Guild Wars 2

@OP: Thief called.

I really liked the way leap worked. It was effectively a shorter range albeit better infil strike. Having the clone dead force the skill from working is a huge pain to deal with.

I mean the bugfix is understandable, but the skill was so far from being overpowered, and it worked so well. If the bug was creating problems programatically, they could have also just written another method or two to allow it to function the same as it did.

Tim.6450:

DeceiverX.8361:

It’s not. That’s my whole point. What I’m saying is that because application is so easy (in the sense that there is nothing special one has to do to get conditions stacked on his enemy), just healing from the damage taken from the start of combat to when you have healed is not enough, because conditions last through healing unless either those healing skills have a cleanse built into them, or people have traited for cleansing.

So a direct damage character hits you, and you heal off the damage taken and can re-engage the fight without worrying about bomb damage and cooldowns.

A condition damage character hits you, and you not only need to heal from the DoT’s, but also need to cleanse conditions to remove them to prevent taking damage beyond your healing skill.

I don’t see the point. If someone hits you for 10K in power and you heal 5K isn’t that the same as receiving 10K in conditions and heal 5K whalfway and while still receiving 5K from the resting ticks?

The problem is that it isn’t comparable damage. The DoT effects from condis are usually higher than the skills that cast them or comparable skills.

I.E., my condi thief can deal 30k-40k damage from relative safety every few seconds while my stab thief can deal around 20-30k damage on the same rotation, assuming the target is built squishier, meaning those figures can go as low as 15k for the whole combo.

Meanwhile the condi build is running almost four times the effective health, and that damage can’t be mitigated by counterplay or other stats (so you’re consistent and don’t need to get good at picking fights) except from the odd block or removal for the first few hits.

The damage throughput for the amount of removal available is just too high. This is why either ticks need to be affected by a stat (not so good for PvE/would make builds much more linear), or healing skills should affect the DoT ones, and the DoT ones could be slightly buffed per tick to compensate, also appealing to PvE players.

The reason I mention P/P over shortbow is because of the forced AOE on trick shot. Sometimes getting aggro from more than one mob at once is really, really bad, especially when soloing more difficult areas.

Pavel.8531:

Dev.9683:

Guys are you sure? I get the feeling I’m doing more damage with D/D than P/P while leveling my thief. I even got the pistol damage trait. I am level 50ish now.

Melee weapons always do more damage than ranged weapons. And D/D is a single target weapon set, like P/P(except if you have richochet). Best for leveling is S/P with signet of malice, shortbow or P/P when melee is a “no go”. I prefer shortbow, because of the mobility options. It’s all about personal preferences, but for a new player you might aim for something like this when you hit 80:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsaVl8Mp7pFOxxJ0PNBNBt9wbQE8LM6GgEA-TRCBABGp8Tw9HUw8nEPCQJIOq7AwJAIF9BMcEA0RlAA-e

Haste is a waste, especially on a build like that. Should instead be using Signets of Power.

At least it’s better than it used to be.

For the most part they really fixed Infil Arrow. You used to be able to shoot the ceiling and just go flying into the next room, over doors, etc. I also remember in CoE thieves could shoot under the gaps in the doors to skip content, and even shoot through the glass near the golem room and bypass the whole thing lol.

That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets fixed, but I don’t know what to expect these days. ANet has proven to be pretty detached from reality and concentrates way too much on LS.

dancingmonkey.4902:

That doesn’t are any sense. How is condition application any more or less easy then direct damage application?

It’s not. That’s my whole point. What I’m saying is that because application is so easy (in the sense that there is nothing special one has to do to get conditions stacked on his enemy), just healing from the damage taken from the start of combat to when you have healed is not enough, because conditions last through healing unless either those healing skills have a cleanse built into them, or people have traited for cleansing.

So a direct damage character hits you, and you heal off the damage taken and can re-engage the fight without worrying about bomb damage and cooldowns.

A condition damage character hits you, and you not only need to heal from the DoT’s, but also need to cleanse conditions to remove them to prevent taking damage beyond your healing skill.

So you avoid the condi bomb on one character and the burst on another… great. The problem with conditions is that you’re still needing to sacrifice more utility to mitigate the damage than a physical damage player. Additionally, conditions are applied at full damage even when the caster is affected by weakness, and both reflection and retaliation do not apply to conditions, meaning there are even fewer ways to mitigate or counteract the damage dealt by condition users.

Meanwhile, condition damage users also only have to rely on one/two stats for optimized damage throughput while comparable physical damage builds rely on two/three for damage, making condition builds inherently more durable and subsequently easier to play and more forgiving while demanding stricter counter-play for effectively the same result.

Condition overload has also led to the reason as to why guardians are so good in PvP environments due to their removal potential via light fields, especially when combined with more players. If light fields were removed from the game, every single WvW zerg would be exclusively condi overload and healing spring rangers. As it stands, heavy CC and mass cleansing are what make successful group builds in such environments. It’s not about damage but about kit utility and lockdown on certain weapon sets.

By removing the condi DoT effects through heal spells, the builds reach closer balance and become more equally relevant while allowing room for growth and expansion on the skills themselves for better balance of conditions in general in various forms of play, as then the DPT could possibly increase for certain applications.

The issue is that application is too easy and that there’s not enough removal for all build paths/classes.

Removal should be more accessible in the heal skills – If you dodge a physical damage skill/burst but still get hit with a few follow up attacks and low-tick condis, you’ve successfully mitigated the major damage, and have the capacity to heal out of it.

Healing skills should be reworked remove DoT conditions as well as other condition effects (per skill), such that the current ones are removed, for dodging the condi bomb but still getting hit with the few follow-up ticks is often enough to kill you without extra removal. The healing still applies and the battle outcome is no different, as the damage-based character can still DPS, and the condi build can still apply more DoT effects with relative ease.

This makes the matchups more interesting, too, as then squishy characters can now counter-play condi bunkers through skilled play, and utilities can be adjusted to account for a lower demand for condi-removal utilities, opening up other gameplay doors.

The dependency on condition clearing is just too high for some classes/builds to the point that it inherently makes them less viable across all game modes. Putting DoT removal on heal spells would significantly equalize the two build choices and make matchups more fair and skill-oriented.

And that’s it. CnD is a hgh-damage skill even if it’s designed with utility/stealth application in mind.

What LR does is provide a failsafe if you have no init and no resources. It’s a double-edged sword or simply a skill which if you know your HP numbers and watch for incoming damage, the negatives can be ignored, with the positives being free stealth.

If you find that it hurts you more than it helps, then just get another trait instead.

