Guild Wars 2

Claws for necro and ranger but it would be considered a 2H weapon.

Necro – Would be a ranged weapon, similar to axe.

Ranger – Would be a melee weapon.

Why 2H? Currently auto attack is a main hand animation. This is so you can swap out the off hand and still keep the same animation. By making it a 2H weapon, the animations would make use of both claws and not just the one on the main hand.

Double Bladed Sword for mesmer and thief.

It would be a dueling weapon and so I find these two best represent dueling professions.

For the Thief:

Auto attack would be a slash, slash, jab.

2nd Skill: Throw it at the target like a spear and the skill changes to the second stage.

2nd Skill: Second stage which is available for 3 seconds, teleport to the target (acts as an evade) and rip the weapon back out.

3rd Skill: Stick it in the ground, spin around it with your foot out kicking up to 5 enemies within melee range and knocking them down.

4th Skill: Throw it with a spin hitting enemies along the path of travel. Upon throwing it, you teleport 600 units facing the direction you came from. The speed and timings on the teleport are such that you teleport after you throw and you show up in time to catch it.

5th Skill: Whirlwind, reflects ranged attacks and blocks melee.

Sifu.6527:

Deamhan.9538:

Brassnautilus.2941:

Deamhan.9538:

I know this might be difficult to grasp but stealth is not a thief’s F# ability. It is not the thief’s equivalent to virtues, or adrenaline, or pet.

that sentence made no logical sense what-so-ever
there is no magic buttons in this game. Majority of escapes and cc are not related to the F buttons.
the rest of your little post carries no meaning

Wow are you that dense? What the hell are you talking about “magic button”? I’d say puff puff pass but that kitten you are on is killing some serious brain cells. Listen, if you didn’t know what I meant by “F#”, you could’ve just asked.

They (the person I quoted in the previous post) asked about traps that can restrict/nullify other profession’s F# abilities. F# means F1, F2, F3, etc. These are the game’s default key bind. A necro toggles in and out of shadow form with F1. A mesmer shatters using F1, F2, and F3. Virtues are like signets, where the ‘active effect’ is used by pressing F1, F2 and F3. Ranger’s pets are commanded and swapped using F1, F2, F3 and F4. Thieves’ F1’s primary function is to steal and then use the item stolen.

So the only thing that makes no logical sense, is requesting traps that severally limit and/or disable other profession’s F# abilities because a thief’s stealth (which is not their F# ability) can now be hard countered by a trap.

The thief F# ability is to 1 steal and 2, use/benefit the stolen item. When stealing from another thief, the stolen item will allow the user to stealth. The trap is a hard counter to this F#.

Good try though.

Oh wow, talk about a stretch on that one. Sorry but if you follow the example of locking the pet, then that is on par with locking out the ability to steal or use any stolen items. Preventing say, wolf’s fear, is more in line with preventing the thief from using a particular stolen item. I don’t even know how it would compare to the other professions. Maybe with warrior it would prevent the use of F1 on just one weapon which is a far cry from allowing them to gain adrenaline. Or, prevent the use of a single virtue for guardians but doesn’t block the passive. This is a far cry from “locking all the guardian virtues”.

But please, grasp at some more straws while you’re already at it.

Brassnautilus.2941:

Deamhan.9538:

I know this might be difficult to grasp but stealth is not a thief’s F# ability. It is not the thief’s equivalent to virtues, or adrenaline, or pet.

that sentence made no logical sense what-so-ever
there is no magic buttons in this game. Majority of escapes and cc are not related to the F buttons.
the rest of your little post carries no meaning

Wow are you that dense? What the hell are you talking about “magic button”? I’d say puff puff pass but that kitten you are on is killing some serious brain cells. Listen, if you didn’t know what I meant by “F#”, you could’ve just asked.

They (the person I quoted in the previous post) asked about traps that can restrict/nullify other profession’s F# abilities. F# means F1, F2, F3, etc. These are the game’s default key bind. A necro toggles in and out of shadow form with F1. A mesmer shatters using F1, F2, and F3. Virtues are like signets, where the ‘active effect’ is used by pressing F1, F2 and F3. Ranger’s pets are commanded and swapped using F1, F2, F3 and F4. Thieves’ F1’s primary function is to steal and then use the item stolen.

So the only thing that makes no logical sense, is requesting traps that severally limit and/or disable other profession’s F# abilities because a thief’s stealth (which is not their F# ability) can now be hard countered by a trap.

Kain Francois.4328:

How about a trap removing clones from mesmers, preventing warriors from gaining adrenline, disabled pet on ranger, and locking all the guardian virtues.

Yeah, this is pretty dumb. Why discriminate against such an important feature for a single class?

How about because the traps don’t stop your ability to steal. I know this might be difficult to grasp but stealth is not a thief’s F# ability. It is not the thief’s equivalent to virtues, or adrenaline, or pet.

[sarcasm]“Use interupts, stuns, and CC man. Anticipate their impending use and counter with a supply stealing trap, man. L2p, man.”[/sarcasm]

*Quotations used due to thieves commonly falling back on CC and anticipating them as counters for stealth.

**For effect, read the sarcastic part while pretending to be a surfer with a slight mental condition that affects speech.

Now that thieves have to follow their own advice as a CCM (counter-counter measure), it will be interesting to see how well it works for them.

Thief for roaming.

You spec for dps, you have your stealth for survivability, and they have the best mobility.

To break it down further…

They, like any profession, can spec to maximize their damage output. They have stealth as their means of survival (and to maximize their damage output). The thing is that their spec’ing for dps has very little impact on their stealth where as other professions that spec for survivability do so at a cost to dps.

