Guild Wars 2

Daecollo.9578:

And BOON STEAL thieves, your counter. Is being reduced by 50% effectiveness in the next patch.

Boon steal doesn’t just counter us, it counters any class that relies on boons to survive – eles, guardians, in the warriors case a major portion of their offensive damage so I’ll also say WARRIORS. A thief being able to gut 75% of a warrior/ranger elite in one attack should have it’s effectiveness reduced. Please don’t act like rangers are the only one suffering by one overpowered skill. Not to mention it deals a kittenload of damage along with it.

Rangers are forced to go shaman’s in tpvp, rangers are also FORCED to go 30 into WS to get the condition removal which is a bunker condition tree by Anet (those conditions also aren’t completely removed theyre handed to our pet), Rangers are forced to choose conditions over power because a major portion of our direct dmg is alotted to our pets who have a bad AI and we get nothing but cried about for these restrictions. Anet designs our shortbow the way it is , rangers use it and get called 1 spammers. It’s pretty unfair, but I guess it is what it is.

Daecollo.9578:

honovi.7893:

tattoohead.3217:

honovi.7893:

Scoobaniec.9561:

honovi.7893:

Scoobaniec.9561:

honovi.7893:

Scoobaniec.9561:

honovi.7893:

Because TU has a cast time, down time, requires timing, is easier to time poison with, and is worse than healing spring…

Sword+dagger..Anyone from rangers? 3 evades in one set and all of them on low cd..Easy access to Vigor inst a problem either.

Stop looking on small image like x hp/s and take the whole picture. If hp/s were all that matter warrior would be a best bunker by now, but for some reason he inst, or im simply wrong? Unlike other classes we taking everything on chest, and all we have for defense is:

Gs – whirlwind evade (gs is a crappy weapon for pvp anyway) 10cd
Shield stance – 3sec block. 30cd
Sword offhand riposte – block distance atatcks for 2sec, 1 attack for melee. 15cd
Mace mh counterblow – block single attack, 10cd
Endure pain – take 0 dmg from attacks for 4sec, 60cd.
Berserker stance – conditions cannot be applies for 8sec, 60cd.

Thats all we got from evades/blocks. Other type of defense we use is stuns. Thats what makes healing signet looking op and what the majority of ppl qq about. The Stuns. . U cant deal damage when ure stunned. Ask urself if u had troubles dealing with warrior that doesnt use stuns.

Also healing spiring healing allies and provides 15sec water field..do u really trying compare it to signet? No words man.

I’m not comparing it to healing spring at all. He brought up troll unguent. I brought up healing spring.

Yes, i do have trouble with warriors that don’t use stuns because all they do is run away and heal for 400hp/s the moment they see trouble.

If they run away that actually means u won. Congratz u beated non stun warrior..So i fail to see any issue with healing signet. Its not like they can run away, reset and come back without using signet. I did that many times with surge. So time to nerf surge i guess.

More like time to nerf mobility but that is a different story.

Anyways u just proved that healing signet is far from being OP and the thread was about it. Maybe its time to make a thread about mobility then? Moving on.

I think you are missing the point. Warriors have all this healing and they also have max base toughness + vitality. Read the first post. I simply used elementalist as a comparison because they have the least max toughness/health.

Ehh… they may have max Vit & Toughness but they have never been a bunker class. Its much more difficult to kill a Guardian or an Engineer. Necros are tough as nails is built right and so are Eles (even in the current meta) the only think that’s easier to bust down is a ranger… and well that’s a whole different story.

You make it sound like your stats actually matter. Its all about the proper use of mechanics in this game… i have no issue taking down a war. I also lose to wars all the time so id say that’s balance.

Depends entirely on the build. Warriors who are not speccd to have healing still have a lot of healing. That’s where i believe the issue with healing signet is. Warriors who are speccd into healing have really lackluster healing and team support if you are not defending a point.

My Ranger who isn’t specced for healing, has a ton of healing.
My Thief who isn’t specced for healing, has a ton of healing.
My Guardian who isn’t specced for healing, has a ton of healing.

Point?

You will never see a ranger winning without Shaman’s amulet in a sustain fight.

I’m confused on all the QQ About rangers, we’ve been nerfed to kitten and are countered by most warriors builds now anyway in 1on1s which is where most of the crying is coming from anyway. The only thing we have left is a spirit build that’s good for teams but any competent player in a 1on1 will destroy the 2 most important spirits, stone and sun.

You said a warrior wouldn’t dare run Dwayna, of course you wouldn’t , you don’t need to and that was his point. We HAVE to run dwayna and i dont think you realize how much dps we lose to have the sustain we have. I would take healing signet over troll ungeant by the way as we are good with sustain because then i wouldnt need to slot dwayna and could run DPS runes instead. So you comparing the 2 makes absolutely no sense. By the way, troll ungeant scales horribly with Healing power too , as well as our signet. It’s the regen boon that scales well with HP and is also a major reason why boon steal thieves heavily counter the bunker ranger. Steal the regen boon, we just lost 50% of our sustain if not more.

You don’t run berserker stance, didn’t you hear? You guys get a oh kitten button that lets you faceroll stuff now.

Condi necros are tricky

Simple tip for condi necros: Most do a fear + spite combo… Slot lightning reflexes for that combo alone. It breaks the fear and evades the spite combo. Bait the fear, wait for the yellow signet pop over his head then within 3/4 seconds pop LR.

Main things to look for when fighting a condi necro atleast:

1. green reaper above their head – is a fear cast, dodge it if you can
2. yellow signet looking pop over their head – this is the signet of spite active cast, you have 3/4 seconds to dodge that , if you don’t you’ll have alot of conditions on you.
3. most run the pet knockdown elite , watch for when he rushes at you, you can dodge it if you’re quick and on your feet
4. most run marks, specifically , look for the mark with the green smoke coming out of the middle, this is a fear mark
5. RUN ROOTS and wait till they’ve blasted their heal already , then pop it. its usually their only condi removal. if you run RaO , they’ll usually just convert it condi anyway. the spirit elite also isn’t bad in a scenario vs a condi necro either.

