Guild Wars 2

Make them act like Ranger’s Spirits. Activate a Venom gives you, idk, 20 seconds base, 30 seconds with GM trait(since you’d obviously have to replace the one that grants venoms extra charges), where you have a % chance to apply the venom with maybe a 2 second ICD, possibly 1 second. It just needs some sort of internal cd, or else you’d start seeing things like capped immobilize or 25 stacks of torment. If this were implemented, the venoms themselves would also probably have to be changed so that there is no permanent immobilize, or at least not on a short cd, and no infinite chills, but I think this idea could really boost the viability of venoms and might actually make the Skelk venom usable and helpful to both team damage and team surviability.

For balancing issues, different venoms would need different ICDs. No one wants to see basilisk venom shared with a team going off every other second. Another thing with regards to balance, the venoms that are shared would have to deactivate if you move too far from the thief that granted them. This would prevent mass venom buffing at the start of the match then the thief running off on his own. Probably something like 2k-2.5k range for removal of buff.

I for one welcome our new elemental hobosacks and can’t wait to throw out all my ugly backpieces.

Black Box.9312:

Necrotize.2974:

Except it was meant to do that from the start and it did for quite a while. Only recently does it not IIRC. If you are say, a S/P thief, you probably don’t go into stealth, meaning you rely on evades and dazes/stuns. Stability completely negates your stuns, so thieves need a way to deal with classes that can achieve long duration of stability. I fail to see though how a single steal that strips stability would completely invalidate stability. Just wait till they steal, then stab up. You say the thief isn’t tactical for having steal strip stability, but isn’t it just as passive to pop stability as soon as you see a S/P thief and watch their bursts fizzle until stability is gone? Steal prioritizing stability and aegis is important to the class due to the nature of their attacks. Stealth attacks, venoms, stuns on first hits or chain skills reliant on the first skill hitting all are severely hindered by blocks or invulnerability( although I personally think invulnerability is fine and nothing needs to go through it) and can mean the difference between a burst succeeding or failing.

Medi guards typically don’t have stability, so I don’t understand why there is an argument over this.

Oh, I was going off topic because the person I quoted brought up that steal shouldn’t prioritize stability and aegis even though it did for the longest time and stopped doing so when they bugged steal/shadowsteps.

Rusc.4978:

Cynz.9437:

thief changes:
- bountiful theft should prioritize stability and aegis, right now it completely ignores aegis
- every 3rd attack on thief AA chain should go through the block/invul

Having Bountiful Theft prioritize stability and aegis enables Thieves to steal with no regard to tactical thinking, and invalidates the whole purpose of those two boons.

I could understand an unblockable attack in the sword auto chain, since the sword is more about sustain and control. But dagger is about burst damage, and is designed around capitalizing on Backstab. The 4s of poison currently on the third chain skill makes more sense for that purpose, since poison neuters healing and leaves targets vulnerable.

Why should anything go through invulnerability? The few skills that provide invuln have short durations, long cooldowns, and leave the user unable to capture points in a PvP format that revolves around capturing points. And, as mentioned with stability and aegis, it would invalidate the whole point of the mechanic.

Except it was meant to do that from the start and it did for quite a while. Only recently does it not IIRC. If you are say, a S/P thief, you probably don’t go into stealth, meaning you rely on evades and dazes/stuns. Stability completely negates your stuns, so thieves need a way to deal with classes that can achieve long duration of stability. I fail to see though how a single steal that strips stability would completely invalidate stability. Just wait till they steal, then stab up. You say the thief isn’t tactical for having steal strip stability, but isn’t it just as passive to pop stability as soon as you see a S/P thief and watch their bursts fizzle until stability is gone? Steal prioritizing stability and aegis is important to the class due to the nature of their attacks. Stealth attacks, venoms, stuns on first hits or chain skills reliant on the first skill hitting all are severely hindered by blocks or invulnerability( although I personally think invulnerability is fine and nothing needs to go through it) and can mean the difference between a burst succeeding or failing.

Say you go into stealth, ready up basi venom and prepare to backstab an unaware guardian. But then their passive block comes up. This means now your venom is guaranteed to be wasted and if they’re paying the slightest bit of attention, they’ll notice their block disappear when you go for the backstab and roll or something, assuming you even stay in stealth long enough.

Steal was fine prioritizing aegis and stability(especially since aegis negating Mug was a huge pain and stability shutting down a grandmaster trait+a master trait is meh) and I think that at least should be changed. Not to mention there was a trade off. You could steal some vigor or fury and wreck face, but if they stab/aegis up, you might not get it.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Necrotize.2974:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Oh look! Another one. Mesmer tears this time.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Keep ’em coming

Just gonna say this, posts like this only make people want rangers to get nerfed even more, and if there’s enough whining about it, it will eventually happen. Antagonizing people isn’t gonna help your cause. That being said, whining in general will solve nothing. If you genuinely think something is OP and needs to be changed, explain why and do your research. This constant whiner v. troll thing really doesn’t accomplish anything and usually ends in the class in question getting nerfed anyway.

If the devs actually changed content, based on argument-less QQ on the forums, we wouldn’t play a game now.

People were used to be able to completelly ignore rangers for 2 years now, and saw them only as a lootbag. Now people started taking them serious, but some do not wanna accept that.

If you afraid to speak your mind in fear of a nerf, I got bad news for you…

I havn’t seen 1 real argument to why rangers are “overpowered” (because they are obviously not). On the other hand, more than 80% from those 500 posts about rangers after the update, are from people who created a QQ thead the minute they lost a 1v1 to a ranger.

