Guild Wars 2

New trait systems, specialisations, builds, all really exciting stuff! I had a few suggestions I think that might go a long way in helping certain classes. These might be completely off base, but it doesn’t hurt to share especially in a time where we’re about to see some major overhauls.

Necromancer: Remove the CD on swapping into Death Shroud. Adjust Life Force generating skills accordingly.
The deal with Necromancers is the fact that A-Net is trying to balance it as a class with damage absorption through it’s “second health bar” rather than giving it sources of damage mitigation. Removing the CD on entering Death Shroud makes the Necromancer class actually do that and gives it options on how to react to various situations. Mitigating burst by quickly going in and out of DS and managing the amount of DS left would promote skilful play. Along with this, there could be combos that generate Death Shroud which would make the gameplay a little more fun. For example, Feast of Corruption on Sceptre could have some prerequisite like gain “10% Life Force if your target has 3 or more conditions, 3% if not” etc. Obviously Life Force through Staff autos etc would have to go. It needs to be a precious resource that you need to manage well.

Mesmers – Move Portal to Elite skill slot.
Mesmers at the moment almost always NEED to take Portal and Blink to be effective at high tier play. Well, moving Portal to Elite would let Mesmers have 3 utilities besides Portal at the cost of sacrificing Moa or Mass Invis, which I think most Mesmers might find okay. Apart from Blink and Decoy, Mesmers get the choice of taking Cleanse Mantra, Mirror Images or Feedback in shatter builds and Daze Mantra in lockdown builds while still keeping Portal. I think this might even help the Thief hard countering Mesmer somewhat as Mesmers now have the option of counter-pressuring Thief hard with Mirror Images or removing their annoying poison with Cleanse Mantra while still keeping their defenses and team utilities.

Rangers – Shout Changes
The reason Rangers find it hard to keep up in any meta is the fact that most their skills, their profession mechanic and almost all their utilities are single target and selfish (besides spirits). It has mostly taken a skirmisher or 1v1 role since launch. We have grown out of the phase where we dedicate a back point bunker and Rangers lack the mobility to make work as a far point skirmisher. There needs to be a reason for Rangers to be picked for team fights, and I believe the new Spirit changes might help with that (as long as they get a good health pool). Apart from that, there are a few shout changes I think might help bring Ranger into the meta. These might be a little far fetched, but it’s just an example. Anything that’s unique and provides something to team fights would work.
Sic Em – Cause AoE reveal. Stealth openers is something that definitely requires some sort of counterplay, imo. Giving Rangers that makes them unique.
Guard – Increase CD to 60 seconds and give it a big red circle in the radius. “Your Pet actively circles around the big red circle dealing devastating damage to those that enter it”. Lich like damage, maybe. This helps peel for teammates, secure stomp, avoid melee cleave, area denial etc. Kind of like a Ring of Warding/Slick Shoes but dealing damage instead of CC.
Search and Rescue – Adjust CD, give it a big tell and make it work like banner? Except you need to CC the pet instead of the ranger.

Thief seems fine (except OP after the new suggested changes), Ele is pretty okay spot post changes and honestly I have no clue on Warrior and Guardian.

Mesmer or Engineer probs

95% of the thieves are going to be running with 6/0/6/0/6 D/P with Improv, Venom Share and Sleight of Hand – Withdraw, Shadowstep, Devourer Venom, Refuge and Basi – and this is going to be crazy strong. Thief really needs to be looked at with the new trait system.
Maybe moving Improv and Executioner to Crit Strikes and Sleight of Hand to Deadly Arts would help? That way you’d need to choose 3 out of –
Improv/Executioner,
Venom Share,
Sleight of Hand and
Bountiful Theft.
Having all of those in one build is certainly nuts.

Remove this trait from the game and make Resilience a GM, or we’re going to witness cancer all around.

P/P will be awesome post patch as a condition weapon. Headshot interrupts cause torment, Steal has confusion, Sneak attacks, Needle Trap on Withdraw, Immob spam and maybe venoms. The possibilities!

