Guild Wars 2

Nettle.9025:

Depends on the D/P thief. A 25/30/0/0/15 can’t make any mistakes in a 1v1. You’re in trouble if you get caught. Against an equally competent player, I should clarify. Against another GC it comes down to who gets caught in the CC first without a stun break up.

A 10/30/30/0/0 however is indeed a good duel build, especially with hidden killer and a soldier’s ammy. A little too much sustain for my tastes in tpvp, but totally viable.

I still don’t get why we are talking WvW roaming on the spvp forum. I thought they skill split now. Also, stats can be hugely inflated there. Full ascended gear with consumables? Hello 2300+ power, 60%+ crit chance, 100%+ crit damage. Without boons. That’s not obtainable in spvp. Then you have the people they kill that may not even be 80 yet. Inc cries for nerf.

I can understand how the class is frustrating in that setting, but maybe you should take your crusade against thieves to the WvW forum. I’m certainly not going to complain about a tpvp problem to a wvw crowd.

The problem remains as a power necro or ranger in tpvp. A backstab even on a 1800 toughness necro with rabid amulet still takes out about 6-7k of his health, on a 18k HP bar. That’s a huge chunk for a single skill, while you are stealthed. It hits even harder against glass cannon builds with 916 toughness.

The problem is that the thief can halt the offensive momentum of other classes via stealth (at best you guess where the thief might be and risk wasting a long cd aoe that doesn’t do even close to 1/3 of the thief’s HP) while doing ridiculous spike that can be done more often than other classes’ usual 30+ second cooldowns.

A thief can chain BP backstabs fairly often, and most importantly a BP thief completely shuts down melee specs, and power necros or rangers have no burst ranged weapons to retaliate. And then Heartseeker hits fairly hard as soon as the target is below 50% health, which that backstab and an autoattack chain is doing to any glass cannon.

It’s just insufferable to play any GC build that’s not a mesmer or thief when other thieves/mesmers are around.

If you are a ranger, you’ll have to play bunker. If you’re a necro, you’ll have to play a conditionmancer with toughness to even last some time against a thief. It’s too kitten lopsided where you need to stack unholy amounts of toughness and healing power or vitality to live through a thief because you’ve got nowhere near the amount of escape tools or invulnerability to stay on the offensive.

Nettle.9025:

I don’t understand what dueling would prove. Who built the better 1v1 build? Grats that you have WvW friends that are good. Never did I say everyone in WvW was bad, just that the majority are. I’d say the same about hot joiners in spvp.

Perhaps the better way to have stated it would have been… don’t talk about WvW here, because the format is too different. P/D may work in WvW, but is less effective in tPvP. They have to stealth too often to hold anything and they do all their damage from one easily removed condition, in a system where everyone typically has some form of condi removal. That and there aren’t chickens standing around for easy CnDs

1v1 matters. D/P is a stupidly effective duel build that is also the standard for tpvp teams with a thief. S/D is now making its rounds as well. A good 1v1 build like BM ranger forces a team to divert resources. So does the thief, except the time it takes for a BM bunker to kill is nowhere near close the time it takes a thief to dispatch a lone player who doesn’t happen to be stacking toughness.

There are certain builds that are prevented from existing because GC thieves exist. A power necro is not hardcountered much by anything besides perhaps an engineer, and even then the engineer takes some time to kill. A power necro on the other hand might as well die under 5 seconds alone against a thief.

So many classes are forced to spec bunker builds because when a team has a thief or mesmer around, they just stand no chance at staying alive by themselves and need to be babysat by their teams.

Besides another mesmer a D/P thief has no match up to fear against any other GC build.

Whether it works or not in tpvp is also besides the point because I assure you more people play WvW than do upper level tpvp players, and so they have to suffer the consequences of thief design.

See how fun it is to roam as a necro or warrior or non-bunker ranger around in WvW with so many thieves hanging around alongside the odd mesmer and ele. There IS a reason the class is so popular among roamers in WvW. Not only is it one of if not the best 1v1 class however you want to build it, but something like D/P allows you to kill players much faster than other duelist builds based on bunkering and thus reduces the risk of interference from reinforcements.

At this point I’d rather they nerf the hell out of stealth and backstab, let thieves keep their mobility, and give them better sustain by more access to protection/healing on skills. I just don’t agree with a class that can burst so often and kills that fast with the ability to reset the fight many times and completely circumvent other classes’ much longer cd defenses.

That trait for condition clear upon stealthing instead of every 3 seconds after entering stealth is broken, as is the cost of Black Powder given initiative regen builds.

Thorson.9218:

Zenith.7301:

Make stealth break on hit,

I think this would kill the class. If stealth ends “early”, they get the Reveal debuff. That’s 3 seconds of being exposed. In 3 seconds most classes could burst them down.

In WoW, thieves were a PITA, just like here. Once they added Flare to the ranger class (they call them Hunter) which “revealed” the thief, most re-rolled other characters because stealth during PvP was their only advantage. Without it, they were a paper class that couldn’t even reach a ranged foe without dying, let alone hurt them. I hope for their sake Anet at least learned that lesson from WoW (now I wish they’d learn the “nerfing builds into the ground to appease the QQ’ing noobs = death of the game” lesson……).

This is a flat out lie. Flare for hunters was easily countered by rogues. You could shadowstep to the hunter and the flare debuff had a delay before appearing so you could get the opener, and you could do the same with sprint while in stealth.

And GC thieves dying in a few seconds while revealed? Welcome to the world of GC, because my GC ranger dies in about the same time, as does a GC ele with only 13k hp.

The fact is current GC thieves pretty much hardcounter any other GC build in this game, and that’s why unless you’re running with a team most classes HAVE to spec bunker to roam otherwise they get gibbed by thieves.

All other GC builds are very fragile and need team protection because they don’t have all the target drops and escape abilities of a thief. The thief is pretty much the only self sufficient GC besides mesmer.

Yeah, as if playing a format that forces you to sit on points or lose isn’t artificially affecting the worth of some classes (bunkers would be useless in most formats that are not point holding, so would scepter eles and BM rangers for that matter — trap rangers are useless in every format that isn’t spvp because people are not forced to eat traps to hold a point).

And LOL at 95% of players being bad in wvw from a tpvp guy. As if tpvp didn’t have its share of bad players. There are bad players in every format. Again, dear Nettle can go challenge any of Redguard’s members to duels, or any top end guild from Seafarer’s Rest for that matter.

WvW is a zergy format, but it has its dedicated roamers.

Not really. Bring in a couple of engineers/eles and the thieves will die.

The biggest counter to a thief is CC. If they switch to sword for stunbreaks then they’re doing kitten burst anyways and you can just gib them.

Thieves are very bipolar things.

Very broken 1v1 but as soon as a team fight starts happening all they’re good for is going and gibbing a wounded player and then gtfo because they’ll die in a couple of seconds to team focus if they don’t.

And the problem behind all this is them being balanced on the broken mechanic that is stealth and a backstab that costs too little initiative and is easy to spam relative to classes like an ele who need to wait 45 secs for fire grab to come off cd.

Make stealth break on hit, make defensive and offensive skills actually have hefty initiative costs — stealth skills should be utility skills not burst skills. Thief should have to spend their initiative to do significant damage not just half of it to do stupid burst or reset and quickly regen it back.

When you break the stealth spam and low ini cost burst, then you give thief better sustained. More protection, healing on weaponskills instead of stealth spam.

Life Leech also needs its range increased. It’s aggravating when an engineer or thief can pelt you with their downed some meters away but you’re out of ranger for your leech to hit so you just die without being able to do anything besides the well.

So sad how it’s all about arcana always with the ele. Buff the fire, earth, and air traitlines ;(

I would like to use glyphs for a change. Even signets.

