Guild Wars 2

Signet of the Hunt: Reduced the duration of the Attack of Opportunity buff to 30 seconds to match the skill’s recharge.

^ HUGE nerf to ranger burst. The previous duration (16 min or so) allowed you to double pop it, have it up from a previous signet pop, and then use it again after the recharge was up, for two 150% attacks in a row.

this is just ridiculous, and completely unnecessary.

Not looking forward to this change AT ALL.
One of the things I enjoy about being on Tarnished Coast, is that I can walk up to any stranger and start speaking to them in character because just by the fact that we are both on this server, there is a chance (a good one from my tests) they are also a roleplayer.

I can make this assumption in any non-overflow map because I will only be encountering people who rolled on, transferred to, or knowingly are guesting on TC.

Now when Megaserver comes along, and I’m out in the open world, sure, I may be grouped with mainly TC people, but I do not have that certainty, that knowledge that everyone that I encounter is on TC, for a reason. Instead, I will always have that Overflow uncertainty.

You know what I do when I know I’m on an overflow map? I don’t RP.

Now Anet can probably defend by saying that well, RP is a community based thing, and that means it’s community’s problem to solve, and they never had to be, or promised to be, defenders of GW2 RP, but this is just going to be an ugly situation.

The RP community needs a degree of isolation to function. The certainty that exists from knowing you are on “the RP server” provides the encouragement to do so, without fear of rejection. In the Megaserver version of GW2, I don’t see RP dying, but I do see spontaneous, open world, between strangers and not set up between members of an established RP guild group, RP, being inhibited.

Consider this please, Anet.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Zaxares.5419:

ERP is a misunderstood condition. Once you’ve been infec-, err, acquainted with it, you’ll find it’s not so bad. Join usssss…

Stop hiding behind your elaborate emotes and instanced Salma and face me in Say chat like a Tyrian so I can vanquish this ERP evil once and for all, THAT is my Wyld Hunt

Wait are you saying you want to ERP in say chat? Like play some sort of ERP say chat chicken, see who folds to the pressure of so many eyes upon them first?

Because I am SO DOWN for that.

Medium armor you say? Why make just a red outfit, when you can make a FIRE outfit?

kta.6502:

There are even recorded cases on the Tarnished Coast of Sylvari having intimate relations with members of the other races (esp. the Asura ). Earlier this year, a bunch of Asura got caught getting it on with their leafy friends. It’s been the talk in Rata Sum since the beginning of the year.

This happened, on my server, and no one called me?

I would have LEFT WVW for that!

Next time this occurs please send a tell to “Phaynel” and I will be there in under 5 seconds.

I have no idea where to put feedback for the official wiki. I’m not a wiki user and I don’t want to try leaving feedback there and end up accidentally editing a page or deleting something, I know how to use the forums, so I’m asking here.

Basically I just want to express my seething hatred for what they’ve done to the Item Nomenclature page.

There used to be a wonderful table on level 80 gear (under a heading “Triple Attribute” that had all the information on armor sets of different types, indicating craftable or not, and most useful of all, which gemstones lined up with which stat sets.

The new page doesn’t have any of this. And sure, there’s a link to “equipment acquisition by stats” or something like that, but guess what, that link doesn’t have the gemstone information! I’ve had to go back to the old versions of the page just to find what I need!

I checked the edit history comments just to see if there was a reason behind this madness and apparently it was because all that extra USEFUL information didn’t belong on a page called “Item nomenclature”, and that it should be moved so the page contained ONLY information of that type.

Are you serious?

Change the name of the page to something that fits then. I got one, try “AMAZINGLY USEFUL GATHERING OF INFORMATION ON LEVEL 80 GEAR”. Name it that, that fits everything that could ever be on there!

What we have now is inferior. The purpose of the wiki is to help people find information about the game, right? Well this change does the opposite. I now have to visit 3 pages to find what used to be available in one.

1. Item nomenclature to find out what names = what stats
2. equipment acquisition by stats to find out where to get said items
3. SOME OTHER PAGE I HAVEN’T EVEN FOUND to find out which gemstones = which stat combos

That’s not even cool. And I don’t like it.

booted out, patcher wouldn’t work, now it’s finally patching and it’s 70% and my guild in voice chat is telling me there’s already a queue to get back in.

I beat the queue once tonight and you had to do this. Thanks a lot.

Stop patching on reset night. Completely disrespectful to the WvW community—and an excellent way to ruin someone’s night (like mine)

If this was real, it would be a huge nerf.
Lose access to Rampage of One (long duration stability, most important boon) to gain what Signet of the Beastmaster builds already have?

That pet rez is meaningless and isn’t even useful. What’s the speed of the rez? If it’s the speed of the current pet rez, it won’t get you up before a stomp. It would need to be an instarez at the least for this skill to not be trash. And still I don’t want it.

All I can say is all Rangers better be praying this is fake, and Rangers who take Signet of the Beastmaster in their builds better be double praying.

