Guild Wars 2

IndigoSundown.5419:

zeromius.1604:

mrstealth.6701:

The OP’s suggestion is precisely what ascended trinkets should have been from the start. Stick with the combined stat+gem, and replacing the gem slot with the infusion slot. But make the base stat the same as an exotic piece+gem upgrade. It gives them great value and convience, without giving a combat advantage. And it promote variety and testing more radical builds.

I don’t know if I’m going to quit over it, but every new step down this ascended treadmill makes that so much more likely. There is no way to keep up with this on 8 characters and a love of build variety.

You knew that they were going to add Ascended items to the other slots after they were first released in November. It’s not a big surprise that you were going to see Ascended weapons and armor. It would however be quite surprising if ArenaNet went back on their promise and introduced a tier above Ascended at some point in time.

Better look more closely at those promises. Promises with qualifiers are not really promises, they’re PR statements. They’re creating the impression they’re done with gear progression. They created the impression exotic was going to be top tier before launch. If the skills-instead-of-gear initiative doesn’t appease the progression crowd, I would not be surprised at all. Then again, I no longer trust ANet.

Nawh it’s too late. I hated it when ascended trinkets were introduced. This is it. I’ve had it.

I don’t care anymore if they went back or added another tier. I think my other hobbies are calling me, and they want me back – badly.

Actually the real sentiment might be worse than what you saw in the boards since much of it has been moderated away.

Some of the critiques have merit too

1) Shallow dumb stories. Kinda like watching pokemon and its monster of the week or uh… biweekly.

2) Slowness in addressing sPvP balance with some builds being so much more effective while requiring very little risk and skill to play, thanks to AI, AoE and Fire and Forget condition damage.

3) Difficulties and cost of raising competitive alts, locking many casuals to a single playstyle.

4) Gear treadmills. I think this was the final and last straw for me. It’s the stupidest concept to hook players in, while requiring very little investment from the company. Hey look, the players are bored, why not add 10% more to these numbers – that’ll do the trick! Well how about more skills, better story, better dungeon or heck even a “Looking For Group” tools would be much better appreciated. But guess that’s way too much to ask for.

The problem is ANET got its priorities confused and the game is like a big ball of mud with no clear vision.

NewTrain.7549:

Ascended weapons and armor may be here to stay, but I’m not. Once a game becomes a chore, I tend to stop playing it. I’d advise others to do the same and move on to entertainment that’s…well…entertaining.

I’m doing the same too. I found out today that they’re adding ascended weapons.

I uninstalled my game just a minute ago. I’m not gonna pour time and money down a bad investment.

tolunart.2095:

I’ve seen the thread, I don’t need to look for it.

“Handful” is a deliberately imprecise term. There is no number associated with it. In a game with 3-4 million potential players (accounts are almost never deleted, even if you stop logging in), a thousand people is a handful. Ten thousand is a handful.

I stop listening to any argument upon seeing the term “manifesto.” That’s about people swallowing the marketing hype and realizing that the devs are merely human. They had grand plans for the game that are not possible at the present time due to limitations of the technology used. A significant minority of people surely left the game at that time, over reasons that included but were not exclusively about Ascended gear. Some of them have returned, others did not.

What I am saying, and I say this with absolute certainty and confidence, is that the people in charge at Anet know a lot more about what is going on in their game than we do. And if their information had told them that:

Putting weapon skin claim tickets in RNG boxes
Changing the quantity/quality of rewards for enemy kills
Introducing new, improved gear

etc.

was going to harm the game more than help it, they would not do those things. People come and go within an MMO all the time. Just because an individual disagrees with a change does not mean it is a bad idea. It means that the individual has a choice before him: accept the change or play another game. Your account will still be here, so you can go away and play something else for six months, then come back to see if enough people disagreed with the changes to make an impact. If not, you make the same choice again, stay and accept it or go.

Not always that straight forward, although you’ve a point.

Do I want to eat some McD now, or should I wait for a lobster dinner. Choices. And frankly many businesses focus on their quarterly earning and throw the long term view out the window. And that’s valid, to a degree. However finding the right balance is often the subject of intense debate .

From my PoV it’d be much better if ANET focused on the casuals. Promote horizontal, rather than vertical progression.

Regardless, ANET is a business, so they do what they have to do. For me I need to get on with my life and do something I enjoy, which the game is increasingly not. So it’s time to part ways, I had my fun, but now time to invest my time and money elsewhere.

Why the complaint about ele? They dish out pretty nasty, constant damage with fresh air.

Granted they couldn’t be tanky, damaging and fast at the same time, but 2/3 is not bad at all – is about par as the other classes imo.

I went 30 in acro, because I kept swapping weapon to get more endurance (dodges). Also helps me dishout 10% more damage – so why not.

The dodges are 33% off because of acro trait 15.

The dodges helps me maintain semi-perma swiftness in addition to bailing me out from constant death.

The swiftness helps me to stay on target, also allows me to take a more aggressive runes.

Pack was chosen due to added precision, which helps in init regen. The 20% + swiftness duration from pack also helps you maintain the swiftness boon from your dodges.

