Guild Wars 2

In case you missed it, Jcbroe and Durzlla are now hosting the GW2 Ranger Podcast Arrow to the Knee. The show is live every other Sunday at 1pm PDT. Jcbroe and Durzlla talk about all things Ranger related, and this week will be covering what the new patch notes mean to the Ranger.

Episode 15: http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-ranger-podcast-arrow-knee-episode-16/

You can check out some of the past Ranger shows here: http://sittingonacouch.com/podcast/guildwars2/ranger-gw2/

Or you can tune in live this Friday on http://www.twitch.tv/soacgaming

If you have any questions or comments that you would like for them to cover regarding the Ranger please post here, and we will do our best to answer them on the show.

I will try to keep this post updated each time a new show goes to video.

Sundays at 1pm PST*

Durzlla.6295:

Sundays at 1pm PST*

Changed!

Wher’z mah podkhast?! Its been 2 weeks already.

Sorry if I came across rude, just watched this.

nagymbear.5280:

Wher’z mah podkhast?! Its been 2 weeks already.

Sorry if I came across rude, just watched this.

Lol it’s cool! There was SUPPOSED to be one last Subday, but Jcbroe decided to let me know literally last second he was out of town xD, we will absolutely have one this Sunday, we have a lot we want to talk about

I’m sorry!!! xD real life>gw2 unfortunately, and when the long distance relationship girlfriend says I can visit, I drop everything and run lol.

Still, there is a lot to talk about now, and we’re only getting more information this week, so I’m super excited for the upcoming discussion and wouldn’t miss it!

Durzilla, speak about the possibilities of Initiative based combat mech for Ranger

jcbroe.4329:

Still, there is a lot to talk about now…

…rangers react to other prof GM traits.

nagymbear.5280:

jcbroe.4329:

Still, there is a lot to talk about now…

…rangers react to other prof GM traits.

Because I don’t want to discuss it during the podcast and possibly derail the cast, I want to make a list of all the new traits I wouldn’t use at this point in time for all of the classes:

Won’t be using:

Elementalist: Any of them. None of them are more worthwhile than what’s currently available.

Engineer: Any of them. Same boat as elementalist.

Guardian: Any of them. Other slot choices are too good to give up for the new traits.

Mesmer: The only one I would (and will) use is Power Block.

Necromancer: A few of these are actually usable. The ones I wouldn’t use are: Parasitic Contagion, Renewing Blast.

Skipping ranger.

Thief: Any of them. Choices are already too good and hard to pick for certain builds.

Warrior: Personally, I’d only use: Burst Precision and Dual Wield Agility.

Let’s take a total count. Out of 35 new traits, I’m only impressed by 6 of them, not counting ranger.

Now, that’s my opinion obviously, but I’m not going to fall for the “shiny object” syndrome going around and associate new with better, because there’s a whole lot of circumstances and builds that would claim otherwise.

jcbroe.4329:

nagymbear.5280:

jcbroe.4329:

Still, there is a lot to talk about now…

…rangers react to other prof GM traits.

Because I don’t want to discuss it during the podcast and possibly derail the cast, I want to make a list of all the new traits I wouldn’t use at this point in time for all of the classes:

Won’t be using:

Elementalist: Any of them. None of them are more worthwhile than what’s currently available.

Engineer: Any of them. Same boat as elementalist.

Guardian: Any of them. Other slot choices are too good to give up for the new traits.

Mesmer: The only one I would (and will) use is Power Block.

Necromancer: A few of these are actually usable. The ones I wouldn’t use are: Parasitic Contagion, Renewing Blast.

Skipping ranger.

Thief: Any of them. Choices are already too good and hard to pick for certain builds.

Warrior: Personally, I’d only use: Burst Precision and Dual Wield Agility.

Let’s take a total count. Out of 35 new traits, I’m only impressed by 6 of them, not counting ranger.

Now, that’s my opinion obviously, but I’m not going to fall for the “shiny object” syndrome going around and associate new with better, because there’s a whole lot of circumstances and builds that would claim otherwise.

Really? None of the Engi ones? Well, i’m a turret/gadget (i swap between them) Engi, so having an AoE reflect and boon-a-polooza as options for my babies makes me absolutely ecstatic to dust off my fungineer again. That and the Gadget trait, because again my Engi is either Gadgets or Turrets and getting so many boons makes me happy.

