Guild Wars 2

I have to ask this because it’s going to be a 3-4s reveal on thieves. Is slotting it worth it for them and will that one skill overcome the shoddy ai from our pet that comes with dealing with constantly invising players and the op water field they can steal from us?

This is in the context of 1on1 duels.

I really think Anet needs to also look at our pet and how the pet’s AI deals with players who constantly invis, these 2 things give us a huge disadvantage in fights against the thief.

Wait and see the full patch notes man, this update is gonna be huge, we don’t know what else it will contain

Sic’em was mainly utilized by beastmaster builds, and those with perma regen already could deal with thieves in the first place. The change fits perfectly to the thematic of the skill, but other than that I don’t see it getting that much use. Or it will skew the thief meta towards s/p teleport thieves. There will be so much qq about that. Most players will go from raging for not seeing the thief to raging for seeing it but not being able to kill it.

i bet it will be a nerf. we gain nerf in every patch. they communicate it as a buff but no. every single big update was a dps loss at the end.

That is not true, longbow did become better. Not the basic damage, but the dps did. It was a high price we paid for it though.

Main problem with Longbow is that the damage from #1 skill is just wayy too dependant on range. Since you won’t be able to sit +1000 in most of dungeons/pvp situatuons/tPvP in general, it does totally crap damage. I knowdevs may like the idea, but really… Even 50% damage difference is way too much. Giving current +1000 damage to range below +1000 and giving around 10% boost to targets above +1000 range would be welcome fix.

nagymbear.5280:

Sic’em was mainly utilized by beastmaster builds, and those with perma regen already could deal with thieves in the first place.

Well, I often “deal with” thieves in my beastmaster build by just stalemating with them since I cannot prevent them from escaping or resetting the fight as many times as they feel like. It’s a frustrating and time-consuming exercise in waiting/hoping for the thief to make a mistake.

Using Sic ‘em to reduce the thief’s condition removal and initiative regen could make an actual kill significantly more likely.

The problem I have with it is that Sic ’em is still really not very good against any other enemy for a variety of reasons.

Stice.5204:

nagymbear.5280:

Sic’em was mainly utilized by beastmaster builds, and those with perma regen already could deal with thieves in the first place.

Well, I often “deal with” thieves in my beastmaster build by just stalemating with them since I cannot prevent them from escaping or resetting the fight as many times as they feel like. It’s a frustrating and time-consuming exercise in waiting/hoping for the thief to make a mistake.

Using Sic ‘em to reduce the thief’s condition removal and initiative regen could make an actual kill significantly more likely.

The problem I have with it is that Sic ’em is still really not very good against any other enemy for a variety of reasons.

I tried playing a BM in wvw with an eagle, ran into a rifle engie, he circled for a good 2-3 minutes until I got bored of that. And before anyone says I should’ve cc-d him I tried with all I could, but it was as effective as trying to stop a hummer with rain.

If you can have a stalemate on your BM against really good thieves, thats as good as you can get. Other builds will have the damage, but due to the thief resetting the fight all the time won’t have enough survivability. I think another skill should give reveal instead of sic’em. A trap would make more sense, and traps can be utilised by many builds even without traiting for it.

No not really, the problem with thiefs is not when you have seen them. The problem is that thery are so weak now, that they(atleast on my wvw servers) prey on those who just fought and have the skills on cooldown and low health. You cannot get any lamer than that.

aspirine.6852:

No not really, the problem with thiefs is not when you have seen them. The problem is that thery are so weak now, that they(atleast on my wvw servers) prey on those who just fought and have the skills on cooldown and low health. You cannot get any lamer than that.

That is nothing new unfortunately. That is on of the main sources of thief hatred, as thieves are VERY effective at that. I’m looking at you Heartseeker >:/

aspirine.6852:

No not really, the problem with thiefs is not when you have seen them. The problem is that thery are so weak now, that they(atleast on my wvw servers) prey on those who just fought and have the skills on cooldown and low health. You cannot get any lamer than that.

Thieves are far from weak AGAINST RANGERS. Now , maybe to alot of other classes, but you need to understand a couple things when fighting a truly good thief, and I duel alot of great thieves:

1. Their steal: They steal a massively op water field from us that they can then use to heartseeker into while stealthed back to full instantly, because the init cost of HS is very minimal , it also clears conditions, the very bane of any BM build in general.