Prysin.8542:

Kibazuka.1390:

The most influential ranger must be the guy from arenanet who wrote the ranger class summary, effectively saying rangers are good archers, should range from far and let their pet tank.

you are mistaking most influential with biggest troll.

Whoever at Anet that wrote that description must have been uncapable of being honest.

Not really. He’s had the biggest influence on everyone who’s been enticed to play the class by attaching a high-demand/loved play style to its description, influencing a lot of people into… playing other classes and/or games because such description is a blatant lie.

Karolis.4261:

Trait should not punish player for playing aggressively.

I would disagree as this trait is intended as a defensive ability to avoid dying. Effectively your logic taken from the opposite perspective would be that CnD shouldn’t use initiative/refunds initiative spent if it doesn’t hit a target, because then it punishes you for playing defensively/far away.

So yes, I think it’s working as intended and shouldn’t be changed.

Zackie.8923:

so p/d gets cnd and they get ‘unload’ from coming out of stealth

the sneak attack bleeds too…

so why go dual wield… ?

Not at all, though. Sneak Attack’s coefficients are rather weak when you toss aside the bleed damage.

P/P is decent, it’s just difficult to deal with being hit or most notably escape from something/someone as it’s the set with the lowest mobility.

You avoid them in the first place.

Otherwise you’re cleansing from HiS or a shadow arts build running refuge and staying in stealth. There’s pretty much no other cleanse access available.

Seeing as HK and other GM traits are not unlocked until level 80, S/P and P/P are the really only effective ways to go.

If running berserker, first go 10 into trickery for Thrill of the Crime. Getting Fury and engaging with steal is a necessity for more difficult encounters. From there, go 3 points into Trickery for Preparedness, and the rest is pretty much up to you. Critical Strikes 2 – Practiced Tolerance, is also a very helpful skill if running berserker gear.

@OP:
If your gear is bad/not top-notch, you’re going to have to improve that before you can really take feedback on what to do better in WvW.

D/D’s dependency on high damage values and ending fights quickly requires good gear.
You should be looking into at least the following:
- Full exotic armor or better (Berserker/Valk); Needs appropriate runes.
- Full ascended trinkets (Berserker/Valk)
- Ascended main hand dagger (Berserker, sigil of Air offhand Sigil of Force).

D/D can be played in a variety of ways ranging from skirmisher builds to might-stacking assassination signet burst builds. Your success will vary depending on your style and your targets.

Find your preferred style/build and assistance it can be expanded upon from there, too.

D/P difficult? What are you talking about? o.O

Tests for DPS and burst have been performed in the past (I know yski just did burst), and Eles maintain the highest DPS combos and burst damage of every class in the game.

Necros contest this when in Lich form having a very easy 16-17k damage per second value, however the cooldown rules this out as impractical in most cases, and warriors/thieves are pretty even in 2nd/3rd/4th depending on their builds. This is followed usually by guards, mesmers, engineers, and then rangers in dead last.

Here’s my approach to a zerg ranger. I hate playing tanky, and love ranged, so I tried making the best siege DPS I could.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATTjMqUyaLLGsQ1ag9gadAUAndrhg9FMChQBrmA-TFCBwAnVCid/R5CO1fAcJByqkKlGi86CY8kACAgAczbmNvZA38m38m38mFCY0CA-w

I run this build as a dedicated back-line ranged DPS character. It’s risky due to shared cooldowns running LB/LB, however the on-swap fury allows for very solid QZ comboing. I’ve found this a very effective zerg siege and tower defense build, and overall even its solo camp-capturing potential is pretty solid. Running camp-taking havoc I would run a greatsword in the alternate weaponset.

My rotation for camps I know I can win is usually:
Send in pet (for aggro, initiatiate with Arctic Wolf for AOE chill on the mobs) → autoattack dolyak/misc mob → Swap weapon (fury) → QZ → RF front mob or scouts to stop the blinds faster → Barrage → run in and drop entangle on balled mobs and swap pet to maintain aggro on summon → gain distance and plink off the rest. Using the GS for its evades and AOE cleave is obviously a good choice to switch to when taking out camps alone when you run in.

You have to play this well, though. If you’re out of place, YOU WILL DIE. Also be sure to be in an organized group which calls water fields to know where to put yours when, and where to align yourself if you need to shoot through them for the finisher or simply heal up yourself.

Izamar.4260:

That doesnt sound very apealing.. So no fun to have without making pet my priority?

It’s exactly the opposite in most cases, actually. Doing your absolute best to ignore the gimmicky mechanic often yields the absolute best results.

The issue is that in ignoring it, you still have skill damage coefficients which are around 30% lower than they should be, and a real lack of self-cast buffs in the trait lines catered towards independence from the pet amplifies this. Comparing my autoattacks from my thief and ranger longbow builds, both running heavy-DPS builds, my thief autos for around 4-6k per strike at almost double the speed (and then there’s 20k backstabs) whereas my ranger gets lucky with 3k’s. My thief also has higher toughness, crit chance, damage modifiers, better utilities in most fights (the pet is notmally dead in demanding situations due to AOE’s), and has more health.

Pets are pretty much just an unreliable form of utility in some cases when they aren’t dead. Aside from that, I play with mine on passive exclusively and only send it to kill targets when I need the damage boost or get desperate.

Removing the pet as a damage entity/targetable/killable AI component but simply making it a source of said utility would be ideal, but ANet loves their pets.

D/P can’t complain about it while D/D can. Ultimately demanding such nerfs the wrong build.

I’d also really like to see whoever it was claiming that they used to play D/D full glass play a D/D thief build like that these days. I’ve been trying to get a handle on my matchups for over a year now with a full glass build and have problems against a lot of classes, meanwhile my necro and guard are godmode characters, war is generally effective against everyone, and my full berserker longbow/longbow swap ranger usually has an easier time against most other characters than my hyper-glass thief.

Also… the comment about condi ticks removing stealth? Are you serious? Near-spammable AOE condi from eles, wars, guards, rangers, mesmers, necros, and engis would break the class to the point if ever implemented even a ton of non-thief players would leave because that kind of balance is so sloppy people would lose all faith in the company.

Supreme.4051:

Shockwave.1230:

DeceiverX.8361:

Nicely put.

Stealth isn’t OP. It’s the accessibility of it. Nerfing stealth just removes viable builds like D/D into more frustrating ones like D/P due to the fact that D/P thieves also have blind fields to work with, too.