Dream Team:

Guardian – Tage
Thief – Vanish
Mesmer – Helseth
Warrior – Rom
Engineer – Teldo

Since that doesn’t have any NA players:

Warrior – Tarcis
Thief – Jumper
Elementalist – Phantaram
Necromancer – Noscoc
Mesmer – Sataarcoeny, lulz

With the new port changes, I noticed that I don’t rubberband (or port back, whatever you wanna call it) anymore when combining a skill with a port. This is soooooooo great. Thanks a ton. You just made this game a lot better.
Love,
Thief

…something about not enuf mesmers…

ha, find me now!

Rome.7124:

Any Mesmers in these games?

lol wtf, I thought I was the only one. Hi, Rome.

Keep at it and allah will reward you with a thousand virgins.

The bets are on! We shall now witness shimmerless playing a…wait…what’s this…sword/sword+staff mesmer?

For PvE, play the weapon set you find most fun (D/D + S/X for me). For PvP, figure out the play style you like best and choose between: Shortbow + (D/P or S/D).
WvW, all weapon combinations are viable. Take mostly zerker weapons/trinkets and add in vit so you have ~16k HP (before adding traits).

+1

Fun watch. So much double dodging. He has an interesting playstyle. It’s quite entertaining to watch you miss Steal so many times to the Black Powder double dodge bait. But hats off to the consistent wins against D/P + P/P. Pistol pewpew OP in thief vs thief.
Edit: That duel at 25:25 tho.

1. How do you normally setup a burst? Do you stealth near the player you wanna kill, do you precast backstab and use infiltrator with it or steal perhaps (can this be even done? I presume so, tried it out a lot of times, but doesn’t work always, timing issue?) or do you just walk up to the player?

90% of the time, you’ll find yourself backstabing from range and rarely melee. This is done by precasting Backstab into Steal/InfilSig like you mentioned. The timing is not that hard to get down. Try hitting the golems with it a couple of times.

2. I have a hard time landing backstabs. I mostly run out of stealth by the time I position myself.
I learned the camera trick to get 4 HS in through BP but it feels like unneeded if I’m in a fight and am about to break it soon to burst because I’ll be out of initiative.
I stealth with 1 heartseeker, should I use 2 to give me more time or get used to getting the burst in quickly?

You’re trying to fight like a Shadow Arts D/P. As D/P Panic Strike, the bulk of your damage isn’t going to come from backstab unless you get a clean opening on the target or are in a favored 1v2 or something. Most of the damage is through auto attacks and Shadow Shots. Shortbow Suprise Shot + Clusterspam is not to be underestimated.

3. Initiative management.. How much should I keep at all times cca? I often find myself out of it or at least with 2-4 left since every skill just costs a lot of it.

As long as you don’t spam your skills or try to stealth up too often, you should be fine here. In D/P, you should be auto attacking along with Shadow Shot/Headshot/Black Powder (as the situation demands). Auto attack is your best friend. In Shortbow, you’ll barely ever use 5 unless trying to disengage, #4 when a heal is coming up or when fighting Engis, #3 for timing or random dodging (extremely effective when you expect a leap coz cripple), #2 for burst and #1 for good pressure in team fights or to setup a burst when used from stealth.

4. Short bow, how often do you use it? I often do it right after I burst to get out of there and kite around but I feel like I should maybe be in my dp set a bit more..
Also, I’ve seen top thieves use shortbow 5 multiple times in a row and still have decent intiative, how is that possible? Is there a trick I’m missing out on?

A lot. It’s your go-to weapon for team fights and down bodies, very good opener in 1v1s and for specific scenarios:
vs mesmer – After you’ve landed your burst or when the mesmer has staff up and is standing in the middle of clones in his chaos storm etc.
vs necro – he’s in staff or DS and you wanna evade spam or LoS poke.
vs engi – your best chance of 1v1ing an engi as D/P is to get an engage in D/P and fall back on shortbow for eternity and finally finishing with D/P. camping shortbow/immob-clusterspam is extremely important in this matchup.
vs thief – they go bow, you go bow or when you know they have their shadowstep and withdraw blown to immob-clusterspam and finish (excellent way to bait out steal when you know it’s off CD is to immob from bow and dodge right after. enemy will try to daze expecting a burst)
vs warrior – never really, idk
vs guardian – to poison shelter and blow his CDs into SB 3 spams or to poke from an unportable spot while strafing etc
vs ranger – cluster spamming OP tree

5. Which sigils do you run on dp? I have air + fire on dp, energy + generosity on shortbow, I used to run rage + air on DP but I found air + fire works somewhat better..

