Guild Wars 2

Love the changes to torch, I feel like the others are mediocre.

Hunters call still needs something like blinds or bleeds added to it. Call of the Wild could use a couple more stacks of might or at the very least increased swiftness duration, especially considering warrior warhorn can give perma swiftness when traited and necro gives 22.5 out of 24 seconds when traited.

Heal as one needs a good perk like “revives dead pet to 50% health”

Even solo roaming you are bound to run into other roamers and even if you don’t you can still feed the others servers free points by continuously getting stomped.

Nothing wrong with sword axe/greatsword if you know what you are doing. It’s actually a really strong build.

Sagramor.7395:

stop trashing other players builds when they follow up with
“It’s important that you like the ranger you’re playing.. Don’t just copy builds/setups from other people, just try to experiment.. Try all the weapon combinations and determine which one feels the most OK for you.”

It is also important that they run a viable build that isn’t contributing to the free bag bearbow stereotype. Tribio has stated in the past that he has trouble with 1vX situations and a huge part of that is because of the build he is running. I’ll say it again, less damage, less mobility, less utility. There is no logic behind running that build and I’m sure the other players on the ops server will be much happier if he isn’t acting as rally bait and a free point for the other team.

Sagramor.7395:

@ Jim Hunter: Please stop using “duel” when you mean “dual”.

Tribio.8531:

Jim Hunter.6821:

It would be much better for the op to start off with a good weapon set to get used to the class and then experiment from there.

Wow, what a nice point you have there..
Oh.. Wait..

Tribio.8531:

Try all the weapon combinations and determine which one feels the most OK for you.. Build further on that..

The difference there is I’m advising the op to begin with a weapon combination that isn’t garbage.

Uriel.6310:

I would like to thank you guy for your replies, some great advice from everyone that I will consider. And Ttribio, I can respect that you choose to go against the grain and choose what works for you. I usually do the same to fit what I prefer the most, so (once I get a feel for the class that is) it is nice to know that something works for you that is not considered “meta” which at least tells me that some orthodox builds can work .

And I also understand where your coming from Jim. I know well about “run this as standard” if you want to be most effective. I heavily played necro as my main before leaving and in certain areas of the game if you were not running a particular weapon you were either going to be effective or non existence to your group (outside of world pve).

There is a difference between not running the meta and running something that is subpar. I don’t run the meta builds because I have found builds that work better for me, but my build is still going to be viable against any opponent and only needs minor tweaks for certain WvW situations like a quick pet or utility swap.

Tribio.8531:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Like I’ve said in the past, run your build, enjoy your build, but you shouldn’t recommend it to people because literally any other weapon set would be better than running duel bow.

I didn’t recommend my build, I just stated what I’m running and how I actively play in WvW with my ranger.. Someone asked for opinions, I gave mine.. These are forums for a reason..

And I simply informed the op that duel bows isn’t a good build. I didn’t want a new player to be confused by your post and assume that it was a good idea to run that. It would be much better for the op to start off with a good weapon set to get used to the class and then experiment from there.

Aleksander Suburb.4287:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Am I missing something? I haven’t used devourer in a long time but it was about the most garbage pet I ever tried. If you want a ranged pet why wouldn’t you use a spider that actually has a useful f2 and higher vitality for soaking up your conditions? Is it for the rng evade? I’m really not making fun of anyone, I’m genuinely curious if there is something that I’m missing.

Spider is only poison and a little bit immobilize. With the lashtail devourer i’ve a little poison (in my condi build is enough poison) bleeding and a nice. knock back. It’s my favorite pet for my trapper-build

If you are looking for some extra bleeding you should try hawk or eagle. The birds hit much harder and more often, and they stack two 15 second bleeds on a 6 second cooldown (untraited). Oh and spider has 2 immobilizes which are 3 seconds a piece, if the spider manages to hit your target with the immobilizes your target is going to be forced to blow a utility or eat the full duration of your traps

Tribio.8531:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Less damage, less utility, less mobility. 1 trait doesn’t make it a good choice especially when that trait is in direct competition for traits that are far better in WvW, ie Eagle Eye and Read the Wind.