Blind/smoke field access is honestly what makes thieves so strong against non-ranged classes. I occasionally run a really trolly bunker thief spec in sPvP. It’s a full healing power P/P thief which effectively attritions people to death so hard that until they get reinforcements or the capacity to ignore spamming blind fields, it is unkillable. Why? Because I make you miss 100% of your attacks and hit you for 100-200 damage attacks which whittle you down for 15 minutes and eventually run you dry without either running away and resetting or you getting your friends.

And this build is literally just me pressing 5. I don’t even have to try or even play well, and I’ve been kicked from a ton of dueling servers because the build is just so infuriating to play against.

It’s not stealth, but the access to smoke fields and what ANet made absolutely ridiculous blind durations that make these builds so hard to out-play.

For anyone that thinks black powder is OP, you should try kiting around it to see just how much damage you can deal while making a thief waste initiative.

Yes and any thief with a brain won’t stand in the smoke field – he will be gone before you can hit in melee by heartseeker.

Or simply will stand in the blind field but will stick to you and keep applying blinds. A thief can use in one rotation:

Blind on stealth -> stealth on steal = 5 sec blind
Black Powder = 5 sec blind x 4 pulses = 20 seconds of blindness
HiS = 5 sec blind
Blinding Powder = 5 sec blind
Instinctual Response = 3 sec blind
Shadow Refuge = 5 sec blind OR smoke field 1sec blind x 7 pulses = 7 seconds blind
Signet of Shadows = 5 sec AoE blind.

With a SA/init build, by simply facerolling a keyboard through utilities and pressing 5 and 2, a thief can maintain blind at even the highest opponent’s attack speed for over 30 seconds within one initiative cycle while closing the gaps to the target. This isn’t even accounting for thieve’s guild, either.

Meanwhile, all of those skills allow for stealth with dagger mainhand.

Blind application is blatantly overbearing, especially since 12 seconds of that application doesn’t even come from needing blind on stealth/steal traiting.

And for many instances of fighting blind thieves, if you cannot burst them, they lose the fight. With so much anti-burst potential due to the blind application it has, a good D/P faces no counter when engaged by melee-based opponents when played well. No counter. Not even a skilled play can counteract this. There is literally NOTHING an opponent can do about it except take the hits, try to get at a ranged advantage, and do SOMETHING.

I have nothing against thieves and stealth. I main thief and love the class. Blind application is just too accessible, though, and if fixed to have a duration of say, 1 second on many of its applications, the capability of a thief to excel to such extents would be inhibited on one of its more overpowered builds while not affecting the other ones. D/P blind builds are worth complaining about, while you never see anyone complain about D/D (except noobs that get gibbed by burst signet stabbers and don’t understand the level of sacrifice the build makes to achieve those numbers).

Carighan.6758:

Terrahero.9358:

And the last one has got to be a joke, you silly person :P

Well, in a way.
Long-term stealth like in WoW is used to force initiative. The idea is to always be the one to pick the fight (in return you’re weaker, so you’re forced to pick a favourable context where your victory is guaranteed – easiest example is when the target is distracted).

Stealth in GW2 feels more like a defence. It’s on two rather fragile classes (well, Mesmer more because Clones don’t fulfil their originally heralded function of confusing players since thy’re blindingly obvious), and it’s used to break target lock and force the attacker(s) to fall back to using non-targeted attacks to continue the assault.

As such, what would it’s “counter” be, other than simply attacking?
To turn the question around, how do you counter death? By not dying in the first place, correct. There’s no rezz from dead, either, only from downed. If our rezz skills worked on dead targets the whole dead-thing would lose all meaning (see: Keep Lords, which is just silly).

Stealth might be problematic in balance but mostly because it can be obtained as a combo field (and quite frequently so). Like with conditions and boons, it’s a case of being too weak but way too common.

In itself, having a “counter” would be illogical however. The point is that there isn’t a “oh my target stealthed”-button on every player’s hotbar. If there were, there’d be very little reason to stealth in the first place. Unless this costs a hotbar slot, and then players wouldn’t equip it, and still complain (see: Vitality vs Conditions).

Nicely put.

Stealth isn’t OP. It’s the accessibility of it. Nerfing stealth just removes viable builds like D/D into more frustrating ones like D/P due to the fact that D/P thieves also have blind fields to work with, too.

Blind/smoke field access is honestly what makes thieves so strong against non-ranged classes. I occasionally run a really trolly bunker thief spec in sPvP. It’s a full healing power P/P thief which effectively attritions people to death so hard that until they get reinforcements or the capacity to ignore spamming blind fields, it is unkillable. Why? Because I make you miss 100% of your attacks and hit you for 100-200 damage attacks which whittle you down for 15 minutes and eventually run you dry without either running away and resetting or you getting your friends.

And this build is literally just me pressing 5. I don’t even have to try or even play well, and I’ve been kicked from a ton of dueling servers because the build is just so infuriating to play against.

It’s not stealth, but the access to smoke fields and what ANet made absolutely ridiculous blind durations that make these builds so hard to out-play.

Any self-respecting power necro is going to run Lich Form, seeing as it’s 1.5x a backstab each #1 at 1200 range.

As a thief player: Condi bombs (especially torment) with some fear chaining. The only way they’re clearing it even remotely well is if they have a very unlikely combination of “bad” utilities and are running a SA-based build. Thieves in general have arguably the poorest access to condition clears in the entire game.

Liewec.2896:

the fact that your said “in pvp” almost made me fall off my chair laughing,
as a rank 65 who rarely does anything other than pvp i am sick of conditions being the only thing that ever shows on the death breakdown, 15k bleed, 15k burning, 5k poison etc…

you could make an argument for pve or WvW,
but conditions are way too spammable in pvp already, and you want them buffed?

i dont even….

Yea… they’re actually even worse in WvW. Balancing combat in general is much, much, much more complex than just buffing conditions because condi users can’t just spam one button and win (instead of just facerolling the keyboard). This is especially apparently since some classes have extremely low access to condi removal (thieves). OP unfortunately doesn’t have his facts straight.

Depends on the thief you’re facing. When it comes to thieves, there’s no “one size fits all” approach. I run a berserker DPS dual-longbow swap build on mine to maintain fury when I need it.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATTjMqUyaLLGsQ1ag9gadAUAndrhg9APChQBrmA-TFCBwAnVCid/R5CO1fAcJByqkKlGi86CY8kACAgAczbmNvZA38m38m38mFCY0CA-w

For signet D/D hyper-burst, you’re going to need to go long range glass to destroy them as fast as possible and simply get good at counter-playing their burst via good dodge timing/skill use. D/D signet burst’s success is dependent almost entirely on either catching the foe off guard/on cooldowns or simply having the target not know how to counter it. I consider this to be the most potent glass long range build on the ranger, for the on-swap fury with dual longbow yields high fury uptime for entry combos with QZ.