I personally use Air+Fire on both melee and bow, but there are other really good options. Generosity on bow, Blood on D/P instead of fire, Energy on bow, Hydromancy on bow etc.

Most of all, practice. Learn the capabilities of your weapons and utilities in the various matchups. The wonderful thing about this class is that you learn to adapt in a lot of different situations and after a point it becomes muscle memory.

Archaon.9524:

Rome.3192:

Archaon.9524:

Yeah you definately not qualified since i’m pretty sure phd is already running at least one stunbreaker

Actually, he isn’t. :p

Wtf, even shout war has stunbreak on shake it off…pretty much all war specs usually have at least one stunbreak u.u

I might be wrong, but last I queued against him, he ran a Distraction Strike warrior with Fear Me, Berserker Stance and Signet of Stamina/Endure Pain (which doesn’t help get out of Slick Shoes either way).

Archaon.9524:

Yeah you definately not qualified since i’m pretty sure phd is already running at least one stunbreaker

Actually, he isn’t. :p

Hi, I play a D/P thief in GW2 sPvP. I’ll try to answer these questions from the point of view of a D/P Executioner as well as an AcroTrickery S/D.

• What is the first thing that comes to mind when you’re about to face a Mesmer?
  As D/P: 90% of the Mesmers are easy kill. Irrespective of Shatter or Phantasm. Against good mesmers, it’s about what kind of an opening you get, as a burst followed by Shortbow spam is really effective. However, if you get torch 5’d, GS 2 wrack, you have to disengage so I suppose it really depends on who gets the better opening and who can bait out better.
  As S/D: 100% of the mesmers are easy kill.

• How do you feel about your odds of winning?
  As D/P: It’s the one class I feel pretty confident about winning against.
  As S/D: Lul.

• Strategies and tactics?
  As D/P: Really depends on the weapon set they use and how they cycle through their CDs. As an opener against GS, the standard Blinding Powder + Infil Signet + Steal + Auto into HS is quite decent and will force a Decoy or Blink. Continue to chain stealth at this point and let the mesmer go through defensive CDs (like Blurred Frenzy, Riposte or dodges). Upon re-engage, mesmer will definitely Distort or Phase Retreat. If you’ve landed your burst, switch to Shortbow and make sure the poison sticks and gg. The fight comes down to if you can land your burst, so it’s important to know your opponent. The mind games in this match-up are extremely satisfying.
  As S/D: Infil strike/return trolls.

• Which type of Thief build do you feel best fights Mesmer?
  S/D AcroTrickery.

• What Thief skills (weapon or utility) are most important to have in this fight?
  Withdraw is amazing here but I’ve only ever fought mesmers with Hide in Shadows, Shadowstep, Infiltrator’s Signet, Shadow Refuge, Basilisk Venom. I couldn’t imagine any other combination that would work better – maybe Devourer’s Venom over IfilSig or Refuge.

• How do you feel about Mesmer in general?
  Mesmers are an annoying class for any class that’s not a thief. The burst damage, the kiting potential and the range damage they have is a combination no other class has. Thankfully, as a thief, I can stick on them like flies and have stealth myself to avoid getting stealth-bursted along with burst so I can pressure them enough. What do I feel about mesmers in general? Hunt them down, always. In terms of 1v1s, I’ll add that a fight between a good D/P and an excellent shatter can be extremely fun because of the mind games that ensue with baiting/counter-baiting CDs.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Those are already spheres.

The circles on the ground lie. The circles you see are are the cross-section of the invisible sphere and the surface it crosses.

Because of that, you may be hit outside the circle, when the sphere touches the surface on a spot were it’s smaller than its maximum radius.

Someone’s been reading Flatland.

Been getting a lot of those along with BLTC not working. I’ve tried disabling my firewall, forwarding all ports and the /clientport 80 thing. None of it has resolved this issue. If anyone has a fix, please let me know.
Edit: Practice mode works lag free, but I can’t whisper anyone or accept party invites, or queue ranked/unranked. Neither does my friends list show anyone online. I’m on a Mac.