But of course, one trait that benefits two weapons is very inferior to two traits that apply on one weapon.. Meta much? :p Also, Piercing Arrows is no grandmaster :p

Ah well, no point in discussing this further.. You enjoy your build, and have some nice results with it.. And the same applies to me.. :-)

It is inferior when one of those weapons isn’t just unnecessary but is in every way a worse choice then every other option.

Like I’ve said in the past, run your build, enjoy your build, but you shouldn’t recommend it to people because literally any other weapon set would be better than running duel bow.

Novuake.2691:

Depends. EotM should be the fastest if that is what the map is already doing, karma and XP instead of PvP fights.

Otherwise, PvP gives A LOT of lvling tomes.

This, plus PvP gives some good reward chests, you’ll end up with a lot of the skill points, armor and weapons you need by the time you hit 80, which is good because for some stupid reason you now need to pay for traits (thanks anet for the new and exciting gold sink).

How exactly are devourers the best might stacking pet? Marsh drake does a channeled bouncing attack, I always hit 25 stacks when flipping camps and towers. If you are talking about vs. other players the projectiles are so slow that the majority of them miss moving targets and a dps pet like a bird are much better options.

Tribio.8531:

Jim Hunter.6821:

@ The op, please don’t run duel bow, Tribio may enjoy it but it is objectively worse than running any other weapon for your second set.

Objectively worse? sigh
I’m not interested in an entire build discussion here, but just stating: Piercing Arrows works on shortbow and longbow.. So I have double advantage with that trait on a dual bow..
and yeah, I know:
“You have no melee” —> full melee’s have no range
“Reflection will kill you” --> too many dumb people keep pew pewing a reflecting opponent
…. —> ….

Also, I stated it in my initial reply: Let OP just experiment with all kinds of weapons, until he/she finds what suits his/her playstyle best..

Less damage, less utility, less mobility. 1 trait doesn’t make it a good choice especially when that trait is in direct competition for traits that are far better in WvW, ie Eagle Eye and Read the Wind.

phirefox.2568:

shadowpass.4236:

HARDOFREADING.7298:

It’s simple.
What class has the highest Auto Attack Damage?
How high is the margin of difference between the classes?
The Devs know the answers to these 2 questions…They just don’t care.

What class has the highest access to stealth?
How high is the margin of difference between the classes?

What class has the highest access to hard cc?
How high is the margin of difference between the classes?

What class has the highest access to healing + sustain damage?
How high is the margin of difference between the classes?

What class has the highest access to teleports/gap closers?
How high is the margin of difference between the classes?

Lol.

Rangers are good at range.
Thieves are good at hit and run/burst.
Warriors/Elementalists/Engineers are good at sustain.
Guardians are good at sustain/burst.
Necromancers are good at sustained damage/hard cc.

On the matter of stealth: some time ago i created an Overview regarding the different classes stealth capabilities. I did not bother taking thief Weaponskills into consideration (P#5+D#2 or D#5), because they are too hard to judge just by their relative cooldowns (time needed to regenerate their cost in initiative), and thus don’t fit that well into the List.

potential Stealth capabilities for utility and weaponskills with Cooldowns

percentage is rounded! (e.g. 8.23% is rounded to 8%,12.5% to 13% and so on…)

if multiple values are traitable,

Skillname: As|Bs, Cs|Ds -> AC%|AD%|BC%|BD%

R A N G E R:

• Hunters Shot: 3s, 12s|10s -> 25%|30%

With Runes of the Trapper

• Flame Trap: 3s, 15s|12s -> 20%|25%
• Frost Trap: 3s, 30s|24s -> 10%|13%
• Spike Trap: 3s, 25s|20s -> 12%|15%
• Viper’s Nest: 3s, 20s|16s -> 15%|19%

E N G I N E E R:

• Toss Elixir S: 5s, 60s|57s|54s|51s|48s|45s|42s -> 8%|9%|9%|10%|10%|11%|12%

T H I E F:

• Hide in Shadows: 3s|4s, 30s -> 10%|13%
• Blinding Power: 3s|4s, 40s|32s -> 8%|9%|10%|13%
• Shadow Refuge: 15s|20s, 60s|48s -> 25%|31%|33%|42%