I’m just saying that’s how things tend to go down. The class in question undoubtedly gets nerfed. Be it in a month, or a year, it will happen, and the the FotM will change, because if it never got nerfed, we would never get all these new FotM things. Just my personal opinion that people on both sides of the issue acting like kittens to each other won’t solve anything.

Seeing as stealth is one of thief’s core defensive mechanics(the other being evades/mobility), it should be used all throughout the fight, including disengaging. As a thief, you don’t have the health or burst necessary to crack bunkers or even just tough hybrids and if a fight is taking too long, you’re better off just running to another point. IMO, if you aren’t about to win the fight(a 1v1 on point) after say 45 seconds, you should consider leaving and heading for an undefended point. By fighting them longer, you just risk their big skills coming off cd again and possibly dying. Thief’s superior mobility enables them to sort of be a free roamer, that jumps in to quickly finish off someone who is already in the middle of a fight or save an ally that goes down. By trying to hold a point while slower members of your group try capping, you’re just trying to make the thief something it’s not.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Oh look! Another one. Mesmer tears this time.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Keep ’em coming

Just gonna say this, posts like this only make people want rangers to get nerfed even more, and if there’s enough whining about it, it will eventually happen. Antagonizing people isn’t gonna help your cause. That being said, whining in general will solve nothing. If you genuinely think something is OP and needs to be changed, explain why and do your research. This constant whiner v. troll thing really doesn’t accomplish anything and usually ends in the class in question getting nerfed anyway.

So basically delete the thief’s 2 main ways of surviving(stealth based healing/condi removal+teleport/evades/mobility) and throw a huge wrench in the steal ability while at the same time making it impossible for a thief to disengage. You essentially want to turn the thief into a lower hp warrior with less mobility and next to no damage mitigation. No player will ever be able to balance a class if they are always trying to balance from their own class’ perspective.

“I find that most people hate thieves for one and only one reason. A thgeves ability to chain stealths and teleports around the map with no end in sight. This is incredibly frustrating for everyone. Even other thieves.”

You act as if disengaging is something only thieves do. Any class with access to stealth or mobility can escape a fight. And just going from the PoV of that quote, I’m guessing you don’t play a thief. Play a thief for yourself. You will quickly realize that if you’re trying to fight anything other than another zerker, you will not down them fast enough and you will need to disengage. That mobility is what makes thieves useful. If you realize a fight is going nowhere desirable( like fighting a bunker build on point), you can escape with stealth and teleports to quickly traverse to another point that isn’t defended and take that instead.

Just going off your post, your entire reasoning for nerfing something isn’t that it’s actually OP and needing a nerf, but that it is annoying in your opinion. We don’t change things because they’re annoying. That’s subjective and not a good reason.

IIRC, pets seeing through illusions is nothing new. If the ranger targets you before you make any illusions and uses the F1 skill to make it target you, the pet will forever target you, even if you go in and out of stealth or if someone else hits you. Yes it really annoying because it means the ranger will pretty much never waste a skill on a clone(some still do though sadly). Funnily enough, mesmers, who are supposed to be kings of reflect, are beaten by warriors when it comes to reflecting RF. With the reflect on block trait, warriors can reflect every other RF with a weapon skill, whereas mesmers need to devote a shatter skill+trait, a heal, or a utility slot to effectively negate maybe 1 or 2 RFs.

Just wanted to point out since I just noticed it and it bothered me. Dagger Storm is not “an elite skill with a 30ish second cooldown”, it has a 90 second cd.

But more on topic. To those saying the game shouldn’t be balanced based on hotjoin, I somewhat agree. But at the same time people to this day still try to justify things based on 1v1 which is not even a gamemode in GW2.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Necrotize.2974:

What I think bothers most people is that a ranger can show up to an existing fight, pick a non-bunker that is below 50-60% already and just end them with one skill plus a few auto attacks. Sure they’re not too strong in 1v1, but 1v1 also isn’t a game mode in GW2 so it shouldn’t really mean much when it comes to balancing.

That’s what doesn’t make any sense, it’s not like this is a new thing that is happening. Plenty of professions were already doing this. Thieves are notorious for this. It’s annoying when any class does this, but that is far from making it OP.

People do know OP stands for Over Powered right? Annoying and over powered are two very different things.

Preaching to the choir here. To this day, bunkers still get kittened at me when I disengage on my thief and come back with backup or simply cap their home point instead. But combined with people’s ego, saying something is OP may seem like the only logical explanation to them. “My build is so great and I’ve killed tons of people with it, but I can’t kill this (one person playing a class) so there’s two possibilities; I’m not skilled enough( but that’s not likely, cause I’m the greatest player of this class anyone has ever seen), or they’re OP”.

Not 5 minutes ago I was getting 2v1’d off point, I break away and head for a point and I’m followed by one of the people. Then, 2 more arrive midway through the fight. Knowing it’s lost cause and I’d be better off helping a teammate, I break off again. Ofc by this point, I’ve been called a “noob thief”, a “runner” and a “scrub thief” because I didn’t feel like sticking around for a 3v1.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Necrotize.2974:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Necrotize.2974:

This seems to be exactly how every class goes when it gets a sizable buff. The class gets flooded with FotMers who rabidly defend the class no matter what the claim is, everyone else complains about whatever got buffed being buffed too hard, and the people that actually played the class from the start feel like all they can do is watch as a bunch of egotistic 12 year olds make the entire playerbase of that class look like egotistic 12 year olds.

