Guild Wars 2

The healing output is still good enough. Zerker druid could never carry a bad group through healing the way a magi druid could, but if the group knows the encounter and avoids most avoidable damage and uses their own healing well it could and still can provide necessary healing to maintain scholar buffs and give out grace of the land. For higher pressure portions of the fights there are a few strategies it can use to amp its healing output up temporarily (camping celestial avatar longer, using the elite glyph in avatar etc).

For Fractals zerk druid can still bring enough healing to overheal certain fight mechanics like Old Tom and otherwise brings enough healing to keep a decent group topped off (though many pugs will make it challenging by either running too far away or getting too close and triggering agony). While being able to bring lots of useful utility without gimping it’s dps as much as Condi Druid would.

All that said Zerk druid still brings what it always did, solid utility, buff output, and access to enough healing for good groups. It also should be noted that you shouldn’t zero in on the dps charts but so much, dps on a golem is not always indicative of real world damage output and there are many fights where condi druid’s damage output suffers due to bosses moving out of bonfires, being unable to maintain flanking, or cleansing conditions.

qT talks about a number of these things in their ranger guide so i’ll link it here: http://qtfy.enjin.com/ranger

Power druid is fine. It’s less dps than condi but has more utility in the form of pulls, reflects, better healing, better CA uptime, better fury output (especially if you need to petswap), and can take staff with less dps drop off than condi. Power Druid also loses less dps on moving bosses than condi druid does.

qT actually recommends power druid for all of wing 2 and 3, where you have multiple bosses who move a lot, where reflects and pulls can be valuable, and where condi damage is inferior to power damage.

Ging.6485:

ShadowLordX.5148:

Druid and Necro comp honestly isn’t particularly fast, and its even worse now post-patch. It is however exceptionally easy, and many people would rather have a comp that can easily complete all content even if it takes half of forever, than a comp that requires more personal skill of each group member and completes it far faster.

It is fast though, comparatively.

People who aren’t Necros go down, extremely easily, in a lot of Fractal events. They also have to worry about dodging and keeping themselves healed up. They also don’t have the luxury of doing damage from range.

Fractal bosses though, have fairly low HP. If Necros can epi bounce, that HP drops fast without the Necro having to worry about any of the same things the other classes have to. And as far as PS warrior goes, Necros can keep Might up decently by all running blood is power.

Druids used to be great, because they could heal minions which resulted in a lot more DPS. Since that isn’t the case anymore though, they might not be sought after as much.

Yeh except if you know what you’re doing none of that is relevant. Most fractal bosses are fairly easy to melee and die quickly to power comps. While there are some bosses that are too punishing to melee full uptime the optimal comp definitely isn’t 5 necros.

Yes for the average pug a 45 minute run might be fast because in other comps theyd wipe constantly and lose time that way. But better comps can do significantly faster (sub 30 minute) full clears, the only advantage of necro comp is it’s braindead easy and hard to die with.

Druid and Necro comp honestly isn’t particularly fast, and its even worse now post-patch. It is however exceptionally easy, and many people would rather have a comp that can easily complete all content even if it takes half of forever, than a comp that requires more personal skill of each group member and completes it far faster.

The trait ancient seeds seems to take about ~1sec to trigger and seems like it misses moving targets because of that.

TU + the Druid traits will fill it up in combat without needing anything else.

It says it has one but I believe it is not currently functioning as one.

Ranger got a few new tricks that are pretty cool with this patch as well.

Storm spirit is a lot better now, it’s active is a 2.4 coefficient damage +3s daze(6s traited so arguably an alternative to deep freeze), and it’s passive generates 50% uptime 15 stacks of vuln which isn’t bad at all. For short fights you can cast and blow up storm spirit for a strong vuln spike and daze, or leave it up to maintain vuln uptime.

You can also potentially get ~15s of quickness with Zephyr’s Speed, Quickening Zephyr and We Heal As One.

All of this is in addition to ranger’s already solid dps and party buffing abilities so I could see Ranger becoming meta. The only thing really holding it back are bosses that negate condis (making the condi build not always reliable) and the somewhat challenging sword autoattack.

Potential party comps could be double engi, ranger, guard/mesmer, warrior. This would give strong dps and should have enough stealth for even the most stealth heavy dungeons. It is weak on fury output as the ranger and guard are the only source of fury with this comp. Replacing an Engi with an Ele would make fury much easier to maintain but loses out on stealth uptime.

NikeEU.7690:

ShadowLordX.5148:

1 Guard/Mesmer: Reflects/projectile blocks/condi clear/stability/group aegis/distorion. Group quickness and fury. Rev can bring some of this stuff, but at a much higher cost than Guard or mesmer, and lacks the unique utility each class can provide.

Rev can do many of these defensive support things, as you said. The value of the Rev is they can do those things, when needed, but when not needed they can switch gears to offensive support. They are a bit more versatile than those. The problem is they suffer the jack of all trades issue that Engineer has, where in a record type scenario you go for specialists not generalists.

I’m curious, does DnT have numbers for revenant’s dps while in various legends? If Revenant actually has more dps than guardian, at least while in Shiro/Mallyx, and not too much less dps while in Ventari, then it might be a viable alternative in certain content. Although the fact that Revenant only destroys projectiles rather than reflects them is definitely problematic. You’d still be losing out on some of guardian’s utility that revenant can’t bring (partywide blocks, blinds)

So really there’s about 4 slots in a party that are pretty much locked in:

1 Warrior: You’ve got banners, Might, and Empower Allies + decent dps. Revenant could potentially cover the might, but doesn’t have the banners, and 150 ferocity is weaker than 150 power. Revenant’s dps when maintaining might is also likely substantially lower than Warrior’s.

1 Elementalist: You need at least 1 ele for access to at least 1 deep freeze, dps and fury generation. Revenant could bring fury generation, but Ele has deep freeze and much higher dps. Further, ele can also bring some condi cleanse and heals without needing to tank their dps to do so.

1 Thief: Stealth + potentially fury and vigor, as well as the most spammable blast finisher in the game. Thief also brings excellent blind access, something revenant needs to use a very specific setup and much lowered dps to bring. Revenant can’t bring stealth so it can’t replace the thief.

1 Guard/Mesmer: Reflects/projectile blocks/condi clear/stability/group aegis/distorion. Group quickness and fury. Rev can bring some of this stuff, but at a much higher cost than Guard or mesmer, and lacks the unique utility each class can provide.

