Guild Wars 2

This is probably the best sylvari warrior I’ve seen:
http://i.imgur.com/qyjtjFGl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/YqRl6wBl.jpg

So mesmers are by nature a slower-moving class. They lack a passive trait or ability that gives them speed outside of combat unlike almost every other class out there (apart from the ponderous Guardian).

That said there are a couple Time-honored methods to keeping mesmers moving quickly:

Weapon Choices –
Staff 5 – Chaos Storm has a chance to proc 3s of Swiftness
Focus 4 – When run through Temporal Curtain grants 12s of swiftness

Passive Runes –
Superior Rune of Speed x6 – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Speed
Superior Rune of the Traveler x6 – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Traveler

Active on-heal Runes – **You usually mix these with focus or high boon duration builds to run “perma” swiftness
Superior Rune of the Centaur x6 – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Centaur
Superior Rune of the Air x4 – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Air

For a condition-based necromancer, I feel the easiest target is probably a mesmer. Apart from only a few select builds, mesmers are severely lacking in good condition removal. Unless they have an entire segment of their build specifically devoted to cleansing, a condi-specced scepter necro who has homed in on a mesmer will make them weep.

Guardians can be fairly easy for necros to deal with but only when certain utilities/traits are involved. Guardians tend to have relatively low HP for condition or condition/hybrid necros to prey on, and a properly (or luckily) timed Spinal Shivers / Chill of death, Corrupt Boon or Well of Corruption can SERIOUSLY mess with a guardian’s defensive abilities.

I’ve not played my necro with a power-based set quite long enough to be sure what the EASIEST target is, but I often do quite well matched against condition necros. I have the means to cleanse/return their conditions to them as well as a much higher direct damage output than they usually expect which usually leads overconfident condiswarmers to an early downed-state.

Andele.1306:

… its 1 blind every 3 seconds…

Hm that sounds familiar.. as if there was a class that could already do that….

oh right. Thieves.

I’d be all for it since the chills necros have far outnumber the natural blinds they have. That said, blind spam is already a little out of control so just as well that they don’t have it.

flow.6043:

I’ve never heard of a scepter/focus build, and I don’t think it would work.

I use a scepter/focus build and it works fine, though my off swap is staff, not D/D.

It was put together pre-celestial so it’s mostly Carrion/Rabid armors with Rabid trinkets/rampager jewels and rampager weapons with the intent of being able to do reasonable physical damage against builds that could ignore conditions.

Build is a condi duration dhuumfire/terror setup. Focus 5, Chill of Death, combined with Corrupt Boons and/or Well of Corruption make for quite a big “Screw you” to boonbot guardians or elementalists, among other things.

30/20/20/0/0
Runes: Mad King x2, Lyssa x2, Nightmare x2
Scepter/Focus == Nullification/Bursting
Staff == Malice

With 40% condi food, you run a +100% duration on staff and 94% duration with scepter set out. Pretty much the only targets I have consistent trouble with are classes that can pressure and close distance without having to actually cross it, which is mostly thieves.

@Revelations : How exactly are necromancer weapons stratified? The only other class with as mixed up weapons that can theoretically favor hybrid damage in a single set is the elementalist.
Take Scepter for example:
Skill 1 = Condi
Skill 2 = Snare/Condi
Skill 3 = Power

Or Staff
Skill 1 = Power/Filler
Skill 2 = Condi
Skill 3 = Condi/Snare
Skill 4 = Power/Utility
Skill 5 = Utility/Condi (traited)

General rule of thumb: Anything you will take retaliation damage from will proc sigils. This means YES to regular attacks and anything you reflect at them. No to clones and phantasms with the sole exception of Yes if your iWarden is traited to reflect and reflects an attack.

I think it’s to remind everyone that PvE content is still out there and maybe they should check it out sometime.

That said, Wintersday interference was worse. I still remember laughing while watching roamers getting rolled by toy princesses

I still want to see a 1v1 Rock’em Sock’em Golem duel between Jed and Jericho.

Sororita.3465:

put an internal cool down of 10 seconds and be done with it, why a warrior, as an example, can put 20+ stacks of confusion on a target is just plain ridiculous, especially seeming as its not even accessible by their class to begin with.