Smirgel.9460:

They are changing Blinding Powder (the utility), not Blackpowder (pistol #5). Read the article more carefully next time…

Never mind, I’m kittened.

bump

I’ve been having this problem (Mac) and it’s extremely frustrating. I was just about to make a post for it. Hope this gets fixed soon.

Ostricheggs.3742:

I’ve never seen someone wear a scarf so well IRL, it was something to behold.

Hah, had to add the IRL part just to make sure everyone was on the same page.

Amir.1570:

Zoose.1640:

Great matches
Horrible stream quality and technical difficulties
AMERICA
UNITED STATES OF CELESTIAL
ETC.

Congrats to Abjured

Comments like this is just double standard shenanigans. Seriously, I guess were just going to forget EU doing cheesy double Ele Soldier Amulet Cleric Amulet against Lookin Like a Cute [QT]’s Berserker Amulet comp 2 years back.

I guess EU are “heroes” when they do non-cheesy BS while NA is “behind the meta” when they’re doing non-cheesy kitten. Just so simple-minded.

Wut? When did this even occur? Also, Qt had two zerkers as far as I can recall.

Guard: Dom – Cleric
War: Hman – Berserker
Ele: Vain – Valkyrie
Necro: Khalifa – Soldier
Mesmer: SataarCoeny – Berserker (but Phantasm, so lol)

Drindor.7901:

I don’t know why, but before this update I had pretty good stats and now whenever I enter pvp after the update, my stats are cut in half and I have been getting destroyed in competitive pvp, anyone know why?

l2p issue

Lupanic.6502:

Elitist.8701:

Im willing to bet up to 100 gold (all my gold) that China will win.

Lets Start. I bet NA will win. ( I am in EU )

If China wins I will find someone with an NA account to give you the gold. If EU wins it is a draw.

Deal?

This guy knows how to bet.

Aaron.2413:

Guardian-eu
Necro-NA
Ele-NA
Mesmer-eu
Ranger- who cares
Warrior-eu
Thief-NA
Engi-NA

Having played on both NA and EU for an extensive period of time, I definitely agree on the first half of your post (although thieves on NA are usually more tunnel visioned on skirmishes rather than focusing on gaining map advantage, but mechanically better).
However….

Now team rotations
NA vs EU*

More teams
NA vs EU*

Advanced meta – WTF does this even mean?
NA vs EU

As D/P, you can go for 30 SA with Hidden Killer and stack stealth/might if you wanna rely on heavy backstabs while having good sustain. Otherwise, you can play a burstier build like 30 trickery, but it has a different play style altogether and you’re not as reliant on backstab for bulk of your damage. Either way, Hidden Thief is a really bad trait IMO and really limits the combos you can pull off with Steal.

I like this thread.
Baiting/blinding an interrupt by a Blackpowder – Headshot.
Securing HiS with HiS + Steal daze.
Hard to explain but, Shadow Shot + Walk through enemy repeatedly keeps pressure up while keeping enemy blinded, forcing a skill to miss as they try to time clearing blind and landing that skill. Great vs slow weapons.
Blackpowder followed by Shadowstep behind target and a Heartseeker combined with Return is a great way to clear condi and expose enemy back for a stab at the same time.
Z axis infil arrow can often force a Shadowstep/Signet.

Honorable mentions: Mid dodge/Withdraw Steal (vs SD thief), Surprise Shot + Choking Gas + HS (vs DPS guard to bait out Smite condi/virtue or safely melee for a while), Blackpowder + Clusterbomb (vs other thieves looking to Steal mid leap).

Every time they go into Death Shroud, run like a kitten. Either stealth up, or kite them and LoS around. Walking through the Necromancer while auto attacking helps, but you need to be good enough to not eat a single auto attack. You can also try poking via cluster bombs while you LoS as their DS#1 is extremely slow that you can strafe back to your LoS while keeping decent damage. Wait for them to leave Shroud, and burst. Good necros will anticipate the burst and random dodge. Bait that out. Watch for Staff as they chill can really mess you up at this point. Get an interrupt on their heal. The 10 seconds should be enough to get them really low if they aren’t dead already. If they are below 25% health but still manage to go into DS again, spam Heartseekers.