With Runes of the Trapper

• Ambush: 3s|4s, 35s|28s -> 9%|11%|11%|14%
• Needle Trap: 3s|4s, 30s|24s -> 10%|13%|13%|17%
• Tripwire: 3s|4s, 30s|24s -> 10%|13%|13%|17%
• Shadow Trap: 3s|4s, 45s|36s -> 7%|8%|9%|11%

M E S M E R:

• The Prestige: 3s|4s, 30s|24s -> 10%|13%|13%|17%
• Decoy: 3s|4s, 40s|32s -> 8%|9%|10%|13%
• Veil: 2s|3s, 90s|72s -> 2%|3%|3%|4%
• Mass Invisibility: 5s|6s, 90s -> 6%|7%

When in-Fight, general percentage of stealth-uptime itself isn’t neccessarily the most important factor. Shadow Refugee for example has the highest possible relative uptime (42%), but you would have to sit in stealth for the whole (kittenly long) duration, and the rather high Cooldown prevents you from using it often (which limits the numbers of situations where you can use it during a fight). Mass Invisibility grants you (speaking of non-PU) 5 seconds of stealth, but in a fight the 90s Cooldown almost turns it into a one-usage-joker, and it’s commonly used either as last resort when things go wrong, or to initiate an ambush. Perfect are Skills, that got a high percentage of stealth-uptime combined with a low Cooldown – having access to it more frequently allows for far more flexibility in using it. In that Sense, the Ranger actually got one of the best stealth skills in the game – Hunters Shot, with a 25-30% uptime on a really low Cooldown, and while it does require hitting a target, doing so is (at least for me) incredibly easy. Take Stealth-Trappers into Consideration, and the Ranger becomes – at least Stealthwise – a direct Rival to PU Mesmers. If you compare any Longbow-using Ranger to a standart-Shattermesmer (equipped with Decoy and Mass Invis), he will have double the uptime of Stealth during a ~90s timeframe, and has to miss 5 shots just to get down onto the Mesmers Level of Stealth.

I would write something to your other points as well, but i’am probably nearing the word limit again for this one, so i will leave it as it is for now

No offence but this is kind of pointless when you include the weapon skills for ranger and mesmer but not thief and engi.

Re targeting a thief wouldn’t be a problem if they removed all the random rally bait npc’s, and if the thief reset the fight you would also be out of combat because the stupid npc’s wouldn’t be there to keep you in combat.

As for picking off zerglings that strayed too far from their tag… That’s really not a ”thief op” thing, I can do that with any profession. I especially love doing it with my ranger because I know they are raging.

@ The op, please don’t run duel bow, Tribio may enjoy it but it is objectively worse than running any other weapon for your second set.

If you decide to run power I would recommend longbow/Greatsword. Main hands sword is also very effective but it is much more difficult to learn than greatsword. If you really want to play main hand sword you should stay with a condi build since they are much more forgiving.

Also if you do decide to run main hand sword make sure you turn off the auto attack and you go into options to disable auto targeting, actually you should do that anyway lol, oh and definitely turn off melee attack assist.

HtFde.3856:

Jim Hunter.6821:

If you really think thieves are OP then whisper me in game and 1v1 me. You bring a thief and I’ll play whatever profession you want me to.

That’s a nice strawman argument because most encounters with good (!) thieves are not 1 vs 1, far from it. If you want to go 1 vs 1 on him try to see if you can get together in WvW and then meet him in Skale infested Golanta and then see how easy it is to kill a thief with mutliple targets around so that “nearest enemy” does not give you the thief when revealed and you have like 15+ tabbing options regarding enemies so you that mouse click is the best way of selecting your target.

The only times I died there was when other players joined at a very, er, unfortunate moment or when I continued pressure although I knew I should have backed off – oh, and once when I didn’t pay attention and the camp flipped and I ended up right next to Mr. just-spawned-to-say-hello Campboss … my, that hammer did hurt. I still feel the grass tickling in my nostrils. Shadow-return can be unsafe ….

Maybe the better argument is that they should remove all the random npc’s that get in the way of combat. I personally hate when I’m fighting 1vX and I watch someone rally off a firefly because I can’t get in for the stomp. Who knows, it might even take some strain off the servers and make WvW a little less laggy.

