Guild Wars 2

So the thief has the 25% running boost signet.

My question is, why in hell was this not implemented for the ranger instead? This seems like a perfect thing for this class.

We have a 10% boost signet.

That’s not enough. This should be switched around. Thief should have 10%, rangers 25%, it’s only logical.. I don’t understand.

Sangi – I have both a thief and ranger and I would have to disagree. Swiftness is much more critical the more of the thief mechanics and playstyle than a ranger. With thief burst damage due to the initiative mechanic, you need to be able to move a lot more than a ranger.

That said I do feel that a ranger could use another way to get swiftness out of combat. Call of the Wild requires equipping the warhorn but is decent. Quick shot only gives a short quickness burst and is only good in combat. Rampage as One really shouldn’t be used out of combat (I know I’ve used it for the boost but it really is a bit of a waste). I would really like tail wind to apply out of combat with a 10 second cooldown (or something along those line).

My main is a Ranger, I live and breath the idea of the Ranger, and I must agree with Sideshow Mel, depending on your playstyle you can be an agile quick Ranger or a heavy fighter. It just depends we can’t have everything served on a silver platter.

It makes sense for a thief to have sustained swiftness across the board, they are an assassin archetype with their burst, they require to be in and out, they don’t have the similar endurance the Rangers boast, I see the reasoning behind why it’s the way it is.

I think it makes sense the way it is, though I’d probably say the Ranger speed boost should be 15% instead of 10%.

There was an audio file of one of the balance discussions the devs were having about classes, in particular the thief skill. There was usually only one thief skill which allowed the class to play as a roamer in PvP so they buffed the signet to give 25% speed to allow for more diverse roaming builds. The ranger wasn’t a focus at the time so I suspect it’s just fallen by the wayside.

Thieves should be the only class with better mobility than us, but war and engineer have a better one, even necro can get a perma swiftness….

+15 or 20% speed bonus on the signet or a utility skill with swiftness would be great

Da Poolp.6809:

Thieves should be the only class with better mobility than us, but war and engineer have a better one, even necro can get a perma swiftness….

+15 or 20% speed bonus on the signet or a utility skill with swiftness would be great

You do know the passive speed boosts and swiftness don’t stack?

arcaneclarity.5283:

You do know the passive speed boosts and swiftness don’t stack?

Yes I know, and ?

I just want to run faster from point A to point B. I don’t even care if that helps me in combat. Waypoints cost coin… mounts don’t exist… I haven’t found a pair of boots with a speed bonus… just let me run faster down the road please.

Please, please, please.

arcaneclarity.5283:

Da Poolp.6809:

Thieves should be the only class with better mobility than us, but war and engineer have a better one, even necro can get a perma swiftness….

+15 or 20% speed bonus on the signet or a utility skill with swiftness would be great

You do know the passive speed boosts and swiftness don’t stack?

Swiftness and the signet -do- stack… me and a friend tested it, granted it’s a pretty minor difference… The thief one idk if that stacks or not, i know the ranger one stacks!!

I have been harping on this since release. And I am not even going to compare Ranger to any other class except the other two Adventurer classes, Thieves and Engineers. And compared to both of those the Ranger is very, very sub par in the movement department.

Signet of the hunt needs to be move to 20%, especially considering that signets active skill is almost completely worthless.

Swiftly.2385:

I have been harping on this since release. And I am not even going to compare Ranger to any other class except the other two Adventurer classes, Thieves and Engineers. And compared to both of those the Ranger is very, very sub par in the movement department.

Signet of the hunt needs to be move to 20%, especially considering that signets active skill is almost completely worthless.

Well if you think the active on that thing is almost worthless you clearly don’t seem to understand how much damage your pet does… My pet, assuming the wiki is right with the it increases the damage by 150%, would crit an enemy for 7.5k… that’s an ungodly amount of damage, and that’s not even including how much damage he does WITH masters bond… so, yeah…nearly worthless my kitten #8230;

As for the speed boost, 10% is fine, you have to realize that ALSO applies to your pet, which means your pet closes the gap faster, that’s the whole point of this signet, if it was 20% do you know how fast your pet would be flying with that trait? There would never BE a gap, and god forbid you gave that thing swiftness to boot.. you gotta look at the bigger picture and not just the “Zomg thieves have better signet URGHZ” cause if you haven’t noticed, but we have faster, and more reliable ways of applying swiftness then thieves or engies do…

Engies can get perma swiftness with just one trait, so no, we don’t “have faster, and more reliable ways of applying swiftness then thieves or engies do…”

@Durzilla, not sure why it will not let me quote you. My perspective comes from PvP only, you know where enemies don’t stand still. So in that regard from a Wv3 perspective, which pet will crit for 7.5k? Also which pet will not be dead 90% of the time in Wv3 before it reaches its target. That is considering you have your pet on passive in Wv3. You do manage your pet correct?

So take your kittens and your 10% movement boost and pve to your hearts content.

Also your last sentence, just proves you are talking out of your kitten.

Sangi.5238:

That’s not enough. This should be switched around. Thief should have 10%, rangers 25%, it’s only logical.. I don’t understand.

+1

The Thief “needs” the movement speed because he only has 10k base health, while the Ranger and Engineer has 15k. The Thief is the skirmishing profession. No one has as many movement skills as the Thief. But the Ranger does have more movement (and evade) skills then the Engineer, we just have to work a little harder for it.

