Guild Wars 2

Levetty.1279:

Engineers do stupidly large amounts of AoE damage in those kits. No class should be able to do that, Eles are probably number 2 in terms of AoE and not even they can keep up. I’m fed up of these Engineer lies that they are sub par, maybe stuff like Pistol or flamethrower kit needs some improvements but Grenades and bomb Kit are some of the most OP stuff in the game and needs nerfs, even more so if Kits get stats from weapons.

Comparing Engineers to Rangers is a Joke. Rangers need buffs in practically every area and their unique mechanic at the moment is actually making them even worse. As I said I don’t think 16 bullet points will be enough especially if it is mostly bug fixes but we will shall see what they are.

Actually a lot of Engineer builds are pretty bad. Turrets, on a scale of reliablility, are somewhere between our pets and spirits. Only bomb kit and grenade kit are really useful for PVP, leaving flamethrower tool and elixir kits as nothing. Two of their elites are pretty much useless too. I’m not saying they’re as bad as ranger (not even close), but that doesn’t mean they’re good either.

Grenades from the kit arc really slowly and people can run out of the AOE before it hits. It’s also very hard to fight with grenade kits if the enemy is coming after you. You can run outside a bombs range before it explodes and the engineer needs to be right next to you to do damage with them. On my engineer i never use bomb kit and grenade kit is reserved for when i’m standing in a safe place and no enemies are after me.

With all that said, i have to wonder why they’re giving engie so many fixes. Yeah it’s not good, but it’s not that bad either. Two whole viable build is more than necro, ele, and ranger can say. Maybe those 16 patches we got are all massive substantial ones while all of the engie ones are minor tweaks and bug fixes.

Professor Munchies.8472:

Warriors are not underpowered
they just get kited around easily

Usually enemies can’t kite me. My GS has 2 gap closers and there’s always dodge roll to help close distance. I have a useful cripple and immobilize too. Worst case scenario i just pull out my rifle and start shooting. When my weapon switch recharges i close in for a rifle butt attack, switch to melee, and charge them (or if i’m using longbow immoblize them, switch, and go for a 100b)

OneManArmy.5617:

I think downed state is fine,it adds an extra element to the game, however the way it is now is absolutely ridiculous.
Some classes such as rangers and guardians get 1 interrupt and that’s it, meanwhile some others like thieves and mesmers get multiple teleport/stealth abilities forcing players to spend a considerable amount of time to try and finish them off,while also doing absurb damage from a downstate…

They need to homogenize downstate and have the following for all classes:
1. An average damage hitting attack.
2. One AOE interrupt/knockback ability on an average cooldown.
(Countered by stability)
3. An average PbAoE damaging or healing ability on a long cooldown.
4. The selfhealing ability they have now for ressing.

Also quickness should be removed from the game or not affect ressing allies speed.
Downstate health could also use some reduction.It takes too long to kill a downed player.

I’m with this guy. If you’re going to make a downed state, at least make it decently balanced. At this point thief, mesmer, ele, and hunter with the right pets have downed states that are much more powerful than the other 4 classes.

Downed enemies shouldn’t be a threat unless they rez.

deepwinter.9015:

After reading that line in the Reddit thread, I felt like someone kicked me swiftly between the legs.

I’ve always known Ranger’s were recognized as the weakest profession, but “to see it in lights” like this really hurts. I play as a kitten good Ranger, but I also realize I’m working ten times harder than every other class to be remotely competitive/threatening. It helps when I switch to my alts and roflstomp people without so much as twitching my little finger, but I love my Ranger and want to stick with the class!

Hold on brother. Victory day comes november 15th.

I don’t know. Usually i don’t have trouble against thieves. With a combination of torch and traps i can usually keep a good amount of conditions on thief even if they stealth, and i like to use a wolf to AOE fear them if i feel that they’re coming after me. A combination of dodging and vigor from lightning reflex usually lets me dodge them pretty well.

Then again the only type of thief i’ve really met on my ranger is the cheesy backstab build. I sort of became immune to it because dodging is sort of a reflex now. After the initial burst they try to run but i try to spike trap or root them as quickly as possible.

The way i know i haven’t met too many good thieves is that when they think they can’t get away they usually HS spam.

It’s well known that Ele makes a decent bunker class. That’s not saying much though. Engineers and Guardians are still better bunkers, and Ele burst is pretty bad. A lot of people came into the class because it was advertised to be a versatile class that could deal very high damage. Instead most of them are pidgeonholed into being a bunker. \

Did you see how much damage he dealt to you. It was tiny. He basically outlasted you, and you’re a glass cannon thief.

Also, bunkers are OP at this point. Noone is complaining that a thief can kill bunkers in 1 second. They’re complaining that thieves can do that to everyone else.