DarkSyze.8627:

coglin.1867:

DarkSyze.8627:

4. Thieves can kill with a burst, but they die pretty easily as well.
If there is something OP is the almost permanent stealth.

Sure, I can agree that perma stealth can be OP. Finally you stated something not only reasonable, but something I can agree with. I do not feel they need a nerf though. There are several things that are OP in the game but do not need nerfed.

DarkSyze.8627:

5. Things that need to go:
Thieves resteathling repeatedly in a short interval.
Thieves moving across the map faster than any other class or any thing that ever lived in gw2.

Your turning your entire post into one giant hyperbole.

DarkSyze.8627:

You should not have multiple get out of jail cards. If you engage in a fight you should tough it out. If you lose..tough luck..learn to play like the rest of us.

hmm, I can beat thieves consistently, as well as most anyone else I know. Including other thieves. Shouldn’t you learn to play like the rest of us?

DarkSyze.8627:

The multiple restealthing has to be fixed either by introducing cooldowns or increasing the initiative requirements.

They did fix this. It is called reveal.

DarkSyze.8627:

Its like monty python chasing a thief around. How can anyone take this game seriously if these glaring imbalances and broken mechanics are still in effect months into the game? The fixes are simple and easy.

You mean you are like monty python chasing a thief around. Though I see it more of a keystone cop situation. But that is do to your lack of understanding about the situation, and not the professions fault.

DarkSyze.8627:

6. Still broken. Perma stealth, repeated stealth. Worst stealth mechanic ever.
Anyone know the name of the person who came up with the stealth mechanic so I never play a game he/she is involved in ?

Feel free to never play this game he/she is evolved in.

DarkSyze.8627:

7. Shrilly-2014 year; There is no true counter for stealth.

PM me in game. Jump on your thief and we will go to a personal arena and test this theory. If stealth is so easy to abuse, I am sure you will kick my tail all over the place right?

DarkSyze.8627:

To balance stealth some of the following should happen…

DarkSyze should learn to play.

Now i would like to repeat that I feel stealth is OP, but your not even being reasonable and definitely not honest in my opinion. You are claiming things as not possible that I literally see occur on a daily bases.

this is quote from the forum player from 2012-2014, not me.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/The-thief-and-its-gameplay-Your-feedback-Merged/first

reason i put here is show that i not “make” claim about thief no challenge class. When i experience problem with a class; i like read past history to find if same problem was there. So i did with thief class and find same problem, even when guild wars 2 release 2012 to 2014;now. I want find out why thief class was not challenge class and other player in forum say same, that is all. (thief class is not only problem class in wvw but use thief class as important example).

I am 1 month from guild wars 2 and find this problem very sad and not fun because it is old problem and never fix. 2 years problem is not fun and not ok for other player and new player who want fun for challenge in wvw.

why make hard for other player who want challenge?
why make hard for other player not have fun?

Okay… now go look through all the patch notes and see how many nerfs thieves have taken since 2012. Thieves aren’t unkillable, you know how I know this? Because I kill them everyday on multiple classes.

You say you want a challenge but all you are doing is calling for nerfs to a class that is giving you a hard time instead of accepting the challenge in front of you and learning how to beat them.

If you really think thieves are OP then whisper me in game and 1v1 me. You bring a thief and I’ll play whatever profession you want me to.

Samis.1750:

I doubt the people who support the removal of white swords are the ones who are sentrying the towers (or even upgrading them).

Forcing people to sit in towers to satisfy the roaming groups in not a just solution. Eventually, sentries will lose their patience as they will conclude, “Why am I spending even 30 minutes of my life doing this?”.

I’ve spent a stupid amount of time and gold defending and upgrading my bl and I absolutely support the removal of white swords.

Widebody.5071:

Anyways why are so-called hard pvpers not in the pvp arenas? Is it that they hate the fact that it’s structured and not of much of a gankfest. It seems as if they just want to control the game mode to their benefit and at the expense of everyone else’s pleasure.

