Guild Wars 2

Yay or nay? Why?

Might help to stop people whining about PU Mesmers and thieves, but that’s not the point.

I just think that this could be a valid role in WvW. Anyone familiar with WoW remembers that Hunter was like the Rogue’s counter-class.

Besides, in the WvW situation, where it’s not a 1v1 duel, I think counter classes are fine. Kinda like rocks, papers & scissors.

I think that the hawk pet should be the anti stealth pet.

The hawk’s F2 skill would be “Detect” which causes nearby stealthed enemies to be revealed.

They kind of are already….

I run longbow and sword/warhorn.

The 2 on longbow will hit units even after they go invisible. same with the warhorn’s 4. If you’re skilled enough at weapon swapping, you can preform both before your opponent disappears. This works well against the low-health thieves, but isn’t as great against condition bunker mesmers.

Zeqasa Saitou.4256:

They kind of are already….

I run longbow and sword/warhorn.

The 2 on longbow will hit units even after they go invisible. same with the warhorn’s 4. If you’re skilled enough at weapon swapping, you can preform both before your opponent disappears. This works well against the low-health thieves, but isn’t as great against condition bunker mesmers.

I’m thinking more along the line of revealing those who stealth instead of being able to hit those who are still stealthed.

I believe that Rangers needs Stealth & Anti-Stealth.
Both because we’re like HUNTERS.
Most of pets could easily track the smelly thieves. ^^

Zeqasa Saitou.4256:

They kind of are already….

I run longbow and sword/warhorn.

The 2 on longbow will hit units even after they go invisible. same with the warhorn’s 4. If you’re skilled enough at weapon swapping, you can preform both before your opponent disappears. This works well against the low-health thieves, but isn’t as great against condition bunker mesmers.

Except all the thief needs to do while stealthed is to port across you to break your channel or if he’s D/P just daze you at will before stealthing.

What are you asking for?

Ragers have anti stealth already – as the only class btw.

“Sick ’Em” reveals thieves for 4 sec. Should be enough to kill most thieves.
River Drakes F2 is also quite useful, if used in the right moment. Just like the 2 on longbow.
For shadow refuge use the fear of the wolf or your aoe’s like “whirling defence” or “Bonfire” or your traps.

As defensive skills we have “Protect Me” or “Signet of Stone” (when traited) against their burst damage.

There is no need to improve the ranger agains thieves…

When you have mesmers or thieves hiding in your towers, simply ask for good rangers in mapchat or teamspeak. Also if you have thieves killing your dolyaks or permablocking you waypoints.

Oak da Vite.9054:

What are you asking for?

Ragers have anti stealth already – as the only class btw.

“Sick ’Em” reveals thieves for 4 sec. Should be enough to kill most thieves.
River Drakes F2 is also quite useful, if used in the right moment. Just like the 2 on longbow.
For shadow refuge use the fear of the wolf or your aoe’s like “whirling defence” or “Bonfire” or your traps.

As defensive skills we have “Protect Me” or “Signet of Stone” (when traited) against their burst damage.

There is no need to improve the ranger agains thieves…

When you have mesmers or thieves hiding in your towers, simply ask for good rangers in mapchat or teamspeak. Also if you have thieves killing your dolyaks or permablocking you waypoints.

Sick em rarely works. If anyone is using “protect me” or building around signet of stone and traiting it to affect them as well, they will be next to ineffective in WvW.

Playing a Ranger and facing off against other Rangers who use these (and their are), they are basically free kills. They don’t have the damage to compete. Now wouldn’t it be better to maintain what little damage we have while having an anti stealth skill that actually works all the time?

Oak da Vite.9054:

What are you asking for?

Ragers have anti stealth already – as the only class btw.

“Sick ’Em” reveals thieves for 4 sec. Should be enough to kill most thieves.
River Drakes F2 is also quite useful, if used in the right moment. Just like the 2 on longbow.
For shadow refuge use the fear of the wolf or your aoe’s like “whirling defence” or “Bonfire” or your traps.

