Guild Wars 2

Just remember they dont stack, so dont use your utility one if the trait is already proc’ed or is about to

It applies to any pet/clone/summon (or even other players), but since spiders are ranged they dont tend to move much in a fight, so its actually possible to do.

It doesnt only apply to control skills, any skill can be body blocked unless it pierces/cleaves/is AoE, but most CC skills are not like this so.. I guess thats what solrik is getting at, maybe :P

I dont find it worth doing personally, but each to their own if it works for you :P

When they updated MoC I spend a good 15-20 mins trying to get a skull to test the fear duration with, swapping pets constantly to use all the pigs F2. I never got a skull, ragequit the idea and havent used them since.

RNG is never the solution. Ever.

Interesting. I think I’ll just vaguely assume they are true anyway till proven otherwise, since leaks tend to (always) be true in this game. And who trusts ANet anyway :P

Its funny how they keep buffing Bark Skin. Its already a fantastic trait and it always was… The problem is most ranger builds are forced into taking EB for condition removal. If they gave us better condition removal people would use Bark Skin.. but as it stands, they could buff is to be a perminant damage reduction and many many people still wouldnt use it.

Arent you the guy who posted the other day about getting rofl-stomped by thieves all the time?

Edit: Oh you are. Good one.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Thief-stolen-Whirling-Axe-is-OP/first#post3668875

They cant rework stealth without a serious rework of thieves since so many of their traits/attacks/utilities revolve around it.

I agree, more narration

Was nice to watch even if your opponents werent the best, and you yourself did a few odd things (most notably spamming #4 wasting all your initative when your target was clearly out of range), but thats half the interest of recording your fights. I found very quickly when I first started recording fights I had that I saw really obvious things I should / should not have done but I didnt notice at the time. Helps you get better I feel because next time you come up against that class/build you have that thing in mind.

Carry on

I dont see anything wrong with PU, personally. Sure I use it to kitten on my mesmer so you can all say I am bias, but really the trait isnt that extreme.

The one thing I think might be making it go too far is Prestige. As a primarily ranged class it is a bit too easy to gain stealth for mesmers if you have a torch+cdr. Maybe they should consider making an “on hit” requirement on Prestige as there is with CnD. That allows people to actually counter what the mesmer is doing which is the main issue with how memsers use stealth atm – there is no way to stop it unlike with thieves where a good dodge or interupt can serve as a counterplay.

I largely agree.. its the main reason I dislike playing PvP. I find it very frustrating to fight, even lose, vs builds/players I know I can beat simply because I am forced to stay on point rather than playing the way I want to and how I would when roaming in WvW. The main offenders being hambow warriors and necros because they just spam AoE over the entire point, but its a general problem.

I dont see a problem with it. It can be easily avoided by dodging away. Maybe its just that some of the other stolen skills are UP instead of this being OP?

I think its largely agreed that HaO needs some buffing, and adding extra effcts to it would be the way to go.

Our other healing skills though I think are all fine, good even. WS is obviously a group heal, thats its extra effect. It benifits your teammates not just you. HS has its field and AoE regen/cleanse so its fine. TU then doesnt have an extra features.. but it is one of the very very best heals in the game. It heals a massive amount on a decent CD. I really wouldnt want to see it changed.

Please seriously look at reducing the need to GM traits to use utilities. No other class is SO dependant of having GM traits to use utilities and its the #1 problem for build diversity. What you did with spirits (swaping the traits round) was good, but going further and merging traits/simply removing them and adding them as base functionallity would be much better in the case of traps/signets/shouts.

Traits should enhance utilities, not make them viable.

Some nice ideas.. I like how you have tried to include the pet in the traits more without making pet-only traits. Nice to see triats which help both the ranger and the pet.

Some look a bit too powerful, such as:
VII – Carnivorous Appetite – You and your pet gain health on critical hits.
III – Evasive Purity – Dodging removes a condition from you and your pet.

But generally some interesting thoughts and I actually like how you’ve changed signets.

