Guild Wars 2

Yes, ArenaNet also mentioned that combat was supposed to such that you saw your opponent’s animations and reacted to them. I’m just wishing they would find a way to marry these seemingly conflicting ideas.

Nothing in those descriptions mentions that the Thief has to give no indicator to their opponents. I’m asking for a 0.5 second to see/hear and react. With most people that’s not useful and far less than most classes give with their big hit abilities.

I can understand that, Serpent Strike is a nice skill. It does, however, sometimes miss as well.

There are just several abilities in this game that are sadly thwarted by your target simply moving a little. I’m not sure if that was the design, but I feel your pain.

I’m finally back to leveling up my Thief in PvE and have found that Flanking Strike doesn’t bother me too much after playing the Ranger quite a bit. I like Thief Sword much more than Ranger sword even though I’m currently likely much better with the Ranger variant (practice, ya know?)

Interesting factoid … 10% of males suffer from colorblindness of one sort or another.

Those of us who are colorblind (I’m the classic Red-Green), do not like Green/Yellow/Red icon systems. This is why Blizzard eventually put in a colorblind mode and several Rogue mods were created for combo point representation.

When I PvP on my Ranger I give my opponent’s two options:
(1) Fight the tanky, evasive Ranger that is going to take a while to kill
(2) Turn your back to the Ranger who does extra damage to you when you’re not facing him.

Sucks for them.

My problems are with “obstructed” in a wide open field. My pet not doing what I told it to. My pet having trouble hitting a moving target that is slower than it. Having few good utilities. Having to spend twice as many trait points and major traits for the same thing other classes can get with half that many.

When it comes to Ranger damage, I’ve gone to condition damage because of this:
(1) Ranger damage seems to scale very poorly with power compared to other classes
(2) Ranger condition damage is the same as every other class’s given the same amount of condition damage and Ranger has several good, reliable ways to inflict Bleeding, Burning, and Poison.

I let my pet be the direct damage pressure while my Ranger is the condition damage pressure.

My current train of thought with the Ranger damage is this … we don’t have much burst without sacrificing something else. Instead, we do constant respectable damage. To win a fight we have to avoid the burst of our opponent while maintaining that constant damage.

It’s a different way to play, especially if you come from being a Shatter Mesmer, Warrior, Thief, etc. since they rely on burst. It can also be frustrating since there are plenty of classes that can escape when losing a fight and consistent damage is harder to escape from when losing than burst (because burst just drops you before you can decide to leave).

Summary:
There are bugs with pets that aggravate me.
There are bugs with ranger projectiles that aggravate me.
The lack of variety in playstyle/utilities aggravates me.
Ranger is still playable but you have to work at it.

Mesmer can quickly summon 3 illusions and shatter them in 2 seconds or less given the right build.

Please stop feeding the troll guys. I answered his question and he is still trying to troll.

If you question whether or not he is a troll, simply take a look at previous posts by that username. It is full of unhelpful, combative posts.

Stratos.4906:

Is it 100% balanced? No, but try this. Create a thief jump into SPvP for a while and see how “easy” it is. There are plenty of counters. I run multiple classes and all have their optimum builds. They also have weaknesses. It happens.

I did this. It was very easy as a Dagger+Dagger thief.
Sword+Dagger is a more difficult weapon set to master.

Kamata.5762:

You dont have to guess or be a pro at thief to know where the thief is going. If a thief uses CnD when hes not yet losing he WILL try to backstab you. Use that knowledge to your advantage.

Yes, I’ve covered this. He has 3 (4 traited) seconds to choose from as to when to backstab/tactical strike you. If he waits till the end every time then it’s easy. If he’s smart, he changes it up. Yes, a person can dodge roll, distortion, and/or block for those whole 3-4 seconds but then those are down for C&D, heartseeker, cloak and dagger, etc. and you had to use multiple to cover the entire 3-4 seconds of stealth.

For those that it wasn’t obvious … if 2 seconds have elapsed w/o a backstab, use a dodge roll, block, etc. as the backstab is about to land. 1-2 second window is remaining and that’s much more manageable.

Kamata.5762:

If he is low health and uses CnD, he is probably backing off and so should you, because you cant stop him from backing off and he cant stop you because you will kill him in an instant if he engages.

Yep, we can’t stop the thief from backing off … but often the thief can stop us from backing off. This is one of the things that irks people.

Kamata.5762:

These are just 2 simple examples of many many counters to stealth. As a necro, just place fear around yourself, mesmer can pull with focus 4 distortion blur blink decoy, warrior block with shield, ele can RTL away or stomp with dagger earth 4, guardian speaks for itself. And best of all, DODGE. CnD only lasts 3 seconds, he will try to BS you in those 3 seconds. If you have problems with thieves youre just an average or below average pvper. ( I play a mesmer btw )

I’ve covered necro marks/wells and ranger traps in another post. Those are wonderful as they give you an indicator of where the thief is while stealthed and force the thief to take those hits (they hate being hit) … but this is assuming the Thief isn’t smart/patient. You’re not going to kill one of these good thieves by sitting on marks/traps as they aren’t stupid/stubborn enough to rush into a full stack of marks/traps that will damage and CC them. They’ll bide their time, waiting for you to make a mistake or find a new target. They are the ultimate class when it comes to choosing fights and the good thieves know this. They don’t have to fight you on your terms.

Mesmer Focus pull is great … against Refuge. If you’re wasting it before that then you’re largely failing unless you have some other means of getting a Thief when they pop refuge.

