Guild Wars 2

(1) I don’t care if the class is less filled with noobs … I care if the class rewards noob behavior (i.e. spamming)

(2) Simple. Learn to turn. Don’t use when they dodge roll.

I’ve been playing around a bit with sword+axe.

My current thought process on #4 is it’s simply a bit more direct damage and a combo projectile

My current thought process on #5 is that, with 2 dogs, I have a good combo I can use.
Wolf Knockdown → swap to Krytan Hound → w/ Quickness and Krytan Hound using its knockdown, use OH Axe #5 (2.5 sec channel with quickness) → Use hound immobilize if you deem it necessary.

It works pretty well. OH Axe #5 is good damage and puts 12 stacks of vulnerability on the target so landing its full duration hurts.

That’s part of what a QA team does. They look at changes to make sure they fix what was intended and not break other things.

Simply as an analogy, if Amazon’s QA team let as much get through as ArenaNet’s, customers would be griping left and right about being overcharged, receiving the wrong items, etc. simply because the site was made “more flashy” or new items were added to the site.

LMAO. Elementalists seem so confused when they fight a thief and their boons suddenly disappear.

I had several people /w and /s me last night saying my build was a pain in the butt to fight against. A few said OP to which I simply replied “yes, I know it’s OP”.

(1) I don’t need cripple in order to land Flanking Strike

(2) Sword applies cripple via its auto-attack so its trivial to apply

l2p sword thief or stop talking about it. It isn’t even my main yet I’ve quickly figured out how to use flanking strike where landing it isn’t any harder than landing my auto-attack.

Against other Thieves I was tearing them up because Thieves don’t like being dazed and I had a closer that immobilized. Weakness and cripple are also an issue for thieves.

Sword thief is a great way to troll other thieves :-)

I was hitting it against moving targets. It was very easy. It was even easier since the sword’s auto-attack cripples my target.

Landing flanking strike is largely l2p. If you’ve ever used Ranger sword, it’s a very simple skill to learn how to use. Same principles … skill with movement.

oZii.2864:

Sebrent.3625:

Everything has a counter.

Stability finisher? Fear (it’s a condition) or Stealth the downed player
Stealth? Do lots of damage in that area or use an area/conal CC/fear
Distortion? Stealth the downed player.

I’ll admit my Mesmer is the best at this with distortion shatter … but it also requires me to invest a full set of illusions and a long cooldown. If you can’t stealth your friend, his butt belongs to my spike.

Umm you can’t be feared when you have stability up try again. Fear counts as a condition and CC.

Are you 100% sure on this? I was pretty positive that you could be feared even with stablity.

oZii.2864:

You are correct that you can stealth but if its stealth I just 100bs which I do to most downed people anyway for the might stacks.

Hence why I posted that the counter to stealth is to simply do damage on that location.

I was making an effort to use flanking strike last night even to remove regen and other boons and was able to land it reliably quite a bit of the time. I even used it as a bit of burst once (cast once for extra damage, not spammed it).

I believe he showed that they have been looking into solutions for the problem as he came to us with a list of their current ideas.

I was a bit disheartened by the fact that the community had to spot for them that the HoM pets’ stats didn’t match up with their non-HoM counterparts. Stat discrepancies should be trivial to identify.

Overall, with the slow pace of fixes and the weird bugs that come from fixes, my view of their quality control/assurance is diminished. For example, Mesmer clones having no weapons after last patch. There were few Mesmer changes and none of them appear to be related to Mesmer clones, but something they changed broke that. Same for the Mesmer spear hitbox.

Trap ranger is powerful in sPvP because I can throw my traps on the point my opponent wants to take. They have to run over my traps to take that point.

In WvW, the only points enemies want to take that I can employ this same tactic are broken gates/walls and keep lords. Unfortunately, these are also where enemy zergs are and Ranger is not very good in zerg v zerg fights.

Skirmishing/1v1, traps are great against melee because you can force them onto your traps since they have to close on you. Against ranged, it’s trickier. You can still do it, but it’s nowhere near as powerful as sPvP and fighting melees.

