Guild Wars 2

It will never be unless many of our weapons *cough*Longbow, Shortbow, Greatsword*cough* will be totally revmaped from scratch, we get meaningful traits, considerable burst and damage, disengage ability, access to loads of cripple, defensive cooldowns.
Before it happens in next millenium, just switch couple armor pieces to Soldier/Valkyrie. It will help

In my short career of posting ideas I’ve learned three things:

1. Nobody reads Ranger forums except of Rangers
2. If you want to post an idea and see the response, post it where Devs tend to post. Currently : Game Discussion Overall and General Spvp subforum.
3. If your post gets moved to Suggestions subforum or you’ll post it in there :
-Nobody will ever read it
-Nobody from ANet will ever respond to this
-You will feel like you’ve just waisted hell lot of time
-It will drown in a flood of mounts, races and hentai suggestions

Close enough to my current tPvP build for Ranger. I do switch pets sometimes, but I feel that both Lynx and Spider give you a lot of fun stuff. Lynx is nice for bursts and forcing early condi clears (8 bleeds just from the pet? For 15 seconds ? Can be scary ;p ), while Spidy is just my beloved pet and covers conditions.
Now you may ask how do I manage to survive without a stun break! Well, I have some SA trait, and I tend to quickly switch couple things if I see I’m about to face 2 or more warriors, but I found out that SoW is pretty good passive regen, helping out a bit. In my traitset, if needed, I can switch II in MM to reduced cd on signets and just take SoR If I feel I’ll need it.
Why not HS as a heal? I do take it sometimes, however, I find trap build not really that supportive for group fights, I tend to either bunker some point for a while, switch between points, when helping everyone on my way if I can. So it’s mostly 1v1, 1v2, 2vX. TU is just far better as a selfheal, I prefer it in general.
:Edit:In Skirmishing, there’s Primal Reflex use instead

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRAnY8fjAVJ21VyVs2BiVBA1ekJzjJ2DD5oHdymShK-TwAg2CoIaS1krJTTymsNN8Y9x+jpHA

It reminded me of one hilarious situation back in the days. I’ve been running CoF P3 with Murrelow for teh lolz and his surv. Everything went fine. We’ve looted last boss, I left the dungeon and got a whisper from guardian about my pet. He was asking about Murrelow, because he had never seen it before in game. The big question was something like:
“-Hey man. Never seen pet like yours before. Is it a dog or something?
-No, it’s four-legged spider”
giggle

I’d switch Entangle to RaO in a heartbeat. Stability is too important imho, and might always helps.
Overall build isn’t bad, but if I were you, I’d just go for a Apo trap build and get rid of shortbow

They don’t really. If you compare them to other pets, they attack with similar spped. It’s just that their animation is faster so you think they do hit quicker

atheria.2837:

Rym.1469:

We’re master of running Axe/Dagger+Sword/Torch or Shortbow sometimes.

Rangers aren’t the masters of anything. Not a single solitary thing.

We are minor support, the “the rest of you who aren’t Warriors or Guardians or Mesmers or Elementalists, over there” sorting of groups in WvW for tactical advantage.

Funny that thieves get thrown in with the Ranger being “the other group” that doesn’t get any directed job because we are “other”.

Getting really tired of rezzing those who have the highest DPS and getting less badges and loot because I AM rezzing THEM and not hitting the NPC or person in WvW.

Thief has Ninja Nurse, we have Petting Nurse. Still waiting for my ol’doggy carrying whiskey barrel. If ANet adds him, all their sins will be forgotten

Simple thing :
If you go for condition bunker, despite how bad you can be with it at start, you’ll find it very strong and easy mode
- If you decide to go Power spec and don’t run in zerg, only solo/duo/trio roam…Well, be prepared. You’ll have to play flawlessly to win gainst most of meta builds. Even when playing without single mistake, sometimes you won’t be able to win anyway.
Power spec for Ranger is probably the highest “10x effort = 0.5 effectiveness” build along most classes and specs. Well, rifle engineer might be comparable if we talk about SD burst, but he has some damage at least

