Guild Wars 2

Well this thread went exactly as I expected. Both continents claiming they are far superior in a passive aggressive manner. Pointless thread, lock it.

If you like regen ranger, try mixing in some spirits (Vigorous Spirits, Spirits Unbound and Nature’s Voice.) You won’t achieve the 100% regen uptime, but it’s like 98%.

Also if you haven’t already, regen ranger is good training wheels to learn the melee sets. Sword/Dagger and Greatsword are incredibly strong weapons for skirmishing in both WvW and PvP.

RoyalPredator.9163:

Please Fluffy, stop trolling with DMG boosted screenshots…
You know what? 36k on 1 skill is what my TANK WARRIOR is capeable to do.
Not to mention how easy can it outrun any other class, mostly the rangers with that single “Swoop”.

It’s not worth to compare a twin-turbo Audi R8 engined WV Beetle to a Lamborghini, even if it seems to be competitive in the start of drag race…

How am I trolling? For starters it was funny, someone posted that a thief being able to kill him with 3 attacks needed to be nerfed, so I showed him a ranger killing someone in a single attack. Sure, we need to be nerfed. Thieves achieve that damage by going glass cannon.

So many people are whining that a character with 900 toughness and 10k health can’t be killed. It takes three autoattacks landing to kill a thief. THREE. AUTO. ATTACKS.

This really is a learn to play scenario.

Range them and reset the fight if it goes badly. They are so insanely slow.

The OP is clearly not the guy in the video: " Just follow his steps." It’s a joke thread.

Percidios.8213:

20k in 3 attacks sounds a bit to much.

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/135953/gw137.jpg

Kronyx.2570:

YB was queuing 3 maps last night at 1 AM server. DK might not be back yet, but almost everyone else is. Not to mention the addition of new commanders and several new havoc guild xfrs.

FA doesn’t even queue all the maps. Going to be a crazy matchup next week if all 3 servers have gold-league-coverage.

If people are able to PvD, you already lost the fight. No point in complaining that they have way more people than you and you didn’t build any seige.

Can someone post a link of what they use to record? I’ve never been able to get any of the free software to work on my computer.

Edit: Oh, I’ve been following this guy on youtube lately. He plays a power LB build. The fun thing is his concept is toally different than mine, so it brings new ideas to me.

Somewhere he has a video showing him dueling in OS with the build, I am not seeing it immediately.

Kilger.5490:

Its annoying that we have to do everything right not to be dead in 2-3 hits vs a good thief but then again doing it right means our chance of winning is really good.

Don’t forget a glass cannon thief has even less health than we do. Both of us die in 2-3 hits.

I’ve mentioned this a bit before when I talk about my build, but I always get the guard buffs up, use vitality food, and have vitality infusions, so even in 100% berserker gear I’m a little under 23,000 health. That makes a big difference if you mess up a backstab.

Just keep practicing Royal.

Buffy.9246:

Heavens no lol.
Why would I wanna be on that server?
I’m on tc the best server in na
I just like reading forums

Oh. Well don’t dis my opponents of SBI and IoJ then, haha. They are REALLY bringing it in terms of numbers during off primetime NA hours.

Buffy.9246:

Fluffball.8307:

Super Kruegs.8967:

without our celebrity EU commander that left the game recently

Oh no who left?! The only one that springs to mind as “celebrity” is mouse click boom.

I’m NA, but due to a weird schedule I’ve been playing EU/SEA times lately, and [GLOB] has been absolutely rockin’ out non-primetime coverage.

You mean fighting close to 0 people? Those doors must be hard for glob.

No, IoJ and SBI have been putting up really impressive zergs during those times. It’s not GLOB itself, there is a particular commander that is organzing the PvErs and WvW PUGs into a fighting force. The action has been very hot during early morning NA times.

Like I’ve said many time, IoJ and SBI are really brining it arond the clock, and I think any other servers are going to have a wakeup call when they face these guys. Are you on HoD?

Super Kruegs.8967:

without our celebrity EU commander that left the game recently

Oh no who left?! The only one that springs to mind as “celebrity” is mouse click boom.

I’m NA, but due to a weird schedule I’ve been playing EU/SEA times lately, and [GLOB] has been absolutely rockin’ out non-primetime coverage.

Fort Aspendeep?

dylan.5409:

Im not saying ive never killed a thief, I outplay them all the time. If its even skill however, I wont win, I may get an advantage only to see the thief reset.

