Guild Wars 2

Pets don’t offer much, as someone said, and I have to agree.

In WvW especially, they’re either perma-dead or standing idle beside you being completely useless and kittening our damage. I feel more useless in keep defense/sieges than I do in any other part of the game and I just feel it shouldn’t be this way. Every other profession can function just fine in these scenarios without having to use their Mechanic but we are kittened because we can’t use it.

I would probably run a petless Ranger in WvW if given the option, just because I see little use for the pet in this part of the game.

I feel like the only one that thinks the LB is a great weapon and doesn’t really need a lot of change. The autoattack is garbage, I’ll agree, that does need changed. The only other change I would make would be to the 3 skill as it just seems so meh, even with 10 stacks of vulnerability. I’d rather the skill just do something else entirely since we really don’t see a benefit to the pet either.

I feel that our biggest flaw right now (aside from utterly useless traits) is our pets. They’re usually perma-dead in WvW and are 98% useless. In sPvP you have to REALLY plan ahead if you want F2’s to land because the animations are so kitten long. In PvE they aren’t that bad, but are actually quite good when they aren’t aggro mobs half way across the map.

LB is the least of my concerns right now and I use it a lot in sPvP. I’ve used SB/LB combo for months now with no issues aside from the Obstructed crap that everyone else is getting.

To be honest I personally don’t consider the LB to be a very good damage weapon at all, if that’s what you’re wanting to get out of it. You’d be better off equipping the SB for that. The LB, again in my opinion, is meant more for control and support with a little spike from Rapid Fire.

5 is all about area control—either keeping enemies slowed down and deal DoT while you kite and dodge around them (if you’re on point) or keeping enemies from running through bottlenecks or at least slowing them down.

3 is for giving your team/pet more damage on the target as added support.

4 is for escaping, interrupting, knocking enemies off points/cliffs/into AE or gaining some distance for kiting.

2 is for a little spike damage and/or finishing off a target.

1 is pretty useless, even when traited, imo.

That’s just my two cents. If you want ranged damage, go SB or Axe; if you want support then you’re good with LB and you really don’t need traits for it to be worth using.

Bast Bow.2958:

Wat Sleepy says.

I wonder how often we will keep getting these kind of questions.

As long as the game exists.

The game has been out long enough for the community to have a general stance on these subjects/questions so many new players find it easier to come on the forums and just ask here instead of testing them out and repeating the same tests that veteran players (beta testers, etc.) have already done for hours/days/weeks/months.

It’s a logical thought process, so may as well get used to it. It just takes a little more forethought to realize that it isn’t as cut and dry as the questions want to make it.

Honestly SB/LB have given me the best results but I play a power build. I’m sure a sword/torch or Axe/Something would be better for a condition build, so it depends on that a little bit also.

Signet of Renewal is our best stun break imo. If you use Lightning Reflexes, you still evade (or should) while the animation plays but the fact that you stay in the same spot and it doesn’t break any effects like immob/chill/cripple was always a deal break for me.

Drop Lightning Reflexes, pick up Signet of Renewal, and start pre-kiting sooner if you use two bows, or get ready to switch to melee and SAVE that Signet for as long as you can as it’s our only on-demand condition dump.

Nurse.1085:

My doom and gloom isn’t from the SB nerf because I personally never used SB in PVE / dungeons. I hate Shortbow, honestly. I actually went Longbow with Axe/Warhorn offhand.

My personal Ranger DUNGEON complaints :
- Lack of viable weapon options and there’s a lack of synergy between weapon swapping.
- Spirits are worthless / die instantly / short buff range.
- Pets are unresponsive, they can’t attack while the NPC is moving, their F2 is unresponsive / long animation, they die almost instantly in most battles (unless you have a “tanky” pet). There’s also no way to stow pets. so in WVWVW, your pet will probably just stand next to you and die from random AOES on top of a keep.
- Our self damage is “nerfed” because it takes into consideration the damage from our Pets. The problem is, our pet AI is terrible in addition to their lack of survivability, even with constant recalls/returns/passive/controlling who they do/don’t attack.
- Physical Projectiles get obstructed for no reason, thus lowering our overall DPS (ie: Rapid Fire ticks 10 times, however only 8/10 of those ticks will hit. So instead of hitting for 10k, you’ll only hit for 8k).
- Very few viable builds. A lot of our traits and utilities circle around pets, which is why there are very few good Ranger builds.