It’s not a hungry set, but sometimes when you see a guard / ele with 12 + boons, you can’t help but spam 3. The init regens helps you. In a pinch you can also spam “2” + stealth to get rid of about 3 condi in 3 seconds (pretty good I think)

I played the 0/30/0/30/10, but I couldn’t really 1-1 much. Could be partly L2P issue, or just incompatible play style.

So here goes, my personal take of S/D. It trades off 10% damage for a little more survivability especially vs. condition/warrior meta.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAsY8YlYmCO3dS5E95ExmidKUOFM1pdP4qVrKA-TwAg0CnISSlkLJTSyksJN+Y9xugJBA

The idea is to use stealth sparingly, and rely mostly on evade/roll, but not abandon it completely.

Strength:

1) Condition remove on stealth
2) Condition remove on “2”
3) Semi permanent regeneration
4) Tougher armor than the standard S/D.
5) Ability to mix your dodges with stealth for more confusion.
6) You have all 5 weapon skills, rather than relying on only 3.
7) You can take a power rune, rather than lyssa for better dps and still have better condi removal.

Weakness:

1) You give up the GM trait in critical. In justification – I’m not a big fan of executioner since it’s not the most reliable source of damage. Besides if enemy is at 50%, you’re already winning, it just helps you win a little faster. Hiden killer is useless w/o backstab.

2) You cannot spam stealth, use it judiciously to remove condi or maintain perma regeneration or confuse enemy by stealthing and disengage via. “2”

3) There is no 1-click disengage w/o SR. This build is meant mostly for 1v1, and I’m of the opinion that if you run, you lose. So either win or die trying, but either way keep your honor :P And they said there’s no honor among thieves, sheessh.

4) There’s no caltrop spam – again goes back to (3), but also I find a lot of warriors have zerker stance, that practically makes caltrop practically useless. And warrior is meta right now. Similarly vs. necro the caltrops is only helping them heal faster which just works against you. Again, necro is the meta right now.

5) You lose some initiative regen from steal vs. traditional build.

Comment, thoughts or critique?

lvis.3824:

how about dodging thier hard-hitting abilities ?

Also, with your specc you have 6 dodge rolls + FS .
Be smart, use IS + SR to avoid more of their dmg.

You should not spam Fs/Ls , this is perhaps your main problem.

Also, depending on your 2nd weaponset you can pre-dmg before engaging .

Once you have to much condis on you, or you are stunlocked you will lose – but well then you failed to dodge .

Thief is a profession that must somehow outplay many professions nowadays – if you want to react and / or just spam your abilities thief is not for you.

You might kill other GC builds with S/D #3 spamming but for sure no people who know what they do and for sure no Spiritrangers,Stunlock-Warriors or necros.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t been spamming f/s l/s though.

Also dodging is not as easy with the necro’s super wide AoE. The only skill I spammed is IS the “2” to get the dangerous condi off of me before he layer it with up with more nasties.

As for the warriors – sure I dodged a few, but I missed a few as well. And will have to pop stun breaker.

The other issue is the intermittent lag. Even if I reacted quickly and appropriately, it’s not always possible. Regardless mistakes happens, and it seems like when they do happen, the other classes are so much more forgiving.

I think they should just remove it and give us something else like infusion of shadows etc. as the minor trait.

These 2 professions are rather beat-able when you’re out with your stealth build, not so with S/D.

Let’s go with the necro first.

When I get jacked up with condition, I usually spam “2” or hit the bask venom when it’s not on CD. However there’s often just way too much condition and too little health. If I hit basilisk venom too early, it’d be on cool down when I actually get spiked, if I wait for the spike before the basilisk venom, then I’d have lost too much life by that point. The necro meanwhile have twice my health and will usually outlast me in a 1v1 fight.

Now the warrior on the other hand

Has got almost unlimited stun. It’s like one stun after another, while my stunbreaksers are usually on a 30 (infiltrator) and 60 (roll for init) second cool down. Basically not enough.

The other problem is their insane regeneration and the S/D thief lack of healing. Again similar story as the above in a 1v1 match, they will out last me and I would have no way to regen that health back.

So any expert S/D thief can share their wisdom on this? My build is the cookie cutter 0/30/0/30/10. Zerkers, sig of energy and blood (since I’m spamming skill and have very little healing, might as well).

Why the love for Eagle runes?

I find that with eagle runes, I rarely crit as high as when using a power rune, hence I thought pack would be a good candidate.

The trade off is that eagle gets me more crits while pack gives me more dmg on crit. But then on TP eagle is about 6x as much as pack, so may be I wasn’t getting something quite right.

Above 90% though scholar is a beast, but it tapers off drastically as the fight goes on.

But yeah someone explain to me why the love for eagle runes, which seems that for pure dps, power bonus is highly deseriable, no since it affects both crit and non-crit hits.

The map is fine.

Are you raging coz you can’t admit you got one upped in this map?

Vena.8436:

I’ve seen many builds appear to deal with SRangers and Necros, Warriors going far vs. the usual bunker SRanger, and winning has been incredibly common. Hell I’ve seen Cleanse Mesmers that shadow middle/far and play hard counter to condition spam.