—

power necros, run 30 marks and slot the signet of stone and the signet affects you trait and slot heal as one (their burst counters the regen ticks on troll) for the short cooldown, having a high burst heal with low cooldown is pretty good against power necros, dance with them until they get semi-low and bait their lich form , while in lich form , eat a couple attacks then pop signet of stone and try to burst down as fast as possible. good power necros are pretty tough to kill in my experiences of fighting some of the best ones in wvw. you have to pop signet of stone while youre bursting, lich form is essentially ‘their gimmick’. if you can survive it and have a heal afterwards, you’ve pretty much won the fight unless you mess up horribly.

“It’s more than obvious what his intentions are, this behavior is the type of disgusting filth that moderators on this overly censored forum would delete in seconds.
(Any double standards remark will not be considered as an intelligent response.)”

Go outside

You’re kittening stupid dude if you think a poison trap is going to stop a thief and hurt him. They have stealth, and they remove conditions in stealth as well as the steal which also clears conditions and procs regen on top of it. Blinding powder to ‘perma blind’ you? Do you even kittening play thief dude? Half of them don’t use it to blind you , it’s to setup invis burst opportunities. Jesus christ you’re really dumb, roll up a thief class and play it please or simply don’t state stupid kitten.

Are you mad? Rampage As One gives him 20 seconds of stability.

Jackums.3496:

Ryan.8367:

“As far as PvE and WvW are concerned, though, it’s one of the Ranger’s better weapons, and perhaps their best as far as the latter mode is concerned. Trait for 1,500 range and piercing arrows and you can just stand back and let your bear tank mobs while putting out good DPS (in PvE). It’s kind of ironic that longbow rangers are so terirble in PvP but one of the safest options for taking down Svanir and the Chieftain in the Forest of Niflhel. I always send my pet in to draw aggro, pop Quickening Zephyr, and then just unload all of my skills from max range, and I don’t even get hit once.”

The moment you said longbow is good in WvW because you can equip 1,500 range trait and let your bear damage them down, I lost all seriousness in your post. That is quite possibly the WORST suggestion for WvW play and please , any rangers reading that do NOT do what he is suggesting. I’ve seen far too many rangers try it and it just doesn’t work. Please, for the sake of the ranger class don’t do this.

It’s one of the Ranger’s best weapons because Rangers are terrible in WvW, regardless of what they use. It was a relative statement. Their pet is useless due to AoE, and a Ranger lacks any real useful utility for the zerg, in comparison to other professions.

Please, professor, share your wisdom as to what magical Ranger weapon is going to be anymore useful than a piercing, 1,500 range longbow in a zerg/siege situation.

EDIT: I also never said the bear was good for dealing damage to other players in WvW. Did you read what was in the brackets?

Sword, Torch , Axe, Dagger are much better weapons , even shortbow is better even with the 900 range. I think you forget, but in this game people have something called ‘gap closers’, they use them and good players use them effectively – 1,500 ranger doesn’t bring any advantage to the table. Longbow is and will always be nothing but a sit behind 10+ guys and spam weapon.

“As far as PvE and WvW are concerned, though, it’s one of the Ranger’s better weapons, and perhaps their best as far as the latter mode is concerned. Trait for 1,500 range and piercing arrows and you can just stand back and let your bear tank mobs while putting out good DPS (in PvE). It’s kind of ironic that longbow rangers are so terirble in PvP but one of the safest options for taking down Svanir and the Chieftain in the Forest of Niflhel. I always send my pet in to draw aggro, pop Quickening Zephyr, and then just unload all of my skills from max range, and I don’t even get hit once.”

The moment you said longbow is good in WvW because you can equip 1,500 range trait and let your bear damage them down, I lost all seriousness in your post. That is quite possibly the WORST suggestion for WvW play and please , any rangers reading that do NOT do what he is suggesting. I’ve seen far too many rangers try it and it just doesn’t work. Please, for the sake of the ranger class don’t do this.

Yea pay attention closely to the axe attack that has a blue axe/blue trail on it, that’s the #3 axe attack and is very powerful now that it’s been buffed in recent patch.

If they’re running canines, it’s imperative to pay attention to when they do a howl animation and they look like they’re ‘crouching back’ , theyre about to leap and knock you down which does a pretty fair amount of damage especially when it crits.

But you guys can keep defending this kittenty kitten AI , it’s fine with me. You’re only the minority in the pet AI being good department by the way, I think 90% of the rangers in the entire game feel the exact same way and for good reason, it’s very bad. Not like Anet really cares or listens though, hell they’ve even said THEMSELVES and admitted that the AI needs to be worked on and that they have a dedicated team working on fixing it, it’s just taking them forever to do so and to be quite honest with you I’m afraid of what they come up with but can be hopeful as well because anything is better than what’s in place right now. So you can keep defending the AI with your kittenty stances on it.

“This animation is what allows the pet to miss since the pet has to stop moving, has an animation cast time, then damage is applied.”

It’s the same as an auto attack, which can be dodged. I’m confused by your continued defense that pet animations are there so the ENEMY benefits from it. That’s just silly and poor design logic. Not one mmo have I ever played has had this same issue with pets and their AI. Like I said, it’s very poorly written and as such , rangers themselves suffer from it.

Suddenflame.2601:

Ryan.8367:

Suddenflame.2601:

Ryan.8367:

“They allow your enemy to escape from the damage. It would be unbalanced to have damage appear from 2 directions and 1 being unavoidable. "

You’re kittening kittenupid.

Personal insults don’t help your position rather they weaken them. Explain why it is kittenupid in a rational manner before your view is valid. Your wanting a pet attackkitteno be unavoidable when they should be able to be avoided. Why should other classes not be allowed to avoid the damage?