The the rangers equivalent of an all signet thief 1-shotting people with BS. Big burst but cant be repeated often and leaves you with very little defensive options other than running away.

Its biggest strength though has got to be simply that noone seeing it coming from a ranger :P

Sorry, no I dont. I dont know ele very well so I can only judge his build based on what I can see.. No idea trait wise other than diamond skin :P

I was dualling a condition ele eariler in WvW and it was really very interesting. They were using D/D, LF and ES utilities (I didnt quite catch the 3rd one), perplexity runes, with what I think was apothecary gear, and then diamond skin.

I honestly have never seen such a rediculous counter to other condition builds.. his ability to heal was insane, his damage was pretty high if he locked you down with immob or chill (which he had a lot of…), although obviously it wasnt the DPS you’d see from a condition necro or engi.

Still, I dualled him quite a few times on my hybrid trap ranger build, which usually I have no problems at all vs any ele on, and I couldnt beat him. I won once after fiddling my build a bit to exaggerate my direct damage and play down my condition damage simply because with his healling just getting past diamond skin was an issue at first. Two thieves from my server also tried and failed to beat him, as did a necro. It was very impressive, easily the most interesting and one of the best ele build I have fought against and well played as well.

He did lose to a berserker phantasm mesmer in the end, but not without a good fight. I imagine that is the builds weakness.. since with such low HP and not great armour it is vulnerable to direct damage (but still, like I said, he beat 2 thieves consitantly), but I cant imagine a better build to roflstomp any other condition build in the game.

I agree with you now. Would have been nice of you to say that from the start rather than just continuing solrik’s mistake of making general sweeping statements which add little to anything.

Anyway I am going to leave this thread I feel its getting too intense and I am likely not helping. \o7

Forzani.2584:

solrik.6028:

24k health, 6k heal. A fourth of your HP. I’d rather have 17k HP and 10k heal. Sure, a theif would get me to 5-8k HP but I would get it back up to full after a few seconds.

How about a 9k health and a 7k heal? That must be even better, right?

I will take the 24k health and 6k heal thanks

Crazy logic imo

Well done on using a straw man argument to try prove someone wrong. Solrik makes a good point that having a high health pool and low healing only benifits you for roughly the first minute of a fight, and after that you are at a disadvantage compared to someone with lower base health but higher healing.

Of cause taken to extremes have 9k health and 7k heal is rubbish, just the same as having 35k health and 0 healing would be rubbish.

Theres clearly a balance to be had and this build goes very strongly to the high health low healing end which does come with disadvantages (and advantages too). The problem is that with low DPS, this build is likely to end up in long engagements often thus making a high health low healing setup sub-optimal, even though it does allow you to maintain pressure and survive bursts in the short term.

I didnt mean to be rude in my previous post, but I think the problem people have with this build is that you’ve basicly just taking full PVT and then said you’re realyl hard to kill.

Umm… Yeah? Any class can go in full PVT and be hard to kill. Its the same as the build someone posted the other day about how the LB can do good damage and then procceeded to post a full berserker build. Again, no kitten, any class with any weapon can deal huge damage in full zerker. Thats not the issue, the issue is what does doing it on a ranger provide that doing it on another class doesnt? Thats really what people are looking for, and its not something you answer.

The problem is what happens when your oppent (or even both of them) just rock up with 80 people in one big blob. Suddenly none of your teams (not even 2 combined) can deal with them and they will just rampage through the whole borderland taking one thing after another. Sure, you’ll cap things back very more quickly and effectively, but you will lose all your upgrades and generally weaken the BL by doing so.

The only way you’ll stop them is but uniting your three 25 man groups into one blob yourselfs and suddenly you have the exactly situation we do have. One huge blob on both sides with some smaller guilds/roamers hanging about doing other stuff.

Essentially the problem is there is no real counter, defensively, to an enermy blob other than making your own blob. If you are attacking a BL its different because if they are blob defending you can split up and attack multiple towers/keeps and it works great.. But when you’re defending and they are blobbing? There really is only one solution.