Not saying perplexity isn’t a broken runeset (it is, but there are certain classes I’d still use it on even if they dropped the confusion to 1/3, halved the duration and gave it a 20s icd on ’rupt proc), but I just wanted to point out that Warriors DO have access to confusion in-class without perplexity.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Distracting_Strikes

Like many confusion traits it’s almost completely useless because unlike perplexity, the base duration of the confusion is only 8 seconds, at least 1 second, normally 2 or more of which will be spent unable to use skills. I think it’s been buffed a couple times since launch but yes.

@ statement of building specifically to combat against: I agree it’s absurd that you have to build specifically to counter perplexity. However I feel the same way about thieves with shadow refuge so it’s not like there isn’t precedent for certain skills/classes/builds that require specific countermeasures to deal with effectively.

I figure I’d add my two cents. Unfortunately I haven’t had the time to peruse this entire thread but here we go:

I feel that the Living Story is a great addition, in concept but in execution seems to be a bit lacking. While there is certainly some nice storytelling but it doesn’t REMAIN alive. With the sole exception of Southsun Cove, none of the living story parts have had a truly permanent change on the geography of Guild Wars. (Okay yes, the crown pavilion is

I can understand the actual content being temporary, but people cannot return and revisit most of the new content. I can understand this being the case for things such as the Dragon Bash but a lot of other things make less sense.

The Bazaar of Four Winds for example is an AMAZING zone and even with the skyships gone, the cliffs ought to remain. Unless you know they took the cliffs with them but that would be one heck of a trick.

The hidden Aetherblade lair behind the Lion’s Arch waterfall. Sure the dungeon should be gone now, but what of the actual area? People who weren’t here for when the dungeon was there still ought to be able to visit and marvel at the zone, if only to bring it back as a sort of home instance . But no all that remains is a holoprojected rock wall and a sewer drain.

The Molten Facilities. I’m sure man players cannot count how many of them they collapsed. But the world doesn’t show any signs of it apart from the periodic Scarlet raid containing molten enemies. The destruction of Ascalon left ruins, why not these? You could even have Priory researchers, Whispers scouts or Vigil salvagers hanging around the old locales and telling stories of what they were to those who didn’t get to originally participate.

These are just examples but I feel that one way to make the Living Story truly alive is to show more of its remnants after it leaves. The very first Halloween event with the disintegration of the Lion’s Arch fountain was VERY distinct for example. Granted now it has been rebuilt but people NOTICED. And you can bet people remembered. Tixx’s workshop on the other hand while cute in being a huge flying golem, simply disappeared without a trace and has nothing really else that remains from it except for a few miniatures which people rarely pull out.

There are a few ways to do it wrong though too. the Crown Pavilion exists still but you can only roam the upper balconies now, an act which was an exercise in pointlessness even when the event was ongoing. Added to that, there are even still guards around the pavilion warning players that there may be trouble when the queen takes the stage. And as far as I can tell, apart for that one guard and the Royal Terrace, there is absolutely nothing left of interest in that entire area. It might as well be the Great Collapse again.

The bottom line for me is that it’s hard to remain attached to any part of a Living story which does not appear to have any lasting consequences. Sure, Capt, Kiel has taken up residence at the Crow’s Nest, we have a new jumping puzzle in Gendarran Fields and Southsun Cove is now in fact a place, but it seems almost every other introduction given in the Living story is now gone, as if it had never happened.

Olba.5376:

Essentially no one is using Last Stand because it currently competes with Cleansing Ire and Merciless Hammer in that Master tier position. The only plausible way to get it would be 30 into Defense, which pretty much always translates into a heavy sacrifice elsewhere. Also, Last Stand has a 90s cooldown, which is more than double that of Balanced Stance.

I see plenty of people using Last Stand. You can realistically reach it in 20 points simply by you know… not using hammer and cleansing Ire isn’t a must have for a lot of builds. So yes in my experience I meet a fair number of warriors with autopop Stability. Not all, but many. Also 30 in defense is hardly a “heavy sacrifice” given one of the common meta builds for warriors in both sPvP and WvW right now is 0/10/30/0/30.

That’s what you see. In my perspective, the only passive a Warrior has is Healing Signet. In comparison, pretty much all of our top utilities are active use-only. For example, other classes have passive condi removal, such as all those “remove 1 condition every 10 seconds” traits or signets, we get our best removal from using adrenaline.

IMO, Dogged March is much more effective than any of the Remove condition ever 10 seconds, except for maybe the Rangers’ grandmaster Empathic Bond. After all dogged march applies to ALL snare conditions that are applied, not just the 1 every 10 seconds. But that’s just me.

