Guild Wars 2

Hi, I play shatter Mesmer/backstab thief and my Achilles heel seems to be bunker rangers.
No matter what i try i can’t break through their tankiness and hp, and they peck at me slowly with conditions untill I’m dead.
Is there a weakness to these kind of builds that i can expose?
Any advices?
Thanks

I’m not helping any kitten mesmer or thief kill me, you guys are enough of a pain as it is pfft.

noone smart will answer to you =)

Talek.6795:

noone smart will answer to you =)

In reality, the good players always look for a challange and they’re not afraid to give some tips since they’re confident of their skill in battle.
What about you?

Ranger is a challenging class in it’s self. Rangers have work hard to be where they are now. How do you beat a bunker ranger! Thats easy learn your class. Over come your weakness. Improve on your strengths.

QQ in the forums 4x a day in different threads and different subforums (I recomend WvW, sPvP, your class forum, ranger class forum. But you can take it all the way to the suggestions or game discussions forums) untill they nerf the class or implement wvw traps to make it unable to use its mechanics for 30secs or more…

Ok, serious now…
Really depends on the ranger spec.
Check weapons and pets…
You need to know what pet hes using and what they do.
Ranger bunkers go heavy on healing. So poison is important.
If hes using shortbow, dont turn your back to him.
If he got no signets, he’s probably a trapper, get ready to avoid the area where he throws little bags.

I play a Shortbow + Greatsword hybrid BM, and sometimes I switch to a SB + GS bunker spec. If you’re having trouble killing us 1v1, if you can, burst down our pets. Kill them first. Without our pets, our damage suffers a lot, and our utility also suffers. When playing PvP, there are two things that make me nervous. One of those things is when my fingers slip up and I hit the wrong key. lol. The other thing is when my pet dies. Then, there’s one thing that gets me panicked. That’s when both of my pets are dead.

Other than killing our pets, I honestly can’t think of a solid counter to bunkers. I haven’t come across someone who’s been able to kill me easily or kill me easier than others because of what they did. :/

Lobo gave some good general tips.

lLobo.7960:

QQ in the forums 4x a day in different threads and different subforums (I recomend WvW, sPvP, your class forum, ranger class forum. But you can take it all the way to the suggestions or game discussions forums) untill they nerf the class or implement wvw traps to make it unable to use its mechanics for 30secs or more…

Ok, serious now…
Really depends on the ranger spec.
Check weapons and pets…
You need to know what pet hes using and what they do.
Ranger bunkers go heavy on healing. So poison is important.
If hes using shortbow, dont turn your back to him.
If he got no signets, he’s probably a trapper, get ready to avoid the area where he throws little bags.

I appreciate the advice, the signets cue is smart, noted!
Also,about poison, coming to think of it, on top of poison on auto attack, mu thief build has access to choking gas, a pulsing poison field.
I also have dagger storm, now if I combo these two together…
That’s whole 8 seconds of projectile reflection + poisonous daggers bouncing bleedig and crippling both the ranger and the pets and they bounce off of targets!
That for sure will give me a way to pressure the ranger enough and cripple his healing!
I’m gonna try that on the next bunker ranger i see.
Thanks, anything else to add?

Lol! Figure it out pro! I’m not telling you kitten.

Confusion. Confusion. Confusion. To both the pet and the ranger.

roadkill.3749:

Lol! Figure it out pro! I’m not telling you kitten.

Without even knowing what you play, I bet I could pwn you 1v1 any day.
Simply because the champs have nothing to hide, they know if their foe discovers a weakness to exploit, they will always think of a counter.
The response of players such ad yourself give away your skill level, sadly.
I wish you good luck nonetheless

Buttercup.5871:

Confusion. Confusion. Confusion. To both the pet and the ranger.

Thats highly applicable on my Mesmer, thanks.
Brw if you guys need some advice on dealing with thieves/mesmers – ask away, these are my two favorite lvl 80s

MightyMe.1356:

roadkill.3749:

Lol! Figure it out pro! I’m not telling you kitten.

Without even knowing what you play, I bet I could pwn you 1v1 any day.
Simply because the champs have nothing to hide, they know if their foe discovers a weakness to exploit, they will always think of a counter.
The response of players such ad yourself give away your skill level, sadly.
I wish you good luck nonetheless

You just pwned yourself…and likely don’t even realize it.