Manuhell.2759:

What did you expect? No one could have seriously said that warriors and guardians need buffs when they’re the meta classes for any endgame.
And thieves are mostly hated due to stealth, people are always asking for nerfs about it.
And i’ll repeat it anyway: people will likely vote the classes they know, rather than the ones they don’t know.
The results can’t help but end biased due to that.

Of course theres some bias towards voting your own class, but really you are overstating it. The number of people who play each prof is relatively balanced with the difference between mesmer (at the bottom) and ranger being only 40%, yet the difference in voting on the CDI is nearly ~300%. Clearly some people will just vote their main, but also clearly thats not what the majority of people did otherwise the voting would have been MUCH closer than it was.

Genuinely not sure if you’re serious or not, but I really am not sure how you kill anyone with a full PVT build.

Without nerfing games just spiral out of control with power creep, and in 1-2 years time everyone with be critting 4k on AA.

It might be the Anet goes a little too far with nerfing and not enough buffing, but they are trying to do it right at least.

Well it looks like we will win… so far rangers have the most votes and by FAR the most #1 votes.

Not even sure I want to vote ranger.. The post says they want to re-balance every class and we’re just voting on which comes first.

If rangers win all they will do is buff us up and we’ll be happy for a few weeks, then they will get round to buffing all the others and we’ll be the worst again :P

Eloquence.5207:

Inb4 L2P.

Lol at comparing stealth to stability.

Wtf did I just watch in your sig…

Making stealth a boon would only make the issue of theives perma-stealthing worse. Most classes cant boon-rip, and even those that can its not exactly easy to land such skill on someone who you cant see, and even if you do it might no even remove stealth, and even if it does, these skills (like well of corruption or null field) are on long CDs.

Then on the flip side you can have thieves who can run +50-100% boon duration and suddenly they can EASILY be perma-stealth. PU mesmers would also become somewhat rediculous since mesmers aleady often run with high boon duration.

In guild groups.. Yeah its warrior and guardian dominated. In pug zergs, small scale and solo play though it seems pretty evenly spread to me.

It is a failed mechanic because theres not enough appilication of it. Its rare to see more than 3 stacks on you, and with so few stacks its never worth standing still in the middle of a fight to save yourself the extra 300-400 damage.

Confusion works as a way to stop people doing things because certain classes and builds stack 10-15 stacks almost instantly, and at that point it is actually worth stopping what you’re doing. If you could stack 10-15 torment then it might work the same, because the extra damage from moving would be worth taking seriously.

Obvious its not as simple and just making it easier to apply torment because that makes condition builds even strong, so theyd have to be nerfed in another way to counteract it, but yeah.

Idk if people want to karma train around then its not really for me to tell them they shouldnt be.

I still meet plenty of people roaming around, plenty of guild groups, and yeah some massive pug zergs, but I dont see a problem with that.

They could do something to make it easier for smaller group to cap stuff perhaps, but “nerfing” large groups sounds unnessesary.

1000 is too low, but yeah in principle I agree. It should be an option.

What I’ve been playing for months. My dream build <3

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8YjAVx11VWWo2BiVBA1eMJzjJ2DD5oHdymiWD-jkCBYgCy0CRmqAI1cIsJnRrMsIasqaCyqbYKYI6YoCBsYMA-w

So disappointed Met a lockdown mesmer for the first time just now, was really interested in seeing how the fight was going to go.. they got off to a good start with Moa but I am still OK and ready to start fighting back, and just as we were getting to the good bit their guildmate thief had to jump in T.T

Was so looking forward to that fight

It looks cool. Not sure I’d use it but I can imagine it being used in some builds. Certainly for berserker type builds I’d have it over RaO any day, and on BM bunkers it could be insane.. allowing SoS and SoW actives on such builds, as well as insta pet res, sounds borderline madness.

That said.. I am going with it being fake as well. The mesmer one really doesnt sound at all right… Lol.