Swiftness:
Warhorn
Shortbow
Rampage As One (With a 120 second cooldown, this is viable to use in Worlds PvP)
Storm Spirit (With the “spirits can move and follow you” major trait)
Tail Wind (A minor trait that gives you swiftness on weapon swap, when in combat. But getting in combat is easy enough; just send your pet to attack a nearby mob)
Birds (Aim at a target that’s a great distance from you, and then call the pet back as soon as it gives you swiftness, if you don’t want to agro the mob. Use the major trait Concentration Training to make the swiftness last 15 seconds instead of 10. Practice makes perfect)

Other:
Signet of the Hunt (10% increased movement speed is great)
Shortbow (Use the ‘turn 180’ key to make the jump move you forward, instead of back)
Greatsword (Swoop makes you leap forward. This skill will actually move you forward faster then the warhorn, because of the short cooldown)

@Swiftly ugh, can’t quote anymore lol The cat/Bird can do that much damage, and i don’t do much WvW, but when i do i run around with a sword and warhorn most of the time dodging in and out of the hordes to assassinate someone before slipping back into the keep (it’s so trolly and surprisingly effective it’s hilarious). However, most of the time i do sPvP and tPvP and i can say that between sig of the hunt and sig of the wild (only one equiped at a time depends on what i’m doing) both of those just have REALLY good actives, like sig of wild is nearly an elite skill on its own, to bad everyones to busy complaining about how broken and bad they are…

Is sig of the hunt good in WvW? Idk maybe? I rely more on swiftness because i roll around with a warhorn rocking my runes of speed and just outrunning everyone, 50% movement speed is fun to run around with =D

Durzlla – I agree the active mode of the signet can be powerful with the right pet and is useful to keep the pet engaged in combat. I would have to disagree that rangers have faster or more reliable ways of applying swiftness compared to thieves or engineers.

With my ranger, I can have the signet up and use a warhorn to for most swiftness needs. In a pinch, I can use Rampage as one as well but is really a waste of the skill just to move around faster. All of this together allows me to be about as fast or maybe just a little slower than a thief with a 25% boost (and no other swiftness on the thief). The other rangers swiftness abilities are more combat focused and therefore less reliable (for example, quick shot requires you to hit your target and will push you back). Rangers are ok at swiftness.

On the surface, thief only has 1 skill that provides swiftness but that skill gives a 25% passive speed buff. However, a thief can also use Infiltrator’s arrow to shadowstep forward. This is more complicated than a straight speed boost, but it can add quite a bit of speed for a thief. In addition, a thief has 2 traits which can reliably provide swiftness out of combat. One is fleet shadow which provides 33% swiftness while stealthed. This is a little less likely to be used just to move around but I’ve done it on my thief in PvE often enough. The other is expeditious dodger which a 5 point trait in the acrobatic line. This one gives 2 seconds of swiftness by dodging (this doesn’t exactly match the trait description but it is the way it works). In addition at 15 points in the same trait line, dodging returns about a third of the used endurance. This means you can get about 3 dodges in a row but needing to regen, and your endurance never really hits 0 so you can dodge again sooner. There are several thief traits that also provide swiftness but require combat. I would say that these are also probably a little better than a ranger’s set. As a stated in my earlier post, I think a thief needs swiftness more than a ranger so I think the overall balance isn’t too skewed.

As for the engineer, they have several skills that provide swiftness (or boost movement speed – i.e. super speed from slick shoes). These skills are a bit limited in terms of amount of swiftness and recharge rate. Many of these skills are probably better saved for combat. As for traits, they have very few that boost movement but as mentioned by Da Poolp that trait can provide perma swiftness to an engineer. Speedy kits provides 5 seconds of swiftness on a kit equip and with 2 kits an engineer can keep swiftness up indefinitely. Most engineers I know are using at least 1 kit, so they can have swiftness up at least half the time. Finally, I think the engineer needs swiftness the least of the three classes (not necessarily by much but a still the least).

Overall of the adventurer professions, I think the thief needs swiftness the most, ranger second, and engineers third. In terms of ability to bring up swiftness easily & reliably, I think the thief is still on top, the engineer is second (due to the single trait), and ranger is last. I don’t think the balance is too out of skew but a little change for ranger like the change to tail wind I suggested above makes sense.

As for the other professions, I think the true king of swiftness is the elementalist – tons of ways to bring up swiftness, the only combo field that gives swiftness, and the real movement bonus is ride the lightning. Mesmers, on the other hand, are probably the slowest profession. I haven’t played on since the betas but I remember plodding along throwing temporal curtains or hoping for a random boon. They make up for it in other areas but still they feel slow.

What everybody really needs is a Swiftness consumable from all the crafting skills, that work only when out of combat. So much running…

Make them both 15%.

@Sideshow Mel well if you’re going to bring infiltrator arrow into this, we can just use swoop and cover a lot greater distance then the thief could, ESPECIALLY if you have swiftness up on using it, that just launches you…

NOTE: Another thing to mention is that thieves are more about just getting themselves around the map, where rangers are more of the “Pack Masters” so all their swiftness gains are aoes, which likely would give them less duration/longer CD, i personally can keep swiftness up on myself 100% of the time using warhorn and a bird, and if i happen to get a proc off my runes, then i’ll have infinite amounts of swiftness going.