Guild Wars 2

Dulfy has them datamined, but they’re not all paired up to their level. However, there’s a list being compiled there that should help:
http://dulfy.net/2013/11/26/gw2-mistlock-instabilities/#more-66344

Bornthisway.4609:

LOL. Coming up on 10 humongous, glaring bugs that they added into the game today. All in two week’s work!

I’m so glad I don’t work in the MMO industry. I mean, in most jobs if you make a mistake, a handful of coworkers will know.

In MMO-land, being human (a.k.a. making a mistake), results in tons of pipsqueaks like this squealing about it as if somehow their life is now ruined.

Because, really, it’s not actual human beings working to produce this game worthy of our spare time, eh? It must really be an engine created by horrible monsters who deserve to be constantly scorned by us.

Hmm..gemstore loads for me, but I don’t see the new armor in it.

JMar.3254:

Dahkeus.8243:

I’m not arguing that the implementation of the leaderboards is right. I’m arguing that the idea of leaderboards is right.

I do not think that any PvE content needs a leaderboard. I don’t see a point to it and I personally have absolutely no desire to ever check it.

Cool. Not every ounce of content of every patch is meant to be directed at every single player. If you don’t have any interest in this feel free to ignore it and go about your business. You’re not the target audience.

Romo.3709:

Dahkeus.8243:

Irikol.3495:

What I simply don’t understand in this update is even the NEED (ignore the point of) of/for leader boards in a MMO setting… even more so that these leader boards aren’t even in-game. Who honestly wants to go out of game to check the website for these things? If the game had “World first” progression style content like WoW, I could understand the point.. but this just feels like a feature added simply to say “look what we have!” and then let it be thrown out the proverbial development window.

There is a substantial part of MMO communities that really care about this sort of thing. I mean, you don’t see as much in GW2 as something like the WoW community, but the people who pushed to hit level 80 Fractals will probably be the same people who will want to see if they can hit the top of the Fractals leaderboards.

Most GW2 players probably won’t care that much about leaderboards, but not all patch changes should be geared towards the bulk of the population. Keeping hardcore players interested is often good since they tend to the biggest contributors to things like guides and resources that the more casual players use.

That looks all and nice on the paper. But the reality is quite the opposite. The most hardcore players from fractals do not want the leaderboards to begin with. I’m not gonna get into the whole level reset here. And also that kind of leaderboard is pointless. The second someone hits that level 50, the race to the top spot is over. You hit 50 you’re up there. There is no way to advance past you, there is no competition that you’re speaking of after that. At this point it’s all based on who’s got the most time off once the release starts. Two days later, the race is over, the leaderboards is set and there’s absolutely no reason for them. First Come First Serve basis…
And you’re speaking as if hardcore population is being kept interested. Our progress has been taken away. And everything in this patch is basically geared towards the bulk of the population. Nothing hardcore about it at all.

I’m not arguing that the implementation of the leaderboards is right. I’m arguing that the idea of leaderboards is right.

Honestly, don’t worry about your build. If you want to do well in Arah, learn the fights and know which utility skills are useful and where.

To this extent, smoke screen is a great skill to have for a lot of encounters there. There are a lot of projectiles and a lot of trash mobs that hit really hard. Smoke screen can save you and your group with the right use.

People love to get caught up on builds, especially on forums, but having a group of people that know the fight mechanics of the dungeon will always, always be more important than what build or classes you bring into a dungeon.

Malin.2490:

After reading this forum I used the LFG tool with trepidation. I had never done any dungeons apart from with friends, and well… honestly, the horror stories here were legion. Especially as I have only done a few runs before, and some of the dungeons I wanted to run were completely new to me.

However, all three separate pugs were friendly and efficient, I learned where to stack and were to stand and there were really no issues what so ever even when we died repeatedly (CM path 2, I’m looking at you and your explosive barrels…)

So yeah, just a thank you note to all you strangers out there who are nice and helpful in pugs.