After playing a lot as a Necromancer and Ranger, I still find Mesmers the class that is not maybe the hardest, but certainly most annoying to deal with. I found out that the best tactic vs. Mesmers is to just simply play very defensive and kite a lot. That’s why Mesmers are probably most favored class on 1v1 servers – currently, on restricted areas, without those “OP vit/tough” amulets, they’re kings.
I believe that the most serious bane to mesmer is just kiting. Whenever you can’t pressure them hard enough, disengage, use defensives, whatever. If you prevent stupid Pistol Illusion and Zerker from constantly hitting you with no effort from mesmer himself by just simply moving out of their range, you can eventually put fight on your rules.
Still, despite all crying and whining, Mesmers do hold place in PvP since release. Nothing new, they might be vunerable to conditions, but their mechanics and access to various goodies in the game will never delete the fact, that 1/3 of players in the mists are usually pinkies

Within 15 levels you’ll be able to kill Shatterer. However, if you seek another open world bosses, there are some for your level.
There’s also a mini-dungeon in Gendarran Fields for your level

“A: – Look it’s a Plane!
B: – No, it’s a Bird!
C: – No, it is… The Clawmag!
A,B: – …Say what?!…”

Idd. Some Polish may be good. Beautiful language, you know. Just look at the original Witcher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCDBhc_N0Cw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Arena looks cool and nicely designed. Just hope thatmid point won’t be a cap point and king of the hill. It should be just proper deathmatch. However, pillars on both sides should provide a little but more cover and platform could be lower. But overall, very good start

Ranged combat should be discussed in two different aspects: PvE and PvP

PvE: In my honest opinion, before we start to balance the damage between melee and ranged combat we woupd have to fix couple major issues:
-Boon sharing. It’s range should’ve been greatly improved. In current state, with broken Guardian system, you won’t get your buffs if you’re not close or melee ranged. That’s a major fail in game design, because it simply eliminates certain playstyles and weapons from competition.
-Bosses themselves - Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have (at least normal, because Guardian, Warrior duo exists fairly well, often as a trio with Mesmer) trinity. Many people see it as a border which doesn’t allow game PvE to cross the line and bring more advanced tactics than stacking and avoiding red circles. It’s bullkitten. Eliminate Tank from current WoW encounters. And healer, healing him. You know what? Nothing really happens. Because most of the fights are not designed for simple tank’n’spank, bosses still have adds, various abilities, AoEs, tactics which require people to move. Simply adding some AoE cone attacks from time to time should greatly decrease stacking. Boon hate is another thing. Heck, some bosses could also have something like Corrupt Boon.
Something else: having no tank doesn’t mean that boss should attack only by some AoEs without normal attack! Don’t make it one-shot kill, but make players actually take some damage. To prevent overload from Warriors and Guardians, make bosses attack scale a little bit with health of the target, his class etc. It’s doable.
-Give bosses more mechanics and tactics. Honestly, it isn’t anything impossible. Just prevent people from zerging/ignoring mechanics.
-As it was said before, being melee doesn’t mean that you should do way more damage than ranged. Melee should have more defensive instead. Otherwise, everyone will be melee
-Annihilate stupid favorism game mechanics. Example? Nothing hard to show - Frost in CM explorable. Try to melee him for a second. He’ll down you in 3 seconds and continue to cleave your body. Favors being ranged all the time as hell. Ranged = no damage at all. Melee = ridiculous damage.... Kitten like this destroys the game.
Now PvP:
-Kiting - that’s the essence of proper Ranged vs. Melee combat. You try to keep him at maximal possible range when he tries to time his gap closers and tricks, LoS and use defensive cooldowns to get to you. Once he does it, role changes. Now you use your defensive cooldowns, tricks and disengages when he tries to lock you down, in reach for maximal possible time. This is entire kiting cycle and it iusing many abilities and tricks. Most common are just slows, less - timed gap closers and disengages.
Now, imho Guild Wars 2 has a big problem with it. To begin with, overall movement system favors melee. You move faster while chasing than when kiting, you can use all skills when kiting player has to do something ridiculous - be afraid of his skills breaking by themselves, he essentialy has to either run in circle, hoping you’re dumb enough and don’t get too close, breaking his skills, or literally stop, turn and BACKPADDLE to cast your defensive skills.
- Instant gap closers- Why should anyone care and use cripple/chill when you can literally push one button, don’t give a kitten about being slowed, teleport right onto your kiting opponent and immobilize him at the same time? It wouldn’t be an issue if it had a CD or be CD itself. Steal port is cool. G. Targeted porting utility on meaningful cd also. But spammable, low-cost teleport on weapon? Why should I bother crippling/chilling/immobilizig my opponent at all, when he can abuse all my positioning, kiting with pressing one key constantly? Never really seen S/D Thief using his Dagger 4 to chase down people/gap lose. Why does cripple even exist in game? It’s abused by teleports, many movement skills, Warriors can get immunity to slowing effects, period. As a cover for other conditions? Possibly.
Give ranged classes more opportunity to disengage from opponents, more slows, make cripple and chill meaningful in any way.