But, I play in the bad tier so… I get to have more fun I guess.

Yup I’m seeing this. So the meta is shifting which’s good.

Those classes may not be as far out of balance as I originally thought. If they were the meta would be stuck down the nook with no way out.

I’m with Nova and Jetwing here.

And eviscerate requires you to close the gaps, while mesmers can nuke away from a safe distance.

If you still live to hit them, they teleport even further away. Stealth is one thing, but to give one class clones, stealth, teleport, invulnerability and high damage at the same time is just OP.

The only counter is the current condition heavy meta. It’s poetic justice that their OP clones have met their perfect match. So now they’re whining.

I say cut their damage down by 20-30% and look into buffing their condition hate.

JETWING.2759:

Why ilusionist duelist deal more damage than thieve unload?
Why spatial surge deal same dmg than evicerate?
Why mesmer are so hard to kill and hits so strong?

Touché

Yeah the meta seems fine now, I griped too soon in frustration.

I was wrong.

These things have their place.

The more I play the more I think condition is fine… stop QQing.

Before condi builds were a laughing stock and a running joke.

Iavra.8510:

Yes, but if they get immobilized before they misform, they can’t move in that state.

/edit: But now that you mention it. Conditions get cleansed on downed, aren’t they? If so, what i wrote above doesn’t work :/

Um… no… mistform is a stun breaker.

Is it just me, or I’m starting to see more build diversity in sPvP?

SoloQ used to be choke full of spirit rangers, but now starting to see BM as well.

There seems to be quite a variety of build going on and that’s a good thing. A few days ago I’d never dream of saying this…

I just hope they don’t kill them completely…

Why? Mistformed eles are immune to this attack.

Which one is better for dmg oriented build?

The Primary.6371:

Too bad the condi meta can melt them faster than e.g. warrior. Majority of the time feels like lyssa runes and signet of agility just doesn’t work for thieves with this spec.

Umm.. that’s not true… even w/o lyssa runes. I use eagle btw.

This is a really fun build to play

You’re always constantly move. The pace is so different from D/P or D/D. It’s just so much more visceral.

Really hard to master though >.<

Conditions need more soft counters so you can fight them by playing smartly as opposed to building against them.

Similarly for condition applier, they should require some positioning, or some play, besides mindlessly ground targeting everything in sight.

There’s just no reward either winning or losing these fights because there’s no skill involved. The system is doing most of the work, ticking the dots every seconds and players don’t have to play to win/lose. The spirit ranger and mesmer are worse because players behind them don’t even need to play since AIs are doing the heavy lifting. Meanwhile anyone going up against them has to hang on to their dear life.

I like the stealth in this game. If you noticed a lot of thing in GW2 does NOT have a hard counter and that’s a GOOD thing.

In GW1 everything is overpowered, and you have to have a hard counter in order to balance them out. This makes the game very rock paper scissor-ish. It doesn’t matter if you’re good, if you don’t have counter you’re screwed.

Eg. Bond Monk vs. Mesmer, you already lost. Which was why people rage quitted as there is no point in even fighting a decided battle.

A lot of things in this game has soft counter. Stealth, time your dodges, keep running, keep swinging around, use AoE, use CC <— These are all valid counters that will get the thieves. And you do NOT need a special build for this!

Similarly Warrior has insane regeneration. In GW1 this would be the equivalent to mending/healing breeze warrior, which sucked because there’re hard counters everywhere. In this game you have soft counter, eg. blind etc. It doesn’t destroy their healing signet, but it does counter the overall build.

Back to the current meta however, condition stinks, because there’re few soft counters. You either trait/build against them, or you’re dead. Conditions would be so much more acceptable if they were toned down and given multiple options to remove them that merely requires you to play smartly as opposed to specifically building against them. Eg. if you’re immobilized, you can free yourself with dodges etc. (which means you have to save your dodges, but it won’t kill you if you don’t bring condi removal) I’d also like it better if condition requires some play/skill to remove and apply instead of the current, press button to spread and trait to remove which requires very little skill or user involvement.

Traits/builds should give you a small Advantage and NOT outright win the battle. That should be saved for your skill as a gamer, strategy and speed of execution. Can you imagine a SFIV game where if you’re Akuma, you’d be squarely one shotted by Gouken, and if you’re Gouken, you’d be one shotted by Bison – that’s what rock paper scissor is and it’s just madness! Bring back some sanity and skill to this game.

What’s this infamous S/D build everyone is talking about?

I played it for a while and thought it was decent, but I could never get over the lack of burst. So what makes it so popular now?

Rahar.9872:

Kman.7358:

Making it insta cast would not work. At all. It doesn’t need anything and it can be landed very reliably with a steal mid cast. With the amount of damage CnD can do being so ridiculous, changing anything else would push it far over the top.

Note that the picture below is NOT on an upleveled player.

Aberrant.6749:

evilapprentice.6379:

You’re joking, right?

“Large damage” – CnD hits as hard as an over 50% HS – universally considered the absolute worst time to use HS for damage. It hits for crap, how did you miss that?

