Guild Wars 2

Thiefs lack condi removal…. wtf are you smoking. D/P thief laughs at condis all day except maybe from an HGH engi but every class cant keep up vs HGH Engi.

Yea, condition removal has never been a problem with my Thief.

I actually find it to be better then Rangers now after tkitten change

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

If engineers are not reapplying conditions more often than every 48-60 seconds, you face terrible engineers.

Ranger condi removal doesn’t hold a candle to thief, ele, or guardian condi removal.

Thief removal is pretty abysmal dude, they have their heal, and that’s about the end of the list, don’t forget that we have healing spring which removes a condi every 3s for 15s, and the trait that removes 3 condis every 10s, and then we have TONS of regen to counteract them as well.

As for ele and guardian, they’re kinda supposed to be good at it, so idk why you think we should be on par with them, i’d say you’d better off be saying Necro, Ele, or Guardian, not thief, they’re pretty horrendous at removing them, i should know, i play a condi mes and engi it’s funny watching them squirm.

Thieves remove conditions with their heal and every time they enter stealth and every 3 seconds they remain in stealth. For every BP-HS combo they do they wipe off conditions. Shadowstep removes 3 conditions alongside being a double stun break.

Shadow step also has a 50s CD, and what causes them to lose a condi every time they enter stealth? I know about the 3s in stealth one.

That being said they’re still not -that- great at condi removal, they certainly can’t keep up with any of my condi profs and end up with a flag through their chest.

shrugs Rangers just seem like they’re much better at going against condis then thieves, especially seeing as how we don’t have the lowest possible health in the game, and as i said we actually have tons of health regen that mitigates a lot of what the condis can do.

Yes we are better but the single reason is that there is Empathic Bond which (and that is the point) pidgeon holes ranger into BM and Traps.

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

If engineers are not reapplying conditions more often than every 48-60 seconds, you face terrible engineers.

Ranger condi removal doesn’t hold a candle to thief, ele, or guardian condi removal.

Thief removal is pretty abysmal dude, they have their heal, and that’s about the end of the list, don’t forget that we have healing spring which removes a condi every 3s for 15s, and the trait that removes 3 condis every 10s, and then we have TONS of regen to counteract them as well.

As for ele and guardian, they’re kinda supposed to be good at it, so idk why you think we should be on par with them, i’d say you’d better off be saying Necro, Ele, or Guardian, not thief, they’re pretty horrendous at removing them, i should know, i play a condi mes and engi it’s funny watching them squirm.

Thieves remove conditions with their heal and every time they enter stealth and every 3 seconds they remain in stealth. For every BP-HS combo they do they wipe off conditions. Shadowstep removes 3 conditions alongside being a double stun break.

Shadow step also has a 50s CD, and what causes them to lose a condi every time they enter stealth? I know about the 3s in stealth one.

That being said they’re still not -that- great at condi removal, they certainly can’t keep up with any of my condi profs and end up with a flag through their chest.

shrugs Rangers just seem like they’re much better at going against condis then thieves, especially seeing as how we don’t have the lowest possible health in the game, and as i said we actually have tons of health regen that mitigates a lot of what the condis can do.

OK, so you’re just ignorant.

The trait that removes a condition every 3 seconds in stealth is one of the many instances of an erroneous tooltip.

The actual trait works by starting the condition removal count the moment you enter stealth, and then 3 seconds after that.

Every time you trigger stealth, you remove a condition. This includes using blast fields like Black Powder with Heartseeker, or using Blinding Powder, or using Shadow Refuge, or even using your stealth heal (the stealth heal will basically work by removing a condition from the trait, PLUS it removes all DoT conditions on top of it).

So between that and Shadow Rejuvenation, the thief can keep himself up and clean. If he’s fighting you as a ranger in particular, he gets further condition removal from his steal utility.

Obviously they should fix the trait so it actually removes only conditions AFTER every 3 seconds you have been in stealth, but that’s not how it’s functioning at the moment, and thus the engineer is the only class that has enough sustained condition application, and aoe on top of it all, to keep any thief with shadow arts spec with conditions.

