Guild Wars 2

Why? This is our shared damage, one of our class benefits is to be able to split our damage. Pets are squishy, just kill it. It cripples us more than you think.

Hi,
I’m proposing now a list of balanced changes, that keeps the thief still competitive. I mean, some suggestions i’m seeing are ridiculous and would ruin the class.

I think, that the thieves shouldn’t keep popping back into stealth so often. i like to see their time in stealth as carefully planning their next attack, not (LOL GOING TO ENTER STEALTH FOR BACKSTAB/UNLOAD,BRB).
To achieve this it would be best to increase the revealed timer. As it currently stands, the only thing it does is punishing people for having bad timing for prolonged stealth.
I’d say something like 5 or 6 seconds?
To balance this in favor of the thieves, i think 1 second increase on all their stealth skills would be fair.

This would both punish the thieves for making mistakes, giving enough time for the other class to kill him or at least cripple him severely, therefore reducing the whole concept the community has on the thief that bad players can play a thief with ease.
My intention is to make them stealth less and longer.

Another thing i would do is add 1 initiative cost to heartseeker. It’s a very strong ability ( Leap combo finisher, plus high damage on low health characters ).

Now these following changes are intended for P/D thieves only, their strongest, and on some professions impossible to defeat build.

-Reduce unload bleeding stacks to 4
-Bleed only when flanking
-Increase their direct hit damage, and reduce the bleeding duration.

What do you guys think? Would these changes balance thieves, or destroy them?

Edit: Make the revealed buff stack up, increasing it every time the thief stealths.

They stack, and it’s great. When i’m using the shortbow, it steals 325 or 375 health every tick, and it doesn’t have a cooldown ( except for the sigil ). It’s amazing, i am creating a build that consists on replacing vitality with this food. So knight gear it is for me.

Also, compassion training is garbage last i checked. Even though my test was FAR from precise, i didn’t notice any change. If it is, its something like 5%.
I could be wrong though, like i said, my test was very bad.

I’d drop 5 points from skirmishing to beastmastery. In WvW, you’re going to be switching your pets a lot, and having quickness increases your DPS by 10% if you use it every 20 seconds.

I’d drop 5 points from beastmastery to skirmishing to get those 10% while flanking. Also, i’d use rune of the ogre.

It is, hands down, the best rune for pure power builds. Rune of the ranger also works. When the rock dog comes out ( which will be all the time ) he hits just like a canine though a little bit slower.

Yeah haha, they take too much time to attack, i think the swiftness shouldn’t need an animation.

Ever heard of having fun in this game? Or is it like a job to you?

Shortbow. Longbow just isn’t right for sPvP. Time your QZ with your sword. you won’t have that 50% problem. The longbow has a difficult constraint for max damage in spvp, which most of the times is not possible. Even then, at maximum range, the shortbow still out dps’s the longbow, without even taking the bleed into account.

I wish they would fix the longbow, i like it better than the shortbow, even though the shortbow is more effective.

They don’t tick at the same time, it seems to me that signet of renewal ticks as soon as a condition comes to you, and empathic bond waits 4-5 seconds to start working.

Might from rampage as one probably.

Holy thread necromancy

I see what you mean and have updated the marksmanship traits to be in two minor traits instead of three.

Thanks for the feedback. This is what i’m looking forward to.

Rocklin, i read my post twice now, and i don’t think i have made a single reference to any other classes, nor did i compare a thief’s burst, because i understand that they are supposed to excel in that area.

Also, i’m not complaining about balance. The word balance there, was for the new ideas i had to fix some of the broken traits we have. I mean, sure a ranger can do well in PvP or whatever, but that’s because he only picks one of the few traits that work or are decent.

This thread is basically a request with ideas on how to fix those useless traits.

I don’t think you even read my post.

Edit: Also, what are you talking about? Of course you need to go for precision, or do you pretend to kill someone with the first strike alone?

Hi,

I know this topic has been created a gazillion times under different titles, but most of them had overpowered abilities that upon seeing them made me laugh. Things like:
Increase the shortbow’s damage by 30% and increase their speed to 0.3s.

What i’m looking forward to do here, is create a list on how to improve some of the useless traits we have and add some synergy between them.
I want you guys to provide me with feedback, on how these traits are overpowered, or what other changes you think would be great.

• Marksmanship tree:
  I think the minors were too focused on opening strikes, something that should have been only the first minor. So, i’d probably make it like this:
  First minor: You and your pet gain opening strikes.
  Second minor: Opening strike always critical hits
  Third minor: Signet of the Beastmaster effect here
  II- Increases duration applied by you and your pet by 15%
  V- Apply immobilize instead of cripple
  IX- Three stacks of might, for 10 seconds.
  X- 10% instead of 5%, the longbow currently equals in damage to the shortbow without the bleed at top distance, so we need to improve the raw damage of the longbow to make it worth it.