Dodging it great, but a dodge covers 1 second at best. So you can cover 2 of those seconds with dodge rolls. Reveal debuff lasts 3 seconds. A thief can stealth quite often.

I play Mesmer as well and it’s only the really good thieves that give me trouble, in which case the cards all mostly in their hand and I often have to hope to juke them with clones + stealth as any time I am about to win they simply reset the fight with stealth and superior mobility and then either find someone easier or try again until I don’t have enough cooldowns and/or make too many mistakes. Bad/average thieves are just another corpse on the pile under my butterflies.

Kamata.5762:

Culling in wvw is a different story and that is a problem though.

Yep, re-read my post.

Kamata.5762:

Anyway my point is: L2P and you wont have to guess.

You’re right … just spam cooldowns and dodges every stealth till you’re out of them on the 2nd stealth, he resets, and you’re in trouble. Good plan :-)

It works against the bad/average thieves. It does not work against the great thieves.

The 90-10 split limits what you can do.

Making someone who wants to go back to the current split invest in beastmastery assumes that those who currently use their pet successfully (when it isn’t being “short bus special”) put several points in beastmastery … which is not true. I currently have 5 points in beastmastery in my build and make great use of my pet. He actually lives longer in dungeons than most of the noobs I run into.

A band-aid or stop-gap fix is insufficient.

Brother, Thieves in full zerker are not the issue unless you’re paper. Then it’s a game of “spotted you first” and “how’s the latency today” … which is rather boring and honestly the Thief has the advantage in both of these games.

It would be helpful if we knew what your class and build were when this happened.

I agree that you were getting hit quite hard by even auto-attacks which makes me quite curious about the answers to these two questions.

Without those answers, I cannot help you further.

Thief can be awesome in PvE or it can suck. I have yet to see someone in the middle.

I think it’s largely an issue of l2p though as the two best 20+ fractal groups I’ve had both had 2 outstanding Thieves in them.

I think most of the people that tell you Thieves are bad in PvE are either playing their thief the same way they do in PvP or they are encountering the vast number of thieves that are doing this.

Okamakiri.8746:

Sebrent.3625:

A bad thief/ranger is a completely wasted slot in a group. A bad guardian, etc. can still be somewhat useful

Hence, it’s not a L2Play issue and both classes could use some help. There are bad players of all classes. I highly doubt that the reason you notice more bad Thieves/Rangers is because more “bads” play those classes. A more plausible explanation is that those classes have drawbacks and weaknesses that make a bad player more obvious and less useful to the group.

No, it’s an issue of l2p that is exacerbated by the Thief having a higher skill floor in PvE (their PvP skill floor is LOW) and the Ranger having a higher skill floor (largely due to some brokenness). Given two equally skilled players (i.e. no issue of l2p), you’re not going to care much if they are a Thief/Ranger or not unless you’re looking at the capabilities of the group as a whole instead of just those of the player.

The Guardian is loved so much in PvE because it is extremely forgiving in PvE. Failed your dodge roll? No problem, you have Aegis every 40 (30 traited) seconds and a plethora of blocks, etc. you can use. Heck, you even have an invuln trait if you’d like. Couple this with the fact that they can stumble around and provide support and you have a class that is easily able to contribute. Low PvE skill floor. I still don’t want a noob guardian in my groups.

The Warrior is loved so much because honestly their damage in PvE is pretty darn OP (or closely bordering OP) coupled with the fact that they have endure pain as both a trait and a utility. This makes them very forgiving as even noob can still do a good bit during the time they are immune to direct damage. I still don’t want a noob warrior in my groups.

Just by switching around skills and weapons for various fights, Thieves can provide a ridiculous amount of both great damage and great support to their groups. The problem is that many of them are noob and take the same skills they use for their build for PvP (where there is a low skill floor for thieves) and try to use them in PvE (where there is a higher skill floor for thieves)

Pay attention to Red Falcon’s post here. If you play one of these classes, he has highlighted some of the key abilities they use to disengage when losing a fight (or about to be zerged). It is missing Whirlwind for the warrior though :-p (If you have Rush you have Whirlwind as both are Greatsword skills).

The issue, as I said, isn’t that the thief can disengage. It’s the combination of how easily the thief can disengage to reset a fight and the fact that countering several thief skills comes down to the luck of your guesses. Obviously, you can increase that luck by becoming familiar with the playstyle of the thief you are fighting against (each has a rhythm … though the best thieves change that up constantly). Sadly, we can’t see thief names, depending on specs fights can be quite short, and it’s ridiculous to try to remember the rhythm of each thief.

The issue is the guesswork involved with fighting a thief coupled with thief’s ability to constantly reset a fight. You can only guess correctly so many times when that Thief is going to use steal and when that thief is going to backstab you out of the 4 seconds available to them each time they stealth. Eventually, if they keep resetting the fight, you’re going to guess wrong.

Now, this isn’t an issue at the lower tiers because those thieves are garbage that largely think “more damage!” and wait till too late to try to disengage, but at the higher skill tiers this is quite an issue. A good thief knows pretty quickly how the pace of the fight is going.

I’m going to have to agree with those who are saying Unload is not OP. If someone has trouble with Unload spam then they simply did not take into account, either in their build or their playstyle (or lack thereof), how to deal with enemy spike damage. There are several classes with abilities like this. No one else’s is spammable, but I love spammed projectiles as they are trivial to counter in many instances. Good examples have already been given as to some ways to counter Unload spam.

Chopps, you already made an entire separate topic on this … but that’s fine … I’ll reply to you here as well I guess.