RtW is necessary to kill thieves with the longbow. If you plan on killing thieves, you have to go 6 in MmS.

For condi P/D, you’ll need to swap out LR for signet of renewal. For blind spam, you’ll need to just time your skills right for a stealth reposition and try yo fight on your own terms. Pistol offhand blindspam thieves are incredibly difficult to counter as almost every class, rangers not being an exception. Keeping them at your longest range and forcing them to use their initiative before they can get to you is your best bet, so playing hyper-aggressive at range and then re-positioning after they start getting close will offer you an edge.

Heavy DPS rangers often cause a lot of thieves to run away after the initial hits + RF when they try entering stealth due to the amount of health they will lose. Barrage is also a useful tool to cast before a PBS and knock them into it, or to cast on yourself if they get close to force cripple/AOE damage to make them move away.

For S/D thieves, you might run into some troubles as their evasion can be tricky and usually their sustained damage and skirmishing potential is much higher than the aforementioned. The best thing to do is really just nail your timing down to consistently get the right skills off when you need them, and maintain distance to deny the thieves initiative. Infil Strike is their best gap closer, and requires initiative to cast both when using it and to return, so making a thief like this less-sticky by denying them init is a great way to counter them.

S/P… just evade their PW and you’re fine lol.

I disagree only on one thing you mentioned above, Ninja, in that the thief does have two low-risk/high-reward sets: D/P and P/D. Shadow Shot is spammable with a teleport build and is pretty tanky with no real weakness due to no cooldowns on the initiative (it can apply either condi bombs or constant pressure, and those torment durations can extend beyond 12s each), and stealth/blindspam thieves have very little counterplay due to how sticky they are and how much blind access they have, with HS activating a leap for a stab, which has incredibly high coefficients. This allows for the thief to play safely while revealed via blinds.

That said, initiative doesn’t need a rework, and cooldowns being added to thief skills are totally unnecessary and as mentioned, would require a lot of skill coefficient buffs or trait buffs to compensate.

I hate RnG for PvP effects, so I’m going to have to disagree with a lot of what you proposed for archer-based players. Might on crit is also wildly overpowered unless you plan on putting a 1-2s icd on it. As it stands, my bow attacks already crit for something like 4-6k each, at 80% crit chance. Not to mention that MmS/Pet builds could get ridiculous with Fortifying Bond. Some of the ideas are great, but there’s a lot in there that would make rangers wildly OP.

If you roll over your toughness stat, even while downleveled, it should show you your actual level 80 toughness stat.

Depends on how people quantify mobility.

Warriors have the highest in-combat mobility in the game over time from weapon skills, while thieves do through utility options.

Ultimately, low-cooldown landspeed clearance is dominated by the warrior, however the thief unquestionably has the highest access to burst gap closing in the game due to utilities such as shadowstep → infil signet → steal for a 3000-3600 range instant-cast/uninterruptable teleport chain. Consequently, the warrior skills do not require a target, whereas the thief teleports all do.

Ultimately I find the warrior an overall more mobile class, especially since it can trait into allowing for movement skills to break immobilize, with easier access to extended-duration swiftness.

You don’t even need to cleave/AoE if someone pops SR on a downed enemy. Just attack with anything that can hit a stealthed target (not ranged), for I sincerely doubt the downed person is moving, and you can still execute him or just kill the thief trying to res him while standing still in doing so.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Shemsu.8721:

RyuDragnier.9476:

To be perfectly honest, blocks SHOULD pull a thief out of stealth if their attack is blocked. Though I also believe that a suggestion somebody made a while back should come into play…you get ONE chance for your stealth attack during a stealth. If it fails, it turns back into the auto-attack. Meaning if you backstab and the opponent dodges it, you’ve lost your backstab for that stealth duration. You’ll have it back when you stealth again though. It makes it far more different for thieves because there’s a chance of failure now for that burst attack, and also encourages playing smart instead of “lolstealthbackstabspam”.

So blocks should reveal a thief? Not a bad idea actually, so long as dodging a warriors attack gets their weapon stuck in the ground, immobilizing them for 4 seconds, blocking a necro causes them to lose life force, blocking an engi’s grenade causes it to bounce back on them etc etc

You’re overreacting, it’s not like we thieves don’t have a massive easy way to get into stealth whenever we want. If anything it gives a counter to the people who spam stealth constantly, and doesn’t effect the other thieves who use it sparingly and play smart with dodges, teleports, and evades.

You’ve actually go it backwards. Stealth spam builds already build around the principal of revealed and simply build around being able to last long enough while revealed and to get more stealth acquisition. Ultimately, blocking and dodging attempts will be wasted before stealth/blind spamming thieves run out of stealth. All this does is more heavily counter limited-use stealth/blind thieves, which are already very fair builds to play against and have their own, often longer cooldown rotations than most other classes.

DrDivine.5378:

DeceiverX.8361:

S/GS are already considered pretty solid weapon loadouts for the ranger. Most of the complaints revolve around the fact that the class description is a blatant lie and that the theme of the archer “ranger” doesn’t really exist anywhere in the game. The closest thing really to it in terms of playstyle is P/P thief imho.

To be honest, I’m kinda glad it’s a lie. I found the bow playstyle pretty boring compared to thr sword/GS set. There’s a lot more moving around and I think it kinda makes them forget about your pet at times

Which is a shame, despite the fact I agree with you in that ranged options are rather dull. The style of play is one with a big audience, but the skills themselves are bland and unexciting.

S/GS are already considered pretty solid weapon loadouts for the ranger. Most of the complaints revolve around the fact that the class description is a blatant lie and that the theme of the archer “ranger” doesn’t really exist anywhere in the game. The closest thing really to it in terms of playstyle is P/P thief imho.

I recall it only being doable on castle doors and for some odd reason, supply stations. Other than that, I don’t recall being able to do it recently. I’ve just been assuming this is what the OP has been referring to.

Haste actually isn’t as badly designed as you make it appear. You don’t face the “Frenzy” damage penalty as everyone else does, and the endurance loss can be compensated for via trickery and signet of agility. I’ve actually used it on S/P and P/P signet builds before with fairly decent success. It’s certainly much better than most of the other utilities thief has.