Sebastian Knight.4736:

I can personally attest that this build is really strong. I have only recently starting getting into solo queue, but I have something like an 8-0 record with this build over the last couple of days, including an amazing 4v5 victory on Spirit Watch.

Hey, thanks for trying it out and glad it worked for you. I’ve personally really started enjoying the play style of ranger ever since I’ve been playing this, and yes, it’s hella strong.

Dead Muppet.9718:

Believe me when I say this, short bow is very underrated. Short bows strength comes from positioning. While this is just my opinion, I have never found any build or weapon that will apply more pressure than simply auto attacking with the right build/position with the short bow.

Hi, thanks for the feedback. The reason I disagree with that is because I choose not to participate in team fights as a Ranger. I feel like out of the roles I could perform with this trait setup, home point defending is the best. Now after I’ve caped home, I could go into mid fights, but even with a short bow, I don’t feel that much useful outside of Entagle. However, if I take the fight to far point and win my 1v1s or hold out 1v2s, it can pretty much snow ball solo queues. Still, I see where you’re coming from, and I’ll give Shortbow another chance to see how effective I can be in team fights.

Fluffball.8307:

Well naming it after yourself is slightly pompous. This is probably the closest thing we have to a meta build right now. Tons of people are running this or slight variants of it, myself included.

Haha, maybe you’re right. I should have called it Rome’s Slight Variation to the Meta Ranger Build, but that just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Alsooooo, since I came up with this and was using Poison Master before it was “meta” (aka Entangle buff), I feel like I have the right to call it my own, even if people have now come up with variations that are quite similar to this. Or maybe not. Let’s just call it a community build that I like to use a lot. :p

I don’t know if this has been fixed since I’ve been away from the game for 3 months, but to cancel infiltrator’s return, you jump + infiltrator’s strike at the same time. The resulting infiltrator’s return will no longer send you back and you can keep chaining this infinitely. Requires some practice, but it used to be pretty doable.

Goodbye, Ender. It’s been some time since I’ve played with you, but all the games and duels we had back while I was on NA were ballin’.

It’s really getting out of hand. What’s strange is that I have lag on certain matches and not others. I’m compiling a list of the IPs (EU) of all the hot join games that lag for me. Really hope this gets fixed soon as I can’t queue for games anymore fearing I might get the laggy ones where the freezes are so bad, you can’t even move.

It’s in the upcoming November patch. Hasn’t been implemented yet.

Haematic.4913:

My $.02, drop the Snow Owl, grab the Wolf. If you’re in a team fight, or on a point, the fear is ridiculously strong in that aspect. Also, if you’re running entangle; the knockdown and the fear can pretty much guarantee your enemy will be rendered useless.

Yes, the birds can put out immense pressure on targets, but you’re right that it requires a lot more micro managing where I have to keep calling them back when I know there’s heavy AoE incoming, like when fighting a warrior on point or something. I’ll try it out with other pet combinations to see what works better and if the DPS loss can be offset by having more crowd control. Appreciate your feedback.

As far as Celestial is concerned, from what I’ve seen, it isn’t exactly the best amulet for this kind of weapon set. However, put in a longbow and change the traits around, and celestial ranger does quite a bit damage while having a lot of sustain. The drawback with this of course is the fact that you need a longbow as a power weapon with a condition one on weapon swap, which isn’t exactly ideal. However, Sharpening Stone, Roots and Rapid Fire can make for quite a burst even with Celestial. Axe/Dagger doesn’t have much of a power burst by itself (with Spitblade doing the same power damage as Axe auto attack), which is why I went for Rabid.

kiwituatara.6053:

Your link doesn’t work. Please use this instead.

Hi, it should work now. I’ll put it up on GW2skills as well if it doesn’t. Let me know!