(1) Leaving the ranger pet dead does not keep it from being targeted. There is nothing the Ranger can do to keep their pet from being targeted. Mesmers can either not summon illusions or time their summons so that they shatter the illusions before the next target is selected.

(2) Shortbow is an excellent weapon in dungeons. It provides solid dps, a good way to stack bleeds, poison, an extra evasion, cripple (and more bleeds from pet … though not as good, arg!), and a daze. That’s one heck of a weapon. I am of the opinion that 2 bows is a bad idea though as you often need to hit more than one mob and with 2 bows your only options are traps, pet AOE and longbow #5 unless you have piercing arrows in which case you could be fine.

(3) Pets are not able to always dodge the AOE circles at collosus. Pets can’t dodge the agony that affects everyone at Jade Maw. Pets have 0 agony resist. If you can’t swap it out, it’ll die.

(4) You are correct that good use of Attack / Return is required to keep the pet alive in dungeons. I’d add good use to Swap to that as well.

(5) I agree that Healing Spring is one of the best heals a class can bring for its group to use.

(6) When it comes to being downed, I want someone who can do it without worrying about them also being downed. Several classes have rez abilities that aren’t plagued by Ranger Pet bugs, are on shorter cooldowns, and only require them to target you and cast a 2-3 sec utility. Stealth and Invulnerability (I use distortion on Mesmer) are also quite helpful.

(7) I honestly think the best thing the Ranger has going for it when rezzing allies is on-demand quickness from pet swap.

Chopps, I don’t know what’s going on with you today, but I’d recommend that you calm down before making more posts today.

Dasorine.1964:

Penguin.5197:

kirito.4138:

Yes it is normal for any Glass canon build.
Successful burst = kill
Failed burst = death

There is not much balance centered on 1v1, its more on group play.

You’re an elementalist, you should have one of the best escape/mobility abilities of any profession. Something a lot of people complain about. With that, you should easily be able to recover and come back.

That should be true, but failing at burst does not mean death for thieves. If they fail they can just as easily stealth and retreat.

Imo all burst from all classes should be toned down a bit (With compensation of course)

Potentially, some people are good enough at predicting that stealth isn’t a guarantee, plus theres luck and then theres CC and all sorts.

and sebrent you know the time frame, you know the location they are most likely going to assault and you know that at some point they will burn there single steal cooldown (which still doesnt do that much damage) and you still can’t think of ways to counter them? other than wanting to dodge em?

I’m aware of how to counter them. However, I highlighted some of the words used in your post that accentuate what I’m talking about is the issue.

You’re correct that I can be fairly sure they are going to do these things. The question is “when” because when they decide to it happens instantly and there are large windows for them to choose from. I can’t cover those large windows so it comes down to guessing.

This is not the case against non-Thief classes as you get at least 0.5 second of animation to react to. Eviscerate, Bull’s Charge, Bola, Ride the Lightning, Grenade Barrage, Blurred Frenzy, etc.. You see them and have a chance to react. There is no guesswork involved, just reaction time and skill.

You misunderstand … I’m wary, as in I get the feeling “oh crud, I hope they are good” … I don’t leave the group or kick them, otherwise I wouldn’t have discovered the beauty of thieves in the other two groups I was in that each had 2 thieves in them.

I see it like this: A bad thief/ranger is a completely wasted slot in a group. A bad guardian, etc. can still be somewhat useful

That being said, I’d trade a bad guardian, etc. for a good thief/ranger any day.

I like my pet doing damage. If I’m put on the defensive in a fight, I can line of sight my opponent while my pet continues to apply pressure.

I also like the fact that I can build myself to be quite tanky and my pet be the cannon.

I like that I can build myself to be condition damage and my pet provides the direct damage.

I like that I can provide the damage and my pet provides the control.

I hate when my pet acts “short bus special”.

There are several benefits to not minimizing the pet as a part of the Ranger.

If you take away the Ranger pet, what mechanic do we have? We become a Warrior in medium armor with no burst skills. Not a good plan.

Sol and nerva aren’t the only ones that are good, but they are two of our well-known great Rangers. I learned about Sol by asking around Ehmry Bay and people who didn’t even play the Ranger class knew about Sol despite Sol being on Maguuma. Many even admitted to being stomped quite often by Sol … and most don’t like admitting to being stomped by a Ranger. There’s actually a thread on the ehmry.com forum posted by Unholy (plays Ranger) making fun of one of the Thieves for “getting stomped by a Ranger” … that post has a link to Sol’s Ranger stomping Cynical of [GH] (Grindhouse Gaming) on his Thief.

Chopps, if you’re going to quote that much, actually post something meaningful to read. If you’re going to disagree with someone, at least state what you disagree with and why. Communication please.

Calm down. You asked, so I gave you reasons.

(1) Shatter mesmer is great damage. Do you know what happens to my illusions on my Mesmer when I shatter them? They die. You know what doesn’t take hits from Jade Maw? Dead illusions.

(2) It isn’t uncommon for Jade Maw to target the pet multiple times in a row or even just multiple times in a 15 to 20 second span of time. The first time should be no problem as you can simply swap out the targeted pet. The next time, however, you can’t save the pet and it dies. Now your pet swap is on a 48 to 60 second cooldown. This is a large window with plenty of time for the Jade Maw to now kill your current pet, returning you to another 48 to 60 second cooldown once you can finally swap out your currently dead pet.

(3) As previously stated, dead pets can be targeted and nothing can be done about them being out. Dead illusions can not be targeted and there are several options for a Mesmer as far as how they bring them out and get rid of them.