So Revenant really only makes sense for the 5th slot that would usually be put for the 2nd Ele. The Revenant’s good points is fury aura + great vuln output. Potentially +boon duration could be helpful for pugs where if you do have a ps warrior they might not have strength runes and the proper food, in which case the +50% boon duration could be fairly useful. Overall, Revenant is almost certainly a weaker choice than the second Ele, and probably a weaker choice than Ranger. Trying to replace the guard or mesmer with revenant is probably not a good idea as its a serious dps loss to go ventari/jalis; and revenant lacks access to aegis or distortion.

So a couple things:

1. Is there any dev comment saying 10 upkeep is the maximum possible? While that sounds plausible, I’d like to see something saying 10 is the max ever. Assuming it is the max, the only change would be to cast the active at the start of the fight, or upon entering shiro to get a couple seconds of bonus duration on quickness.

2. In my build I am assuming at minimum an Elementalist and a Phalanx Strength Warrior, as such, there’s no need for additional might generation, and in fact the short duration of might generated could be problematic as it could overwrite boons.

3. Chances are +power +ferocity food is the absolute best food, but its easily the most expensive. Moving to maintain salad is probably not ideal, as sword 2 is most likely a root, and the sword auto attack has a returning projectile which can miss with too much movement.

4. That was not intended as a comprehensive guide to revenant, but rather a basic build to do maximum dps. In unoptimized parties you may need the revenant to generate might and/or fury, or need the revenant to use condi clears and projectile blocks, if that’s the case its perfectly sensible to swap legends in the same way any other class would swap utilities. However, the reveneant should be the last class to attempt to do this, as they have to sacrifice more personal dps than most other classes to gain utility.

Traits:
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgYG9AVcA6Q~

Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQRAsX8snfNuNSuJ7JRJlVlsjyrS4SZWJorcsEFNFhdc62tBW0A-TBSBABUq+jZKBva/R5He6HW4IAoxBBIvHAAAnAgAAHA/23+23gzP/8zP/8+93z/98fHDgeA-e

Rotation:
Begin the fight in Mallyx, begin with Embrace the Darkness, follow with Axe skill 1, then sword skill 2, then auto attack until sword 2 is off cooldown/energy drops to 0, then either cast sword 2 again or legend swap to shiro. Cast enchanted daggers if you need to sustain the scholar buff, afterwards trigger facet of nature and impossible odds, auto attack until Mallyx is back up, you’ll probably have 3 to 4 seconds of impossible odds downtime, although you should maintain quickness through that. When impossible odd runs out, end facet of nature and cast sword 2 (if it is up), then switch to mallyx as soon as it is up and repeat.

I think you’re having a case of big #s = big dps, but every dps test i’ve done indicate hammer’s dps, while looking big, is actually fairly average. Sword on the other hand seems to do respectable damage, but individual hits are small, on the whole damage is high.

I’m pretty sure Axe does count for dual wield, since the trait seems pretty similar to the warrior grand master trait dual wielding. I suspect axe may be worth opening with for bosses that start active, outside of that it’s probably not worth it unless the fight will be short enough to kill the boss within a guard/mesmer’s granted quickness, although in that case simply using Embrace the Darkness is probably the best option.

I suspect the ideal setup in dungeons will be Mace/Axe for blasting might and gap closing and then switch to S/S once a fight starts and camp the sword auto for the rest of the fight, rotating Shiro/Mallyx upkeep skills.

That’s likely for Revenant.

It’s in the center of the WvW portals, they didn’t put the dungeon marker on map for some reason.

Orbital strike is all thats worth it. The auto hits for about the same as grenade auto unless im missing something, but applies 2 less vuln. Maybe swap to it for the water field but otherwise better just taking orbital strike(which on the other hand is amazing).

You realize that’s no different than it is currently? It just makes things more annoying for people who want to optimize. The current meta isn’t some hard mandate that you must run Zerk or fail, Zerk is just the most efficient choice. People can run whatever gear (even no gear) and still clear the content. Attempting to force gear diversity for its own sake won’t make random pugs more accepting of bad gear, but rather cause pugs that would be exclusionary to become even more so (as now they’ll want everyone to have all the best gear sets). And chances are make life more difficult on anything goes pugs.

“Each time an allied dolyak caravan arrives at the tower, the timer will decrease by five minutes. The Tier 1 upgrades will automatically occur sometime between 20 and 40 minutes as long as the red team can maintain control of the tower. The time depends on how many caravans safely make it to the objective.” From the blog post.

So their current plan is that towers will eventually upgrade no matter what, but Dolyaks will speed up the process. So killing yaks is still valuable, but it may be less valuable compared to what it currently is. On the other hand, killing Yaks could help to insure the tower is taken prior to upgrading, but unlike now someone just killing Yaks would not be able to stop the upgrades entirely.

Chilling Force/Soul Eater needs to give a damage mod of 5/10%, they’re pretty underwhelming as is. Chilling force giving 5% damage versus chilled foes, and Soul Eater giving 10% damage while using greatsword would make the traits pretty solid.

Shouts cast times for some seem over the top. They could do with cutting down the cast times a solid bit, especially chilled to the bone. Shouts could also use some buffs generally, making one of them a blast finisher would go a ways to improving them.

Chilling Nova’s damage seems quite meh, buffed up a bit it could be cool. Also I’d second making cold shoulder apply a party wide, perhaps reduced to 10%, damage reduction versus chilled foes to give necros at least a little group utility.

Problem solved itself. Ignore.

Raven.9603:

Pet vs Explorable Mode Bosses

COF:
p1, first boss will 1 shot a pet. pets can easily die on the second event. last boss can one shot a pet (either with breath, or with the aoe burn, though you have a second or two to react to the latter, you can only react if the swap is available or you are using healing spring).
p3, pet can die on scorpions easily, and the room after. pet can die during bomb event, or a legit mag lava escort. pet can be one shot during the defend mag sequence prior to last boss. pet can be 1 shot by meteors in the last room (though again, there is time to react to the burning if swap is available).

Neither of CoF1 bosses 1 shot the pet, they don’t 1 shot my Berserker Ele either, so you have plenty fo time to swap your pet if it does get hit(the only time I’ve ever had my pet die in CoF outside of the boulders/acolyte fight, is if my pet gets chain hit by Comets, which is an rng kill at best and only happens rarely). CoF p2, nothing in p2 one shots the pet, some of the mobs have fairly strong attacks, but all of them give ample time to swap/heal the pet. In fact CoF is one of the easiest dungeons to keep pets alive full time with only decent management.