If Anet is planning on using the Tengu in the expansions i’m guessing the next weapon would be something eastern. Maybe katana.

I would love to see guantlets though. Not enough games have them.

Like the others said, if the thief can get off cluster bombs successfully, they will do more damage. Cluster bombs arcs really slowly though and you can’t spam them like you can with other thief skills.

Damage wise, if you ignore cluster bomb, you will probably outdamage the thief.

I mostly PVP so a shortbow and sword/torch

With a condition damage build the torch fire field gives a great damage boost to the shortbow.

Ninjah.6298:

Are you high? That can hit about 8+ targets, cripple them for 50% for 8s, the last 3s of which you can use another skill (like torch drop/root) while the arrow rain continues , and you are comparing that to AA of a single target shot….

I really can’t believe you did DPS calculations but you couldn’t work that out.

Plus it can have the highest range of any weapon/attack in game.

I think it’s pretty clear what needs a buff….

Division.9618:

This one is a bit of a grey area. It does a lot less damage than SB, but it’s an AOE and a cripple.

I didn’t say it was worse. I said it did less damage by itself, but was also an AOE.
Oh yeah and all AOE can only hit a maximum of 5 targets.

Also having large range is pretty useless in sPVP where a class can spot you and catch up to you very quickly. Barrage doesn’t work at max range too.

blurps.2340:

Warrior and Ranger Longbow just have different purposes. Warrior LB is a utility weapon for WvW sieges and laying down the huge fire combo field in groups when using a support build. It’s not something pretty much anyone would use for personal DPS though.

Ranger LB has the longest range of any weapon in the game ( talking traited about both here – 1200 vs 1500 ), control effects on almost every skill and a lot better single target dps. The problem with Ranger LB damage is not so much the weapon as such but that glass cannon builds aren’t really viable and the penalty for being in close range punishes builds with longer time to kill way too much.

No, the problem with ranger LB is that it isn’t very good damage.

I decided to do a bit of testing on LB and SB autoattack damage.
Over 20 seconds LB at max range did 16 attacks with 48 damage each, equaling 38.4 DPS (if you count the skill with the 5% boost in longbow damage 40.32 DPS)
Over 20 seconds, SB did 38 attacks with 21 damage each, equaling 39.9 DPS

This is without looking at the bleed damage you can get from the shortbow autoattack.

So the autoattack on LB is worse unless you’re far away with max traits and the enemy is facing you so you can’t bleed them with a shortbow.

For rapid fire, the tests i did show that each shot does 20 damage, and 10 shots over 5 seconds. this is 40 DPS (42 DPS with the trait). Over 5 seconds the shortbow does 9 shots (well 9.5 but lets round down), each doing 21 damage and making 37.8 DPS. While the rapid fire does do more damage over 5 seconds, the shortbow autoattack can be used constantly. Rapid fire can only be used once every 8 seconds (6 if traited), and you can’t dodge without cancelling it. Also i didn’t factor in the bleed damage the shortbow has.

Hunter shot and point black shot are not made for damage, so ignoring those.

Barrage goes on for 8 seconds, doing 21 damage 12 times. This is 31.5 DPS.
SB autoattack does 15 shots doing 21 damage over 8 seconds. This is 39.375 DPS.
This one is a bit of a grey area. It does a lot less damage than SB, but it’s an AOE and a cripple.

From what i gather the only use LB seems to have is to fire into zergs in WvW, and it isn’t exactly spectacular at that.

Longbow really needs a buff.

Sleepy.2647:

The goal is to whine, people read whatever they want in order to make their point stronger.
Quote where i said ranger is the best at removing conditions.

Just because there are fewer rangers playing in competitive sPvP doesn’t mean they are “useless and underpowered”, it means they are harder to play. As long as ONE ranger is able to do well it means the class has the tools for it to be there, better or worse than other classes…but it has them.

If they removed the burst, what makes people think they are going to put it back and turn this game into a two shotting fest? The most obvious is they will nerf the big bursts in order to make PvP more enjoyable, i don’t think anyone likes a PvP that lasts 2 seconds…and if they plan on making competitive tournaments it’s quite normal that very high bursts will get nerfed and reworked in order to make it more balanced and fun to watch.

Everyone seems to whine about rangers burst, but how many classes actually have high burst damage?

Only 1 class can kill in 2 seconds, and the devs are trying to fix that.

Besides, i’m not saying that rangers need high burst damage. I’m saying we need to have roles where we can compete with other classes. If they nerf burst fine, whatever. As long as Ranger can output similar damage to the other light armored DPS classes it’s good. Right now we don’t do that.