Gotejjeken.1267:

If you try roaming with a longbow you are asking to die. Longbow at this point is a back of the zerg or in/out of shelter defense mechanism. You take it into a 1v1 or 1vX and you might as well ALT+F4.

This is so wrong it’s not even funny.

What are you doing with the longbow that makes you think that? Seriously, if you have the time or care at all take a moment to tell me what actions you would take with the longbow in a 1v1 situation.

Here’s mine:
weapons – Longbow (sigil of int)/Sword+Axe (Sigil of bloodlust/int)
[at the sigil patch Longbow will be Int/Leeching for the heal and unmitigated free damage and Sword+Axe will be the same]

Open in Longbow
Close to 900 range to target
Point Blank Shot [autocrit Opening Strike] → Swap → Path of Scars [autocrit Int]
Cast TU, because it’s a heal designed to maintain your current level of health, you want to maintain full
Fight as usual in Sword/Axe, making sure to pop Axe #5 REGARDLESS of what you are fighting because if you cancel Axe 5 early you still have the Retal for the full duration you would have spinning (Do this it’s worth it! No one ever does this!)
When Path of Scars is finished recharging…
Path of Scars → Swap → Point Blank Shot [autocrit Int] → Hunter’s Shot [usually hits when chained directly after a KB, stealth, gain a bit of distance]
Ping target with 1, use 2 if you suspect stealth
When Point Blank Shot is finished recharging…
Point Blank Shot → Swap → Path of Scars [autocrit Int]
you get the idea

the purpose of doing this is to chain burst your opponent every 15 seconds
There are improvements to this you can do like running a Signet of the Beastmaster built and tossing in Signet of the Hunt
You can pre-pop this skill and have the 150% damage on yourself for about 16 minutes so have the Sigil effect on you already at the first step and activate it again at the swap so you can do two guaranteed crits that both have 150% damage applied to them
If you want, you can also pair this with a Hawk/Eagle for the very low cooldown F2, this is probably the only F2 that will be available ever 15 seconds when you do your burst rotation, use it then (and not randomly in between) so you keep your damage bursts concentrated, that’s how you kill

There’s probably more but seriously, am I the only person who does this? Longbow is second only to the Sword for its usefulness in a 1vX. This is our stealth weapon!

We have essentially 3 skills that hit (crit) hard enough to qualify as burst with enough Power and Crit Damage. Maul, Path of Scars, and Point Blank Shot. Two of them are ranged and can be chained together—so why aren’t more rangers doing it?

for the WvW people

1. Ranger
2. Thief (Dual Pistol)
3. Elementalist

Porcine F2 just needs to do what ele conjures do, and have the item go straight into your hand on use.
In fact, I would say take it one further, have it go into your hand AND drop one! That ONLY people on YOUR team can pick up! (because its current state is completely laughable—not only do I have to drop and item and pick it up, but I have to pick it up before my enemy can get it!? what)

This is probably asking for way too much however. A skill that not only works properly, but is useful too? Gasp.

If you want to go Power and ranged, I’d say focus on a few things. Absolutely go zerker armor. Note all this advice is for WvW, I never touch the other modes:

Longbow’s highest damage dealing skill is Point Blank Shot, you need to use it as often as possible and it needs to crit as often as possible. If you save it as just your survival skill to help get out of trouble you are cutting all the damage out of the weapon. Use 3 as your “get out of bad situations” button it’s better now for that anyway.

Only use Rapid Fire on stealthers or people very close to you. You basically want to use 1 until you can use 4 again. 111111 …. 4 …. 111111elevenone!1 ….. 4. Simple!

And the most important thing you can know about Power+ranged Ranger, is that our hardest hitting ranged attack is not on longbow at all, it’s on offhand Axe and you should try it. Path of Scars.

Try chaining a Point Blank Shot crit into a Path of Scars crit, see how you like those numbers. Just be aware that you don’t want to stand still while executing this combo in case you push the target out of the range of your follow up move. Keep closing in.

Kilger.5490:

GS block is really underrated too, unless your counter-attack goes off you have 4 sec of virtual immunity.

What this guy is saying ^^^^^

As long as you don’t get hit in melee it’s a full block when aoe is raining down all around you. For a ranger commander you’d probably NEED this, because the only other way I can see staying alive in situations like that involves too much mobility for your train to follow you properly.

WolfiKurisu.6894:

I don’t like pets.

Stop. Back away from the Ranger.

I’m really trying to help you here. The Warrior is that way, and that’s where you need to be. This is the pet class, not wanting to engage with the class mechanic is going to make you an even more underpowered version of what’s already underpowered.

Don’t do this to yourself.

I stopped playing my Thief because I didn’t like stealth play and that’s the class mechanic. Round holes square pegs are coming to mind. It’s not going to work if you don’t want to do what the class does, okay?

Now take my hand, I’ll lead you over to the Warriors. They’re friendly. Sort of.

I was one of those people who RP’d around with Embers, but there’s no point to doing so anymore—you can’t command them so in open world they WILL aggro something and they will die and waiting 30m to summon another one is ridiculous. Whole aspect of my RP character removed—thanks Anet!