F.A.Q. (continued)

• Why did you pick those particular utilities?
  Lightning Reflexes and Muddy Terrain are essential. For the third, I usually opt for Signet of Renewal to run a double stun break and as another full condition clear. However, Signet of Stone is another solid choice, especially if you know the enemy thief is going to keep rotating to help his home point. Signet of Stone and Troll Uguent make a great combination and along with Roots and our crazy down state can ensure quite a few 1v2 victories. Sharpening Stone is another choice, but I’ve generally found it inferior for its CD and have usually just ended up using it to clear fear or immobilise since it’s insta-cast. The third utility can be played around with. See what suits you.

• Rabid vs Carion vs Celestial.
  This is an area that requires more testing to be done. From various games, it seems Rabid is the clear winner for amulet choice, but Celestial can also be interesting. A few tweak of traits might be able to make a celestial amulet with smiler weapon set into a team fight spec since the the axe auto is already pretty strong. Maybe the forum can help here!

• How does this build fair in various 1v1 match-ups?
  If you play right, every single encounter is winnable. The hardest is probably D/D Elementalist, but since D/D needs to be in melee range, it’s quite ideal for you and your birds to land their burst. Just be intelligent with your CDs. For example, it’s a bad idea to burst an elementalist when his water attunement is coming up. Rather, poke some conditions, force a water attunement, and once they are out, burst your conditions and land a double chill with bird and Axe 3 so they can’t go back into water anytime soon. Roots make fighting any class extremely easy once you’ve baited out CDs and dodges. What’s more is roots can be hit while you’re blinded since the condi clear from SotF comes first so it’s quite easy to land. Utilise your evades intelligently. Dodge roll when you need protection as well, and use Dagger 4 and Sword 3 to dodge and keep poison up time. Swapping Pets and immediately using their f2 makes the pets instant cast it, so use this technique when your enemy is immobilised. Hitting F1 on a target before battle engages will make the birds give you swiftness.

That’s the end of F.A.Qs. Please leave your feedback and feel free to ask me any questions.

F.A.Q.

• Why the lack of Shortbow?
  The one thing the Ranger class lacks is access to AoE. This makes its team fight presence not that great. You may be a hard target to focus down, but while you teammates are being pressured, your only option is to counter pressure with short bow while in team fights. This isn’t exactly ideal. Take the fight to the side points, however, and it’s a completely different story. With Axe/Dagger, you have the burst, the evades, a good weakness uptime and the immobilises to land your burst that comes from Spitblades. By not taking a Shortbow, you also get to pack in a Torch while not compromising on any of your evasive skills. This is a huge DPS and survivability boost compared to flanking with a short bow. Not to mention fighting on nodes makes it easier to land your skills.

• What’s your typical skill rotation?
  This depends on what I’m fighting and how aggressive and panicky with their cool downs your opponent is, but here’s an illustration. You start in Sword/Torch and land your Throw Torch. Swap weapons to Axe/Dagger and you have a Doom proc, which can make your Crippling Talon inflict bleeding, crippling, poison. This is enough to force their first condition clear. You may proceed with a chill and weakness from the axe, and after forcing a dodge, land your Muddy Terrain. This needs to be followed up by a Spitblade and your pet burst. After you’ve baited out all condition clears and dodges, you hit your I Win button (roots) and ensure victory.

• Where’s Empathic Bond? Why Poison Master?
  The random nature of Empathic Bond was always annoying to me. Now that condition rangers have another form of condi-clear with survivals, it’s okay to let go off this trait that gets your pets killed more often that not. And since you’re not in the middle of AoE spam fest at mid, you don’t require a whole lot of condition clear than the ones provided by survivals. On the other hand, Poison Master gives you a huge boost to your condition DPS and provides a good amount of poison uptime so you have a much easier time while fighting sustain classes.

• Why the birds? Where’s the wolf?
  The problem with melee ranger is those annoying ranged classes that try to fight you from off point (mesmer, power ranger, thief poking with short bow). With the birds, you can LoS around your point while making sure these zerker classes are always on their toes since the birds can take up to half their health before they even realise. You don’t need to worry about them dying since you’ll mostly be involved in 1v1s or 2v2s (or 1v2s). The immobilises you get from Muddy Terrain and Roots are, in my opinion, enough snares to land your skills that you won’t miss the Dog or Wolf anymore. The fear for stoping reses and stomps is something I do miss, since the build lacks any interrupts whatsoever, but I suppose this can be changed to however you personally see fit.