As for mobility, they have a trait for +50% movement while in stealth. They have numerous gap closers and openers as well as plenty of evades as well as way to break cripple, chilled and immobilize. It fact, many of their skills do multiple things and not just one.

They also have the best escape. Again, stealth. Gonna lose the fight? Stealth and run. You will be able to stalemate against 3 to 5 opponents as a thief. You won’t be able to with a ranger.

However ranger for zerg.

You can put your team between you and the enemy, spec for damage output, longbow with +5% range and you’ll be burning down people within the enemy zerg. Literally if you use sun spirit.

However, expect thieves to sneak up on you and pretty much 1 shot you.

We can not deal with thieves. Any traps or barrage can not simply do enough in 4 seconds (less if you factor in reaction times, cast times, lag, etc.) to make it worth it for them to leave refuge before it ends. I’d go as far as saying that no single profession can except maybe necro if spec’ed for it. Sure some professions (including necro w/ staff and skill #5) can fear/knock them out of it but all we have is the wolf. Unfortunately I found out the hard way tonight that the wolf will not use F2 when you tell it too unless it has a target. When the thief uses SR, the wolf loses them as a target.

The only problem with the sword is actually a problem that any profession with common skill effects face. Dodge doesn’t cancel your current action and allow you to perform the dodge roll. Fix this and it’s good to go.

Longbow needs to be worked better. Its only cripple you can see coming, is on too long a cd for a skill that the ranger has to remain still and channel. Rapid Fire will hurt your dps if you use it when available, provided you are getting top damage from Long shot due to range. It doesn’t produce any combo fields (something rangers are lacking with all their weapon skills).

The pet’s auto attack needs to be something that can be performed while on the move.

Alright then, how about this…

Our pets instead return to our sides. They can’t attack, can’t use F2.

But…

They are invulnerable and can’t even be targeted. Unstoppable Lick Wounds ftw.

AlexRD.7914:

Thread reviving should be insta ban

And let me guess, you’re also one of those people who’ll say “Use the search function, there is already a thread about this”.

There is really just three things I’d like to see at this point.

Longbow: Unless you trait for it, it has the same range as the shortbow but it’s out performed by the shortbow.

Pets: They just need to be able to hit a moving target. Kiting the pet should be about keeping them at range (cc the pet and/or speed buff yourself) and not about maintaining a normal run speed so you can run out of range in the time it take for the pet to do their auto attack.

Pets Again: There is no good reason why pets can’t dodge when the ranger does. Period.

You are spot on, OP.

With regards to giving the pet more movement speed, this won’t actually work. The problem is that they stop to perform an action and as long as the target is running at normal combat speed, the pet will miss. The game doesn’t determine if it’s going to be a hit or miss based on range until the end of the cast to allow the target to get out of harms way in the cast time. If there were no cast times, we would never be able to time dodges and evades.

As players, there are some moves we can perform while we run (I can run while I auto attack) and there are some moves we can’t move to perform (if you move while barrage is casting, it’ll cancel the cast and cut the duration short).

When it comes to a pounce, I can understand the pet stopping first then jumping. Mind you the jump should be far enough to cover the distance that opened up between the pet and target provided that;

A. The initial distance was melee range, and
B. The target is not moving any faster than normal combat speed.

However, there are other attacks that should be performed while on the move just as players do.

Or if the pet has to stop, then they can change what determines a hit or miss.

Is the target within range when the attack started casting?
Did the target dodge, block, evade, etc. during the cast time?

If the first answer is yes, proceed to second question. If no, then the attack missed.
If the second answer is yes, then the attack missed. If no, then the attack hit.

Pet’s still stop to perform actions, players can still use their dodge and evades, and pets no longer miss when they shouldn’t be.

As for kiting, this is a matter of staying far enough ahead so that the pet doesn’t try to perform the action or if it does perform the action (F2 ability) then you just answered no to the first question above and the attack misses.

Daemon.4295:

Deamhan.9538:

The class being said to be good in spvp, no doubt, is no more than people simply parroting what someone else said. The source of which is probably a number of people, who you could count on just one hand, who have done well with the class in spvp. Just because 5 out of dozens have made a good go, doesn’t make the class good.

This is just outright insulting to the community, how can you claim that players with hundreds of hours of spvp under their belts are basing their claims off hearsay rather than personal experience? Are you suggesting that they persevere in playing a weak class, blinded to their poor performance, simply because they once heard that some top tier teams roll with a ranger or two? I consistently achieve pretty good success rates in basic pug play with a ranger, and I’m certainly no pvp guru. Are you counting me on one of your hands?

Since your name doesn’t show up on the leader boards, no I’m not counting you.

Stice.5204:

Deamhan.9538:

Got any videos of 1 ranger vs 3 of anything in WvW provided they are not upleveled, undergeard, and/or bad at pvp?

There is no build for any class in this game that can win 1v3 against enemies who aren’t bad at PvP, but a well-played ranger with a roaming build can at least escape from that situation much of the time.

Lol thief says hello.

Also what is this tier ranking on worlds? Is there a list somewhere?

Zikory.6871:

Now that this has a proper title I’ll make a comment.

I agree that the sentries should be able to kill unguarded yaks. Though I wouldn’t want them to nerf the defense on the yaks, rather buff the damage on sentries a bit.

That’s pretty much what I was thinking.

There you go. Lol.

Just a few things that I woudn’t mind seeing added to WvW.

Right now dolyaks can be upgraded but even when they are not upgraded, they can not be killed by those single elite guard posts. These should also be upgradeable. Also the balance needs to shift so that if both are at the same level upgrade, the guard is capable of killing the dolyak.