Because spvp is about holding points more than it is about fighting? I play both but can only play so many PvP matches before I’m burnt out, dealing with cele ele’s and engi’s get’s boring real fast.

joneirikb.7506:

McWolfy.5924:

Rid regular xp from wvw, eotm. Add tomes. —> way less low lvl leveling. Players will come with high levels to earn tomes

Less ways to play as an uplevel, don’t think that will ever work. The only way I can see this work would be to also use PvP’s level system (The no level system, you are 80 with PvP amulets etc). Which I do think could work quote well, it would certainly save a lot of costs on our equipment -_-’

I hate how restricted you are in pvp. It would be much nicer if you just had to unlock the different sets of armor, runes, etc. and then you could access them anytime through your hero panel.

If they implemented this they could also bring back the templates from GW1 since you wouldn’t have to swap weapons and gear.

Aggrostemma.1703:

Centaur is not a movement speed rune set. It gives you swiftness… Mesmers are using it because there is no offensive alternative of the +25% movement speed runes and it’s cheap!…

You don’t consider swiftness to be movement speed?

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Bears because I don’t even need to ask for build/gear. I just click kick

Lol right!?

I only WvW and PvP. I always run wolf and I swap back and forth between marsh drake and a bird, usually raven. The marshdrake comes out when I hit a camp or tower because the f2 attack +rampage as one= 25 stacks of might for me and poison on the npc’s.

The bears come out if I’m soloing a keep and in that situation it is murrelo and polar bear.

Am I missing something? I haven’t used devourer in a long time but it was about the most garbage pet I ever tried. If you want a ranged pet why wouldn’t you use a spider that actually has a useful f2 and higher vitality for soaking up your conditions? Is it for the rng evade? I’m really not making fun of anyone, I’m genuinely curious if there is something that I’m missing.

My server has a pretty bad coverage gap where we occasionally lose everything. This past month we have gained several ranks because small parties and solo players could quickly back cap our towers and keeps without being zerged over.

With the return of white swords we lost our 20-30k lead and will likely take 2nd this week because we can’t get any momentum going in the mornings and it is too easy for the enemy server to send 20 people to deal with the 2 or 3 players that tripped white swords.

You might want to say boohoo players can’t pvd and have to fight but in reality there are far less fights now because the fairweathers log off when we have extremely low ppt and the server that has everything doesn’t have to split up to find the smaller groups so the ”fights” are a couple players running or being steamrolled.

ChoChoBo.6503:

Mesmers can run Mantra of Recovery for heal and Superior Runes of the Centaur or Air.

Use heal skill, gain 12s of Swiftness, after 10s use heal again. The skill has a 10s cooldown so you can have perma-swiftness on a mesmer.

Combine that with blinks and you’re good to go.

edit: forgot Air only grants you 5secs of swiftness, so just stick with Centaur runes

You can also just pop in and out of a tonic with these runes to get the swiftness and not waste your heal.

Just give the option to block all whispers from the enemy server for the people too scared of talking to people.

Sirendor.1394:

McWolfy.5924:

I dont want more ,“you %&$#ing nub 222222 ranger!” whispers from d/p thieves! If i go roam they always whisper me, but just that kind of thieves, nobody else

Hahaha. Well there must be reason they whisper that to you… Are you by any chance a 2222222 PEWPEWPEWPEWPEW ranger? If so… I totally understand the thieves, because that build is broken.

Mad cuz bad

Should definitely be power if it’s pve and you are bringing longbow. Try axe for offhand, has a nice burst.

Lakshmi.5941:

Lynx Rufus Californicus.2958:

As a career low-pop server player, the lack of swords made a HUGE difference in our play this last month. We could actually influence something before a horde of zerglings descended on and face-rolled our much smaller numbers.

It was pure guerrilla warfare at its finest, so naturally, the blob-fests hate it. Look, if you have a high population server, you darned well ought to be able to sacrifice a few of your personal points to guard a place. If my low pop server could manage to station guards at Hills, Bay, Garri, and even towers in the south, you high-pop zergfests darned well oughta be able to do the same.

THIS^. No white swords was very very fun in T8. Hours after the reversion to white swords the blob is back. Last month was the most fun WvW has been in a long time… tactics really made a difference and felt rewarding.

Same goes for T7. Went from awesome skirmish fights everywhere to blobs rolling around the map and wp’ing when they see swords.

moomincat.9816:

No white sword are good are they? try being against BG and JQ when you are tag teamed 24/7, then take in to account BG and JQ just fly hacks in to towers and there keeps to take them back its not just one or two people any more its groups of 10-15 no white swords is really bad, please bring them back!