(4) People are happy grouping with me on my Ranger. They are happier grouping with me on my Mesmer. They are first and foremost happy to have a good player in the group that knows the mechanics of the fights. They then prefer I’m on the class that they deem more beneficial for the group.

(5) While you don’t need to be at 100% of your dps potential, there is no reason to not be.

(6) In your example of being the only one not knocked down … unless you used RaO or Signet of the Wild with Signet Mastery with 30 points in Marksmanship, you didn’t have stability as a Ranger. As such, anyone could stunbreak or avoid a stun the same as you. Warrior’s are even better suited for this as they can fail to evade a stun and simply activate Balanced Stance with a 20 pt trait. Guardians are better for this as well since they can place a Consecration that gives them and their group stability in that area or they can spec for their virtue to give stability.

(7) If you want to talk about rezzing people … Search and Rescue is great when it doesn’t bug out, the pet is alive, something doesn’t kill the pet while it’s licking your friend, etc.. What’s often much more beneficial is Mass Invis, Shadow Refuge, Distortion, Endure Pain, and the plethora of Rez skills various classes have that are instant and often on a shorter cooldown than Search and Rescue. Easier to use, on a shorter cooldown, not dependent on a buggy AI being alive and working? Yeah, I’ll pick the Guardian/Ele/etc. rez utilities any day.

(8) We could list out the weaknesses of every class, but your original post starting this topic was asking why people complain about ranger pets on Jade Maw.

90/10 split would only mask the problem and remove other options from Rangers.

Ritt.3069:

Ooor you could just dodge their Pre-CnD/Mug/BS, making them pretty much harmless. Might take a bit of practice, but rolling a thief yourself helps a lot. Also keep on the look out for Basilisk venoms/Assassin’s Signet: that’s when they’re likely to burst.

Also Shadow Steps.

Thief is only worth complaining in WvW due to culling, aside from that it’s a l2 kitten ue.

That’d be good advice if, as I’ve stated in other threads, steal gave me at least a 0.5 second notice that it was being used as opposed to simply instantly placing a thief on me who has pre-casted C&D and is now stealth after doing upwards of 10k damage (if not tanky) and is about to perform a backstab in the next 3 to 4 seconds.

The steal and the backstab are both instant, no animation, no sound, so you can only guess when they are going to use them and I can’t waste 3 to 4 seconds of dodge rolls, blocks, distortion, etc. every time a thief stealths. I’ll quickly be out of defenses after the first 1 to 3 stealths … 3 only if playing a build with several blocks, vigor, etc.

I love my Ranger more than my Mesmer simply because of the way it looks and how the playstyle feels. However, I prefer playing my Mesmer still as I have to play much harder to get the same effects out of my Ranger that I do my Mesmer. My Mesmer’s mechanics always work. My Ranger mechanics don’t. My Mesmer has a plethora of useful utilities to choose from and unique weapon skills. My Ranger does not.

I believe more evidence of the class issues is the devs admitting them.

Finally, we have some of our best Rangers (i.e. Sol, nerva, etc.) that even say the class is broken. “But they do well in WvW”, you say. Well yes, they do. Now imagine what they would do if they had spent their time mastering a sword+dagger thief, a mesmer, etc.. The Ranger forums would be even sadder and the other class forums would be abuzz with how awesome these players are.

Two reasons:

(1)
When I’m on my Mesmer and a clone gets popped, I summon a new one and my damage isn’t really impacted

When I’m on my Ranger and my pet gets targeted, I swap him out (if able). If not, he dies and now I have a long cooldown. This often results in the pet being dead and reducing the ranger’s effectiveness as their pet is a decent portion of a Ranger’s damage even if they are not beastmaster spec’d.

(2)
If we want Jade Maw to stop targeting illusions, Mesmer can simply stop creating them.

If we want Jade Maw to stop targeting Ranger pets, we have no option. Jade Maw targets Ranger pets even when they are already dead and Ranger’s can’t permanently stow a pet … any damage or combat action un-stows the pet.

Dasorine.1964:

Sebrent.3625:

I can’t see the Thief steal :-/ I’m just asking for 0.5 sec to react. With latency that’s not much.

I can’t see the Thief backstab :-/ Again, I’m just asking for 0.5 sec to react. In this case, just give me a noise that I’ll probably barely hear cuz there’s other fighting and/or my wife is talking to me :-p

If you see a melee thief attacking you and there not at close range theres a high chance there about to steal/shadowstep

Yes, but when? This second? How about this next second? The following second? I can’t just blow all dodges, blocks, distortion, etc. guessing so now I have to hope I guess correctly. Not all thieves are predictable. The good ones know to change up their pace.

Dasorine.1964:

if you see a thief your fighting in melee go stealth theres a good chance there about to backstab.

Yes, but that thief has 3 (often 4 traited) seconds to decide when to backstab me. I can’t just blow 3-4 seconds worth of dodge rolls, blocks, etc.

Dasorine.1964:

Sure its harder to see than other profs, but everyone tends to have some instant damage

Harder is inaccurate as it implies that you can see it. You cannot see backstab. You cannot see steal. Countering these moves involves correctly guessing when they’ll be used.

This largely differs from fighting other classes, warriors being a great example, where you can see them use their abilities and react.

The fact that a large part of my success in fighting a good thief is dependent on the luck of my guesses and the ease by which a thief can reset a fight makes me quite annoyed. I can’t always guess correctly … lucky eventually bites you.