The supervisors at camps can give up to two badges and they are vet status. The champ status dolyak won’t give you one? I say, the upgrade for the guard post should be to make them start as a normal mob, then go up to vet, then up to champ. The dolyak should be down graded to a vet and the upgrades remain the same (vet guards).

One of the upgrades for the supply camps should be to upgrade the supervisor to champ status.

Now here is the break down for badges.

A vet boss (the dolyak would be a vet boss but the vet guards protecting are not) give you one badge while the champs give you two. When I say champs, I don’t mean what the dolyak is now. I’m talking [group even] champs. The kind that a 5 man party would take down and not just some single player roaming around.

Also by having the sentries being able to kill a dolyak at the same upgrade level, it put a greater need to have control of these. The flag symbol should also get the cross swords when being attacked.

Also with regards to defeating another person. This should be a flat 1 badge but they should have a better drop rate.

CC does not work. CC is a just an auto response by someone who is straight up ignorant to the cc capabilities of the other professions.

The only things that can prevent active stealth is daze and stun. Daze still lets the thief stay mobile. Neither one of these will stop passive stealthing nor will it stop 0 cast time skills (at least one of which puts the thief in stealth). The thief gets a utility skill that is an evade that removes immobilize, cripple and chill. It also restores half their inititive. They also get a healing skill that has the bonus of being an evade and removes immobilize, cripple and chill (this is all three and is not a ‘one out of three’). This doesn’t include their other ways such as 1 condition removed upon entering stealth and another every three seconds.

Let’s not forget that most CC’s require you to have a target. The few ground targetable cc there are, require you (due to cast times on most) to lead your target even when they crippled or chilled and, well, without knowing which direction the thief decided to run in after stealthing, you can’t properly lead them.

This also doesn’t include the gap openers and closers that are available (as part of the build) that allow the thief to reposition without the other person knowing where. Openers and closers that work even when immobalized, cripple and chilled. If they don’t have a cast time, daze and stun won’t stop them either.

Stuns are too few, with too long a CD to prevent a thief from entering stealth, and escaping, long enough to take them down. Not to mention them packing stun breakers.

The survivability that a thief gets from their stealth is comparable to a tank spec. This makes them the only class that can spec for dps (glass cannon) and still have the survivability of another class’ tank spec.

Now, that people do that, they are under the misconception that thieve’s are squishy and without stealth and couldn’t survive anything other than a 1v1 encounter.

Umm, no glass cannon can survive anything other than a 1v1 encounter, why should thieves?

What’s funny are people saying “thieves are fine, l2p”, are also saying that thieves are strong or even OP in 1v1.

Umm, if they are OP in 1v1, THEY ARE OP!

Equally skilled players, with equally geared and lvled characters should have 50/50 odds regardless of professions involved. That’s balance. That means that the only way for the odds to shift, is if one player to be more skilled than the other. The more skilled player having better odds at winning, what a concept.

Instead we have average players with 50/50 odds against good players so long as the average player is using a thief and the good player isn’t.

The best part is, we have the thief community saying to roll a thief, people are doing exactly that but because they are playing without the bias, they are only getting their initial points confirmed.

Now when they post, it is a more compelling argument. Not to mention, ANet views the data. People roll a thief, find out what they were missing all this time and stick with it. On ANet’s side, they see a major disproportionate representation of the classes within the game. That is something that will speak louder than any person’s posts on the forums.

I say these thief only people should roll a necro, ranger, or eng and see how well they do with their wvw roam.

Funny, I don’t recall saying that the thief was running away? I suppose ‘hunt down’ is poor wording on my part. I refer to trying to figure out where they are while in stealth as ‘hunting’. This doesn’t imply them running away as I would’ve said ‘track down’ instead of ‘hunt down’. I’ll delete the phrase.

CRrabbit.1284:

Since last patch, I think ranger is now the best roamer in WvW. In open field, a well played ranger is just simply unkillable in any 1v1 and in most 1v2 and 1v3 situation.
For zerg surfing, maybe ranger can’t contribute much, but who cares since everyone is just follow zerg brainlessly.

Got any videos of 1 ranger vs 3 of anything in WvW provided they are not upleveled, undergeard, and/or bad at pvp?

Looks like people are farming and don’t even realize they are farming. To them, they are playing the game, but to someone else, it’s farming.

For me, farming stems from the concept of a farm. Each zone is a farmer’s field and what you are farming are “crops”.

I stopped and just looked out at a frozen lake. I saw a nice flat plot of land with ice worms sticking up from the ground like corn stalks waiting to be chopped down and harvested.

This was easier to see because it is on such a small scale but, it then becomes obvious for other things when you scale it up. Ore nodes that are scattered across the zone you’re in.

The concept then sort of branches off from there. What are you doing when you are harvesting those ice worms? You are killing the same mob over and over and over. Why? Because it’s not like you need just one or two of something they have (crafting material as an example), you need dozens of it.

So that basically includes repetative action. I would go as far to say, excessive repetative action.

So this includes running the same dungeons or doing the same events over and over. Even if you mix it up and do only each dungeon once and do a couple events (just doing each event once), well if you do this list of things on a daily basis, you are farming them.

In most games, if you want to make an outfit, you will have to farm (grind being another term for farm really) the materials. Or you can buy them off the trading house but then you have to ask, “how did they get put up for sale?” At some point someone had to farm them.

As much as people don’t like to mix reality with fantasy games, sometime realism is the best solution. I don’t need to kill 10 dolyaks to get 10 steaks. If I kill a cow in RL, I got multiple steaks, roasts, ribs, etc. Even enough leather to make anywhere from 1/2 to 1 full leather jacket depending on size.

Though, I suppose what I would like is a MMORPS. That is, a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Simulator.

Venereus.9473:

Rangers is good in sPvP and great at open world PvE and WvW roaming, but sucks hard in dungeons and fractals.