Sounds good to me. If the thief is better than you, he wins. If you’re better than the thief, you win. If you’re equal, one or both of you will disengage. I don’t see the reason you and others need to tell the OP “nothing you can do if you face a thief” rather than listing specific things you can do to beat a thief.

dylan.5409:

Bottom line is that to killa thief, you need lots of burst or cc

And this is probably why I don’t have trouble with thieves. Most ranger roamers play to bore their enemies to death over 10 minutes (hyperbolic description of a condi bunker). I play a berserker roamer based heavily around CC, exactly what you just described as being needed to kill thieves. I really don’t understand why that type of playstyle is not more popular, since roaming on your own you either run in to thieves or lost zerglings, both of which die to a berserker ranger.

Awbee.8405:

Fluffball.8307:

You tag yourself for RP by joining an RP guild and playing with other RPers regularly, as well as being on the same server, according to the blogpost.

What about someone who likes RP, but also likes PVE, events, dungeons, PVP, WvW, or whatever else? If someone has an RP guild and RP friends, a dungeon guild and dungeon friends, a WvW guild and WvW friends, which server will they land on? What if someone like that wants to participate in an RP event at a certain time and place? Is there a guarantee they’ll be able to get into the same map as the RP event?

I’m hoping one of the blog posts in the next few days will mention a flag feature could also be used not just for RP, but for other stuff as well.

You can join different guilds, you can party with whomever you want, and you can guest to different servers. None of us know for sure (even the devs) how this will play out, but I don’t see anything changing other than having more people to play with.

I have a bad feeling EotM is foreshadowing what a megaserver will do to WvW. I have so many problems with EotM. I don’t want to fight in big battles with a bunch of random players against a bunch of random players, I want to fight with my server’s guilds against another server’s guilds. When I kill someone roaming I want them to know it was from Fort Aspenwood, not from “green”.

I hope I’m reading too much in to this.

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

I would hope that it works out, I guess. My suggestion still stands though, to be able to somehow flag yourself for RP so you are more likely to be paired with other RPers. That would allow RPers that maybe aren’t part of TC to be more often paired with people of similar interests as well.

You tag yourself for RP by joining an RP guild and playing with other RPers regularly, as well as being on the same server, according to the blogpost.

Here is a realistic assessment of thieves from people who should know. People on the thief forum.

“…once you know and understand the Thief mechanics, you can actually counter them. Denying Cloak and Dagger is the key to beating many Thief builds and it can make a fight quite thrilling.
Against many classes it’s obvious who will win within the first 10 seconds. But against Thieves it’s always exciting since many of them like running glass-cannon, and thus can die at a moment’s notice.
I can see though why other classes might dislike Thieves, especially if they don’t fully understand the Thief’s mechanics. Thief’s put a lot of pressure on an enemy, often unannounced, forcing them to react quickly. Many players can’t handle that sort of pressure and thus cave in quickly.”

“Players get easily frustrated and that frustration comes out in the forums.”

“d/p is not that hard to counter
it is all about pulls pushes stuns cc.
to interrupt them before they finish there black powder / heart seeker combo.
and your timing weather or not they have shadow refuge on cool down . and how much initiative they have left over when u break there combo
break the combo and the thief can break to”

“<3 for learning thief first instead of qqing on forums like most other people do.”

My point is : if the thief is good and he doesn’t make too many mistakes we cannot kill him, and btw we cannot chase thiefs, so he can keep resetting the fight at will till you make a mistake or he gets bored and leave.

I mostly agree with this. They can escape if they want, however three points. The topic is surviving them. Rangers can break combat with thieves as well (see my example above.) Forcing them to disengage more than once is probably all they need to move on to greener pastures. And finally, if you’re playing berserker, you can often kill them before the can fully escape, even if they are “good”. The good ones are usually the ones that will wind up dying rather than fleeing because they’re used to playing on the edge as well as not looking for easy targets.

It doesn’t seem absurd enough to be an April Fools’ gag. It’s like “Hey honey, I got milk on my way home.” “Thanks dear.” “Just kidding, April Fools’!”

Tyragon.2496:

What you people miss, is that NEW RPers, who only factors in with the homeworld, might end up lost. This is the main concern, and do note, it’s a concern, not what we’re judging already. We’re still waiting to see, but it’s only natural we’ll have our concerns.

How do you guys find each other currently? Presumably a new player asks what is a RP guild and then asks to join? Because you can’t just start randomly roleplaying on the average server, no one will respond at all.