40% of the ranger damage does not come from the Pet as some people have brought the math into it. Pets have a set damage based on the level. So that meankittenhe pet is a form of bonus support such as other classes mechanics. Such as mesmers clones normally don’t do damage but are a kittenrong support skill. Thieves have the ability to kitteneal and initiative which in both cases don’t deal damage but support the class.

Our pet is not there for pure damage but rather as a form of support. Such as our pet has a F2 skill that has a unique ability with a skill set and can be cakittened while the enemy is not aware of the pet. The pet also by extension is our ability to control. Such akittenhe spider snaring our enemy or the bear removing conditions and being a damage soaker. Our pet is also able to save us from life threatening situations such as being downed underwater. We are the only clakittenhat while downed in water is kittenill a threat. Hell I took on 4 people in underwater combat and kittenill killed 1 even thou I was downed the entire time jukitten because my pet soaked the damage while rezing me. No other class hakittenhat function.

So your explanation of the shoddy AI ikittenhat we’re able to survive underwater and that pets are an extension of us. Of course pets are an extension of ukittenhey’re a very poorly designed extension of us ikittenhe issue. There’s a reason why F2 doesn’t work half the time on your pet, it’s poorly written, such akittenhe rekitten of the pet AI in general. Anybody defending the pet AI on this game needkittenheir head thoroughly examined. Yes, making comments like ‘our pets are poorly written is so that enemy players can avoid damage’ needkitteno be told their ideas are kittening kittenupid because that is some dumb kitten.

As Chopp and I pointed out earlier the pet AI is fine. Your failure is to understand what AI stands for. Let me educate you on the issue with pets and what AI is. AI is artificial intelligence which covers combat scenarios and path finding. The only AI issue people have brought up is the Pets inability to dodge AOE which by all accounts is a design choice to make the Ranger actually do something such as tell your own pet to move out of it.

The issue that people are having thou is that the pet stops to attack which is an animation not an AI issue. It is a chosen design choice considering all animals in the game stop to attack even when the player is turned into an animal. This animation is what allows the pet to miss since the pet has to stop moving, has an animation cast time, then damage is applied. The enemy player moves out of the range before the damage is applied. As I stated in one my earlier posts 2 options can be done to fix this, but it must be done to all animals in the game as well.

1.) Lower animation cast time
2.) Allow animation on the move

Which ever is done it must be done across the board which also means all other animals would get the same treatment not just pets. Which means largely more player deaths overall and harder time outrunning some animals in PVE. It is an Anet design choice you may not like it but I have learned to live with it and control my pet.

If they’re running on the same AI sure, but PvE AI should not co-exist with PvP AI. It’s a different ballgame with way too many different scenarios compared to fighting against a programmed AI. If you honestly think PvE AI should be considered in the same context as PvP AI then you have much bigger than issues that I already thought.

Suddenflame.2601:

Ryan.8367:

Suddenflame.2601:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Suddenflame.2601:

It is a design choice.

And a really, really crappy design choice it is, for a pet based class.

Anet could quite easily fix many of the issues with pets hitting moving targets. I’d say most of the issues are due to the eye-candy – having animations that looks cool, but are hilariously inefficient because of the fact that they are so incredibly slow to execute – just look at birds, the no#1 contenders for first place when it comes to “the pet that is the worst of all to hit moving targets” – just look at their animations for crying out loud!

For ranged pets, the only issue really is the slow projectile speeds they suffer from. Increase their projectile speed and they will probably be just fine/better.

As for survivability issues like aoe fields that pets have to run through when recalled from danger, that could easily be resolved as well by allowing pets to shadowstep back. Of course that would bring other [balancing]issues, but I’m sure there would be ways to balance that as well.

If they allow pets to attack on the move they would also have to allow all other animals attack on the move just to be consistent. Pets are not meant to be the main source of damage. They allow your enemy to escape from the damage. It would be unbalanced to have damage appear from 2 directions and 1 being unavoidable. Live with the design choice especially since 40% of our damage does not come from our pets. From what i seen its more of an added bonus. Also to escape an AOE field you have to walk through it as well (unless you use a dodge).

“They allow your enemy to escape from the damage. It would be unbalanced to have damage appear from 2 directions and 1 being unavoidable. "

You’re kittening stupid.

Personal insults don’t help your position rather they weaken them. Explain why it is stupid in a rational manner before your view is valid. Your wanting a pet attacks to be unavoidable when they should be able to be avoided. Why should other classes not be allowed to avoid the damage?

40% of the ranger damage does not come from the Pet as some people have brought the math into it. Pets have a set damage based on the level. So that means the pet is a form of bonus support such as other classes mechanics. Such as mesmers clones normally don’t do damage but are a strong support skill. Thieves have the ability to steal and initiative which in both cases don’t deal damage but support the class.

Our pet is not there for pure damage but rather as a form of support. Such as our pet has a F2 skill that has a unique ability with a skill set and can be casted while the enemy is not aware of the pet. The pet also by extension is our ability to control. Such as the spider snaring our enemy or the bear removing conditions and being a damage soaker. Our pet is also able to save us from life threatening situations such as being downed underwater. We are the only class that while downed in water is still a threat. Hell I took on 4 people in underwater combat and still killed 1 even thou I was downed the entire time just because my pet soaked the damage while rezing me. No other class has that function.

So your explanation of the shoddy AI is that we’re able to survive underwater and that pets are an extension of us. Of course pets are an extension of us, they’re a very poorly designed extension of us is the issue. There’s a reason why F2 doesn’t work half the time on your pet, it’s poorly written, such as the rest of the pet AI in general. Anybody defending the pet AI on this game needs their head thoroughly examined. Yes, making comments like ‘our pets are poorly written is so that enemy players can avoid damage’ needs to be told their ideas are kittening stupid because that is some dumb kitten.

Chopps.5047:

Ryan.8367:

I’m enjoying people defend the kittenty pet AI while I’m destroying people now on my mesmer, thief and guardian class compared to my ranger which I no longer play because of it’s lack of effectiveness in wvw compared to other classes. Oh the irony.