Etaoin, I have to say your entries are very thoughtful but there are a few items that I fundamentally disagree with. I’m not sure what game mode you’re analyzing warrior in or if you’re going for a general analysis but here goes:

Of these options, however, there is only one skill to my knowledge (Whirling Blade on the greatsword) that provides any kind of evasion, so the best warriors get with mobility is a way to (not always reliably) close gaps when entering combat and run away slightly faster when leaving combat. This is not really a viable way of avoiding damage.

Warriors have the highest combat mobility of any class in the game short of a blink-spamming thief. They have THE highest sustained combat mobility of ANY class by equipping only one weapon: greatsword. Noted: in PvP and PvE applications this is not anything exceptional but in WvW it means a half decent warrior can disengage easier than anything other than a stealth spamming class or someone using snow leopard form. In fact if you want to do a direct comparison (which fail due to many reasons but there you have it), with Greatsword alone, a warrior attains very similar mobility to a ranger who has both sword and a swap to greatsword.

This is exacerbated by the recently buffed Healing Signet and the warrior’s ability to spec to A. Passively ignore conditions (up to -98% condition duration on mobility-affecting conditions) B. Ability to spec to eliminate immobilize when using a mobility skill and C. The ability to spec to automatically apply a lengthy stability when subjected to a crowd control.

Added to the above, Healing signet currently allows spectacular sustained self-healing with little to no healing power investment. Furthermore like points A, B and C this is a PASSIVE spec which means a player need focus no active attention on defense OTHER Than withdrawing then returning to combat. In a game environment which supposedly emphasizes player skill (PvP, WvW) this gives warriors a myriad of ways to ignore using skill and basically bull through all that an enemy can offer, while still being able to withdraw and escape seemingly at will.

Don’t get me wrong, I remember well the time when warriors were a complete joke in PvP type environments and would hate to see that happen again. But I think a number of unexpected synergies has turned the warrior into a very mindless passive class and that definitely needs looking at

Columbo.5924:

Diamond Skin
This skill is going to be hard to balance, as somebody already stated. I guess it will range from useless to borderline OP depending on the enemy you are facing. It is also very hard to tell how this skill will fare in group compositions. I would rather prefer something like “incoming condition duration reduced by 33%” without a health threshold. That way the effect would become far more calculable, there could be some active counterplay on the condition players side and condition remove would become less of a concern for an elementalist. This would also complement geomancers freedom or rock solid really well.

For the record I feel that this is a pretty bad idea. Warriors have an example of a -33% duration reduction at the adept level, though it specifically only affects snares. With Superior Runes of Melandru and Lemongrass Poultry Soup buffs you get a cumulative 98% duration reduction on conditions. For most intents and purposes this makes warriors right now capable of passively ignoring all snares.

If a blanket -33% duration reduction was given to elementalists for ALL conditions, then the same setup could make them capable of brushing off every single condition in the game in much the same way, in a way that is much worse than a complete immunity over a threshold.

Why stop at cleave? Why not just make it knockdown and chill in an aoe too!

seriously though Alissah’s right. Not that I don’t wish sword/sword had more AoE or chasing skills in it, but the phantasm already hits like a truck. Hitting like a cleaving truck would be excessive.

Ah yes the [DAOC] healing warrior. This person posted a while back touting warrior as the best Healing-per-second character in the game back in oh… March. Gotten even more confrontational if the video comments are to be believed.

Unfortunately when my server fought YB in wvw I was never able to track down this healing warrior in particular, though the [DAOC] guildies that I did run into fell easily enough. That said unless the video they had back in march is much changed, the player isn’t much of a threat offensively and hardly “unkillable”

Mesmer does tend to have high natural survivability for a couple reasons:
Aggro removal – access to stealth, access to clone/phantasm generation make it easier for a mesmer to drop aggro than any class other than a thief
Combat mobility – Blink, Phase Retreat, Illusory leap give the ability to instantly travel short distances.
Evades/blocks/invuln – Mesmers have a class-feature that allows invulnerability and multiple weapons have built in evades or blocks

In fact the only real weakness to a mesmer’s defensive repertoire is the difficulty in maintaining good condition removal in some of their builds. Utility-wise a mesmer only has 2 long-cooldown (40, kitten abilities that remove conditions. They CAN trait into condition removals on Signets, Torch Skills, Heals, or shatters but each requires an investment or sacrifice to achieve it.

