got a 20% cooldown reduction trait but still 6.4s cooldown for a 3/4 sec 600 range leap isn’t exactly killing it.

But as a Druid that has chased down Nike Warriors in WvW especially love the stuck-on-a-rock Warrior Rush, you’ll see it eventually. It may take a while for the Druid to catch up depending on Warrior headstart/Druid’s recent use of cooldowns but it’ll happen…I’ve done it many times.

Thief still beats it all. Druid is second. Warrior is third.

The Dare Devil is so much faster than every other class that it would be liking racing a super car against a minivan.

A thief build often runs Unhindered, Signet of Agility, Shadow Step and Short Bow. That means perma-speed, 2k travel in dodges, 1200 from SS, 1800 from Infiltrators and then cap it off with another 1200 from steal before they are fully out of gas. They also have skills such as Withdraw and movement hindering abilities simply do not stick. Oh and it can get really frustrating if they are running Shadow Trap.

Thieves can easily move 7k in a few seconds and that is from a functionally dangerous build not just a build that is built for speed.

If you think you are “chasing” a thief and keeping up, most of the time they are just stretching you away from the herd so they can turn and burn.

Get the warrior to equip a bulls charge, and signet of rage and you got a race. Perma 33% upkeep plus 3 gap closers.

Should note the warhorn keeps the elite swiftness up.

Artaz.3819:

Nike Warrior being faster than GS/Staff Druid is completely perception.

Rush and Whirlwind Attack is actually really slow (out of combat) since it is no longer affected by Swiftness which gave it extra distance travelled. Sword Leap 2 got slightly stronger with HoT since Sword finally got a 20% cooldown reduction trait but still 6.4s cooldown for a 3/4 sec 600 range leap isn’t exactly killing it.

But as a Druid that has chased down Nike Warriors in WvW especially love the stuck-on-a-rock Warrior Rush, you’ll see it eventually. It may take a while for the Druid to catch up depending on Warrior headstart/Druid’s recent use of cooldowns but it’ll happen…I’ve done it many times.

Thief still beats it all. Druid is second. Warrior is third.

Great summary Artaz!
This does seem to be the general thought.

Much liked the thoughts on Druid catching Worrior too, so they are obviously very close.
But yes, thief, super car vs minivan, loved that one, killing myself laughing.

Yesterday as I joined for some EotM fun, the zerg was at another keep, they challenged me to get there in 20 secs!
I managed about 25 second which is from OG to BL keep with wurm tunnel used and not traited for shorter cool downs on GS or Staff.