Can’t beat (insert buffed skill/archetype/class here)? You’re a noob, you suck no name, play better, you should be able to faceroll them.

You play (insert buffed skill/archetype/class here)? Wow you must suck, no skill, FotM, bandwagoner, play a real class, 1-5 spam.

There is no winning. Whenever the meta shifts even a tiny bit, all the people that were displaced get kittened at the new easy-mode class, all the people looking for an ego boost on an online game roll a new character, and everyone has to deal with it while self righteous forumers on both sides hiss at each other.

Except most of the people defending the changes are players that have mained their rangers since beta. Those of us that know the profession inside and out from years of playing it are taking the time to teach people how to counter a ranger. Unfortunately instead of taking this advice people are responding that they don’t want to change anything about their build or play style, so anet needs to nerf ranger instead.

There’s always some like that. Some players who’ve mained the class forever might say (blank) is super OP and should be nerfed, because they’re used to dominating people without it and now they just destroy everyone. Then other players in the same boat think it is fine because they can recognize the weaknesses of the build/skill/archetype. But then you have the FotM people coming in, defending their new build that they’ve spent maybe a month playing, claiming that their build isn’t OP and that everyone complaining just needs to learn to play, and it’s that type of attitude that makes people want Anet to nerf the class itself even more.

I mostly play thief, elementalist and mesmers so I’m kind of used to the ups and downs of a meta shift. I’ve gone from times when ele was considered unusable, to when it utterly destroys people. I got to mess around with Prismatic Understanding when no one had any idea how to counter something like that and I could pretty much kill people with autoattacks, to now, where PU is pretty much forgotten in SPvP. And thief is well…a thief.

I’m just wondering how many of these flavor of the month rangers really think it is over powered. I have run into maybe 1 or 2 that I would even consider a fight, most of them have died laughably fast, and that is across every profession including necro.

The majority of the people that are complaining about them say they are easily killing them in 1v1’s, and the number of baby rangers seems to have already dropped off significantly.

I just don’t understand how people can claim something is OP while saying they can still beat the build in a 1v1. Or the people that say they refuse to use certain skills and traits that they know will counter the ranged burst because they just don’t want to. It’s fine if they want to risk not bringing something but they shouldn’t complain if they choose to leave themselves vulnerable.

I’ve only run into a few as well that are actual problem, but then again, I am using a S/P thief, so I can go from 1500 units away to right next to them in half a second while at the same time interrupting them, plus Pistol Whip completely evades RF if I time it right. I suppose it could be the annoyance factor. A lot of the ones I find will stick with a partner the entire time or if you get them alone and their RF+Knockback+Pet Fear+RF don’t kill you, they switch to GS and run+block until they either get help or until RF is back off cd. What I think bothers most people is that a ranger can show up to an existing fight, pick a non-bunker that is below 50-60% already and just end them with one skill plus a few auto attacks. Sure they’re not too strong in 1v1, but 1v1 also isn’t a game mode in GW2 so it shouldn’t really mean much when it comes to balancing.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Necrotize.2974:

This seems to be exactly how every class goes when it gets a sizable buff. The class gets flooded with FotMers who rabidly defend the class no matter what the claim is, everyone else complains about whatever got buffed being buffed too hard, and the people that actually played the class from the start feel like all they can do is watch as a bunch of egotistic 12 year olds make the entire playerbase of that class look like egotistic 12 year olds.

Can’t beat (insert buffed skill/archetype/class here)? You’re a noob, you suck no name, play better, you should be able to faceroll them.

You play (insert buffed skill/archetype/class here)? Wow you must suck, no skill, FotM, bandwagoner, play a real class, 1-5 spam.

There is no winning. Whenever the meta shifts even a tiny bit, all the people that were displaced get kittened at the new easy-mode class, all the people looking for an ego boost on an online game roll a new character, and everyone has to deal with it while self righteous forumers on both sides hiss at each other.

Except most of the people defending the changes are players that have mained their rangers since beta. Those of us that know the profession inside and out from years of playing it are taking the time to teach people how to counter a ranger. Unfortunately instead of taking this advice people are responding that they don’t want to change anything about their build or play style, so anet needs to nerf ranger instead.

There’s always some like that. Some players who’ve mained the class forever might say (blank) is super OP and should be nerfed, because they’re used to dominating people without it and now they just destroy everyone. Then other players in the same boat think it is fine because they can recognize the weaknesses of the build/skill/archetype. But then you have the FotM people coming in, defending their new build that they’ve spent maybe a month playing, claiming that their build isn’t OP and that everyone complaining just needs to learn to play, and it’s that type of attitude that makes people want Anet to nerf the class itself even more.

I mostly play thief, elementalist and mesmers so I’m kind of used to the ups and downs of a meta shift. I’ve gone from times when ele was considered unusable, to when it utterly destroys people. I got to mess around with Prismatic Understanding when no one had any idea how to counter something like that and I could pretty much kill people with autoattacks, to now, where PU is pretty much forgotten in SPvP. And thief is well…a thief.

This seems to be exactly how every class goes when it gets a sizable buff. The class gets flooded with FotMers who rabidly defend the class no matter what the claim is, everyone else complains about whatever got buffed being buffed too hard, and the people that actually played the class from the start feel like all they can do is watch as a bunch of egotistic 12 year olds make the entire playerbase of that class look like egotistic 12 year olds.

Can’t beat (insert buffed skill/archetype/class here)? You’re a noob, you suck no name, play better, you should be able to faceroll them.

You play (insert buffed skill/archetype/class here)? Wow you must suck, no skill, FotM, bandwagoner, play a real class, 1-5 spam.