Friendly people make a world of difference in MMOs, particularly when it comes to dungeons.

I wish more people realized this. Glad to see you found some good people though. =)

Ask yourself this: If the group leader thinks that they need a group without any rangers to do a dungeon, do you really want to be in that group?

It’s not entirely useless.

I use it when standing around waiting on stuff since the animation for a male human is a something like a front flip 1080. =P

Seriously though, it’d be nice if they replaced this with something worth using in combat.

Irikol.3495:

What I simply don’t understand in this update is even the NEED (ignore the point of) of/for leader boards in a MMO setting… even more so that these leader boards aren’t even in-game. Who honestly wants to go out of game to check the website for these things? If the game had “World first” progression style content like WoW, I could understand the point.. but this just feels like a feature added simply to say “look what we have!” and then let it be thrown out the proverbial development window.

There is a substantial part of MMO communities that really care about this sort of thing. I mean, you don’t see as much in GW2 as something like the WoW community, but the people who pushed to hit level 80 Fractals will probably be the same people who will want to see if they can hit the top of the Fractals leaderboards.

Most GW2 players probably won’t care that much about leaderboards, but not all patch changes should be geared towards the bulk of the population. Keeping hardcore players interested is often good since they tend to the biggest contributors to things like guides and resources that the more casual players use.

Clumsy.6257:

Dahkeus.8243:

Yea, 25/30/0/0/15 is still your go-to build for maximum dps. D/D is what you use on bosses, S/P is what you use on trash, short bow is what you use on large AoE, and P/P is what you use for ranged single-target fights. S/D is good for fights where enemies have a lot of boons (such as dredge fractal), but that’s about it.

There are plenty of other viable builds, but that’s the current meta for players experienced enough to survive without things like Feline’s Grace.

s/d is terrible for dredge fractal, you can only steal 1 mob’s boons per LS and it they get reapplied instantly

It’s not as good as it used to be, for sure, but between the regen/prot boons you steal and the evasion, it allows you to survive as melee in the huge mobs while dealing strong cleaving damage. The alternative is plinking away with your short bow.

I’m not saying it’s always the best weapon for Dredge, particularly if you’re at a really high level, but it’s the one place where it’s at least a decent option.

Cynz.9437:

Well, seems posters here think CnD is fine, but apprently 3 and 4 and are supposely reason why we don’t see d/d in tpvp.

How would you guys change 3 and 4 then?

The reason you see a pistol offhand more often a dagger offhand in sPvP is for a couple reasons:

- Blind fields give solid group utility that help in team fights
– You don’t need a ranged snare as much in the close quarter combat of sPvP
– Blind fields are move effective in close quarter combat

A dagger offhand, however, is often better for WvW because:

- CnD will stealth you faster than leaping through a blind field, which is more effective when dancing through zergs
– CnD is more initiative efficient for stealthing frequently
– You can get higher burst damage by waiting for stealth to end, then hitting CnD → backstab compared to heartseeker → backstab against most targets

And of course, when it comes to PvE, a dagger offhand is much, much, much better than a pistol offhand when using a dagger main-hand simply because of the initiative efficiency and higher overall dps. D/P is awesome in PvP, but it’s probably one of the worst weapon combos for PvE dungeons.

Huh? Team population imbalance is much worse in hot join than it is in solo q.

Yea, it sucks losing someone in a solo q, but in hot join you pretty much always start off with one team being at least 1 person short.

The imbalance of score in hot joins is so bad that it’s really almost pointless to keep track of it anyways. I mean, the game starts off with one team outnumbering the other, then anyone else that joins either tries to fills slots in the winning team or just jumps into another game until they end up on a winning team.

There are 2 reasons I still do hot joins despite these problems:
1) It’s something to do when I just want to quickly test a build or kill some time when I don’t have enough time to run a full match.
2) When I want to PvP with someone else, but don’t have a full party of 5 people (which is still pretty miserable due to autobalance throwing my friends on the opposite team).