Nobody is running a stealth heavy spec without Infusion of shadow, so your “traiting” argument is entirely pointless.

D/P brings to the table a 900 range gap closer that does respectable damage regardless of a targets health AND blinds (meaning it has utility beyond damage and gap closing), a ranged daze, and an AoE blind field. In comparison, D/D offers a condition damage based AoE with a .25s evade (read: kittening worthless), a ranged snare that misses the target if they move for .25 seconds during the travel time, and CnD.

You are enjoying higher risk and vastly lower reward.

I like how the person above me posts a 10k C&D yet you make it sound like it hits like feathers. Lol.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Heartseeker
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cloak_and_Dagger

^ Read these and learn what the skills do before posting. At UNDER 50% HS hits for the same as C&D, NOT above.

As far as Ini, for D/P most take Quick Recovery + Infil signet to keep up with the higher ini cost of the set. With just Infusion of Shadow you’ll be losing ini very quickly. So… that’s the far heavier investment which limits builds.

Thanks for what I can only assume was a fail troll post full of misinformation.

Quoted straight from the patch notes, November 15, 2012:

• Cloak and Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 33% in PvP only.

What you two sound like you’re saying is you think CnD hits hard based on the evidence that Kman provided. I hate to say this about WvW, because it’s a great game type with a lot to offer, but with food buffs, 25 stacks of bloodlust, what is likely full berserker armor, and with the quote above, the evidence from the picture that cloak and dagger hits hard is heavily skewed at best. Citing evidence in WvW with the most buffs to power and crit damage you can get does not make CnD hit hard. The amount of damage that you trade off for superior stealth access with D/P is negligible in PvP. The fact of the matter here is that CnD is too much of a risk for the poor damage that you get in exchange. Why else is D/D all but gone in PvP, and replaced by alternative like S/D and D/P?

This is leaving out other facts like the #3 and 4 skills being very underwhelming, lack of utility, etc. The whole weaponset needs a rework or a buff.

Lol, someone took screencap of CnD in WWW. That thing is imbalanced as heck. Even auto-attacking can hit in the upper thousands. What’s that supposed to proof?

To re-iterate the poster above, 3, 4 & 5 in D/D are a waste of initiative. You’d be a fool to use them in light of the alternative.

BlackBeard.2873:

Bud.5617:

I like the zerker gear still. Can’t go wrong with jumping in, cycling through 20 skills and getting out.

…I think the class is working as intended. You think you’re good? Put your money where your mouth is and run all zerkers. If your reflexes are good, you’ll contribute much and stay alive. If you suck, roll spirit rangers :P

But if your role it to only hit and run, you might as well just play thief, who can do it way better and more reliably. If you can’t have any survivability, what good is our “versatility”?

The design is just messed up right now. Ele has poor innate toughness/health, and low damage on the whole. The only thing going for it right now are chained instant-cast skills, which are pretty gimmicky. We either need real versatility (being forced to constantly cycle to keep up with other classes’s regular output just kills that), or skills that are more effective for their cooldowns.

I don’t think thief does it any better. Mist form is a much more reliable getaway skill than shadow refuge. And especially when your health bar is low. Running away as a thief is always a 50/50 affair.

Ele is also much better able to recoup any health loss than a thief can. I play both so I know. The healing helps you to survive while escaping.

Ele also has access to permanent swiftness, thieves don’t. Again much more mobility, a lot more capable of escaping.

Thief has very poor CC, Eles are so much better at it and its AoE to boot.

Switching attune is actually part of the fun. Having low health/armor is also part of the fun. Between the 2 I have to say the thief is far squishier than the ele and is less able to escape when the going gets rough. The best time for a thief to escape is when health is greater than 50%. Beyond that their chance of survival goes down exponentially, no small thanks to a buggy trait that puts revealed debuff when they reach 25%. An ele however can keep going to the last 10% and still escape relatively unharmed and heal up to 100% in just seconds.

google.3709:

so are you saying its fair that a single class can run around with 5 pets when most if not all skills are limited by a 5 target limit ? pet who not only provide powerful effects, but also gain the benefits from boons

No it’s not fair. Everyone knows that, except people abusing these builds.

I like the zerker gear still. Can’t go wrong with jumping in, cycling through 20 skills and getting out.

I didn’t find the other gears effective at all. Too little damage and I felt like I wasn’t contributing.

Anyone picking anything other than zerker is just gimping themselves. Eles don’t have a lot of sustain (low armor and long recharge time). Your best bet is to hit and run. So you wanna make sure you hit as hard as you can when you do. When you run, you won’t get plinked, so all those points in defense will just be wasted.

I also find air is the trait to max out these days. Make sure you’re fluent with your KD + AOE combos. I find that I can simultaneously drop the squishier professions (thiefs, eles, mes) in one bombing run, if they’re caught in the KD, AoE chains. Just be sure to show up late and leave early (who doesn’t like that).

I think the class is working as intended. You think you’re good? Put your money where your mouth is and run all zerkers. If your reflexes are good, you’ll contribute much and stay alive. If you suck, roll spirit rangers :P

Zerroth.2401:

Not OP just hard to beat…

That is not OP by definition? Especially considering how little skill is required to play the spirit build well.