However, yes, they’re fun to level with which is why I fell in love with mine. The problem is, leveling is only a small percentage of the game (for me). I prefer to do explorable dungeons / wvwvw and I think that’s when their problems/bugs really start to shine. It’s not about whether or not I’m a good player, it’s the fact that even though I am, bugs are holding me back from achieving my full potential as a Ranger. I’m limited.

I guess I’ve become bitter now that the honeymoon leveling phase is over.

Pretty much nailed it for me as well. Only exception is I actually enjoy SB alongside LB for pretty much everything. The rest of the weapons are just “meh” and require too much on the players part to make them even remotely viable or fun.

Not really much more I can say that Nurse hasn’t already covered.

Same thing happened to me last week, thought I was just being delusional. Glad I’m not losing my mind.

Is there a link to the changes that I’ve not seen yet?

As the two others have stated, Rangers aren’t horrible, but we are very much below par right now. A lot of our weapons aren’t viable or take a very specific playstyle to be effective; but as it was said already our pet is one our biggest drawbacks. The AI is pretty bad, the F2 skills can be kitten near useless at times (firing off 2-3 seconds after the button is hit, if at all) and the pathing is a joke.

Our builds are very limited right now as well. We are limited pretty much to either a pretty specific condition based trap build or slight variations to a power build. A lot of people claim to run off the wall builds and do good, but won’t post it and the examples of things they can do seem as if they’re running twice the utility slots as everyone else—so they’re a little unreliable.

Personally, if you’re having fun with other classes I would say to give it a try but don’t invest a lot of time into it. You can make one, check out it’s skills and such and then wait for the update to invest time into it then. At the moment, you can get more out of a Warrior with Ranged weapons than you can a Ranger and pretty much any melee class option is going to yield better results.

Still, if you like a challenge or just really love Rangers—it’s an option.

I think just changing it so the Ele downed state HP isn’t reset when they enter Mist is a balanced fix. Hell, Ranger 3 doesn’t even work 90% of the time (even when it becomes available, it doesn’t heal us) and we’re not complaining. Yet.

Ele downed is fine imo, but the HP reset thing should be changed.

Ultravalefor.5038:

I’m not sure how I feel about this idea. AI will always be AI, it’s going to have problems, and I do NOT want this class to end up in a position where all our most powerful and useful specs don’t use the pet, instead trading it for a buff. I love the pet mechanic, and I would HATE to feel like I was deliberately limiting my potential by sticking to it.

It also would encourage the “NO PETS OUT!!” crowd of idiots in dungeons, that we’ve seen posts about. Imagine only being accepted to a dungeon group if you spec no pet.. And that’s not your main spec.

Agreed. Pets need to become more useful and less of a handicap; buffing us for not using them is a step backwards, not forwards.

Ranger Pets are entirely useless in WvW no matter how you slice it and not matter what build you’re using. They stay perma dead in any meaningful fight. A petless Ranger for WvW option would be amazing but I don’t see it happening.

Best thing to do with pets in WvW is use Fern Hound for the regen and either wolf (fear), spider (immob) or Alpine Wolf (chill) and keep them mostly on passive mode and only use them in small skirmishes. Any of the Ranged pets like lashtails might work for keep defense but I don’t know as I don’t have any of those yet.

Looking for CTF also. As long as Mesmers, Ele’s and Thieves can’t teleport around with the flags in hand, we’re good!