Sorry, but delusional people play ranger, then they play another class, and realize the world of difference between the two. It’s not just pet AI that’s the issue with rangers, it’s utility , weapon synergy and coefficients.

I have been looking for someone to spar with. Maybe you can help me test my ranger builds in the field?

Sure, ill duel you on my ranger

Whisper Tanbin

Suddenflame.2601:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Suddenflame.2601:

It is a design choice.

And a really, really crappy design choice it is, for a pet based class.

Anet could quite easily fix many of the issues with pets hitting moving targets. I’d say most of the issues are due to the eye-candy – having animations that looks cool, but are hilariously inefficient because of the fact that they are so incredibly slow to execute – just look at birds, the no#1 contenders for first place when it comes to “the pet that is the worst of all to hit moving targets” – just look at their animations for crying out loud!

For ranged pets, the only issue really is the slow projectile speeds they suffer from. Increase their projectile speed and they will probably be just fine/better.

As for survivability issues like aoe fields that pets have to run through when recalled from danger, that could easily be resolved as well by allowing pets to shadowstep back. Of course that would bring other [balancing]issues, but I’m sure there would be ways to balance that as well.

If they allow pets to attack on the move they would also have to allow all other animals attack on the move just to be consistent. Pets are not meant to be the main source of damage. They allow your enemy to escape from the damage. It would be unbalanced to have damage appear from 2 directions and 1 being unavoidable. Live with the design choice especially since 40% of our damage does not come from our pets. From what i seen its more of an added bonus. Also to escape an AOE field you have to walk through it as well (unless you use a dodge).

“They allow your enemy to escape from the damage. It would be unbalanced to have damage appear from 2 directions and 1 being unavoidable. "

You’re kittening stupid.

Eurantien plays a 0/10/30/30/0 spirit build , if youre talking about PvP.

Eles are in a weak spot, I can agree with that but that’s ONLY because of condition meta not because of any weakness to the class itself. Once it’s toned down, they’ll actually be very powerful again and you’ll see them at all the duel clubs being unstoppable like they were many months ago.

ItIsFinished.9462:

Chopps.5047:

Thief comes out of stealth, I am using beastmaster build and press “sic em”. I now cripple the thief with shortbow or try to stun and attempt to cast muddy terrain on thief. Cast is successful. Thief eats massive bird burst from sic em and traits. Thief is dead. And I can use muddy terrain / sic em combo really on any profession. Someone will post a video along these lines and everyone will stop worrying about “how much it will suxors”.

Sic em + entangle + bonfire GG

Sic em + muddy terrain + auto GG

What else can you think of?

You’re scenario will work. But its only good for a 1vs1 type of scenario against a thief. This is no different than the HS argument. Some people mentioned that HS isn’t just used for bunkering situations. It can be used it team play situations. Well, in this case, the new Sic Em changes aren’t enough to warrant a space on my utility slot.

Ok you need to realize thieves have more than just 2 teleports to get out of that, you have to think before using that they may have placed a sword #2 down somewhere

1. Sword #2 inf strike start location out side of that spot = teleport
2. Shadowstep teleport = teleport
3. Withdrawl , gets you out of immob, evades attacks AND heals them

All 3 can be managed effectively on a relatively short cooldown , withdrawl being all of 15 seconds and Sword #2 being intiative based, a good thief will see this coming miles away and plan it ahead effectively. Once again, better utility to evade practically all of our dmg setups.

As a guy who plays thief now in WvW along with Mesmer and guardian, I see how easy these classes have against rangers and the OH kitten buttons (mainly thieves and mesmers obviously) they have that completely destroy every inch of a good damage lineup we can produce on them. It’s quite sad really, which is unfortunately why I’ve shelved my ranger all together in WvW. I’m tired of giving 1000% for barely any returns and kind of want it easy for a little bit, these classes provide that. I may go back to my ranger after I’ve had it easy for a bit.

I will say though and add that we do fairly well against mesmers, our pet gives us their location always and condis ruin them. Condition mesmers though, are a much different animal on your ranger.

Suddenflame.2601:

I don’t use a BM ranger at all so I don’t know your guys pain on that subject, but I use a mixed ranger using an LB/GS combination. I use Troll urgent, signet of the Hunt, signet of the wild, a trap, and rampage as one. I trait 30/30/10/0/0. I also have a gaming mouse with my pet controls on it so I can control my pet on the fly. My armour is rampagers with celestial accessories with a berzerker backpiece.

I can go toe to toe with thieves along with my pet helps me. The pets I use are Drakehound and Spider. I don’t use them for their damage, but for there unique abilities and some interesting tricks that can be done using them. A constantly invisible thief would have more issues as I place a trap and stand in it with my GS out. As soon as my trap goes off I know where the thief is and engage them on my terms and on my field (flame or poison trap both work wonders, cause of the constant pulses of damage). My pet in the mean time has enough time to lock and these pets have the unique property of long charge up attacks. This is a good thing when dealing with something invisible cause once the charge up is locked by the pet it can hit invisible targets (also works against mesmers to easily find the real one). The drakehound pounce attack that causes knock down usually hits the invisible thief by surprise (unless they are porting around as well but that is rarer) which then I use to place a trap where my pet landed. A spider has 2 long charge up attacks a snare and a poison field. poision field is unreliable and misses often just use it as a cover from a thief. The snare usually hits tho unless the invisible thief is paying attention to your pet and you (which 99% of the case they aren’t) so when you see the snare go off hit the spot where it landed (espically if it vanishes before hitting the ground).

If they give me sic em’ with a revile attached to it i will use it and start murdering thieves more just cause i could use my LB more and keep them at range.