One thing I like about bears is same thing I like about Canine species too in general : Bears can actually hit with their autoattack. They don’t have that freaking useless animation and aftercast on it, so they’re able to hit moving targets better. Felines for example are terrible in that matter. And this thing alone can increase bear overall dps
So many bearbow Rangers use them, so they had time to learn something lol. Their AI may be better than real one of some Rangers pricking around ^^

Traps may be not super active. But considering your argumejts, most of AoEs should be treated as such. Meteor Shower is fire/forget, same like Barrage, Combustive Shot, Engineer Bomb Kit, Mesmer Chaos Field… I believe that traps are kind of fun tho, because enemy cannot see them placed until they activate it. There are a lot of uses for ones I use : Spike and Flame (Chill trap is meh in my opinion, I switch it for SoR so I have okay condi removal). Where Flame is straight damage from burning on veery low cooldown, Spike Trap may be used for e.g. on stairs, paths to simply slow down people from capping your points, traps are also very good vs. thieves
Wish new ones would not replace old ones tho That would be amazing :p

Yep, *cough*D/P, S/X Thief*cough*

ROFLMAO. Pinky in a nutshell

Personally, I don’t use Frost Trap. It has pretty long cooldown, you already have chill from Axe, and it does no damage. Upgraded Spike and Flame Traps are far better because they either provide some slowing CC+damage or burning+fire field and both have really nice, short cooldowns. On 3rd utility you can take Signet of Renewal and pick reduced Signet cd from MM line. Or you can go with L. Reflex/Signet of Wild like me. Another option is taking some Healing Power and running Healing Spring. Personally, I find EB enough in most situations, sometimes I just switch for SoR.

I’ve been fighting spirit Rangers I can’t consider as any bad.
It reminds me kind of the situation back in the days when eople were considering D/D bunker eles as “unbeatable”, BM Rangers as OP, Stabby Thieves as nightmare or phantasm mesmers as “gods of dueling”. Know what? I’ve been able to kill every single one of this specs back in the days, on my Necromancer. Yes, before so-called big buff patch. Over a year ago, I was swooping floor with many elementalists, OP specs et cetera, et cetera.
Every spec has some counter. It may be not a hard counter or very appealing weakness, but playing and positioning (LoS-ing Phantasms!) wisely, you’re able to kill even your Spirit Ranger.
I mean, sure, it’s a very strong spec and some builds can have bigger problems with that. But basic flaws of Spirit Ranger are Spirits themselves. If you don’t rush in, but poke that spec slowly, you can achieve state when Spirit Rangers will be without any utility and then he’s crap.

Skill Capped. They say they own. <insidedryjoke>

The entire thread is one big mistake. Everyone in this game has one warrior at least. The subject should be like more “If your main character, most played character is not a Warrior…” Then it’d be right. Regardless I don’t agree with statement.