Raven.9603:

Arah:
its been way too long. the first boss that is two bosses together, they can one shot the pet.

The only bosses in Arah that are but so pet unfriendly are Lupicus and the final boss on p2(who doesn’t so much 1 shot the pet as simply make it unable to do damage(since the pet doesn’t get the buff), maybe some bosses in p4, but I’ve only run p4 once and was not on Ranger at the time)

Raven.9603:

HotW:
Are there any bosses on any of the HotW paths that DONT 1-shot pets? Perhaps the guy on the stairs. The rest can all 1-shot.

Quite a few don’t 1 shot the pet actually. There are a couple bosses where the pet has a really hard time (Mr. Ice Spike guy comes to mind, and the Butcher, although he’s not so much pet unfriendly as just unfriendly to melee in general). But its not impossible to keep your pet alive for a lot of the fights.

TA:
First and lost bosses are guaranteed to kill your pet if its attacking, both paths. Spider boss probably will also, if you are doing up/up.

I know for a fact none of those bosses 1 shot pets, not even cats. The pet will have a hard time staying alive if the team has a hard time staying alive in those situations, but otherwise the pet stays alive fine.

CM:
See HotW.

SE:
I’ve never actually wanted to go here.

I haven’t played Ranger much in either of these dungeons, but at least for SE the only place i could see having serious trouble keeping the pet alive is last boss of p1, or the Mining suit boss, and golem bosses in p2.

CoE:
A pet can live through all of COE except the “1-2-3 dodge!” bosses (theres 2 of these i think?). Can your group? Probably not. Still, the challenge of many fights here has nothing to do with actual fighting.

Your pet can survive all of CoE including the 1 2 3 dodge boss if everyone is stacked(the aoe cap comes into effect here and if everyone is stacked your pet won’t even be hit).

I’m not going to cover every fractal. The point that there are bosses in every common dungeon path that 1 shot pets seems pretty evident.

pet choice matters. some pets offer control, some offer damage, some offer unique buffs, some are effective as ranged dps or buffbots, some pets warn other players away from grouping with you, but they are all at some point dead meat to bad PvE mechanics and Anets refusal to adjust aoe damage’s impact on pets.

With regards to fractals, yes on a whole pets tend to have a harder time in, at least higher level, Fractals than most dungeons, due to the damage scaling outstripping pet’s health significantly and several mechanics which can add undue difficulty to keeping a pet alive.

As a whole, the issues pets have are there, but broadly speaking a lot of them can be avoided via good management of the pet . Overall, I would like to see some improvement to design taking into account the fact that pets can’t dodge the same way players can, but while this would be a nice improvement, the lack of it doesn’t make pets useless.

Conix.4589:

…

Cats and Birds have the same health, so if either would insta die both will. Keeping a bear on the switch, you might as well run and ooc to get your pet alive again since the dps drop will be similar. And no speed run build for ranger uses bears. At all. Not any that are worth being called a “speed run” build. The bear’s dps is so low that you’re better off having a cat alive for a few seconds than having a bear up the entire time (I’d run the numbers for the exact amount of time a Cat has to stay alive to make it better than a bear that stays up the whole time but I’m too lazy atm).

The red moa is a suggestion for pug runs where I find fury is often the most lacking buff, and being able to singlehandedly keep fury up allows you to siginificantly increase party wide dps.

Further, the main problem I had with your point is that that kind of advice broadly pushes anyone who takes it to play worse. And people believing that pets are useless in all cases, or no pet but bears can survive in dungeons, is why when I run CoF p1, the easiest path to keep any pet alive, I still see rangers using Bear pets, or rangers leaving their pet on passive. If you keep your pet on passive or use bears 100% of the time you aren’t even trying to be effective, in fact you’re actively sabotaging your effectiveness. This kind of mantra, that pets are useless and only bears can survive in dungeons, are why, despite ranger being one of my favorite classes, I always assume that if we get a ranger they’re going to be bad for the party, and only rarely am I pleasantly surprised.

The pet is STILL a large amount of your dps. The idea that the pet nerf was so severe is hardy exaggeration, Cats specifically only had 1 attack thats on a 20 second cooldown nerfed, their dps as a whole was not nerfed significantly (stalk was nerfed a bit more but if you’re keeping up sizable fury uptime on your pet via boon sharing the nerf actually isn’t significant). At the very least the pet makes up 15% of your dps in a situation where both are fully maxed. In non optimal scenarios, the pet can be anywhere from 25%(with a complete dps setup), to potentially far more if you are running a non-optimal build (I.e. for every point you deviate from full berserker gear the more your pets dps matters relative to your own, or if you use weapons with weaker overall damage compared to the optimal weapon (sword) the more your pet’s dps is going to matter). So your choice of pet has a significant impact on your actual dps numbers(if you think 15% of your dps isn’t significant then I don’t really know what to tell you)

Regardless of whether you intended this to be a message to dungeon newbies or everyone, the idea that pets are useless in dungeons because they die all the time is a bad message for people to start out with, it would be like telling people that they should just use Soldier’s gear because they’ll die all the time in Berserker gear. Sure, its probably true that if you are new and in berserker gear you will die a lot, but its better to die and try to learn to play better, than to build bad habits and never get better. The same is true for pets, if you come to rely on never having to swap pets or worry about your pets health bar because you’re used to having a bear that never dies, it builds bad habits that as a whole will make you a worse player.

Conix.4589:

Pets in PvE (not dungeons) are important. Hounds, Cats, Birds, and Drakes are considered the best. Hounds have a knockdown and howls, Cats and Birds are DPS machines, and drakes have a blast finisher as well as breaths. The drake used to be the Ranger’s ONLY blast, which was dumb because you can’t control it. Now we have the warhorn’s 5, and soon maybe the greatsword’s 2. Drakes and healing spring are good.

In dungeons, pets are useless. They die too fast to the bosses. If you want to, keep your pet on ‘avoid combat’ and use the ones that buff you. I use the cat that gives 5 stacks of might, and the bear for it’s condition removal roar. The birds are a good choice as well. Keep it out of combat. When you need a speed buff, just target something and have it attack. It’s first attack will be a screech that speeds you up. Just remember to call it back right after, before it actually hits something. If it does, you slow down to combat speed.

Also, if you want to attack a boss with the pets, use a devourer or spider. They have range, but they will be AoE’d anyway and die fast.