For Mesmer i’m ABSOLUTELY going to take Maim the Disillusioned and Bountiful Disillusionment since my mesmer mainly runs a Confusion + Retal build designed to kick skill spammers in the teeth, and both those traits work a LOT better than what i currently have (AoE Confusion AND Torment? Oh dear god YESSS!)

As for my Ele, meh idk, MAYBE, i like the new GM traits but at the same time the fatal flaw with Ele is how pidgeonholed you are into either 0/30/0/10/30 or x/x/x/30/30, i mean if that’s fixed, by all means i’ll probably try at least blinding ashes and aquatic benevolence…

I don’t really play the others but I know my Guardian, Warrior, and Thief friend (as in 3 different friends) are all ecstatic about the new build options they get.

I’d describe my view on the ranger ones but that’s either in other threads and/or will be on the podcast xD

Today’s Arrow to the Knee should be up for viewing on the twitch channel. Like links? I do too! So here’s a link for all of you: http://www.twitch.tv/soacgaming/b/515730985

As much as I welcome your enthusiasm (its like fresh air to the ranger community) I don’t agree with your views on the new marksmanship and wilderness survival GM traits. I particularly don’t see why you would autoattack an ele casting meteor shower, when you have Point blank shot, and can interrupt instead. And if you can land 2 long range shots on an ele standing still, you can do that without Read the wind too. I get that this will make rangers more of a snipe type prof with zerker longbow, but it has been said by the community for a long time now tha MM bow traits are too much in one trait line. What I think loongbow needs is some sustain, and I think I recall Chapman saying so on an old SOTG as well. They did work on how the bow feels, as they added projectile speed and short range damage as well, and stealth (which is really fun and useful as well). And while I agree with the sentiment of having to choose between trait, longbow power rangers had to do that already. Of sustain and less congested traits Read the wind addressed none. It is yet another trait that makes something basic just work better. The same goes for Poison master as well. It is a 100 per second damage boost on 1200 condition damage and ca 140 per second on 2000 condition damage. At 2000 condition damage you will apply burning and bleeds for damage. Poison is a good addition and it definately has its uses in pvp, but again it is a trait that just makes something a bit better. Its not adding interesting play or a fresh air to condition builds, its just 100-140 more dps. You can already easily have 100% poison uptime without our pets applying conditions. And the fact that our pets applying condition that deals damage off of our traits is just a feature because their condition damage is god aweful to begin with.

Sorry if this seems like a rant, had to get it off my chest.

nagymbear.5280:

As much as I welcome your enthusiasm (its like fresh air to the ranger community) I don’t agree with your views on the new marksmanship and wilderness survival GM traits. I particularly don’t see why you would autoattack an ele casting meteor shower, when you have Point blank shot, and can interrupt instead. And if you can land 2 long range shots on an ele standing still, you can do that without Read the wind too. I get that this will make rangers more of a snipe type prof with zerker longbow, but it has been said by the community for a long time now tha MM bow traits are too much in one trait line. What I think loongbow needs is some sustain, and I think I recall Chapman saying so on an old SOTG as well. They did work on how the bow feels, as they added projectile speed and short range damage as well, and stealth (which is really fun and useful as well). And while I agree with the sentiment of having to choose between trait, longbow power rangers had to do that already. Of sustain and less congested traits Read the wind addressed none. It is yet another trait that makes something basic just work better. The same goes for Poison master as well. It is a 100 per second damage boost on 1200 condition damage and ca 140 per second on 2000 condition damage. At 2000 condition damage you will apply burning and bleeds for damage. Poison is a good addition and it definately has its uses in pvp, but again it is a trait that just makes something a bit better. Its not adding interesting play or a fresh air to condition builds, its just 100-140 more dps. You can already easily have 100% poison uptime without our pets applying conditions. And the fact that our pets applying condition that deals damage off of our traits is just a feature because their condition damage is god aweful to begin with.

Sorry if this seems like a rant, had to get it off my chest.

I’m not going to offer a dissenting point of view because it’s certainly a matter of opinion, and I am more than 100% agreeable that a lot more still needs to happen and a lot needs to be done and that even if some of our builds do get put in a good spot after the patch, it won’t necessarily be because of trait organization.