In my mind, a Ranger build should be able to provide at least 2 things:
(1) Constant pressure through respectable non-burst damage
(2) Survivability to enable them to maintain that constant pressure long enough to get the kill

Once a build has both of those, it’s at least solid (in my mind) and we can then talk about any bells and whistles it has in addition to those.

Excellent, Laika. Thanks.

Just to clarify what I’m seeing here.

The first Infiltrator Strike you do, you immediately interrupt the cast by hitting C&D. This makes it not put down a point for Shadow Return. Correct?

All the other Infiltrator Strikes, where you don’t interrupt, see to work just fine. Correct?

I’ve never encountered this, but that video is good evidence. I hope you have filed a bug for this through the official channels ArenaNet has provided for players.

All I know is I was tearing it up in sPvP last night on my Sword+Dagger Norn thief.

I was playing around on my warrior, trying some solid builds I already had experience with. Had several good fights against people. Decided to switch and jump on my thief to compare the two. So I joined the same game. At least 6 of the people in the game were the same (probably more, but I’m bad with remembering names).

The performance of my Sword+Dagger Thief was ridiculous.

Flanking Strike → Cloak & Dagger (easy, they are immob’d) → Tactical Strike → Auto-attack chain (all 3 hits for weakness + cripple) → repeat starting at Cloak & Dagger

I would just do that over and over to every class and winning my 1v1s very solidly.

I was running Soldier’s amulet (can’t remember armor rune), sigil of fire and sigil of force and was 0/30/30/10/0.

Damage was solid, I could take hits, and the only time I didn’t just follow that chain was if they got extra help that could put decent pressure on me … in which case I just hit shadow return on sword, or shadowstep, or used shadow refuge.

It was cake, I enjoyed it, but it was far too easy for how effective it was. When I’m being that effective on my Mesmer, I’m working at least twice as hard and I certainly can’t escape as easily from a fight that turns when reinforcements, etc. swing a fight out of my favor.

Everything has a counter.

Stability finisher? Fear (it’s a condition) or Stealth the downed player
Stealth? Do lots of damage in that area or use an area/conal CC/fear
Distortion? Stealth the downed player.

I’ll admit my Mesmer is the best at this with distortion shatter … but it also requires me to invest a full set of illusions and a long cooldown. If you can’t stealth your friend, his butt belongs to my spike.

Laika.8795:

Sebrent.3625:

A sword thief without shadow return readied is a dumb sword thief (or afk), lol.

FYI:

I’m sure it’s a bug, but if you cast IS and and then C&D (or any other skill) too fast, the strike won’t occur and your Shadow Return marker won’t be placed. It’s very frustrating when I jump into a sticky situation thinking I have an easy out, only to further entrench myself in the nastiness when I hit ‘2’ again…

:(

Ugh. Thankfully, I have not encountered that.

If you could replicate it and make a video of such, I bet it would speed up a fix for ArenaNet. Replication of a bug makes discovering the responsible code easier which makes creating a fix quicker.

Though, are you sure you’re not just hitting C&D before flanking strike has gone off?

^ ^

Sir Vincent III.1286 is quite correct. There is a reason I run 20 points in domination on my Mesmer. There is a reason I run sword on my Thief.

Boon removal helps bust bunkers and it helps deflate some foes’ damage as well (might/fury stackers). I accept the weaknesses of these choices.

Maybe it’s because I played Ranger before Thief, but I haven’t found flanking strike to be hard to hit with. You also have your sword’s #2 skill to immobilize … and you should be using it anyways with sword so you have a pocket stunbreaker/condition removal ready.

A sword thief without shadow return readied is a dumb sword thief (or afk), lol.

There’s no need to worry about the arrows. People should be dodge rolling those. Being at range makes dodging them trivial.

AOE for the adds is the most beneficial thing you can do aside from skills to clump them together (Mesmers and Guardians for this).

I honestly wish they’d scale back the burst in the game so that 2 glass cannons facing each other took at least 3-5 seconds to kill one another if one just stood and took the other one’s big hits. Whatever needed to be changed to balance this, go for it.

Fights should feel like fights. If that means getting rid of the extremes so you don’t have actual glass cannons nor actual bunkers, so be it. Allow the variety but get rid of the extremes.