Manekk.6981:

Zenith.7301:

Yeah it was a good duel. You could have used that blinding slash more to pressure him! It’s a fairly low cd anyways. Having a wolf/jaguar since you do have signet of the hunt would have also made the duel even easier for you.

Raven is the pet that suffers most against moving targets even with signet/speed on as showed by recent tests in this forum.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Zenith.7301:

DD thieves are trash why would you ever run DD as opposed to DP, DP is better in every single way.

You run DD thief for pve single target damage cnd backstab rotation and that’s it.

A DP thief is a faceroll thief that doesn’t even need to risk missing a cnd because BP>HS stealth is guaranteed.

Or maybe you run both? Like for example I find I fight classes like necromancers (with minions), mesmers, and most rangers better with DD for reasons you can figure out why. So it’s my secondary. Actually no, primary DP secondary >.< depends on the encounter. That’s the take home point.

EWWWW! No shortbow, I could never run my thief without it it’s too good (even if people can sidestrafe it, it’s pretty awesome for disengaging when you don’t have many cd’s up. Spamming that shortbow skill 3 alone into 3 evades with swiftness pretty much allows you to get away from anyone.

Could you ever sidestrafe thief shortbow? the things bend and move in midair like heatseeking missiles

Yes, you can now. Their projectile speed was heftily nerfed this patch.

Puandro.3245:

Xsorus.2507:

Puandro.3245:

Xsorus.2507:

Puandro.3245:

Xsorus.2507:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s7YW3EZvUA

You can see me fighting a D/P thief in this video

Thief played really bad. He chased you then BP + HS instantly instead of BP as soon as coming out of stealth to force you out of melee then HS for stealth.
Also he kept using Shadow Shot waaay too much from stealth to get a BS off on you causing him to waste too much initiative.

standard “Thief played really bad”

I pointed out what he did wrong, it wasn’t like i just said “he played bad” and left it at that.

You realize the reason he was chasing me was because everytime he did his BP/Stealth I dodged away so i wouldn’t get back stabbed

Fully aware and you play your ranger very well like always but thats even more of a reason to not waste initiative for a gap closer from stealth. He should have just HS 1-2 times more in BP and gotten in BS position.

The thief you fought that was P/D in that other video played much better. If he could handle your condis a D/P should be able to NP since you dont need CnD to stealth.

And while he’s HS more through BP Xsorus would have kited further away from range. Your only gap closer after wasting shadow step or signet is steal on a considerable cd.

The fact that the thief has not emerged after 4 seconds within the first BP should tell you he has extended duration and you should react accordingly.

And in that duel you can clearly see that at the very best that thief took Xsorus down to 55-60% HP. Xsorus never dipped below 30%, and a couple more backstabs would not have changed that. He’s able to stall and kite out the thief in between his heals just fine.

The Bukkaking.5482:

Zenith.7301:

The Bukkaking.5482:

randomfightfan.4091:

Not everyone was able to farm 50s 60s and 70s before they made them inaccessible I have about 1/3 of the weapons you have and have 4 transmuted but use 1. I’ve gotten 2 hammers, 2 maces, and 2 torches. I don’t use hammer, mace, or torch. Don’t worry though, most of the other ones that 1 have only 1 skin I can’t/don’t use either.

38 and 48 is all I do. Do one or both every day. I haven’t gotten a skin in over a month. In the past week I’ve gotten 1 junk ring and nothing else.

I don’t have anything past 49 unlocked…..
If u do 48 with a good group it takes 1 hour 15 mins typically. NOT PUGS or ppl with under 3k achievement points.

Drop rate at 48 is definitely around 25% if not higher. I have 210 full runs done at all levels, mostly 48s. (I have 210 pristines and I have only spent 10)

I have the achievement and over 700 runs under my belt. I’ve got about 7 skins, my friend who did a similar number got none.

Your post is sort of that post from a guy who got a precursor off a dragon twice (a guildie of mine got Dusk off Temple of Grenth, and then The Legend from Karka event) saying that drop rates actually are good. It means nothing other that you were lucky.

A 25% chance doesn’t change the more times you do it. It’s the gambler’s fallacy. Some will be very lucky, others will not be.

With the amount of runs I have done: to me is a good sample size for drop rates.

Is your 700 runs 700 jade maws or is it 700 individual fractals (180ish full runs)? I’m guessing its the latter. Fact of the matter is that I think most people who are complaining about no weapons is because they are running 20s and 30s over and over. I have run over 100 (that’s 100 full jademaw runs, mostly with guildies) at 40+ and played with lots of pugs and I find that most people aren’t at the skill level to handle 48 reliably for a fast run.

You run 48 four times a week and you have an extremely high likelihood of getting a skin, but people will not do this because they cannot get a group good enough to make a 48 run efficient. (Here’s a tip: don’t play with rangers, necros and engineers)

I only do 48, when I’m not leveling past 60+….. I don’t need your tips about what classes to play with or what to do — the fractals are simple.

I’d rather just not gamvle over an hour doing something and end up emptyhanded or with a useless ring I no longer need.

The games I like, activities are rewarded consistently, not only a fraction of the time.

Nice for power builds, weak for condition builds.

In the survivability department, very weak. Life force in DS is depleted by spike very easily and Life Blast does garbage damage below 50% hp LF which you’ll rarely have when pressured.

zone.1073:

The most powerful aspect of rangers isn’t their pet (does 0 damage on moving targets), or their evades (telegraphed; easily predictable and countered), or their condi removal (on par with other bunkers).

It’s their heal.

What makes Troll Unguent so strong is that it can be used preemptively. It’s an 8.5k HP heal over 10 seconds, but it can be used when the Ranger is at full HP right before a fight breaks out. This effectively makes the cooldown of Troll Unguent only 15 seconds for the next one.

With a well-timed Troll Unguent, a Ranger with no healing stat is basically healing for 17k HP over a short period of time. It is, by far, the strongest heal in the game, and it is the reason why rangers seem to have an immovable HP bar. Troll Unguent’s cooldown says it’s 25 seconds, but when you factor in all of the seconds of invulnerability the Ranger has from evasions and dodge rolls from perma vigor, and the fact that you can preemptively cast Troll Unguent, that cooldown is much, much shorter than stated.

With troll unguent you only got 2 condition wipes every 10 seconds, after which an opponent can stack conditions on you, and evades won’;t do anything to stop those conditions ticking.

TU also trades in long duration sustain for the ability to be bursted. TU isn’t gonna do crap when you’re getting trained by 2-3 people. You will be spiked down and even if you can stay alive for a bit you won’t be killing anybody or knocking them offpoint like a guardian or ele can.

Troll Unguent has a longer cast time, and it does nothing for teamfights whereas the superior healing spring does (and with runes of dwayna you can gain perma regen and high vigor uptime in addition to blasting on a high duration water field that also cleanses conditions every 3 secs off you and your teammaes).

If anything, troll unguent needs to be made more useful, because it’s only used by bunker rangers; trapper and GC rangers will never use it because they will day way faster than the healing will kick in.

The problem with the ranger is that you either go all out bunker and are able to survive, or you simply go down faster than a prom dress if you don’t. Nobody plays berserker rangers because their active defenses are so weak and a couple of dodges won’t compensate because those dodges actually kill your pressure output (serpent strike is horrible dps).

The Bukkaking.5482:

randomfightfan.4091:

Not everyone was able to farm 50s 60s and 70s before they made them inaccessible I have about 1/3 of the weapons you have and have 4 transmuted but use 1. I’ve gotten 2 hammers, 2 maces, and 2 torches. I don’t use hammer, mace, or torch. Don’t worry though, most of the other ones that 1 have only 1 skin I can’t/don’t use either.

38 and 48 is all I do. Do one or both every day. I haven’t gotten a skin in over a month. In the past week I’ve gotten 1 junk ring and nothing else.

I don’t have anything past 49 unlocked…..
If u do 48 with a good group it takes 1 hour 15 mins typically. NOT PUGS or ppl with under 3k achievement points.