I rerolled a thief, and I hated it. I rerolled a guardian, and I hated it even more. I now have a mesmer who I admit I like, but mainly because its so easy to survive in full zerker and kitten about its silly

I love my ranger though <3

Nice video

Dont worry about clicking your skills.. I click mine and always tell people that comment on it that if I am beating them like that with them using keybinds that doesnt make me bad, that makes them really bad.

Thighum.7295:

ROFL!

“The rate at which thieves kill “unaware” people is really high."

You do realize that if you are an “unaware” while playing a thief you will almost instantly die if someone targets you?

This sentence seems to tell all. It reminds me of a ranger I fought yesterday who was doing his bear bow thing in wvw from 1500 range. I CnD and backstabbed him 2 times in a row to down him and he NEVER EVEN MOVED AT ALL. It was like he thought he could afk in a zerg fight because he was near the back of his zerg.

People are upset that a thief can kill them when they go afk for a couple of seconds!

+hahahahaha nice one!

Not even sure what you’re saying, but it sounds like you misread what hihey said :o

Personally I can understand why people dislike thieves.. Stealth is badly designed to have to no counterplay in this game, so inevitably the class which has the most access to stealth (and has many of its traits, cleanses, heals, etc) tied to stealth has very little counterplay to it.

TBH its not really a solvable problem because thieves dont really deserve further nerfs and what really needs changing is the stealth mechanic, but doing so requires more a less a full rework of the thief class (which is a lot of work and also unfair on theives. Noone wants they class completely turned upside down).

Its the same problem you have with PU mesmers. I have only been playing mesmer like a month and I run around in WvW solo in full zerker knowing that the only person who can gank me is a thief. No other class has a chance to catch me unless I choose to fight them. Its such silly really, but its done now and applying random nerfs to thieves damage doesnt solve the problem, it just ruins the class so badly that it becomes unimportant.

I agree the AA on the MH axe is horrible, in any sort of build or situation… but the #2 isnt that bad and the #3 is really good.

I can understand the slight issues with #2 of it being essentially a point blank attack on what is otherwise a ranged weapon. Thats is odd, but it does stack 5 bleeds on a very short CD which is not something to take lightly on a condition build.

And #3.. Chill is the best debuff ever.. movement, and then CD speed reduction too? It might only be 3s, but it also has a short CD, and short duration high application conditions are the best. Throw the weakness it gives on there and it more or less turns even a full berserker player into a wet fish.

Lol I had no idea it did that :P guess I assumed theyd get revealed if they hit themselves.

Makes me want to try it, shame rangers dont have the best reflecting :O

I look forward to seeing this later, but as Aevis said, you’ve just posted the same link to Xsorus’ build twice ^^

Could have a middle ground where they only get 1 shot at using their Stealth Attack, and if they miss/get blocked they dont get revealed but their AA goes back to normal.

I have to say I find this issue most annoying of P/D thieves.. can see their shots spamming through the air air as I dodge, it even gives away their exact location but there is nothing at all I can do about it meaning proactive play becomes impossible. The only solution is to wait till they actially hit you then dodge, so you only take the first 1-3 hits intead of all 5. Thats fine and all, but it would be nice to be able to actively defend myself instead of having to do it reactively.

They are the only class which delivers on GW2’s original promise of every class being able to play every role in the game. They can be DPS, tank, support, condition, burst, sustain, whatever the hell you want.

They have some borderline OP builds and some arguably OP traits/skills, but thats not unique to warriors, so its just that they can do so much and be exactly what you need in any game mode its easy to look on them and think they are generally OP when really the problem is every other class is seriously lacking in certain game modes and playstyles.

Guard is used simply because its the lowest CD shout. What people are really after is proc’ing the Nature’s Voice GM trait, giving both regen and swiftness.

In the build like this where one of the defining features is high healing, having the regen buff vital. Guard simply allowes for perma regen and swiftness thanks to its low CD.

Basicly.. people arent taking traits to support guard – they are taking guard to use the traits. People dont care what guard does or doesnt do as long as it procs Nature’s Voice.