Daecollo.9578:

All classes have there little problems, that is also describing the problem that mesmers/necromancers face, except Ranger is a little more reliable because they can switch there pets if the going gets tough.

But Rangers can’t swap their spirits out when the going gets tough … they die just like Necro pets and Engineer turrets.

Daecollo.9578:

Pets are a lot more tanky then most other things though, and a lot of people just ignore them, even in large zergs.

This is dependent on the pet.
Even bears/devourers die in large zergs (30+ per side) rather quickly.

There are so many sources of damage, the pet can’t dodge, takes 100% of it, and doesn’t get exotic/ascended gear stat improvements.

evilapprentice.6379:

Not all of us have a friend we can summon whenever a bunker needs busting. Whats the point of a burst class that has trouble with bunkers because they don’t have the tools to beat them?

What’s the point of a bunker that can be busted by burst? It isn’t killing other people nearly as quickly as the burst is who can simply switch targets to a non-bunker.

Infiltrator’s Strike → Flanking Strike … very simple. IF immobilizes for 1 second. That’s plenty of time.

This is what is called “comboing skills”. I know most thieves are aware of it since initiative lets you spam your favorite button, but this is how other classes are played.

Flank Strike also gives you control over your character after the initial first hit, so you can move/turn/etc. a bit before the second swing of Flanking Strike.

Sword damage is good but you aren’t as bursty as a dagger since you can’t simply get someone to 50% and spam noobseeker.

However, sword auto-attack is putting both cripple and weakness on your target. Helps you easily stay on your target and reduces the damage they can do back to you.

If you’re a fan of the stealth gamplay, while Sword’s tactical strike isn’t as much damage as backstab, it is still good damage and dazes your target for 2 seconds (from behind) or blinds them (not from behind). This helps you stay alive during those 3 seconds of reveal. Heck, if you daze them for 2 seconds each time, that’s only 1 second they can attack before you can stealth again. This is awesome and I love using it.

Making good use of Infiltrator’s Strike and Shadow Return helps quite a bit too.

Daecollo.9578:

Actually rangers are quite overpowered in spvp and pve and even pvp in some fights.

Rangers are probably one of the best classes in the game right now, it just has a higher skill ceiling.

Make that “trap ranger” and you’re somewhat right, though overpowered is an exaggeration. They can tear up anyone that relies largely on melee range. The tanky beastmaster can do well, but it’s not on the same tier as trap ranger.

The main issues with the Ranger are the lack of viable utilities and bad pet AI. Look at the number of utilities that are actual useful. Look at the viable builds people are touting for Ranger. Then go over to the Mesmer subforum and compare. Mesmer isn’t a low skill floor class and that community is quite positive. There are several reasons why.

Ranger also has trouble in large battles with the pet dying quite quickly to random AOE.

Ranger also has trouble in sieges since the pet can’t do crap from the walls (900 range at best) and can no longer be sent outside the walls with Guard.

EasymodeX.4062:

That leap kitten with Ranger Sword is annoying as HELL to get used to. Edit: I think the biggest problem is the animation lock with all the steps of Sword1 messing up the timing of the other abilities, causing the timing of everything to be weird as hell until you get reaaally familiar with it.

Personally I think the “stall” time at the end of the leap animation where you can’t move needs to be reduced. Hard to use it twice in a row (turn around for the first half) to leap twice in the same direction (which is hilarious kekeke).

That said, using Ranger S/D with Quickness makes you go batkitten insane flippy floppy mad attack rage. Enemy doesn’t know where the hell you are or what the hell you’re doing when you’re spamming those.

Lol @ your description :-)

I know exactly where a ranger is when they do that … flipping in my face. If on my warrior I swing my weapon or block. On my mesmer I distortion or block.

I agree about the stall time. Very annoying.

But we’re getting off-topic, back to thief.

Practice with the sword, ladies and gents. You’ll be better for it.

However, warning, it plays quite differently from the dagger.

jkctmc.8754:

Ryan.8367:

Funny, they thought guardians were fine where they’re at, except theyre getting a 10% dmg reduction innate because devs feel they need to be able to take more damage.