Drop rate at 48 is definitely around 25% if not higher. I have 210 full runs done at all levels, mostly 48s. (I have 210 pristines and I have only spent 10)

I have the achievement and over 700 runs under my belt. I’ve got about 7 skins, my friend who did a similar number got none.

Your post is sort of that post from a guy who got a precursor off a dragon twice (a guildie of mine got Dusk off Temple of Grenth, and then The Legend from Karka event) saying that drop rates actually are good. It means nothing other that you were lucky.

A 25% chance doesn’t change the more times you do it. It’s the gambler’s fallacy. Some will be very lucky, others will not be.

Auesis.7301:

The only complaint I have with Rangers is that in some cases, I’ve been attacked on Far by a pet owned by a Ranger on Close.

That’s just dumb. It’s not OP or anything, just…irritating. Like swatting a fly out of the air and finding it buzzing around your ear a minute later.

My only real complaint as well. The pet should leash at something like 2000 range.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Zenith.7301:

Yeah it was a good duel. You could have used that blinding slash more to pressure him! It’s a fairly low cd anyways. Having a wolf/jaguar since you do have signet of the hunt would have also made the duel even easier for you.

Raven is the pet that suffers most against moving targets even with signet/speed on as showed by recent tests in this forum.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Zenith.7301:

DD thieves are trash why would you ever run DD as opposed to DP, DP is better in every single way.

You run DD thief for pve single target damage cnd backstab rotation and that’s it.

A DP thief is a faceroll thief that doesn’t even need to risk missing a cnd because BP>HS stealth is guaranteed.

Or maybe you run both? Like for example I find I fight classes like necromancers (with minions), mesmers, and most rangers better with DD for reasons you can figure out why. So it’s my secondary. Actually no, primary DP secondary >.< depends on the encounter. That’s the take home point.

EWWWW! No shortbow, I could never run my thief without it it’s too good (even if people can sidestrafe it, it’s pretty awesome for disengaging when you don’t have many cd’s up. Spamming that shortbow skill 3 alone into 3 evades with swiftness pretty much allows you to get away from anyone.

Let’s not get carried away, for zerging okay, but 1v1 and such they nerfed that thing to kingdom come. Guess they only wanted rangers to have the shortbow. I use it for escaping though I’ll admit that.

I can link you a video of ranger shortbow getting sidestrafed as well. It’s not as bad as current thief, but it happens.

And ranger shortbow is only really good for the auto and skills 4 and 5. Skill 2 is pretty terrible, and the ranger shortbow has no aoe whatsoever while thief shortbow’s auto is aoe, cluster bomb is the best blast finisher in game that you can also spam and does kitten tons of damage, your evade skill is basically a way better version than the ranger’s (you can use it multiple times in a row), you got better version of the aoe poison with choking gas than poison spread from ranger, which is not a combo field either.

The shortbow may not be the titan it was 1v1 but as a group fight weapon it’s still better than anything the ranger could hope to bring. When I look at clusterbomb and then I look at the ranger bow’s only aoe attack, from the longbow on a 30 sec cd, I cry.

I just wish I had more ways of gaining fine transmutation stones other than paying 6.6 gold for 5 stones.

At least transmogrification should be more of the model of stones, where the previous stat set is not destroyed, the skin is just copied over to the new set without destroying the base one.

My ranger’s t3 cultural armor cost 100g. I can’s spend 100g multiple times for the multiple stat sets, so ultimately I’m destroying one of my stat sets to have that look on the current set I’m using (in pve it’s berserker because everything but berserker in pve is garbage).

Yeah it was a good duel. You could have used that blinding slash more to pressure him! It’s a fairly low cd anyways. Having a wolf/jaguar since you do have signet of the hunt would have also made the duel even easier for you.

Raven is the pet that suffers most against moving targets even with signet/speed on as showed by recent tests in this forum.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Zenith.7301:

DD thieves are trash why would you ever run DD as opposed to DP, DP is better in every single way.

You run DD thief for pve single target damage cnd backstab rotation and that’s it.

A DP thief is a faceroll thief that doesn’t even need to risk missing a cnd because BP>HS stealth is guaranteed.

Or maybe you run both? Like for example I find I fight classes like necromancers (with minions), mesmers, and most rangers better with DD for reasons you can figure out why. So it’s my secondary. Actually no, primary DP secondary >.< depends on the encounter. That’s the take home point.

EWWWW! No shortbow, I could never run my thief without it it’s too good (even if people can sidestrafe it, it’s pretty awesome for disengaging when you don’t have many cd’s up. Spamming that shortbow skill 3 alone into 3 evades with swiftness pretty much allows you to get away from anyone.

DD thieves are trash why would you ever run DD as opposed to DP, DP is better in every single way.

You run DD thief for pve single target damage cnd backstab rotation and that’s it.

A DP thief is a faceroll thief that doesn’t even need to risk missing a cnd because BP>HS stealth is guaranteed.

No one would run 3 BM’s ever. They can’t kill crap in time, have no cc outside wolf aoe fear to get people off a point and don’t have high stability uptime (RaO is a 90 sec cd, strip that stability and they don’t get more for another 90 secs).

Most people that complain about BM rangers are just face tanking the pets instead of kiting them.

BM rangers have also no aoe/cleave damage whatsoever.

Engineers or thieves however you can run 2 of them just fine. It’s just that mesmer is also a good spike class and offers better team utility so every team that has a thief or engineer pairs them with a mesmer to get kills. You always see mesmers and thieves spiking targets together.

Running 2 thieves or 2 engis would mean you’re either skimping on the mesmer or are not bringing any bunkers.

Puandro.3245:

Zenith.7301:

Puandro.3245:

Once again you keep assuming a thief can’t chain D/P for infinite stealth, yes he will take damage but its not significant from a necro to cause any worry.

And you don’t seem to understand that he can chain all he wants, because that BP is an indicator of creating a stealth window and most importantly an indicator of where to bomb aoe into (you can’t dodge while using HS).

And a single stack of 3 bleeding at base 1300 condi damage is not “negligible” as you say. 3 stacks by themselves will eat about 1/4 any berserker geared thief’s HP in a few seconds.

It’s not about killing you while in stealth. It’s about detecting your movements and denying you the backstab because the moment you push hard for backstabs is the moment you get killed.

You’ve got shadowstep and the signet as utilities to close in on your target without having to spend initiative and that’s it.

I don’t know how you think a 4k backstab is going to kill a bunker ranger. My ranger has 17-18k HP even if you landed 3 in a row without pressure I’ll heal it back up. My spirit elite and passive regen will heal it back up. And I will self-rez with spirit elite if you pop all cd’s and manage a lucky streak.

Bleed isn’t going to do anything when it will be removed as i enter stealth. Also why do you think i am full berserker. 15K HP and 2,600 armor is not full zerk. I play a BM Bunker Ranger and know how sturdy they can be but they can still die to pressure damage. If the thief is good you die to him or its a stalemate at best no good thief will die. Also ive been talking from a D/P + S/D PoV, 3 sec daze when you get low will mess you up try to heal and you regen will get stolen.

The bleed is not applied when you enter stealth. It’s applied when you get hit by a mark after entering it, and considering you can cover the bleeds with chilblains for poison and chill good luck with staying completely condition clear.

If you’re not full zerker it just means your backstabs will have less impact and the class can stall for less, and 15000 health is hardly stellar against classes that can spam conditions faster than you can clear them and ignore that armor you posted.

The 3 daze involves switching to sword and hitting with flanking from the stealth skill, and that means you’ll be opening with a weapon that has no subsequent pressure out of stealth as your 1 auto spam is your main source of damage and larcenous strike has such an obvious animation. You’ll be locked by weapon switch cd on that weapon for enough time for the ranger to get a heal through.