The leaderboards themselves are fine (or at least are as fine as any leaderboards can be for something like this), but the real issue is just that there’s not enough difficulty to prevent this from being a race that’s available to people who are able to be online for the first 24-48 hours of this release.

People have already gotten to level 80 fractals, so I don’t see there being any real difficulty for people to hit level 50.

Bugs happen. It’s the nature of the business.

However, considering how polished every patch for GW2 has been compared to other games, I don’t think this is really a big deal.

I mean, I remember back when I played WoW that there wasn’t much reason to play anything on patch day simply because you could almost guarantee that any new raid encounter would be unplayable to half your group because of either overwhelming glitches or server instability.

I have yet to log on to a patch that wasn’t playable and the only instance of this I have heard of was the original Karka event that was over a year ago (which they seemed to have learned from).

Eh, I have no interest in an increasing level cap.

I would love to see new skills and traits introduced, but the idea of having to grind out another 10 levels and get a new set of gear is something I really don’t want to see. This is the kinda stuff that made me leave games like WoW.

CnD is one of the best skills on a thief right now. I sincerely hope they don’t change this ability.

The ability gives a fast, instant stealth (faster than dropping a blind field and leaping through), but you have to think before you use it.

People who don’t pay attention to enemies with aegis, when they are blinded, or when they are simply not facing their enemy will miss, but that’s from the player being unreliable, not the skill.

P/P is a set that is still absolutely awesome for some encounters, even if D/D blows it away on most others. An example of this is the rotating laser fight in the Aetherblade fractal/dungeon. You can do this fight as melee if you’re skilled, but you’ll be spending so much time running in and out of melee that the damage boost of melee weapons is lost.

There seem to be a lot of melee vs P/P debates on forums, but considering that a 25/30/0/0/15 trait investment is the highest dps setup for both D/D and P/P, I don’t see why more people don’t simply use both, depending on the encounter. =P

Maps with small, hard to find shortcuts like this are awesome. I love finding new tactics to maps that I’ve run a million times that makes them feel new again. It also makes it feel like there’s a real payoff to learning the ins and outs of maps.

Thanks for sharing this tip!

Liquid Swords.1740:

WoW was so nice looking with the right UI. I understand not having a custom UI from Anets pov so I am fine with the one as is. Here is an example of what WoW looked like most of the time with LUI for me. Couldn’t find a pic of my own but got this quick on google to show how clean looking it was.

True, but after just about any patch, you’d have half your UI break. I loved the beautiful UI I was able to create in WoW, but having to constantly update addons, find replacements when my favorites were no longer supported, and reconfigure settings when things changed was a major, major pain in the butt.

I got a trial for my WoW account about a week ago to try checking the game out again, but realizing how bad that game is without all the addons is one of the reasons I didn’t go back.

Yea, 25/30/0/0/15 is still your go-to build for maximum dps. D/D is what you use on bosses, S/P is what you use on trash, short bow is what you use on large AoE, and P/P is what you use for ranged single-target fights. S/D is good for fights where enemies have a lot of boons (such as dredge fractal), but that’s about it.

There are plenty of other viable builds, but that’s the current meta for players experienced enough to survive without things like Feline’s Grace.

So, a comparison between two classes fighting in a way that should never realistically happen…

Yup, this a comparison dumb enough to keep people here arguing for a long time.

Eh, the only thing wrong with having ‘Seasons’ in WvW is that it seems to highlight competition in a game mode that is really dominated by which server spends more time online.

Yes, there have been a lot of steps made to make population imbalance matter less, but with a huge map that is open 24/7, there’s no getting around the simple fact that the server with more people online more often will dominate.

There are some good fights that go on during the day, but the game is still full of so many people that have so little idea of what they are doing or how it contributes to the server’s overall performance that judging a server based on performance is really ridiculous.