This cracks me up, and makes me sad. I initially quit my Guardian because the nerfs to the heals were getting too much. Why not just reverse the nerfs to the Guardians healing abilities?

Because heals can affect more than just the Guardian.

If you combine the damage of the two hits, I don’t believe it’s 20% less.

I concede that your other points are good though.

It could be possible for it to stay the same, I’m just wary of it becoming the new “noobseeker” spam button. I’d hate to see sword go that way.

Oldgrimm.8521:

seldom thieves use anything besides d/d

Fixed :-p

I wasn’t trolling. Like the ranger sword skills, it takes practice to get used to. People use to complain a good bit more about the Ranger’s sword’s #2 and #3 skills. Now they are well-loved.

I don’t think flanking strike removing 2 boons instead of 1 would be too overpowered.

If you made it easier to hit with flanking strike, however, I think its damage would need to be lowered as it is barely below the damage of backstab.

evilapprentice.6379:

Crit boon removal sigil is garbage – its uncontrolled and happens once every 10s, it cant be applied tactically. Flanking strike would be an awesome boon removal…if the skill pathed correctly.

Perhaps some easier answers would be to:

• Make the weapon sigil more reliable and/or have a lower cooldown?
• Improve how flanking strike’s pathing worked? (many classes would benefit from pathing improvements on various skills)

evilapprentice.6379:

Bountiful theft is nice to rip 2 boons every 32-36 seconds. No bunkering spec in the game will be crippled by losing 2 boons every 32-36s.

I disagree. First, it takes removing those boons just long enough to burst the tank. Second, many tanks make use of a few utilities/runes to stack boon duration. If you remove that long duration boon, you’ve created a sizeable window of opportunity.

Work against all tanks? No. Some? Yes.
As such, I disagree that “no bunkering spec is crippled…”

It’s not horribly crippling. It forces Thieves and Mesmers to be visible for 3 seconds after every stealth.

Here’s an idea boys and girls … try out the sword. What’s this?! A weapon whose auto-attack chain puts crippling and weakness on the enemy?! And a shadow return on weapon skill #2?! Wow!

Go in stealth, shadow return out during reveal. Rinse and repeat.

Good thieves have already been doing this sort of thing.

Have trouble with bunkers if you’re not a cannon?! Well most bunkers use boons. Put a dagger in your off-hand with that sword. Oh my! Now you have boon removal! Welcome to the ranks of Mesmers and Necromancers. You’re one of the less than 1/2 of classes that now has reliable boon removal.

Sword + Dagger Thief … it’s for the big boys and girls.

Lol. I agree with your whole statement Druzlla.

However, the bad thieves aren’t what bother me. They are just flies.

Take a look at what the good sword thieves can do. Shadow Return on a weapon.

Come in stealth, jump out 1,200 range (stunbreaker and condition removal to boot), rinse and repeat. Good thieves are mean unless you’re a trap ranger. Then you’re stuck on your traps and they are off finding a new target.

I’ve tried using spirits in the fractals. They take a hit and suddenly I have no benefit and a utility on a ~60 sec cooldown.

This is the primary issue. If we can be given a way for them to survive long enough to give their boons or maybe be given a longer range so we can put them in a safer location while benefitting from them, then we can talk about what they give versus other similar abilities.

Until then, it’s a utility that dies quite quickly.

Honestly, think of our spirits in the various fractals. I can see each one being extremely useless in their current state.

The best place currently to use spirits? Keep/Tower defense. You can keep them far enough back from the wall that they won’t get hit by AOE/etc. yet close enough for defenders on that wall to gain the benefit. Sadly … with guard being changed, Rangers got nerfed in sieges since we can’t send the pet out without going out ourselves … a large portion of our dps stuck on the wall … but that’s for another thread.

I think boon hate is a bad idea because it introduces the following two scenarios to the game:

• My ally places 1+ boons on me. I’m mad at my ally because he/she is now causing me to take more damage from my foe(s).
• My ally removes 1+ boons from my foe(s). I’m mad at my ally because he/she is now causing me to do less damage to my foe(s).