What I am going to say is that most of the traits in this game across all the professions that are strong and define builds are not Grandmaster Traits. Granted that every profession has a few useful grandmasters of course, but what I mean is that there are traits in the game like Cleansing Ire, Deceptive Evasion, Incendiary Ammo, Backpack Regenerator, Cleansing Wave, Elemental Attunement, Mug, Terror, Absolute Resolution, etc that boost every build or 90% of all the builds you can possible run, and most of those examples are only masters.

As a matter of fact, as far as Grandmaster dependency goes, Thief is the next most dependent class on their Grandmaster traits, but not only do they have high raw base damage output, but they have a bunch of other unique and defining class mechanics that the traits are just improvements to what the weapons and steal are already capable of.

I cannot think of a single trait for a ranger that is even remotely like any of the ones I mentioned. I guess the Beastmaster Traitline (Mighty Swap, Vigorous Swap) but that ends up being extremely limiting due to the inherent limitations of the pet versus certain parts of the games content.

That ends up being my biggest issue. I could care less about getting any more Grandmaster Traits, we are already so 30 point dependent on everything that it doesn’t end up improving build diversity at the end of the day. What I want is to be able to look through certain traitlines and instead of having a hard time choosing an adept or master trait because I’m looking for the least bad one, I want to be deciding on which one because they’re all so good it’s hard to pick.

Honestly the Marksmanship Traitline is perfect. It has exactly what I’m looking for. It’s the longbow that needs a rework because something is missing when you use it because it’s clunky and feels like a relic of an old build that never got updated when it hit live.

And sorry you don’t agree with our enthusiasm! I’m not going to try to convince you, just try to keep in mind that it isn’t a scripted discussion. My excitement for all of the PvP features alone boils over into me talking about the patch, so if that ever keeps me personally from me being as critical as people think I need to be, I apologize and will try to bring up more opposing viewpoints in the future

Its not that I don’t agree with your enthusiasm, I just don’t agree with you on Poison master and Read the wind. And your view is an opposing one to mine if you look at it that way, and I welcome that as it is needed for a good discussion.

nagymbear.5280:

Its not that I don’t agree with your enthusiasm, I just don’t agree with you on Poison master and Read the wind. And your view is an opposing one to mine if you look at it that way, and I welcome that as it is needed for a good discussion.

I do agree that poison master doesn’t really make our condi builds super interesting, personally I’d like to see something like “when you apply poison to a target who has more than X (I’m thinking 20 or 30) seconds of poison they also gain 5stscks of torment.” And then keep the poison from pet swap. It’d actually change up how the builds would work, and would encourage some pet usage in order to stack up poison so you could then through on some torment.

As for read the wind I do wish there was SOMETHING else added to it so it’s useful in PvE too, personally I’d like to see it increase our projectile finisher chance so we could use it to better utilize fields, and it’d fit in marks due to condi duration and power (both used for every field projectile finisher.), it’d also give something for PvE, and would indirectly be a damage and/or utility boost, and would sorta make sense with reading the winds because doing so could help you fire the arrow in a way that it’d catch the effect IE shoot arrows throw flames more properly.

Episode 14 is now up and rolling: http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-podcast-arrow-knee-episode-14/

Enjoy and keep the conversation going!

I’ve gotten to about 15 minutes in. I don’t know if you guys are right or wrong, but you’re awfully harsh and dismissive of “the ranger community” (which is also your target audience?) as a ranger-only player I feel like I’m very much part of the ranger community, even if I don’t always participate actively on the forums, and as such I feel clumped in with what you’re describing as “qq” and stupid rangers. Arrow to the Knee? More like, Arrow to the Heart :c

I’m not sure we are speaking of the same ranger community. The ranger community who accused a game developer of being a double agent because he posted on the thief forums. The ranger community who wants to stow their pets and get a 30% damage boost (a suggestion very VERY narrow minded, not considering the ranger community at all). The ranger community where a good 20% of posters are sure what the community thinks. The ranger community where players dismiss a suggestion like learning to play your pets properly.

I suggest not getting downhearted by what they are saying, takeing a step back and reading through the CDI thread as unbiased as you can. You will see that they a completely right when they say some of the rangers are suggesting things without clear oversight that would make rangers brokenly OP.

SafiMoyo.5130:

I’ve gotten to about 15 minutes in. I don’t know if you guys are right or wrong, but you’re awfully harsh and dismissive of “the ranger community” (which is also your target audience?) as a ranger-only player I feel like I’m very much part of the ranger community, even if I don’t always participate actively on the forums, and as such I feel clumped in with what you’re describing as “qq” and stupid rangers. Arrow to the Knee? More like, Arrow to the Heart :c

I’m just as much a part of that ranger community too though. I have my moments of QQ, and I will openly admit that I haven’t tried every build available and every playstyle before formulating my opinions on certain of those builds/playstyles, which means that at times I also tend to be “stupid” or ignorant.