Zepidel.5349:

evilapprentice.6379:

Zepidel.5349:

evilapprentice.6379:

Zepidel.5349:

evilapprentice.6379:

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

What about CnD giving an evade effect and positioning the thief behind the start and then enters stealth? Quicker stealth and set up your BS. DD would become slightly more defensive also.

If you want CnD to be more defensive, it should ignore block.

Random thief hater – “You already have LS, now you want CnD to ignore block? Rabble rabble rabble!”

Well, imaginary person, CnD is the perfect skill to have ignore block for defensive reasons. All of SA’s best defensive skills are based around going into stealth. CnD already does extremely poor DPI (Damage per Initiative), and it doesn’t set up any further block busting skills – Tactical strike, BS, Sneak attack, and trick shot are all stopped by block. By allowing CnD to ignore block, you’re allowing SA focused thieves to access their defensive mechanic when their opponent use their defensive mechanics, without giving them any additional offensive advantage.

no, it’s already annoying enough to fight thieves/mesmers who can just run away whenever they start losing.

A) What you find annoying is a poor metric for balance. In fact, it’s entirely worthless as a metric for balance. I find things annoying to fight as well, it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be in the game.

B) Even if we ignore point A, D/P does this better already – hell, you can aim the HS directly away to open a huge gap at the start of the fight! Inf arrow is also a much better expenditure of Init for running away. The thief would have to close to melee just to get the CnD to hit (and you’ve always still got the option to dodge).

I find people who think 2+2 is 5 are annoying, I find people who deny the holocaust annoying. Just because I described it as an annoyance doesn’t make it any less true.

In your “B)” you seem to assume people don’t have ranged capabilities, and that thieves have unlimited ini. The main draw to stealth is juking (running to were the persons camera is most likely not panned to, and dropping target) Somthing you can do with inf Arrow or hopping around with HS (which will auto target 1/2 the time and do way more harm then good)

Whats the point of your first paragraph? Re-iterating that it’s annoying? What annoys you is ineligible as a basis for balance, pure and simple.

Your second paragraph doesn’t make any sense – Inf arrow and BP->HS are still better for escaping than a point blank CnD. HS only auto-targets when you have the option set, so the player is in control of whether or not they HS toward or away from a target at all times. Inf arrow builds up a huge distance – any class that close that gap is going to have an even easier time catching up to a thief who’s escape option is “CnD through block then run away”.

All that is pointless anyway – you’re only argument is “CnD shouldn’t hit through block because it would annoy me”, and as we’ve discussed, that’s not an applicable argument.

The point of my 1st paragraph is just because someone finds something annoying doesn’t mean you get to disregard any merit it has.

CnD shouldn’t hit through block because thieves already have enough escapes and mitigation, it would be a massive waste of a buff (ppl would cry "omg thief buff!! this is crazy they are OP! when in reality it really doesn’t do anything to help us) Its like wasting one our freebies on something we don’t need.

Whats really pointless is this entire thread and this argument, because anet will never consider an iota of anything posted in this thread.

I don’t think it was pointless. CnD got the short end of the stick during the last thief witch hunt. Buff the kitten thing.

Too much init, too little benefits. Shortening the cast time also makes precasting unnecessary. I’m sure ANET didn’t design the skills with pre-casting in mind. Let people use it the way it’s meant to be ie. by queuing up the attack, and that means steal first, then CnD. If you want to you can still press both buttons at the same time, you’d still lose nothing.

And yeah sorry that it’s annoying you, but that’s sorta irrelevant to the discussion. The general user of the skill definitely thinks the skill is lacking, especially in D/D configuration.

Xsorus.2507:

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Xsorus.2507:

I’ve still yet to see a single person explain how Spirit Rangers are overpowered or what they did to magically make them overpowered.

Offense:
- Awesome burn uptime due to Sun Spirit passive proc not only on the Ranger but to the pet add to that Torch skills (if equipped with Torch)

- Poison from Sword Main and/or Shortbow

- Occasional 3k-ish hit with Storm Spirit Active every 20 secs regardless of Ranger spec.

Defense and Survivability:
- Decent Protection uptime due to Stone Spirit passive

- Evades evades evades

- Body blocking from spirits add to that difficulty in keeping Ranger target-locked if regularly stealthing with Longbow skill and the crapy targetting system (which of course is a game issue and not the build itself). I think this is the most annoying aspect with the build IMO.

Support:
- Spirit passive not only affects ranger but allies.

- Elite that resses and heals.

And yes, Spirit Rangers are currently OP in the sPVP format. When facing a Spirit Ranger in 1v1, if you ain’t Skullcrack Warrior with Berserker Stance, you either run away, struggle to survive until backup arrives, or bend over.

1. Burn, Which was already perma from Rangers/Ele’s/Engineer’s….So what exactly is the Burn doing, It doesn’t stack in intensity, only duration.. and you pretty much always had Perma Burn going already, Now Necro’s also do it, So making it an extra amount of time is not really changing anything.