Players hacking has nothing to do with white swords. 15 players bypassing walls will flip a keep before white swords can trigger anyway.

my server did a great job stepping up the communication and organization during the trial period for no white swords and ppk. I thought no white swords was a terrible idea but I’ve had so many great skirmish fights and have had a better overall WvW experience. I really hope this gets reinstated.

If it’s not a duel there is nothing wrong with resetting a fight. If you constantly reset and decide to be an kitten about it you will be made fun of.

I had a thief try to jump me while I was flipping a camp, I forced him to hide in stealth long enough that the camp flipped. Knowing he wouldn’t fight me in the guards I chased him all the way to the next camp where he had guards on his side and he still ran. He ended up whispering me laughing that I couldn’t catch him. I told him congratulations you can run like a little kitten in a pvp game mode.

xXJonoDXx.3061:

Rangers are for people with 2 fingers. Just learn to tap v and press 1 and 2 with longbow and you are set to burst everything down in seconds. Well coming from my tier, that is what happens.

Sounds like someone has been getting his butt kicked by rangers

GuzziHero.2467:

The ranger targeting in general is awful. Prioritisation seems to go like this:

1. The target off screen
2. The target behind cover and out of line of sight
3. Enemy weapon installations (dredge turrets etc)
4. Yellow name creatures
5. Something else you can’t even see
.
.
.
.
10 The enemy right in front of you.

This goes for pet AI and bow targeting. I’m sick of my Ranger always targeting everything but the obvious thing in front of me. Today I saw my pet run past 2 Dredge in a tunnel ahead of me, and attack one round a corner I wasn’t even aware was there, or in Skypeaks, running down 2 tiers of a tower, past several Dredge, to attack one way below me.

lol This is why I absolutely hate all the random animals wondering around WvW. I’ll be trying to fight a thief or mesmer and every time they stealth and drop target I have to tab target through 50 fireflies to retarget the enemy player directly in front of me. It would be nice if I could just click on the enemy player but that seems to work about 30% of the time.

By some rams, cata’s, ac’s and tag up yourself. You act like PvDing in eotm is hard or something.

FrownyClown.8402:

Jim Hunter.6821:

FrownyClown.8402:

Are the blinks and what not working as intended? If not, they shouldn’t be able to port up places.

It’s been like that forever. Take a look at this video to see how ridiculous it is. http://youtu.be/_pr6gxULn00
Rangers just can’t compete with this type of mobility on certain maps.

Can they still do all that?

Yup.
If the game was just about fighting rangers would be on equal footing but it’s about bunkering and rotating. Rangers don’t have the mobility that a thief does on these maps and we don’t have boon stripping to deal with the celestial cheese builds as quickly.
Now if they would just add boon stripping to warhorn 4 or traps…..

Would love to see some more open maps but I’ll take what I can get. +1 more deathmatch in a seperate queue

FrownyClown.8402:

Are the blinks and what not working as intended? If not, they shouldn’t be able to port up places.

It’s been like that forever. Take a look at this video to see how ridiculous it is. http://youtu.be/_pr6gxULn00
Rangers just can’t compete with this type of mobility on certain maps.

FrownyClown.8402:

Jim Hunter.6821:

If you catch a thief at range you can take out the bulk of their health before they ever land a hit on you. If they do close the gap the GS is a fantastic weapon for fighting a thief. Catch them with counter attack, swoop, hilt bash, maul, wolf fear, swap to bow and pbs, then finish them off with rapid fire.
I rarely see a thief running more than 1 stun break, once you draw that out it’s pretty easy to chain cc and burst them down with maul/rapid fire.

Of course in pvp a thief will rarely engage someone 1v1 and sword/dagger thieves are much harder to lock down, so running condi is a much better choice for ranked matches. Longbow is still plenty of fun in unranked and WvW where thieves think stealth spam makes them immortal.

lb can still be very good in ranked. It just relies on your allies coming to your aid whenever you are focused. Longbow gets better when you have good teammates. I use s/d so its a bit harder for my to win vs thieves. I changed up my utility to include lightning reflexes and i can now beat them 50% of the time.