I’m thinking Whitefall Steppes style from RIFT. Man that was a fun map. Too bad the pvp was unbalanced as all hell.

Oppa is a pretty good Warrior. Best one I’ve seen so far.

http://www.twitch.tv/cpham642

Im Too Godlike.5629:

Just give a small amnt of points for healing a specific amount as well as a point every few seconds for defending, it really isnt a hard fix.

I think the issue is deciding what can be considered fair across the board and what will allow players to afk and still get rewarded for it.

While we’re on the subject, points for player kills needs to be reduced to 1 point per kill instead of 5. That’ll help out a lot with both zerging teams and glory gain imo.

Honestly if they allow F2 skills to cancel current attack animations and let them attack while moving, the only thing they’ll need to fix is letting them drop down from high platforms to low platforms and voila—pets are fixed.

Then all they have left is the rest of the mess that we’re dealing with regarding weapon damage, traits and 1/3 of our utility skills being completely and utterly useless (looking at you spirits).

It’s a shame all the signets but SoS kinda suck. SoR could be better but is our best stun breaker of the two that we have imo. And it’s active effect doesn’t work on us, as far as I can tell. I don’t see how it would, either.

SB/LB combo here for all three aspects of the game. Not level 80 yet, but I feel sorry for people in WvW when I get there and get my gear up to par.

Freky.1903:

I can understand peoples view on backstab thieves being OP but I don’t think that’s true at all. Backstab thieves have very low health, usually below 16k. That’s really low in PvP. I think people just need to play smarter instead of going full dps all the time. Throw some stunbreakers in your build and try to anticipate where the thief is when he’s stealthed to keep your back to him. If they miss that 1 attack then you have an advantage now.

The damage of BS is only the icing on the cake in my opinion. The fact that they have less than 16k HP is simply disregarded by the sheer fact that due to the stealth bug/glitch/whatever, they can barely be hit in the first place. Combine this with their mobility and very few professions have very limited options in ways to counter this.

There is no “Oh I barely escaped that thief!” It’s fight or die, and because of the points above, most of your casual players will die more often than not. This is a huge problem for someone who doesn’t spent large amounts of time crunching numbers, comparing builds and testing them and then taking the hours of time to develop the muscle memory for various situations—especially when Thieves don’t have to do anything near that to be just as, if not more, effective than that person of any other profession.

rickshaw.5279:

They nerfed Heartseeker. People still complain.

If they nerf Backstab, people will still complain but then they’ll continue to complain louder about Death Blossom. Once Death Blossom is nerfed people will continue to complain about Thieves downed state. Once that is nerfed people will complain that Stealth is far too long. Once that is nerfed…

People will whine that Thieves are under powered and criticize ANet for their design choices.

Warrior will receive several buffs over this time period.

Heartseeker is fine now; still spammable, still doing nice damage but is a finisher instead of a 1 button win. Downed state is fine. The constant evade from spamming deathblossom is what people don’t like and the vast majority of the forums are already complaining about stealth.

Warrior probably could use a little love.

Agreed.

In all honesty I wish player kills only netted you and your team 1 point max. Giving more is what’s promoting this kind of garbage play because it gives a reward towards zerging. Point defense needs a big boost in glory reward also since, as of right now, you get very little reward for defending your teams points, which in sPvP, is also promoting the zerg style of play.

Also: stop being a kitten. I can understand being competitive and all, but just being plain rude has no excuse behind except for showing your stupidity and wanting to stroke your own kitten of which is probably nonexistent anyway.

Merciless.5349:

But we only have 14k HP!

L2Dodge, noob.

L2P, noob.

I’m still expecting this from some of the usual Thieves on the board.

Give it time.

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

Amityel.5324:

ofc it happens in spvp but you are the pro here huh?

Prvoide proof, oops you can’t. Bads always cry with no proof. This is an issue in WvW not sPvP, learn other professions mechanics before calling bug.

lol @ haters, I am pro Thief, Warrior and Necromancer Not good as Mesmer but don’t need to since my phantasms give me free kills. Not that good at bunker Elementalist either, recently started playing one.