There are builds that have adequate condition removal and it’s not really a huge issue in PvE setting, but given the current condition-heavy meta of WvW you may sometimes feel yourself lacking adequate condition mitigation without building specifically to combat it.

I never understand why people get these things wrong. Crowd controls (CC) are white symbols on light purple backgrounds, or launch/push/pull skills. The ones with symbols are Daze and Stun, then they have push, pull, knockdown and blowout for movement CCs. THESE are the things that a stunbreaker will break you out of. As a note these skills make you unable to use any skills except instant-cast skills during their duration, which is why they are considered crowd controls.

Conditions on the other hand are black symbols on a red background. These include a set of conditions which affect movement. In the tradition of GW1 let’s call them “snares”. These are cripple, chill and Immobilize, the last of which is NOT a stun will NOT be broken by stunbreakers and just happens to lock you in place and disable dodges. To remove it you should try to use a Condition Removal skill. Note that while immobilized, only movements and dodges are disabled. You can still use skills normally. Not a stun skill.

I’d say the primary differences are that leap require you to be inside the 600 range to activate, only has a 5 (five) second stunbreak window, and blinks you TOWARDS where the clone is with no control and has a 12 second cooldown untraited in order to even set it up.

Infiltrator’s strike has a 15 second Return window (Which used to stunbreak), can be planted even without a target, always creates the return point regardless of distance to target, and has no cooldown (3 init to set, 2 init to return).

The quality is uh… slightly different. I say if a mesmer can time that 5 second window to stunbreak with when you do your stuns…. more power to them.

1. It IS possible to make a regen bunker trap ranger. Here’s my general take on it: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRAsf3YjEVx11VKWo2Bi2jM1fMxewfH9IXhRVwqG-jUCBIODimWAgkGi8I05RFRjtMsIasadER1aGYeFFRrWKAImGB-w

2. Trap builds aren’t very good frontline builds since in order to reach effectiveness, you have to sacrifice stunbreakers and the like. Traps are okay at dealing damage to groups but on zergs they usually have enough cleanses running that your conditions don’t tick very often. You COULD use frost trap for some decent slowing but Staff elementalists tend to do it so much better. Also your pet will likely die on contact, and Entangle tends not to last too long unless you use it when one side already has the clear advantage. Against organized groups your roots will melt.

That said, a trap regen build is very good in a roaming/small group setup.

3. Drakes for tanky with decent damage, Cats for DPS, Birds for DPS, Canines for mix of control, dps and survivability and Spiders for control. Those are the standard wvw pets.

Straegen.2938:

Dungeons:

• No speed runs that I know of want a ranger. Pet again is pretty useless in these.

There are definitely speedruns that use rangers

Granted they’re normally premades rather than pugs but there you have it.

Well if you want the upwards limit on what you can do with damage output using ranged weapons…

http://youtu.be/-ZR0ur5lhUg

Is probably your best bet. The player is using a very silly build mind with maxed buffs (banners, stacks)

http://youtu.be/324jMFwR3hg

still not too bad without full stacks and buffs. Very very glassy.

NargofWoV.4267:

Watched a Vid the other day of a LS Warrior on Youtube, was amazed at the damage per swing, was seeing 3000, 4000, 2000, per hit rolling… Was like, wait I have a Exotic LS on my Ranger… 300, 200, 600 (oops my pet hit the target), 300….

I was like… oh nice. How in the world is this even right?

For the record, 1H sword is the Ranger’s DPS weapon, GS is more utility, burst. As for “big damage numbers” Brazil from DnT gives a good example of the damage output rangers are capable of:

http://youtu.be/qLJg3VarKm4

Spite tree gives up to +30%. And though they may have changed it Paralysis sigils add 15%

Excalibur.9748:

… thieves were nerfed … thief got buffed

Uh… what? Can you make up your mind?

I’m sitting here remembering the days when people said Mace and Hammer were almost useless due to how much stability there is. Oh how things change.

As is the only thing I see on warriors right now that could stand a little bit of rebalancing is Healing Signet. Yes it deserved a buff before, but I personally think that it should be adjusted so its passive heal over time does NOT in fact outweigh an activated heal. It’s already a more efficient heal (less wasted healing) since it starts immediately as your life drops, and yes it has the weakness of no burst healing. But the thing is especially with stun/invuln skills it allows you to keep healing even while kiting or channelling at a higher rate than any other heal. That said please don’t nerf the thing back into pre-buff oblivion. I’m ecstatic right now that Warriors actually have decent sustain and are no longer the joke class in a drawn out fight.