There is no winning. Whenever the meta shifts even a tiny bit, all the people that were displaced get kittened at the new easy-mode class, all the people looking for an ego boost on an online game roll a new character, and everyone has to deal with it while self righteous forumers on both sides hiss at each other.

FLiP.7680:

IMO Steal should become a Utility skill, and his F1 would be Stealth.

- A 10s stealth duration with 15s cooldown, insta-cast. No need of Reveal anymore.

- 6 points in Trickery will give you +30% (3s) duration and one of the GM traits +20% (2s) and Daze on the first hit. Summing up to 15s duration, which means thieves would be able to roam around perma-stealth, but not be able to stealth every 4s in combat.

- Steal and Stealth skills/traits should be reworked.

This would be interesting, but it would also take some viability out of several builds that already don’t rely on stealth but use steal to great effect. Also seeing as everyone and their mother has some deep seated hatred for stealth, this would probably never happen. They already complain about “perma stealth” thieves, the last they we need is for there actually to be perma-stealth thieves.

Cam Ron.4170:

Necrotize.2974:

I’m too lazy to find builds so I’ve developed this bad habit of just throwing points into trait lines I like then hoping it all works out.

Sounds like you need to roll an engineer. Enjoy the free wins

I’ve tried engineer, sad to say two major things make me never want to bother with one. Ugly kit backpacks is one, the fact that grenades is pretty much the end all be all of utility, conditions and damage all in one is another, especially since I hate throwing them. I pretty much just jump back and forth between Thief, Mesmer and Ele.

Thanks for the build Deax, I’ll give it a shot. Atm I’m having the most success with a S/P build with lots of teleports and giving people the slip. I have to say that infiltrator’s strike is my favorite skill and has saved me countless times, running around a corner to escape a 2v1 then teleporting behind them to get away never gets old.

Just thought I throw this out there, the reason thieves have so much trouble with medi-guards is because thief doesn’t stand up to well to burst and are supposed to use evades+stealth to avoid portions of a burst and recover. The problem they have against guards stems from the fact that 2 very good meditations(Smite condition and Judge’s Intervention) are instant cast, making them hard to be evaded. Then, the weapon of choice for many medi guards, the greatsword, has a majority of its burst in self centered AoE form, thus ignoring stealth unless the thief is using pistol mainhand( as all other mainhand weapons barring Sbow require you to hit them in melee range). So this means medi guards can continue their bursting rotation regardless if the thief is in stealth or not, because much of it doesn’t rely on targeting. This is also just my personal pet peeve, but passive blocks always seem to pop up at the wrong time to eat a backstab or stop a Mug+Daze.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is an impossible matchup, but I will say the thief needs to outplay the guardian more than it might have to in other matchups.

Nova put it well but sadly, sometimes the teams are only 2v2 or you’re not working with a guild team so coordinated attacks and movements are easier said than done and a lot of the time it will diverge into 2 1v1’s or a single 2v1.

bobomb.5209:

Necrotize.2974:

bobomb.5209:

Necrotize.2974:

bobomb.5209:

But what happens if you buff ranged and nerf melee? That could be quite a predicament.

Maybe they’d just cancel out?

No they don’t cancel out, a larger chasm of unbalance is created. I apologize but my question was rhetorical, I assumed the fact that doing so would be absurd would be apparent.

I was joking… That kind of was the intention of this thread btw. Not to call any class in particular out but to mock the way most people go about asking for changes.

Oh goodness looks like I am guilty of the folly I accused you of, sorry.

All good, sarcasm is not meant for the internet but sadly that’s when I feel the most sarcastic. This thread really took a serious turn when I didn’t really expect it to be more than people joking lol.

So I was just messing around in hotjoin, working towards them sweet rewards boxes. Now my team was doing fairly well, but the other team had this thief that just kept bursting our squishy down. Since I was in the area and had to cap that point anyway, I went to help. By the time I get there the poor guy is downed and my mass invis is on cd. When the thief sees me approach, she uses blackpowder+HS to stealth, undoubtedly sure of her stomp. I run over and start to rez, counting the seconds. 2 seconds in, I pop diversion(I have illusionary Persona). Ally gets up, thief’s stealth wears off and we force her back. I feel like diversion is underused due to its limited use(harder to interrupt heals with than non-illusion reliant interrupts), but when the opportunity does arise to use it, it wrecks face.

So, just so there is some dialogue; Whats your favorite use of diversion? Are you a chain-dazer kind of guy or do you prefer uses it to secure a kill/rez?

bobomb.5209:

Necrotize.2974:

bobomb.5209:

But what happens if you buff ranged and nerf melee? That could be quite a predicament.

Maybe they’d just cancel out?

No they don’t cancel out, a larger chasm of unbalance is created. I apologize but my question was rhetorical, I assumed the fact that doing so would be absurd would be apparent.

I was joking… That kind of was the intention of this thread btw. Not to call any class in particular out but to mock the way most people go about asking for changes.

bobomb.5209:

But what happens if you buff ranged and nerf melee? That could be quite a predicament.

Maybe they’d just cancel out?

dancingmonkey.4902:

nickxnickx.5401:

dancingmonkey.4902:

I will gladly give you the knock back off of any of my various professions, if the knock back is replaces with an AoE stealth I can spam.

Smells like any angry thief post, but i will reply anyway.

Have fun getting rapid fired through stealth, aoe conditioned, hit, revealed, knocked out.

Smells like any angry thief post, but i will reply anyway.