You applying boons to allies and removing boons from foes should not be negatives for you and/or your allies.

How ridiculous would it be to be in World vs World, Structured PvP, or even PvE and people are yelling at their allies to stop applying/removing boons because it’s hurting them?

“Mesmers and Necros, stop removing enemy boons!”
“Warriors & Guardians, don’t use your shouts!”
“Elementalists! Don’t take Elemental Attunement or stop swapping attunements!”

It’s silly.

Furthermore, boon hate is allowing people to do nothing but “make a build” to counter other people who “make a build” but also “use 1+ skill(s)” to gain their boons. I think providing more access to active ways of performing boon removal would be a much better solution.

Currently, the only classes with reliable boon removal are Sword Thieves, Mesmers, and Necromancers. Guardian can trait to remove 1 every 20 seconds (don’t know why that cooldown is so long) when they inflict burning.

That’s only 4 classes and really the Guardian doesn’t truly count and for Thief they are forced to take a particular weapon (main-hand sword).

Necromancer and Mesmer are the reliable ones since they have both utilities as well as weapon skills for boon removal/conversion/theft.

I don’t think it would hurt to give each other class access to at least 1 anti-boon utility.

If we start to have people need to take a particular trait in their build to counter another build we’re going to take steps towards “build wars” as GW1 became. I would prefer we avoided that and aimed more towards “skill wars”.

I think boon hate is a bad idea because it introduces the following two scenarios to the game:

• My ally places 1+ boons on me. I’m mad at my ally because he/she is now causing me to take more damage from my foe(s).
• My ally removes 1+ boons from my foe(s). I’m mad at my ally because he/she is now causing me to do less damage to my foe(s).

You applying boons to allies and removing boons from foes should not be negatives for you and/or your allies.

How ridiculous would it be to be in World vs World, Structured PvP, or even PvE and people are yelling at their allies to stop applying/removing boons because it’s hurting them?

“Mesmers and Necros, stop removing enemy boons!”
“Warriors & Guardians, don’t use your shouts!”
“Elementalists! Don’t take Elemental Attunement or stop swapping attunements!”

It’s silly.

Furthermore, boon hate is allowing people to do nothing but “make a build” to counter other people who “make a build” but also “use 1+ skill(s)” to gain their boons. I think providing more access to active ways of performing boon removal would be a much better solution.

Currently, the only classes with reliable boon removal are Sword Thieves, Mesmers, and Necromancers. Guardian can trait to remove 1 every 20 seconds (don’t know why that cooldown is so long) when they inflict burning.

That’s only 4 classes and really the Guardian doesn’t truly count and for Thief they are forced to take a particular weapon (main-hand sword).

Necromancer and Mesmer are the reliable ones since they have both utilities as well as weapon skills for boon removal/conversion/theft.

I don’t think it would hurt to give each other class access to at least 1 anti-boon utility.

If we start to have people need to take a particular trait in their build to counter another build we’re going to take steps towards “build wars” as GW1 became. I would prefer we avoided that and aimed more towards “skill wars”.

Warthog and Siamoth … two pets I’d use all the time if they improved how forage works … they even have a knockdown on a 40sec cooldown just like my dogs … and a bleed … just their knockdown has a much longer cast time and shorter range (why?!)

nerva.7940:

Well with boon duration u get about 50% protection uptime for your group with stone spirit alone. For yourself u can have perma with moa and dodging.

Frost spirit makes your ele’s 3k aoe hit for 3.3k. If he hits 3 people thats an extra 900 damage. If your hammer warrior jumps in as well, and your gs mesmer drops an izerker and a shatter, your group is doing an extra 2.5k dmg. Get my drift banners cant do this

Frost field and muddy terrain are always good when retreating

Yes, we can spec specifically for our spirits that die extremely easily while warrior banners are immune to damage.