2. Pet AI: Pet AI simply blows against a constantly invising thief, it takes 1-2 seconds for the pet to physically register before it starts to go into the sequence ‘ok thief is found, attack it’. This alone really hinders us against thieves.

Couple things to note that can be done to help prevent their HS – Wolf Fear, GS #5 , is there anything else? They can HS while immobilized correct? Wolf fear is on a 36-45 seconds cooldown , they can steal every 15 and it’s borderline instant, you can’t really effectively dodge it as most will steal from stealth anyway. GS#5 is good but you’re gambling , if you miss , you put your interrupt on cooldown for when the thief is visible. Any suggestions here would help.

3. Boon / CnD bait: While this isn’t exclusive to our class obviously, it’s very easy for thieves to abuse the shoddy AI of our pet (and the very existence of our pet). They also steal boons from the pet as well (ESPECIALLY anybody running 15 in NM).

#1/#2 completely gives us a disadvantage at fighting a good thief from the beginning of the fight. I duel really good thieves and if a thief knows the ranger inside and out he will rip them to shreds based on #1/#2. It’s a shame it’s not the same with knowing a thieves abilities , there’s just some things rangers simply can’t do against a truly good thief who’s good at avoiding important attacks.

I think boon stealing reduced to 1 and the Sic’em will definitely help and open up options for being more tolerant to thieves , and like others have said, all of the patch notes aren’t out yet and there could be some other stuff that’s getting added.

aspirine.6852:

No not really, the problem with thiefs is not when you have seen them. The problem is that thery are so weak now, that they(atleast on my wvw servers) prey on those who just fought and have the skills on cooldown and low health. You cannot get any lamer than that.

I completely Disagree.

If thieves were so weak, why the Outrage against them?

A weak class wouldn’t Never get the Center attention.

Even their class wouldn’t be mentioned.

(what class since gw2 release been troubling and causing tremendous Irronies?)

You already know that answer.

Thief, of course!

So there….

As the saying goes, “The Abuser always plays the victim card”>> Thief

1. Ability on sword should cast more on teleport to target but for exchange, less on teleporting back. Also, range has to be toned down to max 900. 1200 is simple faceroll and irritates me. If I kite thief very well on long range, I should be rewarded for that and he has to be punished, forced to use cooldowns or eat damage. Not smashing one “GG nice kite” button!

I doubt it will help in any real way, although I could be wrong but I doubt it.

1) Anet is doing the patch so it wont work and if it does work it wont work well.

2) The length of the reveled vs the cool down will not be worth while. Thiefs are mobile enough they will just leave for a few seconds.

3) Anet is involved.

If they just throw a 4 second reveal on the shout and change nothing else about it then no.

I think that Sic’Em reveal effect will only happen when the pet hit the target, so the chances of it actually work is very low, and if it hits it will most likely have a very low duration, probably around 5 seconds (I can see it won’t be affected by condition duration), and since the skill will get a “buff” the CD will probably get higher or the pet wont get stealth or something around that line, since a buff for us can’t come without a nerf.

5 seconds is a lot when you are a thief and you’re trying to stay alive. I think it will be the standard 3 seconds, and it will be given to the thief on activation, not on hit. But with ANet you never know.

Burnfall.9573:

aspirine.6852:

No not really, the problem with thiefs is not when you have seen them. The problem is that thery are so weak now, that they(atleast on my wvw servers) prey on those who just fought and have the skills on cooldown and low health. You cannot get any lamer than that.

I completely Disagree.

If thieves were so weak, why the Outrage against them?

A weak class wouldn’t Never get the Center attention.

Even their class wouldn’t be mentioned.

(what class since gw2 release been troubling and causing tremendous Irronies?)

You already know that answer.

Thief, of course!

So there….

As the saying goes, “The Abuser always plays the victim card”>> Thief

Well I say weak because they now rely on a single thing to stop them getting killed Stealth. And stealth is the worst thing imo that happend to pvp/wvw. They need it because when you would see them coming a ranger could have them at half their health before they get to you. Even though they have great mobility.
I really cant stand those thiefs because of that stupid stealth, I cant say that I ever enjoyed a fight between me and a thief. While I have enjoyed fighting many other professions.

Ryan.8367:

I have to ask this because it’s going to be a 3-4s reveal on thieves. Is slotting it worth it for them?