Culling still being an issue just exacerbates this.

Since this week, the two best fractal groups I’ve ever had in 20+ both had 2 thieves in them. I now think that Thieves that say they are in a bad place in PvE are just experiencing l2 kitten ues.

Sadly, because I’ve encountered so many bad thieves for fractals and other dungeons, I’m still very wary when I see them in my groups.

Decked.8274:

Burst:
– Thoughness
– Stun-breaker

Permastealth:
– Block
– Blind
– AoE
– CC

Now stop complaining about it.
Realy, I’m tired of seeing people who don’t know the class complaining in the foruns and asking for nerfs.

Everyone has a stunbreaker and can be built with toughness so let’s look at the other list.

Ranger:

• Block – only on greatsword and it lasts 3 seconds while thief stealth lasts 4 seconds.
• Blind – only from pets (or sun spirit, lol), culling makes this difficult, and a thief can drop blind by auto-attacking air … which doesn’t break stealth
• AOE – traps, torch #5, and longbow #5. Could factor in melee attacks from sword/greatsword I guess.
• CC – Here we go … Ranger has a lot from both pets and weapons as well as 2 traps for this.

Summary:
You can see why the most common advice for Ranger vs Thief is “use traps”.

Mesmer:

• Block – Distortion (shatter and blurred frenzy), Scepter #2, OH Sword #4
• Blind – Scepter #2 (2nd activation), Glamours (traited), Torch #4, Chaos Armor (random)
• AoE – Shatters (not great vs stealth), Chaos Storm, Greatsword #3 … others aren’t great vs a stealth opponent and even the above aren’t wonderful … could include sword attacks
• CC – Daze (shatter), Daze OH Sword #4 (2nd activation), Pistol #5, Greatsword #5, Sword #3, etc. Plenty here.

Obvious why you don’t see Mesmers complain as much about Thieves as Rangers.

Those are the two I mainly play right now, so I’ll stop there and let others, if they want, do it for other classes.

I would like to add that Mesmer and Ranger suffer from an annoyance when fighting a stealthing Thief in that both class’s mechanic (Mesmer Illusions and Ranger pets) provide trivially easy targets for Thieves to land Cloak & Dagger on for stealth. It’s an example of where two classes are penalized by their mechanic with fighting against Thief with OH Dagger.

Vitality and Toughness are factored together for “Effective Health”.

20,000 hp with 50% damage mitigation can take just as much direct damage as 30,000 hp with 0% damage mitigation.

Obviously, condition damage ignores damage mitigation so is a somewhat different discussion.

Lol @ Red. I can see you coming at me with Rush, Bull’s Charge, Leap, Earthquake, Whirlwind, etc..

I can’t see the Thief steal :-/ I’m just asking for 0.5 sec to react. With latency that’s not much.

I can see you Hundred Blades, Eviscerate, Kill Shot, etc.

I can’t see the Thief backstab :-/ Again, I’m just asking for 0.5 sec to react. In this case, just give me a noise that I’ll probably barely hear cuz there’s other fighting and/or my wife is talking to me :-p

I just want the chance to react to something when it is used rather than guessing when that something will be used.

I think things will improve some with culling … but Steal hits extremely hard for being an instant cast with 0 animation time to allow for a reaction. If you leapt at the person, disappeared in a cloud of smoke and reappared 0.5 sec later, etc. I wouldn’t be bothered by it.

Backstab is similar. I would like to at least have a sound that gives me 0.5 sec to react with a dodge roll.

As it stands, avoiding these attacks is largely guesswork.

It isn’t about shatter vs not_shatter. You should still be using shatters with this build.

What it’s about is what happens when someone is AOEing/Cleaving/Bounce-Attacking your clones to death and what happens when you overflow on illusions.

Interesting note: If I’m fighting two enemies and my illusions are on the first enemy and it dies then my clones die as well … which procs the on-clone-death traits. It makes it very nice.

Tired of summoning illusions on a target and it dying quickly before they can get there and shatter, etc? Well here’s a solution.

Cynical, you should talk a bit more with some of the FTF thieves on our server. I was actually talking to a few last night while running fractals. A few are running condition builds. During zerg fights, yes, they definitely stay away from death blossom as it’s much safer (?and more effective?) to use shortbow and caltrops. In skirmishes and duels they are making good use of death blossom and caltrops. In both situations they are amused at how effective caltrops are … I agree, lol. Darin is a good thief to talk to if interested in such.

I’m glad you like my block idea. I was thinking there is at least 1 skill on each weapon set that thieves think is useless that could possibly be replaced. Not likely, but that’s my thoughts.

I do NOT want thieves to get whacked like other rogue-type classes in MMOs where they start out too strong and get nerfed to uselessness. It makes it pointless to even have the class in the game as you only get the time where it’s annoying and the most commonly played and then it’s still annoying (but diff reason) and least played.

What I’d like is for Thieves to remain unique in their gameplay while adhering to some of the key ideas relayed by ArenaNet for how combat in GW2 is supposed to be.

@KitKat:
If you’ve ever used Mesmer’s Scepter’s block, Mesmer’s OH Sword’s block, Warrior’s Mace’s block, or Warrior’s OH Sword’s block then I don’t think you’d say that. These aren’t just skills you press and magic happens. They are best used to counter your opponents big hits. For example, when I block a warrior’s eviscerate with OH Sword (I run this a lot) I mitigate a large chunk of damage, do a large chunk do them, and summon a clone. It’s game changing by timing a 2 second block that goes away after you block one thing. It requires skill to use to its full potential.