Stay jealous.

I don’t know what to think of your posts man. Sometimes you raise valid points but a good majority of your posts are just you trolling.

It IS a known issue and it DOES happen in sPvP, not just in WvW. Even other Thieves have said they’ve seen it happen in sPvP. Just because it doesn’t happen for you, doesn’t mean you speak for everyone. I ALWAYS see the delay in sPvP and I rarely have latency issues in-game. It’s even worse in WvW where latency can be rather large at times.

But to the OP, no it isn’t perma-stealth. They are suppose to render as soon as they attack but don’t always do it until a good 1-3 seconds afterwards on YOUR screen due to some bug/glitch/typo in the coding. PvE mobs that stealth do it as well but not nearly as bad, even in populated areas. This allows them to attack you and go back into stealth by the time you see them and is a large factor in why they are so powerful.

If you ask me their stealth should break on taking damage like the Mesmer or anyone else that has any type of stealth.

Edelweiss.9815:

Your decoy was ruined when you tried to compare Hammer Warrior to a Backstab Thief, it became immediately apparent what your class is.

If you run around with 12k health and 900 Toughness, without a single shadowstep, no Hard to Catch, no snares to counter Earthshaker/Bull’s Charge… well, you will die. Not as fast as a 3k armor, 25k health Warrior would die against your backstabs, but still you will die.

You thieves are going to such great lengths to try and justify your OP class it’s really getting quite insane.

I second this.

There’s nothing wrong with Warriors and they are no where near OP. The Thief is the biggest annoyance in the game right now and no amount of exaggerated posts about any other profession is going to change that.

The ONLY thing people may agree is on is that Mesmers are still pretty hard to beat 1v1 but at least they’ve been toned down enough to make it doable now if you bring your A-Game and know what you’re doing. Doing that much against a Thief will only buy you a few seconds depending on the class you play.

Not a bad post, but pretty much just sums up everything the entire community has been ranting about since BWE1.

However, downed state should be the same for all professions but with different animations and is totally fine in PvP even as it is; it just takes time to adjust.

I’ve actually fought quite a few hammer warriors lately and thought it was odd. They may knock me down a couple times but ultimately their damage isn’t anywhere near burst and if you CC them there doesn’t seem to be much they can do to you. Even my pet is effective against them and if you know anything about Ranger pets, that’s kinda sad by itself.

You pretty much just kite them or CC them to death, or at least that’s what I do. Keep them crippled and dodge a one or two of their stuns here and there. Sure they’ll get you a couple times but as I said, they don’t really have any burst.

I can see how they can be deadly in team fights, but in 1v1 I’ve not lost to very many warriors in nearly a month, maybe one or two.

I play anvil rock. Would you be willing to run multiple matches? That don’t have to go against your record for this? I could use a sparring partner myself. As asked above, what class are you?

That’s how it works. You HAVE to be in combat first, however, to get the buff. So start attacking a target, then switch and unload.

It’s a good method, I think people are just a bit spoiled with the instant gratification of the world today and have very little patience for things they want as a result.

Thus far Anet has communicated more with it’s community than any other MMO I’ve ever played, especially on it’s forums and I’m not sure anyone could name a current company that does the same or does it better.

There may be a couple other companies that do it, but I don’t foresee very many names being listed. But I do agree, class balance and content updates are definitely needed.

(stupid quote buttons disappeared again)

@Blazer Hellsing.9184 “Most of them do but they die 24/7 because Thief and Warrior go glass cannon for those burst builds, then when they realize these professions are not as strong as they thought they go back to their main and come and cry on the forum.”

Actually every person I’ve met thus far who has rerolled to a Thief hasn’t gone back to their main because the class wasn’t as strong as they thought—it was actually a lot stronger than their main than they realized.