2. Poison, Again, This was possible well before Spirit Rangers, You can stack over 2 Minutes of Poison from a kitten Thief with Shortbow… Don’t even need a Necro…Who else can stack poison…Oh Engineer’s.. So again.. This was fairly common already and nothing to do with Spirit Rangers

3. This is a Valid point, it use to be 1.5 k, now its 3k…The Crit rate is incredibly low but it can crit… But is an increase of 1.5k damage really what sent Spirit Rangers over the top?

4. Ranger’s already have amazing Protection uptime, and you get even more from classes like Ele’s/Engineer’s and Guardians.. So this isn’t really changing the dynamic all that much. Necro’s can actually do fairly good protection themselves.

5. 3 Evades..2 if they run Sword/Torch and Shortbow..Something that again has been just fine on Rangers considering they lack Stealth, and most of the builds don’t have things like Signet of the Stone Active (and protect me was Trash)

6. very few if any Spirit Rangers run Longbow, and Body Blocking Seriously? Specs in this game that aren’t Ranger are bloody Cleaver’s if they’re melee, and if they’re not, they generally have Pierce.

7. Swiftness that everyone has, Protection which is fairly common on most of the good classes in TPvP and Burn, that is also common…Not seeing the Benefit.

8. This is a Valid Point, and I honestly think is where most of the crying stems from. They didn’t make Spirit Rangers amazing over night, They just didn’t magically get a bunch of conditions they didn’t have access to before.

Finally as a BM Ranger, I’ve actually stomped the ever living kitten out of Spirit Rangers whenever i’ve fought them.

I fear a well played Trap Ranger more then I fear a Spirit Ranger.

1) Well duh, ele’s AoE are on a really… long cool down. How long is your cooldown?

2) Ele has got to get into melee range and attune as much as they want, they can’t switch their weapons to suddenly fire outside of melee. What is your range?

3) Necros are slow, immobile target. Rangers have swiftness and vigor and spirits.

You put 1 through 3 together = OP. Did I say OP? OP! OP! OP! OP!

I think terror necro is powerful but somehow still inline.

The necro is slow, just slow, and he doesn’t have nearly as much damage mitigation unlike the ranger.

Without abusing fear, the necro is a punching bag, albeit one with a long lifeline.

jcbroe.4329:

I still can’t believe people are trying to argue about GW2 specs like there are certain specs that stand out as a pinnacle of skill.

This game is easy. Period.

“But… But… a ranger who has played for 3 days is better than x that has played for y time cuz the build is so OP.”

LOL. That’s my response. 3 days? It takes 20 minutes to learn the depth of and play skillfully any class in this game, tops. 10 minutes maximum to learn all of the different setups and weaknesses, then another 10 minutes to learn optimal roles and matchups.

The entire game is simple, and every spec is easy. Sure, a few specs require more actions per minute to perform optimally, but that’s important in order to change the flow of gameplay from class to class in order to differentiate the “feel” of each class.

The “nerf the ranger” topic has been made for every single meta ranger build that has existed since launch. That includes traps, which never received any actual nerfs, the meta just changed so that the build became more inefficient than other specs at performing the same output.

It’s time to point out that at this point, it’s just a witch hunt perpetuated by peoples bias against rangers, simply because they just don’t like losing to the ranger class. It’s okay to be kitten though, it’s understandable. But it’s time to stop non-constructively demanding the game be changed because of it.

Now that all the angry peoples blood is flowing, here is some advice. Instead of shouting “nerf” with tears in your eyes on the forums, try making a constructive topic. Go into detail about what makes things too good or too easy, and how it is affecting the competitive level of the game. Then, look historically at the track record of ranger builds and begin determining what needs to be changed to make the class more competitive, and stop just trying to get a single class nerfed out of all it’s competitive options.

Much more useful, especially to devs reading forums that make the game, than to just scream nerf every time people don’t like something, without adding anything healthy or constructive to the games improvement or development.

Cool story, bro!

Zepidel.5349:

The CnD delay makes it amazing for D/D thieves because we precast it with steal resulting in CnD and Steal hitting the target in the same time stamp.

Reducing the delay would actually nerf our front loaded burst (which is all thieves are good for anyways, honestly any other class can do anything else 100x better than thieves)

Makes sense, then may be less init, or higher damage or a combination of those.

Although if it lands faster, you may not need to blow steal, which’s usually a 35 sec downtime. Something like HS -> CnD might become a lot more usable. Heck even changing the order Steal -> CnD will work. It opens up a lot more diversity in combos than relying on Mug which has been quad-nerfed at this point.

There’s plenty of counter in the meta as is.

AoE CC and condition kills BS thief. All of which are highly popular and those players don’t even need to position, while the BS thief does.

High health and armor, which basically counters the zerker build. Again plenty common these days with the popularity of rabid gears.

Thief gap closer skills are what made the fast, in stealth thief has to choose between, blowing their stealth with a gap closer or BS. And frankly w/o gap closers, other classes are able to maintain higher combat speed due to access to swiftness. Again it makes landing BS, harder.

So simply buffing CnD isn’t going to make thief overwhelming all of a sudden. The greatest trick is in landing the back stab and that’s still not guaranteed.