And oh, OP. You have already far better “pew, pew” than Rangers will ever do.Even more, if you want a pet, come here and grab it! Most of the Rangers don’t want it in current state anyway. Just give us 30% of your damage and utility in exchange, we should be kitten fine

Risen Megalodon?
Hey fishy, fishy! Look, I have fresh Thief for you…
Fishy?..
…Oh kitten…

@Durzilla I know and I do that since traps are very good in close quaters But as I say, on mid fights, or in some bigger than 1v1, 2v2 clashes, spirits are generally better. Traps are good unless too many people show up, but from my experience, especially in current meta, better players have tons of condition removals and massive condi clears are your worst enemies. In these situations, spirits have huge advantage because everyone on your team (mind me, I’m talking stricly about tPvP now) gets something when you don’t have to really bother about setting traps in useful places, you can instead focus more on evading et cetera, et cetera…
I do know that in PvE general, including WvWvW, spirit rangers are mostly seen for 1v1 and not really in bigger fights due to Power play overall, which destroys NPCs in general very quickly with dem AoEs. However, in spvp you don’t have min/maxed gear really so not many tend to run power AoEs, so…long live spirits!

The real problem, from my point of view, is not really that spirit ranger is omg so strong in 1v1. It’s very boring spec that can eavde, regen a lot. But if you have brain, you’ll take care of his sun, stone and nature spirit and then finish him rather quickly.
The real problem and huuge advantage of spirits is that they’re, hands down, one of the best teamplay tools. They work wonders when 2-3 people stack around ranger spirits, because each of them will proc burning, protection and get healed/rezzed/cleansed by Nature spirit. Not to mention, Sun Spirit allows stomping for a Ranger, who lack blind by default. So whenever you see that enemy spirit ranger enters the fight, you may be godkitten sure that enemy team will put constant burning on you, have protection, heal for nice amounts, simply-will be buffed a lot. It’s the same reason why people like to have guardian with them – insane buffs, condi clears, stability.
I don’t run spirits really because I find them cheap, I run semi-trap build. But I just know and I feel that in fact I might hurt my team by not running spirits, because of these party buffs.
I mean, even if I do very good and play to maximum with my build, I know that opposite ranger might just pop spirits, get them in range for party buffs, activate auto attack on shortbow, go make a coffe for himself and still his effectivness overall might be greater than mine

Well, basiclly, World of Warcraft pet system. I don’t say it’s bad, because it’s excellent pet management. In fact, Hunter class from WoW around late Wrath of the Lich King/Late Cataclysm was probably best example of how classes like it should work and be played. It was most skill demanding classes of all considering competitive PvP with good high skill=reward system. Throwing best aspects of Hunter class from those times into GW1 Ranger based class would make GW2 Ranger probably most fun class ever. I mean, I don’t mean only bow builds, hell no. Mixed with GW type, we’d be able to have decent defensive, kiting, trapping, hiding, action-combat skills including both ranged and melee when either would be useful. But meh, won’t happen. I’d still welcome UI that shows everything I need to know about my pet. And less passive play, for god sake…

Spectral Walk can be activated mid-air. If initial place was on the map, it will teleport you back to that place regardless of falling, being CC’d… That’s why Necromancer is good for jumping puzzles.

Like a month ago, I’ve got under the Skyhammer map in SoloQ. It wasn’t the first time, that map is full of bugs, but usually when I “evade” and I end up under the map, swimming, I just sigh and relog. It usually takes me to the place where I break into void, but not that time. After relogging, I was dead and with timer to rezz. When I did rezz, I was on blue team start graveyard, while being art of red team. To make it even more weird, after I got killed, I rezzed not on home graveyard, but in the same place where the first bug/glitch occured.

Message from mid enemy guardian that “Spirit Ranger is OP”. I’ve been runing Trap build…

I am running my double bow power build for quite a long time on WvWvW. 20/20/30/0/0, I believe I’ve posted it somewhere in the past, should be in my post history. It isn’t perfect because you have to be careful picking fights(no hard disengage from zerg), but 1v1, 1v2, it proves to be viable. Knowledge on kiting is a must.
For tPvP, well. You could run some kind of CC Ranger, taking SB, GS, Moment of Clarity, Wolf/Spider+Boar. Personaly I run semi-trap build, 10/30/30/0/0 with Flame Trap, Spike Trap and Signet of the Wild + TU and RaO. Utilizing Axe/Dagger+Sword/Torch, Settler’s amulet with Rabid or Barbarian gem. I find it quite nice and fun to play, it works really good when you’re guarding point for a while and excells in covering/defending small radius, like most of points. Lynx is useful in here, coupled with Malicious Training + Weakness spider, both have decent damage, conditions and control. It isn’t any super-duper build like Spirit one which provides very huge buffs to entire team and excells in groupfights, but it’s useful, viable and fun.