I wish you good luck nonetheless.

Forzani.2584:

MightyMe.1356:

roadkill.3749:

Lol! Figure it out pro! I’m not telling you kitten.

Without even knowing what you play, I bet I could pwn you 1v1 any day.
Simply because the champs have nothing to hide, they know if their foe discovers a weakness to exploit, they will always think of a counter.
The response of players such ad yourself give away your skill level, sadly.
I wish you good luck nonetheless

You just pwned yourself…and likely don’t even realize it.

I wish you good luck nonetheless.

I tried to prevent him from start, honestly… =)

Spec phantasm mesmer. Keep moving so the ranger’s pet can’t hit you. Spam your stealth utilities to keep the pet re.t;arded.

Dodge throw torch and their winter’s bite (frost axe), and stay at a distance so their splitblade will never hit you for more than a stack of bleeding or two. The BM bunker ranger needs to get close to deal the brunt of his condition burst. If you can keep kiting him and the pet and applying steady pressure and conditions he’ll eventually be worn out.

The BM bunker ranger has few condition removal options, several of which are passive and leave them open to smart condition stacking. Bait their condition transfer passives with a few trash initial conditions, and when conditions have been cleared twice then load them up with stacks. This will either force them to pop signet of renewal (60 sec cd) or their spring heal (a lot of the run Troll Unguent so their condi removal will be pretty crappy after signet of renewal wipe).

Burst specs don’t work too well against this ranger because he’s loaded on toughness and evades. Unless he makes some serious mistakes no burst build will scratch him. You need either high sustained ranged pressure or strong condi builds.

This is why trapper rangers, phantasm mesmers, and engineers form good counters against this spec.

Bunkers are incredibly difficult to deal with, regardless of class, imo. Some are better at it than others (pre-nerf ele, engi, ranger, guardian), but they are all built on a looooooong fight of attrition. Dont expect to burst them down and mentally prepare for a longer fight.

The one weakness of a BM bunker (a typical spec) is that they strongly rely on their pet. Kill it with fire! Or crazy little purple butterflies, that works too. I notice that most people ignore my pet entirely. I can even sometimes send them into an enemy zerg and have them run around taking down people low on health. I suggest taking down any and all pets you see (this is coming from a wvw perspective, but I think it applies in s/tpvp too). The pet allows a BM bunker to still have great damage while the player character has great survivability. Once the pet is gone, its almost like applying a condition on a ranger.

Rangers generally have pretty weak condi removal, even with healing spring. Conditions are a strong counter to almost all bunkers as well, with the possible exception of the ele running ether renewal.

Beyond that, all of the “standard” advice applies. Dodge/evade/blur any of the bigger attacks and make sure to keep moving.

MightyMe.1356:

lLobo.7960:

QQ in the forums 4x a day in different threads and different subforums (I recomend WvW, sPvP, your class forum, ranger class forum. But you can take it all the way to the suggestions or game discussions forums) untill they nerf the class or implement wvw traps to make it unable to use its mechanics for 30secs or more…

Ok, serious now…
Really depends on the ranger spec.
Check weapons and pets…
You need to know what pet hes using and what they do.
Ranger bunkers go heavy on healing. So poison is important.
If hes using shortbow, dont turn your back to him.
If he got no signets, he’s probably a trapper, get ready to avoid the area where he throws little bags.

I appreciate the advice, the signets cue is smart, noted!
Also,about poison, coming to think of it, on top of poison on auto attack, mu thief build has access to choking gas, a pulsing poison field.
I also have dagger storm, now if I combo these two together…
That’s whole 8 seconds of projectile reflection + poisonous daggers bouncing bleedig and crippling both the ranger and the pets and they bounce off of targets!
That for sure will give me a way to pressure the ranger enough and cripple his healing!
I’m gonna try that on the next bunker ranger i see.
Thanks, anything else to add?

You didnt think of that before? :|

Actually, a phantasm Mesmer will win against a bunker ranger most of the time.

Phantasm Mesmer and you can kill any Bunker ranger (unless he runs :P) if you know what you are doing.