And nerfing burst is a horrible idea until they nerf bunker, which is dominant in tPVP. The top tier classes are filled with mostly bunker classes (Guardians and engineers make up 38% of lvl 36+ pvp), anti-bunker classes (necromancers at about 14%), and mesmers for their high sustained damage and great utility (at about 22%)

The other 27% is made up of Ele bunkers, a few warrior bunkers, and burst, so whining about high burst is usually a l2p issue.

Sure a few rangers sneak into high lvl tPVP (going by that chart about 2-3% of people above lvl 36 in tPVP are rangers), but that doesn’t mean anything. A high honor level doesn’t necessarily mean that group is good and rangers certainly aren’t part of the meta.

Sleepy.2647:

I never said rangers were the best at removing conditions.

What did you say then. It sounds like you said a ranger skill is the best because it removes conditions.

Also

Sleepy.2647:

I didn’t ignore the question, in fact i replied to it. I’m happy because i know they won’t change ranger basics at all, it will never have the kind of burst some people wants. We will probably see certain classes burst being nerfed, but ranger will never have it to that degree.

Some people just made the wrong class, if you want high burst there are other classes that can do it, where is the problem?

Why is the ranger the wrong class for high damage? Where does it say that we can’t burst. From what i know, we used to have great damage in the closed beta weekends, but we were overnerfed.

Ranger needs to be able to do something well or else it will never be as competitive as other classes. It doesn’t offer better support because spirits are useless. It doesn’t offer better damage because longbow and greatsword both are bad (rapid fire on the longbow does less DPS than the shortbow autoattack, for example). It’s condition damage is the only thing it’s decent at, and even then it’s easily outclasses by necromancers and thieves. Our bunker is bad because we have very few healing and defense skills and again spirits aren’t useful. Sure the ranger can stomp better than other classes but that’s not that amazing.

What secret role is the ranger useful for that i’m missing. Sure there are some rangers in competitive PVP, but there are a lot more of other classes. Someone actually put up a chart of it somewhere on these forums of class presence in ranked PVP. If i find it i’ll post it.

rangers, going by their skills, should be able to do 3 things well. burst, condition damage, and support.

Edit: i found the statistics, thanks to Argo.7541 in the “some statistics” thread on the pvp discussion forum.

Sleepy.2647:

The AoE heal is not situational, it’s one of the best skills in sPvP because people actually have to stay inside circles a lot, and while the healing it’s crap all the classes have some sort of conditions.

If you’re talking about condition removal guardians have rangers topped on that. A lot of guardian skills put down a light combo field. A guardian with a mace can keep a light field with regeneration on the ground 50% of the time untraited. With the right traits a guardian can keep a large light field on the ground up almost constantly with near constant regen, retaliation, or both.

Ghertu.7096:

I guess, people who ask for get rid of pets don’t like their aesthetics in the main, not mechanics. They think like “I am ranger, agile and cunning, so why I forced to carry this clumsy bag of fur, that they name pet? It makes me look bulky!” So, just use birds – they are almost unnoticeable on the game screen. Or maybe Anet should give us small, flying, endure and long-ranged pets, that will be just another fancy accessory for ranger, like minis.

Yeah i like this idea. If i could carry around say an air elemental as a pet that would be amazing.

Of course pets need major fixes. More responsiveness, better control, good AI, resistance to AOE, better tracking, ability to hit moving targets, better f2 skills, etc. I also want them to follow me down cliffs instead of running 5 miles backwards to walk down a path.

I never truly understood how bad the ranger traits were until tonight.

I wanted to make a power/precision sword/dagger character.
Lets see.. what traits should i take
marksmanship? No. Most skills are about signets, which are pretty bad.
skirmishing? No. Most skills are about traps, which are condition damage.
Surivial? sure. Survival skills are useful. 30 points. so many good skills in here. Why can’t i have them all?
nature magic? No. most traits are about spirits, which are bad. like kittens.
beast mastery? Pets are unreliable. I want to seperate myself as much as possible.

Seriously? Condition damage in the critical tree? Most good skills stuffed in one trait tree? Did hunters collectively kick all other classes’ puppies in closed beta?

They did promise to fix rangers. I’m very excited about that.

nldixon.8514:

You’re not pidgeonholed. There are plenty of effective builds. Just because you don’t like the play style of the effective builds doesn’t mean that Rangers stink.

There are lots of people having success with the Ranger profession.

When i see high rank tPVP match where a greatsword ranger with a bird owns everyone, then i’ll belive you. Right now ranger is the lowest tier class in tPVP. There is nothing we can do that can’t be done 5x better by another class. Our burst is pathetic compared to thieves, warriors, and mesmers. Our condition damage isn’t anywhere near as useful as necromancers who can apply all kinds of conditions and destroy bunkers. Our bunker isn’t anywhere near as good as engineers, eles, and guardians. Our support build is broken because spirits are horrible.