However, I don’t believe it is either my or Durz’s intent to demean or insult. If anything, it should be taken as more of a challenge. We are attempting to challenge people (and ourselves) to disagree and dissent with what the loud majority thinks or what they discourage you to do. Throughout the entire guild wars 2 community, there are lots of formulated “meta” optimization theories and ideas about balance and what’s good and bad and etc, and lots of the time, those sentiments are filled with misconceptions and over-dramatizations, or even just fueled by bias based on gameplay experience or people projecting their expectations onto guild wars 2 only to be met with disappointment.

Personally, I only want the community to think critically and be constructive in discussions instead of being dismissive towards any new ideas or concepts just because it isn’t how they want something to be changed or they are just so jaded and disappointed that they are willing to shoot down everything to bring everybody down to their level.

Don’t be afraid to be an individual. Don’t let other people tell sway any of your ideas or opinions before you actually go through and test and try them. Vocal != accurate.

Essentially, all I mean by any negativity I may express is to take everything not supported by data with a grain of salt, and verify any data or data testing methods yourself before trusting somebody’s data for a theory/test that they post. All I want is for the misinformation to be eliminated, the doom and gloom to cease and desist, and to actually be able to have constructive conversations without people using arguments like “because we are bad as a class” or “because ANet hates us” and etc.

I don’t think I could put it any better than nagmybear and Jcbroe have already, I am absolutely part of the ranger community, and being so much apart of it is actually one of the main reasons I haven’t rerolled to an ele, or Mesmer back when I was “losing faith” in ranger.

I can say fully that once I started ignoring what people TOLD me was viable, and started using what I FOUND was viable I had much more fun, and success with my ranger than I ever did before hand.

I do NOT want to upset anyone, I just want to see the Ranger community as a whole improve, the CDI, and the comments from many people on this forum in the past, and the general mindset of “our class sucks” just really disappoints me, and I want to see that change.

Durzlla.6295:

I don’t think I could put it any better than nagmybear and Jcbroe have already, I am absolutely part of the ranger community, and being so much apart of it is actually one of the main reasons I haven’t rerolled to an ele, or Mesmer back when I was “losing faith” in ranger.

I can say fully that once I started ignoring what people TOLD me was viable, and started using what I FOUND was viable I had much more fun, and success with my ranger than I ever did before hand.

I do NOT want to upset anyone, I just want to see the Ranger community as a whole improve, the CDI, and the comments from many people on this forum in the past, and the general mindset of “our class sucks” just really disappoints me, and I want to see that change.

On the other hand, the ranger class isn’t going to improve if you pretend everything is alright. I think you two have been in the ranger community long enough to see how the negativity’s spread after each disappointing balance patch. Of course, I agree there are some ridiculous ranger change suggestions out there, but it seems natural to me that many people are upset/skeptical about the upcoming patch.

Personally I reckon most of the new GM traits are trash, but definitely excited for Survival of the Fittest.

kiwituatara.6053:

Durzlla.6295:

I don’t think I could put it any better than nagmybear and Jcbroe have already, I am absolutely part of the ranger community, and being so much apart of it is actually one of the main reasons I haven’t rerolled to an ele, or Mesmer back when I was “losing faith” in ranger.

I can say fully that once I started ignoring what people TOLD me was viable, and started using what I FOUND was viable I had much more fun, and success with my ranger than I ever did before hand.

I do NOT want to upset anyone, I just want to see the Ranger community as a whole improve, the CDI, and the comments from many people on this forum in the past, and the general mindset of “our class sucks” just really disappoints me, and I want to see that change.

On the other hand, the ranger class isn’t going to improve if you pretend everything is alright. I think you two have been in the ranger community long enough to see how the negativity’s spread after each disappointing balance patch. Of course, I agree there are some ridiculous ranger change suggestions out there, but it seems natural to me that many people are upset/skeptical about the upcoming patch.

Personally I reckon most of the new GM traits are trash, but definitely excited for Survival of the Fittest.