Ok so when the thief completely guts your Rampage as One (stab is first to be stolen in a larc boon steal in prioritization of stolen boons btw), blinds you before every stealth attempt you make and dodges (they have endurance regen too btw) the trebuchet like attacks from the spider and clears conditions every time he stealths. Also, keep in mind he’ll line up Larc strike with thief steal so he just stole 2 boons from you and now has regen and more condition clear, by the time he’s done with that he can CnD for 6 initiative but the thing is he doesn’t even need to waste the intiative because blinding powder is back off of cooldown so he then uses the 6 initiative to shadowstep to you and steal more boons from you, he evades before doing this because flanking strike is an evasion. If he’s running shortbow he can use half of his initiative and literally dodge every rapid fire shot (because they know rapid fire is channeled and count on you to waste it so when they go stealth right after they’re not hindered by it) , then comes back out of stealth (because they recharge more intiative while in stealth as well AND heal for about 300 a tick in stealth).

Just curious how your signet of the hunt plays in all of this really, when they have 3 ways of teleporting to you anyway. The spiders do nothing and you’re better off with dual canines, so not sure on that either.

Sorry , but the well played thieves i know and duel on a regular basis would destroy every inch of that strategy you think you have that dominates them. Thieves have utility that far outweighs rangers and when used right , they don’t even need stealth. I know thieves who can run sword/pistol pistol/dagger and dominate you with your strategy. They have far to many on-demand evasion for anything you’re proposing to work while critting for immense amounts of damage and IF they run perplexity, as a player running the troll ungeant heal – you’re kittened. It’s too easily telegraphed and good thieves will interrupt it and also stack 5 confusion on top of you, everytime you try to do it. Thieves who know rangers inside and out will destroy you, case and point.

Longbow works best when you’re behind about 20 other classes that can do everything better than you, your best bet is just to simply spam important targets with rapid fire , stack vulnerability on them and if a thief tries to hit you while you’re in the back line, hit #3 and hope he doesn’t blind you before hand. Oh and try to #4 people from stomping, the issue with this is that a common tactic is getting stability while stomping so that won’t work. Barrage entire groups as much as possible since the cripple does hurt groups, but since they’ll most likely have a guardian spamming aoe condition clear, it probably won’t matter in the end anyway. This is from a WVW perspective obviously.

I’m enjoying people defend the kittenty pet AI while I’m destroying people now on my mesmer, thief and guardian class compared to my ranger which I no longer play because of it’s lack of effectiveness in wvw compared to other classes. Oh the irony.

Sorry, but delusional people play ranger, then they play another class, and realize the world of difference between the two. It’s not just pet AI that’s the issue with rangers, it’s utility , weapon synergy and coefficients.

Chopps.5047:

lol @ stubbornness

You need to learn to play. I’m trying to help you. But go ahead and keep using cats and birds on moving targets without any crowd control or cripple. You must like not hitting things. Go ahead and pick useless pets for your build, I really don’t care if you lose in battles.

You ever heard of the Yin and the Yang? That’s the ranger and the pet. They should compliment each other. If you’re going to build Yin and the Yin, I can’t really feel sorry for you.

Or they can fix our pets AI so that we’re not forced to bring useless utilities to aid our pet in doing what it’s supposed to be doing in the first place. Jus sayin..

Hepatolith.6389:

Ryan.8367:

jcbroe.4329:

I didn’t realize that as a ranger you were only capable of playing in a team or not at all. Oh wait… right… there is other content in the game that isn’t controlled by people who are only worried about blast finishers and combo fields.

Why else would you run healing spring other than in a team comp? It has a horrible heal unless you spec full healing and in PVE you’re not and if you’re doing 1on1s troll is amazingly better. It’s a team heal all the way, therefore it IS a nerf.

Lets see wether it is really that bad.
if you manage to stay in for the new 10 sec, you will have ~7000 healing.
+ most ranger builds can perform at least 2 finishers (leap and/or blast) in it.
Against melee enemies you can potentially go up to 5! finishers (2 drakes + sword/horn + GS)
makes ~9600 healing with 2 finishers and ~13500 with 5 finishers.
So with the right build it can be an awesome heal.
Not to mention the improved condi removal!

This is why rangers are looked at as bad, they think of never existing scenarios and try to prove points with them.

When, and I mean when will a good player who knows a ranger is running healing spring STAY IN THE SPRING WITH YOU AND ALLOW THAT TO OCCUR? None.

Any enemy with AOE (mesmers, necros, thieves, OTHER RANGERS, ETC ETC) will simply place the AOE on top of that healing spring, completely nullifying it. It still baffles me that people think like this that they can just at free will be able to do leaps into it when people have interruption and not to mention with perplexity now.

I’ll give you a real life scenario , and it actually occurred earlier today on my thief. A Ranger I was dueling tried putting down healing spring and used the insanely telegraphed #2 leap into it , I interrupted him everytime EXCEPT when he had RaO up (how long does stability last again? Oh yea, very minimal against a stealthed player). I not only interrupted his heal, but I stacked 5 stacks of confusion on him as I run perplexity to troll people on one of my thief builds.

I really hate to break this to you, but in that little fantasy world where you think you can actually pull off combo finishers like what you explain against GOOD PLAYERS who are expecting it? It just DOESN’T happen. I’m sorry to burst your little bubble but you need to seriously wake up.

Like I said, this field is used only in groups where teammates can blast into it and you can blast into it. It got a nerf in this regard as the condition removal, like I said before is just an added bonus and is handled by other players more effectively.

I think they just want to nerf the stuns, it’s ridiculous at the moment and warriors who are defending want to keep it as easy as possible. The stunning is the issue and the access to it. It shouldn’t be that only one class in the entire game (maybe 2 if you cant a perma blind thief) is able to go toe to toe with this class. It is ALL stuns, the whole mesmer build that Burr linked is based around mitigating the stun because the lockdown is huge. You guys got your damage, you got your heals, you got your damage soaking tools, but the stun access is just over the top, anybody defending that is just selfish.

If that’s the case then let’s simply slot every class with teleports/3 stun breaks that are useful and not just kitten utilities that happen to also be stun breaks (ranger is a good example of this btw), stealth and blinds/aegis on a smooth rotation – to the warriors defending the current state of them, do you think that would be fine?