And yet, I can solo most dungeons with mine. Haven’t tried fractals yet.

McFribble.2349:

TheGuy.3568:

TL;DR

Thief is OP in WvW but…

Honestly, can someone explain to me why a Thief is considered OP in WvW that doesn’t relate to 1v1’s, running away (real helpful), or ninja capping areas from a blind enemy team?

I should really set up a youtube account. That way I can record just how often I see a 5 man try to kill a thief, unsuccessfully. The only other class I’ve seen stand up to a group like that is the mesmer.

I was wondering as to what method do people use when they create a build for their character.

What starting point do you use?

I was thinking that it doesn’t really matter too much where you start as long as you start somewhere specific. Like a weapon set and the skill set that comes with it or with a particular utility set. Maybe even use your F# ability as the starting point. Basically, for me, the starting point is the center for which the build is based around. This includes some concepts such as condition, or spike w/ crit, or sustain with power, etc. Defensively it could be dodges and evades, lots of toughness and/or healing, etc.

Where do you go from there?

Do you then use utilities to compliment the weapon set (if the weapon set is the focal point of the build) and use traits to complement these or do you use traits and then pick utilities that work with the traits?

Gear.

Do you pick gear that compliments the above or do you use gear to simply get your numbers (stats) where you think they should be?

The class being said to be good in spvp, no doubt, is no more than people simply parroting what someone else said. The source of which is probably a number of people, who you could count on just one hand, who have done well with the class in spvp. Just because 5 out of dozens have made a good go, doesn’t make the class good.

There is spvp, WvW and PvE and yet they balance around spvp which is wrong. They should be balancing around WvW. Why? In pvp, they place certain limitations that can mean the difference in a win or lose in WvW. Also, spv kitten trictly pvp with no pve element. WvW is pvp but with nothing different to the profession from PvE and there is also PvE in WvW. Thus WvW is a PvE/PvP hybrid situation allowing the players to make use of everything.

If they balance the professions around concept of 1v1 within WvW, then the rest would, more or less, fall into place.

I too think the ability to put it on auto would be good but I also think they have the wrong skill as the F2 skill. The skill that should be the F2 is their Quickening Screech.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Culling

Now it is my understanding that, this limitation is placed on the number of characters that are rendered within your visible range. Which means, you will see the dot of everyone on your map (on your side). Those that are in your party are a different shade and size dot. I only see his party which is comprised of 2 mesmer and 3 thieves in total. lol.

I do, as well as a razer naga.

I use mostly default keybinds.

Tab (button 1 by default) is select target which I think is also default for the game.

Q (button 2 by default) is to swap weapon groups.

WASD as default movement and on the game pad are shown to have ^, <, v, and >. they are buttons 3, 7, 8, and 9 respectively.

E is 180 turn and R is toggle between walk/run which is nice since despite run speed boosts, everyone walks at the same speed including event npc’s. So you can walk with them in between encounters.

F is all set to default (both ingame and game pad).

I also bound the city clothes toggle to one of the bottom keys (either C or V) and I have something else bound as well so I make use of both. I can’t remember off hand what that other action is.

Z and X I don’t use simply because it feels odd to try and use them. I also don’t use caps lock.

I use numbers 1 through 0 on the mouse for skills/utilities and changed F# to Shift + #. The shift key by default on the game pad is right under my little (pinky) finger (button 11).

Map is the button above the D-pad and jump is the button under my thumb (below the D-pad).

The d-pad is set up for macros. We are allowed to have macros as long as it is one action per macro.

I set up the arrow keys on the keyboard for movement as well and have alt as dodge. I’d have to be home to check what the macro code is but basically I have the d-pad set up to cause me to dodge roll in the direction of my choosing.

I can be strafing right, dodge roll back to the left and then continue on strafing to the right without ever taking my finger off button 9.

What allows this is that if you strafe right and, without lifting your finger off the button, press the button to strafe the other way, you character will begin to strafe the other way. Once you lift your finger to stop strafing that other way, your character will then go back to strafing to the right.

However, by using two adjacent movement keys, you actually have 8 directions of movement. So if I’m moving forward and dodge right, I’ll actually dodge on an angle since the movement to the right doesn’t negate the forward movement.

It is then possible to actually setup a dodge macros for all 8 directions.

The mesmer will be next on the chopping block after thief.

I tried to find a video of a warrior holding his/her own against a small zerg like that…

All I saw were 1vs1 videos.

Stealth is what allows the thief to do this.

They have a stow mechanic yet they patch the game so that our pets can run through a group of enemies and not pull them. Kinda makes stow obsolete.

The solution is actually simple…

Switch +healing with boon duration on the trait lines and cause stow to give the ranger an appropriate bonus to the ranger’s attributes to compensate for the pet not being there.

That wouldn’t be an overhaul of the profession. We’d be getting better trait options and an improvement on an existing feature that would cause the profession to be more appealing to a wider range of players.

Oh, and I don’t give a rat’s kitten about anyones obsessive need for exclusitivity. That’s their insecurity and not mine.

I’ve run MM. The difference between them is that we actually rely on our pets damage to put us on par with the other professions. A MM doesn’t. Their minions deal damage that is extra to their, already on par, damage.

What are you talking about F1->F3? F3 pulls them out of the fight which has nothing to do with the issue. F2 is the skill they come to. This depends on the skill. Some skills, like a leap to make the target bleed, will miss. Others, AoE with beyond melee range, will work. Thus this only enhances the issue. F1 is the attack command which pretty much defines the issue since the issue is the pet having to stop moving to use their basic attack.