A long time ago, when the game was young, I was told that for a D/D ele corruption stacks were actually superior to Bloodlust stacks. That the damage scaling was better off of corruption than bloodlust since almost all of the ele’s abilities also caused damaging condis that would benefit from Condition damage.

Is this still true? Was this ever true?

How about for Scepter/Dagger? What do you elementalists use?

This isn’t exactly ranger specific, but since Call of the Wild has been turned into a blast finisher, has anyone checked if Runes of the Pack were inadvertently made to proc blast finishers too? By all appearances the runes effectively proc a Call of the Wild instead of just granting Might/Fury/Swiftness.

Zordon.8237:

What if I am not playing as Asura? Is there any possibility of making a similar build, for example, a build with runes of mesmer?

The main problem with not having an Asura is you lose access to a third daze. Technobabble, as Xsorus pointed out, becomes a 4 second daze with moment of clarity. If you drop it on someone who’s already used stunbreakers they can literally do nothing except run and dodge for a full four seconds.

That and with only 2, shorter duration daze/stuns at your disposal it’s harder to pull off a lockdown. In theory a Sylvari could use grasping vines to similar effect but it wouldn’t be the same thing.

As for other thoughts on racial types, you could make a SB, S/D Charr with Hidden pistol for evasion spam…

Dear Anet: please make Aetherblade Rapiers available.

Until then: Sylvari t3 sword is a nice single edged weapon with good length if you don’t mind the plant-and-crystal feel.

Whisper’s Sword is also a good fit but some people are turned off by the jointed blade.

Currently the easiest to acquire for “elegant and single edged” goes to the Ceremonial Sabre though it’s more of an asian/canthan feel than an elegant western blade.

the 10/30/0/0/30 is a pretty good rifle zerker type setup in WvW whether or not you use static discharge. Utility skills can be mixed and matched depending on what you want out of it such as Rocket Boots for better mobility, Toolkit for defensive + pull, or PBR for cripple + Hilarity.

Bear in mind though the Engineer rifle is mostly a close-ranged weapon. Autoattack can be used to damage the enemy at range but your hard hitters will be Blunderbuss, Jump shot and Overcharged Shot in what is effectively melee range. On crit, the Net Shot —> Blunderbuss → Jump Shot-→ Overcharge can do 10k damage or more depending on your target’s armor.

Rennoko.5731:

rare veggie, because it is the only food a condition user should ever consider.

For the record it isn’t the ONLY food.
The Koi Cake (Dragon Bash food) is a cheaper (currently) 20 minute version.

The Bowl of Garlic Kale Sautee (Flame and Frost food) is a 1 hr version

But point is taken that Condition Damage/Duration is pretty much king for necros

1. I roam on my guardian quite often with mixed results. The Guardian has excellent sustained combat abilities, and some of the best consistent self-healing. The main problem I find is that they have almost no way of keeping damage on a target that is trying to disengage with everything they have. Once a guardian establishes an advantage, most classes will be able to disengage before the guardian can finish them. Likewise if the Guardian wants to disengage more than likely they won’t be able to. Kiting kills you.

2. Guardians are amazing in large scale fights. As stated, Staff is great for a wide angle tagging attack, and adds great support to groups. The ability to place persistent walls breaks up enemy groups and guardians are definitely one of the most commonly seen shock troopers, leading charges deep into enemy formations. Likewise a larger scale combat eliminates some of your roaming weak spots: there are many more stragglers you can catch and a lot more support from your side to stop runners from trying to get away

JakobGW.5730:

My folks don’t do pre-arranged fights – for reasons I’ve explained in my previous posts – but if any small groups between 3-6 or so would like a good open-field fight but don’t want to stand around waiting for duels, send me a whisper and I’ll give you our exact location and you can try to hunt us down!

Also, all the [TKVA] folks have promised to share cookies with any group who can actually beat us with even numbers.

I would honestly love to answer this challenge but unfortunately my small-man group has pretty much left GW2 altogether.

Thaaat said… if you guys really want to get more even number fights you should stop trying to withdraw, stealth, and then dogpile on overextending stragglers whenever people finally gather enough random people together to push. I mean sure it’s a completely valid strategy which works and all, but it’s not exactly the sign of wanting even fights ;-)

I’m just sad that without my teammates, when I do down one of you guys I usually end up focus fired by thieves and rangers then feared or otherwise CC’d in the opposite direction while my allies run around ineffectively :-(

It’s hard working without a team

—that Orange Sylvari Guardian.