More importantly, it is a visible skill.

@Kazuhiro:
Just sounds like learning the timing for flanking strike, though admittedly I’m not very good with Thief sword. Don’t play thief enough and that weapons requires skill.

Death Blossom is not easy mode because it doesn’t really chase the target the way heartseeker does and can’t be spammed nearly as much since it costs almost twice as much initiative. Furthermore, it doesn’t do good damage scaled to great damage as the target gets weaker. Finally, its condition damage can be countered with condition removal, so if you just spam it till you’re out of initiative, your opponent is going to just cleanse and laugh.

I love the on-clone-death traits as well. My only issue is fitting them in with all the other great traits we also have.

I think they make the scepter, as you stated, a much better weapon. I think they also make it easier for a Mesmer to punish overly aggressive or noobish play as enemies constantly inflict themselves with conditions and eat confusion damage. Lastly, rather than focusing on making clones good only when shattering or only when staying alive, you now make clones good even when killed. It reduces clones to only being “useless” when killed by ranged attacks with no enemies around.

What? No one has any thoughts about the idea of giving Thief more evasion or block skills in their weapon sets?

xev.9476:

Sebrent.3625:

Oh rly?!
I had read several places about people using Black and White Ravens so they could F2, swap, F2 for quick burst.

If this is really the case, then no problems. Anyone with the HoM pets care to make a quick video? the free 30 sec fraps let’s you do should be more than sufficient.

You could just go to the Heart of the Mists and test this yourself, lol.

Ah! Duh! Looks like I have too much blood in my coffee stream.

Either really. My issue with Warrior right now is getting a feel for the what is “tanky” while still maintaining “good damage” and preferring to have some mobility as getting zerged down is frustrating (one of the reasons I love my Mesmer … poof, chase a clone, bye zerg)

I want to have great mobility (Warrior is a wonderful class for this), not be glassy, but not hit like a wuss either. I.E. A mobile warrior with good balance.

Thanks, CoaxialMazer. That makes sense for the crit chance. 30% because w/ Fury 50% is fine and anything over is a waste with +50% vs stunned.

I like your build and understand why you took the traits you did, but I really like having 100% up-time on swiftness and fury. The fury helps with keeping up solid dps and the swiftness helps with getting in/out of combat. The horns for more weakness, vigor, and condition removal is nice too since warriors are often quite lacking in condition removal and it bypasses one of the biggest advantages of warriors, high toughness.

I’ve been thinking though, if you could tweak my build some to use Shield and Horn as offhands, what would you tweak and what mainhands would you suggest?

Rising Dusk.2408:

Sebrent.3625:

Robert, it’s the fact that if I want two spider pets that have a stun, I have to have the Black Widow. If I want two ravens, I have to have the White Raven. If I want two Moas with a stun, I have to have the Black Moa.

These are in-game skill choices that are not available without having the HoM pets. It’s similar to saying someone can’t have a particular weapon as part of their second weapon set because they didn’t have enough HoM points. A Ranger without the Black Widow has only the Jungle Spider for a stun on F2. One with the Black Widow can use Jungle Spider to stun on F2 and then swap out to Black Widow to have another Spider pet with a stun on F2.

This is the in-game advantage from HoM that I was asking about.

Is this acknowledged as an issue?

This is not true. The F2 skills they use (the HoM pets and the normal ones) share cooldowns, so you are actually at a disadvantage if you bring both types because you have only 1 F2 cooldown between two pets.

Oh rly?!
I had read several places about people using Black and White Ravens so they could F2, swap, F2 for quick burst.

If this is really the case, then no problems. Anyone with the HoM pets care to make a quick video? the free 30 sec fraps let’s you do should be more than sufficient.

So for that hammer build you seem to be recommending moving more points away from Precision into a different prefix. Recommendations there? There’s obviously Valkyrie and Soldier.

neverborne.4736:

Sebrent.3625:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Sebrent.3625:

Robert Hrouda, could you please weigh in on whether or not things like the in-game advantages given by having HoM pets, etc. are also on the list of “issues” for the Ranger?

I think it would be beneficial if we knew where the community and the devs were on the same page. I think it’d be beneficial to the community to know what are the sort of things we know to simply “be patient” on. For example, we know to be patient on pet AI and pets have no Agony Resist in fractals. That’s comforting to know that those are acknowledged problems and being fixed.

Robert, it’s the fact that if I want two spider pets that have a stun, I have to have the Black Widow. If I want two ravens, I have to have the White Raven. If I want two Moas with a stun, I have to have the Black Moa.

Sebrent, of all the massive balance issues rangers face, this is the least important I can think of. Considering they’re obviously very limited in what they have time to work on, can we please agree to let stuff like this go by the wayside, at least until our true issues are fixed?

I don’t think this fix would take that long if they simply reverted it back to how it was back in beta when we were allowed to have two of the exact same pet as our two active pets. People who earned their HoM pets would still have their special skins while they would not have any in-game advantage over the rest of us as a Black Widow + Jungle Spider would be no different gameplay-wise as a Jungle Spider + Jungle Spider.

But I want videos right meow ;-)

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Sebrent.3625:

Robert Hrouda, could you please weigh in on whether or not things like the in-game advantages given by having HoM pets, etc. are also on the list of “issues” for the Ranger?

I think it would be beneficial if we knew where the community and the devs were on the same page. I think it’d be beneficial to the community to know what are the sort of things we know to simply “be patient” on. For example, we know to be patient on pet AI and pets have no Agony Resist in fractals. That’s comforting to know that those are acknowledged problems and being fixed.