I killed someone once with L.Reflex when I’ve been pricking around with it tpvp. It was kind of long time ago, but that was the first time when I’ve noticed this skill has a damage factor lol

We’re master of running Axe/Dagger+Sword/Torch or Shortbow sometimes.

150% in spvp. (30 MM, Runes of Necromancer). I’ve deleted the original post to simply prevent it from bumping up. We’re testing something similar in guild in tpvp now, with pretty good success. Add to it, if you have 2 necros with epidemic, final target of two spreads can get 30 sec fear.
Now all Rangers would be glad if we stop posting there so we can actually enjoy it for longer time than Eagle Eye buff
@Dardamaniac – If I were to troll so hard, I’d invite our tPvP, One above All, The Master, guru Sensotix and make him to run around in fear for 30 seconds when I’d be /laughing. Ohh, he’d make so sad state of game thread, tears would fall like rain above Amazonia and QQ would be so hard that Sun would raise at night to see what’s going on

Can’t currently log in. Client is not able to connect. Are servers temporary down atm ? [EU]

Also, Sigil doesn’t affect Fear. But Giver’s Weapons do. I just got reported by a random thief after he was CCd for 25 seconds in row

It overcomes the cap. Proved with Mkkoll, in spvp, 12-13 seconds aoe fear.

If you can bait stunbreakers before the combo, that’s ultimate group overkill. Today we’ve wiped 5-man havoc on WvWvW with just with 2 ppl total. Fear everyone, focus one by one…
10 in BM instead of NM is for pet F2 cooldown reduce.
Keep in mind that skull itself has ICD!

Currently, The longest AoE Fear possible can be over 9 seconds. How?
Involves some RNG, very good communication, Terror Necromancer with Epidemic and up to 5 targets.
And The Boar (Ranger’s Pet).
Currently, Boar can spawn one of three bundle CC weapons :
-Rock, thrown 2 sec daze (meh)
-Bone, melee 3 sec stun
-And Skull, same as Thief’s Fear.
With this patch, Moment of Clarity grants Rangers +100% duration on all Fears, Stuns and Dazes. So basic durations become more like 4, 6 and 6. However, Fear counts as a Condition and can be increased by condition duration. Even in sPvP, you can achieve total of +150% Fear duration from 30 in MM tree, Runes of Necromancer and MoC, which makes bundle single-target fear basic longer fear, and outside of PvP use food to get +190% duration and pass 9 seconds…
So, once Ranger uses imba Boar skull fear, Epidemic it! Bam, 9 second 600 range AoE CC, more conditions and 9 terror ticks
Quite fun

Now we’re waiting for AiV guild – All Is Vain. Solo queues only Sign me up

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-Revolutionary-Revelations/first#post2946489

Complete Ranger revision with informative descreptions on way, will be released around Christmas as I need some time for other classes too.

Just one of ideas I’ll post:
Remove passive pet healing from BM tree. Now every pet regenerates 1% of total health every second while under 75% health. Vigor Boon boosts the healing to 2% every second and works without certain health level cap till the boon is up – just a passive heal, helping all pets with staying up during the fight and finally Pet affected by Vigor in some way

Well, aside from spirits, there’s very little to anything that Ranger can bring for his group in tPvP. All spirits affect up to 5 people, which means that they’re especially superior when it comes to teams clash on mid point or sth like this. Spirit Ranger being 1v1 spec… Hard to say. I’ve never played Mesmer for longer than needed to get basic knowledge about the class and traits for pvp as I’ve never enjoyed it’s feeling. But from duelling experience of Power Ranger, Trap Ranger, CC aka 9 second fear Ranger, D/D Thief (not that much, honestly), Warrior (not Hambow – I always giggle when I hear name of this build, Polish raw translation of it kind of fits the player behind ;p ), Engineer, Guardian and a lot, lot of Necromancer I can say that 1v1, if you don’t rush in, facerolling for greater purpose, you can easily take out even good Spirit Ranger.
As other said – most Rangers don’t like playing and don’t enjoy rolling with Spirit Builds. It’s clunky, easy to counter, all about spamming and simply not fun. We roll it because people in meta demand it from Rangers and, as said above, our power play is in simply unhealthy, stagnant and sick state. Sure, you can get Rapid Fire for over than 10k. But with cost.
That’s said, I’ve recently made some major scrap&remake for a lot, a lot of Ranger weapons, traits, pets and overall mechanics, working on other classes revisions and got some ideas even for classes I play the least (the pink ones^^).