Nex.2450:

If you admit more practice is needed, then please practice before you try and change a skill. Sure it isn’t the easiest thing to land (god forbid some skill is required!) but with situational awareness and practice you will land C&D reliably. Posts like these that make skills easier to execute just decrease the gap between inexperienced and experienced players. Sure d/p is easier to access stealth but it lacks the extra damage from the C&D (2-4k) and honestly is frowned upon by many.

Lol let’s set up a duel between your D/D thief and any D/P thief and let’s see how you fare.

Honestly have you not seen the new meta, where every sort of condition is being spammed ad infinitum? This is the catch 22 for any D/D thief, to cleanse condition you need to enter stealth, but to enter stealth you need to first cleanse condition.

Not to mention evade, block, which is easy coz of the short attak range of dagger and slow kitten cast time. Even if you learn to time it and use shadow step to make it more reliable, you lose a lot of sustain, and utility, all for measly 1.5k more damage and an extra init? I think not.

Then there’s lag, which’s completely out of your control. And I have been noticing an increasing amount of that is sPvP with a few occasional rubber banding effect.

The problem is it takes no skill to play spirit rangers, but it takes a lot of skills and exotic builds (that’s practically useless vs. anything else) to outplay them.

That’s where the cry for nerf is coming from. Its risk vs. reward is out of range, and needs to be toned down to match that of other classes.

Oh as for asking to nerf a class in their own forum. Get used to it. All other classes had their share of critiques also, have you never been to other classes forums? Or is the ranger so special to be beyond reproach? I think not.

evilapprentice.6379:

Master of Timespace.2548:

If you can’t land cloack and dagger, just install the training wheels like everyone else, that is, roll d/p.

That’s a silly thing to say. Whether or not D/P is easier has no bearing on the fact that Pistol OH and D/P’s dual skill blow D/D out of the water.

Even if we ignore BP->HS for stealth (which is easier, but also stronger since it doesn’t rely on getting a hit to gain stealth), D/P still has a vastly superior dual skill (Gap closer with solid damage AND a blind over a condition based ability with a .25s evade), a ranged interrupt, and a blind AoE – nothing D/D has compares even remotely to that in a power/crit spec.

This!
Lame kitten cripple that is way too short and does too little damage.
Jumping attack that sucks as damage mitigation, deals less damage than auto attacking and apply far crappier condition than auto-attack (poison vs. bleed) and cost initiative to boot.

Lack of interupt.

Lack of effective gap closer above 50%.

Costly stealth skill that is utterly slow an unreliable. Subject to multiple CC that’s currently the meta that renders you dead before you could even land a clean hit. Hello fear spam, cripple spam, chilling spam. The irony is that you want to enter stealth to cleanse condi, but now you can’t. Sure there’s steal, stun breaker etc, but are you really gonna blow through them just so you can use CnD? What about saving them for when you really need them? Not to mention the slow recharge rate of those skills.

D/D sucks for all of the reasons above. In S/D the D offhand is actually still functional because sword 1 cripples, sword 2 immobilize those make it much easier to land CnD. And even if you fail to enter into steal it’s not all lost since you’ve evade on 3.

D/D is just a poor weapon set, period. It’s been overnerfed to account for the insta-glib builds that were once the meta for thieves. Since then, the meta has moved. Most players are in Rabid, have tons of health, armor and regeneration.

Most of the fight with D/D thieves usually degenerate into HS spam, because they couldn’t land a clean CnD hit – so they’re out of initiative. DB and Dancing Dag are useless, so that leaves HS – which’s cheap enough, so heck why not spam it. Defending D/D and CnD is part of what caused the HS spam complaint and the degenerative play style that follows.

Oh great it’s always an L2P issue when some build is overpowered. Of course the guy in the overpowered build, don’t need to L2P since they have their “Ez” and “I Win” buttons in their skill bar.

That post wasn’t the only one. Take this for example: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-biggest-issue-with-TPvP/first#post2613896

All other classes have to dance and jump around naked for a win, while the ranger simply press random buttons to get top score. How is that for balance? Really? How about nerf rangers so their players will learn to play as you so eloquently put it.

Peter Buch.8071:

Guardians and hammer warriors can’t dump 20k AoE damage from rotating through 34 skills in the space of 4 seconds (counting the attunement themselves and boon/damage they provide plus the elite conjure/whirlwind). Hello…

Elementalists can’t either. Beside that, elites on ele are crap. Stop trashtalk.

Not to mention guardians are slow turtles, while eles can travel half a map in seconds and come back for more mayhem.

Again, stop trashtalking. Elementalist mobility got nerfed extremly hard. Even guards can catch up now.

But yes rangers are over the top, that doesn’t give excuse for Eles to top them up. I think everyone practically agrees the rangers need adjustments. No class, ele included should be balanced against that, or we’d be introducing endless power creep.

I hate people that are just writing to have something written. You probably didn’t even read one single post in this thread, so seriously, what are you doing here beside of flaming?
It’s not about buffing the elementalist on stupid ranger, thief or nekro lvl (but yes, he desperatly needs some buffs in his current state – he was far too overnerfed), it’s about that he has major design flaws consiting since beta, tons of bugs, has suffered from stupid and hilarious balance changes and is pushed towards a bad-at-everything-role where it becomes a disadvantage for every team to have an elementalist.