In fact since you’re not full zerker those backstabs will be hitting my ranger for less than 4k. I have over 2400 toughness, on top of passive regen and quite frankly you can steal all the regen boons you want because they are so easy to reapply from healing spring (which is an almost instant skill and good luck interrupting that or my blast finishers with high healing power).

I also don’t use that kittenty mainhand axe so I got an evade and a daze from the shortbow to throw off your momentum and heal safely while doing more sustained damage than mainhand axe will ever do.

A good sword/torch-shortbow bunker ranger will not die to a thief. He’s just bad if he’s dying to one. More so if he enters the duel knowing it’s a thief and brings in pets with CC like dogs.

I’m not saying the thief will die because any thief can escape whatever mistake they make. I’m saying in a scenario he stays fighting any number of bunker specs will be able to survive and wear him down eventually.

Make thief condi removal upon entering stealth go. It should remove a condition AFTER every 3 seconds, not every time he spams stealth, which they can do a lot of the time.

Raise BP cost to 8 initiative. It should be a defensive maneuver that costs you something not “tralala you can’t hit me in melee and I’ll stealth at will without even needing to land a cloak and dagger”.

Or they could actually just remove the leap finisher from heartseeker.

evilapprentice.6379:

and thieves do not do attrition well.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

P/D thieves in WvW beg to differ.

And oh please, what good is a necro’s second life bar when they do garbage pressure in it. It’s not even an actual double HP bar — it just a fraction of your total health.

You go play a berserker necro and come back and tell people that life is so hard. Or a berserker (BERSERKER, NOT VALKYRIE) ele and come tell me their survivability is great with all of their 13k HP waiting to be 2-shot and your main survival skills being 75+ sec cd’s.

Hell, where are the berserker rangers? That’s right, they don’t exist because unlike your precious thief they actually don’t do that great a burst, nor often as other classes, and their defenses are crap.

Puandro.3245:

Once again you keep assuming a thief can’t chain D/P for infinite stealth, yes he will take damage but its not significant from a necro to cause any worry.

And you don’t seem to understand that he can chain all he wants, because that BP is an indicator of creating a stealth window and most importantly an indicator of where to bomb aoe into (you can’t dodge while using HS).

And a single stack of 3 bleeding at base 1300 condi damage is not “negligible” as you say. 3 stacks by themselves will eat about 1/4 any berserker geared thief’s HP in a few seconds.

It’s not about killing you while in stealth. It’s about detecting your movements and denying you the backstab because the moment you push hard for backstabs is the moment you get killed.

You’ve got shadowstep and the signet as utilities to close in on your target without having to spend initiative and that’s it.

I don’t know how you think a 4k backstab is going to kill a bunker ranger. My ranger has 17-18k HP even if you landed 3 in a row without pressure I’ll heal it back up. My spirit elite and passive regen will heal it back up. And I will self-rez with spirit elite if you pop all cd’s and manage a lucky streak.

Puandro.3245:

Zenith.7301:

How are you beating bunker rangers as a thief? The backstabs at best crit for 4k on a proper bunker ranger, and all the ranger needs to do, because if your stealth only lasts 4 seconds is to circle strafe to deny his back initially and then just use his eveades even when you are stealthed so you’ll be forced out of stealth or use another black powder to HS again, in which case he just uses the wolf fear or entangle to delay your backstab to the point it happens or you can’t get enough backstabs in to outdamage his healing.

And a necro with terror build will screw a thief over pretty badly. All he needs to do is lay the mark, to know when the thief has approached, because even if the thief dodges through the mark you can see it trigger and go into DS or dodge.

All the condition removal won’t matter if you can mess up his momentum with some spike and a muddy terrain or entangle. Hell, go spirit elite and he just blew all his cooldowns to kill you just for you to get back up.

The only thief you can’t kill is a thief with /d offhand because your kitten pet won’t dodge cloak and dagger, so he can regen all he wants.

Your fighting thieves who you somehow are making them run out of initiative too quickly. Marks/traps ect can be triggered on purpose walking/dodging in stealth and with D/P you have perma stealth and remove all the condis then start the fight with 12 stacks of might. Really to kill a thief you have to blind side him and burst very very quickly 1v1. As long as the thief is patient and knows when to pressure and when to back off you wont win. Stalemate is your best bet or die.

Stealth doesn’t make them immune to damage. In stealth you will remove a condition every 3 secs. If they can hit a condition more often than that the thief will still take significant damage, enough that when he does come out of stealth, you can burst him to put fearon him and make him back off again or die.

In that scenario, where you can stall enough, you can retreat and recover or he can keep resetting but someone will interfere and kill him.

Patience doesn’t matter because the ranger’s survival is on a low cd. If a thief doesn’t want to die, he won’t, but neither will the ranger.

It’s not about purposely walking through the mark with the necro either. The fact that you triggered it and you have a 4 sec period of stealth to land a backstab, which he can delay with smart positioning and layer with death shroud or dodging means you will rarely be getting off backstabs. Any smart necro or ranger knows to save all his dodges for the stealth period.

The necro will know you have triggered the mark, and he has more aoe abilities than you have total dodges, so you will eat some aoe regardless, and if the necro wants to be cute and also bring well of darkness to foil black powder spam. He’s got 3 fears at his disposal with traits, aoe weakness and bleeding to reduce endurance regen, and a cripple. A good necro even with all your stealth condi clear will not let you stay condition free when he knows you’ve approached him.

A single terror will take out 1/4 of your thief’s HP bar. You can do a reset all you want but time is not on your side as it increases the odds of someone passing by in wvw or in the case of spvp you’re just going to get screwed by reinforcements.

D/P is very effective at gibbing distracted people, but it’s always predictable because like any stealth build you know their period of effectiveness is confined to 4 seconds which you can stall or burden. Once they’re out of stealth they are easily pressured.

The moment you see a black powder go down it’s also very obvious to interrupt what’s gonna come next. All you need is to place a CC on top of it and they’re gonna waste a portion of their newly acquired stealth.

How are you beating bunker rangers as a thief? The backstabs at best crit for 4k on a proper bunker ranger, and all the ranger needs to do, because if your stealth only lasts 4 seconds is to circle strafe to deny his back initially and then just use his eveades even when you are stealthed so you’ll be forced out of stealth or use another black powder to HS again, in which case he just uses the wolf fear or entangle to delay your backstab to the point it happens or you can’t get enough backstabs in to outdamage his healing.

And a necro with terror build will screw a thief over pretty badly. All he needs to do is lay the mark, to know when the thief has approached, because even if the thief dodges through the mark you can see it trigger and go into DS or dodge.

All the condition removal won’t matter if you can mess up his momentum with some spike and a muddy terrain or entangle. Hell, go spirit elite and he just blew all his cooldowns to kill you just for you to get back up.

The only thief you can’t kill is a thief with /d offhand because your kitten pet won’t dodge cloak and dagger, so he can regen all he wants.

Forzani.2584:

Zenith.7301:

Forzani.2584:

Manekk.6981:

Forzani.2584:

What this test says to me is to use dogs. Unless you are fighting a stationary target.

If you don’t have any traits that enhance pets and don’t plan to help them yes, now if the ranger starts to cripple, chill and stun the target it will be a little diffrent or very diffrent actually.

How so ? Please explain.

Pure damage dog and cat are very similar with agility training.
Without Agility it is a rout in dogs favor.
Stationary cat wins….but not as lopsided as without agility.

Obviously the Ranger will try and use some CC to help the pet. Still, even then the cat barely wins…and that is not even taking into account the dogs own CC ….3 per dog. If you are any kind of kiter then that pet CC is invaluable.

I would suggest the Rangers build and play style would play a part in the decision making. A burst melee Ranger would have a stationary target for the pet to hit so in that situation I would go with cat.

I am only concerned with WvW. I am sure pve…dungeons and PvP are quite different.