That said, I’m not saying it’s particularly good, either, due to the dependence it has on using another utility. Reducing endurance regen is probably the only necessary part to keep if they were to buff it, for it would at least leave the thief functioning for two evades, and then if they chose to, use signet of agility for another two, especially now that shortbow evade spamming has been taken care of (which they need to fix the animation for as it now causes you to lose control of your character by jumping too far backwards and then creep forwards while being incapable of doing anything else).

Welp, since my post was regarding the topic of revealed on whiffed attacks, and I sincerely stand by it. One-dimensional builds are indeed one-dimensional, and already in many cases have their counters. My build has tons of problems, and tons of hard counters (especially necros as a whole class). The thing is, though, is that I’m okay with these and have subsequently just learned to pick my fights and study my enemies better. I can’t win a fight if my enemy is prepared for me. I don’t think this deserves to be punishable seeing as the punishment of the enemy being unprepared already exists. I have to strike when a windows opens, not just when I want to, and I think you’re overlooking that by just assuming I can pick fights with whomever, whenever. That’s the curse of one-dimensional builds, and one-dimensional builds which don’t have such problems then indeed do need to be toned down. Revealed on a whiff, however, punishes more than just the intended audience is what I was trying to say, and therefore I disagree with the notion since it just breaks something fair in order to fix something some people deem annoying or “difficult” to counterplay.

With the condi thief thing, yes, non-burst application is the best way to play. My point is that the application potential is still absurd. A condi thief can maintain 2-4 stacks of torment constantly, force you to blow your cleanses, and then pop in and apply 10 more. The potential for such application is what makes it truthfully deadly, as ultimately the fights would take too long, otherwise. Consequently, you may have a lot of condi cleanse, however simply, some classes just lack that kind of cleansing. The thief only has two utilities which can remove conditions, one of which only removes one, and the other being on a 50 second cooldown (SA removal aside). That’s another particular reason why so many players run SR and permasteath: It’s effectively the only effective mechanism thieves have to remove conditions. Thus, generally speaking, healing skills offset the damage taken from regular-damage classes. Why do the hybrid heals, initially designed to heal and remove DoT effects, not remove torment? It’s just ANet’s neglect to update the heals and was an excuse for people to spend skill points on antitoxin spray. With so much torment application, I see it as almost necessary to have the DoT-cleanse heals also remove torment, too, seeing as it’s in many regards, the condition with the highest DoT.

The SR discussion has grown and I concur with most of what’s been said. The skill is good, and yes, it IS a good skill – to the point where yes, it IS a little too powerful – however to demand it be totally nerfed is simply over the top and unfair as godz said.

I really like the prospect of changing revealed the most, in that I believe the revealed timer should be a 1:1 ratio to the time spent in stealth with a minimum duration of 2-3 seconds (undecided). While it doesn’t inherently reduce the effectiveness of resetting a fight via SR, what it does do is prevent a thief from running meta blind leap permastealth builds to keep resetting the fight and gaining the benefits from all of those stealth effects constantly. Even these, I would like to see changed, as stealth and blindness spam thieves are really the kings of frustration to fight against and offer a lot less risk in fights than non-blindspam variants. I’d also like to see blind’s timers reduced, for it’s an extremely powerful effect that should be more active than passive.

SR and the signets are good, scorpion wire situational, which is fine for swapping when sieging keeps and whatnot as OOC’ing can be easy and dragging people off walls is great, but there’s little else beyond these. Either the cooldowns feel too high or the actual abilities are too underwhelming. Consequently, the synergy a thief has with stealth and the very limited viability there is to signet builds (they only work if you’re running signet burst) puts the rest in bad-tier, and even with signet burst, these are only really useful for the might stacking, meaning you don’t actually really have utilities as much as you have on-demand might stacks every so often which if you’re still somehow alive and in combat when they expire, you get a nifty bonus of sorts.

NewTrain.7549:

Taglor Anwamane.9468:

The inclusion of scythes as weapons, since Dervish in GW1, has always frustrated me for one reason: Scythes with blades perpendicular to the shaft are actually tremendously ineffective as weapons, despite the knee-jerk “cool factor” that attracts people. Scythes used effectively for combat have historically been modified to turn the blade 90 degrees, making them more similar to… yes, polearms.
Therefore, by all means, war scythes should be included in the game, but as a subset of the Polearm weapon type. Because Necromancers may be able to get by with a weapon that works by looks alone, but any other class is practical enough to use a weapon that actually works.

Was just about to post the same thing actually.

War scythes are really just a subset of polearms and should be included as such. It actually opens up some really cool options such as halberds, spears, bills/billhooks, naginatas, etc.

I believe this is a universally-known fact, but ultimately we’re playing a fantasy video game where zombies run rampant and players have access to high-powered mech suits.

In this type of environment, the cool factor pretty much beats everything out, especially since the cool factor makes so much money. As I iterated, I go back to another title sometimes just to swing the weapon around, not even for its gameplay. It’s that kind of intrigue which can get people to play this game or consider playing this game more, be it either for mechanics or simply roleplaying.

Phule.1968:

And to all those saying that this is war, I just want to say, No, it’s not a war, it’s a game and comparing this to war is just plain silly.

The comparisons are made to demonstrate human behaviors when presented with a conflict. Ultimately, people are going to try and win by whatever means necessary, using the best tactics they can to do so. Spies, and cheap plays like that, are utilized due to their low-risk high-reward nature and high effective net yields, be it in real life or in video games.

Ashen.2907:

Regardless of cosmetic elements such as flared muzzles weapons in GW2 have rates of fire comparable to automatic weapons. Call it class balance or class mechanics the setting includes high ROF autofire firearms as a commonplace element. Once you establish the fact that firearms are accurate and have a high ROF, bows become obsolescent.

Yes there are slow firing weapons in the setting as well. They, and bows for that matter, exist in the real world too. That doesnt mean that bows and the like are not obsolete on a modern battlefield including elements such as machineguns, mortars, artillery, grenades, flamethrowers, tanks, helicopters and so on.

It’s done entirely for aesthetics. If you wanna talk technicalities, so be it.
Unless you think firing your gun only four times per minute would allow for fun and fast-paced gameplay. I’ll dodge roll your attacks infinitely and just beat you to death while you stand there still for 15 seconds and not being able to do anything (since nobody can reload a musket while moving), thanks.

Not to mention how inaccurate and unreliable early firearms were. Actually, these guns were so inaccurate, and so slow to reload, that formations were created for the sole reason that because shots were so unpredictable, having a massive volley was the single only effective way to actually dispatch enemy troops. Consequently, until the invention of the bayonet, there were dedicated front-line pikemen which were used to kill off those who got too close, because an enemy getting too close due to the inaccuracy of the shots and slow fire rate was so probable.