Still not really worth going for Beastmastery signets trait for meso it changes nothing really unless you go for signet build (yck!)

Still better than heavy one. Laughable. It’d be better to not release any $$$ armor at all if they hadn’t enough time to do anything even a little bit unique. Reskin with flamy effects. Nobody who’s serious will buy it. Well, maybe apart from T3 reskin, it’s a lot cheaper than original and avalible to all races.

Nerfy tweaks to spirits underwater, some minor changes and fixes, tooltip updates… Nothing special, but good for patch expectations. We’ll see on 10th December.

D/D isn’t that big issue since it can’t stealth just by itself, Thief has to use CnD. Our class stuggles here again, because CnD can be easily used on our pet which obviously won’t mind, however, D/D is fairly easier fight than good D/P.

As Sick Em! – It is a will be viable. Now it’s sometimes necessary to win with good permastealther. After it won’t. Reveal is always good.

Waiting for new build or that Daze one I suppose you wait for 10th Dec and possible MoC buff with that one ^^

It should. Like many other things should.

Not much to advice. You’re playing semi-,ranged build which doesn’t have the advantage of range. But I’ll try to help you because I’ve been playing necro for a long time :
-Bait him. Don’t charge in, play to your strenghts. You have 3 up to 4 condition removals every 10 seconds, try to avoid being hit buy multiple of them at all costs. As others said, send your pet and start kiting. Pet may harass Necromancers and lower him a bit.
-Use range. It isn’t as simple as with other classes, but. You have two range weapons, each has one soft CC as cripple or chill. These two will help you maintaining maximum possible range. Enter the fight at max possible (900) range for your weapons. You can buy yourself some time with Concussive Shot or pet KDs/Fear to apply some pressure as Necromancers have poor access to stability in most popular faceroll builds, which are meant “op”.
-Never, ever get close to Necromancer outside of stomping or chasing him. He can turn the tide of the fight in seconds and keep you in his range (900, same as your with Scepter and Dagger, 1200 for staff which is not as dangerous, but may chill you, but couple dot on you and transfer up to 3 conditions on considerable cd). Be aware of Dark Path which may be used by better ones to get close to you. Whenever Necromancers hops into Death Shroud and you see a dark hand slowly coming at you, dodge it. If you won’t Necro will chill you, put some conditions and teleport straight to you. It has 1200 range, so be careful.
-Necromancer has a heal, which cleanses all conditions and heals him for each one removed for little extra. There’s nothing really you can do about it. It has long animation, when he raises his hand up and you can interrupt it with Concussive Shot. It may put some pressure on him and force him into defense, but be careful and be ready to play with range. If you can’t pressure him quickly, Necromancer won’t turn defensive, but ofensive instead, which is bad.
-Your main goal with Condition build is to watch for his heal. Once he uses it, you have 25 second window when he’s vunerable to conditions. Put some bleeds, send pet, burn him, put dots and instantly disengage. Let your conditions eat him alive. Do this till he gets very low, start panic/running around etc. or get downed.
-Necromancer can transfer his conditions to you or your pet with two skills. One is previously described for staff (1200 range) and transfers 3 conditions, dealing decent power damage. There’s little room for counterplaying it, watch out for his staff. Second is slowly moving, swarmy-like, dark and slow projectile with 900 range which also transfers 3 conditions, bounces and blinds, but can be easily dodged.
-If you see he’s using Signet of Spite, watch out for it with your Signet of Renewal. His cd is one of most powerful condition cooldowns in game and it shares cd with SoR. If he uses it, save your signet for cleansing it. It’s just massive condition overload at once, with various condis.