Linking to one mesmer build, which mesmers have been known to dominate warrior before and after these patches isn’t anything new, they have the most overpowered and useful utiltiies latched to stun breaks in the game next to thieves.

Sorry, the stunning is ridiculous in PvP AND WvW.

Atherakhia.4086:

It’s all going to hinge on how the skill works. I’m not really sure we need it as it is because the Ranger does well against thieves overall. I’m more interested in the utility it provides. Can the Ranger counter a Mesmer veil in some fashion for example? Roaming with this to counter Thieves? Unless Thieves get greater access to stability I’m not sure we ‘need’ it.

You speak as if you’d dueled good thieves before. Name the guys you’ve dueled before to make an assumption that rangers do well against thieves.

jcbroe.4329:

I didn’t realize that as a ranger you were only capable of playing in a team or not at all. Oh wait… right… there is other content in the game that isn’t controlled by people who are only worried about blast finishers and combo fields.

Why else would you run healing spring other than in a team comp? It has a horrible heal unless you spec full healing and in PVE you’re not and if you’re doing 1on1s troll is amazingly better. It’s a team heal all the way, therefore it IS a nerf.

Not sure how healing spring is getting a buff, it was only used in teams for a water field, the condition removal was already handled by guardians etc. I’m not quite sure anybody in there right mind would consider dropping the duration of the water field from15 to 10 a buff. Now with 5 seconds off of it, it hurts team comp blasting into it and the cooldown of he heal is the same. Please do realize that the ONLY reason why that thing is being put down is to create a water field, the condition removal is just an added effect. Regen is also another boon handled by many other classes and in effect, is an added effect.

It’s a shame, but if there is anything substantial, it’ll be cried about and again, like every other build we’ve had be nerfed into the ground. I’m surprised the fire trap hasn’t had it’s cooldown increased, I mean I’m really surprised on that one.

Chopps.5047:

Why didn’t you list 171% factor increase in pet health?

Old pet health *1.71 = new pet health

(71% rumored)

Because that helps in only one area PVE, it won’t be affected by WVW (if it is the crying will be ridiculous) and second of all it doesn’t address the core issue, AI. They need to fix the pet AI , the F2 functionality before they start buffing pet hp , it’s so silly to me that pets still don’t have a dodge option or atleast aegis when we dodge or something to compensate for that. It’s going to help alot in PVE so that’s excellent and great, but in terms of ranger usefulness in wvw i dont think it’ll even see the HP buff.

I just don’t think rangers are meant to even go toe to toe with a good thief.

1. No blinds except from a pet , which is extremely tough to get off.
2. CnD our pet whenever you’d like with no risk at all. Meaning I can completely dodge a CnD and be doing the right thing, but since my pet has no dodge functionality, i suffer extremely.
3. Pet AI blows against constantly stealthing targets. (why you run canines against any good mesmer).
4. Steal and insane water field so conditions loading isn’t effectively possible.

Why is there no dodge functionality on our pets when we dodge or something to compensate? It seems so silly to me that as rangers we get penalized EVEN if we dodge important kitten, it’s not just CnD that’s like this – look at ele churning earth, if we’re in the vicinity of that and I dodge, my pet still takes damager and 8 stacks of bleeding. It’s just completely unfair that Anet tells us to rely on our pets and stack a percentage of our damage into that pet and then not give the pet itself defensives to compensate actions done by other players. It’s just really sad development on Anet’s part and something needs to be addressed, I as a ranger am tired of being penalized for actually knowing the other person’s attacks and dodging them effectively but since I have a pet that can’t do anything, it gets abused. CnD is the biggest of the abuse. There needs to be like Aegis to the pet for 4 seconds or so on dodge when we dodge because like I said, I’m tired of being penalized for actually knowing another player’s attacks and dodging them effectively, no other class has to worry about this except mesmers but honestly, give our pets duelist and berserker phantasm damage and I may be alright with them not being able to dodge/receive mitigation for our dodges.

aspirine.6852:

No not really, the problem with thiefs is not when you have seen them. The problem is that thery are so weak now, that they(atleast on my wvw servers) prey on those who just fought and have the skills on cooldown and low health. You cannot get any lamer than that.

Thieves are far from weak AGAINST RANGERS. Now , maybe to alot of other classes, but you need to understand a couple things when fighting a truly good thief, and I duel alot of great thieves:

1. Their steal: They steal a massively op water field from us that they can then use to heartseeker into while stealthed back to full instantly, because the init cost of HS is very minimal , it also clears conditions, the very bane of any BM build in general.

2. Pet AI: Pet AI simply blows against a constantly invising thief, it takes 1-2 seconds for the pet to physically register before it starts to go into the sequence ‘ok thief is found, attack it’. This alone really hinders us against thieves.

Couple things to note that can be done to help prevent their HS – Wolf Fear, GS #5 , is there anything else? They can HS while immobilized correct? Wolf fear is on a 36-45 seconds cooldown , they can steal every 15 and it’s borderline instant, you can’t really effectively dodge it as most will steal from stealth anyway. GS#5 is good but you’re gambling , if you miss , you put your interrupt on cooldown for when the thief is visible. Any suggestions here would help.

3. Boon / CnD bait: While this isn’t exclusive to our class obviously, it’s very easy for thieves to abuse the shoddy AI of our pet (and the very existence of our pet). They also steal boons from the pet as well (ESPECIALLY anybody running 15 in NM).

#1/#2 completely gives us a disadvantage at fighting a good thief from the beginning of the fight. I duel really good thieves and if a thief knows the ranger inside and out he will rip them to shreds based on #1/#2. It’s a shame it’s not the same with knowing a thieves abilities , there’s just some things rangers simply can’t do against a truly good thief who’s good at avoiding important attacks.

I think boon stealing reduced to 1 and the Sic’em will definitely help and open up options for being more tolerant to thieves , and like others have said, all of the patch notes aren’t out yet and there could be some other stuff that’s getting added.