Puandro.3245:

Phantasm Mesmer and you can kill any Bunker ranger (unless he runs :P) if you know what you are doing.

Why are you telling people that?

Chopps.5047:

Puandro.3245:

Phantasm Mesmer and you can kill any Bunker ranger (unless he runs :P) if you know what you are doing.

Why are you telling people that?

What do you mean? Do you disagree or do you not want people to know?

Kite the pet. Kite the pet and you win. DO NOT fight on point. Just get your phantasms up and land all your shatters.

Phantasm mesmer does destroy BM as well.

MightyMe.1356:

roadkill.3749:

Lol! Figure it out pro! I’m not telling you kitten.

Without even knowing what you play, I bet I could pwn you 1v1 any day.
Simply because the champs have nothing to hide, they know if their foe discovers a weakness to exploit, they will always think of a counter.
The response of players such ad yourself give away your skill level, sadly.
I wish you good luck nonetheless

Pretty much how I imagine the mentality of all thieves LOL

Eurantien.4632:

Kite the pet. Kite the pet and you win. DO NOT fight on point. Just get your phantasms up and land all your shatters.

Phantasm mesmer does destroy BM as well.

Phantasm mesmers have a chance to win, just like engineers, but if the ranger is any good he too can kite the phantasms and send his pet to swipe them down and the mesmer’s dps drops to zero for a good 10-15 seconds.

Mesmers are pretty rough if you let them surround you with clones, but if you kite said clones as well their damage drops by a lot and your pet can wittle the phantasms down and then go to the mesmer.

Engineer by far is the ranger’s worst match up because he can do a lot of his pistol condition damage from range and have permaswiftness up to kite your pet while spamming boons on himself.

Instinct tells most BM rangers to go close quarters to shotgun their splitblade and melee cripple opponents, but against these two classes you’ll get blown up (you’re making it very easy for a glue shot into a supply crate drop and getting destroyed by their following condition bomb) if you try that, so you just want to kite as well with monarch’s leap, bait their dodges with throw torch/splitblade, and hope to land a winter’s bite/crippling talon once they’ve dodged your first 2 ranged attacks so the pet can get to them and pressure.

Zenith.7301:

Eurantien.4632:

Kite the pet. Kite the pet and you win. DO NOT fight on point. Just get your phantasms up and land all your shatters.

Phantasm mesmer does destroy BM as well.

Phantasm mesmers have a chance to win, just like engineers, but if the ranger is any good he too can kite the phantasms and send his pet to swipe them down and the mesmer’s dps drops to zero for a good 10-15 seconds.

Mesmers are pretty rough if you let them surround you with clones, but if you kite said clones as well their damage drops by a lot and your pet can wittle the phantasms down and then go to the mesmer.

Engineer by far is the ranger’s worst match up because he can do a lot of his pistol condition damage from range and have permaswiftness up to kite your pet while spamming boons on himself.

Instinct tells most BM rangers to go close quarters to shotgun their splitblade and melee cripple opponents, but against these two classes you’ll get blown up (you’re making it very easy for a glue shot into a supply crate drop and getting destroyed by their following condition bomb) if you try that, so you just want to kite as well with monarch’s leap, bait their dodges with throw torch/splitblade, and hope to land a winter’s bite/crippling talon once they’ve dodged your first 2 ranged attacks so the pet can get to them and pressure.

Phantasm mesmer will win most of the time:
- he can put up phantasms much faster then your pet will chew threw them
- swordsman and duelists are very hard to kite even with the high endurance regen and evade skills. This is especially true if the attacks are not synchronized
- Chaos storm and chaos armor messes up your pet really hard
- blurred frenzy helps mitigate a lot of the burst
- Defender / nullfield

Buttercup.5871:

Confusion. Confusion. Confusion. To both the pet and the ranger.

This

MightyMe.1356:

Hi, I play shatter Mesmer/backstab thief and my Achilles heel seems to be bunker rangers.
No matter what i try i can’t break through their tankiness and hp, and they peck at me slowly with conditions untill I’m dead.
Is there a weakness to these kind of builds that i can expose?
Any advices?
Thanks

Spec and gear for the highest possible burst, that ‘might’ do it.