Bows are considered obsolete today on the battlefield in almost all regards. Long range attacks are simply done better with rifles, especially since shooting prone lowers one’s profile and prevents detection, while even well-tuned auto-rifles shot by good marksmen pack accuracy the best bowmen in the world cannot beat. The crossbow is actually more widely-used today than bows, but only due to its very limited use in stealth applications due to the extremely low/no noise it generates and its capacity to be easily broken down, stored, and subsequently concealed (with a smaller footprint) with relative ease, as well as allowing for improvised and reusable ammunition. Granted, this is mostly applicable to high-tech compound crossbows which in some cases need not even be drawn via a stirrup, and definitely not a classic crank.

The rate of fire for rifles is comparable to the reason why in many games with crossbows, there is no half-minute wait period on reloading.

It all boils down to flavor. Frankly, I’m more shocked at the fact pistols are part of the game rather than hand crossbows, for accurate and remotely reliable pistols took quite a bit longer to develop than rifles.

I’d love to see it implemented. Gimme another 2H thief weapon for ranged DPS please

It could fairly easily be implemented for a lot of classes. Ranger/thief/war easily work, as does ele (channeling through the weapon/shooting projectile magic as a lot of games do), engineer (could add a lot of depth with this one). Just really leaves out guard, necro, and mesmer (though the mesmer arguably could use it.

It got some discussion love a while back, but ANet’s yet to release any new weapons… ever, so I doubt we’ll see it any time soon. That being said, I do support the notion and would love to see more weapons/weapons expanded into other classes to freshen up gameplay and add more diversity.

Was about to post effectively the same thing.

Honor in war is long dead… Like 250+ years dead.

While I agree, I don’t like how a lot of people play PvP games in this regard (you find it everywhere, sadly), to say it’s a mockery of war is pretty far off :P

OHKO’s are fine. Running a build with them is usually pretty risky, and if you OHKO someone else, they likely have a build which was designed to do the same to you. The way I see it is, might as well get them before they get you. They know what to expect by running glass (or should).

If sPvP gear was expanded, I wouldn’t be too against this. That said, I think there’s too little diversity in sPvP. The trinket you pick defines everything, and I think the lack of the ability yo mix and match gear detracts largely from it.

What I’d really like to see are guild commander tags, which only display the tag to those in the same guild as the person tagged up, effectively reducing spying and blobbing we see which makes the environment a little less fun. A lot of guilds run without them for this reason, but dying and then needing to find them and regroup can be a pain.

Scythes are great fun for aesthetics, and sometimes I go return to Vindictus for bursts just to swing mine around for giggles, but new weapons requires a lot of work. I’d be okay with the scythe, but I think they’d have to implement more than it. It doesn’t really fit on a thief, or engineer, which already face fairy limited weapon availability. That said, I’m down for more weapons (especially a crossbow).

Rather than new ones, however, they should work on expanding the current weapons to other classes. It’d add tons of new ways to play the game without needing to go through the process of developing new skins/animations, and just lets them get down to the mechanics. Doing so could also create some really cool niche roles and fill demanded ones, like the archer, by supplying say, the thief, with a longbow. An ele with a sword or bow would be cool, and if they really did want to go with new animations, having a ranger or thief or warrior with a staff (bo) would also be pretty sweet, too.

Swapping in offhand weapons (focus, warhorn) as mainhand ones would also be neat for some of the classes as well.

I don’t really care. I just want to be able to jump while using my Quaggan tonic for obvious reasons.

Conversely, to drive the point home, I run a trolly tank thief spec in sPvP duels sometimes. It’s a full healing power P/P build. And you know what? I’ve never lost a fight against anything burst before, or even anything using power-based damage. Granted, it sits there and durdles for 15 mins – and many people have just surrendered the fight because it was taking too long – to eventually whittle the opponent down (as long as my damage is better than their sustain, which it usually barely is, and my sustain is higher than their damage, which it usually is), then I will eventually win.

If you’re not countering burst, or even playing in a way to counter burst, then you can’t complain about being bursted. I certainly know if my burst characters were turned into sustained DPS because people complained about getting bursted, I would get up and leave the game. I play burst because I like the intensity of it. Because I find it fun. Do or die is what I like doing, as with many other people, and even if build effectiveness was never decreased in the process of making such a style conversion, I would still leave, because I simply wouldn’t enjoy the game any longer.

My advice is to genuinely practice avoiding burst damage. and to learn how to pick fights. You can’t just go in hero mode and expect to win, especially outnumbered. If you avoid it properly, usually you leave the foe at a massive disadvantage, and can just walk in and kill them while they struggle over blown cooldowns or a lack of resources to keep fighting/stay alive. As I said, you got in a 1v2. You were in a situation, which unless you had negation for all that damage, you would lose. That’s why I don’t understand why you’re complaining. You’re outnumbered, and if you also had no life force, you got out-played by letting it happen by roaming alone and not trying to GTFO as soon as you saw the two of them in the distance. I mean 7k Arcing Arrow? You would have had to actually let the warrior get on top of you in order for any reasonable player to let that happen. Actually, it may even have been a 1v3, seeing as the war was on three weapons, which means either it was a 1v3, further emphasizing my argument, or you let the war reset the fight, heal, swap weapons, and then re-engage while either OOC or having a 1v1 with a thief. Based on the number of swaps, I also know you stayed around to fight for longer than you should have.

So no, this has nothing to due with burst being overpowered. This is L2P and you’re downright refusing that you did anything wrong. All we see is a damage log.
So I’ll show you my damage log regarding how some players can be insanely survivable despite having the lowest base HP pools in the game, and how one dodge roll could have saved this guy.

@yski:

Exactly. That’s how my thief works, and I laugh at OP complaining about 5-10k stabs. Anything less, especially by burst-built players would simply be too low to actually kill anything. Look at this encounter with a guard I recently got the jump on (screenshot below).

@Luke

First off, I’m pretty offended you intentionally butchered my name. There’s one x. And it’s only there because when I signed up, ‘Deceiver’ was already taken, and I run that name in other games I play.

So let’s break down my burst thief, shall we?

I run no sustain. Literally 0. All I get is two dodges and a heal. When I engage a fight, I have enough init for one more stab. I have 0 utilities available, no elite, no effect actives on traits, and no condi cleanse (I avoid necros at all costs unless I know they’ve burned their bombs).