You know those guardians and eles and engineers? That stability part? Your wolf does crap.

Your wolf will also never crit someone for 8-9k with cooldowns.

I know Guardians and Warriors can block arrows. I will still use my SB though. I didn’t realize Guardi and, Eles and Engineers had 100% stability.

How will your cat crit any of those classes for 9k when they can’t hit them when they are moving ? I’m sure the cat critted now and then during the testing provided yet the damage was half of what the dogs was on a moving target. Don’t forget about pets HPs either. When a Warrior actually does get close to you and starts cleaving with axe or GS see how long the cat stays up compared to the wolf. I like my Jag….provided it does overwhelming higher damage than the dog. These tests say they don’t. /shrug

Use whatever pets you prefer. I was just commenting on the numbers provided by the testing.

Guardians or warriors blocking arrows? What spvp guardian brings wall of reflection. Maybe in scrub zerg wvw, but in spvp bows do just fine.

Guardians and eles can achieve long enough stability to kill you, to the point of bringing a wolf is more because of the cripple.

Sersiously, there’s a reason why raven and jaguar are used. They do so much more damage in most situations, and most importantly they do the most desirable type of damage — burst damage.

Wolfs are brought solely for their CC or against a duel with a guy that has a lot of swiftness/dodging.

Vayne.8563:

Zenith.7301:

I’ve been doing MF runs and the occasional fractal with some world bosses for an entire month, and at best I ended up with 98 ectos. At that rate, it takes 2.5 months to get the backpiece.

That’s 2.5 times what it takes you to get an ascended amulet or an ascended accessory.

It takes ten minutes to run CoF path 1. Ten minutes. If you’re really not good at it, 15 minutes. During that time you get a minium of 2 yellows, which on the average yield two ectos.

I don’t know how often you’re playing but there are well over a dozen places you can get guaranteed golds every single day.

Since the average of about (more or less) 1 ecto per yellow, well that’s quite a bit of ectos.

More to the point, if you sell the mats and other stuff you get from in world and fractal runs, you can make money and buy ectos. Right now you can get 3 ectos for 1 gold or basically 50ish gold will get your all the ectos you need.

You might think 50 gold is a lot of money…but it’s really not in this game.

I don’t farm CoF. And it’s certainly not an average of 2 ectos per yellow. I wish that was my average, just like I wish I had gotten the jetpack after the 70 MF runs I did.

But this is a garbage casino-style gaming experience, where to mitigate that you must tediously repeat the one remotely profitable activity (cof farming or TP) because the alternatives or playing other more entertaining formats do not yield reasonable rewards (30 minutes of boredom killing Claw od Jormag for a single yellow and a couple of blues and greens is not my idea of time investment).

I’ve been doing MF runs and the occasional fractal with some world bosses for an entire month, and at best I ended up with 98 ectos. At that rate, it takes 2.5 months to get the backpiece.

That’s 2.5 times what it takes you to get an ascended amulet or an ascended accessory.

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure what a legendary weapon has to do with gated content. At this point, anyway, it’s exactly the same as an exotic.

The only gated content in this game is the top levels of the Fractals, which if you played them to get to top level, you’d have the gear anyway. They drop in the fractals themselves, and every ten level 10 dailies gives you a guaranteed ring, besides the ones that come with your dailies.

Legendary weapons, at this point, are completely cosmetic.

What content are you suggesting is gated, and by what?

The infused backpiece does not come with doing the fractal. It comes from spending money for 250 worth of ecto, or about 65-70g.

And that comes at the expense of not synergizing as well from stats from gear.

A berserker warrior benefits far more from his greatsword and axe/shield than does the ranger whose weapons are combined of part direct damage part condition so the other half of the skill is wimpy while the class with the pure category attack can allocate stats to fully benefit his attacks and not just part of it.

ensoriki.5789:

Boon duration runes isn’t really an issue.
For some profs might stacking doesn’t hurt you much and for others it does
Thief can stack might on himself as well using Venoms or Signets, but it’s either not a lot (about 8-9 stacks for him and party members in range) or not for very long (signet might). He can get a couple stacks through dodging but then he’s used up his endurance to purposefully stack might (which has obvious issues).
The more he tries to extend length the less he’ll generally get out of it himself because the trade off’s are steep given what his profession offers.

Likewise Might from the juggernaut trait on an Engineer doesn’t go that high by itself even with duration runes.

Boon duration isn’t really an issue for might stacking it’s the skills/traits that allow it to be applied.

No. You play an ele without any boon duration runes and tell me how long your might stacks last. Not nearly long enough. You won’t be stacking 20+ might stacks by yourself as an ele ever without boon duration runes and be able to maintain it.

Play an ele without any boon duration runes and tell me how long your fury and prot from elemental harmony last. Hint: Not very long.

2 major runes of monk, 2 of water, an extra 30% boon duration on top of the 30% from arcana. That’s pretty huge. If it were wvw, it’d go even higher from 60% to 70% since you can use major runes as well for another 10%.

Take Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew for the 40% endurance regen increase. It’s as close as you’ll get to vigor unless you got a warrior using warhorn or a mesmer with vigorous revelations to give you vigor.

Use axe/focus, dagger/dagger. Blood is Power, Well of Suffering, and Signet of Spite. Trait 30 into power line for 20% extra damage to opponents under 50% hp, trait 15 into curses for fury on death shroud, and trait the rest into soul reaping. Grab might and piercing/vuln on life blast.

Basically, you use death shroud for 2 reasons: To proc your 5 sec fury so you deactivate it and have 4 secs of fury for your dagger auto spam, or you use that fury and do life blast or life siphon for cleave/aoe damage.

Use skill 3 on axe, then 4 on focus, and lay down a well and channel axe no 2, switch to daggers and go death shroud for fury and cancel ds and spam dagger 1. Use blood is power lined up with either axe skill two or before using death shroud fury for daggers.

Keep your life force as much as you can over 50% always so you get a 5% damage boost from 25 trait minor in soul reaping.

I’ll be honest, you won’t be that great in aoe damage or cleaving, still good damage, but don’t expect ele/warrior/thief aoe.

Single target sustained, however, you pretty much compete with warriors and thieves, and you have more survivability or ability to stay in melee under pressure than them. You also use Lich form, which hits like a truck, and apply aoe weakness whenever you enter death shroud or with dagger offhand skill 5.

What this build needs is for dagger to somehow cleave at least 3 targets, and for axe auto 1 to receive a substantial buff in damage (axe auto damage is soooo bad, 2 stacks of vulnerability does not compensate for the damage lost).

Just you watch them gloss over the real issue and just nerf base durations of the might procs instead of nerfing what’s the real problem — boon duration runes.

Boon duration runes have been the issue behind the ele bunker, yet they doled out all these nerfs while ignoring that it is the easy application and constant uptime of strong boons and stacks that push some specs over the top.

How many eles or guardians or engineers do you see running without boon duration runes?

Runes for duration should not stack with traitline bonuses. Voila. A person could choose to get boon duration from runes or traitline, but not both.

Loki.4871:

Aaah, now I understand: you’re a “stop having fun guys” person, the one with the spreadsheets out who flies off the handle when someone is doing less than 100% potential damage potential.
I wouldn’t care about the PvP things you suggested actually; those are mostly convenience things and the ranks are something for people to work for in pvp to show. GW1 had those with the pvp skins remember?
What I do get annoyed with is someone shouting loudly about how a class I enjoy playing sucks because it doesn’t play like a similarly themed class from a game I dislike, and how it would be much better if it copies the game I dislike. Conveniently ignoring that other classes, and the very game itself, is designed to play different from that other one.

Yeah, I guess people who have fun optimizing performance are not having fun. I’m done with this idiocy of “Well, I’m having fun, and if you’re not having fun for enjoying things the way I do, you’re wrong”, goodbye to you too.