If you MUST use a melee pet to attack that boss, use a bear or pig. They are the only ones that can survive multiple heavy AoE attacks from a boss.

Sigh. There’s so much misinformation here.

Pets do not insta die vs bosses. They just don’t, outside of a few specific bosses with mechanics that heavily punish pets or completely suboptimal strategies on the part of the team. Even the squishiest pets(birds and cats) are able to stay up a reasonable amount of time vs most bosses, especially if everyone melees(since there is an AOE cap in stacking situations the pet often will not get damaged at all) and if you manage your pets well, switching often you can keep good pet up time vs most bosses. For Dungeons high DPS pets like Cats and Birds, or if your party needs fury, the Red moa are good choices. In some situations ranged pets are decent, but for the most part they shouldnt be used.

Please, please do not use Bears or Pigs for bosses because you think that Bosses will insta-kill your pets, if you really have trouble keeping your pet alive Drake’s DPS is far better, while also having significant survivability. Further, keeping your pet on passive in dungeons is frankly worthless, the best buff pets(Moas) are actually very tanky, and their damage is actually a bit more than you would expect while being able to keep up quite a bit of fury. If you keep your pet on passive you’re losing out on anywhere from 20-30% of your dps for no reason.

As to the actual question, yes pet choice is highly important. In dungeon situations, even fully damage specced, your pet is a significant portion of your damage and choosing to use relatively low damage pets is going to significantly hurt your contribution to your team. In WvW roaming or SPVP its often a good idea for instance to use a wolf for the CC alongside a cat or a bird for damage. In Zerg fights pet choice tends to matter a bit less, albeit its not completely unimportant, mostly because Zerg vs Zergs do legitimately put down enough AOE to kill even the tankiest pet.

So I would suggest not simply choosing a pet you like and sticking to it if you are interested in playing at all optimally (if you don’t really care about playing at all optimally then there wasn’t much point in making this thread I suppose)

Berserker gear is the best gearing for any and all dungeons. If someone kicks you for berserker gear they’re frankly terrible.

If you don’t know the dungeons and you aren’t confident in your dodging ability you will down and die fairly often at first. Some people would suggest starting with Knights or Valkyrie and replacing gear with berserker as you improve, but personally I think learning the hard way and jumping straight into berserker is better as it will insure you don’t get bad habits from using more defensive setups.

I’m certain players have priority over npcs, and I believe party members have priority, but I could be wrong on that.

If you’re looking for a high damage build for dungeons, Brazil’s build is very good: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/83701-the-perfect-dps-guardian-build/
This build is survivable, but a lot of that survival comes from correct use of blocks, blinds, and dodges.

If you feel you need more sustain, and prefer greatsword to sword, then I like this build reasonably well: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJARWlYgyCXFSKEfIFRWBRWpIe3D7BGhfHvKkQA-jwxAYrARfgoCAJvioxWcLiGruGT5SEVDA-e

If you aren’t comfortable in full berserker you can mix in Knight’s gear for Helm, Coat, and Leggings (or all armor if you’re really uncomfortable in berserker’s.

If you really find that you cant survive with either of these builds, a standard 0 0 30 30 10 Altruistic Healing build will work, but loses out on considerable amounts of dps compared to either of the other two builds.

It’s likely that in WvW it may also be hitting its limit of 5 on other players, and thus you are no longer getting the buff.

That was an epic golem rush attempt from BP just a few minutes ago. Must have been at least 20-30 golems. We had a good bit of luck that we spotted you and our zerg was coming along at the same time. Not sure why you continued to try to attack our garrison instead of cutting your losses, but fun fights anyways.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

If you think rangers only need a damage buff, you are looking at this game with a severely limited view of the mechanics that make the other classes so much better in design.

Few combo fields
No variety in combo finishers
Need to trait to use most reliable AoEs
No group support skills without traiting
No true condition cleansing outside of heal (passed off to pet)
No pet scaling with your own stats (as much a boon for bunkers as a bane for non bunkers)
Little utility in dungeons
Lack of support on numerous tiny, easily fixed, bugs
Too much reliance on NPC
etc etc

Say what you want about “ranger being ranged”. I honestly have no more interest debating about that, so I won’t go there with fellow players. However, you need to take a big step back and look over a few of the things you mentioned in the OP. This class is amazing at healing. It is amazing at not getting hit. It is unbelievable at allowing for easy-mode PvE. It is lacking just about everywhere else – a farcry from needing merely a damage buff.

The problem with this class isn’t only the damage. The problem with this class and the reason so many people are upset about its state is due to the severe lack of group utility and the insane reliance on npc pets. It’s a class completely built around “me” in a game where you are severely limited in your options for gameplay if you aren’t viewed as viable in a group.

While the reactions on the forums are definitely blown out of proportion, it’s unfair to toss it all into the trash as “reactionary nonsense”. You’re basically saying to the many players, with very legitimate and constructive complaints about this class, that they should suck it up and deal with it.

So I have to disagree with a few points here.

-In terms of combo fields, Rangers are actually fairly average at fields, maybe even above average. At least in terms of variety they have roughly the same variety and access to fields as Thieves. And they have arguably better ones than Thieves in terms of duration, and what finishing the field provides(in PvE). Rangers have more and better fields than Guardians, Warriors(Warriors have access to a superior fire field, at least in terms of duration relative to cooldown, but the warrior has to use full adrenaline to get the most out of it, which likely extends the cost and true cooldown of it), and Mesmers. Necros have more variety in fields, with Dark, Light, Poison and Ethereal fields, but these fields all range from mediocre to ok in PvE.
Further, Water and Fire fields are easily the strongest fields in PvE, and Rangers have access to both, and specifically the best water field in the game.

-Combo finishers could be better, specificially the lack of blast finishers hurts, but Mesmer and Necro are probably worse in this regard. Necros have better access to blast finishers but have no leap or whirl finishers, and mesmers only have 1 blast finisher on a virtually unused weapon.

-No group support skills is a definate exaggeration, Rangers can give somewhere around 98% party uptime on Fury with Warhorn and Crimson Moa pet, assuming perfect timing and without traiting(Probably closer to 90% taking into account cast times). Healing spring, without traiting, gives group regen and condi cleanse. Spirit of Frost gives a basically permanent 10% damage buff if you can keep it up(I may be wrong on this, the wiki states it gives an average of a 3.5% damage increase, but using it in game I see the buff up constantly, but it certainly has usability issues regarding it being stationary and easy to lose without good placement). If Stalker pets didnt have such a long cast time for such a short duration on their Mighty Roar, Rangers would actually be fairly decent at might stacking as well.