The only fundamental flaw that ever REALLY kittened me off because of how much it crippled us is being fixed, that flaw is the F2 and post pet swap unresponsiveness. A lot of people say we have no damage, but the ONLY reason they say that is because they don’t see as big of numbers as a warrior, when in reality our pet + our damage will generally be better than a warriors damage (vs one target, their cleave is more effective than ours), the only reason people think otherwise is warriors have big numbers, we have a lot of smaller ones, and a warrior is nearly kitten proof to play, where rangers require more skill due to pet management (of the pet was nonexistent we would be on par with warrior if not easier). If we had a DPS meter, this would be blatantly obvious, but we don’t, not do I think we ever should (with the exception of an NPC like Master of Damage from GW1)

Most of these “issues” and “problems” our prof has are just things the community WANTS us to do, but we can’t do. IE: petless ranger, and Out damage Melee weapons with a bow (totally doable in fights that are Melee unfriendly), there’s others that I agree with, like signets benefiting us AND the pet pre trait, and traps having wider radius pre trait (mostly because I hate having to throw them for the big radius) but overall we are fine, and once the patch hits live we will have less issues than some of the other profs. Like elementalist, those guys need love.

That’s fine from a PvE setting, but pet responsiveness will not resolve the WvW issue of pets, and so long as pets remain useless as a source of damage, the class’ damage will not be competetive with a Warrior.

On top of that, the skills and utilities that ANet gave to the Ranger class don’t allow it to maintain their sustained damage long enough to actually contribute anything meaningful because the kiting potential of the class is well below where it should be (especially when you consider what damage the class is actually capable of).

It’s the above that really bothers me with a lot of MMO’s these days. They go out of their way to handicap ranged damage but also remove a lot of the advantages ranged combat has in the first place. But then to further handicap the ranged damage because of a pet that doesn’t work at all in WvW, which is where the vast majority of the players actually play the game?

It’s this double dipping that will never allow a power option for this class to work at range. And Rangers are a far ways off from a power melee option being able to run with the hammer train with any success or real value.

RoyalPredator.9163:

Durzilla, speak about the possibilities of Initiative based combat mech for Ranger

how is this a possibility? can someone link news about this? im very interested.

Atherakhia.4086:

That’s fine from a PvE setting, but pet responsiveness will not resolve the WvW issue of pets, and so long as pets remain useless as a source of damage, the class’ damage will not be competetive with a Warrior.

On top of that, the skills and utilities that ANet gave to the Ranger class don’t allow it to maintain their sustained damage long enough to actually contribute anything meaningful because the kiting potential of the class is well below where it should be (especially when you consider what damage the class is actually capable of).

It’s the above that really bothers me with a lot of MMO’s these days. They go out of their way to handicap ranged damage but also remove a lot of the advantages ranged combat has in the first place. But then to further handicap the ranged damage because of a pet that doesn’t work at all in WvW, which is where the vast majority of the players actually play the game?

It’s this double dipping that will never allow a power option for this class to work at range. And Rangers are a far ways off from a power melee option being able to run with the hammer train with any success or real value.

PvP setting* in PvE it hardly matters WHEN your pets F2 goes off so long that it does, at some point.

And the utilities and skills do allow us to maintain our range and keep enemies at bay, not a thief granted but unless I’m missing something thieves normally run out of healthbar long before they run out of gap closers to throw at you. Not to mention, we are probably the BEST kiters in the game, but then again our competition is pretty minimal.

As for WvW, I personally have had little issue keeping my pet alive in it, the trick is to send your pet in AFTER the Melee run in, not as soon as you want to start shooting something. Sure, you do take a DPS hit, but you could be a pure Melee build (a lot of warriors, guardians, and thieves do this or have a build that may as well be this way) that drops your DPS by 100% instead of 50% at absolute max.

As some of us have discussed in the ranger balance thread, I think my point of view should be pretty clear that basically, while I think ranger would be in an okay spot if you are only looking at it individually and not in regards to the rest of the game, when you do look at the bigger picture, there are a lot of what I’ll refer to as “pacing” issues versus mainly the longbow and our pets, in which options that other classes have access to can simply throw more at us than what the longbow can handle.

That’s where we end up getting the perceived “kiting” issue, it’s not that we don’t have the tools, it’s that we have two different skills that are both single shot and very dodge-able, one of them is a stealth and the other a knockback. With the prevalence of stability and instantaneous gap closers and dodges and aegis (on certain classes), we just end up getting outpaced by certain classes because they can output more actions to counter our limited responses to their gap closers than what we can produce as a defense.