So in the new system they join the RP guild, and boom, now they’re playing with their RP friends.

dylan.5409:

As Urdriel pointed out, power is hopeless 100% of the time vs a good thief while tanky rangers may not have enough damage to kill 1.

This sort of absolutism is enraging. It’s why I corrected the post of the guy who said there is nothing to be done against thieves. YOU can not kill thieves, MANY of us can.

“Then they aren’t any good if you can kill them” is not an acceptable answer. If that’s the case, there are no good players at all in the game. I can clearly see who are skilled players, people who are pulling off amazing feats of timing or hitting evades or teles that take me completely by surprise. My first main character was a thief that I played very extensively in all formats of the game, so I know a good thief when I find one.

No one complains about thieves in sPvP (aside from occasional skill imbalances like the current pistol whip.) They have advantages and they have disadvantages, just like every class out there. In WvW you get the added bonus of not even needing to kill the thief you encounter. If he can’t kill you, he’ll probably leave.

Some of you watched a Ready Up a few weeks ago where Matt Visual, someone who is extremely low rank in PvP went up against one of the premier thieves in all of GW2. Matt lost, but it was a good fight.

Maybe sentinel’s with dolyak runes. Carpboy keeps trying to steer you in to being tanky and you keep coming back with adding damage. The idea of a commander is purely leadership and moral support. Your zerg does the damage. Just take every possible survival trait.

Positioning is also critical since your zerg is going to be 100% on you, which is one of the reasons Carp recommended the melee greatsword. The other being the leaps and evades. You’re going to be leading a force of almost entirely warriors and guardians in melee range.

lordkrall.7241:

Apparently there were some lore-documents switching hands yesterday about a certain mysterious religious sect.

Might be related, might not be.

https://twitter.com/John_J_Ryan/status/451126231413428224

Oooh, Mursaat.

“A certain” makes it sound like he is directly telling us it’s White Mantle, like when someone breaks a lamp and you say “well if a certain someone hadn’t broken the lamp we’d be able to see now.” Or maybe I’m reading in to it too much.

Solo queue is the new hotjoin. Hotjoin should be renamed “hotmess”.

It was a balanced fight, IMO. We disengaged 3 times (to be fair I was the one who disengaged one of those times with a stealth LR sword2sword2.) I got an adrenaline rush from fighting the guy because he was so good, but at the same time he was running around with um, 10,805 is base thief right? Plus he had the guard buffs up, so he only had 13,305 health? I suck at math but I think that’s correct. It only takes 3 LB autoattacks to kill a thief, so he was living on the edge just as much as I was.

Thieves have 1 way to beat you if they are a backstab thief. They cannot whittle you down in most cases. Rangers have a ton of sustain whether they’re condi bunker or full berserker, so the matchup favors us if the thief is willing to engage. And the willingness or not to engage is what determines almost all thief vs ranger matchups.

Edit: If it’s a condi thief is another story. I matchup horrifically against those.

Edit2: One final thought (I’m sitting here waiting awkwardly for an appointment). I played full map completion and quite a bit of WvW and sPvP with a backstab thief. It’s actually a lot harder than people give it credit for. I think knowing where it is hard for a thief will help anyone make it hard for the thief.

I think I have 2 laurels. I use them on T6 materials or infusions. I also used a bunch putting ascended gear on 7 alts I don’t play.

urdriel.8496:

If you play a condi/bunker/regen ranger against a good thief he will never die, he will reset fight til he have the upper hand, and will kill you ( or you will flee).

Depends, a lot of people like to post their condi roaming videos, and they like to highlight killing thieves in them. But you’re preaching to the choir here, I don’t like the slow kill speed.

urdriel.8496:

If you are playing a zerker ranger, and kill a thief, well…..is a bad thief or you did a unexpected burst.

Isn’t that the point? If you expected an attack to land, you’d just dodge it instead.

For example, the other day I ran in to an absolutely excellent thief. I always take sminkiottone.6972’s advice and just scare thieves off (or as you pointed out, kill the bad ones.) This guy was really good and he kept engaging and resetting the fight when I chased him off after a nerve wracking fight on both our parts. Finally I got him using the Muddy Terrain anticipatory move I suggested in my first post. The guy was well practiced, but unfortunately all that practice made his final backstab attempt too predictable. He didn’t expect it, and my attacks landed.

Aeolus.3615:

DarkFrost.2847:

It was requested, even though I don’t have a screenshot, for queue numbers on reset night. On HoD, we had 220 for EB, and a little over 100 for each borderland.