As defensive skills we have “Protect Me” or “Signet of Stone” (when traited) against their burst damage.

There is no need to improve the ranger agains thieves…

When you have mesmers or thieves hiding in your towers, simply ask for good rangers in mapchat or teamspeak. Also if you have thieves killing your dolyaks or permablocking you waypoints.

Its a big difference trying to duel a D/P theif with unlimited stealth or a D/D who gets free CnD’s off your pet vs just being a Sic Em dispenser while your pals bumrush the lone thief.

All a thief has to do is kite for those 4 seconds and then you are a sitting duck. You just wasted a utility and the class’s lack of burst has never made a thief think twice about attacking a Ranger. Just ask any of them.

I’ve been in WvW alone this morning.

1. First thiev girl attacked me when I channeled Barrage on some Red Moas. Since its rooting, I was already at 5k HP from 20k in 2 seconds. Evaded, healed, but the thief spammed the stab on me, switching to GS then Block takes ~3 second for some unknown reason, so I just died.
2. Second encounter was when I tried to capture a Supply Camp WITH A WARRIOR.
   That thief killed the warrior somehow, and was always in stealth. When it appeared, it had full HP all the time. He knew where I was in stealth… Don’t know how the..
   Not mutch later I died.

I like the idea. It would encourage thieves to be a bit more skillful with their engages and escapes and it would make S/P a counter to the stealth counter. :P

What Do you learn from your Journey this morning?
1.dont attack red moas
2.Most warriors are Bad
3.The thief knew stealth =/= invulerability, you can also predict their postition in stealth

Domey.9804:

….
3.The thief knew stealth =/= invulerability, you can also predict their postition in stealth

That’s the key to beating thieves on any class right there.. Every good thief player (its one of my mains, but recently I’ve been leveling a ranger) can count stealth time and reveal times in their head… they’re also good at guessing your position in stealth…
Now, as a WvW solo/small group D/D thief, let me give some suggestions real quick…

If a thief enters stealth at low health or with multiple conditions, they will try to stay in it for the full duration (or at least 3 of 4 seconds to trigger 2 not 1 condi remove), therefore, you’re best bet is activating your defensive skills after 2-2.5 seconds (Gs 4 for example)
IF YOU THINK YOU CAN PREDICT THEIR BACKSTAB TIME do not, in ANY circumstance, dodge forwards… never EVER dodge forwards against a thief, it will NOT work… EVER… dodge backwards always…
its important to remember that thieves want to be behind you, if they’re in front of you, backstab tickles at best…
when you want to avoid a backstab, roll backwards not forwards so they have to reposition rather than just stepping forwards

When at thief enters stealth, run a small circle, while changing which direction you’re facing to make it hard for them get behind you…

If its not a D/P thief, back against a wall so they can’t backstab you at all (beware a D/P will just perma-blind you if you do this)
If you want to use a CC from outside of black powder to stop a heart seeker, fire one basic attack followed immediately by what you want to hit… It doesn’t matter if you have blind when you launch the cc, provided your basic attack hits first… most people launch an attack, and then WAIT for the blind condition to be removed by the hit, and THEN they do their cc… just fire basic attack and cc one after the other, with practice you’ll land the cc straight after the basic attack and it will be as if you weren’t blinded (important for LB users)

If they enter stealth at low health and you’re at high health and can take a hit, that’s when you use your AoE dmg that roots you… otherwise, stay away from staying still no matter what

And now back to the moas!!!

I don’t like the idea of counter classes in any setting, be it pvp or wvw. It already feels like condi necros are my counter class and it’s not fun. Try this with thieves:
20/20/30/0/0 sword/dagger longbow utils: lightning reflexes and 2 of your choice.
longbow 2 right before stealth. When a backstab is coming switch to s/d spam dodges and evades and right before he un-stealths sword 2, about face, and jump again. He’ll appear and you’ll be far away from him, switch back to longbow and repeat. If he decides to ignore backstabs and just bum rush you, you have protection on dodge which will mitigate a lot of his auto attack damage.

they just need to nerf stealth all around

Some replies here make me think you want to auto q thieves down because they shouldn’t be worth bothering. Of course it is a challenge to finish a thieve in 1v1 and of course there is no non plus ultra build against all kind of enemies.
That is the challenge of this game and that is what i like about it.