That’s all within the longbow though. And if the longbow was only meant to be a utility weapon (as opposed to a damage weapon, like looking a staff on a mesmer power build which is used more for it’s utility and clone generation that DPS), I feel like we wouldn’t have an entire traitline trying to make a single weapon better, and another grandmaster trait being introduced almost exclusively for that weapon.

The pets as well, particularly melee pets, are designed from the PvE AI in this game, which we all know as players has produced the “zerker meta” in which the AI is literally poor enough for people to go 100% glass and the be able to kite and dodge through 99% of the games content. The only fixes for that are faster attack speeds and a larger attack radius, because there are lots of times where the damage efficiency that we would get from pets gets wasted because they literally cannot catch what they are attacking, and then can’t hit that target when they catch up because the targets keeps moving.

I’ve already stated numerous times that if we aren’t going to get a fix for those types of issues and somehow make pets scale into large combat scenarios a little better, that we should be able to build entirely for the pet swapping mechanic or utility/support pets while wasting minimal to no damage potential on that investment. Beastmastery actually is really awesome for power builds right now with the three pet swap traits, but the problem is that for a power build, you essentially still get shoehorned into investing everything else into your own damage and end up with limited survivability, or survivability and end up with very limited damage output.

If the devs mean us to have to play with less defensive options in builds like I’m suggesting (essentially 30/x/x/x/30) then we need more baseline defensive utility, or some of the current stuff needs to be more reliable (hunter’s shot is like a 50% success rate for me at times, and long back shot gets entirely ignored by boons and instant gap closers).

I’m still looking forward to a trait reorganization of some sort. Our Skirmishing line is flat out terrible for power builds outside of the stats it gives, and while we have many of the pieces we need to make very interesting and coherent builds, most of those options are 30 trait point options (even more on April 15th) when what we needed was for more of our current options to get the “Spirits Unbound” treatment and drop them some tier levels so they can be integrated into more playstyles and more build diversity gets created because of it.

There, I think I’ve said my long winded piece now lol.

Jcbroe has a point in his discussions. Basically I feel that the rangers traits are overly dependent on grand master traits to be of any use. Obviously the pet is another issue on his own, but I do have the same problem where I am choosing a trait not because is good, but because is the least worst from the list I am provided with.

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-ranger-podcast-arrow-knee-episode-15/

Episode 15 for your listening pleasure

Odd point after listening to it.. I’m someone who you will see opening a fight (certainly against warriors, but often against rangers and other classes to) with SB#5.

The reason is pretty simple.. 99% of warriors (and a lot of other classes to) run their equivalent of Shared Anguish. If I save my CC till when they try to heal or when I really want to interupt them, that trait will be up and ready to protect them making my interupt useless. I’d rather open with SB#5 right at the start, knowing that it has a 30s CD and their trait has a 90s CD, so later on when I do need to interupt them I know it will work.

I’m sure plenty of peopel do just spam it without thinking and thats bad, but there can be some logic behind using it early on even if it appears random

Cufufalating.8479:

Odd point after listening to it.. I’m someone who you will see opening a fight (certainly against warriors, but often against rangers and other classes to) with SB#5.

The reason is pretty simple.. 99% of warriors (and a lot of other classes to) run their equivalent of Shared Anguish. If I save my CC till when they try to heal or when I really want to interupt them, that trait will be up and ready to protect them making my interupt useless. I’d rather open with SB#5 right at the start, knowing that it has a 30s CD and their trait has a 90s CD, so later on when I do need to interupt them I know it will work.

I’m sure plenty of peopel do just spam it without thinking and thats bad, but there can be some logic behind using it early on even if it appears random

Now that is a very valid reason to pop it at the start, personally I’ll try to still interrupt something just in case they don’t have the trait, and if they do not have the trait I’d hope you wouldn’t fire it off at the start.

PS: Mirror of Anguish can be turned against the Mesmer by using knock back shot to increase the gap between you even more than it does normally, and if paired with a stun break (QZ for example) can turn you abusing that trait into a death sentence for the Mesmer.

Aha.. never thought of that. I rarely use LB, and actually rarely see mesmers taking that trait because theirs is a Master instead of Adept.. but still.. Interesting :P

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-ranger-podcast-arrow-knee-episode-16/

It’s up and ready to roll. – Audio only will be up tonight.