The ONLY reason I’ve heard of regarding people going back to their mains is because Thief got boring and required no challenge and just wasn’t as complicated/fun to play as their main of pretty much any other profession.

I’m not sure what people you’ve been talking too.

People are also not mentioning that once you’re targetted by a thief, due to thei insane mobility, there is no escape at all. You either kill them or they kill you UNLESS you damage them enough to make them stealth and resetor run off. Sure, if they run off, that’s a win but usually they just wait a few seconds and attack while your defensives are on CD and you have no way of mitigating the bulk of their damage anymore.

That’s how it is for my Ranger anyway. Kill or be killed, no other options.

Can’t say I’ve see near full teams of Ele’s as much as I have Thieves. What’s more, Ele is probably 100 times harder to play effectively than a Thief is; I currently applaud anyone that does well in sPvP as an Ele.

Besides that, they’re only immortal because they’re built defensively and have to be to stay alive against the sheer number of Thieves you see in one game.

I’ve limited my PvP down to one or two matches of sPvP a day, maybe a couple more depending on the thief turn out. Otherwise I’ve started enjoying the PvE side of the game and am working my way to 80 to play in some WvW. Looking quite forward to that, actually.

How about we add different game modes or balance classes/skills a bit more before adding interface changes? The interface is fine as it is right now and no one is complaining about it. The only interface option I’d ever want to see changed (currently) is giving us more freedom to place things where we want them. Otherwise, screw the interface it’s fine.

Fix the classes first.

@Zzod – Lol at your screen. I’ve seen games like that before. Must’ve been nothing but spammers on the other team.

Sometimes pets won’t even use the F2 skill, even after spamming it. It’s pretty horribad sometimes. I wish they had a little chat bubble above their heads that said “ kitten #8221; every so often; at least then it would be funny.

Cogbyrn.7283:

KungPaow.5847:

Yeah, because this one hot-join match was the only one where these classes are over-represented, right? Don’t live in denial, atleast in Spvp thiefes and mesmers are OP.

If anything illustrates the fact that the majority of people on these forums jump to conclusions about things based on very little data, it’s your reaction to my post.

Prove to me that hot-joiners flocking to what they hear is easy in sPvP is an indication that Thieves/Mesmers are OP instead of it being an indication that players are simply bad and want an easy to way to kill people for glory?

Everyone wants to be a carry. That doesn’t mean carries are necessarily imbalanced.

Do Thieves/Mesmers need tweaks? Probably. I’ve heard some interesting arguments with actual rotation information based on experience that suggest there are combinations that are too powerful that can be performed too frequently. I’ve personally commented to my girlfriend that I feel as though my window of opportunity to actually do damage to a Mesmer, for example, is exceedingly short. I also had a 2-3 minute 1v1 on a point in sPvP with a Thief because he would engage, I’d get him low, and he’d disappear for what felt like forever. I was focusing more on maintaining control of the point than killing him, but again, the window of opportunity where I could confidently engage him felt tiny, so killing him was going to be an issue regardless.

Perhaps small windows of opportunity are how the classes are designed, but could they be too small? Is it more that the damage they relative to the window size is too large given the degree of their glass cannon spec coupled with the survivability provided by disjointing stealths/utilities?

It’s an interesting discussion, and I feel like threads like this one sell the interesting part way, way short.

Hence, my previous post.

EDIT – Of course I don’t think Rangers are fine based on that screenshot. The whole thing was facetious to serve a point. I actually don’t have an opinion on Rangers, because I don’t have enough personal experience with/against them, and I don’t know any personally. If I can’t form an educated opinion, I don’t like to take a stance.

Probably the most thought out and comprehensive response I’ve seen on either GW2 forum I’ve been following so far.

I play Ranger pretty much religiously right now, and have tested various builds. I don’t claim to be an expert but anything you want to know I can either tell you or find out first hand through testing. So let me know either on here or in-game if you ever want info.