I don’t think this new trap thing is the proper solution. Sure it can work with people littering the battlefield in anti cloak fields but all this is is ANet trying to find a solution without directly addressing the issue because if they did then that would be them pretty much admitting that they f’ed up with regards to the stealthing system.

I think they should grow some balls and deal with it directly.

The thief’s defining ability is stealing, not stealth. Stealth has just become the end-all-be-all thing to do with them for a number of reasons.

While a thief doesn’t reset themselves every time they stealth, with the right traits (which are part of the build) a thief can get 75% reset. Which basically means (assuming they enter stealth every time their hp drop to 25%), they will get back 50% of their total hp (if not more) and will have 75% of the conditions gone (those not stripped will simply expire and the increase to hp is after the fact of damaging conditions doing their thing).

They’ve said they want the thief to be burst but that burst needs to have adequate time in between. DPS stands for damage per second which is derived by dividing the damage done over a specified period of time.

Having the thief be burst is fine, so long as their dps is comparitive to the other professions.

The two questions are;

How much damage is each burst?
How much time does it take to do multiple burst?

You have to consider multiple burst because if you take the time of just one, then the dps is going to be quite high. You need to factor in the time in between bursts and to do this, you consider the total time to perform multiple burst.

So, for example sake, if each burst is 5k and you can perform 3 burst in 15sec, then that works out to be 1k dps.

Now that you have the dps the final question you ask is, is this in line with the other professions?

So let’s say, if the other professions spec for damage, they too can reach 1k per sec. The next thing you have to compare is the thief’s survivability to the other professions with that dps spec. You can not compare the survivability of the 1k dps thief to the tank specs of the other professions because if the other profession can only match the dps if spec’ed for it and can only match the survivability if spec’ed for it, then you basically just showed that the thief gets the best of both.

So you compare the thief, whose spec gives them 1k/s damage, to that of the other professions with specs that give them 1k/s damage.

So let’s say that the thief can do that dps and shadow dance around in a fight all day long. Is this right? The way I see it, a thief that spec’s to stealth the way they do is their version of a bunker.

If the other professions can not deal 1k dps while spec’ed bunker, neither should the thief.

Thnx. I’ll have to wait to get home in order to see the link. I think the work network blocks the function so the link takes me to the page but only shows a blank build.

1420 / 4 sec = 355 hp/s + any additional hp/s from any other sources. CC’ing them in SR is actually doing them a favor since they want to be in it.

Also, the SR skill is for 4 seconds, minus the time it takes you to place AoE DoT. Travel time is as little as already being there up to 2 seconds away for an average of 1 second. Then there is the cast time. Average of 1/2 a second. Then there is reaction time that I would also say averages 1/2 a second (reaction time includes ping as well as the players time to react). 2 out of the 4 seconds of SR is done by the time you get just one AoE down.

The only other tactic that you can counter is Black Powder and Heart Seeker combo which combos both jumping out of and back into the field. Here CC’ing the smoke field would work, oh wait, no it won’t. They just don’t have to jump back into it. It only lasts for 3 seconds and will only stack time if you are traited to stay in stealth for longer than what the combo gives you by default. While the increased time is nice, it’s not something you depend on.

Now they are putting in traps that players can use to create an anti stealth field. Sounds to me like they are coming to realize that they F’ed up when it came to how they worked stealth in and now they are coming up with round-about ways to counter it.

Honestly, they just needed to change the combo field on Black Powder to something that doesn’t grant stealth and reduce the stealth duration on SR.

I’m sorta at a loss as to where I want my ranger to be.

I was working towards a particular build and would like some input on it. I can’t link to the build site right now so I’ll lay it out the best I can.

30/10/30/x/x

Signet Mastery; Piercing Arrow/Eagle Eye (situational); and Signet of the Beastmaster

Pet’s Prowess

Natural Vigor; Vigorous Renewal; and Empathic Bond

Armor is Knights of the Dolyak

Longbow of accuracy (I can’t remember what prefix I went with)

Rabid Sword of accuracy and Rabid Torch (I can’t remember what suffix is on the torch but it increased precision, condition dmg and one other stat)

Trinkets are all Berzerker of the Knight (so Berzerker with Emeralds)

The pet of choice would be birds or cats for their high crit chance to take advantage of prowess.

Utilities are mostly signets.

Signet of Stone and Signet of the Hunt are both musts. The third I’m at a loss with. Should I go trap to get more out of condition damage? Also, is it any good to go with the flame trap if I already have bonfire? Go with a third Signet to take advantage of the grandmaster trait? Or should I go with something like “Protect Me” and maybe even change out Pet’s Prowess to something that benefits me and keeping the pet on passive and close by to use as a meat shield? Perhaps going with a wolf for the AoE fear, keep on passive and use protect me….

Or is this just a bad build in general?

The counter for it is simple. Kill the big glowing nature spirit. The elite has a long CD and the spirit is weak.

Very few professions have an AoE that can toss a thief out of Shadow’s Refuge. Most are single target based and require you to have a target. Shadow’s Refuge also heals for a decent amount per tick (per second) and this is in addition to the regen they already have for being in stealth. It would take a minimum of two condition build players to put down enough marks, traps, etc. to stack enough conditions to actually do any good.

Arcatar pretty much called out how it is. So at this point, NinjaEd, you are just trolling.

They regen for being out of combat because the pet was chasing but not hitting. If the pet attacks (hit or miss) or is hit, both the pet and ranger are now in combat. This also means that, unless you are attacking something (or even attacking the pet but missing for some reason) or being hit, you too will be considered out of combat and heal back up.

I have, with a BM tank build, sent my pet after up levels and have killed them by pet alone but this is rare as it tends to happen to those who are under geared (being up leveled) and/or they actually try and fight the pet to realize too late that the pet is stronger.