- Ranger condi cleanse is on the weaker end, but its arguably better than warrior’s access to condi cleanse, with a lot of passive condition removal being available.

The rest of the points are fairly accurate, but I think Ranger would actually be at a fairly ok point in PvE if some of the reliance on pets were reduced, since a number of boss mechanics and fights tend to make the pet far less useful, and results in a ranger not being able to fully contribute in certain dungeons.

Tulisin.6945:

Acrobatic’s 30-point traits are pretty poor. Hard to Catch is finicky and hard to predict, Quick Pockets should just be an innate part of the thief profession to give benefit to weapon-swapping.

I’d like to see a 30 point trait that gives Acrobatics more consistent access to Vigor. I feel like thieves are purposefully held back from Vigor because of how well it synergizes with Acrobatics (“regain endurance on dodge” stacks with endurance regen boost, in particular). Maybe work some synergy with the dodging + boons thing Acrobatics has going and do “Thief gets 1s Vigor every time they apply a boon”.

We have 50-60% vigor uptime with Vigorous recovery if you use it with Withdraw or Signet of Malice. Withdraw being the prefered trait, though malice gets a mention for its synergy with the signet trait which reduces cooldowns by 20%. Which means you can get ~80% vigor uptime.

D/D Zerker specced thieves are fine for CoF P1 speed runs, in fact they’re better than the 4th Warrior if they’re good, because each warrior beyond the 2nd, and especially the third starts to drop off in terms of added team damage since you start to max out the might and fury, and you can have all of the banners that are needed with 1/2 warriors.

But the problem is that soem of the culture around CoF has become ONLY warriors and mesmers, even though most other zerker specced classes would be fine as long as you have 1 mesmer and 2 or so warriors, because it’s easier to be certain that everyone’s reasonably competent, since a bad warrior hurts the party a lot less than a bad thief/guard/ele/etc.

Me Kill You.9035:

People need to get this idea out of their head that “DPS is always best”.

Especially for a run like fotm where having all the dps in the world won’t save you if that’s most/all you can bring to the table. Fotm is all about working well as a team and getting the objective done without having a million deaths in between.

I run my guardian on 48 and can honestly say that although I have low to moderate dps compared to a warrior, my teams would be in trouble many times If I was not there to support them (try shaman on 48 with multiple wars and no guard or other class with support skills.)

Of course I value warriors just as much as any class in fotm, but it’s not because im thinking “YES now our dps will be so high!” It’s because most of the warriors Ive run with (luckily) have been exp and not noobish, and that’s 99% of what I look for in fotm teammates.

When you have experienced parties and the right defensive utilities selected, dps IS best. Really, efficiency in runs is much better done by having a lot of damage to kill enemies quickly, so they deal less damage to you, than to soak damage.

Now, the defensive utilities are very important, really in terms of actually completing the fractal, they are far more important than dps, but once you have the necessary amount, and your party is experienced and capable, increasing party dps is the best way to make for faster and smoother runs.

Nikaido.3457:

ShadowLordX.5148:

The lava elementals can be killed as fast or as slow as possible, the primary need is to kill them before reflects run out. That means that both increasing dps, or increasing reflects will be effective at defeating the elementals. And the reflects pull more weight here because reflects are more easily lacked than the modicum of dps needed to get through the elementals.

My best grawl run by far, and I’ve done a lot because if I’m the one who assembled the party I often start the roll with grawl so the probability of doing grawl when I’m in the party is rather high, was with only one guardian and one mesmer. So I’d say, adding more reflect than the bare minimum is overkill if your group knows what it’s doing and deals enough damage to kill stuff before reflect go on cooldown.

I wouldn’t say dps is necessary, or as vital as Byron implies, but I do personally believe that it makes things ten times easier and smoother. I now have a larger number around me of people I can do high fotm regularly with to form optimized groups (2guard/2war/1mes) and having everyone but one guard go full dps (one AH knight guard, one full DPS guard) makes the run a LOT better. Faster, smoother, less risk taken.

Since the introduction of fractals, there’s been no shortage of guardians (as a lot of people made one as their alt almost immediately when they realized the need for reflection), you don’t need to wait a lot to get guardians for fotm, what there is a shortage of though in pugs, is people who understand the fact that dps makes runs go much faster and smoother. Getting a dps-y group of pug outside of the typical CoF farm is nearly impossible. Which makes me really happy to have found the right guild for this stuff.

When I run AC it feels so painful to go back to these sluggish runs. Almost no experienced player run AC so if you want its skins you really have to pug it.. and feel the pain you left by finding the right people for FOTM/Arah/CoE.

Indeed, the important thing is having the base amount. Which is mostly what i’m getting at. there are points in fractals where you’re almost certain to fail without at least access to 3 or so projectile reflects or blocks(the lava elementals come to mind).

There are not however, many or I’d really say any, that require a certain amount of dps to get through. I’d say a real dps check would be if there was a boss that required you to kill it in x amount of time, or constant agony would occur would be an example of a dps check. Uncle Tom might count as a dps check, but it’s possible to double the crystal number that spawns, which means that it’s at best a very low dps check.

That said I certainly agree that for smooth fast and efficient runs getting more dps once you have utility is key.

LordByron.8369:

ShadowLordX.5148:

LordByron.8369:

nothing compare to warrior damage,…

And if you already have 1-2 warriors the next class to make the run easier (and then complaining of the forum the game is too easy) is guardian…

And at 48 you almost certainly have a fixed party (you almost never see 48 party on gw2 lfg).

But without a guardian the run may be much harder….without a warrior unless you have 5 FULL dps (good luck with that) you simply can t get past some parts that are clearly dps checks.

Warriors have a sustained damage comjparing to 2 if not more other professions paired and a burst even better while being able to survive 1 hit at least thus react.

Lol. There are 0 dps checks in fractals. I’m honestly not sure that you’ve ran fractals, because while I really prefer dps parties, because low dps makes runs exceptionally slow. Nothing in fractals requires parties to deal a certain amount of dps. And certainly none of them require a warrior to deal enough dps to get past.

If instead of attacking players you just for a second tried to play with random parties form 38-48 you ’d know that:

1)old tom is a DPS check…..100% you have to deal X damage before time runs out or you die…
You can t even discuss here….