That being said, Rangers are in a sad state honestly, overall. We aren’t as bad off as Ele or Necro, but we’re pretty kitten close when it comes to traits and utility. Our weapon options are pretty limited as well when it comes to viability. Some people have off the wall success but it takes a very specific play style and from what I can tell, only does good against certain classes and while not under the pressures of 2v1 or focus fire in 2v2+. You pretty much have to leave them alone for it to work.

We do have other game modes in currently, but they are in the towns and no one seems to play them at all. It’s like people don’t even realize the mini-games are even there

You know I was thinking about this for a long time and finally decided that TDM, on our current maps, would be an utter disaster. The maps are way too small for it; Maybe if they implement larger maps it MAY be ok but currently, hell no.

What I would like to see, which would also require larger maps, is CTF and Briefcase style game modes. By Briefcase I mean where you hold onto an object (or objects) and get points every few seconds that it’s held. If you ever played RIFT and remember the Library map, that one was actually really fun at times. Black Garden was horrible however, so it takes some finesse in how it’s presented in order for it to work.

Whitefall in RIFT was probably my favorite map, even when we were getting stomped. I’d love to see something along those lines with GW2 pvp. All this aside, it would take better balance between classes and larger maps for any of this to be added. Our current maps are way too small for anything over 5v5, even for our current game mode.

Cogbyrn.7283:

@KungPaow: Look at that Ranger representation. Clearly Rangers are fine as well.

Lol; not by a long shot.

You don’t really see that many Rangers on one team that often, but it is becoming more common I think. I’m not sure why though, most Rangers I’ve faced have either been decent or horrible—I’ve never been beaten by another Ranger 1v1 and rarely have I been in a 2v2 and lost simply because I will always focus the Ranger first. We have very few ways of escaping each other and even less ways of escaping other professions UNLESS we spec directly into escapes in which case we lack burst and/or the ability to 1v1/2v2 effectively.

It may be that people think Ranger is just as spammie as Thief since SB has given us a bad name; but it really isn’t. Maybe easier to pick up, but harder to play imo since you have to account for a kitten pet AI to get maximum effectiveness.

I disagree, Dee Jay.

I’ve successfully downed and killed two players before on separate occasions. Skill disparity does make a difference. It doesn’t happen very often, but I’ve done it and I player a Ranger which is arguably one of the kittenest classes in the game currently (although maybe a little better off than Ele).

The rest of the stuff you mention I see no issues with as it adds another level of game play, except maybe the downstate abilities; some of them could use some love.

Not to mention, no one should be winning 2v1’s versus competent players anyway, at least not consistently.

Even if they mess up the rotation, it doesn’t take them long to reset it and you have to hope no one else comes into the fight AND that you don’t make a single mistake while trying to counter them.

Their reset time is much shorter than anyone else unless all you do is dodge, but even then you’re not avoiding that much damage and you’re probably loaded down with conditions to make your reset time longer anyway.

If it’s all about skill, why doesn’t someone who considers themselves more experienced grow some balls like the OP and post a video show casing just how exactly they deal with these mechanics?

Everyone keeps bashing his play skills but not a single person has posted a video showing how “it should actually be done”. Any class but a Thief would be fine with me.

The downed state is fine in sPvP. People just hate it because they think downing someone is automatic win in every situation and need to get over this mentality.

My Ranger has 1.9k Toughness and still gets hit for 9-10k backstabs. That’s half my health (21k total HP) in one hit. Sure, it can be avoided with either a lucky dodge or a damage immune, but what if make one tiny mistake or your immune is on CD? They don’t have to wait as long as you for that damage combo to reset, even if it doesn’t hit as hard the second time around, it’s still a good 6-7k damage on someone spec’d for survival on a very low CD; how is that balanced?

One mistake while fighting a Thief with this build and you’re dead because you fall too far behind on damage. As mentioned before, some players can even dance in and out of stealth without ever being touched simply because of a bug. No other profession has THAT much of a risk:reward ratio.