Yes, our spirits have procs and activate-able abilities, Banners have several skills as well …

All banners share the same #1, #3, #4, and #5 skills when equipped:

• 1: Attack
• 2: 3873 Healing and 5 seconds of Regen to nearby allies (10 sec cooldown)
• 3: 10 seconds of Swiftness to nearby allies (15 sec cooldown)
• 4: 600 range sprint that can do damage, lol
• 5: Plant standard … a blast finisher

Each Banner gives a constant bonus to those in range and has a unique #2 when equipped

Banner of Tactics:

• +90 healing (soon to be +180) and +10% boon duration
• 2: 3873 Healing and 5 seconds of Regen to nearby allies (10 sec cooldown)

Banner of Discipline

• +90 precision (soon to be +180) and +10% crit damage
• 2: 8 seconds of Fury to nearby allies (10 sec cooldown)

Banner of Strength

• +90 power (soon to be +180) and +90 condition damage (soon to be +180)
• 2: attack and apply 3 stacks of vulnerability

Banner of Defense

• +90 toughness (soon to be +180) and +90 vitality (soon to be +180)
• 2: Attack w/ knockback

Battle Standard

• Rez allies when planted
• Fury, Might, and Stability
• 2: Stability

That chance for +10% damage doesn’t really compare to 100% chance at +180 to power and condition damage or +180 precision and +10% crit damage. Throw in that you can give almost 100% up-time on fury and it’s even better. Pick up, hit #2, hit #5 to put back down … and anyone on your side can do it.

They also give swiftness in and out of combat.

All of the above can also be traited to give regen on top of what they already do. We have to trait just to get our spirits to come with us.

That 50% up-time with boon duration is making a big assumption that you are going to proc it every time it goes off cooldown

nerva.7940:

The biggest issue was that gc thieves could unload 10-14k damage on you before rendering. Culling lasts 2.5 secs and the debuff 3 secs, giving you about half a sec to burst the thief down. It’s easy killing a gc in 2-3 secs if u have a daze. This is the major nerf, and the rest is just sugar on top.

I agree that culling being fixed will fix one issue.

I was simply disagreeing about it affecting how much time they spend actually stealthed since that is what affects how much they receive the healing that was being discussed.

You’ll be doing one of two things when you’re using the sword:

• Being defensive: you are not even touching your #1 auto-attack skill chain. Instead, you are dancing around your opponent/terrain to avoid damage and using the dodge rolls on #2 and #3 as well as your normal dodge rolls to avoid damage. Used to buy time for cooldowns, reinforcements, pet to do damage to your foe, etc.

• Being offensive: you are spamming your auto-attack on your opponent, likely with quickness from pet swap and/or QZ. You will still on any non-stealth/-teleporting opponent and do very good damage while crippling them and granting might to your pet. Best used against non-melee opponents since a warrior can trade blows with you with axe, etc. and win in many circumstances … though obviously if you currently have the advantage in the fight this is not an issue.

nerva.7940:

I believe thieves will be spending a lot more time out of stealth come the 26th. Theyre losing 2 secs of culling upon each unstealth (huge nerf), and they will no longer be able to zerg surf with cnd. Thats all I felt thieves needed, as I can already dispatch most skilled ones with a bit of effort.

You may want to go back and read up on the changes. The only thing that is going to make them be in stealth less is the (presumed) change to the revealed condition where it won’t matter if they broke stealth or it wore off. This will simply prevent them from waiting 3-4 sec for stealth to wear off before re-stealthing. Now they have to keep stealth up or wait 3 seconds after stealth breaks for any reason before they can re-stealth.

What this did was prevent the near 100% stealthing abuse where a thief was hardly visible unless they broke stealth to hit you.

Xsorus.2507:

Sebrent.3625:

Xsorus.2507:

All thieves can get rid of conditions easy, cause almost all of them take 30 shadow arts because it not only removes conditions every 3 seconds in stealth (so if you wait the 4 seconds in stealth, it’ll remove 2 conditions every time you do it) It also heals for more then a Ranger in a full Healing Power Set automatically without the investment in a signet or in gear.

Yep … Shadow’s Rejuvenation is 293 hp per sec while stealthed. Granted, it’s a 30 point trait so it should be good … but then take a look at Ranger’s stuff:

• 30 pt trait, Natural Healing : 125 per second for pet, 133 every 2 seconds for player. (player alone gets less than 25% of what the thief gets)
• Utility, Signet of the Wild : 62 per second for pet, 125 per second for the player

So let’s look at this combined.