I’ve run longbow in ranked, I would play the role of the thief, running between points and +1ing fights. On Foefire a ranger is fantastic for this, but other maps where mesmers and thieves can use vertical ports to navigate the map the longbow ranger falls short.

What killed me when I roamed in the higher tiers is you would catch ”roaming” groups of 15 that would only cap camps and wouldn’t even attempt a tower.

I ran into a handful of good roamers when I played in tier 2-5, the majority were free bags that would rage quit when you downed them and then come back with 6-10 people to try and catch you.

If you catch a thief at range you can take out the bulk of their health before they ever land a hit on you. If they do close the gap the GS is a fantastic weapon for fighting a thief. Catch them with counter attack, swoop, hilt bash, maul, wolf fear, swap to bow and pbs, then finish them off with rapid fire.
I rarely see a thief running more than 1 stun break, once you draw that out it’s pretty easy to chain cc and burst them down with maul/rapid fire.

Of course in pvp a thief will rarely engage someone 1v1 and sword/dagger thieves are much harder to lock down, so running condi is a much better choice for ranked matches. Longbow is still plenty of fun in unranked and WvW where thieves think stealth spam makes them immortal.

Jana.6831:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Jana.6831:

shadowpass.4236:

Jana.6831:

shadowpass.4236:

A thief can cover 4200 range instantly.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAV8Yl0Mp0pVOx7J8PNBNhw9qaz8e83yaFA-T1SBABlqSxDHEgIeAAYp8jo9HQR3wCXAAEMBhhSwcUXBgjAQAAEA25RP6RPaSBExWA-w

And it’s still 3 skills for one move.

You get 4200 with:
1. Traited Steal
2. Infiltrator’s Strike (Sword 2)
3. Shadowstep
4. Infiltrator’s Signet Active

And honestly, pressing 3 skills at once is very easy lol. Unless you click of course.

Ok, didn’t see the equipped sword – so it’s 4 skills which all have a slight pause between them, you can press 2 as a ranger and have 6 k+x of insta damage, which the thief dan’t evade while doing his 4 skill combo, then knockback and dodge and all 4 skills of the thief are wasted.
So you have to use 2 skills of your already equipped longbow to evade 4 skills of someone who will have 3 of the skills on cooldown afterwards – fair?

Edit: Or: you dodge and all of the 4 skills are wasted – one cannot dodge LB 2 though.

So a 2.5 second channel is insta damage?

So you mean because it lasts 2,5 sec and is half dodgeable it’s no insta burst?
Ok, I get your point (But we just got a buff, why nerf again?) but if you’re any good at any other class, roam wvw someday and fight rangers, maybe you’ll get everybody elses point. And even if you claim you already did it – do it some more.

I’ve been playing this game since beta, I have leveled every profession through WvW, mostly by roaming because I get bored of the zerg to easily.

I was actually running on my thief last night and I killed a ton of rangers. It’s not difficult when you know how the profession works and how to counter them.

You should take your own advice and try roaming as a ranger. Once you truly know the profession you will be able to read their tells and exploit their weaknesses, until you do that no one will take you seriously.

Jana.6831:

shadowpass.4236:

Jana.6831:

shadowpass.4236:

A thief can cover 4200 range instantly.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAV8Yl0Mp0pVOx7J8PNBNhw9qaz8e83yaFA-T1SBABlqSxDHEgIeAAYp8jo9HQR3wCXAAEMBhhSwcUXBgjAQAAEA25RP6RPaSBExWA-w

And it’s still 3 skills for one move.

You get 4200 with:
1. Traited Steal
2. Infiltrator’s Strike (Sword 2)
3. Shadowstep
4. Infiltrator’s Signet Active

And honestly, pressing 3 skills at once is very easy lol. Unless you click of course.

Ok, didn’t see the equipped sword – so it’s 4 skills which all have a slight pause between them, you can press 2 as a ranger and have 6 k+x of insta damage, which the thief dan’t evade while doing his 4 skill combo, then knockback and dodge and all 4 skills of the thief are wasted.
So you have to use 2 skills of your already equipped longbow to evade 4 skills of someone who will have 3 of the skills on cooldown afterwards – fair?

Edit: Or: you dodge and all of the 4 skills are wasted – one cannot dodge LB 2 though.