I also take advantage of the range and the lack for needing line of sight to use my pet to attack siege equipment (ie. trebs).

All you need to do, is run. Remember that if you strafe you are not running as fast as a forward run. A pet with an increase movement speed won’t change anything either. Since the pet has to stop to attack and there is an animation based cast time, so long as you are not crippled, immobilized, stunned, or chilled (did I miss any?), you will be out of range by the time the pet finishes with the cast time. Unfortunately our pets are very limited to being able to reduce movement speeds. Since, well, the skills that can have a cast time.

Manekk.6981:

Sebrent.3625:

Run pet on passive, press F1 while you have the Thief or correct Mesmer targeted … don’t press F1 again for that pet …

Your pet will now attack that Thief or correct Mesmer any time they are not stealthed no matter what they do. This is one of the beautiful aspects of the Ranger pet.

Are you sure this works for you? cause I changed from passive to aggressive pet strictly because my pet never resumed attacking stealthers otherwise, not that I haven’t had my fair share of buggy pets of course.

And on another note there’s little reason to have your pet on passive now since they can’t aggro anything that hasn’t already aggroed you and likewise if you recall your pet while in combat already he’ll stay there until you manually tell him to attack again even if he is on aggressive stance, atleast that’s how it works for me.

I think it might depend on what targeting option you have selected

CC is a straw man. It does not work.

I have seen on rare occasions, two thieves hold a stalemate vs 20+. I see one hold a stalemate against 5 or so consistently. I have yet to see, even bunker Guardians, hold a stalemate. Sure, I’ve seen them hold out for a few minutes but eventually they either went down, escaped somewhere (into a keep or tower), or had aid come to assist them.

Show me a video in WvW (not spvp) where a thief that is spec’ed and geared properly fails to hold their own against 5 people, and I’ll show you a dozen where they do.

Seeing is believing, and not reading some arrogant, conceited, and obviously biased and jaded post.

Speaking of seeing. There is nothing like cycling through targets in a zerg and seeing;

Thief, thief, mesmer, thief, ele, guardian, another thief, another mesmer.

People are naturally lazy and the stealth mechanic is certainly a low risk for high reward mechanic which is why they are the most represented class in WvW.

I’m leveling a thief and I’m just lvl 18 with it. Up level doesn’t mean anything. It just means I’m a lvl 80 who is only in masterwork quality gear (assuming it too becomes equal to wearing lvl 80 masterwork or else it is still lvl 14 masterwork) and only has 8 trait points to play with and haven’t unlocked the third utility slot skill or elite slot skill as well as not having unlocked the all the utility skills themselves yet.

Already I can go toe to toe and often down non up leveled and geared players (1 on 1). Provided they are not total bunker as I can only maintain the shadow dance for about a min.

Thank you Arcatar for being upfront and honest. Clearly most thief players are as deceitful as the the profession is and it is nice to see one that is not.

Cufufalating.8479:

Deamhan.9538:

Cufufalating.8479:

Interesting to watch One this I might recommend is when fighting thieves, it helps a lot if your pet is on aggresive stance. They will instantly re-find thieves when they unstealth and it makes it easier to track where they have gone. Would have avoided them res’ing the first time. Good job though ^^

Actually, if you have them on aggresive stance and you happen to attack something else when they stealth, your pet will switch to attack what you hit. So if the thief stealths and you hit rapid shot too late (a nice longbow skill that will continue to track a thief while in stealth) and you end up autotargeting (if you have it enabled) a Moa and hit the Moa with rapid shot instead, your pet will go after the Moa.

You want to put your pet on passive stance and tell it to attack the thief. This is when the pet will automatically re-engage the thief everytime they come out of stealth. Regardless of what you happen to be attacking. So you can use the pet to keep a thief on the defensive (somewhat) while you attack something else.

This is particularly useful against mesmers. While you will find yourself attacking one of the mirrors instead, your pet is not fooled and will go after the player. I only wish there was a key bind to target your pet’s target.

I wouldnt know, I dont use auto-targetting^^ Its true if an random NPC is attacking me as well (say a wolf) that my pet will go attack the NPC when the thief cloaks, but will immediately go back to the thief when they uncloak as long as you havent begun autoattacking a new target (which for me requires me to double click them).

Guess it just depends how your controls are set up and how you like to control your pet. The point is pets can be used to track thieves and, as you mentioned, mesmers.

Now we just need to get the word out. Put those thieves on the defensive.lol.

Olba.5376:

Deamhan.9538:

303 hp/s regen before gear and you say it as if that’s bad? As I said, delusional.

Well yes, it is bad, compared to what you’d get if you went full out Healing Power.

Fighting thieves in WvW they, quite literally, spend half the fight in stealth. In a 1 min fight, they will be in stealth 30s accumulative time. So let’s just look at the 303 hp/s. That’s 9k. Since they can pretty much keep up the shadow dance indefinitely (I’ve had encounters last a couple minutes with no sign of slowing down until other factors came in to disrupt the situation), then at least half hp is coming back unhindered.

FYI, a Warrior can easily get 320 hp/s regeneration and no one ever thinks that’s too high. In fact a lot of folk think it’s too low.

Also, I’d like to know what you consider good damage.

Well 806 damage every 7 seconds sure isn’t what I consider high. Not when Eviscerate is 1006 every 8/10s and Axe autoattack is 1,648 every 3.6s.

Note that I am not saying that CnD + Backstab doesn’t deal high damage. I’ve been hit for some 18,117 dmg by a good thief before I could do much. I’m just saying that the myth of a Thief that spends 50% of the time in stealth and deals massive dps doesn’t exist. After all, camping in stealth is the opposite of high dps.