First i am curious, how do you die to rapid fire with stealth and 2 dodges and a reflecting elite skill?

All classes have at least 2 dodges and yet people still get hit with RF. Funny how that works. So unless you’re saving all your dodges for rapid fire, you’re not gonna dodge it all and the long bow auto attack is just as damaging if you don’t stop it and get close. Stealth only works if the ranger has no idea what your stealth skills look like, otherwise they just start channeling when they see the animation and RF will track you in stealth. Stealth doesn’t stop damage so even if they don’t manage to get the RF off, they can always use Barrage on themselves. Most burst thieves won’t risk the HP loss+cripple to go into that area. Daggerstorm has a 90 second cd compared to the 8 of RF, not to mention it recently has developed this nasty bug of doing absolutely nothing but the animation but going on full cd. Just saying. If you’re gonna make thief sound like some god tier class who is never hit with anything, you might wanna include all factors when making your snide replies.

I am an amazing player, so obviously any class that is lucky enough to be played by me should completely destroy every person I come across. If people complain about my class on the forums and say its OP, they need to L2P as amazingly as I do and any class that beats me obviously has such a huge advantage that they must be nerfed into the dust. My build is perfect and original, so anyone who copies it is stealing from me because I worked so hard to create a build that hard counters almost everyone. My class still isn’t OP though, only someone of my skill could so utterly destroy people with so little effort so it doesn’t matter if its easy. If you’re having trouble with any skills, just ask me and I’ll ramble off literally everything that could potentially counter it, even if your class doesn’t have that or the counter is super situational, because if you’re really good, you will make that situation happen or git gud. Hotjoin is the only true test of real skill.

/intense sarcasm off

Wooh that was fun. But seriously, if someone has problems dealing with certain playstyles, don’t just list every single boon, skill or tactic that counters that playstyle theoretically. You’re helping no one. And instead of calling for nerfs to everything and just calling something OP, actually give respectful and well rounded suggestions as to what could change instead of just focusing on it from your point of view. You may have found your own hard counter, everyone has one, get used to it. Before saying anything asinine, try playing the class for real yourself.

Fine, but only if we can change other classes’ methods of damage mitigation. If warriors use a block, they can hold up the block forever, but at soon as they put it down, all sources of block go on a 5 minute cd and they can’t gain Aegis for 5 minutes. Stances actually become real stances and immobilize you until they’re over. All other classes’ healing skills would become 10 second channels. If you interrupt the channel or are interrupted by someone else, the healing skill goes on a x10 cd of its base cd. That way you need to use your heal smartly and at the right time, not just whenever you get low on health.

shadowpass.4236:

ppl just get mad when they are about to kill a thief in wvw, then the thief just shadow refuges and u never see him again

Honestly with literally any form of AoE, a low hp thief using refuge to escape is a dead thief. Heck, if they were low enough, you can just spam autoattacks in the giant bullseye and in a few seconds they’ll probably show up, downed and about to die. Even if they do get away, that is a win in my book.

Only works while in combat.

Anhomedog.7968:

I’m really not sure why people call someone with damage OP! I’m not sure if people dont know what true balance really is. If you do high damage, your defense is low (aka glass cannon), if you have high defense, your damage is low (aka a tank), if you are in the middle ground, then your defense is meh, and your damage is meh (aka middle ground). The Ranger is being called OP because it can hit like a 8k with one really fast hitting spell, so you come here and complain about it. If you didn’t know about something called reflects, retaliation, and dodge, you may want to think about looking up what those are. It is so incredibly easy to one dodge out of rapid fire, or just completely reflect it, as well as put up retaliation…it actually helps -_-. Elementalists S/D or S/F is incredibly powerful, I’ll give you that one, but really…if an elementalist gets off that huge combo on you before you two shot it into oblivion, you deserve to die. IMO just learn class mechanics and rotations and you pretty much can beat and class with whatever you want.

People complain because their burst is a single skill at the longest range and honestly the best complement to it is autoattack. At least with a S/D or S/F ele, their burst is on a fairly good cd and involves using several skills within a short time. For RF, its one skill over a short time out of most classes’ range. Retaliation is good and all, but not all classes can access it and won’t exactly be applying major pressure compared to the 8k you just ate to proc all the retal, so I would not suggest tanking RF just because you have retaliation. Reflects are also not accessible to many classes or at the very least would mean sacrifices to general viability just to counter one archetype of one class(but lets face it, there are a lot of freaking longbow rangers now) and even then, most can’t match the cd. Assuming you do get off the reflect, the ranger still has the advantage. They can cancel their skill with a dodge, which will at the same time dodge any projectiles you reflected back at them.

IMO the skill is a little over the top, especially since there were tons of other changes they could’ve made to increase ranger viability that players who actually played ranger before would’ve enjoyed (cough Sword auto attack cough) and my suggestion would be to make it root and prevent dodge cancelling just like the sword auto attack does but shouldn’t. This makes the skill more high risk-high reward like burst should be instead of just low risk at long range-high reward while at the same time making reflects a very viable counter to it instead of just a way to get the ranger to cancel the skill and try again in 8 seconds.

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

I killed a rabbit with my glass thief.
Rabbit underpowered

Rabbit is fine. Every other class is OP. Nerf everything so they can’t oneshot rabbits anymore.

Very cool. Always loved the asuran animations for elementalists, especially burning speed. I’d make an asuran ele myself but I need my fashion to be big sized T_T

Keep up the good work though, gives me something to watch when I’m bored in the middle of classes.

oxtred.7658:

It’s not about the counter available, it’s about the low risk for such a high reward. Eles have easy access to reflects and proj absorb, but it’s not the case for everyone.