I have to ask this because it’s going to be a 3-4s reveal on thieves. Is slotting it worth it for them and will that one skill overcome the shoddy ai from our pet that comes with dealing with constantly invising players and the op water field they can steal from us?

This is in the context of 1on1 duels.

I really think Anet needs to also look at our pet and how the pet’s AI deals with players who constantly invis, these 2 things give us a huge disadvantage in fights against the thief.

If you need to learn how to play the ele class I suggest messaging Aggressive Serane, a very good ele that dominates in duels safe for necromancers and engis which, again, comes back to condition spamming that kittened the ele over not an RTL nerf. RTL is fine where it’s at. Also, the addition to perplexity hurts the ele probably most out of all of the other classes imo, so that’s unfair as well adding insult to injury.

If you’re in a group play/zerg play youre GOING to get focused as an ele, with the RTL revert or not. It’s the way it is. Rangers, necros , engis are no different in this regard. We get focused for a reason and not warriors/guardians/mesmers/thieves because of escapism or in the regards to warrior (endure pain/stab/blocks from shield/ etc) guardians (aegis/block on heal, et c etc which is whyits easier to simply moa them and burst down), way too much stab and you cant focus hem as easily as rangers, eles, necros and engis. It’s the way it is, whether you have RTL or not.

That’s because mesmers completely counter the current warrior stun builds.

Daecollo.9578:

Ranger’s Greatsword is getting a huge damage buff soon.

Rumored damage buff from leaked patch notes. And it’s to the one of the most telegraphed skills in the game. a rumored 15% dmg buff to the most telegraphed skill on that sword doesn’t get people to use it, fixing it’s functionality in a pvp/wvw environment will. Power builds don’t work for rangers and gs is nothing but a power weapon.

Please spare me the bullkitten

Once again, you’re not getting your op kitten utility RTL back to what it was.

Once condition spamming is toned down you will be on top in duels again, don’t worry guys,

Solid? Lmao, it contains some of the most telegraphed skills in the game.

A Block where it shows us holding the sword up , would you hit us while we’re doing that? A smart ele won’t

Maul: A huge bear comes out in 2seconds time, yea, not enough time to dodge that at ALL.

Hilt Bash: a 1 second cast of me spinning and hitting you with the hilt of my sword, again, completely not telegraphed at all.

Auto attack: slow, ineffective and useless

1. Leap: Like I said, takes 1 second for us to take off has a flying eagle animation, totall y not counter-able at ALL. Like i said above, can be snared/immob’d/chilled/feared/interrupted. All but fear are skills you have.

Please know the mechanics of the gs before you try and say its ‘completely solid’. That weapon has absolutely no place whatsoever in PVP/WVW , it’s a pve only weapon and that’s about where that ends.

Quit crying and learn to play and adapt, RTL isn’t the ele’s issue it’s condition spamming.

Shemsu.8721:

Ryan.8367:

“the evades from flanking strike (which is simply abused to get the boon steal option by flanking striking the air anyway) and bow are what i was referring to by the way.” isnt tied the sentence before it, i was replying to you trying to say that i was talking about traits being the only way (specifically 15 in acro) for evasion. please don’t try to say im tying s/d with 30 in SA when im clearly not. thanks!

In order to make full use of s/d evades you need much more than 15 in acrobatics, 20 pts for 2 init per 10 seconds and 30 pts for 3 init on swap

As far as that goes the original post i replied to falls into the same fallacy that so many anti-thief posts do, you mention a laundry list of things ‘thief can do’ like its something EVERY build can do, completely ignoring that you can only have a fraction of those things in any build. Feel free to return to the fuzzy animal ranger boards

and i’ll reply that with a 25/30/0/15/0 build with shortbow and sword/dagger and utilities: Blinding powder , Shadow step , Shadow refuge) and withdrawl you can do pretty much everything i said, once again, youre talking out of your kitten without clear knowledge of what your own class is capable of.

Atherakhia.4086:

They need to just make all pets do the same damage.
Reduce that damage to the point where Ranger weapon and skill coefficients can be increased to normal levels.
Make all F2 abilities stop what is going on and activate immediately.
All F2 abilities will be given a .5 second cast and they can continue the animation after.
Engage and recall put on the same button via a basic if-then-else script.
F3 changed to activate secondary pet skills in the same fashion as F2 above.
F3 set to auto-cast so pets don’t change in functionality at all so new players aren’t overwhelmed.
When the Ranger dodges or uses a skill to evade, the pet gains aegis for 5 seconds.

This isn’t complicated, requires next to no real effort, and would solve the vast majority of problems with the pets. I’ve given up on them ever actually hitting a moving target as simple circle strafing is enough to beat most PvE content in this game. Can’t expect pets to be different without an engine revamp.

Good suggestions actually , especially on the F3 functionality overall.

“the evades from flanking strike (which is simply abused to get the boon steal option by flanking striking the air anyway) and bow are what i was referring to by the way.” isnt tied the sentence before it, i was replying to you trying to say that i was talking about traits being the only way (specifically 15 in acro) for evasion. please don’t try to say im tying s/d with 30 in SA when im clearly not. thanks!

i like how my posts got infracted when they didnt even contain anything negative including my latest one. hilarious

OP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laxyoaHOP1c

Nothing more, l2target

100% power should be given to ranger by default, pets stay the same but allow us to hotkey their other utilities to f5,f6,f7,f8 (allowing a remap of course for example: naga users) . if we want go BM, each 5 points you go into BM drops the ranger’s damage by 5% , totalling out to a 30% dmg loss if we were to go full BM w/ 30% dmg added to pets (or however the scaling could be, maybe some other suggestions on this would be helpful because that could be really overpowered w/ a sic em and skirmish trait for 30% crit dmg combo). and last but not least really needed ai improvements to our pet especially for classes that continually go in and out of stealth, it takes our pet 1-2 seconds to even register the person is out of stealth before an action occurs, this is a huge detriment to us. felines have to stop and hit to deal dmg , maybe make them continue this but increase the range of the attack itself so they dont have to be completely on the player to hit them, as it is right now cats lack alot of dps simply because of this.