Even the devs admit Rangers need a fix. They already announced that they’re doing that next patch.

nldixon.8514:

Instead of copying what other people do, maybe you should try experimenting until you find a play style that’s fun and interesting to you. I’ve already shared a few of the builds that work for me and given details on how I play those builds.

I’m not going to spend my time making a video to teach you how to play the class too. If you can’t make a build/play style work, try something else. If you enjoy the class, experiment until you find something that works for you. If you don’t enjoy the profession, go make something else.

Seems like a no brainer…

It’s not a no brainer. People here all enjoy the class and want to play the styles that they find fun and interesting, but because most of the styles are sub-par compared to other classes they’re pidgeonholed into a condition damage SB build.

@orion templar

That pet thing is more frustrating than you realize. Anet considered that a ranger would have pets. They balanced it so ranger pet + damage pet would match other classes. The pet is supposed to account for about 45% of your damage.

The way it turned out is that only 3 pet types are really useful.
spiders and devoureres (ranged attacks), and bears (high HP and toughness).
These 3 pet types are the lowest damage ones, so if you want to do high damage you’re out of luck because the high damage pets die way too quickly and you will do sub-par damage compared to other classes.

I really want to use a bird in PVP, but i can’t. Not only do they die really fast, but they have the longest pause before attacking out of all the pets, so they almost never hit.

Yes short bow is supposed to be condition damage and longbow is supposed to be straight up damage. Too bad it’s not.

I just did a bit of testing with steady weapons. I tested longbow against shortbow and i found out that shortbow outdamages longbow every time.

Barrage fired about as fast as the shortbow auto attack and did less damage per attack (20 damage per attack for barrage, 21 damage per shortbow autoattack not counting the bleed)
Even looking at the tooltip it confirms that shortbow does more damage with the normal autoattack, and that’s before you factor in the bleed.

When the main burst of the longbow can’t outdamage a shortbow autoattack, that’s a problem.

Rangers are in a bad spot right now. They have all the same problems as Eles, and unlike Eles they don’t have a single role they greatly succeed in. The only thing they’re decent at is shortbow condition damage, and it isn’t all that impressive compared to other classes.

Guardians are getting nerfed because bunker guardians are very OP in tPVP.

Noctred.6732:

\

Thanks for proving my point I guess? When I said “competitive environment”, I meant against serious competition, not at sub-1500 ratings where people barely know what to do with their class.

Anyway, not trying to hijack the thread – just wanted to correct the absurdity of that “healers take no skill” comment.

Well to tell you the truth i was talking more about PVE and lower ranked PVP.

I guess i can partially retract my statement. In competitive environments healers take as much skill as other classes.

Actually i played (well.. was forced because no one wanted any other type of paladin for PVP) to heal on my paladin in WoW when burning crusade was the latest expansion. In matches with more than 3v3 people healing usually consisted of standing in the back and spamming heals on anyone that looked like they had low HP.

They’re a part of the game’s dynamic because a lot of the more traditional RPG’s don’t have any way to truly mitigate damage. They’re a crutch and those games need crutch because of how its combat is designed. They designed the game to make the crutch look better. This game doesn’t need that crutch and it wasn’t designed for it.

Velkira.2316:

3. i have no idea why people are complaining how terrible the elementalist is. one would expect to be similar from gw1 and plays like a support.

“Elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.”
- Guild Wars 2 main site

I don’t particularly disagree with the rest of your post though.

Sorry about the late reply. The hurricane took out my internet. Stupid nature.

I don’t agree… :\

All the people forget the reason why Anet removed the HT.
70% players Dps
20% players healer
10% tank
In a game that require all the 3 classes, there is not balance because a lot of DPS will be out… no dungeon, no arena… not enough support…
That’s why they created a kind of self-sufficent classes. So… IN CASE OF ABSENCE of tank and healer players, nobody will be out and DD players could play anyway.

Something wrong happened in the process… at the end of the story even if there are a lot of skills, traits, equip and boons dedicated to Healing… healing build is useless… and Anet turned the game in a monoclass: DPS self-sufficent
So… no morte 3 options (like the others mmorpg) but just one.

Improve the healing will not create HT. Will just meke happen the ORIGINAL Anet idea.
Self sufficent in case of absence of healer and tank.
In thys way ALL the player will be free to play what they want, when they want and how they want…

Anet didn’t want to make people self sufficient in the absence of healers and tanks, they wanted to remove healers and tanks entierly. That’s why there are no taunts, and exactly why healers are missing. You can’t have it the way you’re describing. If they make dedicated healers, they will be demanded everywhere and people won’t run without them.