• If a thief takes a 30 pt trait, they get 293 hp per sec while stealthed (which that build spends 50+%).
• If a ranger only takes a 30 pt trait, they get 66.5 hp per sec (133/2)
• If a ranger only takes a utility, they get 125 per sec
• If a ranger takes a 30pt trait and a utility they get 191.5 hp per sec ((133/2) + 125)

Granted, the thief has to stealth to gain theirs, but stealth comes with several other benefits for Thieves and is a decent portion of their gameplay. Does it really warrant them getting twice as much as a ranger who invests the same number of trait points AND 1/3 of their utility slots?

Now, before anyone tells me “but Ranger gets tons of evasion!” …

• Not on all weapons
• So does thief … and look at this http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ofdu0ltKmTk

My personal favorite is the 5 Seconds of Regen they get every time they stealth..

I abuse it with my healing power thief, I have only 800 hp with the gear right now, but i’m doing over 600 HPS while in stealth..

Yeah, regen on top of that brings it to 130/sec + 293/sec = 423/sec every time they stealth.

I hadn’t brought that up because Ranger can take several skills/traits/pets/runes to gain regen. Can’t spam a single way to gain it, but we have ways to achieve near (if not complete) 100% up-time on regeneration.

Nice work. Do you have any videos to go with this?

Looking at your numbers let’s check out 3 different amounts of power: 1,000; 2,000; and 3,000.

Numbers are [Warrior] – [Ranger] = [Difference]

1000 Power

• 1530 – 1150 = 380/s
• 1550 – 1220 = 330/s
• 1560 – 1080 = 480/s
• 1500 – 1080 = 420/s
• 1460 – 1150 = 310/s

2000 Power

• 3060 – 2300 = 760/s
• 3100 – 2440 = 660/s
• 3120 – 2160 = 960/s
• 3000 – 2160 = 840/s
• 2920 – 2300 = 620/s

3000 Power

• 4590 – 3450 = 1140/s
• 4650 – 3660 = 990/s
• 4680 – 3240 = 1440/s
• 4500 – 3240 = 1260/s
• 4380 – 3450 = 930/s

Looking at this, the difference seems to reflect the Ranger having a pet. I think this does a good job of highlighting that fixing ranger pets’ ability to reliably hit a moving target would go a long way in helping with Ranger’s dps.

Grandmaster trait should make the spirits immune to damage … then I’d think about takeing spirits.

What’s amusing is I’m stating “Force me to spend 30 points and a grandmaster trait to make my spirits like Warrior Banners are by default”

Xsorus.2507:

All thieves can get rid of conditions easy, cause almost all of them take 30 shadow arts because it not only removes conditions every 3 seconds in stealth (so if you wait the 4 seconds in stealth, it’ll remove 2 conditions every time you do it) It also heals for more then a Ranger in a full Healing Power Set automatically without the investment in a signet or in gear.

Yep … Shadow’s Rejuvenation is 293 hp per sec while stealthed. Granted, it’s a 30 point trait so it should be good … but then take a look at Ranger’s stuff:

• 30 pt trait, Natural Healing : 125 per second for pet, 133 every 2 seconds for player. (player alone gets less than 25% of what the thief gets)
• Utility, Signet of the Wild : 62 per second for pet, 125 per second for the player

So let’s look at this combined.

• If a thief takes a 30 pt trait, they get 293 hp per sec while stealthed (which that build spends 50+%).
• If a ranger only takes a 30 pt trait, they get 66.5 hp per sec (133/2)
• If a ranger only takes a utility, they get 125 per sec
• If a ranger takes a 30pt trait and a utility they get 191.5 hp per sec ((133/2) + 125)

Granted, the thief has to stealth to gain theirs, but stealth comes with several other benefits for Thieves and is a decent portion of their gameplay. Does it really warrant them getting twice as much as a ranger who invests the same number of trait points AND 1/3 of their utility slots?