People say that you can still hit the Thief while he’s stealth because it isn’t an immune, but it might as well be. How many of your hits do you think you’re going to land when you have no idea that you’re even hitting them in the first place? 98% of the time you’re not unless you’re running a lot of AE’s. That leaves Rangers with pretty much ONE build to fight thieves with; a trap condition build. We have no other options. That is not balance and that build imo isn’t really fun either.

This thread = win simply because of two replies. The rest I didn’t even read.

But yeah, sPvP is more of a zergfest than WvW most of the time and Thieves are pretty much the kings of the castle right now.

Red Falcon.8257:

Pradton.8576:

So Anet does the same blunder every other game with a stealth class does? They are “squishy” but can basically kill you in one or two hits. Why oh why did they not learn from the past?

They cannot kill you in a few hits if you stack armor.
Read my post above.

My Ranger has nearly 2k toughness and a little over 21k HP. How much more armor are we suppose to stack and how much damage are we suppose to give up before we counter Thief damage?

Anything higher than that is a Bunker build. I’ve given up pretty much every utility that can help with damage and spec most of my traits into survival—this still doesn’t hender thieves in the least. The only REAL threat a Ranger can give a Thief is if he specs entirely into a condition build and traps so that hopefully the thief triggers them and can’t cleanse them before he bursts us down.

Good luck taking that thief down with your 20s CD traps and kitten AI pet when he only comes out of stealth a MAXIMUM of 2 seconds (due to stealth bug) before he restealths, runs off to heal up (while you’re conditioned out the yin-yang since we have only ONE on-demand condi removal) and then returns at full HP ready to go again because he isn’t having to wait on lengthy CD’s to stealth and dish out large amounts of damage instantly.

Why should other classes have to spec into very specific traits/utilities just to deal with that ONE other class that has various other viable specs that work equally as good no matter who they are against? It’s garbage balance and if it is balanced I don’t see it.

Seeing as how updates are rolling out on a regular basis right now, I don’t understand why there is no Private Test Server (PTS) for people to test changes before they hit live. I think this would help further iron out changes before it upsets the whole population by going live with major flaw.

Thoughts?

iTB.1428:

I don’t play hotjoins (so I’m not familiar with this map), placing those turets should fallow same restrictions as “blink” skills imho

My thoughts exactly.

I don’t usually play tourny myself. However, even in tourny an Engi can place these turrets on top of the statues overlooking the keep. I didn’t take a screenshot of that though, still I’ve seen it done.

“Exploit” wasn’t meant as a harsh term, but rather something that can be done that probably shouldn’t be. Teleporting to different platforms is one of those things as well, imo, but I’ve yet to see a Mesmer or an Ele bombing people from atop a house or statue out of reach of everything non-ranged with no way for the player to actually get up to them.

The fact that you HAVE to have a Ranged weapon, take your focus completely off the fight and onto them just to destroy them just doesn’t seem right. Is it gamebreaking? No not really; but that doesn’t mean it should be allowed either.

Thieves aren’t a huge problem in 1v1. My Ranger can kill them more often than not unless they just utterly spam the crap out of stealth.

When they Cloak and Dagger you, it takes ~2 seconds for them to actually appear. You have just enough time to locate them and get in one MAYBE two attacks before they stealth again. Their damage isn’t about burst at this point, it’s about outlasting you and they can. All they have to do is keep stealthing and attacking you before you’ve used all your CD’s to avoid the damage, then it’s game over.

It isn’t really them that’s OP it’s the fact that they can get in multiple attacks after breaking stealth before you even get to see them. I understand they are squishy but not having to worry about being retaliated against for two-three attacks every 4-5 seconds (2-3 by the time they actually appear on screen) more than makes up for it and does make them quite powerful.

As for Mesmers, well, I usually lose to them regardless of what build they use unless they are just really bad. I rarely win against a Mesmer.