2) grawl shaman events is another….CC just makes grawls runs and once you lost one hostage it becomes harder to CC at higher levels CC is not enough to stop grawls.
While its a free chest if you have 1-2 warriors…….

3) at 40+ even elementals at lava boss start to become a DPS issue.

4) many other situations like Crystal elemental becomes a formality with 1-2 warriors…whereas a support guardian is just useless

If you think its just a time issue i m led to think you Always play with optimal guard+war parties…because ANYONE learn those things quite fast.

And its not even rockes science.

CC is done around PvP on top of that mobs hits like trucks and are often immune to cc rendering cc+healing useless.

That results in a dps centric gameplay……..

And don t even make me start to talk about banners….
Its really fun how warriors are the only able to revive dead characters and have HUGE boosts to stats for the party WHILE being GC.

I’ve ran 80% Fractal 48 random parties. Some of these include warriors, some don’t. By what mechanic does Tom form a dps check? By running out of crystals? it’s possible to make increases crystals spawn, and I’ve never had an issue with running out of crystals to kill him regardless of the party composition.

The grawl shamans can be cc’d in order to kill, but yes it’s probably easier with more dps, i havent disputed that(although I d say warriors making it free isn’t really the case, any combination of high damage classes will make it easier to kill the rawl shamans, especially in combination with cc)

The lava elementals can be killed as fast or as slow as possible, the primary need is to kill them before reflects run out. That means that both increasing dps, or increasing reflects will be effective at defeating the elementals. And the reflects pull more weight here because reflects are more easily lacked than the modicum of dps needed to get through the elementals.

By the crystal elemental, I assume you mean the one in the dredge fractal? If so, yes more dps = better, but again, optimal =/= required. A dps check which means you NEED a warrior is different from, you want a warrior because it makes the run go faster.

Perhaps I should say, I don’t really dispute that you’ve ran high level fractals. I think however you’re seriously overstating the extent of any dps check. because the extent to which there are dps checks, none of them NEED a warrior, or really any particular team comp to do. For instance implying there are any points in fractals that can’t be done without a warrior is really a pretty laughable exaggeration.

That being said, optimally, yes, adding more dps once you have the reflects and projectile blocks covered(which are actually needed) is going to be more efficient than adding too many extra defensive utilities.

LordByron.8369:

nothing compare to warrior damage,…

And if you already have 1-2 warriors the next class to make the run easier (and then complaining of the forum the game is too easy) is guardian…

And at 48 you almost certainly have a fixed party (you almost never see 48 party on gw2 lfg).

But without a guardian the run may be much harder….without a warrior unless you have 5 FULL dps (good luck with that) you simply can t get past some parts that are clearly dps checks.

Warriors have a sustained damage comjparing to 2 if not more other professions paired and a burst even better while being able to survive 1 hit at least thus react.

Lol. There are 0 dps checks in fractals. I’m honestly not sure that you’ve ran fractals, because while I really prefer dps parties, because low dps makes runs exceptionally slow. Nothing in fractals requires parties to deal a certain amount of dps. And certainly none of them require a warrior to deal enough dps to get past.

Lets look at the various fractals why don’t we?

Swamp: no dps check here, kiting or reflects works fine to beat both moss and bloom, and for bloom having reflects is much better than just dps.
Krait: Again no dps checks, the poison clouds can kill you fast but avoiding those cna be done by anyone and whether or not you have survival can matter every bit as much as dps. The jellyfish is easy with any party composition, but dps would be preferred since all he is is a giant health sponge with minimal damage dealing capabilities other than agony.
Ascalon: No dps check here, but you really want reflects and blocks here to help versus the soldiers and mages. Warrior is actually amazing in this fractal, not so much for the dps but for warbanner rezzing the npcs.
Asura: Reflect is king here, those harpies will burn you down extremely fast without reflect, and getting past them without blocks reflects and stability is a headache. Old Tom makes having a Guard with shield of the avenger very strong here. And the final boss requires you either kite or you have plenty of projectile blocks and reflects ,other than that dps is certainly great to have to quickly burn down the vets.
Cliffside: There’s no real dps checks here. Having higher dps can help make it possible to stand in the safe spot on the burning , but so do area heals(in fact one of the easiest runs through that spot I had included 2 necros who cast their wells on the spot which were doing good damage and healing us all.)
Ice: Again, where are the dps checks? Reflect stability and projectile block comes a lot more in handy for the elemental fight. The final boss is really easy with any team composition, so dps is probably best to have here, but that part is easy anyways.
Dredge: No dps checks here, more time checks for mowing through mobs. More dps is good here, but having the reflects and projectile blocks from guardian is, imo, far more important or actually succeeding due to how hard a lot of the projectile and wave attacks of the dredge hit. Last boss simply requires good kiting, which any party composition is capable of.
Grawl: Projectile blocks and Reflects are both amazing here and really the more of it you have here, the better off you are. Extra dps can help to deal with the shamans quickly at the 2nd phase, but cc effects can work just as well. The final boss, well, its all about reflects and projectile blocks here. I can’t see a team without projectile blocks or reflects surviving the lava elemental phase on fractal 48, without perfect play and coordination(and even then Im not really sure it would happen)
Jade Maw: Certainly no dps checks here.

So yeah, I’m not sure what fractals you’re playing but there’s no dps checks in fractals that are required for progressing. Certainly, it’s better to have more dps, after all, we’d all like to finish sooner rather than later. But a warrior is hardly required in the same way that a guardian almost is required to do certain fractals.

Guardian is the best pick for fractals because on their own one guardian can almost entirely cover access to stability/projectile blocks/reflect projectiles that a team needs. All while giving plenty of other boons and helpful effects to the party and doing good damage on thier own. Now I’d say warrior is the best filler class, because once you have enough projectile blocks and reflects, adding more dps is the optimally efficient way to get fractals done, and warriors are the best at increasing group dps. But I would much rather do a fractal 48 with 5 guards than 5 warriors.

Alright. He’s fairly simple overall, but he becomes challenging at high level fractals without guardians, multiple thieves or multiple x/focus elementalists.

The main mechanic is the fan. This fan will shut down his poison cloud. In order to activate the fan, there are 2 slots which require a dwayna crystal to be placed into to activate. The crystals can be found in front of the fan. The general strategy is to go around the sides of the area he’s in to avoid aggroing him and depoit half the crystals on each side.

After you set up the crystals you can initiate the fight. The best strategy for doing this is to have 1 player assigned to each crystal spot and one to the fan. When the posion cloud reactivated they need to rush back and reinsert crystals and retrigger the fan.