1) Shadow’s Refuge is, of course, a must have for most WvW, but Shadowstep is a close second. It’s amazing at helping you jump on distant targets (Shadowstep → Steal gets you on top of just about anyone), but it’s also great at escaping zergs. Blinding Powder is another great ability, but Infiltrator’s Signet is good as well, depending on what build you’re running.

2) Pistol Whip isn’t getting it’s stun nerfed (that already happened with the nerf to Sigil of Paralyzation in the last balance patch), but the sword is getting nerfed with a cast time being added to Infiltrator’s Strike. However, pistol whip will have a small aftercast reduction at least.

That being said, I would recommend having a short bow as your swap weapon unless you’re solo-capping a camp. Dropping a blind field will allow you to auto-attack through the guards, although a dagger storm is good to start with for clearing scouts.

3) Rune of the Traveler is optimal, but Rune of the Centaur is good too.

4) Direct damage. A condi build can work, but direct damage is almost always better. If you do run with a build that uses at least 25 in trickery, it still works well for direct damage because of Lead Attacks. Just make sure you’re not wasting initiative.

5) Check out Coloxus’ video on thief tips and tricks to see various ways of closing distance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUmrfBr1R5s
Some of it won’t apply to WvW or your spec, but it’s all worth watching.

6) You don’t need anything but a short bow for zerg fights, really. However, tossing down a shadow’s refuge on top of yourself before you go down will often give you a chance at being able to heal yourself back up from a downed state and escape if things go badly. Just be sure to Shadow Escape out of your Shadow’s Refuge as enemies will often decide to AoE inside in hopes of hitting you.

7) Who cares. Perma stealth is dead 12/10 anyways. =P

8) Pop out your short bow and help out. Cluster bomb will allow you to hit targets on top of walls that are out of line of sight since the AoE from when it lands goes through walls. Just don’t detonate the cluster.

9) The short bow is great for catching fleeing thieves (particularly if you stealth to get the immobilize shot), but don’t waste too much time chasing thieves. You’re usually better off going back to capturing objectives than running all over the map for 1 kill.

10) Descent of Shadows is awesome for WvW and is particularly helpful for when you’re doing things like jumping off walls to attack since it gives you a free stealth.

Finally, if you haven’t yet, go watch Yishis’ videos on thief in WvW:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8Lh8Oogl6Y

Read through the title and the first thing that popped in my head was stylish pictures of people who steal ladies.

How 2 counter diamond skin:

Deal a little bit of direct damage to ele first.

Ta-daaa!!!

1) Minimal gear treadmill. I wish I could say there was no gear treadmill in PvE, but at least there isn’t one in PvP and the one in PvE is very small compared to most games.

2) Solid combat mechanics. Moving and fighting in GW2 feels very solid and simply feels right. One of the main reasons I will never be able to get into Rift is because movement feels stiff, character movement looks awkward, and combat as a result just feels very lackluster.

3) GW2 showed me that cash shops can work. I was extremely skeptical about any sort of cash shop in an MMO until I got into GW2 and saw how the cash shop allowed for players to keep the game funded without being able to buy super gear that blows competition out of the water. However, a lot of that comes from the gear system in GW2 that doesn’t make gear rewards ridiculous like WoW and other similar MMOs.

4) Leveling doesn’t prevent grouping with friends. There is no ‘tagging’ of mobs and you can always join with a friend, regardless of their level, by the level scaling system. It’s really nice knowing that if I had a friend pick up GW2 tomorrow, we could play together instantly without me having to roll a new alt and keep up to his leveling pace.

5) PvP and the mists. I love that I can play a character of any profession in PvP instantly without having to spend tons of time leveling a new character and gearing them. Also, I love being able to try out new gear sets, runes, sigils, etc. without having to invest a ton of time farming for them. This makes finding a new build for PvP so much more enjoyable. I wish more games would have a PvP system like this.