A warrior is constantly visible, targetable and thus engageable. That’s the defining differance.

You know what, I don’t even have to reply to any of this directly. Show me a video of you holding a stalemate vs 5 players who are not up leved and are fully geared (I’m assuming your warrior is fully geared?) then we’ll talk. I have yet to see a warrior hold up against a 5 man in WvW. They can’t out heal the damage and can’t escape. I’ve seen thieves hold a stalemate against 5 mans consistantly in WvW.

Cufufalating.8479:

Interesting to watch One this I might recommend is when fighting thieves, it helps a lot if your pet is on aggresive stance. They will instantly re-find thieves when they unstealth and it makes it easier to track where they have gone. Would have avoided them res’ing the first time. Good job though ^^

Actually, if you have them on aggresive stance and you happen to attack something else when they stealth, your pet will switch to attack what you hit. So if the thief stealths and you hit rapid shot too late (a nice longbow skill that will continue to track a thief while in stealth) and you end up autotargeting (if you have it enabled) a Moa and hit the Moa with rapid shot instead, your pet will go after the Moa.

You want to put your pet on passive stance and tell it to attack the thief. This is when the pet will automatically re-engage the thief everytime they come out of stealth. Regardless of what you happen to be attacking. So you can use the pet to keep a thief on the defensive (somewhat) while you attack something else.

This is particularly useful against mesmers. While you will find yourself attacking one of the mirrors instead, your pet is not fooled and will go after the player. I only wish there was a key bind to target your pet’s target.

Yeah, the class basically needs an overhaul.

Longbow: This needs to be reworked. The only cripple it provides is with Barrage. It’s easy to interupt or avoid so long as the person(s) you are trying to use it on are paying attention to you. It’s also on a 30sec CD.

Barrage should be a fire field instead of cripple.

Hunter’s Shot should cripple and Point Blank Shot should cause vulnerability.

Long Range Shot should do the same damage regardless of range but should have a longer range than skills 2 through 5.

Rapid Fire needs a damage boost. As it is, there is no change in dps between Rapid Fire and Long Range Shot when at full range. This is just wrong.

Traits

It’s true that too many of our traits are for our pets alone. It wouldn’t be nearly as bad if they had the same or smilar effect on the ranger as well. As well as our skills. We have to invest 30 pts in our power trait line in order for the active effects of our signets to work on us too! We have to trait into having boons we recieve get applied to the pet as well. If we send our pet in while we stay back with a bow, we are out of range of the pet’s F2 (ie Fern Hound’s regen howl) and that trait that gives our pet boons that we recieve is only a one way street.

Pets

They can be killed and yet we need them to be on par with the others. We lose them and we basically suffer a massive performance hit. It would be different if the pet allowed us to out perform the others while the pet is in the fight, since the increased performance comes at a cost of having to micro manage it or lose it. You can’t cc or kill a Guardian’s virtues.

I’d be content with 120% performance with the pet and only a 80% performance without. This way, we are sub par without the pet in the fight but we are above par with the pet in the fight. Any boons that the pet can provide (either itself or nearby party) should automatically benefit the ranger regardless of range.

Right now pets stop moving to attack. There is a cast time on these attacks which are represented by an animation. I’d much rather see (especially on their basic attack) no cast time but instead a CD represented by the same animation. Visually on screen, the pet’s behavior wouldn’t change. They would get in range, stop moving and swipe. The difference would be that the damage numbers would pop up before the swipe instead of after. This would also mean that a moving target can’t just move out of range during the cast time of the skill. In order for the opponent to kite your pet, they actually have to maintain distance which means actively cc’ing the pet as it should be.

Response time to commands. This is another issue that needs to be worked out. If I tell the pet to use its F2, it should stop what it’s doing (in other words the command should interupt the pet’s current action) and use the ability.

Pet pathing also needs to be improved. Why can’t my pet recognize the door way to towers and keeps? So my pet can actually run out. During siege defense, rangers are basically at a 40% performance hit (dps hit) you basically have to go out, tell your pet to attack and then go back in but now it will take you time to get back up on the wall and in that time, chances are your pet will almost be dead and you will have to swap. Birds should just be able to fly down from the wall since, well, they can fly.

Also, pets are treated poorly. If we are suppose to have a bond with our pets, then the mechanics does a poor job at allow us to bond with our pet. Constantly having to swap between the two selected pets, and swap between what our two active pets are going to be.

What if instead of the current pet selection/use system, we had the following. You select on the right which pet you want to use. On the left, where the currently selected pets go, you instead pick two out of the four stats you want to have a boost. Take a look at the pets and you will see that two out of the four are boosted. Swap pet then becomes a rez pet.

Maybe, just maybe, you can select the F2 ability. So the F2 ability gets that little arrow like our utility skills do when out of combat. These skills come with the pets as you tame them, so you unlock these skills for which ever pet you use by taming the pets that have these skills.

This way you can pick the pet that is most visually appealing to you and best suits the theme of your character. It gives the pet customization quality, and allows the player/ranger to have a bond with the particular pet. It would also help with the name reset issue. Instead of now where the pets are just used and abused.

Oh, and we should have an elite skill called camouflage. Removes movement imparing conditions (also breaks stun) and gives us invisibility for a couple seconds. I was thinking 10s on a 2min CD. It’s basically an escape skill.

Olba.5376:

Deamhan.9538:

Shadow Arts trait line. The trait line to improve your stealth ability. This also happens to be your +healing and +toughness trait line. Since you’d want to reach Shadow’s Rejuvenation, then you will have +300 healing before you even consider gear. Not to mention the +300 toughness before you even start to factor in gear

You have to be kidding me. Shadow’s Rejuvenation scales at 0.1 healing per healing power point. That 300 healing power makes it go from 293/s to 323/s. And that’s not much at all.