Now, in order to survive tom’s poison bolts, the best strategy is to use the guardian’s shield of the avenger and the thief’s smoke screen to absorb the bolts, placed on top of him the shield will absorb all his bolts and the smoke screen can absorb all on one side(maybe all of them I’m not certain). I believe most reflect projectile abilities do not work, but I think most, if not all protection from projectiles works.

At low level fractals, I believe it is perfectly possible to get a tanky character to tank his bolts and to just stand behind them and dps him down(at least it was when I first started fractals, I haven’t done low levels in long enough that I don’t know if it’s been changed)

I feel like this deserves repeating here. Everyone QQ’ing over this are overstating the case. Yes, it will suck if you get hit by it. But no, 99% of your fights will not involve this. And out of the one’s that do, it will either be painfully obvious they’re setting it and you can avoid it or kill them while they’re rooted for 4 seconds.

Or you simply disengage and outdistance them. You don’t need stealth for most disengages, really enemy thieves, and maybe warriors or rangers are the only ones who can catch us. And you shouldn’t need stealth to beat 99% of warriors(Seriously this matchup is almost painfully easy except versus VERY good warriors), and any ranger who is decent enough to catch you won’t have the damage to catch you and chase you down. The mirror is the only place to worry about this, and you can counter it the exact same way they do.

swinsk.6410:

ShadowLordX.5148:

Honestly, you really shouldn’t be stepping on the trap in the first place. it’s very obvious where its at except vs thief mirrors. Further, even if you do happen to step on it. Disengaging for 30s then reengaging wouldn’t be particularly difficult. Even if you don’t reengage, you just cost them 10 supplies, 15 badges and 500 karma. Which is arguably a higher cost than actually dying and repairing is.

What happens if someone sets a trap while your not around and roams that area and kites the thief into that trap?

It’s not like we can see it on the ground.

People will get smart with the trap. I think it’s pretty obvious if an ele pops mist form to drop one of these a thief isn’t going to run into it on purpose, but if someone sets a trap before hand how a tra kitten upposed to be set and not during the middle of combat, then yea it will be very useful.

Thief vs. Thief, this trap will be a fight winner unless you are evasion built and don’t have any stealth.

Shadow arts is freaking useless in wvw.

I am very frustrated with this and recent changes to thieves in general. I may be taking extended break from gw2.

Screw ANet and all the QQers who ruined my class.

I already noted you might get hit by it if they preset it. But that’s a lot of work for one maybe kill on a thief(who can probably still escape, then come back and kill you after the revealed buff is up, because lets face it, if you put that much effort into setting a trpa for a thief, you probably couldn’t beat them without it.)

Besides, how many people do you really take out who know your coming from halfway across the map who have plenty of time to prepare? When roaming nobody is going to be smart with traps, because your attacking people trying to get from one point to another.

Seriously, those who are bemoaning this trap are way overdoing it. Yes it’s stupid. No it’s not useful for 1v1ing thieve except in very specific circumstances. Further, it’s not an efficient use of resources. Those 500 karma, 15 badges and 10 supply could’ve been spent in much better ways.

Also, Thief mirror, if you’re trying to run you can probably still outkite them for 30 seconds if you get hit by the trap(or if not outkite them, force them to blow initiative chasing you so you stay alive till the trap’s duration ends.

Honestly, you really shouldn’t be stepping on the trap in the first place. it’s very obvious where its at except vs thief mirrors. Further, even if you do happen to step on it. Disengaging for 30s then reengaging wouldn’t be particularly difficult. Even if you don’t reengage, you just cost them 10 supplies, 15 badges and 500 karma. Which is arguably a higher cost than actually dying and repairing is.

Poxheart.2845:

The only reason why the player featured in the video was able to set the trap is because he did so while in stealth. If he had tried to set the trap while not in stealth, the other Thief would have burned him down in 3 or 4 hits (probably before the channel was half complete). In a typical 1v1 encounter against a Thief, anybody that stops fighting for 4 seconds to set one of those traps is going to find himself looking at the respawn screen. The only probable exception to this are Warriors or Necros that stack Vitality, and even they would find themselves in such a HP deficit that the Thief shouldn’t need stealth to finish them off.

Seriously, all the histrionics being displayed in this and other threads do nothing but identify the bad players. If a Thief can’t burn down an opponent that isn’t fighting back in 4 seconds, you were never good.

This. Realistically the thief mirror(where the opponent can do it to you, and maybe the mesmer fight) are the only fights where in a 1v1 situation anyone can get this off if they haven’t already pre-set the fighting area. Any class who invulnis and drops this will be super obvious what they are doing and you can easily avoid the trap.

kiba.2768:

not sure if this matters, but karma gear can’t be salvaged nor MF’d unless anet changed something in the last patch…it’s been this way for months now.

It can definitely be mystic forged, but not salvaged. But that’s why i suggested fine transmutation stones.

I personally really like lyssa runes, curing all conditions on Basilisk venom usage and gaining 5s all boons is very good. Even the random boon on heal is pretty good, especially if you’re using withdraw, since it’s something like 10s boon on a 15s cooldown. If you’re not running Basilisk Venom, some of the other runes being mentioned here are better. Lyssa runes can also be gotten for karma + transmutation stones.

I’ve personally never noticed this, and I’ve always found withdraw quite responsive, not sure why.

EDIT: Just tested it out, both withdraw and roll for initiative seem to function the same way, neither will cancel CnD while dodging will. On the other hand neither dodging nor withdraw/roll for initiative will cancel heartseeker or death blossom.

Chrone.6809:

Bean Muncher.5197:

I think Kick shouldn’t lunge towards your foe. I mean, c’mon, 2 out of 3 parts of the auto-attack chain disable dodging? I would be perfectly fine with the chain if only the leap disabled dodging, but right now the sword feels too clunky to me.

Completely agree. Using 1h sword makes us so incredibly immobile. One thing that is handy is that we can pretty much stay on top of a target because its basically a moving attack.

1h sword is EASILY, the most mobile option rangers have, just turn off auto attack and auto targeting and it has more in combat movement options than almost any other weapon in the game. And almost certainly any one handed weapon in the game.

Travlane.5948:

only 2 traits helps how fast you go tho….50% while invis and 20% reduced signet for infiltrators….well i guess 2 intiative per 10 seconds helps but thats 1 extra heartseeker per 20 seconds. idk i think its close tho we will have to see. maybe we can get some trial runs in before it starts. does race matter? dont norns have some skill that makes em a bird or something? or idk

If you cant see how other traits increase your speed you’re doing it wrong.