So a 2.5 second channel is insta damage?

FrownyClown.8402:

mistsim.2748:

try it, but know that once to get to the top 300 or so, the spec becomes extremely difficult to play. a good s/d or d/p thief will always hard counter you unfortunately, no matter what you do. you can do some serious damage if allowed to freecast, but in the higher brackets people wont give you that chance.

Pretty much this. Thieves outshine rangers as a bursting class in pvp. Give it another 6 months for ranger to either be useless again or able to not be hard countered by thieves.

I don’t see how ranger is hard countered by thieves. I shred almost every one of the thieves I come across 1v1 whether I am playing glass longbow or condi. Ranger has plenty of tricks for dealing with thieves if you know what you are doing.

That being said thieves will remain more useful in PvP unless they remove the vertical teleporting. If there were more maps like Foefire rangers would be a lot more competetive.

shadowpass.4236:

Can we get a report feature for all these people complaining about rangers? You guys are getting really annoying with all of these “rangers are OP threads”.

I don’t know if its just me, but rangers are an extremely easy class to counter when playing longbow/zerk/etc. etc.

And no. I’m not specced into a ranger counter. I just play appropriately and use my skills when I need to.

Honestly. Some of your reasons of why rangers are OP are utterly stupid.

“What if I have no cooldowns left?”

gee. that’s no one’s fault but your own…

My favorite part of all the ranger OP complaints is when people say, “I have no problem killing rangers in a 1v1 but when I’m fighting someone else and I’m already at 25% health rangers jump in and kill me.”

Because when a ranger jumps in to finish off someone with 25% health it is an affront to the gods, rangers are OP, yada yada yada, but for some reason it is perfectly fine for every other class to do it.

I only PvP and WvW, I completely forgot about the Ogre Pet Whistle thing you can get in PvE. Well I’m convinced, rangers are OP. I mean the only way you could stop a ranger that was running something like this would be…. I dunno… sneezing on them or something.

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

Ranger Thunderclap, Engineer Booby Trap, and Guardian Wave of Light will still affect stealthed players. I believe Necro Fear requires a target. You’re also forgetting that there are many other ways a player can stomp without fear of interruption or serious damage — Stability (almost all classes but most notably Guardian, Warrior, Ranger), Ele mist form, Engi invul, Mesmer invis (suppose this counts as stealth in a way). In a way, stability and/or invul is a more powerful stomp combination than stealth, since it negates the effects of the downed skills I mentioned at the beginning of my post.

Thunderclap won’t interrupt if you can’t target the player.

SilverWF.4789:

2. Rly? Did you counted Minis or not? Never seen Rangers with THREE pets at once, but seen Necros with 6 pets

You can actually get at least 6. Hyena and summon, hounds of balthazar, ogre or pirate runes, and sigil of demon summoning. Throw on spirits and you will be a walking zoo.

Now is this effective? Absolutely not, but it gives the ranger haters something else to kitten about.

Along with this they should give a trait vendor that lets you pay with karma and/or badges.

DeadlySynz.3471:

WvW (Roaming) – If your somehow able to avoid the zerg and stay in 1v1 or maybe 1v2 scenarios, the pet is fine in skilled hands. Most people don’t go to WvW to roam, they go to zerg, and given the amount of complaints of roamers and smaller groups being run over by the zerg, it pretty much negates the pet.

That sounds more like a tier thing. My server is full of roamers and small groups and we know how to avoid being run over by zergs. Pets come in very handy in these situations.

HARDOFREADING.7298:

You want to make it even close to fair…Make an Anti Pet Trap with the same amount of penalty time that the Stealthers endure.

Ummm… okay

T7 had a queue for EB last night during prime time. Not a common occurrence but it goes to show you bronze is far from dead.

Yes we know zerg tactics but we have a lot more freedom with our builds because there are a lot less organized zergs in bronze. The GWEN meta is only necessary when the enemy is running it in large numbers. If it’s a 10-15 man group trying to pull it off it is a lot more fun to scatter and pick them off while they try to stick together.

My guild only ran proper zerg builds a few times last week, reset night and in response to pushes from the other servers where we needed to shut them down. Other than that we focus on having fun.

Other than that the roaming action is about a thousand times better than what I found in the higher tiers.