MightyMe.1356:

Hi, I play shatter Mesmer/backstab thief and my Achilles heel seems to be bunker rangers.
No matter what i try i can’t break through their tankiness and hp, and they peck at me slowly with conditions untill I’m dead.
Is there a weakness to these kind of builds that i can expose?
Any advices?
Thanks

Hi, like other rangers out there, the best way to defeat one is to get to know them very well. If you do not have a lvl 80 ranger try making one in PvP and speccing it for BM, it won’t be the real deal (in PvE is where it really applies) but it will give you an approximation towards how they work. Perhaps a BM bunker exists in your guild and can better help you out.

Also, defeating a BM ranger depends 100% on their tiny tweaks, but in general you really have to overcome our survival potential, there is no other way around it. Either that or survive it better than we can. Also, wouldn’t it be a better idea to post this question within the mesmer & thief forums? I say that because they may have better tips than rangers, plus BM bunker rangers took over half a year to develop and it’s one of the only specs in a handful of them that actually work well; after tons and tons of feedback from all rangers. We probably couldn’t tell you well how to kill one because we know we can fight ourselves evenly.

In any case rangers have always struggled to consistently kill mesmers, it’s like our achille’s heel so I am surprised to see this question coming from a mesmer.

Oh no, one class with a specific spec can beat you…

Get over it.

peter.9024:

Zenith.7301:

Eurantien.4632:

Kite the pet. Kite the pet and you win. DO NOT fight on point. Just get your phantasms up and land all your shatters.

Phantasm mesmer does destroy BM as well.

Phantasm mesmers have a chance to win, just like engineers, but if the ranger is any good he too can kite the phantasms and send his pet to swipe them down and the mesmer’s dps drops to zero for a good 10-15 seconds.

Mesmers are pretty rough if you let them surround you with clones, but if you kite said clones as well their damage drops by a lot and your pet can wittle the phantasms down and then go to the mesmer.

Engineer by far is the ranger’s worst match up because he can do a lot of his pistol condition damage from range and have permaswiftness up to kite your pet while spamming boons on himself.

Instinct tells most BM rangers to go close quarters to shotgun their splitblade and melee cripple opponents, but against these two classes you’ll get blown up (you’re making it very easy for a glue shot into a supply crate drop and getting destroyed by their following condition bomb) if you try that, so you just want to kite as well with monarch’s leap, bait their dodges with throw torch/splitblade, and hope to land a winter’s bite/crippling talon once they’ve dodged your first 2 ranged attacks so the pet can get to them and pressure.

Phantasm mesmer will win most of the time:
- he can put up phantasms much faster then your pet will chew threw them
- swordsman and duelists are very hard to kite even with the high endurance regen and evade skills. This is especially true if the attacks are not synchronized
- Chaos storm and chaos armor messes up your pet really hard
- blurred frenzy helps mitigate a lot of the burst
- Defender / nullfield

- Nope. A phantasm even with the HP signet+inspiration HP trait (which this build doesn’t even use) still dies in 2-3 hits to a Frostgorge Sound alpine regular wolf. Test it yourself. It takes at best 2-3 seconds to kill a phantasm in between your pet and your autoattack, and his phantasm summoning time at the very least is 16 seconds.

- You cannot use swordsman or duelist at the same time, and with the duelist you can actually sidestrafe and mitigate a lot of the hits without even needing to dodge. The swordsman’s single hit every 4 seconds is a leap, and you’ll have recharged with vigor your endurance just fine.

This brings me to my greater point, which is that people’s mistakes is letting those phantasms ramp up. That’s when you get overwhelmed, when you get them stacked up instead of immediately reacting to them.

- Chaos Storm and Armor do very little besides give him 4 secs of protection and maybe an aoe daze field largely RNG based. They are both also on pretty large cooldowns. Play a mesmer yourself and see how “great” these skills are. The damage is negligible, and the conditions are unreliably applied.

- Defender, Null Field, and he’ll either will have to take Blink or Decoy. Defender still occupies an illusion slot and gladly comes to die in your bonfire skill pretty quickly.

Null Field untraited is a 45 sec cd. If you can’t pressure conditions in between a 36-45 sec cd, you are doing something wrong.