Zietlogik.6208:

Dahkeus.8243:

Personally, I think this may be a fun option for sPvP since the possibilities of anything outside of point capture is looking…unlikely. I always thought this was one of the many things that made GW1 PvP so interesting (in Hall of Heroes) since it adds an extra layer of strategy.

In the dev livestream about PvP map creation they talked a bit about having more game-modes that didn’t involve capture points at all, and even had some sneak-peeks at some of the maps they have been brainstorming.

Cool! A 3-team match would still work with other game modes though. =D

Add Runes of the Traveler please!

Personally, I think this may be a fun option for sPvP since the possibilities of anything outside of point capture is looking…unlikely. I always thought this was one of the many things that made GW1 PvP so interesting (in Hall of Heroes) since it adds an extra layer of strategy.

Yup, instead of having dungeons with mechanics that make ranged dangerous, we have a game where players get shamed for trying any spec that doesn’t involve humping an enemy’s leg.

Pretty much the best guide on which food to use for a zerker build:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/86597-dps-food-guide-for-dungeons-and-fractals/

Travlane.5948:

Chicago Jack.5647:

Travlane.5948:

[…]it was close.

Lol! No it wasn’t!

Jumper had about MAYBE 40% hp..prolly less to the rangers 10% before he finished him off. the ranger was good from what im hearing. but 1 mistake would have equaled death for jumper. 1 knockdown….1 stun… blind or w.e. ….. it was a good fight and if it wasnt for BV who knows what would have happend. but 40% to 10% is still a close fight before jumper finished him

Agreed with this. Running around with the lowest health pool in the game and using a zerker amulet makes health disappear fast. Close fights with thieves are decided on evades, not on % of health.

Qaelyn.7612:

Well I’ve certainly done a lot of dying.

I appreciate the advice and know it’s true in a general sense. I ask a lot about builds because this is difficult enough without adding poor build choices into the mix. I also don’t have unlimited funds to keep buying and salvaging gear.

I generally use the approach you mentioned in MMOs, but with thief I’ve been lagging so far behind in terms of both killing and surviving that I’ve felt I needed more help. It’s not from a lack of effort, and I really haven’t skipped the basics. I’m just.. not very good at it.

It takes a lot of time, so be patient and don’t give up. Personally, I tried a lot of the popular meta builds early on and gave up on them because I wasn’t able to utilize them well enough and died a lot. However, I abandoned the glassy meta builds and just found something that matched what I needed better and was able to stay on my feet. Once I got used to playing with a build like that and got more accustomed to the different weaponsets, I revisited the meta builds I had tried earlier and noticed a night and day difference.

Don’t be afraid to take a more defensive amulet/gearset early on and don’t be afraid to try a more defensive build. Play like that for a while and gradually adapt or move to different builds as you feel comfortable. While the thief class doesn’t juggle a ton of abilities like an engi or ele, it is still a tough class to play since it’s very squishy and has very little passive defense. Other classes can absorb hits and shrug off conditions a lot easier, so don’t worry if you spend a lot of time with your face on the ground.

The more you play, the more natural everything will feel. Before you know it, you’ll be able to perfectly time your stealths, dodge incoming stuns, and dive in and out of combat exactly when you need to.

I think the only time I use Death Blossom is when I’m bored and want to do a backflip 1080 (the animation for this skill, particularly on a human, is ridiculous).

If I ever use this skill in combat, it’s a complete accident.

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

I made thief mainly for wvw and start to think use it somewhere else, how thief in pve? Can i keep using full zerk? Or better stick with my necro/war for pve?

I assume you’re talking about dungeons and will reply in that regard.

Thieves are a great contribution to a party when played right. S/P makes tearing through trash easy since you can keep a blind field down 100% of the time. This is particularly powerful when line-of-sighting enemies to stack them. Stealth allows groups to skip through a lot of content as well and is particularly beneficial on some dungeons (ex: the keg run to blow up the gate in CM Exp).