Here’s one. The time is EST.

… i dont know what to say![/quote]

Say “of course that’s EST, that’s shortly after reset on the first day of the tournament and half or more or all servers looked like that.”

dylan.5409:

Fluffball.8307:

dylan.5409:

Not a whole lot I can do vs a thief tbh.

Fixed that for you.

Yea there will always be “pro’s” telling you how things should be/ l2p. However, 1 clever forum edit does not change a proff’s mechanics unfortunately.

Totally agree with you. The fact that so many people in this thread are giving constructive advice as to how to beat thieves should tell everyone the guy that said it’s impossible to beat them should have written what I edited his post to. He needs to read this advice himself and practice fighting thieves rather than being so defeatist. They’re really not that difficult.

Edit: Also I love this post.

sminkiottone.6972:

I usually don’t bother with them, if they keep attacking me I retaliate but usually the thief is looking for cheap wins and won’t waste hes time against someone who he can’t kill.

It’s easy to get sucked in to dueling a thief for 10 minutes, but all you’re doing is wasting time. Go take a camp or something instead if you can’t kill him in 1 or 2 resets.

What if current rank finishers were guardian-flame-blue (for example), and forever unattainable in that color after the update.

So a blue phoenix would be “worth” way more than a (what are they currently, yellow? I’m color blind) yellow dragon.

I don’t see any reason to ever go in to EotM. It doesn’t help your server, there is no community, and the map and mechanics are fun-house goofy.

The youtube footage I’ve seen of ESO looks like a kickstarter project by 3 entrepreneurs in their early 20s.

Extra points for that happening in the only NA matchup that isn’t a blow out.

You couldn’t move and attack at the same time in GW1 on any class (although high skill players could make this almost non-noticeable with some really well timed button pushing.) That meant pet AI wasn’t very important. You either kited the pet and did nothing yourself, or it hit you.

mango.9267:

It’s unlikely IoJ will lose to BP and also pretty unlikely that CD will lose to SoR. It’s also unlikely that YB will beat HoD/SBI unless YB puts in some serious, serious overtime during offhours.

I’ve been nothing but impressed with IoJ and SBI. Those two are going to be something to reckon with for any of the non-FA servers who face them. Especially if they get PvErs coming out for easier matchups than what they’re in right now.

I do wonder if SoR has finally reached it’s natural stopping point though. They’re ticking 225 right now. Would be nice if they showed up for the tourney.

Are you dying in 1v1s and not knowing who killed you?

dylan.5409:

Not a whole lot I can do vs a thief tbh.

Fixed that for you.

When a large group makes the shift to a new BL, that’s the time to get tons of supply out of him. As far as using his seige… not as much, since he’s insanely slow.

wolfyrik.2017:

Serraphin Storm.2369:

I have see at least 5 different rangers played by Dev’s on blackgate and maybe overflow. Anyone who say they never play Rangers is talking out of their fanny.

Please tell me you’re American, cos otherwise……

I had to google that. That’s funny.

I posted this in another thread. You have to assume the thief’s entire goal is to backstab you (unless you see he’s using different weapons or something.)

“You can use yourself as bait for the first C&D and then immediately Lightning Reflexes out of the Basilisk Venom. Sword 2 in 2 random directions will probably make the 2nd attempted backstab miss (it will never come before they unstealth) and then for the third one, Muddy Terrain yourself right before/as they unstealth. Possibly drop the entangle there as well.”

As Kilger pointed out, muddy terrain and entangle can be stealthed out of, so use it when they just come out of stealth or when you know where they are in stealth (muddy terrain only, since entangle needs a target.) You can use the drakehound howl in the same manner.

Also, rapid fire is your bread and butter for tracking stealthed thieves. If you see them low on health and know they are about to stealth, start the channel. It will follow themif you start attacking them before they finish stealthing. Turn with your RF so they don’t get out of your forward angle that RF works in. I.e. if you see them moving behind you, turn with it. You can tell how close they are to you by how fast your RF turns directions.

Don’t camp in LB against a thief. You’re pretty much only going to quickly switch to LB to make use of skills 2, 3, and 4, or autattack when they are circling around you before they attack. Only use barrage for area denial (i.e. to cut off an escape route when he’s stealthed, on Shadow Refuge, or on rare occasions use it on yourself to cripple him as he moves to backstab, then swap to melee and fight him in the AoE. That last use is very situational, be careful and do not default to using barrage.