The healing skills are there for bunker builds. People that want to play defensively in PVP, not for dedicated healers.

Bleeding x24
Burning
Poison
Confusion x?
Vulnerability x?

How many damage a player will suffer?
How can I counter it with 150hp regen???

How can you say Regen x3 would unbalance? In my opinion x3 is still not enough…
Obvously we have a different idea about balance. :P

You’re not supposed to counter with 150 HP regen. You’re supposed to counter with condition clensers, high HP, and multiple healing skills. You’re looking at it way too linearly. It’s not about which number is bigger, it’s about how many options you have to avoid damage. Instead of just pure healing you have to account for dodging, blocking, aegis, protection, stability, condition cleansing, etc.. . All of these mitigate damage, and you aren’ t considering any of them.

How much stronger it should be done?
This is the real question.

Actually Anet has said multiple times that bunker builds are way too strong. Bunkers rely on a lot of healing to get by. I played an elementalist bunker before, and with the large amount of healing and defensive skills i had, no amount of bleed, poison, and whatever could beat my defense, protective spells, healing water magic, and regen.

If sone one like win easly, should organizes a private boxe match with an 8y old child and stop play in a COMPETITIVE game.
GW2 should be competitive, and not a DPS dedicated game.

The truth is that -right now- all the DD players are living a beatyfull dream… kill, kill, kill, kill and more kill. That’s whay they don’t want change nothing.
Sup/Healers players are simply bored and they will left the game soon if nothing change…

GW2 is competitive. Just because a lot of people focus on damage doesn’t mean it’s skilless. There is far more skill here than in any game with a healer. Like i said, being successful is no longer about standing far away and spamming healing spells, it’s now about working with your team to perform combos, doing the right moves at the right time to mitigate damage, and making sure that you survive to help your team beat the enemy.

Healers are a crutch. Often times they take no skill to play and they take away the need for skill from other characters. Why should i dodge when i know a healer can just heal me up if i take damage? Why do i need to put up stability or a stun breaker to break out of an enemies burst if a healer can just heal me before i die?

It’s incredibly easy to close with someone using dagger storm. Every class has a way to get there really quickly and screw the thief over unless they run away, like for example by dodging towards the thief or using one of the many gap closers a lot of classes have. Thieves have pathetic surviveability unless they stay mobile and keep stealth handy, which they can’t do with dagger storm.

You also forget that they’re 100% vulnerable to elementalist AOE, engineer grenades and jump shots (and i think the short ranged 3 and 4 rifle skills too), necromancer marks, hunter traps, and mesmer detonations.

Yes, you can lure enemies into fields with dagger storm, and yes you can punish ranged attackers for short bursts, but that’s a clever and tactical use of the skill. It’s not OP at all.

What i got from that thread is that you’re complaining about people complaining. That’s like trying to stop a forest fire with thermite.

Tulisin.6945:

There are some legitimate points in this thread about why dagger storm isn’t overpowered. Make no mistake, however, dagger storm is incredibly powerful. The daggers are not weak, and far from being inaccurate in the right setting they actually hit multiple targets per dagger.

There is always going to be some portion of thieves that can’t see past 1v1 and think that nothing but Thieves’ Guild matters, but Dagger Storm is very good in many situations and has half the recast time.

I used dagger storm plenty of times, and ive gone up against it plenty of times. It was never OP.

1) The daggers are very close ranged, to the point where you have to be within a good reachable range to actually hit daggers. You pretty much have to run into a tightly packed zerg to deal good damage, and if you do that you’re pretty much guaranteed to die in 2 seconds.

2) even with stability you’re still vulnerable to immobilize and cripple, making you even more defenseless.

3) if you dodge, you end it early, which means you can’t dodge if you actually want to do damage with it.

It has projectile reflection, but its animation is so obvious that anyone can see it. If they keep attacking you, they deserve to take their own hits.

It doesn’t matter if it has half the recharge time, it’s incredibly situational. You need to be in a group of ranged characters with no AOE and no melee weapons who will keep firing at you no matter what and won’t bother to move out of range of your AOE. In any other situation you will be killed very quickly by any melee character. On the other hand thieves guild is reliable, always works, and gives you 2 allies that do respectable damage.

Using a bow is far better than dagger storm. No cooldown and you can do great damage while still being far away.

Wait 90% of people use dagger storm? Is there a special version of guild wars where thieves guild is considered useless and dagger storm actually makes it rain daggers?

Or are you complaining about a skill that slows you down, throws a bunch of weak inaccurate daggers everywhere, and leaves you open to any idiot with a large stick to mash you into paste.