Thieves also bring some awesome single target damage to clear through bosses in a breeze and if your group is organized enough to drop a fire field before a fight, you can spam a blast finisher to get your group at 25 stacks of might. In unorganized pugs, rezzing with shadow’s refuge often makes the difference between a wipe or success.

That being said, thieves are very, very squishy. Running a full berserk thief is much, much harder than running a full berserk warrior or guardian. If you’re not comfortable with this…then you may want to roll with another class.

Qaelyn.7612:

Thanks, that’s useful stuff.

I don’t really have the skills yet for thief in PvP, was using it mostly to test builds I hope to use in WvW, and I get the caveats.

The problem for me with Yishis’s build is that, bluntly, I’m not good enough to make it work. I don’t have the reflexes and coordination, and don’t know enough about other characters’ strengths and weaknesses yet. I might try going back to the condition build, though I will need to get some better gear to make that work.

If you do try a D/P build, you may want something with a deep investment in Shadow Arts as it’s generally more forgiving than a glass burst build. Tessa Avery has a good guide on the GuildWars2Guru.com forums:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/82333-tessa-averys-daggerpistol-shadow-burst-builds/

Just be aware that this build will be nerfed a bit on Dec 10th.

Shadows Arts builds are generally a bit more forgiving since they give you much more survivability. However, Dagger/Pistol can still be a bit strange to get used to since stealthing with it isn’t as straight forward as something like a D/D build. However, it can make surviving against melee specs a lot easier through the blind field.

Also, one tip I would give for anyone who is new to thief PvP is to not underestimate the short bow. A lot of people generally picture thieves as melee characters that pop out of stealth, but good utilization of the short bow is huge for so many fights. It should also be your main weapon for most big team fights since a squishy thief diving into a fight full of AoE is a recipe for failure. Tessa gives some good advice in short bow use in the guide above as well as in this S/D guide. Both are worth reading through briefly, even if you don’t end up using the spec.

Jumper,

First of all, thanks for sharing your thoughts on these changes with us. It’s awesome to have someone on the high end of things to give some perspective.

However, I was going to mention that I think Infusion of Shadow and the SA tree is still in a good place for WvW on D/D thieves without any changes. A D/D thief rarely uses a stealth while stealthed, so the change doesn’t really hurt them there. If you want a good example of this, take a look at Yishis’ build.

For sPvP, I can see how it hurts, but it seems like SA builds were often overshadowed by glass D/P builds anyways (25/30/0/0/15 or 10/30/0/0/30).

Anyways, going forward, what thief build do you think you’ll be leaning towards on Dec 10th?

Be aware that a good build in WvW is not the same as a good build in sPvP. For example, Yishis’ build is hands down one of the best for WvW, but he even admits that it’s really badly designed for sPvP.

In sPvP, D/P builds overall tend to do better than D/D builds largely because the blind field performs so well with small scale environments and team fights.

Currently, the top tournament thief builds are either the S/D evade spam build (most popular atm, but will be nerfed kitten Dec 10th) or the D/P glass burst build (has two variants and will be buffed Dec 10th. Below are links to each of the builds:

S/D evade spam – http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-cF3F3;0Vwk0-J5JOFd0;9;49T-T-2;027A;128B;1UNk65;1KJG4KJG45Bv

D/P Burst Deadly Arts Variant – http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-c3RV;1RwV0-6-FOFd0;9;4OT;0E28-07A;43;05BW4;2G3G3G3G35Bn

D/P Burst Trickery Variant – http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-c3RV;1RwV0-6-FOFd0;9;49T;0T2;007A;436B5BW4;2G3G3G3G35Bb

It’s worth noting that the 25/30/0/0/15 is also your highest dps build in PvE if you use D/D instead of D/P.

Orpheal.8263:

You dream too much …

No such thing.