And y’know what? I still don’t one-shot even low-base-health foes when they build tanky. Guard base HP is 10k, yet this guy soaked so much damage, even when playing poorly by not avoiding or negating a single attack of mine. And y’know what? I struggle to no end fighting condi builds because I have no way to deal with them. The objective of my build is to pick a target and kill it. Nothing more, nothing less. I can’t 1v2. I can barely even clear camps in WvW because my defenses are so low and the blinds and CC from the mobs is enough to sometimes down me within a few hits. I’m not some unstoppable god who can just kill whatever comes at me willy-nilly. Burst is a style of play, and I own it entirely, and have no issues getting beaten by people who have builds which can deal with this style of play. Conversely, rangers AND eles can easily survive burst. The ele has mist form, and a new trait which gives 100% crit resistance. 100% resistance. TOTAL NEGATION. If you’re playing burst damage, you’re critting. Rangers also have high access to protection and a skill which puts all of the damage they would take to the pet, which can even stack with another skill which lasts just as long, which makes your pet immune to all damage. That seems awfully cool, no? You mention they don’t have the HP. They don’t. And on the basis that you just facetanked all that damage, I see no reason why stating you got out-played is not correct. Every class has a method to deal with every other class.

It’s all a double-edged sword. Arcing Arrow by a DPS war can one-shot me with overkill. Other thieves obviously can. Power necros have and easily can one-shot me in lich form. LF auto does more damage than a backstab. Guards can drop me in a single whirl. I get three-hit by tank hamemr warriors. My ranger’s RF could kill my thief with just one opening autoattack. I’ve killed myself on clutch retals.

@Cog

Regarding SR:
The healing only affects you if you trait 30 in SA for it. In WvW it’s fairly viable, but SA setups are considered to be one of the most laughably bad builds in sPvP. SR is useful, and yes it can save stomps, but so can applying a blind to the stomper, which is just as easy to do as D/P with a heartseeker + BP. Or CC. I mean, hell, my ranger can prevent a stomp every 12 seconds from 1500 range away. I can make my pet go and res people while I still DPS. Does that make the ranger OP? I’ll be gosh-golly-darned if it does.
“But those are for special situations.” So? So is preserving SR to use on an ally fairly far away to attempt to prevent them from getting stomped on.

Honestly, unless you’re SA, the skill is actually rather underwhelming since it already gives an indicator as to exactly where you are to be targeted heavily for AoE’s and condi bombs.

Regarding your response:

And yes, A 30-second CD skill is a hard-counter. Signet of might is on 25 and is a hard counter to blocks by making your blocks unblockable. You use it to secure something. M/S war also has another block with a counterattack. So now you’ve avoided two stabs. If you dodge rolled, you just avoided all three. Now you can bull rush -> pommel bash -> shield bash -> hammertime and literally 100-0 the thief in one rotation. If a stab thief is doing THAT much damage to you, then you can deal just as much back while they’re stuck CC’ed. I’ve had this happen to me many times in re-tries in WvW with warriors and other classes after getting the jump on them the first time and getting off my stab. And I guarantee you that my stab numbers are way higher than 99%+ of the thieves out there (see attached screenshot of hitting level 80 guardian earleir), yet I still get wrecked when good people 1v1 with the intent on focusing on me. Why? Because counterplay is how you beat thieves. And it’s not hard. Just because you get the jump on you and get spiked hard by someone with 900 toughness doesn’t mean the given class is overpowered. Every class. I mean EVERY SINGLE CLASS has a hard counter to backstab. It’s a matter of whether or not players choose to consider roaming and thus building around surprise bursts or choose to zerg and thus do not need to which defines the success of the player. My thief has a weakness. I have zero condition cleanse. But you don’t see me complaining about conditions being OP (aside from P/D torment thief). If I get bombed and focused, I die. I run from necros and mesmers. I don’t even try most of the time. That’s just how this kind of stuff works.

And I’m referring to condi thief almost exclusively. Have you ever fought a fast one? I personally know I am capable of applying 14 torment in less than 2 seconds, lasting almost 14 seconds, every 15 seconds. They blow your cleanse by applying 8 bleeding via Sneak attack. DoT healing cleanses were designed to inhibit this kind of junk. P/D Condi thief has the highest access to torment in the game, and there is little out there which can cleanse torment, despite there being so many DoT heals. P/D shadow shot also has no casting animation and with instant teleports can allow for chaining extremely quickly. These builds have fallen into cheese category much more so, especially recently with people picking up on them, than stab thieves.

And yes, I do see it as too debilitating. Why? Because a thief will land CnD, whiff stab to an evade if the target is good, or any other form of defense (guard’s aegis, ele’s crit resistance while in earth, blind spam, etc.), and then be forced out of stealth to then do it AGAIN. Now the thief has literally burned 100% of his initiative, assuming he even lands the next CnD. Good players will already have forced the stealth effect to have expired. Now bad ones can force it off and then roll for a second CnD whiff and put the thief at 0 initiative. 0. No skill use, and depending on how dedicated to stabs they are (like myself), 0 utilities, elites, or trait activations. Dedicated stab thieves (intent on maxing stab damage) often have nothing left to use after the stab. Forcing them to sit idle for several seconds with no form of fighting back is just a terrible idea.

If anything, all this would do would be encourage more blindspam builds and the condi P/D builds with insane torment access, and kill the assassin-D/D stab style and build altogether.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

its not about the numbers its how you use it, i bet you don’t open with a unload that would be silly but i bet you use it on the second round of stealth after you soften them up and make sure there cooldowns are on.
the longbow auto shouldnt’t be used for damage just a gap fill for 3 and 5 or 4 then weapon swap.

this aa damage is only related to melee classes where the main bulk of damage comes from the autos, and spikes from ether class machanics or aka unload after leaving stealth i see p/p+ P/D unload is that much because you’ve only got limited access to stealth without using cloak and dagger (because thats perfect for unload to get you into a good position before unloading.)

And that’s really, really low relative to other classes.
Hell, even my P/P thief does 11k unloads which can be chained together.

Longbow shouldn’t be used as a main weapon? This is a design flaw. There’s no valid archer in the game, and ANet has explicitly marketed the ranger, even in its class description, as “Unparalleled Archers.”

You’d also just deal more damage autoattacking. RF only proves to be useful for DPS when your target is attempting to enter stealth as it’s stealth-tracking. Otherwise, it deals strictly less damage than AA’ing. Unlike what you just said about AA only applying to melee, the longbow AA does the highest DPS outside of Barrage to a target, and in most cases, it does more, since nothing gets hit by a full barrage.