Yeah.. to be honest I think adding more stealth to the game isnt a good idea. The builds that need it the most are our berserker builds, and its already on the LB.

Adding more so that our already strong bunker specs could stealth too would really just be unnessesary.

Adding a smoke field so you could leap+blast finish it might be ok, because it requires so actually play to do.. but just adding a flat stealth to a skill people already use all the time doesnt sound right.

I really dont think thieves are OP, but I do think they are a big part of why condition bunkers have become so popular.

Most classes simply cant go DPS builds because thieves are the kings and gods of such builds, and everyone knows if you are in a berserker gear and a decent thief attacks you, you’re seriously in trouble.

Their presence just makes it very hard to anyone to play anything except bunky specs, and some classes cant bunker well without being a condition spec, so you end up with people condition bunkering.

Now this is very hard to change without nerfing thieves (which they really dont need), simply because any class running a DPS build is going to be extremely vulnerable to BS. Now.. you can use blocks and evades to try escape BS, but essentially thieves can stealth longer and more often than people can block and evade and theres a lot of luck and guesswork in countering BS anyway.

The most obvious solution is giving people counters to stealth, just as being able to see them if they come within 200 range, so that people have a chance of playing DPS without getting 1 hit, but thats a serious nerf to thieves and generally is an unsatisfactory solution IMO. I dont know what the answer is, but thieves DO stop other people from playing DPS and force others to bunker.

This sort of general thread is somewhat pointless.. There are so many builds within a class, each with different weaknesses. The only over-arching weakness that many builds suffer from is lack on condition removal, but even that can be solved with EB, HS and SoR (and even EP if you really want).

Rangers in general also do lack the burst power of other classes, but I am not sure thats a weakness, just a different fighting style.

I’ve played traps a long time now, albeit mostly in WvW not sPvP so it is slightly different. I have to say I am very opposed to moving the traps from their traitline, them being there really does allow for fantasic hybrid builds in WvW, its shame that hybriding is so lame in sPvP.

Not sure I agree with your solutions either. Like you said the damage output of trapping is fine already, but you can lack survivability option (I actually only run 2 traps because I want a stunbreaker in there).

Instead of giving us more damage by adding it to the frost trap perhaps the GM trap trait could be changed (and its current effect merged with the master trait) so that traps pulse defensive boons as well as conditions. Flame trap could give vigor (doesnt have to be long.. 1-2 seconds per pulse), frost trap could give protection, vipers nest could give retaliation and since spike trap doesnt pulse perhaps it should be a blast finisher to synergise with all the fields traps rangers get.

This would help trappers defensively, as well as help them bring more group orientated support (which currently only spirit rangers do), without buffing their already pretty decent damage.

Also one other thing.. entangle applying torment when it also hold the target in place so they cant move doesnt really make sense :s

Warriors are not particularly strong in a straight up 1v1, but sadly theres no game mode which promotes real 1v1s. In PvP you are forced to fight on this tiny little circle (if you are defending) making combat mobility a problem, which in turn makes warriors (and necros) more dangerous than really are.

This is why theives and mesmers arent home point defenders.. they are 2 of the very strongest 1v1 classes but they do it by moving and stealthing meaning they are useless in point defence, whereas a warrior whos defence is just standing there and taking it like a boss while doing huge AoE attacks which need to be dodged is perfectly suited to that sort of restricted fight. It actually actively helps them because their opponent cant avoid them like they want to.

Then in WvW roaming its the same.. warriors still arent particularly strong to fight 1v1s, but because people there build for high mobility trying to kill a warrior who doesnt want to die becomes a serious issue.

Essentially a warriors weakness is having to fight an opponent without being able to run and without them being “trapped” in a little circle, but thats never ever the case in this game unless they actively choose to fight you that way.

You dont need regen nessesarily.. It took me a long time to get used to playing without it after playing on fauxs original RRR build for far too long, but if you can get yourself 2900+ armour and 20k+ HP honestly you’re good to go. TU is one of the very best heals in the game, it will keep you alive :P