Lol what guardians can catch up to an ele? U mad, bro?

When I play ele, not even thieves can catch me. If they can about keep up – I don’t know why coz they don’t have as much access to swiftess, they’d be wasting a lot of value able time better used for assisting/ capping other points.

Lue.6538:

Bud.5617:

Mesmer beat just about everything else in 1v1 except for warriors.

They only sucked because of the condi build meta, but their spike is still among the strongest. Also they pretty much counter ALL other power build except the warrior’s, given how hard it is to pin them down otherwise given a ton of evades.

And when Mesmer wins, it’s not even because of skills coz they just pop clones one after another like there’s no tomorrow, each dealing a goodly 3-4k of damage per shot, while the main one can just focus on surviving. Anyone fighting them on the other hand will have plenty of things to keep them busy such as dodging the endless spike.

Actually I think Mesmer spike or survivability could use a few hit by the nerf bat.

just thought I’d point out that an endless spike isn’t a spike and that our spike actually has to walk up to you to deal the damage, unless its a phantasm ofcourse, in which case you can just evade or block and we wont even get it to spawn… And even after all this, rangers think their pets have it bad

Oh great so you don’t even need to get your hands dirty coz you have AI to do it for you.

You realize all other power based classes need to risk their health getting into melee range in order to spike – right?

Of course Mesmer had to be special, they only need to push one button, once to win, the AI will take over. At least HS spamming thieves had to push that button repeatedly and get into melee. Hey I know it’s like the easy button that clicks itself! How is that for skill?

Peter Buch.8071:

You mean other than the strongest AoE blasts and AoE KD/Launch and AoE heals? The eles got nothing going for them?

Seriously what other class that you mentioned above can do that?

Guardian has a lot stronger heal and arguably same amount of AoE power. Nekros, Rangers, Warriors and Engineers have more AoE Power (and especially conditions). No idea what you mean with AoE KD. If you are talking about AoE CC, guardians are stronger, warriors are stronger, rangers don’t have hard ccs but a lot of soft ccs, nekro has fear and engineer has extremly strong cc.

Guardians and hammer warriors can’t dump 20k AoE damage from rotating through 34 skills in the space of 4 seconds (counting the attunement themselves and boon/damage they provide plus the elite conjure/whirlwind). Hello…

Not to mention guardians are slow turtles, while eles can travel half a map in seconds and come back for more mayhem.

But yes rangers are over the top, that doesn’t give excuse for Eles to top them up. I think everyone practically agrees the rangers need adjustments. No class, ele included should be balanced against that, or we’d be introducing endless power creep.

You know, PvP players rarely ever had a consensus, so when there’s one, you can almost be certain that it’s true.

And so far… spirit ranger is at the top of the list of all things OP and every single, repeat every single poster in there practically agrees.

Here take a look https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/A-serious-post-on-the-meta/first

So yeah time for some “fixing” – devs please restore balance. For something this brain dead to play, the reward shouldn’t be so good.

These guys are super tanky, they don’t need to dodge, don’t need to aim or target, while dealing insane AoE/cc/condi and damage. Something gotta go. The other lesser classes have to aim, dodge, maintain los, pick between damage or survival, but not all of the above.

What do you want the thief to do? They’ve no stability, which’s an insta-on, fire and forget, look ma-no button to push in a meta choke full of CC.

They take a few hits or 1 HB from a stun spamming warrior and down they go. Plus thieves are trading a lot of burst and condi removal for that endless evade, which pretty much turns them into food for necros and rangers.

I actually think the spirit rangers, engineers and condi necros (in that order) are the worse problem. Those builds are so braindead to play and yet dish extremely powerful. Aoe, dmg while being able to tank practically everything. They don’t even need to aim, or target, because most of their attacks don’t need line of sight. How much more brain dead can it get?

But gotta watch for the Mesmer too, they’re just as brain dead, and only currently overshadowed by the other worse offenders.

Mesmer beat just about everything else in 1v1 except for warriors.

They only sucked because of the condi build meta, but their spike is still among the strongest. Also they pretty much counter ALL other power build except the warrior’s, given how hard it is to pin them down otherwise given a ton of evades.

And when Mesmer wins, it’s not even because of skills coz they just pop clones one after another like there’s no tomorrow, each dealing a goodly 3-4k of damage per shot, letting cheap AI do the dirty work and the main one can just focus on healing/surviving. Anyone fighting them on the other hand will have plenty of things to keep them busy such as retargeting and dodging their endless spike.

Actually I think Mesmer spike or survivability could use a few hit by the nerf bat before the devs should consider buffing them.

You mean other than the strongest AoE blasts and AoE KD/Launch and AoE heals? The eles got nothing going for them?

Seriously what other class that you mentioned above can do that?

Mcrocha.3891:

They have 1 stun break which is a trait on a looong cd and no access to stability, go figure.

OH GREAT! So to beat them you need another OP class, the perma stunning, ever regenerating warrior. That’s dandy.