Out of all the various activities, game modes, PvE content and WvW content, there is only 1 scenario in which you would slot Sic Em:
.
.
.
tPvP – And that’s if there’s a Thief/Mesmer on the opposing team.

That’s it.

Thanks Anet for the wonderful buff to Sic Em.

I just don’t think rangers are meant to even go toe to toe with a good thief.

1. No blinds except from a pet , which is extremely tough to get off.
2. CnD our pet whenever you’d like with no risk at all. Meaning I can completely dodge a CnD and be doing the right thing, but since my pet has no dodge functionality, i suffer extremely.
3. Pet AI blows against constantly stealthing targets. (why you run canines against any good mesmer).
4. Steal and insane water field so conditions loading isn’t effectively possible.

Why is there no dodge functionality on our pets when we dodge or something to compensate? It seems so silly to me that as rangers we get penalized EVEN if we dodge important kitten, it’s not just CnD that’s like this – look at ele churning earth, if we’re in the vicinity of that and I dodge, my pet still takes damager and 8 stacks of bleeding. It’s just completely unfair that Anet tells us to rely on our pets and stack a percentage of our damage into that pet and then not give the pet itself defensives to compensate actions done by other players. It’s just really sad development on Anet’s part and something needs to be addressed, I as a ranger am tired of being penalized for actually knowing the other person’s attacks and dodging them effectively but since I have a pet that can’t do anything, it gets abused. CnD is the biggest of the abuse. There needs to be like Aegis to the pet for 4 seconds or so on dodge when we dodge because like I said, I’m tired of being penalized for actually knowing another player’s attacks and dodging them effectively, no other class has to worry about this except mesmers but honestly, give our pets duelist and berserker phantasm damage and I may be alright with them not being able to dodge/receive mitigation for our dodges.

@ryan

Minor correction: in addition to raven, sun spirit blinds

@OP – It might help in 1v1 but if it is a 3 second revealed on a 40 second cooldown, it really isn’t worth it. That’s basically one rotation for a thief and a good one will just dodge anyway.

Where did you guys get the notion that the thief can dodge the reveal? What makes you think it’s not an instant? It might not be an instant but I can almost guarantee it won’t depend on the pet landing a hit. It wouldn’t work properly since pets can’t really hit good thieves already. Just doesn’t make sense

When was the last time the balance team made any sense?

But about sic’em, it won’t help us one bit. 3-4 second reveal is nothing for a thief they just end up using few dodges and then CnD off our pet again and go on about their business as usual. And the 40 second CD just makes it even more useless.

At 4 seconds, it’s going to be a precision job, trying to get reveal on the Thief at the right time. Use “Sic ’Em” to early, and the reveal will run out before the Thief can be downed. Use “Sic ’Em” too late, and the Thief has already ran away to reset.

sic em has a uptime of 10 sec with a dmg increase for every hit. i think arena will bring something like every hit will stack the revealed “condition?” ( condition duration increase work or not ) with every hit for maybe 2 sec. with this buff and a ranged pet thiefs will have a hard time

It’s all going to hinge on how the skill works. I’m not really sure we need it as it is because the Ranger does well against thieves overall. I’m more interested in the utility it provides. Can the Ranger counter a Mesmer veil in some fashion for example? Roaming with this to counter Thieves? Unless Thieves get greater access to stability I’m not sure we ‘need’ it.

Untraited sic em rangers are food for shadow stepping /pistol thieves.
Fight reset = you no sic em. /GG

At BEST this will make thieves target someone else. And that’s just wishful thinking.

As someone said on the forums, bunker to survive – that was the only way for me. I refuse to go glass-cannon it’s way to easy for thieves to shank you down.

Dont any of you be fooled.

I think it will be very useful for us ! Alone it doesnt sound very good, but we have others ways to deal with stealth, hope they also improve the pet ai a bit, somethime it takes just too long for my pet to realize he has to use F2, and somethimes these skills do not work.

Atherakhia.4086:

It’s all going to hinge on how the skill works. I’m not really sure we need it as it is because the Ranger does well against thieves overall. I’m more interested in the utility it provides. Can the Ranger counter a Mesmer veil in some fashion for example? Roaming with this to counter Thieves? Unless Thieves get greater access to stability I’m not sure we ‘need’ it.

You speak as if you’d dueled good thieves before. Name the guys you’ve dueled before to make an assumption that rangers do well against thieves.