You should have removed them from the game, and given us something to compensate. Disable their function entirely and double their resale price to the vendor so we can dump them. People buy full stacks of these things and making them useless with no warning is… pretty rude.

30m resummon timer feels like you just wanted to be able to say “be glad we didn’t remove them completely”. But you did. You ought to have the decency to do it right.

As for the whole “these items were a bug” thing, that sentence doesn’t even really make sense to me. They didn’t pose any problem until people were using them for Tequatl. You could have put a limit on how many Embers can be out in a given area or something.. you have the code, there is such a thing as siege cap in WvW, you could have made an item summon cap.

But whatever. I’m a ranger, I’m used to baffling disappointments from this game

I always name my spiders either
“Arachnus Deathicus”
Or
“I Killed Breakdown”
…if anyone knows those references.

Barbaric invader filth, such as the denizens of your server, on average, are incapable of displaying the level of intelligence needed to embrace organized voice communication. You seem to be some kind of anomaly.
I would give up in this foolish endeavor. If you want to play on a server that embraces organized use of server comms on a regular basis, by both guild groups and militia, you should come to the Tarnished Coast. We have all but mastered this method of warfare, through diligence and strategic deployment of karaoke.

Be warned that all new petitioners will be required to pass loyalty tests involving bloodshed and sacrifice, and you will be forced to denounce the false gods of your homeland and worship the Golem God.

FrownyClown.8402:

You’re not invited to the party. I call the shots, but your husband can come to the party.

Railspike doesn’t go anywhere without a direct order from his Master.
Also I suppose it’s for the better we don’t attend. Most invaders probably have leaf-rot down there.

FrownyClown.8402:

Hi, I am looking for some erp on tc, preferably with multiple men. Message me in game what you want to do with my body. If I am satisfied, I will reply back with a time and location to my lemon party.

need more details

1. what race are you (I don’t do charr, asura preferred)
2. multiple is good but how do you feel about being shared with a married couple (my husband is an Alpha Golem)
3. invaders are a huge turn off though, how willing would you be to permanently transfer to TC. PiNK has ERP almost every weekend and I would personally see to your flexibility training

Not tied to a pet or heal skill.
But on a utility or weapon skill, like Lightning Reflexes or Sword 2.

Instead, we’re getting a mobility nerf, with your proposed changes to WS 5.

…who on the anet team actually plays (melee) Ranger? (In WvW, since everything I post is from that perspective)

Anyone?
It’s definitely not those guys from the livestream

We still have a ton of completely nonviable pet skills, due to poor AI that can’t track moving enemies and will happily cancel the skill instead of turning to face them. I’m looking at you, every single pet with a cone attack. How many of the pets is that? Why are you okay with that many pets being broken?

I could put together a list of pets that perform adequately (meaning their F2 skill works enough for that pet to be in my short list of pets I might use) in WvW, and those that don’t. In fact, it doesn’t have to be me. Why don’t you make a dev feedback thread where we all post which pets we NEVER use because they don’t work. (or don’t perform well enough even when they do work) Ask us to tell you why, in depth, and we will!

You call some of our skills blatantly OP, but I don’t think you understand just how OP we need to be to compete with the real classes. Really. Do you have anyone who specializes in Ranger WvW on your team? (especially melee small scale not just bow+zergs) Do you understand how much effort needs to be put into winning fights with this broken class? How much more effort than anyone else?

And how much that hinges on constant evasion?
Anet, if you’re reading this, do me and the rest of the community a favor. Talk to whoever on your team specializes in Ranger. Someone should, right? Ask them what their plan is, for how they’re going to deal with this massive mobility nerf.

Then come back here, and tell us what they said.
I sincerely want to know.

Nike.2631:

Try hitting Signet of the Wild ( +25% damage, 8 second), Signet of the Hunt ( +50% damage, next attack) and then f2 on a drake.

Yeah. They’re for bursting .

I don’t know what you pve bunnies do, but in WvW you couldn’t land that combo on anything that moves more than the broad side of a dolyak’s kitten .

And even if you did, you wouldn’t be able to stomp for the entire duration of Signet of the Wild, more than long enough for the downed guy’s friends to have you… removed.

Devon Carver didn’t kill Kaineng.
Tarnished Coast killed Kaineng.

Rangers are actually well suited to killing D/P thieves, we have all the right tools.

1. Cast Rampage as One
2. Pop (traited) signet of stone
3. Drop stealth trap, it’s not possible for them to interrupt or damage you
4. You Win

D/P chain stealth is cheap, you gotta go cheaper. No shame in my game.
It’s not hard to get 10 supply. More of you guys should be doing this. It’s free thief tears to keep your pets from getting thirsty.

I understand your being drawn toward playing glass ranger.. glass ranger is fun! But if a thief fart is killing you, then you play a glass character but you don’t play them like they’re glass, if that makes any sense.

If you can’t get hit, your weapons/utilities have to be focused toward not getting hit otherwise you’re going to die over and over. In other words, if you want to go full glass, go for it, but you need to sub in skills that absorb damage or help you avoid it.