HGH engineers are really the only condition spec that can kill a shadow arts D/P thief, and to counter that a thief can just run S/D as if you’ve been paying attention to Teldo’s Engineer play it is S/D spammable boon steal and high sustained that has given him trouble.

The only aspect where a thief truly suffers is in a teamfight, and that’s not unique to them considering anyone who’s not a bunker spec or not a mesmer/thief GC spec dies in mere seconds within a team fight. It’s why you don’t see necromancers or GC warriors or GC rangers or GC engineers or GC guardians. Because anyone that doesn’t have myriad teleports/stealth target dropping and several stunbreakers dies immediately as a GC spec.

And other GC specs can’t exist so long as D/P and mesmers exist because they will gib the crap out of you and your burst sequences are much more complex to pull off, have higher cd’s to activate, and the thief/mesmer have more resets/counters to that burst than you can throw at the while gibbing you themselves.

GC spec that isn’t another thief or mesmer is easy pickings for thief and mesmer simply because they have mechanics where they don’t pay nearly the same amount for making mistakes that other classes do.

and yet thieves and mesmers are working as intended. according to ANet

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

If engineers are not reapplying conditions more often than every 48-60 seconds, you face terrible engineers.

Ranger condi removal doesn’t hold a candle to thief, ele, or guardian condi removal.

Thief removal is pretty abysmal dude, they have their heal, and that’s about the end of the list, don’t forget that we have healing spring which removes a condi every 3s for 15s, and the trait that removes 3 condis every 10s, and then we have TONS of regen to counteract them as well.

As for ele and guardian, they’re kinda supposed to be good at it, so idk why you think we should be on par with them, i’d say you’d better off be saying Necro, Ele, or Guardian, not thief, they’re pretty horrendous at removing them, i should know, i play a condi mes and engi it’s funny watching them squirm.

Thieves remove conditions with their heal and every time they enter stealth and every 3 seconds they remain in stealth. For every BP-HS combo they do they wipe off conditions. Shadowstep removes 3 conditions alongside being a double stun break.

Shadow step also has a 50s CD, and what causes them to lose a condi every time they enter stealth? I know about the 3s in stealth one.

That being said they’re still not -that- great at condi removal, they certainly can’t keep up with any of my condi profs and end up with a flag through their chest.

shrugs Rangers just seem like they’re much better at going against condis then thieves, especially seeing as how we don’t have the lowest possible health in the game, and as i said we actually have tons of health regen that mitigates a lot of what the condis can do.

OK, so you’re just ignorant.

The trait that removes a condition every 3 seconds in stealth is one of the many instances of an erroneous tooltip.

The actual trait works by starting the condition removal count the moment you enter stealth, and then 3 seconds after that.

Every time you trigger stealth, you remove a condition. This includes using blast fields like Black Powder with Heartseeker, or using Blinding Powder, or using Shadow Refuge, or even using your stealth heal (the stealth heal will basically work by removing a condition from the trait, PLUS it removes all DoT conditions on top of it).

So between that and Shadow Rejuvenation, the thief can keep himself up and clean. If he’s fighting you as a ranger in particular, he gets further condition removal from his steal utility.

Obviously they should fix the trait so it actually removes only conditions AFTER every 3 seconds you have been in stealth, but that’s not how it’s functioning at the moment, and thus the engineer is the only class that has enough sustained condition application, and aoe on top of it all, to keep any thief with shadow arts spec with conditions.

HGH engineers are really the only condition spec that can kill a shadow arts D/P thief, and to counter that a thief can just run S/D as if you’ve been paying attention to Teldo’s Engineer play it is S/D spammable boon steal and high sustained that has given him trouble.

The only aspect where a thief truly suffers is in a teamfight, and that’s not unique to them considering anyone who’s not a bunker spec or not a mesmer/thief GC spec dies in mere seconds within a team fight. It’s why you don’t see necromancers or GC warriors or GC rangers or GC engineers or GC guardians. Because anyone that doesn’t have myriad teleports/stealth target dropping and several stunbreakers dies immediately as a GC spec.