I don’t use a BM ranger at all so I don’t know your guys pain on that subject, but I use a mixed ranger using an LB/GS combination. I use Troll urgent, signet of the Hunt, signet of the wild, a trap, and rampage as one. I trait 30/30/10/0/0. I also have a gaming mouse with my pet controls on it so I can control my pet on the fly. My armour is rampagers with celestial accessories with a berzerker backpiece.

I can go toe to toe with thieves along with my pet helps me. The pets I use are Drakehound and Spider. I don’t use them for their damage, but for there unique abilities and some interesting tricks that can be done using them. A constantly invisible thief would have more issues as I place a trap and stand in it with my GS out. As soon as my trap goes off I know where the thief is and engage them on my terms and on my field (flame or poison trap both work wonders, cause of the constant pulses of damage). My pet in the mean time has enough time to lock and these pets have the unique property of long charge up attacks. This is a good thing when dealing with something invisible cause once the charge up is locked by the pet it can hit invisible targets (also works against mesmers to easily find the real one). The drakehound pounce attack that causes knock down usually hits the invisible thief by surprise (unless they are porting around as well but that is rarer) which then I use to place a trap where my pet landed. A spider has 2 long charge up attacks a snare and a poison field. poision field is unreliable and misses often just use it as a cover from a thief. The snare usually hits tho unless the invisible thief is paying attention to your pet and you (which 99% of the case they aren’t) so when you see the snare go off hit the spot where it landed (espically if it vanishes before hitting the ground).

If they give me sic em’ with a revile attached to it i will use it and start murdering thieves more just cause i could use my LB more and keep them at range.

Ryan.8367:

Atherakhia.4086:

It’s all going to hinge on how the skill works. I’m not really sure we need it as it is because the Ranger does well against thieves overall. I’m more interested in the utility it provides. Can the Ranger counter a Mesmer veil in some fashion for example? Roaming with this to counter Thieves? Unless Thieves get greater access to stability I’m not sure we ‘need’ it.

You speak as if you’d dueled good thieves before. Name the guys you’ve dueled before to make an assumption that rangers do well against thieves.

Hard to name good thieves in WvW just cause you can’t see their names.

Logically, you’re correct suddenflame. The sentiment remains: a good thief is by no means easy to beat, especially in wvw. Sick em will really help, I have a feeling. I have been using the skill already. It really isn’t too bad for beastmaster builds.

Chopps.5047:

Logically, you’re correct suddenflame. The sentiment remains: a good thief is by no means easy to beat, especially in wvw. Sick em will really help, I have a feeling. I have been using the skill already. It really isn’t too bad for beastmaster builds.

by the same Sentiment any good player is hard to beat. I fought good rangers that went 5v1 and made it out alive (couldnt kill any of them due to them constantly rezing the downed) but the fact that 5 players couldn’t kill him was enough of a praise. I seen an engi (usually called the worst class) take on 4 people.

How good a class is in GW2 is not predetermined by selecting that class but by the skill of the player using it. I am no expert on Ranger or Engi but I would say I am a skilled warrior and a least decent Ranger. I will be hard to kill in any 1v1 situation, but that’s not where it matters in this game. Sic Em will be helpful for yourself and your team not just yourself. The entire game was designed around the concept of team play. Rangers have more team helping skills then most classes.

Such as:

• Spirits
• LB arrow barrage use it to cover your zergs retreat (guranteed to save a few peoples lives)
• traps used as indicators or time gainers

this is only some of the different uses for common damage skills

If you only think of skills for what they can do for you or their damage then your missing entire concepts of the skills. The new Sic Em will have more team play then solo play. It is great for solo play but better for the team.

I agree, team will only help with this, mainly because you have to substitute out something you will probably need to actually Kill the thief to put “Sic em” up.

It’s a pretty pointless skill now and it will remain a pretty pointless skill unless they completely rework it. Standard form is a slight buff along with massive nerf to most other utility to make it the new least-worst option for rangers (*cough longbow *cough)

To really FIX the counter to the Stealth of the Thief, it can’t be a trait. It has to be on a grouping of pets, say pigglet that sniff out thief and do damage as well. It can’t be a trait we will not run around with because it doesn’t fit our build.