You said not to ask you to change your weapons, so I won’t (not too much), I’ll just make a very friendly suggestion—with mainhand sword you have 2 evades with relatively short cooldowns, including an evade that can chain into a leap which you can point in any direction you want for defensive OR offensive (mark target which you can now do solo, drop target, flip camera, press Sword 2, reacquire marked targed, press Sword 2 again, to leap and cripple them as they run) purposes, plus an auto attack that chases down targets (which isn’t as bad as people make it sound on here). And if you were Sword/Dagger you would have 3 evades, one of which is very long, and again, all pretty short cooldown, especially with traits. Longbow/GS may be the kind of dps you want, but you can’t dps while dead, and you are noticing that already.

I guess the point of this post is, how glass you can go is related to how many hits you can take, and your current setup takes more hits than your glass build allows.

I don’t know your rune setup but currently you can use Traveler runes to give yourself the 25% speed increase without having to take the speed signet, which would free one of your utility slots. Now the signet ALSO lets you burst harder one one attack, since you’re using it with the trait, but look at your playstyle, are you actually doing that with the signet or do you just have it on for the speed boost? If the answer is the second one, I would suggest dropping it and getting the runes instead. Because if you have a free slot, you can run Protect Me ALONG with Signet of Stone for 12 seconds of invuln (to non condition damage) which is very awesome as glass—as long as you keep your pet alive. Which leads me to another thing.. pets. Your post didn’t mention what you’re using but for glass I would recommend Red Moa on passive. Use the Fury screech and then call it back so it doesn’t run anywhere. All I do is buff myself with it and use it as a secondary HP bar. Secondary pet is Wolf for fearing people away from either yourself or allies when they are downed.

You can survive and kill things in WvW as pure zerker Ranger. But if you don’t want to change your playstyle to get hit less (and negate more damage), then yes, you should probably change your gear.

Please do something about this. Even if these items aren’t intended to have Power, level 80 items should have 3 stats on them, not just 2. These items are entirely useless in their current state.

You’d best hope you never face the Tarnished Coast, Niim.
Blasphemy against our most high Golem God will be met with the only acceptable reaction… Immediate destruction.

All hail and all glory to the Lord of War and Rocket Fists! Praise the Superiority of Steel!

Blasphemers must be executed, wherever they dwell! Be warned, those who dare conspire with Niim.. The Church of the Golem God [COG] will find you wherever you are, and our inquisitors are not known for their… Delicate touch.

D/P thieves are weak, and usually very cowardly. If you’re too hard to kill, they’ll give up.

The most important thing I would suggest, is bringing a class that can keep up a high uptime of Regeneration (and any other passive healing effect you can get your hands on) and wearing something like Cleric’s gear, so you have at least 1k Healing Power. That’s what I’m wearing on my Ranger currently, and I literally let D/P thieves attack me, put up regen, and use the /sit or /sleep emotes to make them feel bad about themselves. Also you want to take the lowest cooldown heal you have. Spam heals but make sure you have backup plans for interrupts, or decent duration stability. And if you’re not interested in fighting, don’t stop to fight, just keep healing and moving toward the nearest escape from battle, be it a tower, or camp, spawn entrance, whatever.

Second, you can escape from thieves, they are very mobile but you can be more mobile, with leap skills. On Ranger I’m talking about chaining leaps from the Sword 2 skill, but any class that can leap/dash without a long cooldown and has either run a speed signet or keep a good swiftness uptime can escape from a thief. They can teleport and chase you but bringing it back to my earlier point, if you weren’t dying anyway, they won’t.

D/P gankers are after easy meals, it’s all their easymode gameplay can get.

Don’t be one. Be as annoying as possible to damage and you’ll have no problems. Do it consistently and they’ll learn not to even bother with you, and your problems will lessen as the match up goes on.

I am the one undercutting all of you by 1c.

All of you. Every single item you list.

It’s me.

And I love it.

please fix:

Auto-cancel + Mini cooldown on F2 if you try to use it while the pet is in any kind of animation (including running animations) There are times when I’ll try to get a pig pet to spawn an item for me to carry, OUT OF COMBAT, nothing distracting him, but because I didn’t come to a complete stop and wait for him to stop moving too, the F2 cancels. What. It’s even worse in combat. When you’re fighting another player, it’s about timing, it’s about I NEED IT NOW. Do you not understand this? I can’t wait for an AI to make up its mind. I press the skill the skill needs to activate—on the target, which brings me to the next point…

Pets do not face targets when you command their F2. Things like Drake breaths or Moa screeches in pvp/wvw environments are IMPOSSIBLE to land, there is too much movement. Do you not have any Ranger playtesters? These skills are not usable! I can’t tell you how many times I have watched my River Drake start charging up the breath, the enemy ends up behind him by this point, and so what does he do? Instead of flipping around and firing the breath at the new location of the target, who is NOT currently in “Evade”, he just moved, that’s it… the drake instead cancels the whole F2. Just cancels it. It even happens in pve. I can recreate it for anyone who wants to see it.