At least thief has some good builds. Anet is prioritizing other classes ATM and making it so thief doesn’t destroy everything before the fixes come.

I believe ranger is next for fixing. They have an entire subset of utility skills that are so useless they’re laughable (spirits), most of their other skills are pretty bad except for traps, 1 signet, and 1 shout. They only have 1 weapon that does any decent DPS because all their other weapons have something wrong with them. Their traits don’t mesh at all, and their pets can’t hit moving targets.

Then i’m guessing ele’s who are only successful as bunkers. From what i heard 2 of their trait trees are useless, and from what ive played i can pull off massive flashy burst combos while doing less damage and having half the HP of a burst warrior.

Then maybe necros, who are bugged up the kitten

Then maybe thieves.

Thief is my main and i love P/P. If the next patch came with a change to P/P skills that actually made them meld together i would be really happy. Unfortunately we probably won’t get that change because half the classes have massive problems.

quotes still not working so
@Leeian
You’re talking about balancing healing and support spells, but the way the game is right now simply doubling regen rates or something similar will destroy balance.

Making healing stronger would mean that burst damage would become useless because people can be easily healed from that initial burst. Bunker builds would become ridiculously powerful, especially eles and guardians with their abundant healing. Even if you nerf bunkers some other way, the game would become much slower paced because everything would die much slower.

To me it seems like you want a different game. GW2 is nothing like most other MMOs in how it handles things. It takes a lot of hints from online action RPGs like dragons nest or vindictus. Things like dodging, those semi-combos we have, and the relatively tight hitboxes from attacks. It’s a half and half games, taking part of its mechanics from the traditional MMO and part of it from modern action MMORPG’s. You can’t hold this game to similar standards as games like WoW.

Arenanet made this game to be more fast paced and skill based. Fast paced and skill based doesn’t meld well with high healing and strong support. The support skills are weak compared to the offensive skills because the support is made to compliment the offense, not be it’s own thing.

and to add to Rottaran

healing skills are plenty powerful, they’re just designed to be used for bunkers instead of dedicated healers.

Healing is a crutch and is reserved for games where there is barely any skill involved. Enabling dedicated healers means either making them OP or slowing down the game significantly. This is why a lot of action MMORPG’s trash the healer concept, because healers are bad for a game if you have other ways to mitigate or recover from damage.

Like Rottaran said, healers serve no purpose other than to weigh the game down, especially in a game like GW2 where dodging is possible. If you actually want to stand in the back and spam healing spells, this is the wrong game for you.

Besides, he said damage prevent/healing are low performance, meaning he has no idea how dominant bunker builds are in sPVP. Guardians and Elementalists rely heavily on having a lot of self healing spells to survive.

So you’re suggesting that glass cannons shouldn’t be able to kill quickly and that we should introduce healers back into the game? No.

Anet removed the holy trinity for a reason. It pigeonholes people into certain roles and makes finding proper groups incredibly annoying. And you are suggesting the holy trinity. Heals are weak because strong heals means a class can specialize in them and become a healer.

Throughout your whole post you’ve been suggesting that you should be unkillable if specced right, that you should be able to outheal any damage in 1v1. We already have bunkers who are unbeatable against 1 person, and the devs consider that a problem. We don’t need stronger support.

The only way you can hit someone with jump shot without some kind of immobilize is if they stand perfectly still. I mean perfectly still. jump shot has a large delay with a small AOE. A few steps to one side can avoid it entirely. It also has an amazingly obvious and 100% unique animation. At that point saying net shot is insurance is like saying bulls charge is insurance for 100 blades.

Jump shot isn’t insurance. It doesn’t do anything to hold enemies. It’s for damage. If you skip jump shot it’s like doing the backstab burst but then not doing the actual backstab.

Most glass cannons give you time to react. I said it in a post above, they generally take a while to be taken to completion, and they can be reacted to and broken out of easily and quickly. Thief does it way too fast and with way too much damage to be considered balanced.

Tulisin.6945:

“5-6 seconds of combo and it does less damage than backstab”

Just because your combo is three skill activations doesn’t mean it is a burst combo. You could’ve stood in place hitting autoattack 5 times for the same amount of damage in less time. Given the same good hypothetical conditions that allow backstab closers to be amazing you could pull that combo off in 3~ seconds.

“…After that go invisible and quickly go for the stomp. The enemy won’t have any idea where you are…’
I hope people continue to believe this, because I enjoy free kills for running over to a downed buddy and hitting autoattack. You can’t stomp remotely, killing a glass stealth stomping thief is easy.