Littlefeather.8623:

Everything else was on CD, and yes it’s not an exaggerated amount but it’s not bad either. You can do 11k at 900 range while I do 13k at 1200, I’lll be happy with that. Keeping in mind that was crit though not consistent damage at all. My point is I don’t see why rangers even say LB is kitten but it’s not really the case at least the way I play and from my experiences with it, I guess I can express that easily since ranger was not my original main.

As I’ve also iterated, rangers aren’t inherently bad, but they can simply be out-performed. A rifle warrior can get off almost the same damage with volley, and obviously can be extremely useful in other ways in almost every circumstance.

So what most complaints about consist of issues with the pets causing overall too much of a damage cut. When you engaged with RF, what was your pet doing to augment this damage? Likely either getting ready to engage, or still in it idle animation depending on the pet you used. And damage-wise, if you were to say, get rid of the pet, and allow for a 30% damage modifier or something, putting your numbers up to around 14k, would that make the class overpowered or too strong? A lot of people (including myself) say no, especially since such numbers can be achieved by other classes.

Longbow is restricted highly due to its inherent problems with interacting with the ranger class, and overall its boring play despite stylistically being a demanded one. The autoattack is weak relative to a lot of other ones (mesmer GS is better with lower range penalties and has piercing built-in), yet it’s the best form of DPS for the longbow (it out-DPS’s every other skill except a full barrage, which never happens, and in WvW often kills the ranger via retal or causes a whole zerg to proc Runes of Strength). It’s got awkward/poor synergy with its own traits (need to run 30 marksman and forgo a real GM trait for just letting your arrows hit their targets properly), and by the looks of it, you’re skipping out on some important ones, seeing as you’re at 1200 range, which can easily be closed by most classes in a very short period of time.

The weaponset is riddled with synergy issues with ultimately lead it to be fairly sub-par. Not bad to an unplayable extent, but simply, the ranger, in any build, can be out-performed by another class to fill the same role.

Cogbyrn.7283:

…

How does a warrior “time” his block? He just kind of sits there for 3s immune to stab, which taking into account reaction time and casting times, makes the warrior immune from the stab entirely. Only through the use of utilities or D/P weaponset can a thief then re-apply stealth without losing it. Swap shield when you see the thief poof and hit 5. You now have auto-immunity from stab damage. This doesn’t require any skill at all, and imho, is such an incredible hard-counter in it of itself (same with guardian’s aegis, easy blind application from other thieves, necros, and eles, and the likes) that it simply shouldn’t reward the player to such an extent, seeing as those durations already force a thief out of stealth in most cases.

The cost is shared for CnD/Powder. 60% of resources is a lot. Deny the stab and the thief will get one more shot, and then can’t do ANYTHING for several seconds of the fight except autoattack. Thing is, though, is that it’s extremely choreographed. The thief has a timer to use his attack. You’re so far away from it at the time of stealth. Are you moving? Which way? Is the thief able to react to these jukes to reposition and stab properly? Do you understand dodge frames and proper timing to dodge? These are good questions, which when answered and executed properly in the heat of battle honestly shut down thieves harder than anything else.

Your analogy is horribly flawed. Good players know exactly where the thieves are despite them being invisible. Why? Because they’ve taken the time to learn the class itself and consider their opponent’s perspective simultaneously to make decisions on how to get the upper hand in a fight. Asking for a hard-counter isn’t really a good idea. Your analogy is better paired to be something like, is it easier for any random guy to kill an elephant with the hammer versus a professional tracker to kill the squirrel. The tracker’s going to win. Why? Because despite the target being obviously harder to find, learning how to approach the target makes the encounter inevitably easier and much faster.

I’d rather see smoke fields and D/P as a weaponset reworked more than anything. D/D is one of the single most fair sets in the game, and people who deny this simply have L2P issues. Really. Understand their timers as well as yours, and how a thief will approach a situation, and you’ll win any encounter against one. D/P/smoke field blind thieves is a little over the top due to the permanent stealth access it has paired with how insanely strong blind is as a condition, and how easily it can be spammed and applied to shut down pretty much everything except necromancers. Leap + smoke should apply 1 second of stealth after landing, and the blind/smoke fields from powder should not pulse.

Consequently, torment needs a rework (or rather heal skills do), for heals designed to remove DoT effects in the base game before torment was implemented (removes burning, bleeding, poison) do not remove torment… at all. This is what has mainly allowed for P/D condi thieves to run rampant, as a D/P torment thief can get up to 15 stacks of torment and 19 stacks of bleeding within a matter of seconds (the torment can be applied in less than two). Not having the ability to cleanse the torment prevents a lot of counterplay opportunities – much moreso than stealth – seeing as the only way to deal with conditions is to remove them via traits or skills, and with so much spammage, I’d like to see this adjusted to inhibit such styles of play.

A stealth timer cap and a scaling revealed duration would also be nice. Weaving in and out of vision constantly to the point where it’s not really “stealth” but more or less untargetable/losing target is a much better solution than constant high duration periods of being out of sight. Some reworks may be warranted, but simply stating we need a loss of stealth on a whiffed attack is too overkill for builds beyond D/P.

Littlefeather.8623:

Bombsaway.7198:

In PvP, we do quite well but PvP tends to respect more of the evade and melee style over range so it takes a bit of a different spec than most play.

I use Longbow and get 13k Crits with Rapid Fire…

And that’s really, really low relative to other classes.
Hell, even my P/P thief does 11k unloads which can be chained together.

You’d also just deal more damage autoattacking. RF only proves to be useful for DPS when your target is attempting to enter stealth as it’s stealth-tracking. Otherwise, it deals strictly less damage than AA’ing.

I don’t see what the issue is.

You eat all of those skills to the face and presumably kill neither of your opponents while likely having one of the best classes/setups to do it via condi bomb and having one of the best resources in the game for facetanking damage (death shroud).

Not to mention you’re still in a 1v2. Did you EXPECT to win that kind of fight? Seems awfully arrogant to assume you would.

Seems to me like you got either significantly out-played, played poorly in general by allowing for the 1v2 to happen, or simply do not understand how to deal with those two classes above.

Xae Isareth.1364:

The thing is, if you got higher DPS being ranged, why would you go melee?

Better utility, support, defensive stats, and simply less-selfish kits or ones which simply perform differently in regards to damage output.

What’s scarier, two warriors bumping each other 25 stacks of might each forever, or two rangers which deal the same damage at only at max range as the warriors without the might stacks, who are also inherently squishier, provide less CC, less mobility, and due to the extremely high number of gap closers, are very easy to reach? The warriors.

I think a lot of people would be perfectly content with the thief having access to a longbow and 1500 traited range with good damage numbers despite the massive defensive hits just because it would let DPS archers do their thing.