Thief comes out of stealth, I am using beastmaster build and press “sic em”. I now cripple the thief with shortbow or try to stun and attempt to cast muddy terrain on thief. Cast is successful. Thief eats massive bird burst from sic em and traits. Thief is dead. And I can use muddy terrain / sic em combo really on any profession. Someone will post a video along these lines and everyone will stop worrying about “how much it will suxors”.

Sic em + entangle + bonfire GG

Sic em + muddy terrain + auto GG

What else can you think of?

Better make warhorn 4 to prevent and reveal stealth
I cant believe they make my birds stealth too
(My birds are attacking, it should be “Revealed”)

Chopps.5047:

Thief comes out of stealth, I am using beastmaster build and press “sic em”. I now cripple the thief with shortbow or try to stun and attempt to cast muddy terrain on thief. Cast is successful. Thief eats massive bird burst from sic em and traits. Thief is dead. And I can use muddy terrain / sic em combo really on any profession. Someone will post a video along these lines and everyone will stop worrying about “how much it will suxors”.

Sic em + entangle + bonfire GG

Sic em + muddy terrain + auto GG

What else can you think of?

You’re scenario will work. But its only good for a 1vs1 type of scenario against a thief. This is no different than the HS argument. Some people mentioned that HS isn’t just used for bunkering situations. It can be used it team play situations. Well, in this case, the new Sic Em changes aren’t enough to warrant a space on my utility slot.

They need to introduce a trait that makes thieves targetable within a certain range of either the pet or ranger. Targetable by the Ranger and pet, but does not reveal them. You could even further the traitline so that those in your party can receive the ability as well.

Google ‘Knight Online lupin eyes’ <—— That is how stealth should be dealt with. Also take note: this ability is only available to Rangers….so that makes them a necessity to a roaming party.

Suddenflame.2601:

I don’t use a BM ranger at all so I don’t know your guys pain on that subject, but I use a mixed ranger using an LB/GS combination. I use Troll urgent, signet of the Hunt, signet of the wild, a trap, and rampage as one. I trait 30/30/10/0/0. I also have a gaming mouse with my pet controls on it so I can control my pet on the fly. My armour is rampagers with celestial accessories with a berzerker backpiece.

I can go toe to toe with thieves along with my pet helps me. The pets I use are Drakehound and Spider. I don’t use them for their damage, but for there unique abilities and some interesting tricks that can be done using them. A constantly invisible thief would have more issues as I place a trap and stand in it with my GS out. As soon as my trap goes off I know where the thief is and engage them on my terms and on my field (flame or poison trap both work wonders, cause of the constant pulses of damage). My pet in the mean time has enough time to lock and these pets have the unique property of long charge up attacks. This is a good thing when dealing with something invisible cause once the charge up is locked by the pet it can hit invisible targets (also works against mesmers to easily find the real one). The drakehound pounce attack that causes knock down usually hits the invisible thief by surprise (unless they are porting around as well but that is rarer) which then I use to place a trap where my pet landed. A spider has 2 long charge up attacks a snare and a poison field. poision field is unreliable and misses often just use it as a cover from a thief. The snare usually hits tho unless the invisible thief is paying attention to your pet and you (which 99% of the case they aren’t) so when you see the snare go off hit the spot where it landed (espically if it vanishes before hitting the ground).

If they give me sic em’ with a revile attached to it i will use it and start murdering thieves more just cause i could use my LB more and keep them at range.

Ok so when the thief completely guts your Rampage as One (stab is first to be stolen in a larc boon steal in prioritization of stolen boons btw), blinds you before every stealth attempt you make and dodges (they have endurance regen too btw) the trebuchet like attacks from the spider and clears conditions every time he stealths. Also, keep in mind he’ll line up Larc strike with thief steal so he just stole 2 boons from you and now has regen and more condition clear, by the time he’s done with that he can CnD for 6 initiative but the thing is he doesn’t even need to waste the intiative because blinding powder is back off of cooldown so he then uses the 6 initiative to shadowstep to you and steal more boons from you, he evades before doing this because flanking strike is an evasion. If he’s running shortbow he can use half of his initiative and literally dodge every rapid fire shot (because they know rapid fire is channeled and count on you to waste it so when they go stealth right after they’re not hindered by it) , then comes back out of stealth (because they recharge more intiative while in stealth as well AND heal for about 300 a tick in stealth).

Just curious how your signet of the hunt plays in all of this really, when they have 3 ways of teleporting to you anyway. The spiders do nothing and you’re better off with dual canines, so not sure on that either.