Now for dueling more advanced players. Not many of them on WvWvW, but you mind find some.

-Keep distance from your pet. Many of Necromancer’s skills will affect both of you and pet, making it possible to getting rid of your condition removal.
-Which leads to another point – look after your pet. It’s your only condition removal. Once it dies, you’re dead also. Swap it if it’s slow or you’ve recently transfered some condibomb.
-Be careful for Epidemic. Very small population of new fotm necros knows this trick, but they may spread all conditions from your pet to you with full duration if you’re within 600 range from pet. Good ones will use it after you use your SoR to transfer condibomb or after EB tick. Very deadly when properly used.
-Watch if you have a way back. Some Necromancers like to put Spectral Wall behind you to prevent you from escaping backwards. It has shorter range than your bow, but if you get closer, you may be tricked.
-You may consider switching one of your spirits to L.Reflex. Will give you vigor to evade more attacks as break fear, saving your SoR for greater danger.

That may be all. I have more specific advices, but it’s not the place to type it. Hope it will help!

awge.3852:

It’s not so bad, you only need to get your pet to attack the thief with sick em within the 3 second window that they have the reveal on them, same goes for entangle.

Sarcasm… now for the real deal:

The thief has how many different ways of getting back into stealth? Hmm let’s analyze this and weight our options:

- Many ways of going into stealth, most of which cause little, no danger, or create a positive effect for the thief (health, condition removal, can obtain boons, confusing your enemy, a good chance to avoid damage and open with heavy damage on the enemy).
vs
- I just blew through a 150 second cool down elite and a 40 second cool down skill that did nothing to the thief and gained zero boons of any kind at all, in fact I am more vulnerable now that I have less options to survive with.

Next on the December 10th patch – no changes to the above – dun dun duuuuun

In fact 10th December patch obliterates perma-stealth thief build. They will no longer be able to “stack” stealth that easily with Heartseeker across Smoke Fields provided by Blinding Powder from OH pistol. It’s still possible to stack duration of stealth (which, outside of big cd is pretty bad), but not without large cost in initiative. It’s because of trait which now gives them back almost whole cost of Heartseeker when they leap over field, extending stealth. After 10th December, they’ll only regain that cost one, on first Leap/Blast/Stealth because it will proc only on entering stealth. Which means, to trigger it again, they have to come out of stealth with Revealed debuff and enter it once again, being vunerable for that time. And oh, their condition cleanse while in stealth also gets nerf hit as far as I believe.
So what might be the situation of our ol’perma-stealth D/P?
Well, they will still stealth often during the fight, but not for long. They won’t sit in it endlessly, reseting fights or getting away with no problem. Maximum of 6 second stealth (only when traited deeply into nerfed trait and with full initiative bar, which is very, very rare in the middle of fight when you want to use any skills) will increase room for counterplay. Average stealth will be normal 3 seconds which perfectly fits our blocks, evades and timed dodges. Long stealth won’t be achieved easily : only by Shadow Refuge cd (always been OP ability for cooldown, but well…), reseting your Initiative via using active effect of one of Thief’s signets(not very common one, at least across majority) or with help of others l, providing blast finishers for Area Stealth. None of these will be as easy as playing D/P now and should actually require some better skill and timing, we may also see return of D/D and (hopefully not, but eh..) increase in number of “Warrior-Troll” P/D Thieves.

I don’t think that it’s that viable. When I love Web by myself, running double spider is kind of tricky. Spiders are probably our best pvp pets, but none of them has “hard” CC which I like to have sometimes. For instance, your build fails by idea with many warriors running WvW with their -98% cripple/chill/immobilize duration. And mind me, they do run it often because of new immobilize change. Classes like guardian will cleanse your immobilizes pretty quickly and going toe2toe without having burst or well, considerable damage is suicide. Sword thief cleanses your long immobilizes on go, without thinking, just by spamming. By that I mean: Immobilize is good, but not everything. You immobilize for something. Kiting, getting range, locking down for burst. Your build requires none of above, as it’s pretty defensive. I do like it, but still I can’t say it’s really viable.