Vigor on heal, more dodges, more movement(a dodge roll is slightly faster than standard movement). Initiative on heal, you get 4 iniative on heal, which when combined with withdraw, equated to a good 900 or so mobility on your heal, which is also curing crippled/chilled/immobilize and giving you swiftness via runes of the centaur. Trick cooldown reduction reduces the time to reuse roll for iniative, which gives you 2 heartseekers + 600 movement on its own, while also nicely curing crippled/chilled/immobilize. You get even more initiative regen, you get dodge rolls cures cripples, and if you have enemies long reach on steal(which this will be through orr, there will be plenty of enemies.)

The speed on stealth is worthless btw, it doesn’t stack with swiftness and doesn’t go over 33% movement speed, so you’re better off with runes of the centaur and using your heal to increase your speed(withdraw already is amazing for fast movement anyways.)

EDIT: Norn might be ridiculous for this, snow lepoard gives absurd rush, but the long cooldown might limit it, but paired with a good thief build a norn thief would probably be the fastest set possible.

Travlane.5948:

thief and warrior are VERY close in mobility….the small difference is cooldown tho. warrior has quicker “re-access” in my opinion than thief. thats my experience tho trying to catch up with a warrior that was a pro scouter. 3 of the shadowstep skills need targets too. (steal) (infiltrators strike) (infiltrators signet) and for steal it has to be in range….and strike doesnt always go full distance on a far target idk y…. i mean i love my thief im just saying i give a slight edge to warrior.

adding in conditions im sure thief would win….warrior sprint / leap skills LOVE to target things. infiltrators arrow is a waste of intiative no matter how u look at it. just to keep it simple in explanation…..its a slow skill…unless ur standing still u dont get 900 range. u get around 600 and for only half of your initiative :/ . HS is better even with cripple. but hs is good only when used 2+ times….if you use one there is like a 1 sec animation thing that makes u stand still .

They really aren’t. Warriors are very fast when they barely work for it, but they have very few useful traits or additional mobility utilities, whereas most thieves don’t take every mobility option they have and don’t take the extreme abundance of traits which will increase their overall speed. Warriors can only reduce the cooldowns on their gs and physical utilities(and perhaps banners) to get added mobility. Thieves can literally have every trait dedicated to increasing how fast they can go.

Travlane.5948:

@shadow lords u might be surprised. if its a short sprint thieves would win. but anything thats like a 1-2 min race…warrior wins.

Not if both are traited for max speed. Warrior’s have a high base speed, but a low speed cap. Thieves on the other hand have a mid range base speed but a high cap.

Warriors have access to 1 1200 range rush on a 20s(16s traited) cd, a 900 leap on a 8s cd, a 600 rush on a 40s(32s traited) cd, a 450 rush on a 8s(6.5 traited) cd. Then if they’re really good about aiming their banners they have a 600 rush on a 15s(12s traited) cd. They can get 100% swiftness uptime, and probably near 75% vigor uptime.

Now I noted what thieves can get, and given specs for initiative regen vigor and reduced cds, thieves can far outspeed warriors. The specific spec im talking about is 0 0 10 30 30, with runes of the centaur, using withdraw, signet of infiltration, shadowstep, and roll for initiative. Traiting for iniative and vigor on heal, reduced trick and deception cooldowns, increased steal range, and increased initative gain, you have easily way more speed than a warrior if you’re good at using the quick turn to transform roll for initiative and withdraw into speed abilities. This really applies to both burst and long distance running. Warrior is only faster than a thief while untraited and relying mostly on merely signet of shadow + heartseeker/infiltrator’s arrow for mobility.

Also regarding infiltrator’s arrow vs heartseeker, I’d be interested to see how each compares when in combat. Also infiltrators arrow has the useful ability to ignore cripples/chills/immobilize, however the raw speed on heartseeker might be better if it really is 33% more efficient(but given that this is running through orr, I have a feeling ways to reduce movement reduction may be more important.

Finally you lost because you had signet of shadows instead of rocking perma swiftness, via runes of the centaur, with perma swiftness you beat the warrior due to more gap closers, and not wasting utilities on signet of shadows.

Ryan.8367:

I REALLY wish people would quit referencing the description in a wiki and just look at the traits, the pet mechanics, spirit mechanics. How do you not see that the ranger is predominately a ranged class? I’m just confused on how you don’t see this.

Tell you what, next time you run a dungeon (or for that matter, next time you do a skirmish with a guild in wvw , or for that matter, when you do a tpvp match, or for that matter when you do anything with a group), tell all the melee classes to sit back and let you melee it. You’re not designed to be a melee class, it’s simple as that. It’s why a majority of our ‘melee’ weapons have evasion and mobility aspects on them. It’s for positioning and utility more so than dealing melee damage.

kitten the wiki description, look at the kitten we have and get your head out of your kitten

I think you should probably look at the melee options again, yes there’s plenty of mobility, but its hardly all based on getting away(in fact there’s literally only 1 melee skill that involves disengaging from melee range, and that one includes a leap right back into the fight), in fact, a couple of the skills actively keep pushing you closer, see sword auto attack, and tell me that’s about positioning for attacking at range. Also about the traits, you know that there are more trait trees than just skirmishing and marksmanship, right? Because those are the only two trees that really emphasize ranged combat.

Regardless, I don’t understand why people feel the need to argue this, rangers should be good at range, sure of course, but there’s no reason to keep going BUT IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE BEST RANGED CLASS, like you want them to nerf melee and make ranged super awesome. I don’t see any particular reason some of ranger’s weaker ranged options(cough, longbow, cough) can’t be improved without claiming that the ranger is a primarily ranged class.

Thieves correctly buit and traited win this without issue.

You have 3 targetted shadow steps for 900 range(specced correctly 1 is 1200 range 31 second cooldown, the other is 900 range 30 second cooldown, and the last is 900 range 3 initiative 15 second cooldown), a 900 range untargetted shadow step for 6 initiative, a 1200 range untargetted 40 second cooldown shadowstep, 2 super rolls, 60-70% vigor uptime, 100+% swiftness uptime, multiple ways to remove cripple/immobilize and keep moving.

Really, if you spec’ed for it thieves have the best speed in the game. Warriors have nothing on Thieves with regards to sheer forward motion.