Make liberal use of your melee sets movement skills. Be unpredictable if you don’t know where he is.

Work with your pets’ random CC, i.e. if your wolf knocks him down, follow it up with the LB4 knockback as he stands up.

Wolf fear is incredibly strong against anyone.

Hope any of that helps. Remember that their goal is usually to backstab you and reset combat if it doesn’t work, so get inside their head.

Your in combat and not moving fast, and if you strafe or move backwards you barely move at all. Even dodging, which is a waste of the stealth won’t move you that far.

If you want people with big melee cleaves to miss you, you need to either move in a completely unexpected direction (for a lot of enemy players, this is through them rather than circling or backwards. Also not moving at all can work) or you need to use a movement skill on your sword or GS.

If you engage a mob and then run out of combat, and the mob comes back in to pet range, it may need to be recalled so it doesn’t attack them (this often happens in dungeons, CoF1 with the flame acolytes is the most common place.)

It can be a bit tricky to tell if you’ve engaged the mob. If you run by and don’t attack, but are attacked and missed or your pet takes damage, your pet will sense the aggro and view them as enemies, and will again need to be recalled before he becomes able to be aggrod.

Any of that sound like your situation?

Ceres.4569:

And outside of major upsets/double teaming, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd will be determined by wk 3 matchups.

I am personally not expecting too much out of HoD, but let’s assume they are now a WvW monster, it will be interesting to see whether FA or HoD cracks of boredom first after facing each other for 8 straight weeks.

ItIsFinished.9462:

Rapid Fire is currently 10 arrows on a 4.5 second channel. Take Read the Wind Trait and it is now on a 2.25 second channel.

Durzlla.6295:

Jesus do you people read?

You misread his post Durzlla. He’s getting such a short channel because he thought RtW increased firing rate.

Dave Pare.2069:

That’s the trick not everybody saw: the cast time will remain the same.

The only thing influenced by the new trait is arrow flying speed: that means it would be more difficoult to dodge your arrows (probably) but……the DPS is not influenced at all by this trait. Read the Wind is a Troll trait.

So beware, Rangers, of this misleading and pointless trait.

I’ve mentioned this in several of the other threads. If you’re own your own (obviously in competitive play not PvE), RtW is a solid trait. For small scale you don’t need piercing arrows. Thus you have 4 traits to consider for 2 slots. However SotB is not going to go on the same type of build that would be taking RtW. Either your using signets or you’re not. So really it comes down to a choice of 3 traits: RtW, eagle eye and spotter.

I’ll probably go with RtW. And that makes the second choice for me, if I’m going to be hitting with my arrows, I’m going to want the further range and LB damage boost of EE rather than the shorter ranger and melee and LB damage boost of spotter.

When you get in to group play, you’ll probably want to change traits. RtW is not effective if no one can see your arrows coming anyway.

The points are the week total, and then I just sorted them numerically, since that is who they would play the next week.

w1: FA 3, YB 3, HoD 3 | SBI 2, BP 2, NSP 2 | IoJ 1, SoR 1, CD 1
w2: FA 6, SBI 5, HoD 5 | YB 4, BP 4, IoJ 4 | NSP 3, CD 3, SoR 2
w3: FA 9, HoD 7, IoJ 7 | SBI 6, YB 6, NSP 6 | BP 5, CD 5, SoR 3
w4: FA 12, HoD 9, SBI 9 | IoJ 8, BP 8, YB 7 | NSP 7, CD 7, SoR 4
w5: FA 15, HoD 11, IoJ 11 | SBI 10, YB 10, NSP 10 | BP 9, CD 9, SoR 5

I think I did that right??? assuming no upsets and assuming HoD is not a disaster waiting to happen.

Not wishful thinking that rangers out DPS warriors, just something I’ve seen posted a lot with no evidence proving or disproving it. My gut feeling is it’s extremely close either way. Mesmers have terrible DPS.

Liston.9708:

I have a feeling FA and HOD will score on a different plane than ioj/sbi/yb. But I don’t know who else would face FA hod other than those 3…. I admit I don’t understand the matching though.

The top 3 spots in silver should be fun. It’s relatively a blow out in FA/SBI/IoJ right now but it’s not like embarrassing for IoJ or SBI. FA/HoD (assuming they’re not a paper tiger) and SBI should be a good time if HoD can occupy a lot of FAs attention.

I assume FA/HoD/SBI-IoJ will take place at some point. The points get confusing.