Only focus has projectile absorb and only staff/focus have reflect, unless you wanna count that weird Projectile Block effect on Ring of Earth that I’ve personally never really had much success in using that way. Which is odd, since whenever you hear someone complain about ele, its always D/D is OP. But yeah, Rapid Fire is huge reward for usually no risk unless your opponent has a reflect ready for you, in which case you cancel rapid fire with a dodge and in turn dodge the arrows reflected at you at the same time. IMO, rapid fire should be like their sword autoattack(even though that sword auto attack really shouldn’t be like that), it roots and prevents dodge cancelling while active. This would at least give it some risk and reward players for reacting quickly and reflecting.

Ummm…no.

Incredibly long post but I felt it was necessary since people sure do love hating on thieves because countering stealth is “impossible”.

Here’s why. Stealth is one of thief’s 2 main methods of damage mitigation. Most classes have 2 or 3. Warriors have passive regen+blocks+stances, guardians have passive blocks, blinds and tiny heals, thief has evades and stealth, and maybe blinds if they have pistol offhand, although that is no where near as reliable anymore. No other class to my knowledge has a condition that can single-handedly shut down one of their forms of damage mitigation(I’m referring to revealed here). Revealed applies pretty much exclusively to thieves(as no other class has stealth as a primary form of damage mitigation) and totally prevents them from from gaining it for 4-6 seconds. Stealth also doesn’t drop targeting channel skills, the biggest offender being rapid fire. Meaning gaining stealth while they’re channeling is almost pointless.

Not to mention stealth does not actually prevent or reduce damage, it just makes it impossible to target you. With just a little observation on what the thief’s main hand weapon is, you can instantly determine where they will be going in stealth. If its pistol, they’ll back off, but if it is sword or dagger, they will most likely try to get behind you. AoE skills don’t care if you’re in stealth, they’re gonna hit you anyway.

If you want to make something that completely hard counters stealth, then you will need to make evades a lot more viable. As it stands, thief’s evades are usually tied into attacks, meaning they can’t just save them for whenever they need to dodge if they want to do damage quickly. Thieves would also probably need more access to damage mitigation such as protection upon entering stealth or something to that nature.

To put this in perspective, I’m sure lots of warriors would complain if suddenly there was a condition that prevents stances(unsteady ground perhaps). Or if there were skills that ignored the invulnerability on things like mist form, distortion, blocks and things like that?

Stealth is arguably weaker and stronger than other classes’ damage mitigation. It can be used offensively and defensively, but at the same time, it doesn’t actually prevent damage. Good players will still predict what you’re planning and hit you regardless or just block till you leave stealth. Just because you can’t counter stealth the exact same way every time doesn’t mean it needs to be nerfed, it means you need to get better at fighting thieves and recognizing playstyles.

My advice to you, play a perma-stealth thief for yourself. Watch as you contribute almost nothing to a team and have trouble taking down even glassy people.

caveman.5840:

.

But if it starves to death and dies here, it’ll really start to stink up the place. At least if you feed them they leave when the thread dies. When they get desperate they just make thread after thread and it goes on forever.

I’m too lazy to find builds so I’ve developed this bad habit of just throwing points into trait lines I like then hoping it all works out. Some go well, others… we don’t talk about. Last thing I tried was P/P+Sbow with Ricochet for AoE pressure and some…less than optimal traits/utilities while roaming around points. To clarify, I mostly to hotjoin because again, I’m lazy. So what do you guys find the most success with?

dancingmonkey.4902:

I didn’t mean to imply that I support the idea that it prioritized might. I was simply suggesting that it removes all of what ever boon it does remove, when it removes them.

Ahh ok. Yeah, it would need to be one or the other. Both at the same time would completely destroy boon stacking classes or burst classes that rely on short term might.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Necrotize.2974:

I feel like a sigil that single handedly hard counters any class relying on boons would be a very bad idea. If it prioritized might, it would probably be the death of might stacking in PvP and pretty much hard counter any class that utilizes might often, especially eles.

It seems fairly reasonable to me, due to the fact that we have a sigil that stacks might.

As might (and some other boons for that matter) have become an isue for some, because it can be stacks easily and to a large extent, it seems reasonable to have a sigil of this nature.

The sigil grants might, but is not responsible for all might. If it did prioritize might and steal stacks of it, it would have to be limited to say 5 stacks. Otherwise, say an ele uses up all their blast finishers and attunement swaps to build up 20 might. Most damage skills are ready to be used now that might has been stacked properly. Then, they opponent switches weapons and does a single autoattack, stealing all 20 of those stacks. The ele now has no way to get might as everything is on cd and the opponent now has huge damage potential. This sigil would range from useless( such as against classes like thieves who can gain 1 or 2 stacks of Might for a long time just by walking around and dodging) to class breaking for others. If it were made to prioritize might, it should also be made to have a stack limit that can be stolen.

Stacking might is active play, sigils are passive play. Active play should be able to counter passive play, not be totally destroyed by it.

I feel like a sigil that single handedly hard counters any class relying on boons would be a very bad idea. If it prioritized might, it would probably be the death of might stacking in PvP and pretty much hard counter any class that utilizes might often, especially eles.

Rabbitstew.2756:

This thread —> Waaahhh, a Warrior spec’ed for mobility and got away from me! NERF IT INTO THE GROUND BECAUSE I DON’T WANT THEM TO BE GOOD AT SOMETHING THEY SPECIALIZED IN!!!