• Skirmishing tree:
  This is the tree with traits that need very little work. I think though, that the pet traits would be better suited in the beastmastery tree. BUT, i digress.
  II- Increase the bleed duration to 3 seconds at least
  V- Increase the might duration to 4 or 5 seconds
  VI- Fix it as it currently gives 13% more or less
  XII- Attack of opportunity now lasts an entire channeled skill ( like rapid fire )
  Also, trapper’s defense seems to me like a trait that no one uses, so switch it with something that heals conditions whenever you use a healing ability or something like that.

• Wilderness Survival tree:
  II- Maybe protection along with swiftness would be better?
  III – 90 seconds seems to be too much for what it does, reduce it to 30 seconds.
  V- Remove it and make pet’s condition damage scale off our own

• Nature Magic tree:
  Second Minor: Boons your pet gets are also shared with you, i had in mind something like sharing the jaguar’s stealth ( you get out of stealth when you hit though ).
  Third Minor: Your damage increases with the amount of spirits you have out
  IV – Spirits can move and follow you and have twice as much health
  VII – Increase this effect, the enemy should regret killing spirits
  IX – Increase in 10% instead of 5%, same issue with the longbow

I’ll update this once i get more ideas, but it would be great if you guys gave your ideas, so i could create a list that the devs can actually look at and get ideas from.
Please tell me when the ideas are too overpowered.

I’ve come to the conclusion that using a longbow is not decent for any situation except that for defending keeps, which in my opinion doesn’t matter because enemies at 1500 range won’t die even if you burst them down and get them downed, they’ll just get rezzed. So use shortbow always until they fix longbow.

@Dapoolp for heals that cure conditions i think that the heal is calculated without the poison, because i always get the full heal when i use that thief heal, so maybe the skills prioritize poison and always calculate without it? I’d have to check.

Anything is better than unguent really, i use the 20 second heal one, because it’s much more reliable to have a heal that you can time the poison’s leave, and it’s instant, where as unguent is over time. Whenever i see someone using unguent, all i have to do is poison them and burst them down.

I just love it when i get quoted with phrases taken out of the whole text, making them look completely out of context or stupid.

Pets are NOT useless or broken, sure it needs a little bit of work still, but they are hardly useless. If you work with them, they will never be useless. Unless it’s a P/D thief, then GG.

How is the pet useless?
Please tell me, now i am curious ( not being sarcastic )

Ranger paired up with warrior = GG
Ranger uses entangle, warrior uses hundred blades!
Ranger uses Muddy terrain, warrior uses hundred blades!

i try my best

He can hit while invisible and all of his hits are critical hits

I could say the same to you wrango, i didn’t understand a single word that you said. The fact that you guys are nitpicking on the analogy i used shows how much you guys can’t argue that not having a pet is against the whole concept of a ranger.

Rangers are not restricted to bows, Aragorn was a ranger. Saying you want rangers petless because you want an archer is not a good argument, because you CAN be an archer with a pet, and being an archer with a pet is even better.

You shouldn’t be rewarded for bad pet management.

They are not going to remove pets.
Forget it.

This is a pet class. I mean, it’s the same thing as creating a thread in the warrior forum saying: “I DONT WANT TO USE GREATSWORD BECAUSE I DONT LIKE IT AND IT IS NOT PRETTY. REMOVE IT FROM THE GAME.”
Learn to use your pets, pets are useful and powerful if you play it right.

I have NEVER seen my pet die in 3s when i was looking out for him, i have never seen my pet being kited by an enemy while i was looking out for him, and being able to split your damage in half (And that other half will be powerful, regardless of the gear), is one of the best things you can ask for.

You know what my friends say after i beat them in 1v1s? They say :
“You only won because of your pet, he is overpowered”

I agree with agadar, for christs sakes, if you want to play a petless class play a thief. If you guys get ranger without a pet, then i want my warrior to have a unicorn.

Skirmishing traits II and V have a really really short duration.
I mean, trait II applies a 1 second bleed everytime you critical hit. That, without any condition duration bonuses, is one tick of bleed. And trait V applies a 0.5s might to your pet every time you critical hit. That goes by so fast, that the boon probably will be over before your pet even has a chance to attack.

When choosing between, 30% critical damage for your pet, or vigor on critical hit, the choice becomes pretty obvious, and i don’t think traits are supposed to be an obvious choice. So please bump the duration up to at least 4-5 seconds for might, and 3 seconds for the bleed to make them equal our other useful traits.