Fixed a bug with Dodge roll where it could get stuck in the queue and unintentionally execute after a stun or immobilize.

was posted on the May 14th patch notes, but I still get queue’d dodge rolls executing after I break out of stuns or immobilizes. Normally I wouldn’t complain too much but if I’m in the middle of trying to survive in WvW And channeling say, Renewed Focus or Shield stance only to break out of it with a dodge roll? Kind of annoying.

What game mode do you play? The standard DPS weapons are Sword or Greatsword but the traitlines will vary between PvE, PvP or WvW.

Key damage bonuses come from 10 in Zeal for trait II +10% damage on burning targets, and 25 in Radiance for + 10% damage to targets who have a condition. Zeal trait VII is the +5% damage w/ GS while Radiance X is the +5% damage with Sword. The only other easy access trait is Virtue 10 trait I which gives a 20% bonus while Aegis is up which can fill a niche for scepter dps, or be used for extra bursts if you know you won’t be hit.

As far as I know there are only 3 easy ways to acquire exotic knight’s stat gear for armor: Crafting, Purchasing on the Trading post, or Acquisition through Badges of Honor in WvW.

Knight’s is Toughness/Precision/Power affix. If you don’t have the funding, you may want to try fine or masterwork versions which should cost a lot less, and still give you a feel for the armor. Alternatively if you MUST have exotic armor and you have karma you might want to consider Orr temple armor which can give you 5/6 pieces (minus helm) of the Soldier’s affix (Power/Toughness/Vitality)

Uh, offhand, your utilities have no synergy, you have no toughness in your gear except your weapon and 25 in valor. Furthermore your traits are kinda all over the place.

I’m not sure why you’d have both SYG AND Hallowed Ground and Bane Signet doesn’t do you very many favors except give you an activatable knockdown. The one thing in your favor is high general crit damage and power and decent vitality. However without any toughness, and no extra heals except for what you get from base weapon skills and your healing skill I don’t think you’ll get very far.

May be workable if you juggle 5 points into Valor and pick up Altruistic Healing and use a staff… Might be.

Running a 0/30/30/5/5 build with Meditations. Pretty glassy but great fun and surprisingly high damage output. Sword/Shield, Hammer Shelter, Judges Intervention, Smite condition, Contemplation, Renewed Focus
Radiance: VI, X, XI
Valor: I, X, XII
I use mostly berserker gear with some knights and other pieces.
Power: 1903
Precision: 1892
Toughness: 1456
Vitality: 1059
Crit Chance: 50% (not counting Right hand Strength)
Crit Damage: 91%

Variant for slightly more utility at the cost of damage are
0/5/30/15/20
with Indomitable Courage for stability access, and heal dodge

I thought this had been removed awhile ago… was it put back in? Distinctly saw a thief cloak and dagger the outer walls of SMC in order to maintain stealth.

Arganthium.5638:

However, your arguments for why escaping is “OP” in WvW are… Terrible. First of all, you completely missed the point of my question: what if an army never fought? If, whenever faced with opposition, it fled? You state in your own post that there’s a huge scale difference in WvW as opposed to PvP. If that’s the case, then doesn’t retreating every 30 seconds mean having to go very far distances as well just to get to a single point?

Before I get started I would like to say I do not think Thieves are OP. Unbalanced around a poorly thought out set of class abilities and game mechanics? Maybe. But not OP. THAT SAID?

If there was an army that never fought…. only engaging exactly when and where the situation was advantageous to it, I would think that would be a very powerful army indeed. This is the advantage that thieves get in WvW, where forcing someone to defend an objective is rather more difficult and less straightforward than in PvP. It’s not necessarily that they can flee any engagement (though the better thieves for the most part can and it’s horrendously annoying), it’s the fact that unless a thief missteps horribly or gets unlucky, they always have the advantage of initiative.
Pun on class feature not intended but appropriate.

In most engagements in WvW, a thief will both start and end an engagement on their own terms, a luxury that most classes, and especially those such as Guardian or Necromancer, cannot have. Thieves will almost always have the advantage of opening first, and I’ve noticed in the few times they don’t have that advantage, the thief usually dies. The fact that most thieves open with spike damage that drops a target’s HP pool by 1/4- 1/2 simply exacerbates the issue. And the fact that a thief can end a fight on their own terms and whisk themselves away tends to be a source of great frustration, especially to classes that do not have any escape mechanisms.