People do the same for thieves, and so far it has been working.

Because stealth is SUPPOSED to be one of thief’s damage mitigations. Unlike other classes’ damage mitigation however, stealth doesn’t actually stop damage or reduce it. It just makes it harder for people of lower skill to hit you. This means channeled skills and pretty much any AoE, will still hit you in stealth, making it effectively useless for reducing damage.

Just saying, for necros, bluffing with Spectral Walk+Armor to get before a ranger is not exactly a reliable method. Seeing as Rapid Fire has what, an 8 sec cd, and spectral walk has 60 seconds base. You also use a stun break, which you definitely need if you don’t wanna get knocked down by dog then eat a full RF.

Just gonna compare this to a situation I remember. Like a year ago, everyone complained about warriors. Their passive healing was great coupled with their ability to stun people continuously while still dealing good damage. In pretty much every forum people were complaining but the people in the warrior forum would always defend it, saying it was easy to counter and that warriors were weak, because well, they didn’t want to get nerfed. Not making a direct comparison though, I have mixed feelings about rangers at this time and need to do more testing to be sure I know where I stand. But yeah, everyone seems to have different viewpoints based on where they stand. Rangers think it’s fine and that if anything should happen, other classes should be buffed/fixed around this, while other classes think ranger should be nerfed around them. No one in this community seems to want to have Anet work on their class if having them “fix” another class is an alternative. God forbid other classes work up a bug list the size of mesmers, or thieves.

Remove celestial and builds pretty much all go back to their cookie-cutter bursty glass builds and tanky bunker builds. People might try to make hybrid builds, but they’d have to either make condi or power far weaker than the other( and essentially useless when compared to going pure) or sacrifice survivability for not much extra gain. All celestial builds only reach full potential if they can maintain and get boons on demand. This means one good boon strip once they really get going and they’re pretty much screwed. Especially against necros. Let them get a good bunch of buffs going, wait till they heal or for ele till they switch into water, then once they’re out of water lay on the conditions. Start with say Signet of Spite to make them panic and use cleansing fire if they have it, then fear to force stab/stun break, corrupt to turn stab into fear and erase all their boons. At this point they should be fairly low on hp, covered in conditions and probably chilled for a while, making them an easy kill if they don’t back way off.

Just watched it see what kpop you listen to :P
Downloaded a few too lol.

Great fights though. Just out of curiosity, what attunement do you usually find yourself starting a fight in? I usually start in air, then switch to fire, so on and so forth.

How many rangers does it take to change a lightbulb?

I don’t know, if they ever get within melee range of it we might find out.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Mbelch.9028:

Necrotize.2974:

For all the people suggesting a nerf to might because it makes cele more powerful. Might is not exclusive to people with Celestial builds, anyone can do it. Which also means that if you nerf how might works, you are slightly hurting those celestial builds, and really crippling any other build that relies on might but doesn’t use celestial. I mean, boonstripping is a thing for many classes. Watching an ele or engineer get to 20 might stacks then sending them into the void can really screw them over. Pretty much any class can have access to might, and the intended draw back of this is that Might isn’t permanent like your amulets and runes are. Might can be stolen(believe me, you don’t want a zerker mesmer stealing 20 stacks of might from you), corrupted and stripped and it has a duration.

Celestial is really powerful, IF you can maintain access to a wide variety of boons. This almost always requires building around obtaining boons and always keeping on eye on what boons you have during fights. This encourages more active play and gaining specific boons in reaction to things, instead of just at random times when the skill is off cd.

Saying something is OP just because with active play and proper boon management(which can be shut down by 1-2 boon targeting skills) it is very strong seems like you just want every class to be some variation of each other, just with less health and more damage or less damage and more health.

I very much agree with this. Thank you for posting.

You are using the wrong reasoning to suggest someone else is claiming something is OP. The reason folks are pointing out that might is the problems, is because useless threads of the nature of this one are made. So we have to educate the thread creators. celestial hase been around for a long time. Yet no one mad threads complaining about it untill the rune and might stacking changes occurred.

Not to mention, the guy who created this thread clearly made a very strong effort not to do any comparisons of damage out put or defensive capabilities. If you actual feel you have a strong point, you offer those cases to support it. The fact that they do not exist, is strong evidence that the OP may not even believe the smoke and mirrors he created to blame celestial gear.

In addition, such collection of data would be time consuming and it is far easier to just claim something is broken rather than take the time to test it. I play ele fairly often, I can hold my own against 2v1’s, but I eventually die if help doesn’t arrive and I rarely down either of them unless they’re full glass(but if they are full glass I need to dodge their burst before executing mine, since mine is a lot longer). What really destroys me is, like I mentioned earlier, Necros and Mesmers that understand how ele is meant to be played. You support yourself with boons, you don’t have a big burst heal, just smaller heals over time. See an ele switch into water then out? Signet of Spite+Fear(to force stab) then Corrupt Boon. This pretty much destroys the elementalist. All passive heals gone, no condi clears(or few) and now damage is in the toilet due to loss of might, all while conditions eat up health. Celestial builds in general are like speeding trains. They start slow, but as they build up might they get stronger and stronger. Stripping might even once is like pulling the emergency break.

Just to clarify. I’m not for nerfing might or cele. Cele is niche and requires very active play to maintain and we don’t want to discourage that. Might is powerful for all classes. Always has been. The strongest burst came from classes that could temporarily supply their own might or maintain several stacks all the time. I just think other things should be buffed to the same level. But before that, bugs should be fixed, since as a person who also loves mesmers and thieves, there are a lot of little bugs that really screw over things.