I’d go for full dwayna set, someone told me that signet of the wild procs the 5 second regen from it, not sure though, going to double check this.
Still. Even without that, i think dwayna would be best.

How do you get so much critical chance?

While i understand that with healing spring you can apply vigor 6 times over 15 seconds, that does not explain how heal as one or troll unguent gets 5 seconds given you can only pick one healing skill. (keep in mind to get 15 seconds of vigor with healing spring you have to stay in the circle, which is most of the times, not viable)

Also, both thieves and rangers depend on evades for their survival. Thieves get invisibility to improve their survivability even further, so why do we have less vigor?

@Oldgrimm they have something that regens endurance when they use evade right away, you can use evade three times when you have full endurance if you wait like half a second.

Ok, so thieves and rangers have the same trait, only with different names.

They are identical, both in the first trait tier, so why does our vigor upon healing only last 5 seconds while thieves one last 10 seconds?
This is the kind of thing that bothers me in class balancing.

I’d use double canine, hits moving target’s better, AND knocks enemy down and fears them. Or if you want to stick with felines pick jaguar, the stealth makes him crit 100% for 6 seconds, and he can hit enemies while stealthed.

Also i’d lose the 10 points in natures magic and put it in skirmishing, and keep only natures protection trait. Strength of spirit only gives you 60-90 power, which isn’t a lot when compared to 10% crit damage, 5% more crit chance and 10% damage when flanking

Munrock.3092:

AlexRD.7914:

The pet revive skill is absolutely useless because of its ridiculous long cooldown, so why not make traits that improve these pet skills?

/disagree. S&R is excellent for tough fights where allies go down often, including NPC allies. Those fights are usually the ones where the pet struggles to survive, and S&R doesn’t need the pet alive to work. This combined with quickness from traited pet swap and/or QZ makes the Ranger capable of reviving people in the most ridiculously dangerous situations.

Keep in mind this only revives ONE person, and you have to wait 85 seconds to use it again. If you want to revive people its a lot better to just pop your spirit of nature renewal, which revives a lot more people.
Maybe useless was a harsh word, but it does need a smaller cooldown.

Any other suggestions? I like using wolves.

While i totally agree with the OP, you guys that are saying that the revive rate needs to be buffed are wrong.
The revive rate has been increased by at least 100%. How many of you know, there was a delay between the actual patch and the patch notes. Seeing that the patch notes stated that search and rescue was going to get buffed ( and i i always like to know by how much ), i tested it out on someone fully dead and it took him about 60 seconds to get fully revived.

After the patch, it took my pet 30 seconds for him to revive a fully dead person.
If that’s not a good buff, then i don’t know what is.

Can’t tell if you guys are joking or not..

Hi,

I’m just looking for input on ways to kill a p/d thief.
If the P/D thief is good, i’ll most likely lose to him in a 1v1, unless he screws up badly or i’m lucky. My biggest problem is how they can cloak and dagger off our pets, letting them escape any situation. Also, as a trapper ranger, another problem i have is how they have no reason to step on my traps, because they kite.

One trick i have is to set the traps where my pet is, so when he needs to cloak and dagger he’ll step on my traps. After that, i’ll immediately switch pets and burst him down and it’s game over. That, is very hard to pull off though, as they have that healing skill and utility skills that gets them invisible.

This thread is dedicated to players sharing their knowledge on how to kill P/D thieves, i figure if we all share what we know, we can build a strategy against them.

Please add this. The same thing happened with lunatic inquisition, you can’t join your friend. Add a feature to make it possible to join your friend in the match!

That is all. Thanks!

I think that the way shouts are handled in this game is kind of bad.
Some of the shouts should already be in the pet control interface, not in utility skills. Like guard.

We should have the option to tell our pets to move somewhere and stay there without having to use an utility skill, or making your pet revive people without a utility skill. The pet revive skill is absolutely useless because of its ridiculous long cooldown, so why not make traits that improve these pet skills?

Also, let us manage our pet. I want to be able to choose when my wolf knocks someone down, just like my f2 skill.

Those improvements i listed there, would improve ranger’s usefulness on PvP a lot. Being able to revive fallen comrades with your pet would add a unique feeling to rangers just like mesmers have it with portals.

And being able to control our pet’s abilities will give us chance to say, interrupt enemies healing, or burst someone down while that person is on the ground, that kind of thing.

Oh, and please, improve the range on the wolf’s knockdown, it’s really low and very easy to be avoided.

To fix the shortbow, i think if you increased the bleed duration by say 30%, and gave us the ability to bleed from all sides, that would be a decent fix (without the need to fix QZ with it, for balancing reasons). Oh, and make shortbow’s number 2 something like rapid fire that applies poison per tick, that would be decent.