Heck, even if you add Shadow Protector for the Regeneration, that’ll still be 490 hp/s.

Now add in the consideration of Revealed and you’re down to regenerating 1,292+ 835 = 2,127 every 7 seconds, for an average of 303 hp/s.

303 hp/s regen before gear and you say it as if that’s bad? As I said, delusional. Fighting thieves in WvW they, quite literally, spend half the fight in stealth. In a 1 min fight, they will be in stealth 30s accumulative time. So let’s just look at the 303 hp/s. That’s 9k. Since they can pretty much keep up the shadow dance indefinitely (I’ve had encounters last a couple minutes with no sign of slowing down until other factors came in to disrupt the situation), then at least half hp is coming back unhindered.

Compare that to a ranger. We can, if spec’ed go all out regen tank to get 600 hp/s. That’s a grand total including the right gear. It also leaves our damage quite low. We rely on our pet to deal the damage. You know, that animal that won’t ‘guess’ at where you are and try to AoE areas you ‘might’ be after you go stealth. We’re constantly exposed so while those condition fall off of you (whether they get removed or the time on them expires), we get application after application put onto us.

Also, I’d like to know what you consider good damage.

I do find it difficult to level an alt when I already have a maxed out main.

I think it would be pretty fun if you could use an alt as a follower. Think the henchies in GW1. You pick one alt that follows you around. Only available to lvl 80s. Your alt gets all the reward except when it comes to looting. You would loot using your main.

/signed

15 char

Olba.5376:

warchanter.9574:

Don’t allow them to heal while in stealth. They nerf healing for eles in mist form. I understand its different but stealth is just over abused. And fighting someone and getting them to about 10% of there health and then invs you aoe and miss them and they reappear full health. Healing should reveal them.

The thing is, to get that, you need a few things:

• Hide in Shadows
• Shadow’s Rejuvenation
• TONS of Healing Power

That already limits you a lot, since Hide in Shadows has a 30 second cooldown and Shadow’s Rejuvenation requires 30 points into Shadow Arts. And no, you do not heal fast enough with Shadow’s Rejuvenation alone.

Now, Healing Power comes with the following combinations:

• Healing Power / Power / Toughness
• Healing Power / Precision / Vitality
• Healing Power / Toughness / Condition Damage
• Toughness / Boon Duration / Healing Power
• Vitality / Condition Damage / Healing Power

Notice that there is no combination with Healing Power and two damage modifiers. No Condition damage with Precision, no Power with Precision. This means that a Thief who specs for Healing Power lacks damage.

Also, regaining health in stealth means that you’re not dealing damage, unless it’s conditions.

Thus, the only spec available is a P/D bleed spec. And let me tell you, the damage those guys do in comparison to a full berserker Backstab thief is weak.

My point is that you cannot get both damage and massive stealth regeneration.

Shadow Arts trait line. The trait line to improve your stealth ability. This also happens to be your +healing and +toughness trait line. Since you’d want to reach Shadow’s Rejuvenation, then you will have +300 healing before you even consider gear. Not to mention the +300 toughness before you even start to factor in gear

Honestly all ANet has to do is give the Acrobatics trait line the +toughness and +healing. This way, if they go the stealth route, it should cost them survivability while out of stealth.

I mean honestly. Thief players have basically become out right delusional now if they think they are made of glass and if they weren’t see through they would shatter.

Watch and learn.

No, this is not me.

I click on a thread to read it and when I go back to the main section, that particular thread title is greyed out. I post a reply and I get an indicator for that. When a staff member is involved in a threat, it gets a special icon. Take that icon and change the color to grey. The grey version would indicate that a staff member visited the thread and it would give the community a bit more peace of mind.

Baldric.6781:

Arena.net wanted to be cool, innovative, sweet. Let’s remove the trinity, let’s build the mmo paradise, u don’t need to heal, u don’t need to tank, u don’t even need to specialize.

So in the end, we have have only one thing needed for parties, we have dpser’s that need to survive by themselves (no tank, no healer) and that’s it.

The funny thing, is that in pvp there is a sort of tank/healer, and dpser’s, and tank/roamer, and dps/finisher. There is specialization, u can’t win by playing what u want.

Yeah, they definitely went in the wrong direction for removing the tinity. I don’t mean, removing it is wrong, but rather that they did it in a fashion that was wrong.

They basically took the dps and gave everyone self healing and tankability. Tankability and healing come together to form survivability (evading falls under tankability as avoiding damage is one way to reduce the damage you take and healing includes boon applicating and condition removal). Now you can spec towards more survivability at the cost of dps or spec toward dps at the cost of survivability. Dps covers applying conditions to the enemy.

If you try to take the middle ground, you will just end up lacking in either department.

Heal other, or otherwise stripping conditions and adding boons to team mates seems more of a side effect to doing it to yourself.

What they should’ve done to break away from the usual trinity is to allow each class become any one of the classical trinity. Take the ele, with the right setup, should be able to be a tank or be dps or be the party healer. Ranger is same thing. Beast master bunker makes a good tank. Or they can focus on power, precision and bm to dish out good dps. Nature magic should provide them with the ability to heal party members, remove conditions from them and bring them back from down/dead.

Actually come to think of it, ranger can sorta do that.

But honestly we should still be seeing in chat “group looking for healer” or “group looking for tank” but in this case, it should not be a specific profession they need but rather someone with the right build regardless of what their profession is.

As been said, ‘class’ is more of a shot term for classification. You are classifying your skill set, etc.

To me, we choose a class to play and not a profession. A profession is more like the job you do. Eg. a crafting profession.