Robert, it’s the fact that if I want two spider pets that have a stun, I have to have the Black Widow. If I want two ravens, I have to have the White Raven. If I want two Moas with a stun, I have to have the Black Moa.

These are in-game skill choices that are not available without having the HoM pets. It’s similar to saying someone can’t have a particular weapon as part of their second weapon set because they didn’t have enough HoM points. A Ranger without the Black Widow has only the Jungle Spider for a stun on F2. One with the Black Widow can use Jungle Spider to stun on F2 and then swap out to Black Widow to have another Spider pet with a stun on F2.

This is the in-game advantage from HoM that I was asking about.

Is this acknowledged as an issue?

If so, are there plans for:

• Being able to either take two of the same pet (i.e. both my terrestial slots are a cave spider)
• Being able to obtain the HoM pets through other means
• Being able to obtain new pets of the same family and with the same F2 skills as the HoM pets

Thanks.

Alright, here it is fleshed out a bit more. You have over 50% crit chance with the 100% up-time on fury, plenty of toughness from Knight/Cavalier.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/?8.0|1.1n.h17|7.1n.h17.g.1n.h8|1n.71g.1n.71g.1n.71h.1n.71h.1n.b1g.1n.b1g|2v.0.2v.0.3v.0.2v.0.3v.0.2v.0|0.0.u28c.k69.k6a|39.7|5z.64.6g.0.6m|e

The idea is to be quite solid, providing the ability to get in and out with that toughness and your high mobility. If you can get in and stick on a target you can provide solid dps. I know it isn’t as bursty as going Berserker.

I’m also curious what I could do if I moved points/traits around to use Hammer. 100% uptime on Fury with +50% crit chance vs stunned enemies could be quite nice … plus a Hammer warrior with a good bit of mobility and toughness seems quite scary. Could use Mace or Axe as the other weapon set’s mainhand.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/?8.0|2.1n.h17|9.1n.h17.g.1n.h8|1n.71g.1n.71g.1n.71h.1n.71h.1n.b1g.1n.b1g|2v.0.2v.0.3v.0.2v.0.3v.0.2v.0|0.a4.u2ac.k69.a6|39.7|5z.64.6g.0.6m|e

The only other weapons I might think of using with it are sword + warhorn and longbow in a more Rabid set with Celestial trinkets. It does over 100 dmg per bleed per second as well as good burning damage while still being quite tanky, good crit chance, decent crit damage, moderate power. All helped by the fact that you have the 100% up-time on might and fury.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/?8.0|3.1b.h17|c.1b.h17.g.1b.h8|1b.71g.1b.71g.1b.71h.1b.71h.1b.b1g.1b.b1g|411.0.211.0.311.0.211.0.311.0.2w.0|0.k38.k28.k69.a6|30.d|5z.64.6g.0.6m|e

I’m still a noob to warrior. Mesmer has been my main since beta followed by ele and ranger. Warrior has always been a love, but I’m still learning it. Here is the current idea I have for a build with open prefixes, utilities, etc. for places I’m not 100% sure on yet for the build.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/?8.0|1.0.0|7.0.0.g.0.0|0.71g.0.71g.0.71h.0.71h.0.b1g.0.b1g|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.u28c.k69.k6a|0.0|0.0.0.0.6m|e

It doesn’t look like the traits are giving you much in the way of damage, but you have +damage per boon and 100% up-time on:

• 5 Stacks of Might (Signet of Rage)
• Fury (Signet of Rage)
• Swiftness (Signet of Rage -or- Horn … really 200% up-time)
• Vigor (Horn)

Additionally, on top of the constant swiftness, you’re hard to pin down because:

• Horn #4 removes chill, immobilize, cripple
• Horn #4 and #5 convert 1 condition to a boon
• Movement abilities (Greatsword #3 and #5) remove immobilize
• Balanced Stance when stunned, dazed, etc. (via trait)
• If you take Mending as your heal, it removes conditions as well

To gain more hitting power, you obviously need to get more power, etc. from your gear, but this would be quite difficult to pin down. If you replaced the retaliation for Endure Pain at 25% hp it’d be even more difficult, but I’m not sure if that would make it less dangerous as >50% up-time on retaliation on a warrior is fairly mean.

I know 100% boon duration has the risk of a necro ruining your day, but I feel having Mending + Horn could remedy that or if you took Signet of Stamina and/or Shake it Off.

So, more experienced warriors, what are your thoughts?

I’m not sold on these weapons, the only requirement is the 60% boon duration (so minimum 20 points in Tactics) and reduced signet cooldown (so minimum 10 points in Discipline). This build is just what looks like an extremely difficult build to both catch and get away from.

For those saying “Ranger is lacking AOE”, you have some great options:

• Piercing arrows
• Traps
• Drake

I personally go with the traps.

Robert Hrouda, could you please weigh in on whether or not things like the in-game advantages given by having HoM pets, etc. are also on the list of “issues” for the Ranger?

I think it would be beneficial if we knew where the community and the devs were on the same page. I think it’d be beneficial to the community to know what are the sort of things we know to simply “be patient” on. For example, we know to be patient on pet AI and pets have no Agony Resist in fractals. That’s comforting to know that those are acknowledged problems and being fixed.

@Maug:
I don’t think something like Flashing blades has a place here since there are not that many “unblockable” attacks. Not to mention, because of skills like that and others, Guild Wars 1 became largely “build wars” … I prefer “skill wars”.