Zenith.7301:

peter.9024:

Zenith.7301:

Eurantien.4632:

Kite the pet. Kite the pet and you win. DO NOT fight on point. Just get your phantasms up and land all your shatters.

Phantasm mesmer does destroy BM as well.

Phantasm mesmers have a chance to win, just like engineers, but if the ranger is any good he too can kite the phantasms and send his pet to swipe them down and the mesmer’s dps drops to zero for a good 10-15 seconds.

Mesmers are pretty rough if you let them surround you with clones, but if you kite said clones as well their damage drops by a lot and your pet can wittle the phantasms down and then go to the mesmer.

Engineer by far is the ranger’s worst match up because he can do a lot of his pistol condition damage from range and have permaswiftness up to kite your pet while spamming boons on himself.

Instinct tells most BM rangers to go close quarters to shotgun their splitblade and melee cripple opponents, but against these two classes you’ll get blown up (you’re making it very easy for a glue shot into a supply crate drop and getting destroyed by their following condition bomb) if you try that, so you just want to kite as well with monarch’s leap, bait their dodges with throw torch/splitblade, and hope to land a winter’s bite/crippling talon once they’ve dodged your first 2 ranged attacks so the pet can get to them and pressure.

Phantasm mesmer will win most of the time:
- he can put up phantasms much faster then your pet will chew threw them
- swordsman and duelists are very hard to kite even with the high endurance regen and evade skills. This is especially true if the attacks are not synchronized
- Chaos storm and chaos armor messes up your pet really hard
- blurred frenzy helps mitigate a lot of the burst
- Defender / nullfield

- Nope. A phantasm even with the HP signet+inspiration HP trait (which this build doesn’t even use) still dies in 2-3 hits to a Frostgorge Sound alpine regular wolf. Test it yourself. It takes at best 2-3 seconds to kill a phantasm in between your pet and your autoattack, and his phantasm summoning time at the very least is 16 seconds.

- You cannot use swordsman or duelist at the same time, and with the duelist you can actually sidestrafe and mitigate a lot of the hits without even needing to dodge. The swordsman’s single hit every 4 seconds is a leap, and you’ll have recharged with vigor your endurance just fine.

This brings me to my greater point, which is that people’s mistakes is letting those phantasms ramp up. That’s when you get overwhelmed, when you get them stacked up instead of immediately reacting to them.

- Chaos Storm and Armor do very little besides give him 4 secs of protection and maybe an aoe daze field largely RNG based. They are both also on pretty large cooldowns. Play a mesmer yourself and see how “great” these skills are. The damage is negligible, and the conditions are unreliably applied.

- Defender, Null Field, and he’ll either will have to take Blink or Decoy. Defender still occupies an illusion slot and gladly comes to die in your bonfire skill pretty quickly.

Null Field untraited is a 45 sec cd. If you can’t pressure conditions in between a 36-45 sec cd, you are doing something wrong.

- with a s/s and s/p you can have both swords man and duelist up at the same time.
- once the signet applies the HP buff it will take more then 2-3 attacks to chew throw that phantasm
- chaos storm is mostly used defensively to allow for the phantasms to stay alive and build momentum
- while nullified and defender do take a slot, a phantasm Mesmer can live with decoy only as blurred frenzy and staff can give enough surviveability

You can’t have staff and s/p+s/s at the same time.

Really, just test the signet+ hp trait against normal mobs in frostgorge and see how many hits they take. They’re still really squishy, and most importantly those phantasms are all your damage unless you’re a rabid/condi build if you’re really sporting staff (and if you go s/s+s/p you have no range whatsoever). The staff hits like a wet noodle without condi gear.

I don’t think you’ll ever want to engage a BM ranger as a phantasm mesmer in melee. Melee is actually what a BM wants you to do as the pet will hit you much easier when you’re trying to melee than when you’re kiting in range.

If you take Decoy over Blink you have no tool to catch a ranger that wants to kite you — Illusionary Leap is 600 range and to anyone who has a mesmer of their own it’s a very obvious telegraphed skill chain. Monarch’s Leap alone will take a ranger well over 900 range from you and staff projectiles and the illusionary warlock’s projectile can simply be walked out of without needing to dodge at greater ranges.