Remix.2086:

A warrior tank will ALWAYS be the last one standing if he’s worth a dam. I mean, no other class has a standard 9 seconds where you take 0 damage. You trait 30 into defense, take Defy Pain, slot Endure pain, and have a shield= 9 seconds no damage. Now if you’re sylvari you can take it further with your elite, to 12 seconds.

If someone says guard is a better tank than a warrior, theyre just stupid. In wvw, you throw a warrior in the middle of a zerg, he will last ATLEAST 9 seconds, not to mention his heals and 30-33k healthpool.

Even not taking into account my disagreements with the rest of your post…

The Engineer says “Hi”
Elixir S: 3 seconds of Invulnerability
Self Regulating Defenses: Elixir S at 25% HP
Toolkit Gear Shield: Block for 3 seconds
Static Shield: Blocks next melee attack, or all ranged attacks for 2 seconds

Granted, there are differences between Elixir S And Endure Pain, but I find that Elixir S has the advantage: Elixir S locks skills but Endure pain means you still take hits from people, and means new conditions can be applied even while it is up.

The next closest contender is Elementalist at 8 seconds (Obsidian Flesh + Mist Form) and then Guardian at 5 seconds (Renewed Focus + Shelter) but it should also be noted that all 3 of those classes have easy access to near 100% vigor uptime for extra dodges, something warrior does not have.

Edit: It just occurred to me that Mesmer situationally has the longest Invulnerability uptime:
Distortion (3 clones, Illu Persona) 4 seconds
Mimic (after taking one hit) 4 seconds
Blurred Frenzy 2 seconds
Signet of Illusions —> Distortion 1-4 seconds
Illusionary Invigoration (Recharge shatters at 50% health) —> Distortion 1-4 seconds.

Only counting Distortions and blurred frenzy you have a 5-14 second invulnerability total, taking into account that blurred frenzy has a traited 8 second cooldown and you get a potential total of 16 seconds of invuln, 20 if you perfectly execute a mimic.

Vanthian makes a lot of good points but I’d just like to cover a few missed items:

Removes Single Condition:
Shouts (requires 6 rune pieces)

Removes multiple Conditions:
Heal – Mending: Removes 2 conditions
Trait – Restorative Strength: removes Cripple, Immob, Chill, Weakness on heal
Warhorn – Charge: Removes Cripple, Chill, Immobilize

A warrior CAN effectively remove conditions, but only if they spec for Warhorn, Take Mending and Spec for removal as well. This costs them both in offensive power and effective heals. Or it pigeonholes them into a rune set.

I think my favorite thing recently was playing on my necro, and somehow chasing down and stomping a D/D ele who had tried to run away. This is pre 4/30 patch and to this day I have No Idea how it happened, but I bet that ele sure felt embarassed.

Emily, to paraphrase what a lot of people are saying the Guardian is less of a healing class than a damage mitigation support class (if you play them that way). In dungeons and WvW content it’s much more important to reduce incoming damage than try to heal it away. The heals you can grant other people are probably better considered as a stopgap triage until they can get their own healing abilities off cooldown and working again. What’s much more important is your ability to mitigate or otherwise prevent large amounts of damage to your allies.

Guardians are the only profession in the game that can reliably grant the Aegis boon to allies which when used at the right time can completely prevent damage from large attacks, and have access to a LOT of Protection which significantly increases incoming damage. Furthermore they have a lot of blinds that they can call on to reduce damage taken, and a large number of Crowd Control weapon skills which can be used to great effect. They are the ONLY profession in the game who can create persistent Crowd Control effects that aren’t elite skills. Furthermore they’re one of only two professions in the game who can create area projectile reflection effects.

Creative use of the above, and the Guardian’s ability to spread large amounts of boons such as might stacks and team stability make the Guardian second to none as a supporter who also happens to be able to provide some healing.

Warrior weapon-type traits for offensive land-weapons:

Axe: Axe Mastery (+10% crit damage), Sharpened Axes (Extra Adrenaline on crit)

Mace: Sundering Mace (+10% damage on weakened targets, -20% skill cooldown)

Hammer: Merciless Hammer (+25% damage on disabled targets, -20% skill cooldown)

Rifle: Crack Shot (-20% skill cooldown, shots pierce)

Longbow: Stronger Bowstrings (Increased Range)

Sword: Blademaster (+10% critical chance)

General: Dual Wielding (+5% damage when offhand wielding a OH weapon.)