I love how you dismiss the very idea of spreadsheets when running classes as if developers don’t use said spreadsheets to monitor and design these very classes. No, classes and all those numbers you see on the screen are MAGIC.

WHAT ARE THESE NUMBERS AND EQUATIONS GUYS I SAY IGNORANCE IS BLISS. NOW GO AND SPEC FULL CONDITION AND USE A LONGBOW AND SWORD/WARHORN.

Loki.4871:

What justification? I’m stating facts. WoW is off doing something while GW2 does something else, which is clearly seen by all the dynamic events, class mechanics, visuals, ect ect ect.
My pets worked fine in GW1 in the endgame, as they do in GW2. I can happily have them along in dungeons too. God forbid you play the class the way it was designed and stop trying to make the class play like other games. You bet I’m going to throw the apples-and-orranges argument at you, because it’s entirely true. The reason I play GW2 (and played GW1) is exactly because it doesn’t play like WoW. If you want to play something like WoW’s Hunter, why are you not playing WoW? We’ve all seen how well copying WoW and WoW’s features worked for The Old Republic after all.

God forbid games pick up successful features from other games.

Guess that level cap increase to 80 for GW2 was a total disaster because it’s like a total copycat.

You run whatever pet you want in dungeons on a deficient group that holds other people from speed clears.

I can roll a selfish bunker d/d eles in fractals and never die and occasionally provide some heals my team doesn’t need because they know how to dodge. I’m still deficient even if I don’t die.

I know people like you don’t get the value of maximizing efficiency, but if this game is to cater to hardcore players as well, hardcore ranger players deserve the courtesy of maximized output like other classes without being held back by their class mechanic.

This apples and orange argument is a very known fallacy that people like to throw out when the subject the analogy comes from is one they dislike, as you’ve clearly shown about your dislike for all things WoW.

I bet if this game had a model of ranked pvp with leadergroups and groupfinder, like WoW, you’d also be more than happy to spit on it just because that game you hate very much served as a successful testing ground for a working design.

Chopps.5047:

Question: if these speed runners are so good with aegis that they don’t get hit, why is pet death even an issue?

Because they don’t get hit due to dodging. The pet doesn’t dodge and its positioning to you after recalling with f3 is how it pleases, which includes roaming to your side even if there’s also aoe besides you.

zTales.4392:

Zenith.7301:

You know those guardians and eles and engineers? That stability part? Your wolf does crap.

Your wolf will also never crit someone for 8-9k with cooldowns.

What pet crits 8-9k? O__o;

Anyway, the knockdown may not always work, but the cripple will! The F2 skill also helps a lot.

Fear does not apply against people with stability up.

As for those numbers. Pop signet of the wild. Pop Signet of the Hunt. Have Rampagae as One might stacks on your raven or jaguar. Hit a guy in berserker gear in spvp.

It happens. The wolf will never do that damage.

I like the wolf because it can slow down targets and it does OK damage. The aoe fear is great in many circumstances.

But for killing people, the wolf will NEVER match a raven or jaguar. Because bursting is an important part of killing smart players. You gotta apply enough pressure to force them to panic and make mistakes.

Forzani.2584:

Manekk.6981:

Forzani.2584:

What this test says to me is to use dogs. Unless you are fighting a stationary target.

If you don’t have any traits that enhance pets and don’t plan to help them yes, now if the ranger starts to cripple, chill and stun the target it will be a little diffrent or very diffrent actually.

How so ? Please explain.

Pure damage dog and cat are very similar with agility training.
Without Agility it is a rout in dogs favor.
Stationary cat wins….but not as lopsided as without agility.

Obviously the Ranger will try and use some CC to help the pet. Still, even then the cat barely wins…and that is not even taking into account the dogs own CC ….3 per dog. If you are any kind of kiter then that pet CC is invaluable.

I would suggest the Rangers build and play style would play a part in the decision making. A burst melee Ranger would have a stationary target for the pet to hit so in that situation I would go with cat.

I am only concerned with WvW. I am sure pve…dungeons and PvP are quite different.

You know those guardians and eles and engineers? That stability part? Your wolf does crap.

Your wolf will also never crit someone for 8-9k with cooldowns.

Mathias.9657:

sorrow.2364:

Archaon.6245:

Obviously you never ever went tpvp with a thief (Or never went tpvp at all)….low risk yeah, just make a thief and go for a tpvp midfight and see how thieves are so low risk….you’re going to die even before you realize something happened…this is not stupid wsvw you don’t have a zerg covering your back so you can just go here and there killing random nubs with maybe 30 levels less than you…thief is the most killable prof and the one that needs the best positioning and timing in order to survive..you have no cond removal, you have crap armor and healing..all you can do is going stealth but ppl are not so dumb to not spamming aoes killing you anyway…decent players actually know where the thief is even if he went stealth..or you’re one of those who think that ppl in stealth just vanish and you can’t get them until they’re visible again?

Who plays D/D glass cannon these days?
S/D is one of the most played build and they are far from squishy or easy to kill.

Fact is that Thieves have only to put 20 trait points either in Acrobatics or Shadow Arts to have incredibly effective defenses. Plus, S/D is a defensive set by itself.
Feline Grace + Vigor on healing + Withdraw are more than enough to grant amazing defenses. Same is for Meld with Shadows + Cloak and Dagger + Shadow’s Embrace + Infusion of Shadow.
I wonder which profession, excluding Thief, is capable to get good defenses only by spending some traitpoints in a specific traitline.

Don’t lie saying that thieves are squishy. The time when people ran full glass cannon with 0 defenses are past. Now thieves still run berserker, but at least they now know that they have to spend some points into defensive traitlines.

This is partly true, landing a C&D on a skilled opponent is hard as hell. I miss half of mine in tpvp when I don’t have a closer up then if I get CC’d I’m dead instantly, thieves only have great defense vs bad players. Our defense is trash, I’d much MUCH rather a source of protection than relying on stealth 24/7.

The defensive traitline gives you a shadowstep everytime you get CC’d. The last traitline gives you stealth and aoe blind upon hitting a certain threshold.

All escape mechanisms much better than other classes get when trained.

The problem with thieves is that they want full uptime on targets despite having the highest single target spike in game.

In any game where a team doesn’t train the thief, the thief by himself can gib any of the players unless they are bunker.

Archaon.6245:

Zenith.7301:

Archaon.6245:

Zenith.7301:

Archaon.6245:

Zenith.7301:

As if that didn’t happen to the class that just got gibbed by a thief.

Go into the midfight as a necro and find the mesmer and thief looking your way and proceeding to down you in about 5 seconds flat.

5 seconds is a pretty long time for 2 glass cannons to down a focused non bunker target…

That’s why you see many necros leaving a flesh wurm on a safe spot when going for a teamfight

It’s not if you figure in all the defensives popped and granting the generous scenario that I wasn’t distracted and didn’t let myself be CC’d.

Otherwise the necro goes down faster than a prom dress. Now compare that against the thief or mesmer or ele that just took a little stunbreaker port a few yards away and then proceeded to stealth.

I’ll trade you DS and all that HP for actual mobility and the ability to port back to safety into a ledge by abusing terrain teleports and have nobody outside a mesmer or thief be able to chase you.

That’s why you see many good necros leaving flesh wurm on a safe spot before entering a teamfight..it’s called tactic aka playing with brains..

Yeah, as if most bring a flesh wurm. You’ve got 3 utility slots. Epidemic and signet of undeath are not optional, and neither is corrupt boon.

You drop any of those 3, you might as well bring no necro to the team as they’ll be useless.

It’s like asking a thief to switch to pistol/pistol to stay alive or just shrotbow all day long. You’re removing what makes them desirable to a team.

Oh well…welcome to mesmer’s life in tpvp…you can’t bring what you like, you bring what you need…for you and your team (Expec the second one)

Last time I checked mesmer has distortion every 2 secs, a short cd stunbreak teleport on staff, chaos armor and chaos storm for aoe daze.