Thieves are good agains players with bad reactions and builds that have not enough defence. What is the point about it?

As you can read in other replies here there are builds and ways to finish off thieves. That these builds may not be strong against different kinds of players makes the game fun, because you have to find a way to make the game perfect for you.

As I said: Ragers have, compared to other classes different options to deal with them. Wheather you use them or use other skills, because you prefer those, is your choise.

No, it’s not the point. I’m just thinking that this could be a nice counterplay as in: stealth and then the counter would be anti-stealth. And to counter that, the thieves also have still a lot more to the table: mobility like dodge heal, etc.

And a Mesmer who faces a Ranger then might rework the strategy around this new ability by timing the stealth differently (perhaps using it to force the Hunter to use the reveal skill unwisely, etc.)

Plus, the Ranger currently doesn’t have any solid roles anywhere. Perhaps, the least the Ranger could do is to be some sort of the anti-meta roamers or could help a little bit in a small group or zerg by nullyfing the Mesmer’s mass invis / vail / decoy (and the Mesmer still could counter play this by using Blink, Staff #2/GS #5).

Mice.8921:

Domey.9804:

….
3.The thief knew stealth =/= invulerability, you can also predict their postition in stealth

That’s the key to beating thieves on any class right there.. Every good thief player (its one of my mains, but recently I’ve been leveling a ranger) can count stealth time and reveal times in their head… they’re also good at guessing your position in stealth…
Now, as a WvW solo/small group D/D thief, let me give some suggestions real quick…

If a thief enters stealth at low health or with multiple conditions, they will try to stay in it for the full duration (or at least 3 of 4 seconds to trigger 2 not 1 condi remove), therefore, you’re best bet is activating your defensive skills after 2-2.5 seconds (Gs 4 for example)
IF YOU THINK YOU CAN PREDICT THEIR BACKSTAB TIME do not, in ANY circumstance, dodge forwards… never EVER dodge forwards against a thief, it will NOT work… EVER… dodge backwards always…
its important to remember that thieves want to be behind you, if they’re in front of you, backstab tickles at best…
when you want to avoid a backstab, roll backwards not forwards so they have to reposition rather than just stepping forwards

When at thief enters stealth, run a small circle, while changing which direction you’re facing to make it hard for them get behind you…

If its not a D/P thief, back against a wall so they can’t backstab you at all (beware a D/P will just perma-blind you if you do this)
If you want to use a CC from outside of black powder to stop a heart seeker, fire one basic attack followed immediately by what you want to hit… It doesn’t matter if you have blind when you launch the cc, provided your basic attack hits first… most people launch an attack, and then WAIT for the blind condition to be removed by the hit, and THEN they do their cc… just fire basic attack and cc one after the other, with practice you’ll land the cc straight after the basic attack and it will be as if you weren’t blinded (important for LB users)

If they enter stealth at low health and you’re at high health and can take a hit, that’s when you use your AoE dmg that roots you… otherwise, stay away from staying still no matter what

Says a lot about the game that ones has to do all this just to kill an average thief player when all one needs to do to kill a Ranger player, even a good one, is CC+Burst…

Y’know its hard to do anything when I’m 2-3 push of the same button for him… with 20k HP. And it happens in 2 seconds, after I’ve dodged the prevs out.
I’m used to kill thieves, but when I meet someone who is actually not dumb as kitten, the lacks of Ranger design diggs my grave.

Give the pet an F5 where it can “smell” something hidden in a certain direction.

To a skilled ranger stealth in it self is not a real threat. Wasting any skill slots on stealth prevention or stealth reveal would be a waste. Veteran ranger wont use it and new player will out grow it or never develop the skill to over come stealth.

As it is pets already kind of track stealth, If anything guard should be an f5 skill.