Nope i can’t pull that off in 3~ seconds. I still need to get close after i hit them with net shot, jump shot takes a long time to pull off, and there’s a delay between jump shot and blunderbuss. Yes. That’s burst damage for other classes, and no it doesn’t do less damage than just auto attacking.

Oh and after checking that combo out again, no. It doesn’t have similar damage backstab burst. The heavy golem still has a decent chunk of his HP left.

Most people won’t just run over and auto attack, and they certainly can’t kill a quickened thief before he manages to finish off your downed buddy. You seem to greatly underestimate how long it takes most people to kill a thief, unless like i said you assume that the thief ran in the middle of a group of 3 or more, which would be stupid. 2 is already pushing it.

And even if you could stop a thief before he downs your friend, so what? you can beat a glass cannon in 2v1. good for you. You can do that with every glass cannon out there. No one should be able to instantly down an opponent in 1v1.

yeah but most of those glass cannon ambushes are easy to beat. They usually either take a while to complete (like the elementalist or engineer burst) or they’re really easy to react to (like the warrior or guardian burst).

thief backstab burst however doesn’t have either of those.

For example, the engineer. I can do similar damage on my burst rifle engineer. The difference? Well first i need to hit them with a skill that’s pretty easy to dodge (net shot), then i need to run up to them before net shot runs out and do a jump shot which takes about 2-3 seconds by itself. Then finally i finish off with a blunderbuss which is about 1 more second. All in all it’s about 5-6 seconds of combo and it usually does less damage than backstab.

Thief? well i activate devourer venom, que up CnD, use steal to get in. Steal is almost unpredictable and CnD hits right after steal. When they’re immobilized i just run through them and press assassins signet for a backstab. That’s all about 1 second.

EDIT: also forgot to mention, you can fill that 3 second gap in between stealth with a dodge or two. After that go invisible and quickly go for the stomp. The enemy won’t have any idea where you are and the downed person will be dead. that is, as long as you didn’t try to backstab a guy in the middle of a zerg alone.

Tulisin.6945:

Luckily, this is somewhat offset by the downed system. A thief who jumps in and insta-downs someone and then is downed and finished while their target is revived has lost in every way. This means that the tactic is only really an issue in 1v1. Perhaps instead of profession change it warrants a meta shift away from 1v1?

Not really. A thief can still stealth stomp of quick stomp and get away.

And besides, it’s not a meta change if only one class is moving it along. That just means that one class is OP. 1v1 situations happen. Sometimes you want to split off from the zerg and snag a point in sPVP, or you have a strategy where your team splits off into 3 groups in tPVP.

NinjaEd.3946:

and yet, there is a dodge button, and tons of escape skills on numerous professions… I dont run signet and venom BS build( i only hit about 8k Backstab) so maybe those builds need rethinking but the way thieves are designed are not OP. They arn’t unkillabled and certainly arn’t impossible to counter. Flamers post that thieves take no skill. Not true. Good thieves take thinking within seconds and putting skills together to maximize dmg or else they get targeted and die quickly due to low defence and hp. Rangers get pets and long range, and engineers get long range and turets so they can play safe for awhile. Thieves have to risk being up close and vulnerable.

I’m not saying thieves are OP. I’m saying backstab glass cannon builds are OP. I love my thief, and i’d like for P/P or S/D to get some buffs thrown in there, but killing someone in the span of a second should not be allowed anywhere.

Just because you have some weaknesses doesn’t mean you have the right to 1-shot people. Don’t stand still when you dissapear is a good idea if you’re fighting a kitten thief that doesn’t know how to approach properly. I can mug+cnd with devourer and basalisk venom then hit from behind instantly with assassins signet. Most people are not geared to break immobilize, so the devourer venom usually gets them. steal is instant so there’s no way to tell if a thief is going to instantly kill you.

bwillb.2165:

Even then the thief has to suddenly go braindead and stand still instead of dodging away

I’m just going to quote this for emphasis, because that is exactly the situation that gets people in trouble against thieves in the first place.

Or you know being surprised by a random thief jumping out of ambush and mugging you with basalisk venom or devourer venom, and then finishing you off instantly.

I think i finally figured out the problem with the backstab build. After a few rounds of instant-killing heavy golems, i understand now. Why is it that when i activate the assassins signet in stealth my character attacks and still gets the backstab. If they made it so activating the signet doesn’t attack, and instead just breaks you out of stealth, it won’t be OP anymore.

Quotes don’t seem to work so

@bwillb
1) Don’t forget that the backstab combo isn’t a single attack. Most thieves use mug>C&D>backstab. A single block won’t shave off that much damage. Even then most classes don’t keep aegis and block skills handy, and they shouldn’t be expected to just for a single class.
2) If they miss their burst they can run away. If the thief saves up a single utility for a stealth skill or uses the stealth heal they can get away easily.
3) During that 3 second window they can dodge. Then they can switch to shortbow, stealth, and use infiltrators arrow to get away.