And other GC specs can’t exist so long as D/P and mesmers exist because they will gib the crap out of you and your burst sequences are much more complex to pull off, have higher cd’s to activate, and the thief/mesmer have more resets/counters to that burst than you can throw at the while gibbing you themselves.

GC spec that isn’t another thief or mesmer is easy pickings for thief and mesmer simply because they have mechanics where they don’t pay nearly the same amount for making mistakes that other classes do.

This pretty much, if you’re not a Mesmer or Thief, you simply don’t rush GC in Team Fights, you go Bunker..

Blame it on the fact that Mesmer/Thief have cheese ball GC specs that allow them to stay alive for a very long time.

But they determine what every other class runs in the long run..Hell even their on class.

At the start of the game in world vs world you saw a ton of GC D/D thieves (you still do somewhat) then a couple switched to S/D and P/D and that caused the GC D/D ones to drop because they cant’ compete against those two builds… then P/D dropped in usage because it gets reamed by D/P Thieves which are common now…

Fortunately for us…D/P is a joke to kill as a BM Bunker Ranger.

They can either stay and die, or leave..

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

If engineers are not reapplying conditions more often than every 48-60 seconds, you face terrible engineers.

Ranger condi removal doesn’t hold a candle to thief, ele, or guardian condi removal.

Thief removal is pretty abysmal dude, they have their heal, and that’s about the end of the list, don’t forget that we have healing spring which removes a condi every 3s for 15s, and the trait that removes 3 condis every 10s, and then we have TONS of regen to counteract them as well.

As for ele and guardian, they’re kinda supposed to be good at it, so idk why you think we should be on par with them, i’d say you’d better off be saying Necro, Ele, or Guardian, not thief, they’re pretty horrendous at removing them, i should know, i play a condi mes and engi it’s funny watching them squirm.

Thieves remove conditions with their heal and every time they enter stealth and every 3 seconds they remain in stealth. For every BP-HS combo they do they wipe off conditions. Shadowstep removes 3 conditions alongside being a double stun break.

Shadow step also has a 50s CD, and what causes them to lose a condi every time they enter stealth? I know about the 3s in stealth one.

That being said they’re still not -that- great at condi removal, they certainly can’t keep up with any of my condi profs and end up with a flag through their chest.

shrugs Rangers just seem like they’re much better at going against condis then thieves, especially seeing as how we don’t have the lowest possible health in the game, and as i said we actually have tons of health regen that mitigates a lot of what the condis can do.

OK, so you’re just ignorant.

The trait that removes a condition every 3 seconds in stealth is one of the many instances of an erroneous tooltip.

The actual trait works by starting the condition removal count the moment you enter stealth, and then 3 seconds after that.

Every time you trigger stealth, you remove a condition. This includes using blast fields like Black Powder with Heartseeker, or using Blinding Powder, or using Shadow Refuge, or even using your stealth heal (the stealth heal will basically work by removing a condition from the trait, PLUS it removes all DoT conditions on top of it).

So between that and Shadow Rejuvenation, the thief can keep himself up and clean. If he’s fighting you as a ranger in particular, he gets further condition removal from his steal utility.

Obviously they should fix the trait so it actually removes only conditions AFTER every 3 seconds you have been in stealth, but that’s not how it’s functioning at the moment, and thus the engineer is the only class that has enough sustained condition application, and aoe on top of it all, to keep any thief with shadow arts spec with conditions.

HGH engineers are really the only condition spec that can kill a shadow arts D/P thief, and to counter that a thief can just run S/D as if you’ve been paying attention to Teldo’s Engineer play it is S/D spammable boon steal and high sustained that has given him trouble.

The only aspect where a thief truly suffers is in a teamfight, and that’s not unique to them considering anyone who’s not a bunker spec or not a mesmer/thief GC spec dies in mere seconds within a team fight. It’s why you don’t see necromancers or GC warriors or GC rangers or GC engineers or GC guardians. Because anyone that doesn’t have myriad teleports/stealth target dropping and several stunbreakers dies immediately as a GC spec.