Phantasm mesmers work well because many people don’t play mesmer and don’t know the spec kittenter is the spec that is viable in most of the content whereas phantasm is purely a 1v1 build. Once people know where the damage distribution and delivery is on a build, they will counter it well just like people learned to kite BM bunkers pets in spvp rather effectively.

peter.9024:

Actually, a phantasm Mesmer will win against a bunker ranger most of the time.

Pretty much this ^

Skullclamp’s phantasm mesmer is the only one that’s been able to kill me 1v1 consistantly. I was able to kill him once and get him down to 10% hp or lower twice, but he’s gotten me every time except for that one loss. The only others that I really have issue with are some high power stealth thieves, but I still get the kill 4/5 times.

I’ll take a video if you want to see it Zenith. There is next to nothing I can do against 3 phantasmal swordsmen who hit for 4k damage each every few seconds. One of the most OP builds I’ve ever fought. We’ve got a phantasm mesmer in my guild as well who is still undefeated in duals. If you get near him, the phantasms kill you in seconds. If you stay away from him, the phantasms will kill you while he watches from afar.

EBay is one of the biggest “dueling servers” in the game outside of Maguuma and a few others. There are always fight clubs when servers are matched up against us, so I’ve got loads of experience dueling in WvW. With that said, I believe that this phantasm build is the best build for 1v1s out there atm.

[Edit] I challenge you again to some more duels Skullclamp :P I must find a way to beat you. I have a feeling SB may be the trick.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

peter.9024:

Actually, a phantasm Mesmer will win against a bunker ranger most of the time.

Pretty much this ^

Skullclamp’s phantasm mesmer is the only one that’s been able to kill me 1v1 consistantly. The only others that I really have issue with are some high power stealth thieves, but I still get the kill 4/5 times.

PS: Still haven’t had issues with HGH engineer, but I haven’t encountered very many either in my tier.

I second this, somehow being able to properly redirect our pet and our damage into other things really chips away at the effectiveness of the build. That is because a properly traited mesmer can have a ton of clones attacking you faster than you can bring him down. Also the constant barrage of damage from clones eventually tends to outlast our high survivability, as long as the mesmer does a good job at timing the attacks. Overall I can survive a fight vs that type of mesmer for a lengthy period of time, but in the end I end up with the short stick.

S/P and GS phantasm mesmer with full or almost fulk zerk. Blink, Decoy and Portal or Veil. Even with the broken berserker phantams GS is still great.

Why are you letting him get up 3 phantasmal swordsmen? It’s a 16 sec cd. You dodge its leap, and likely have 12 seconds to work with to kill it before he can summon the next one.

If that sworsman is hitting you for 4k on a bunker apothecary spec the mesmer is in glass cannon gear.

Look at Redguard’s Intigo or Amadeus in the engineer forums for some duels against mesmers. One thing they particularly do right is eliminate the illusions while the mesmer kites instead of trying to tunnel the mesmer.

Zenith.7301:

Why are you letting him get up 3 phantasmal swordsmen? It’s a 16 sec cd. You dodge its leap, and likely have 12 seconds to work with to kill it before he can summon the next one.

If that sworsman is hitting you for 4k on a bunker apothecary spec the mesmer is in glass cannon gear.

Those phantasms heal themselves and have a buttload of health. He has the ability to kite me very effectively for at least half a minute. I can’t put constant pressure on him while he’s got those swordsmen out. There’s a lot of my attention that goes to dodging (every few seconds). He knows what he’s doing with the mesmer (one disadvantage), and he has played me enough on my bunker ranger to know how to dodge a lot of my attacks (another disadvantage).

He will get those phantasms out regardless of what I do, and there is very little room for me to kill him in that 24 second window (between initiation of fight and time he gets out 3rd clone) while relying on my pet to stun him. The only way I can stop him is if I get my pet to stun/daze/hard CC him while he’s summoning.

Needless to say, that’s a very small chance, especially with pet skills only working some of the time.

[Edit] You added a bit about killing the phantasms after I responded. The phantasms heal very quickly with certain phantasm builds. Focusing them down with a bunker build (by definition, less dps capability) is easier said than done.

It’s important when talking about stuff like this that people don’t assume that every person who uses a certain type of build will play the same way. I’m sure less experienced phantasm mesmer may not be an issue, but I’m saying that the ones who really know what they are doing – those truly talented players who are crazy good even before playing a broken class – are a serious kittening threat.