And no 3 seconds isn’t enough to kill a glass cannon thief unless you’re a glass cannon with your cooldowns up. A lot of l2p thieves are saying that you shouldn’t be a glass cannon. Even then the thief has to suddenly go braindead and stand still instead of dodging away and pulling out the shortbow.

And i don’t want to see them being all about conditions. To me the dual pistol thief is more of a gunslinger type.

Besides, what you just described sounds like almost a perfect copy of dual pistol engineers, except worse.

Bard.7215:

So i’ve been going around the forums to see if my Theory that everyone compares themselves to either warriors or Guardians is true.

Surely this is it, this was the finale class Needed to prove without a doubt that every single class is terrible other than Warriors, or at least the entire player base thinks that.

If you don’t believe me, go to any class forum and you will see posts exactly like this. People saying Warriors or guardians can do better.

So when 80% of the overall classes are “Bad” or ineffective, what does that make the 20% by comparison?

As a side note, every forums literally makes it sound like 80% of the classes are useless and unplayable, even if glitches were fixed. This is disheartening, I can’t even decide what class to role next since most of them are unplayable(supposedly)

The reason people always compare themselves to warriors is that warriors are middle ground. They’re basically the class that the devs declared balanced, what they’re all aiming for.

I really do want to play the ranger, grab a sword and an offhand dagger, sprint around, and flying kick my enemies to the face while my owl slices them down. It just never works out though. Like many people said, the pets are pretty broken. My owl CAN do large critical damage, but it doesn’t, because it almost never hits. That means my sword attacks by themselves are relatively weak and the might buff my pets get from the 3rd hit doesn’t do anything.

Well maybe thieves have it easy but wasting a skill that’s supposed to get you out of burst or help you survive isn’t a good solution. If you’re a warrior for example, you can either save up endure pain (4 sec invulnerability, 90 sec cooldown), frenzy (4 sec quickness, 60 sec cooldown), or dolyak signet (8s stability, 60 sec cooldown) for it. Of course if you’re using endure pain you probably need it to not die, same idea with dolyak signet, and if you have haste you probably already used it for your burst.

And even then a thief or mesmer can escape you easily wasting endure pain and frenzy. A decently timed #2 from any of the classes (except poor ele) can stop your frenzy stomp too.

So pretty much only the thief has a way to stomp safely without using up important high CD abilities, making them best at surviving while downed and finishing off other downed. Great.

Yeah burst ele is way off the mark. I tried to be a D/D glass cannon ele and did a test vs a golem. With a large combo (earthquake>air attunement> ride the lightning>arcane blast>arcane wave> updraft> fire attunement> burning speed> fire grab) 99% of the time i couldn’t outdamage my glass cannon warrior with a much smaller combo (bolas> hundred blades> whirlwind attack).

A lot of the times not even close. Hundred blades usually took out 1/2 to 8/10 of the heavy golems HP and whirlwind attack by itself could take a respectable 1/4 to 1/2 of its HP out too, depending on positioning.

And the cooldowns. Earthquake and fire grab are 45, updraft is 40. I need 30 in air to get bonus damage from stuns and 15 in arcane so the air bonus damage can carry over to fire. I can’t reach both the earthquake cooldown and the fire cooldown reduction, and even if i could they’ll still be 36 seconds.

Bolas are 16 seconds CD, whirlwind attack is 8 seconds CD and HB is 6.5 seconds CD. All cooldown reductions in easy reach with each other.

You’d think a combo with so many chances for the enemy to escape, especially with how common stun breaks are, and with such a high cooldown, on a class with such low defenses when specced for glass cannon, would outdamage or at least match that warrior combo.

Ele support/bunker is pretty good but the class is pretty much a wet cleric for the time being.

Awesome thanks. I’ll try it out.

I’m interested in your build Munkel, but your link is broken.

I really want to play D/D ele. It feels perfect for me, a close range fast paced spell caster. Really I’m looking for any build that’ll help me be competitive.

phaeris.7604:

Honestly those numbers the first guy is quoting, 25 k on squishies?

I would love to see screenies.

Rifle is only good for WvW, just due to the zergy nature.

You will get eaten alive in Spvp/tpvp. I can’t get enough of killing rifle warriors in spvp. Just to prove how utterly innefective they are when targetted.

Really? I own with rifle in sPVP. Yeah i only use it as a secondary weapon, but that’s the beauty of it. If the enemy tries to get close i get my greatsword out and do my 100b burst on them (not bull charge + frenzy, i use might emblems + bolas).