Collection of data regarding cele and might wouldn’t really prove much that we don’t already know. Might increases damage, both condition and power. Celestial increases power, crit, crit damage and condition damage. People who utilize all those stats will have none of them wasted, whereas say a pure power build is really only using half of the might and half of the stats.

As others said, when life force builds as easily as adrenaline, we can talk. For warriors, every hit builds adrenaline. Necros have 1 weapon skill on each MH weapon that does it and some utilities that can be traited to do it. Sometimes that weapon skill isn’t even the autoattack and is actually on like a 10 second cd.

Ranger needed a buff. Maybe not all to one skill, but it needed some kind of buff. I personally would’ve been happier if they reworked Sword main hand for them so it could be cancelled and didn’t sometimes decide your ranger would like to learn to fly. Longbow always was a passive kind of play weapon. The autoattack was probably the best thing about it. Rapid fire probably just needs a longer cd. As it stands, the best way to counter it is reflects( by best I mean, most helpful to you and detrimental to them) but most reflects have at least 4-5 times the cd of rapid fire and the classes that have access to them aren’t gonna survive 4-5 rapid fires, partial hits or otherwise.

My suggestion for it. Maybe tone down its damage and in turn boost damage slightly on the other skills slightly. What I think would really help is making it root the ranger. LoS is pretty much the go-to way to counter longbow, so making Rapid Fire actually vulnerable to it would help a lot. It is vulnerable to LoS already now, but you’d have to be pretty on top of things to not get hit several times before making it to cover due to its high speed.

For all the people suggesting a nerf to might because it makes cele more powerful. Might is not exclusive to people with Celestial builds, anyone can do it. Which also means that if you nerf how might works, you are slightly hurting those celestial builds, and really crippling any other build that relies on might but doesn’t use celestial. I mean, boonstripping is a thing for many classes. Watching an ele or engineer get to 20 might stacks then sending them into the void can really screw them over. Pretty much any class can have access to might, and the intended draw back of this is that Might isn’t permanent like your amulets and runes are. Might can be stolen(believe me, you don’t want a zerker mesmer stealing 20 stacks of might from you), corrupted and stripped and it has a duration.

Celestial is really powerful, IF you can maintain access to a wide variety of boons. This almost always requires building around obtaining boons and always keeping on eye on what boons you have during fights. This encourages more active play and gaining specific boons in reaction to things, instead of just at random times when the skill is off cd.

Saying something is OP just because with active play and proper boon management(which can be shut down by 1-2 boon targeting skills) it is very strong seems like you just want every class to be some variation of each other, just with less health and more damage or less damage and more health.

Turn it into deployable Arrow Cart. Instantly an amazingly OP elite and engineers dominate all WvW. Think your about to push back that enemy zerg? Well 6 engineers just dropped 6 fully made Arrow carts

I was bored so I was thinking of ways that more depth could be added to the mesmer class via their traits. The main thing that kept sticking with me was that there aren’t too many traits that take advantage of clones. Even against average players, clones are just not a threat or even much of an inconvenience, just something that you dodge through if you see them run at you. So these trait ideas were based around that.

Perfect Replication: GM tier probably. Maybe Master tier.
Clones copy all buffs on you at the time of their creation. Clones now dodge when you dodge.

This would make clones a lot more convincing and more than just shatter fodder. It would also stop builds that rely on constant clones(AoE condi, Signet healers) from losing all their clones to one AoE.

Obscured Identity: GM tier definitely.
Clones have a chance to apply blindness on attack.

This one really depends on the . If the % was like 10-15, then I could see it getting away with no internal cd, but 25%-50% would need a cd ranging from 5 to 10 seconds at least. This could make for some very interesting bunker mesmers that rely on clones that are harder to kill with AoE, blind pressure, and constant shatter fodder.

Only reason I thought clones really needed a boost was because as it stands, they’re really only good for one or two builds in particular(Shatter and condition) and in both of those, the only role is to die. What if you don’t want to watch clones of yourself die over and over!

Maybe just make it root or something. As it stands, it is a low risk high reward skill. Being executed at max range lowers risk significantly, lower channel time does as well. I’ve run into quite a few rangers who find little places to jump to(Like the giant torch next to the middle point in Silent Storm) then just stand there sniping anyone who approaches. Because of the increased elevation, some classes flat out have no way to deal with this due to lacking pulls or long range skills(And if they did have pulls, rangers can always gain stability for a decent amount of time). This gives it pretty much no risk unless your enemy really focuses fire on you and they happen to have a ranger as well.

I’ve been playing my Mesmer recently and honestly, I find myself considering swapping out stun breaks for reflects, because stun breaking the knockback shot rarely works as they’ve already started channeling RF. If it rooted, it would increase the risk to match the reward by preventing them from dodge cancelling when it is reflected. It just gets annoying after a while when the only thing that hits you is RF+Autoattack, and you can’t kill them fast enough because of disables+entangle then running away to max range. Literally had a ranger who I got low on health, entangle, chain both pet disables and knockback shot, all so he could get far enough away to heal.

Don’t get me wrong though, rangers needed a buff. But maybe spread that buff around to other skills instead of just dumping it all into one.

Vieux P.1238:

Feedback & crap load of bursty dps on em. Just last night, Power ranger launched his meta attack on me & Feedback took half his life away in that burst. I did the rest & he was down for the count.

Which utility would you suggest dropping for Feedback? Without Null Field I’ll have no condi clear and I’m addicted to Blink+Decoy T_T