Sorry , but the well played thieves i know and duel on a regular basis would destroy every inch of that strategy you think you have that dominates them. Thieves have utility that far outweighs rangers and when used right , they don’t even need stealth. I know thieves who can run sword/pistol pistol/dagger and dominate you with your strategy. They have far to many on-demand evasion for anything you’re proposing to work while critting for immense amounts of damage and IF they run perplexity, as a player running the troll ungeant heal – you’re kittened. It’s too easily telegraphed and good thieves will interrupt it and also stack 5 confusion on top of you, everytime you try to do it. Thieves who know rangers inside and out will destroy you, case and point.

ItIsFinished.9462:

Chopps.5047:

Thief comes out of stealth, I am using beastmaster build and press “sic em”. I now cripple the thief with shortbow or try to stun and attempt to cast muddy terrain on thief. Cast is successful. Thief eats massive bird burst from sic em and traits. Thief is dead. And I can use muddy terrain / sic em combo really on any profession. Someone will post a video along these lines and everyone will stop worrying about “how much it will suxors”.

Sic em + entangle + bonfire GG

Sic em + muddy terrain + auto GG

What else can you think of?

You’re scenario will work. But its only good for a 1vs1 type of scenario against a thief. This is no different than the HS argument. Some people mentioned that HS isn’t just used for bunkering situations. It can be used it team play situations. Well, in this case, the new Sic Em changes aren’t enough to warrant a space on my utility slot.

Ok you need to realize thieves have more than just 2 teleports to get out of that, you have to think before using that they may have placed a sword #2 down somewhere

1. Sword #2 inf strike start location out side of that spot = teleport
2. Shadowstep teleport = teleport
3. Withdrawl , gets you out of immob, evades attacks AND heals them

All 3 can be managed effectively on a relatively short cooldown , withdrawl being all of 15 seconds and Sword #2 being intiative based, a good thief will see this coming miles away and plan it ahead effectively. Once again, better utility to evade practically all of our dmg setups.

As a guy who plays thief now in WvW along with Mesmer and guardian, I see how easy these classes have against rangers and the OH kitten buttons (mainly thieves and mesmers obviously) they have that completely destroy every inch of a good damage lineup we can produce on them. It’s quite sad really, which is unfortunately why I’ve shelved my ranger all together in WvW. I’m tired of giving 1000% for barely any returns and kind of want it easy for a little bit, these classes provide that. I may go back to my ranger after I’ve had it easy for a bit.

I will say though and add that we do fairly well against mesmers, our pet gives us their location always and condis ruin them. Condition mesmers though, are a much different animal on your ranger.

nagymbear.5280:

Stice.5204:

nagymbear.5280:

Sic’em was mainly utilized by beastmaster builds, and those with perma regen already could deal with thieves in the first place.

Well, I often “deal with” thieves in my beastmaster build by just stalemating with them since I cannot prevent them from escaping or resetting the fight as many times as they feel like. It’s a frustrating and time-consuming exercise in waiting/hoping for the thief to make a mistake.

Using Sic ‘em to reduce the thief’s condition removal and initiative regen could make an actual kill significantly more likely.

The problem I have with it is that Sic ’em is still really not very good against any other enemy for a variety of reasons.

I tried playing a BM in wvw with an eagle, ran into a rifle engie, he circled for a good 2-3 minutes until I got bored of that. And before anyone says I should’ve cc-d him I tried with all I could, but it was as effective as trying to stop a hummer with rain.

If you can have a stalemate on your BM against really good thieves, thats as good as you can get. Other builds will have the damage, but due to the thief resetting the fight all the time won’t have enough survivability. I think another skill should give reveal instead of sic’em. A trap would make more sense, and traps can be utilised by many builds even without traiting for it.

Why not sic ‘em and a trap? in any case we won’t be worse off from this addition, I can see it being troublesome for many thieves.

Taku.6352:

When was the last time the balance team made any sense?

But about sic’em, it won’t help us one bit. 3-4 second reveal is nothing for a thief they just end up using few dodges and then CnD off our pet again and go on about their business as usual. And the 40 second CD just makes it even more useless.

You’re looking at it thinking of a thief that’s just having a good time full of health and in no trouble at all, how many times haven’t we all fought some thief we just about had dead that went back into hiding a split second before you kill him? that’s when you use this skill.