this would give full control to pet micro , full dmg back to the ranger allowing more build diversity SPECIFICALLY power builds and i would even suggest one more condition removal in the marksman / skirmish line (20/30 deep) to help not having to go 30 deep into WS for empathic bond for our only traited condi removal.

dont worry guys, ill wait

Shemsu.8721:

Ryan.8367:

if youre a thief dueling or roaming, youre 30 in SA much like if youre a ranger dueling or roaming youre 30 in WS. the evades from flanking strike (which is simply abused to get the boon steal option by flanking striking the air anyway) and bow are what i was referring to by the way. teleportation (shadow step from sword , shadowstep utility , shadow trap, you could do it with bow but there’s no point really in a fight its mostly used for mobility outside of combat as the init cost doesnt justify anything in combat – kitten). are you kittening dumb or are you just really that naive of your own thief’s capabilities?

So your suggesting running 30 SA for a s/d evade/boonsteal build? and i’m kittening dumb?

no, for a s/d evasion build id run something mostly in DA/CS , who mentioned anything about pairing a s/d weapon set with 30 in SA? youre the one that mentioned 30 in SA to begin with and the ONLY reason i mentioned s/d wasbecause you had to make it out like i was specifically talking about traits and not weapon sets/utilities to get teleport mobility (which youd prob run shadowstep in an evasion build as well). BP / #5 D / SR for s/d-shortbow evasion , yawn

if youre a thief dueling or roaming, youre 30 in SA much like if youre a ranger dueling or roaming youre 30 in WS. the evades from flanking strike (which is simply abused to get the boon steal option by flanking striking the air anyway) and bow are what i was referring to by the way. teleportation (shadow step from sword , shadowstep utility , shadow trap, you could do it with bow but there’s no point really in a fight its mostly used for mobility outside of combat as the init cost doesnt justify anything in combat – kitten). are you kittening dumb or are you just really that naive of your own thief’s capabilities?

almsot , if not everything i mentioned is carried in one weapon set and utility choices alone, what 30/30/30/30/30 are you referring to? I play a thief as well by the way because you know , ranger has to play every other class to completely learn it inside and out to even have SOME FORM of a chance in 1on1’s, and even then it’s very tough to beat a good thief as a ranger – i dont even think thief needs to do this except for maybe the mesmer/guardian class. once again, keep spewing more bullkitten please, thieves do it best to try and make themselves out like the victim in gw2.

Shemsu.8721:

Rvb.8297:

This buff to sic em is not going to change anything, i have never ever seen a thief get the full 4 s of revealed, culling issues and all… (or whatever its called). A good thief should never lose to a ranger in a 1v1 (unless he’s bunkering). But no build should ever be able to win against a bunker in a 1v1 anyways… And regarding the ‘nerf’ to larcenous strike: evade, decent to good damage and boon STEALING is a bit OP for a two skill combination. Im surprised they kept it at 1 boon… And i also don’t see why only a few classes should have boon removal….

First off, 4 second reveal is in Spvp, wvw/pve have 3 second reveal, secondly, there is NO way at all in game to reduce revealed, so if you played spvp you sure as hell did see a thief get 4 second reveal, you simply cant count well is all. Third, there is no such thing as culling any longer, it was removed, read patch notes. FS/LS does not do decent to good damage more like bad/mediocre damage, is one of the shortest evades in game and it was made to steal two boons because it wasnt useful when it removed one. Many classes (including yours mr ranger) can reapply boons as fast as they are stripped, and thats with skills like null field, corrupt boon (if 2 boons removed is OP how is ALL of them removed ok?), so changed to 1 boon removed means it is no longer a counter to boon builds, since they can reapply faster than you can remove them, hence it will be useless again

and you have stealth , ability to take boons, ability to evade alot with the correct weapon set (same with rangers – we are also forced to a weapon set except yours does alot more dmg) , ability to burst insane amounts of damage , ability to have 2-3 stun breaks on utility and teleport to different areas in conjunction with a weapon set and a utility. classes have different uses for different things. if rangers had full dmg on their weapons, the crying would be endless and quite frankly , we should be given that option to not take a pet and get the full dmg but anet won’t give it to us.

most of the ranger’s issues against the thief isn’t the ranger himself, it’s the pet ai and mechanics in general. it takes a pet 2 seconds to register someone coming out of stealth before he attacks that person that and it’s a free cnd as the pet can’t dodge not the mention the steal we give you , if running dagger at all is insanely overpowered as HS doesn’t require a huge amount of init vs the heal youre getting AND condition removal out of it. jus sayin, any thief bragging about killing a ranger 1on1 needs to realize how much they actually have it made against us. that’s why we’re getting stealth counter, and like many have said, it’s really not that significant , you just have to pay attention a little more to the skills we use, that’s all.

Daendur.2357:

Ryan.8367:

no, we’re getting reveal counter , quit crying

and gg

we aren’t getting any reveal counter. it will allow us to backstab-insta stealth-backstab
making us OP

mhm

Olba.5376:

Dumb suggestion, as it would make stealth kinda pointless.

In any 1v1, the Thief would basically be visible 24/7. And then you’d just have a dead thief.

End result? Everyone starts playing an S/D evade spec. And then everyone rages about that, rather than stealth.

high regeneration(warrior, ranger, guardian, elementalist)

Pretty sure a Thief can get kitten close to a Warrior in terms of hp/s, if not above it. Shadow’s Rejuvenation is superior to Healing Signet at 1,980 hp, which of course isn’t a very realistic figure. However, throw in Withdraw or Signet of Malice and the numbers favor the Thief. Shadow Protector easily gets you permanent Regeneration if necessary.

it’s a 4s reveal every 40 seconds 32 if you trait for it, explain to me how this would entail the thief being visible the whole fight? thieves are so irritating sometimes, the best at blowing a scenario completely out of proportion. you guys are really good at making yourselves look like the victim.