Portal, Illusion of Life, and then the third option is either blink or null field. Not even close a comparison to necro, who has to facetank everything despite lacking the bunker’s recovery tools to do so successfully.

Quarktastic.1027:

Zenith.7301:

It has dungeons, whose completion time is the primary goal for people who want to squeeze as much profit into a game with such fabricated grind (legendaries, new RNG crap like 160g+ super rare drop jetpacks from a temporary dungeon).

DPS meters are there to show what everyone in GW2 has already observed one way or another. They may not have the concrete data, but the sum of experiences is there and consensus was formed, and not in favor of rangers.

Raids are not dungeons. Fabricated grind is optional grind. You only grind as much as you want to. DPS meters are for the “elitists” who are only concerned with shaving every possible second off their run. These people are the reason why I never set foot in CoF. These aforementioned elitists tend to also not be very good at adapting when forced out of their scripted farming runs.

So yeah, it sounds like you enjoy WoW more than GW2. you can have your raids, and DPS meters, just keep them out of my GW2.

Ah, it’s good you’ve made it clear that your priorities are what people should accept as their gaming choices.

You know what else is optional? A game with content. You don’t NEED to play a game with content or proper balance, but you like a game with it. So cut this little cute “these people are elitists while I’m casually dismissing their ways of enjoying a game” crap.

Better yet, since I don’t expect you to, troll someone else. I won’t be replying if this will be your line of conversation, getting on a soapbox about how awful people with an eye for efficiency are.

Loki.4871:

Zenith.7301:

Loki.4871:

Where did I say they could do better than a human controlled guardian, a class designed to be the ‘tank’? You went into the ranger class with ANET saying the pet was going to be a big issue. By extension, that meant the pet would be limited by the AI, since you’d be controlling the ranger and issuing general commands to it. If you weren’t willing to accept that, why did you play ranger? For ranged damage? Because if you did, why are you not playing the warrior, the class designed to be the best with hitting stuff with weapons on their own?
The ranger may not match dps of the damage designed classes (fancy that) but the Ranger compensates by being at least as durable if you trait properly. It compensates by being able to split their damage between two targets in opposite directions, nothing any other class can do.

I chose to play a ranger because I expected them to do AI right. You know, like world of warcraft does when it let pets scale fully from the owner’s stats and have 70% aoe damage reduction and built in speed boosts to stay on a target instead of lagging behind and self rooting when attacking.

But alas, I was asking to much from the same group that made elementalists in gw1 wait over a year and a half before they started implementing changes that made them less garbage in the Hard Mode content.

This isn’t WoW and more importantly, GW1 works has different game and class mechanics than WoW. I don’t see WoW without a dedicated healer, and if my memory serves, isn’t the warrior in WoW unable to use ranged weapons properly? So why should you expect a game that deliberately set out to do things different have a class that plays exactly like other classes, when the others such as warrior don’t.
You say you expect them to do AI right but then list things which are not connected to the AI at all!

As for gw1: elementalists were always overrated, a mesmer or necromancer (even before their buffs) were worse if you knew what you were doing. Hard mode just made it even more clear. Still, it could worse.. be you could be a paragon.

Pretty shoddy justification there. So despite the fact that pet classes function in edngame pve without an issue with WoW, because guild wars 2 has a different encounter design, somehow pets should continue to be a burden. Because god forbid GW2 adopt successful features from other games — they must be unique little snowflakes, even if it’s bad for the people playing it.

Next I’m going to be told that because guild wars 2 has a different grouping and goals system, that grabbing a LFG feature like, say, WoW, is completely unnecessary because, well, apple and oranges!

Quarktastic.1027:

Zenith.7301:

Quarktastic.1027:

Zenith.7301:

You know, like world of warcraft does when it let pets scale fully from the owner’s stats and have 70% aoe damage reduction and built in speed boosts to stay on a target instead of lagging behind and self rooting when attacking.

This isn’t “doing AI right.” Those are all band-aid fixes that blizzard introduced after the fact.

Doing AI right tends to make the AI overpowered. It’s extremely difficult to make an AI that is competent, while also balanced.

Yeah, hunters are very overpowered in raids last I heard. That middle of the pack DPS performance is so over the top!

And GW2 doesn’t have raids, or DPS meters.

In GW1 we had NPC heroes with fairly competent AI. They trivialized all PvE content, even before you could bring seven of them. Olias was a better minion bomber than any player I have ever encountered, able to not only keep up 8-10 minions at all times, but also keep death nova up on all of them. All while following me as I blindly C-spaced my way through hard mode.

It has dungeons, whose completion time is the primary goal for people who want to squeeze as much profit into a game with such fabricated grind (legendaries, new RNG crap like 160g+ super rare drop jetpacks from a temporary dungeon).

DPS meters are there to show what everyone in GW2 has already observed one way or another. They may not have the concrete data, but the sum of experiences is there and consensus was formed, and not in favor of rangers.

Now do DoA HM (specifically Foundry) heroway or with actual players and tell me with a straight face heroes were better. Stop wasting my time.

Quarktastic.1027:

Zenith.7301:

You know, like world of warcraft does when it let pets scale fully from the owner’s stats and have 70% aoe damage reduction and built in speed boosts to stay on a target instead of lagging behind and self rooting when attacking.

This isn’t “doing AI right.” Those are all band-aid fixes that blizzard introduced after the fact.

Doing AI right tends to make the AI overpowered. It’s extremely difficult to make an AI that is competent, while also balanced.

Yeah, hunters are very overpowered in raids last I heard. That middle of the pack DPS performance is so over the top!

Loki.4871:

Where did I say they could do better than a human controlled guardian, a class designed to be the ‘tank’? You went into the ranger class with ANET saying the pet was going to be a big issue. By extension, that meant the pet would be limited by the AI, since you’d be controlling the ranger and issuing general commands to it. If you weren’t willing to accept that, why did you play ranger? For ranged damage? Because if you did, why are you not playing the warrior, the class designed to be the best with hitting stuff with weapons on their own?
The ranger may not match dps of the damage designed classes (fancy that) but the Ranger compensates by being at least as durable if you trait properly. It compensates by being able to split their damage between two targets in opposite directions, nothing any other class can do.

I chose to play a ranger because I expected them to do AI right. You know, like world of warcraft does when it let pets scale fully from the owner’s stats and have 70% aoe damage reduction and built in speed boosts to stay on a target instead of lagging behind and self rooting when attacking.

But alas, I was asking to much from the same group that made elementalists in gw1 wait over a year and a half before they started implementing changes that made them less garbage in the Hard Mode content.

Daecollo.9578:

PsionicDingo.2065:

Daecollo.9578:

Dungeon mobs should be more about buffs/debuffs, not large HP pools.

Yes.

Here is my 2 c.

Nerf mob HP by 50%, Add boons to them like Protection/Regeneration/Fury/Aegis, let the players deal with them.

NOW SUDDENLY OTHER CLASSES ARE WANTED! :>

Now, make the mobs deal things like weakness/vulnerability instead of just raw damage.

NOW SUDDENLY WE WANT ELES TO CURE! :>

Great, so power build rangers with no boon removal become even more garbage.

Warriors need a nerf in pve, plain and simple. Their damage is outrageous. And to say base damage is low is just silly. Condition necro don’t benefit from vulnerability because vulnerability doesn’t affect conditions. Necro dagger auto doesn’t cleave, while several of the warriors’ hardhitting attacks cleave.

Instead, they buffed their ridiculous banners while all rangers got was a crappy 60% hp buff to spirits (did nothing, 60% of base nothing is still nothing) and an increase chance to proc after 20 trait points are spent in a crappy traitline without touching the 10 second effect recharge rate which was the issue to begin with.

And to say mesmers are great at support, wth?