Why can’t my pet autoface the target, at all times, without fail, unless they are stealthed? Is there a reason this was not included?

There are more problems. There are just plain poorly implemented things like Pigs. the long cast times of pet attacks in general, Birds with their horrible attack pattern, and all those issues just add to the sheer annoyance that is using pets.

That’s really the core of it, anet. Pets are not a seamless part of our characters. They’re an uncontrollable, hard to wrangle, unresponsive, poorly done, problem that taunts us by constantly reminding us how effective we could be, if only that Pink Moa daze was something to be relied upon. If only.

We don’t Rampage as One with them, we drag them along, most Rangers by this point, don’t expect much, try to get them to work when there’s nothing else we can do and they always disappoint. Maybe I wouldn’t have died if the Wolf had dropped everything he was doing to use his fear howl the moment I pressed F2 but he was too busy making sure his footsteps were perfectly animated.

Our core mechanic, our class mechanic… is BROKEN.

…I swear I come to these forums every month or so and write out the same rant, pleading to the devs. Really. You can check my post history I’m sure everything above was already said. I even left some stuff out this time I bet.

How long is it going to take?

Lenador.1436:

<.< i despise TC…..nothing but theif roamers gimme some rangers or guards

hey, I roam ranger for TC every single night. I’m in the fire outfit with all the fire theme weapons. Sexiest sylvari you’ll ever lay eyes on.

when you see me, you’ll know

Having to justify yourself to a High Council of random players you don’t know as to why you can stay and play with them?
Telling them what your secondary weapon set and build are just to keep your foot in the door?

lol what kind of nonsense.
Come to WvW, all of you, leave this PvE idiocy behind. No one’s going to ask you your build unless you’ve reached the like, uber elite GvG’s level.

If you want to PvE play Skyrim, no one will judge you (at least no one you can’t kill for trying) and you can ride dragons, fly airships, and did I mention fly airships. Your companions there will be only supportive and will never kick you from the party like these cretins I hear about in our forums all day. And there’s a LOT more shiny gear to collect!

In WvW, if you have legs to carry supply with, if you can follow directions, you’re welcome. You can fight to your heart’s content and do so defending the honor of your server. Your skills will get FAR sharper than they ever would be fighting NPCs and you can judge your OWN worth in how much invader blood you spill!

Give up PvE today, and join with the Mist Warriors upon the battlefield!

has to be PvE players complaining about this, that’s why I don’t understand
…because this is the best change ever

Usagi.4835:

Syktek.7912:

Giving a shout out to that thief from PINK that I just got killed in the Obsi JP: I’m sorry for downing you. You were peaceful to that point. When I saw you attack the dude my mind went into “TC jerks attacking again” so I went after you.

I noticed my mistake upon downing you but it was too late…team mates weren’t very happy. Should have let you kill them. Sorry ;;

Be aware that the Empire of the Tarnished Coast does not take kindly to acts of aggression towards its peoples. Retribution shall be swiftly delivered as penance for your hostility.

What miraculous change is this, that you’re sounding like a proper Knight of the Coast..? Have you decided to finally forsake the path of loving those filthy invaders, and embrace your homeland, your noble lineage?
I’m proud of you… my brother.

-waits for you to inevitably disappoint me-

…is without a doubt the most annoying part of the nerfs. At least for someone who doesn’t use shortbow.

The pet won’t take two steps away from you anymore without leashing. I can no longer sneak my pet up to open field siege (like catapults) using “Guard” to destroy them before they can take down walls, because the distance is now too far in almost every circumstance. Even if I do manage to creep close enough to get my pet to go -after- the catapult, retreating back toward the tower I’m defending even a little will result in the pet quickly returning. I can’t leave the pet on a downed enemy and fight another, knowing it will get the job done—because it won’t, if I so much as look away from it!

This leash range reduction is ridiculous. I already stopped using pets as a source of damage months ago—but I still used them in certain utility situations, which now also, have been ruined.

Can I trade my pet in for being able to use a hammer or something? Or for like… 5 gold? Not even 5 gold each, 5 gold for the whole lot of ‘em. I have quite an extensive collection—at this rate it’s a steal.

Oh wait, maybe I could trade my pets for Steal! What do you say, devs? Same button and everything.

Yeah, and I’m glad. Any food over 1 silver is too expensive, and there are some foods (the ones I wanted to use, but had to resort to lower level versions of just because of prices) running at ridiculous rates like 10 silver each.

No the overpriced foods are not more desirable because they last an extra 10 minutes, not worth it for all that cost. I hope the food market stays destroyed and you can bet that myself and many others are stockpiling stacks upon stacks of the Dragon Bash food so you never get another copper of my money.

Have a nice day, and a nice time finding a new job

Nope.. my build is only being improved. Pretty excited about it!

I will however, lament the loss in efficiency at farming mobs in PvE.. Will I still be able to afk farm crafting materials while I read on my phone, using pet damage? I hope so.