I missed that ‘y’ when I first read the title. It was quite disturbing.

Peow peow.2189:

Try have some fun with it while u can , rumor is they are deleting thiefs next patch as the class is too powerful.

Sword mainhand is getting a nerf, as is some other specs, but many other specs, including D/P and D/D will be getting a buff with the way initiative regen is changing.

Qaelyn.7612:

Okay I think I’m making myself go in circles with trying too many things.

The condition build doesn’t work for me. I’m sure it’s effective but it doesn’t “feel like a thief” to me.. too much dodging and kiting. Even if I die all the time I’d rather use stealth and backstab.

I think I want to stick with DD as primary toolset. PD looks useful as a mobility supplement and for kiting mobs or hitting from a distance.

So assuming I want to go DD+PD, what traits do I want? For an aggressive build, but a bit of toughness or other defense would be nice.

What types of gear should I use? Approximately, don’t need every piece spelled out. Just go with berserker and hope for the best?

Thanks.

Are you talking WvW? If so, a good rule of thumb is to get full Valkyrie for armor then get full berserker on trinkets. Yishis has a pretty good D/D WvW build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQNAoYVlUmiP3eS6E+5Ex2jd2Tiy9woJtpdFiKA-jUDB4fAYLLaksYIaUBgJPQpPEZslhFRjVXDT5SIS7CWFD1gjRr2mDQIABbBA-w

Here’s his latest video that shows how he uses it. Check out the ‘about’ section for some good additional info:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8Lh8Oogl6Y

JMar.3254:

Konu.1826:

Dahkeus.8243:

^ So true. If the dec 10th patch does anything about this, I’ll actually make a legitimate return to my ranger (my first 80 and the main class I played for about the first 6 months or so).

I wouldn’t hold my breath. Not more than a week or 2 ago there was a dev commenting in a thread saying there are no plans for changing ranger sword aa. I can’t be bothered to search said thread, though.

Jon Peters said that the sword is working as intended. They designed it that way since it’s a leap, and no other movement skills ( like warrior dash or whirlwind) can evade during it, therefore it will not be changed.

He also said he likes it that way, which I think is the real reason.

Yes, but he also said that he was exploring something that may make the 1h sword “less frustrating”.

Source:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/December-10th-Ranger-changes/page/7#post3155858
and
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/December-10th-Ranger-changes/page/8#post3162014

I’m not holding my breath over it, but I can certainly hope with a bit of optimism since it’s at least being looked at, finally.

Tarkan.5609:

Hey guys
lately I fought against some thieves in solo q that were running s/p and using their 3 to stun and damage me and so on – do you know what build they are running? Is it becoming famous?
Because i may want to try it out

Thx
Tarkan

I wouldn’t recommend S/P right now since the stun is so short and is in a pretty bad place since the nerf to the Sigil of Paralyzation, but if you do want to try it, 10/30/0/0/30 is your best bet. Here’s a link to a good guide for the build:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/83957-tessa-averys-swordpistol-shortbow-daze-burst-build/

The ability to spectate high end PvP in GW1 was awesome.

Sadly, in GW2, you only really get to see random pugs duke it out in hotjoins unless you are able to join some top end PvPers in a custom match.

Unless you’re in a group that provides 0 boons, I doubt it since the LB forces you to be far away from your team (boons have a 600 range) or causes you to lose a ton of damage when you’re close.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Rangers are a slight change of their sword auto attack away from being the second most popular and important dungeon class.

^ So true. If the dec 10th patch does anything about this, I’ll actually make a legitimate return to my ranger (my first 80 and the main class I played for about the first 6 months or so).

There’s an awesome video by Coloxus that shows a lot of small tricks with thief that make a big difference, particularly in PvP. Knowing stuff like this will make a big difference in your overall performance.

Guardian.

If I ended up in a party of 5 guardians, I’d be happy (assuming they weren’t running some AH defensive build).