Coarr.3286:

sic em has a uptime of 10 sec with a dmg increase for every hit. i think arena will bring something like every hit will stack the revealed “condition?” ( condition duration increase work or not ) with every hit for maybe 2 sec. with this buff and a ranged pet thiefs will have a hard time

Yeah let’s just murder stealth completely… lawl. Sounds like you just want more S/D flanking strike spammers.

Ryan.8367:

Ok so when the thief completely guts your Rampage as One (stab is first to be stolen in a larc boon steal in prioritization of stolen boons btw), blinds you before every stealth attempt you make and dodges (they have endurance regen too btw) the trebuchet like attacks from the spider and clears conditions every time he stealths. Also, keep in mind he’ll line up Larc strike with thief steal so he just stole 2 boons from you and now has regen and more condition clear, by the time he’s done with that he can CnD for 6 initiative but the thing is he doesn’t even need to waste the intiative because blinding powder is back off of cooldown so he then uses the 6 initiative to shadowstep to you and steal more boons from you, he evades before doing this because flanking strike is an evasion. If he’s running shortbow he can use half of his initiative and literally dodge every rapid fire shot (because they know rapid fire is channeled and count on you to waste it so when they go stealth right after they’re not hindered by it) , then comes back out of stealth (because they recharge more intiative while in stealth as well AND heal for about 300 a tick in stealth).

Just curious how your signet of the hunt plays in all of this really, when they have 3 ways of teleporting to you anyway. The spiders do nothing and you’re better off with dual canines, so not sure on that either.

Sorry , but the well played thieves i know and duel on a regular basis would destroy every inch of that strategy you think you have that dominates them. Thieves have utility that far outweighs rangers and when used right , they don’t even need stealth. I know thieves who can run sword/pistol pistol/dagger and dominate you with your strategy. They have far to many on-demand evasion for anything you’re proposing to work while critting for immense amounts of damage and IF they run perplexity, as a player running the troll ungeant heal – you’re kittened. It’s too easily telegraphed and good thieves will interrupt it and also stack 5 confusion on top of you, everytime you try to do it. Thieves who know rangers inside and out will destroy you, case and point.

Your assuming i have boons to give him. From the build I have stated I have 0 boons to steal which in turn gives him nothing. Which of my skills gives me boons? Rampage as One great but it doesn’t give him any boons he needs and i wouldn’t use it in that situation. Poison trap which he can’t block or dodge if he wants to get to me lowers his healing ability by 33% (which to a thief is devastating) and he has to stand it the entire time he wants to fight me. Due to its 12sec cooldown I can effectively dodge him till its back up. If he uses blinding powder to try to perma blind me i just move out of it. Its radius is extremely small. Toll Urgent is a buff that he can’t steal and also heals for a large amount on a shorter CD. I have 2 abilities to great fields with larger radiuses then a thief. You say you duel a lot, but you are missing the importance of a constant poison or burning field. As well spiders are important cause they can snare. A Black Widow is capable of 2 snares which a thief has only so many conditions cures. A LB has a knockback and a field with a cripple. I have faced by the sounds of it far more thieves than you. IF they waste all their initative on curing all their conditions great now they dont have as much to deal damage with. As well if they switch to SB i got a LB that deals more damage at range so it would be a great mistake from them to go into the distance.

Are you mad? Rampage As One gives him 20 seconds of stability.

You’re kittening stupid dude if you think a poison trap is going to stop a thief and hurt him. They have stealth, and they remove conditions in stealth as well as the steal which also clears conditions and procs regen on top of it. Blinding powder to ‘perma blind’ you? Do you even kittening play thief dude? Half of them don’t use it to blind you , it’s to setup invis burst opportunities. Jesus christ you’re really dumb, roll up a thief class and play it please or simply don’t state stupid kitten.

Even if the skill does help against thieves, I’m not going to take a skill for such a situational use when there are other skills that can be taken that can be more applicable to more situations.

HOWEVER, I am watching the MLG tourny right now, and Caed is running a stealth far-point assaulter build. Granted that the amount of people that effectively run the build can probably be counted on only 1 to 2 hands, but I wouldn’t see it as unreasonable for “top tier” rangers to take the new Sic’ Em particularly to counter Caed in that matchup.

That, however, is probably only going to happen in that game mode if spirits get made more useless and the pet centric builds make a comeback.