Only if you’re on Tarnished Coast.

You want to take the Longbow’s only defensive skill, change it around to deal more damage (situationally, most likely, it already does decent damage), not sure what you intend to do with the knockback, and add a longer cooldown to it.

I agree the Longbow could use more power, I think you’re looking at the wrong place to add it. Try the 1 or the 2, those need improvements. 4’s fine.

Daemon.4295:

What’s there to look forward to on the longbow? It’ll miss slightly less due to the increased projectile speed but that’s it. The longer cripple on barrage is pretty much useless, the issue with that skill is people dodging out and not getting hit at all. Anyone running a power longbow build will only be hurt by this patch due to the loss of Zephyr’s Speed, assuming these patch notes turn out to be legit.

Well in zergs most people don’t really dodge out of Barrage, especially if you wait until they’ve already dodged out of the other aoe to use it. It has no place in small scale fights except for maybe when you want to dissuade a stealthed thief from getting close to you and weapon swap is on cd.

I’ve run 0 BM for some time now.. Zephyr’s Speed was never a factor for me, and I run Power. I use the Longbow to put vuln on people and burst them with crit Point Blank Shot, one of our highest damage dealing skills. Have you tried using it just for damage and not for defensive purposes? Sure, the range is bad but it’s both an interrupt and a high damage skill. Overall, the Longbow does less damage than the shortbow, but I find steadily pecking away at someone’s health with auto attack to be less satisfying (and less effective) than bursting them. SB crits never go much over 1k for me, and I run 96% crit damage and something like 2.2k Power.

Sword/Axe is already a great combo. PoS crits like a truck and Sword provides tons of mobility and makes you almost impossible to escape from—which the new pull will only make worse for your enemies.

Though I’m also looking forward to the new longbow—if these “leaked” notes are real, that is.

Think about it, this is what we’ve been asking for right? More damage on the Ranger, less on the pet? The best thing I ever did playing this class was stop trying to use the pet as anything other than a walking buff provider. Once we adapt to these new changes, I think we’re going to be a lot more dangerous.. well, maybe. We’ll see what how much Torment screws us.

Biggest thing to watch for is that PoS’s return hit is somewhat unreliable… gets obstructed quite a bit, and I bet they haven’t fixed -that-

Torment seems like a really dumb idea to me.. for Rangers who don’t want to bunker up in their Healing Springs, we rely on tons of movement and evades. I don’t know how Torment works, will it affect movement -skills- or just movement, will I take damage for leaping around using Sword? Almost all the Sword skills are movement based… is using it going to be suicide? Would be really upset if that was the case.

And really, thieves, the class we need our movement/evades against, can punish us for it? Rampant boonstripping not enough, I guess, they need more anti-Ranger tools!

Mesmers I’m not too worried about, they’re still slow and any good Ranger can run in circles from all their damage if they want to, taking a bit more damage escaping probably won’t prevent the escape. But thieves?

And I guess I’ll start using Cave Spider now in anticipation of the Weakness changes, at least until I find out they nerfed the duration to hell or whatever they’re going to do to make the new Weakness not worth using, lol. It’s already bad because the spider always starts its attack rotation with that horrible, slow arcing, worthless and double worthless poison field attack (can we get that removed? Honestly don’t even replace it with anything just remove it. I’d pay for that.) that the F2 venom does NOT apply to, so you have to either wait for it to finish it before you get the Weakness on the next auto attack, or spam F1 and hope you can animation cancel your pet so it skips straight to auto attack. That’s -really- clumsy and I don’t enjoy doing it, which is why I use Spiders so infrequently because it’s something you have to constantly remember.

all I have to say really is why are you buffing the classes that don’t need buffs anet

do something about Longbow 1 instead, or pet AI? They still don’t face the enemy, and it takes only the slightest of movements to miss an F2. Why can’t they correct their facing if the enemy is still in range? I know it’s possible, you can test it with the Ranger—go up to an enemy, swing a greatsword at it, keep it targeted but turn your character away, and then hit Maul. You’ll spin right around and bring the bear down. Why don’t pets do this?

There’s a whole host of unusable (vs players) pets because they don’t do this simple action of automatically facing the target—every one with a cone attack, for example.

adding shinies to other classes while this one has a broken mechanic = ???

Just ignore them—don’t feed and it’ll go away and look for responses elsewhere. Roaming WvW thieves are looking to feed on your rage. Thief is the Troll class, anet got completely carried away making them and people have taken that to the next level, as the players always take things further than the devs can envision.

Mesmers are pretty slow, at least from what I’ve seen/heard, so maybe you should roll a class more suited to escaping from others, like a… oh yeah, have you tried a Thief?

I would happily take a well-trained Warrior as a pet, but I’m afraid I only accept wartrained pets, and it seems your previous owner brought you up in the frilly world of contained matches, also known as spvp. That simply will not do. PvP pets always shrink back at the sound of cannon fire or freeze up at the sight of arrows raining down around them.