• Why Troll Unguent over Healing Spring?
  You take little poison, thanks to Evasive Purity. You have 0 blast finishers for Healing Spring. You already have a decent amount of condi clears. You need to keep your pets up. And you’re not fighting with your teammates most of the time. Along with all that, the regen heal works really well with the amount of evades you get, not to mention that combining it with Signet of Stone can make life hell for the burst classes that thought they had you.

• Why Keen Edge over Sharpening Stone?
  Player skill issue. I can personally never count when Sharpening Stone is going to be up, so I can never plan my bursts with it and neither can I rely on it as a condition clear. On the other hand, Keen Edge is a good added DPS and the swiftness from the minor trait by investing in this trait line gives me a good target uptime, which is essential when running a melee ranger.

Hello forum, I’m Rome and I’ve been playing thief in this game since time immemorial. However, upon my return from a short hiatus, I explored the ranger class (I tend to favour the medium armour classes a lot) and really like the build setup I’m currently running. I decided to post the build on the forum so other people can play around with it and provide me with valuable feedback.

Here’s the build.

F.A.Q.
See the following post.

Now I know I’m a very inexperienced ranger and the build has waaays to improve, which is why I decided to post it on the forums so people can give it a go and hopefully, together we can achieve rangers being the meta home defenders again.

Every class has quite the ability to burst, but not every class is designed to be able to mitigate pressure when speccing as zerker. I’d say the best way to pick a class is to look at each of the play styles and see what you enjoy the most. Here’s a list of burst specs to start with, which can be altered based on whether you want more burst or defence:
1. Guardian – Meditations
2. Warrior – Kill Shot + Hundred Blades / Eviscerate
3. Thief – D/P Trickery
4. Engineer – Static Discharge
5. Ranger – Longbow
6. Necromancer – Power Death Shroud
7. Mesmer – Shatter
8. Elementalist – Fresh Air

I do the same and overall it’s pretty much a rage inducing experience. My advice to you is: play a class/spec you can push far with.

More of an exploit than a bug with sword 2: you jump and cast it, it will port you but using return won’t port you back. You can use this to chase a target indefinitely. Huge spammable gap close on demand.

Solid thief. Would definitely be an asset to any team.

I take it back. Recently had this in team queue where 4/8 people disconnected.

Lachanche.6859:

happened twice to me yesterday around 4pm gmt+1.
It’s a weird kind of lag where everything is fine than suddenly you are left behind for like 5 seconds then the damage catch up and it looks like you just got one shotted.
First time i was on my guardian and i thought someone bursted me but the damage recap just showed people wailing on me, took me a while to realize that it was a lagspike.
Second time the client lost its connection to the server after around 5 seconds of lagging behind (people running against wall, skills not firing, this sort of stuff means you are experiencing a lag spike).

Similar issues as this guy described. Oddly enough, I don’t get these in hot joins or team queue, just solo.

you really need to stop posting.

Good engi, nice guy. Would recommend.

Daishi.6027:

1/2 a second base blind duration and one less pulse vs targets who will only stand in it once anyways?

Surely this is the end times.

4 pulses with a pulse per second vs 2 pulses with a pulse every other is a huuuge change to how your opponent is going to play around black powder. Yes, the reason why black powder was a great skill was because a thief could use it as a position displacement to take some pressure off since nobody would stand in it anyway. After the change, that’s not a problem. Warriors can stand right in it and pew pew with auto attack to get rid of the blind to follow it up with a hammer 4, for example. The purpose of black power would no longer be to take some pressure off from melee classes but only to stealth yourself. If it’s a single blind that you want, you’re better off using Shadow Shot that will deal damage and blind much faster and more reliably than the black power projectile anyway.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Remember that these changes are not just for TPvP
They are for WvW and PvE as well
So try to look at changes from a game-wide perspective
As in ~ how the changes effect play in all game modes

I don’t really PvE much to understand the change from that perspective, but if the PvE AI was a problem, couldn’t they just adjust the attack speed and damage of the PvE mobs accordingly rather than change the balance of a class throughout all game modes?
A channeled flurry that a mob does that can go through black powder and can be interrupted…woah, counter play in PvE.