Phantasm mesmer has built in retal and regen for the clones. Not to mention you obviously dont play a mesmer or you would know the phantasms are on a 12 sec recast timer not 16.

Only if you take the trait in dueling for sword skill cd reduction…. that trait also happens to be competing with fury on phantasm summon trait. If you take 20 into dueling you’re skimping either on illusions or domination.

Funny to receive a retort from a guy using a greatsword on his mesmer for a roaming build.

Zenith.7301:

Only if you take the trait in dueling for sword skill cd reduction…. that trait also happens to be competing with fury on phantasm summon trait. If you take 20 into dueling you’re skimping either on illusions or domination.

Funny to receive a retort from a guy using a greatsword on his mesmer for a roaming build.

Because its so hard to swap to focus for speed as you move around WvW. As i said above i use GS S/P and i use pistol trait over sword trait.

It’s not about the speed. Staff gives you a free short cd stun/root escape, an ethereal field to combo on for a second chaos armor, lower cd on illusions on a skill that doesn’t need to hit to spawn a clone, and it’s your real kiting tool…..

You are using a garbage weapon for 1v1 engagement whose bulk of damage relies on a target not closing distance and offers you no real defensive options when they have stability up.

But use your GS — I’m sure many opponents will thank you for using it over the staff

Zenith.7301:

It’s not about the speed. Staff gives you a free short cd stun/root escape, an ethereal field to combo on for a second chaos armor, lower cd on illusions on a skill that doesn’t need to hit to spawn a clone, and it’s your real kiting tool…..

You are using a garbage weapon for 1v1 engagement whose bulk of damage relies on a target not closing distance and offers you no real defensive options when they have stability up.

But use your GS — I’m sure many opponents will thank you for using it over the staff

Considering i havent lost a 1v1 i feel i dont need to use staff (a defensive and lower dps weapon) over my GS. Maybe you need to position yourself better.

Puandro.3245:

Zenith.7301:

It’s not about the speed. Staff gives you a free short cd stun/root escape, an ethereal field to combo on for a second chaos armor, lower cd on illusions on a skill that doesn’t need to hit to spawn a clone, and it’s your real kiting tool…..

You are using a garbage weapon for 1v1 engagement whose bulk of damage relies on a target not closing distance and offers you no real defensive options when they have stability up.

But use your GS — I’m sure many opponents will thank you for using it over the staff

Considering i havent lost a 1v1 i feel i dont need to use staff (a defensive and lower dps weapon) over my GS. Maybe you need to position yourself better.

I’m sure that’s the case /pat

What server do you play? Maybe we can settle this so you can stop posting bad information on the forums.

Rangers are tough to beat as a thief, but that’s one of the main reasons I’ve been running with Dagger Storm as my elite lately.

Puandro.3245:

What server do you play? Maybe we can settle this so you can stop posting bad information on the forums.

I want to see this.
Fight Club O_O

… except we already talked about it so first rule is broken.

Are the mesmers gonna kill eachother? I support this notion :P if we could get all thieves to kill themselves also then I’m popping the champagne

THE BEST METHOD: Moa.

my duelling statistic as a bm condition bunker ranger so far:

vs elementalist: 90% win, 5% draw, 5% lose
vs engineer: 100% win
vs guardian: 100% win
vs mesmer: 90% win, 5% draw, 5% lose ( phantasm mesmer with melandurs rune and – condition duration buff food )
vs necromancer: 100% win
vs ranger: 95% win ( only 1 lose, same player as the mesmer player )
vs thief: 100% win ( all duells are organized, the random fights are 50% win, 50% thief run away or gets help )
vs warrior: 100% win

it is very hard to counter a bm ranger. things that work good vs me ( im not totally duel specced, i have around 1900 condition dmg, normal duel specc is around 1500 and 400 more heal power then me ):

- melandru runes
- condition – duration food
- conditions on me ( CHILL!!!! )
- stealth ( i know ^^ )

i think a heavy control build warrior with melandru rune and buff food could be a pain in the kitten hammer + axe / mace with 2x shake it off and a reduced cooldown on shouts.