And other GC specs can’t exist so long as D/P and mesmers exist because they will gib the crap out of you and your burst sequences are much more complex to pull off, have higher cd’s to activate, and the thief/mesmer have more resets/counters to that burst than you can throw at the while gibbing you themselves.

GC spec that isn’t another thief or mesmer is easy pickings for thief and mesmer simply because they have mechanics where they don’t pay nearly the same amount for making mistakes that other classes do.

Wow that trait is a lot stronger than I had thought it to be…. And tbh if you go GC on a Mesmer you’re kinda gimping yourself because there’s so much more you could do with it, but that’s just my opinion.

Personally I’ve never been a fan of GC builds so I’ve never really noticed that their total garbage in team fights (as they should be).

But mesmer and thief GC builds are not garbage in teamfights, and in some team comps neither are GC Scepter eles.

It’s specifically the classes with crappy or few active defenses like the ranger or warrior or necro.

If you notice why mesmers and thieves can run GC successfully is because teleports, stealth, and distortion all allow them to stay on the offensive without risking damage to themselves. So they can stop spike attempts on them by resetting with stealths or teleports and then with stealth/teleports of their own and in the case of the mesmer distortion they land their spike.

Mesmers can spike pretty much every 12 seconds in addition to the phantasms. They have the highest amount of spike attempts. Thieves have the highest spike in a small time window with backstab and they can land that spike safely due to how broken stealth is in terms of offensive and defensive benefit.

Zenith.7301:

But mesmer and thief GC builds are not garbage in teamfights, and in some team comps neither are GC Scepter eles.

It’s specifically the classes with crappy or few active defenses like the ranger or warrior or necro.

If you notice why mesmers and thieves can run GC successfully is because teleports, stealth, and distortion all allow them to stay on the offensive without risking damage to themselves. So they can stop spike attempts on them by resetting with stealths or teleports and then with stealth/teleports of their own and in the case of the mesmer distortion they land their spike.

Mesmers can spike pretty much every 12 seconds in addition to the phantasms. They have the highest amount of spike attempts. Thieves have the highest spike in a small time window with backstab and they can land that spike safely due to how broken stealth is in terms of offensive and defensive benefit.

Stealth gives no defensive benefit, all it does is make them nontargetable and invisible you can still spike them while they’re stealthed. Granted there’s some traits that make stealth more of a defense but in all reality it won’t save them, it’s the shadow steps/teleports that’ll do that

Yeah good luck spiking something that dropped targets when most attacks in the game require a target or are a directional projectile.

Well this went a bit offtopic, but I’m intrigued.

Without Empathic Bond, rangers really do have extremely subpar condition removal. It isn’t that Signet of Renewal is bad, it’s that it’s function as a stun break instead of some other added utility is a hindrance. While on paper, it looks good for bar compression, but in reality, it forces a player to use the active either as a cleanse or a stun break, meaning that if it is the only stun break and cleanse you take, you have no access to either of those functions afterwards.

Basically, if you want to use SoR as a cleanse, then you have to take Lightning Reflexes as a stun break so that you don’t screw yourself over by burning SoR as a stun break. Also, conditions are so easily stacked and maintained by individual professions in this game that I’d be willing to say any cleanse longer than 20-30s in unreasonable, as condition builds are constant pressure builds.

Healing Spring is also a problem because you are now forced to choose between using it as a heal or as a cleanse, and the heal takes priority, because using the longest cooldown heal a ranger has access to as a cleanse is only going to result in getting you killed because at some point you’ll actually need that heal and it will be on cooldown because it was used as a cleanse.

And we’re talking about a meta where Guardians, Eles, and Engis, all prevalent classes, can trait and/or take full advantage of soldiers runes, and get consistent cleanses through extremely spammable, strong utility options. And/or, in the Eles case, being able to switch to a useful attunement while removing conditions (when traited properly).

Even thieves have a very consistently usable range of viable cleanses when using the right weapon sets or traited appropriately.

Necromancers have a little less access to removing conditions then the classes I mentioned, but they do have access to full cleanses, one of them being the heal that gets boosted for every condition on them, that are usable on a often enough basis with their naturally high healthpool.