So if you manage to pick up some war training, oh, and move to Tarnished Coast—maybe then I will adopt you

Against permastealth thieves you need to rely on damage that can hit them without being targeted, so condition damage from traps, and channeled attacks like Warhorn 4 and Longbow 2. (and longbow is a poor weapon for small scale fights in my opinion)

Really your best bet is to be high condition specced and very mobile. If you run 1h sword you can stay highly mobile with evades from the 2 and 3 skills, and you can focus on dropping traps all over your feet to rack up the damage on the thief. Basically all you have to do is dance and not die, and you should ‘win’ in the sense that the thief will be losing health and you won’t—but there is NOTHING you can do to prevent them from running away.

And against two of them? Solo I would advise running away. With another ranger? I would still advise running away unless you two are coordinated and running similar builds designed to take on stealthers. You can escape a thief no problem with 1h sword or even Greatsword.

Now if what you want to do is actually KILL a permastealth thief, you have one option only. Stealth trap. Buy a bunch, always keep 10 supply on you and don’t build with it. When you run into a permastealth thief, pop Protect Me or traited SoS and maybe even RaO to ensure you don’t get interrupted and drop the trap on your feet. The most important thing you have to remember when trapping a thief is that they can still kill you unstealthed, if you waste 50% of your health just getting the trap down, you’re still going to lose the fight, or worse, have to withdraw to recover your health, wasting precious seconds of Revealed. Thieves are generally incredibly squishy, so don’t be afraid to pop your cooldowns to ensure that you are not hurting while laying the trap. Most likely a thief will panic once they do get the 30s of Revealed, so you won’t need your defensive skills as much. If you succeed in trapping them—put as much slow on them as you can, cripples, chills, immobs, and go all out. This is your chance at revenge—make it count!

Xsorus.2507:

I’d make Pigs F2 work like Thief Steal, and just give us the ability in our F2 Slot

This times infinity.
There’s other things I want (since I’m spirit build and all) but I want this more than all of them.

I love my male asura to pieces, Cyrus “Blindknives”, the blind gunslinger. Being able to reduce the eyes in the char creator to the point of non-existence is pretty awesome.

…the name makes sense with the tldr; RP backstory I promise

I have no idea why the forums decided to butcher my post. I can’t seem to fix it either. Curses, there goes my dramatic effect.

I have an important message to deliver to the citizens of Dragonbrand.

An immortal walks among you.

The tale goes as such—my guildies and I were doing what we could to protect the yaks walking from the Vale supply camp to Bay on DBBL, reset night, and admittedly not doing too well as two stealth spam thieves were basically trolling us. 

One of them a bit harder than the other. 

“Dragonbrand General”, was his name, armed with the Legendary Quip, had decided to take up residence between Briar and the supply camp, waiting in the ninja cata spot of the tower for our fluffy yaks to spawn, for him to mercilessly slaughter. 

And it was indeed merciless. He would appear, and disappear. It was like fighting a ghost that stacks bleeds and is nigh untargetable. We looked downright foolish trying to stop him. 

Little did I know how foolish trying to stop him was.

Eventually, fed up of the situation, I took a trip back to the spawn and purchased one of those Stealth Disruptors. I knew the thief liked to hide by the tower, so we posted there as bait. “Lure him over the trap, and then we’ll have his worthless invader hide”, I told my guildie.

And for a moment I actually thought this would work.

He did indeed walk right into the trap, with all the confidence of someone who is used to abusing cheap tactics for easy victory, I mean, when all you have to do is hit 5 and then 1 until you win or your opponent gets tired and leaves, why would you even blink at the thought of two players retreating from you into a narrow passage? Nothing has made you have to -think- while playing this game before, after all.

Then things got interesting. 

Swiftness buffs activated and ranged attacks blazing, we madly hunted down the enemy General, who we thought must have been in a mad panic, a dash for his life. He ran, and he ran, but it was no use, it turned out, without his stealth spam, he was just another squish. Not too far from the ninja cata spot, we down him behind the tower. Eyes gleaming murderously we get ready to enjoy our long awaited kill.

Except… Right after hitting the down state.. The Dragonbrand General vanished.

Now I am aware, thieves are a sneaky sort. I also am not fully versed in the Stealth Disruptor’s features, whether the Revealed persists on down, or anything like that. What I am aware of though, as I have my own 80 Thief, is that it is not possible through any combination of the downstate teleport and the stealth move, to get so far away from a chasing Ranger as to escape their pet AI aggro. Correct me if I’m overlooking something, but I am 97% sure.

So.. We waited there, at the spot where he vanished. There was no exp granted, no bag dropped. It was silent and calm as if there had been no furious chase, no battle at all. 

So.. We waited there, at the spot where he vanished. There was no exp granted, no bag dropped. It was silent and calm as if there had been no furious chase, no battle at all. And that’s when it hit me.

So.. We waited there, at the spot where he vanished. There was no exp granted, no bag dropped. It was silent and calm as if there had been no furious chase, no battle at all. And that’s when it hit me.Of course he wouldn’t die. He was an immortal! Immune to all things death, upon entering the downstate he just disappeared, beyond my mortal comprehension, possibly to the realm of the gods themselves.