Greatsword: Forceful Greatsword (Might On Critical, -20% skill cooldown), Slashing Power (+10% damage)
^^ The problem.

Right now, the traits to improve weapons are heavily skewed towards greatsword. For whatever reason they have a base 10% increase in weapon type damage as a trait, while the only other trait with anything near it is either axes (critical damage) or Dual wielding (offhand with half the bonus.) Add to the fact that greatsword grants might on crit on its cooldown reduction trait (with Rifle, Mace and Hammer being the only other offensive weapons with cooldown reduction traits) and despite having the largest number of weapon combinations available, the warrior begins appearing a one trick pony.

I feel that the traits for weapons ought to be streamlines a bit. There are items about warrior I feel should be addressed but that’s the biggest one, the imbalance in weapon traits

When Corrupt Boons or Well of Corruption hits someone with Stability, it transforms the Stability into Fear.

Otherwise Stability should block Fear from happening.

I honestly don’t think it’s the tracking that’s the problem. All the tracking did was put the thief roughly on even grounds with most of the other ranged classes in the game. The REAL problem, and something most thief players probably haven’t noticed, is that since a couple patches ago (the “Big WvW Patch” I believe) the “obstructed” effect has been popping up a LOT more often for projectile attacks than it should be. Tiny hummock in the ground between you and the target? Obstructed. Allied Player uses bull’s Rush on your target? Obstructed! Target moves 2 steps backwards, but still looks like he’s in the hitbox for your projectile? Obstructed!

Seriously I’m surprised they haven’t dealt with that yet. Other than that I feel like Shortbow Thieves finally get to the feel the pain of a lot of other ranged classes.

There already is a class that can steal health on crit. It’s called “the Necromancer”

Thematically and mechanically, there’s no reason for warriors to have a life-steal proc trait.

Unless you were somehow a W/N (gods I miss dual classing)

For the record, here’s some Guardian WvW gameplay with Hammer, Sword/Board
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR0r3tRjd4s

Aza.2105:

Take a look how guardian gains access to protection, a starter list is:

Hammer skill 1 (which requires them to be immobile).

Mace skill 3 (which requires them to not get hit for the duration of it)

Hold the line

Save yourselves

Tome of courage

inspired virtue (5pts into virtues)

pure of voice (again vulnerability needs to be converted)

For the sake of completeness you may want to also include Shield 4 and Protective Reviver traits. As far as guardians and Protection go, http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Protection Show’s pretty clearly that when looking at weapons and utilities, Guardians have 50% of the available accesses to protection out of all the classes.

Not that some other classes can’t have pretty consistent uptime of protection, Ele’s Attunement to Earth, Ranger’s Prot-on-roll and Engineer’s Protection injection come to mind, but they certainly have some of the easiest access to the boon.

Otherwise, I think there’s a little bit of an overreaction to boon hate. I mean I personally think that boonstacking zergdivers are a bit too much of the FotM in WvW right now, which is why I’ve taken to playing a Necro recently who specializes in blasting boons off people. Nothing quite like seeing someone charge in thinking they’re invincible only to melt on contact. But before this upcoming patch, there was basically no counter for most professions to people who piled on the boons. Much like stealth, you do the best you can against them and sucked it up. After all, the only classes with boon stripping/conversion were Mesmer, Thief, Necro and Engineer, with only the cloth classes having particularly easy access. Now, one more class has the option to be anti-boons and I think that’s a great thing. We’ll see how it pans out

Demonic Jack.8539:

I realize every-man-for-himself seems to be the GW2 model, but I also realize that people don’t run around as glass cannons in GW2.

Actually, depending on the content a lot of people DO run around in glass cannon mode, since the general PvE Mechanics seem to be “be tough enough to survive a trash mob stray hit, but use dodge to avoid OHKO on everything else”

That said outside of the super-elite speedrunner type efficiency machines, your actual build matters more in what you enjoy, than anything else. As for highest necro damage output, a hybrid condition/power/crit build is probably the best necro damage output in general, as a number of necro weapons and abilities are confused enough to add both large amounts of damaging conditions, with high power-damage burst skills right next to them. Not that they don’t have weapons that can focus only on condition or power damage but there you have it.

Other than that one unique role a necro can provide in pve is Chill-spamming (Staff 3, Focus 5, Death Shroud 2, Spectral Grasp)