Mesmers are brought for Feedback and Time Warp. Period. If they had neither, nobody would bring them, because their sustained DPS is actually pretty bad.

This game rewards damage and and damage avoidance. It doesn’t value healing specs, or individually high toughness specs because mobs in high level content hit ridiculously hard and taking a couple of hits whether you have 916 or 2.5k toughness will end with you dead anyways.

AoE damage is also too kitten good in this game. Melee cleaving is so much better than a ranged weapon’s single target attacks. Single target and mobility weapons in general are very niche.

Warrior has both high aoe and single target in one weapon. At least the thief has to choose between high single target dagger or lesser sword cleave damage (though thief damage is universally high in any weapon).

cuge.5398:

Archaon.6245:

Chicho Gosho.6507:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Forgot one thing, as some mentioned already:

- pets hitting like a truck while their masters are bunker-specced

But pets can hit only 1 target. What’s the problem with the bigger damage compared to every mele weapon that have cleave attaks?

I remember, one day…lost into the mist of the past ppl whining all day for 8-9k backstabs….clearly no problem with a bunker spec dealing 5k+ dmg with high tough and healing (And maybe some cond dmg too), working as all other bunkers right?

I made a ranger today and did some tests with a friend thief. My ranger stats are
3200 armor, 1200 cond. dmg, 940 healing, 16k hp, pet was hitting for about 900-1500 non critical.

He just gave up the fight at a point, he stated that:
placing a backstab was hard as hell cause i had lot of evasion and when he got me right he did less than 4k, whenever he had to stop attacking cause conditions ad pet was killing him, i could refil my hp, while he could get back at best 50%.

The funny thing was when we noticed that his damage on me was slightly more than my pet’s damage on him… LOL

Why should we even play other classes ? Rangers can be bunky, can do condition damage and direct damage with pets, and they got the best heal in game for a teamfight.

Seems like many thought the same, cause last week, there was spirit watch map on tourneys, and it was rare to see a party with less than 2 rangers. Yeh, not joking, i found groups with 3 or even 4 rangers.

Yeah, keep talking.

Or you could run a P/D thief and cnd heal up to full off the pet all day and the ranger can’t kill you either.

Go cry a river that you can’t farm more than just berserker players on your thief. Apparently bunkers should be food to thieves as well.

ensoriki.5789:

Chicho Gosho.6507:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Forgot one thing, as some mentioned already:

- pets hitting like a truck while their masters are bunker-specced

But most pets can hit only 1 target. What’s the problem with the bigger damage compared to every mele weapon that have cleave attaks?

There is pet aoe.

The drake, which nobody uses because they root while casting a breath that will never hit a moving person, and unlike jaguar or raven they don’t crit as much so they hit for measly 640-700 autoattacks.

What a scary pet!

That’s a lie. My Lich form in berserker is easily critting for 5.5-6k damage, and it pierces.

Dagger spam at best crits for 3k on the last chain, and the first 2 attacks are usually on the 700-1200 scale. The whole chain is about 4k damage in good circumstances and takes a bit longer than lich form auto, is restricted to melee, and doesn’t even pierce or cleave. (All these numbers don’t consider BiP or signet).

People are saying necro dagger is great, but thief dagger is just the same. The difference is the thief has backstab and he can take that burst anywhere instead of praying that his target stays in a 40 sec cd well.

If you’re playing dagger necro you might as well get used to dying anyways. You’re wet tissue like a thief or mesmer, without the mobility or spike. All you have is high sustained single target damage.

Archaon.6245:

Zenith.7301:

Archaon.6245:

Zenith.7301:

As if that didn’t happen to the class that just got gibbed by a thief.

Go into the midfight as a necro and find the mesmer and thief looking your way and proceeding to down you in about 5 seconds flat.

5 seconds is a pretty long time for 2 glass cannons to down a focused non bunker target…

That’s why you see many necros leaving a flesh wurm on a safe spot when going for a teamfight

It’s not if you figure in all the defensives popped and granting the generous scenario that I wasn’t distracted and didn’t let myself be CC’d.

Otherwise the necro goes down faster than a prom dress. Now compare that against the thief or mesmer or ele that just took a little stunbreaker port a few yards away and then proceeded to stealth.

I’ll trade you DS and all that HP for actual mobility and the ability to port back to safety into a ledge by abusing terrain teleports and have nobody outside a mesmer or thief be able to chase you.

That’s why you see many good necros leaving flesh wurm on a safe spot before entering a teamfight..it’s called tactic aka playing with brains..

Yeah, as if most bring a flesh wurm. You’ve got 3 utility slots. Epidemic and signet of undeath are not optional, and neither is corrupt boon.

You drop any of those 3, you might as well bring no necro to the team as they’ll be useless.

It’s like asking a thief to switch to pistol/pistol to stay alive or just shrotbow all day long. You’re removing what makes them desirable to a team.

Archaon.6245:

Zenith.7301:

As if that didn’t happen to the class that just got gibbed by a thief.

Go into the midfight as a necro and find the mesmer and thief looking your way and proceeding to down you in about 5 seconds flat.

5 seconds is a pretty long time for 2 glass cannons to down a focused non bunker target…

It’s not if you figure in all the defensives popped and granting the generous scenario that I wasn’t distracted and didn’t let myself be CC’d.

Otherwise the necro goes down faster than a prom dress. Now compare that against the thief or mesmer or ele that just took a little stunbreaker port a few yards away and then proceeded to stealth.

I’ll trade you DS and all that HP for actual mobility and the ability to port back to safety into a ledge by abusing terrain teleports and have nobody outside a mesmer or thief be able to chase you.

As if that didn’t happen to the class that just got gibbed by a thief.

Go into the midfight as a necro and find the mesmer and thief looking your way and proceeding to down you in about 5 seconds flat.

Everyone takes a risk going into midfight if they’re not bunker. Because this games’s burst from some classes (thief and mesmer and s/d burst ele and warrior) is ridiculous.

When was the last time you saw someone running a celestial amulet or balanced build?

Even Phantaram complained that flanking strike thief wasn’t balanced. They are just dumb, with pretty big spike and boon removal in addition to being much harder to peel unlike their D/P variants.

Flanking Strike is hitting ridiculously hard on players. It’s fine in PvE, but it does too much damage in PvP for just 4 initiative.

Shadow Return from infiltrator’s strike should have a larger initiative cost. You can’t CC them much at the current state.

Or, I can just switch over to my thor ele or guardian or mesmer and go with a team that doesn’t need to handicap itself on damage and kill the bosses in a fraction of the time it takes for your team to kill the boss.

There are solo videos I can link you of the facility and end bosses done in berserker gear by thieves and warriors and guardians. Wethospu cleared it in 11 minutes by himself. Add another 3 warriors or thieves and a mesmer to that group and see the kill easily take 3 minutes or less.

I don’t have problems dying on my berserker ranger without any points in WS or NM. Or using signet of the wild.

I could run the crappiest heal of Heal as One or a racial heal and still have barely to use it because all the encounters in this game have damage that is easy to dodge.

I don’t die. The ridiculously crappy AI I’m saddled with dies because it can’t dodge damage that is meant to be dodged because it’s lethal. To AoE that it keeps walking over when I f3 it back or recall it and send it back to reposition. And it’s absurd that to run my maximum damage setup (jaguar) I need to remove any optimal spec choices so that the pet becomes less garbage.

This is even more marked in dungeons like TA where Malrona’s projectiles land faster than your pet can be recalled out of the circles and will be randomly gibbed. Or keeping a jaguar up through mossman’s melee cleave or the hierophants melee smash in fractal 48+.

In fractal 48+ not even full toughness guardians can tank boss hits. A single boss hit can reduce them to 30% HP. The idea that a pet with less toughness and HP than a toughness guardian could do any better is ludicrous.

LOL dead guardians should delete their characters.