Now, before anyone tells me “but Ranger gets tons of evasion!” …

• Not on all weapons
• So does thief … and look at this http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ofdu0ltKmTk

Thieves are not “necessary” in tPvP because elementalist exists.

Thief can move quickly. So can the elementalist.
Thief can burst. So can the elementalist.

… now look at what else the elementalist can do. This is one of the reasons elementalist is in ArenaNet’s sights for a nerf … they are the apex predator for what seems to be the only position people have gotten a thief to work for in tPvP.

… why take a leopard when you can have a tiger? Sure, the leopard is stealthy, but that’s no good for taking and holding ground.

Brienson.7319:

I noticed this almost immediately when I started using mirror. I thought it was cool at first, but it’s not very worth it imo. You’re sacrificing the availability of your heal and eating a dodge roll just for a little extra reflection, which the mesmer is already very good at doing. It’s a neat trick, but I doubt there are many situations where you’d get a whole lot of mileage out of it.

You can cancel a cast without dodge-rolling.

I never use capslock so I re-binded my caps lock to escape for quick canceling of abilities … useful if you have something like ranger shortbow that’s annoying to spam auto-attack on so you leave it on but need to cancel when you encounter confusion/reflection.

It wasn’t the thought process “this is an exploit, but not as bad as another”.

It was the thought process “the reasons you take mirror are the short cooldown and the reflection during casting”. It’s the latter part that makes me think this might stay as is.

Otherwise, they’d need to do something to make Mirror worth taking … perhaps lower cast time and reflection upon completion of the heal, but that’s still a nerf given it’s a huge bonus to have the cast not interruptible by projectiles.

I know about the traps + points making Rangers much nicer. This is why I’ve been testing my Ranger in sPvP using other utilities (Lightning Reflexes, Save Me, Muddy Terrain, QZ, Signets, etc.)

The AOE is a good point, but even in small skirmishes in WvW the Ranger feels less powerful than in sPvP.

I’d argue that Ranger does not get 100% out of defensive stats or condition damage because the pet benefits from neither.

I do agree that Ranger scales better with condition damage with power since a Ranger’s bleeds scale the same with X condition damage as any other class but Ranger direct damage seems to scale worse with Y power than other classes.

It does often seem like ANet is balancing around sPvP more than anything else. I too find that frustrating. If Ranger didn’t have its bugs it could possibly dethrone my Mesmer as my main, but I’m not holding my breath.

Vyce.2014:

I wouldn’t too used to it. Anet tends to fix these sort of stop-casting “benefits” as soon as they are abused.

That was my initial thought when playing around with this … but the “reflection while casting” is what makes Mirror what it is so I’m not so sure in this case.

Plus, this isn’t stealth abuse which was much much worse.

Want a quick reflection that you can hit every ~4 seconds? Use Mirror as your heal and interrupt the cast before it finishes. You’ll have the reflection while casting it but as long as you interrupt it before it finishes casting you’ll only get a ~4 second cooldown. Excellent for when you don’t need a heal but are being shot at … which helps you not need a heal ;-)

<3 Mirror.

If your build doesn’t take any of the options that allow you to have 100% (or near 100%) up-time on swiftness, that’s on you as that is the current state of the Mesmer.

I do understand the beef though with things like the Engineer spending 10 points in a good trait line and getting perma-swiftness while a Mesmer has to invest much more to receive the same.

For those citing that Ranger Rapid Fire is good damage…

… yes, it does good damage, but over a 5 second channel.

• 5 seconds – plenty of time to line of sight, dodge roll, etc. … not to mention that damage has to be divided over those 5 seconds … warrior axe can crit for 2k per auto-attack and hit easily 5 times in 5 seconds

• channel – can be interrupted by the enemy or if the ranger needs to dodge roll, etc.

Comparing Backstab to Rapid Fire is silly since Backstab is an instant attack that does the same damage. The advantage of Rapid Fire is range. The advantage of Backstab is being instant.

The issue people have is with Backstab’s instant being combined with Mug’s instant and C&D (non-instant). That Instant + Non-instant + Instant makes running glassy in a Thief heavy environment quite dangerous.

… hence why I don’t do it, lol. Cavalier ftw.