When it comes to things to give to the Thief to compensate for being stealthed less, my thoughts are more on active skills. For example, I’ve often wondered why the Thief didn’t have more weapon skills with built in evasion like the Ranger has a plethora of. Additionally, if you look at Thief underwater skills (yes, I know you’re nowhere near as OP underwater as Mesmer) and you’ll see there are block skills. I think Thief would do quite well with these skills. The lower skills level players often don’t see the beauty in the block abilities that then retaliate, but many of the rest of us do. I’d be very interested to see that on land under an initiative system. I think it would also help deter things like a warrior simply spamming their axe auto-attack to kill a thief :-) having your attack do 0 damage and taking twice as much damage in return is a pretty strong deterrent. It’s also a way for a good thief to punish a bad player.

I’m open for other ideas. I simply wish for the Thief to require the same approximate skill level to do the same things others do. That isn’t to say I want them to be just like every other class. I just think a bad player playing a Thief shouldn’t be any more dangerous to others than that bad player playing a non-Thief.

I also think the Thief should be more visible during combat … culling may fix this, but from what I see in sPvP (no culling there), it’s not quite there … especially if you’re a Ranger. Gotta hug my traps cuz you cloak and dagger my pet :-p I shouldn’t have to take traps to be able to kill you … it’s traps or stalemate-at-best cuz I’m too tanky/evasive and you’re barely visible for a tanky class to beat on long enough to kill.

Kazuhiro.5809:

Death Blossom’s evade is wonderful and it does so much for me all the time. Like I said, I could swear I nail Flanking Strikes and it doesn’t work.

What about Flanking Strike isn’t working? Is it simply not hitting or something else?

Kazuhiro.5809:

I hear mixed stuff about Death Blossom, but it sure is working well for me.

That is because Death Blossom is harder to use well than Heartseeker. It doesn’t hold your hand like Heartseeker does.

Kazuhiro.5809:

I think it’s the best there is for stomping trash mobs—aside from maybe the bow—and I get to pull some pretty cool shenanigans because I’m carrying around Shadow Refuge.

I think some people who focus too much on the bleeds would disagree with you, but they probably havn’t tried it as much as you have. The evasion is definitely nice for helping you survive the plethora of attacks launched your way by a large group of trash mobs and it does have respectable direct damage on top of the bleeds. I think most people get hung up on the 5 initiative cost.

Kazuhiro.5809:

One more stupid little complaint, Flanking Strikes and Death Blossom make me accidentally jump off of walkways all the time.

LMAO! Come talk to Ranger’s using 1H sword sometime. We’ll start a support group :-p

Columba.9730:

If we keep the complaints coming, anet will have to do something to stealth.

Wow. Please stop. You and I are on completely different pages … probably completely different “books”.

@Maug:
The pros/cons of stealth are why I would really like to see Thief moved to be less reliant on it. Keep some of it, but give some of it up for some other stuff that is also helpful. More varied gameplay and more versatility. I think that’d be a win-win.

Also, take a look at gw2buildcraft.com. You can take cavalier in some slots and then via runes, sigils, food, etc. still have 50+ crit chance. It’s well worth it for getting ~30% damage mitigation.

Also, take into account that Knight’s allows you to live longer thus do more damage. I understand how sexy cannon burst is and how it can be quite useful (even necessary) in some situations, but damage mitigation is excellent if you have the skills/abilities to handle conditions. This goes for all classes, not just Thieves, Mesmers, Rangers, etc.

@Kazuhiro
Thank you for the input. I hope the others have noticed there’s no griping about Thief Death Blossom (even though it is an evasion on top of its damage + bleeds), Cluster Bomb, etc.

I hate fighting a good condition thief on my Mesmer (usually runs a bit light on condition cleansing) as you pop out of stealth, evade most of the time and then go back into stealth. It’s mean, but it also takes more skill than heartseeker so I’m not really against it.

Some blowing 2 long cooldown utilities which you, skill-wise, failed to counter and still only went to half health (that combo usually kills glassy people) and you being unable to recover means that Thief can’t be tanky? Lol.

By the way, what’s with the whole “we made an agreement” followed by the “we didn’t agree on anything”. I’m just curious.

As far as Osicat level … it was comparing reaction times since you said that you’re not a robot in reply to you eating the bull’s charge + frenzy’d auto-attacks. Most of us are out with the stunbreakers in a second or less. It took you 1 second of failing to avoid it and 3 seconds of eating the results before you got away. That was the point being made. It took you 4 seconds to do something.

oZii.2864:

There was no agreement lol. I don’t know her I stayed cause I wanted to.

Really? That’s not what you said earlier …

Its a 1v1 thats what matters right? I can’t leave the area because of the out of bounds we agreed on before we fought.

oZii.2864:

I did no damage and barely tickled her. Do you even know how D/P plays? I used the skills your suppose to in D/P. I am also a robot with faster reflexes than humans so I could have easily dodge rolled the bull charge at point blank range.

Take a look at Osicat play her Mesmer. She blinks out of that combo much quicker than you did. Blink’s teleport works the same as Shadowstep in how the initial teleport works.

Also, if you look at the video, @10:36 she casts bull’s charge and @10:37 is when it ends and you’re on the ground eating damage. I assume a bug in bull’s charge that you didn’t take advantage of because you had already wasted dodge rolls on auto-attacks. You finally shadowstep away @10:39. Perhaps it was late and you were tired but eating 3 seconds of frenzy’d attacks is only the player’s fault, not any limitation of their class.