So without Empathic Bond, rangers only really kind of beat Warriors and Mesmers in terms of cleanses, and for Mesmers, it’s only because the build that would utilize cleanses has been deemed not viable.

I would much rather have Anet spend less time developing new content and just have one massive patch which fixes the core issues professions face inside their trait lines, utility skills, weapons, and features unique to each profession.

Rangers have been asking for fixes for numerous parts of our profession since game release, and all we do is get band-aids that don’t address the core issues. It is ridiculous. Look at spirits for example, Anet keeps on trying to adjust proc chance when that is not the issue. The issue is that spirits effects are rather useless, and even one’s that have some viability are not considered because of the fact spirits die in 1 hit in dungeons.

In conclusion, I whole heartily agree. This Whack-a-Mole balance philosophy has got to stop. More resources need to be shifted to balancing the professions in the game and fixing (not covering up) whats broken.

Bas.7406:

SOTG has zero to do with pve or wvwvw. Unfortunately at this point there is no SOTG for WvWvW or PVE. Though from conversations I have had this may be coming soon.

Unfortunately SOTG has everything to do with PVE, since Anet has never practiced what they preach about splitting PVP and PVE balancing. Almost every single PVP nerf has been carried over to PVE and none have been removed from PVE once given to PVE.

Based on past performance there is little evidence they will ever do anything but keep their head in the sand in regards to PVE dungeon balance.

You can plead for people to give Anet the benefit of the doubt and concede that they are good guys who will magically balance the entire game given time.

It’s very unreasonable to expect unbalanced classes in one mode of the game to sit on there hands for ages while other classes get luv.

Jalad Lantana.3027:

Bas.7406:

SOTG has zero to do with pve or wvwvw. Unfortunately at this point there is no SOTG for WvWvW or PVE. Though from conversations I have had this may be coming soon.

Unfortunately SOTG has everything to do with PVE, since Anet has never practiced what they preach about splitting PVP and PVE balancing. Almost every single PVP nerf carried over to PVE and none have been removed once given to PVE.

Based on past performance there is little evidence they will ever do anything but keep their head in the sand in regards to PVE dungeon balance.

It’s “trickle down” balancing. The highest skill, highest tiered gameplay ideally comes from a player facing off against other players, and if a person can do well against other players, then the idea is that they should be able to do well against PvE creatures, but PvE creatures have predictable movesets, actions, and algorithms that determine how they function in a fight.

Then the argument of balancing primarily for WvW or PvP comes into play. The reason why it isn’t WvW focused is because of the amount of variables there are. Between the mixtures of equipment, with the necessity to grind for top quality gear, and the sheer amount of people there are at times, it would be extremely hard to reach true balance in WvW.

SPvP has the most demanding team composition with the most observable versus gameplay to balance around. Unfortunately, the devs seem to forget that they shouldn’t be balancing strictly around a conquest style game mode, ESPECIALLY if they aren’t going to be splitting changes that often.

Not to say dungeon balance doesn’t deserve any love, but the idea behind balancing SPvP first makes sense as it covers most of the games content.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Back to my OP, with the recent discovery that there could be a trait change that opens up some different builds, my hopes for the next update aren’t entirely killed. However, I’m extremely skeptical as well, since the game was released with those traits and they’re just NOW being addressed. In my head, I know it probably won’t go very well for rangers in the long run.

Blackbird.4382:

First, calm down & don’t over-react.

It was an informal interview, not a carefully crafted statement. Ya, I’d feel better about it if they’d said the entire dynamic of Ranger vs. Pet overall power was being looked at with particular attention paid to reducing pet damage. But just because they didn’t say that doesn’t mean that it won’t be implemented that way once everything shakes out.

Ranger vs Pet overall pet dynamic needs to be the foundation of every balance decision they make with the ranger because that is the foundation of the class. They can’t touch one without considering the other, anything else would show a complete lack of understanding of the core mechanic of the class.

So far the devs have done very little to earn the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the ranger.