So.. We waited there, at the spot where he vanished. There was no exp granted, no bag dropped. It was silent and calm as if there had been no furious chase, no battle at all. And that’s when it hit me.Of course he wouldn’t die. He was an immortal! Immune to all things death, upon entering the downstate he just disappeared, beyond my mortal comprehension, possibly to the realm of the gods themselves.Now the reason I’m informing you, Dragonbrand citizens, is that… Well, don’t you also want a taste of that power? I’ve seen dead Dragonbrand. I’ve even killed some of you. Which means that your General is keeping secrets from you.

So.. We waited there, at the spot where he vanished. There was no exp granted, no bag dropped. It was silent and calm as if there had been no furious chase, no battle at all. And that’s when it hit me.Of course he wouldn’t die. He was an immortal! Immune to all things death, upon entering the downstate he just disappeared, beyond my mortal comprehension, possibly to the realm of the gods themselves.Now the reason I’m informing you, Dragonbrand citizens, is that… Well, don’t you also want a taste of that power? I’ve seen dead Dragonbrand. I’ve even killed some of you. Which means that your General is keeping secrets from you.He’s found a 100% legit way to avoid death on the battlefield, and I insist, it must be 100% legit! No one who takes the time to obtain the most annoying legendary in the game—and progress to the rank of General would ever do anything to risk themselves, how foolish would that be?

So.. We waited there, at the spot where he vanished. There was no exp granted, no bag dropped. It was silent and calm as if there had been no furious chase, no battle at all. And that’s when it hit me.Of course he wouldn’t die. He was an immortal! Immune to all things death, upon entering the downstate he just disappeared, beyond my mortal comprehension, possibly to the realm of the gods themselves.Now the reason I’m informing you, Dragonbrand citizens, is that… Well, don’t you also want a taste of that power? I’ve seen dead Dragonbrand. I’ve even killed some of you. Which means that your General is keeping secrets from you.He’s found a 100% legit way to avoid death on the battlefield, and I insist, it must be 100% legit! No one who takes the time to obtain the most annoying legendary in the game—and progress to the rank of General would ever do anything to risk themselves, how foolish would that be?Yet he has not shared it with his people! He wishes to be the only immortal when with just a bit of shared knowledge your entire server could be made of unstoppable warriors without fear. I find this behavior rather selfish and if I was one of you, Dragonbrand, I would be demanding some answers.

So.. We waited there, at the spot where he vanished. There was no exp granted, no bag dropped. It was silent and calm as if there had been no furious chase, no battle at all. And that’s when it hit me.Of course he wouldn’t die. He was an immortal! Immune to all things death, upon entering the downstate he just disappeared, beyond my mortal comprehension, possibly to the realm of the gods themselves.Now the reason I’m informing you, Dragonbrand citizens, is that… Well, don’t you also want a taste of that power? I’ve seen dead Dragonbrand. I’ve even killed some of you. Which means that your General is keeping secrets from you.He’s found a 100% legit way to avoid death on the battlefield, and I insist, it must be 100% legit! No one who takes the time to obtain the most annoying legendary in the game—and progress to the rank of General would ever do anything to risk themselves, how foolish would that be?Yet he has not shared it with his people! He wishes to be the only immortal when with just a bit of shared knowledge your entire server could be made of unstoppable warriors without fear. I find this behavior rather selfish and if I was one of you, Dragonbrand, I would be demanding some answers.So I say this… If you know this General of which I speak, if you run with him, are in guild with him, hell, if you so much as see him in passing, ask him, no, beg him—make him tell you the Secret of Immortality! 

So.. We waited there, at the spot where he vanished. There was no exp granted, no bag dropped. It was silent and calm as if there had been no furious chase, no battle at all. And that’s when it hit me.Of course he wouldn’t die. He was an immortal! Immune to all things death, upon entering the downstate he just disappeared, beyond my mortal comprehension, possibly to the realm of the gods themselves.Now the reason I’m informing you, Dragonbrand citizens, is that… Well, don’t you also want a taste of that power? I’ve seen dead Dragonbrand. I’ve even killed some of you. Which means that your General is keeping secrets from you.He’s found a 100% legit way to avoid death on the battlefield, and I insist, it must be 100% legit! No one who takes the time to obtain the most annoying legendary in the game—and progress to the rank of General would ever do anything to risk themselves, how foolish would that be?Yet he has not shared it with his people! He wishes to be the only immortal when with just a bit of shared knowledge your entire server could be made of unstoppable warriors without fear. I find this behavior rather selfish and if I was one of you, Dragonbrand, I would be demanding some answers.So I say this… If you know this General of which I speak, if you run with him, are in guild with him, hell, if you so much as see him in passing, ask him, no, beg him—make him tell you the Secret of Immortality! You have a right to know.

I would really appreciate less PvE in WvW, not more.
This would be a fantastic idea for PvE zones though. Or even cities. But a big vote NO for WvW.