The longbow needs more raw damage, in its current state, the shortbow does more damage than the longbow without the bleed and that is unacceptable given its constraints.

Am i the only one that thinks its terribly OP for elementalists to get this? They are already the fastest class by far, how will 25% speed affect this?

Hi,

This following video is pretty descriptive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NIf5WAvsps&feature=youtu.be

What happens is, you get downed, and you switch to your trusty wolf pet so he can defend you from the evil men trying to stomp you.

The problem though, is he remembers all those times you sent him to his death and used him as meat shield, and he decides to not fear the enemy. That, or he decides to tackles one enemy he really didn’t like. The others are fine though, they can stomp the evil master.

All jokes aside, i know this test could be easily faked by pressing F3 to prevent the fear, so if you don’t trust me, try testing this yourself.
You’ll see it works sometimes, and sometimes it doesn’t.

That or i am doing something wrong pressing buttons.

To cancel a pet’s cast is fairly easy, and shouldn’t happen unless you press F3. I noticed this fear cancellation happens only when you have a target selected. This doesn’t only happen to the pet’s F2 skill. When you swap a pet in combat, he ignores all of the commands you give for the duration of the quickness you get from swapping to him.

In my experience, the only way for my pet to keep hitting the target i want, is for me to be hitting the target when i swap the pet, otherwise he’ll be standing there for 2 seconds doing nothing.

Please fix this, or educate me on how stupid i am being.

I do too, i don’t like however to be tied down to traits so i have decent condition removal.

Hi,

Signet of Renewal is very bad in its current state. The activated part of it effectively kills your pet, and has a cooldown of 60 seconds.

Shake it off (warriors condition cleaning) doesn’t harm you in any way (the pet is part of the ranger) and has a 25 second cooldown, which can be traited 20s if i’m not mistaken.
And lets not even go into the thief’s heal ( that heals burning, poison and bleeding), heals him for 5500, and gives him regeneration.
Oh, and engineers get a skill that they transform all of their conditions into random boons, every 60 seconds i think they can use it, or 48.

We need a rework on that utility. Since the pet is the one that’s going to be taking all the conditions anyway, improve the passive, so it removes two conditions every 10 seconds, or something like that.

Thanks

Wouldn’t work out anyway, there wouldn’t be any time for you to predict if you’re using pounce, cancel the ability then use serpent’s strike. This never happens to me though, serpent’s strike always activates as a priority.

If you played for 400 hours, and not once realized that you were still level 2, didn’t have any gear and didn’t have any gold, you deserve the short end of the stick.

Am i the only one that likes pets? Seriously?

Also, don’t forget the advantages that thieves and elementalists get when being finished. If you’re, say, a necro, and you’re downed, and the person finishing you pops invulnerability/vaporform/stability/stealth, you’re dead for good, unless your ally does something heroic.
However elementalists can get out of harm’s way no matter what, run away from the fight, go back to the keep, or jump in the water to annoy everyone else. Thieves get one escape, which ok, might escape stability etc, but still isn’t strong.

As i remember, in the third video, before i started recording the pet managed to hit him sometimes. That would mean he was in combat. And if you’re wondering why i wouldn’t be in combat, sometimes it happens that when my pet is far away, or when i use guard, when my pet attacks, i don’t get in combat as well.

@Sleepy

It seems you were right, path of scars and hunter’s call are not bugged in this case. The only bugged skill is actually crippling talon. (And i consider the requirement to maintain range or clear view of the enemy for Hunter’s Call to work a bug, but maybe its intended. )

What i understood from your unedited post, was that i was just randomly throwing traps on the ground and saying it was 1200 range, which was not the case. Now i understand you meant that by throwing 2 traps, and doing the correct procedure, you can get the decent estimate for 1200.

Also, what you were saying about the other videos having no credibility is wrong. I’m not trying to make videos exaggerating the bug or making false statements just for fun, which is why i removed volume IV as soon as i realized it was wrong. I’m trying to demonstrate these bugs, in the form of a short video.

I mean, you said it yourself, AI pathing is bad.
That’s what i demonstrated in the third video. Maybe it will happen differently, but that was a clear example of what is wrong with the pathing.

You say this won’t ever in happen in PvP, but that’s wrong. Some days ago, i was defending a keep from the walls, with my shortbow against a group of 3-4 people. They quickly realized that if they strafed sideways, they could avoid my arrows but still attack me.

Why? Because that’s logic. You see an arrow coming at you, you move. When you realize that works, you keep doing it. Sure this won’t happen (it still happens like once every 8 shots) in close quarters pvp, but since when do archers restrict to close quarters?