Guild Wars 2

dreztina.4820:

It’s going to be so ridiculous if there’s no way to play with anything less than a full premade. It’s already kitten hard to play spvp with friends as it is. The devs run around trying to figure out how to make spvp more popular, and they still haven’t managed to notice one of the biggest and worst problems it has. kitten. I just wish this combat system were in the hands of a different company.

They should take that unranked idea that was thrown around.

Throw down plague. Be a bunker for a moment.

Noctis Assassin.4035:

It was in one of the asura storylines and it wasn’t that fun.

Wot are you doing here. Back. Back I say.

Play the best with what I bring. But may not necessarily bring what is considered the best.

Shanna.4762:

Jubilee is a perfectly applicable term for the 10 year’s mark. It’s really up to the country, culture, and institution of Monarchy in said country. Kryta celebrates it every 10 years, obviously.

I’m more concerned with how she has no heir yet lol. Girl needs to get busy!

Let mah boy Ogden Stonehealer show her whats wot.

Hmm body shot isn’t too shabby after the update to 10 vuln the duration is just a bit low. As far as thief as a whole body shot then Swap to melee as a combo would be a greater reason to take P/P if the duration was kicked up a bit to be more practical.

TGSlasher.1458:

+ 40% damage reduction

I would play my ranger if I could play my GW1 ranger here, no pet, all traps lots of damage

You must’ve meant Distracting shot.

evilapprentice.6379:

ensoriki.5789:

PW’s evade frames don’t begin right after the stun.
Now that being said yeah some abilities do go through evade. Im pretty sure the Fear Rune goes through evades so if you hit them and it procs it doesnt care if you are evading.

More than a handful of times I PW a necro, and the fear on stun proc has already been triggered but I get feared again and the only explanation is the runes of….undead or nightmare whichever it’s called.

I’m not talking about the beginning of PW – I’ve had this happen a few times toward the beginning or end of PW, and discounted it as a combination of the ability not starting/being over, and a bit of lag.

When I say 6 separate times, I mean directly in the middle – I’ve been swinging away, I still have a few swings left in the animation, and BAM, I’m dropped by direct damage. Every time I’ve checked the combat log for conditions and nothing – on at least 3 of those occasions, no condition was dropping me as instantly as it did (losing 3-5k HP Mid PW animation).

That’s odd. If it’s not lag, check if Rune of Air is going through the evade. Im sure Nightmare goes through it so given the same situation air might, but last time I saw Sigil of air I was too occupied to take note if I took damage or not.

Malcastus.6240:

Lastly ask yourself: “Would I want to use another set of runes instead of the complete Lyssa set?”. If your answer is “no”, it is too strong.

but my answer is yes?
I dip into 5x scholar + 1 divinity commonly for the extra damage. While I keep a lyssa set handy there are other things of use.
I would imagine so since there are players using Runes of Nightmare, 6x scholar, 5x scholar + 1 divinity, might stacking runes, Melandru, Rune of the Ogre is one everyone knows, Rune of Soldier…hmm rune of soldier is a good example of powerful rune effects.
Eh no need to go even further.

PW’s evade frames don’t begin right after the stun.
Now that being said yeah some abilities do go through evade. Im pretty sure the Fear Rune goes through evades so if you hit them and it procs it doesnt care if you are evading.

More than a handful of times I PW a necro, and the fear on stun proc has already been triggered but I get feared again and the only explanation is the runes of….undead or nightmare whichever it’s called.

For what. Badges of Honor is for wvw wtf. Glory is for PvP.

How do we keep avoiding the reality that Badges of Honor and gold are both currencies their respective zones value but Glory sucks.
Glory needs to be improved there are no ifs ands or buts or we need this and that. Make glory stop sucking bottom line.

I guess next month we’ll have a “nerf rune of Melandru” thread.

Lordrosicky.5813:

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Aria.5940:

Lordrosicky.5813:

ronpierce.2760:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Smigleesmits.7540:

So I’ve been playing spirit Ranger recently to see how good they are, and it is actually a lot of fun. One thing that bothers me however is that the spirits start their cool down once you summon them, meaning enemies have very little incentive to kill spirits as they will likely be ready to summon again anyway, also with the trait Nature’s Revenge they will even be punished for doing so. The only spirit worth killing is the Elite one, for obvious reasons. Having nearly 100% up time on my utility spirits just feels unfair honestly, and that’s probably why the build is so strong right now. I suggest the cool down should be lowered to about 45 seconds, but only starts after the spirits die.

It seems like a bug that they recharge when you summon them. This isnt how minions work. So yeh, fix this bug please.

Okay I have to take back my words, it currently doesn’t reset the recharge when they die, but I’m almost 200% sure that they USED to because I remember having a lengthy discussion about them with Deku God, and that’s how he had explained it to me, of course this comversation was 2 patches ago.

Yeh. Spirit ranger is the most op thing in the game by far. It is also completely lame. You just put the things up. Dont even need to use utilities and yet have the best build in game? Seems legit.

I really really hope this is a joke (please put smileys and the like, so hard to tell what’s real and what’s joking when it’s written).
If someone is actually having trouble with a spirit ranger, find a non-spirit ranger and put him/her on the spirit ranger. And where are all the spirit rangers anyway? Seen only very few of them around.

If you understand how spirit ranger works, the only way you’ll ever lose against the ranger is if he/she is simply a better player.
I’m willing to say that if a spirit ranger beats me, it’s because he/she outplayed me, not because of the build.

Nope. It’s pretty much the build. Yes someone can play it awfully, but played optimally that build is too broken. Passive buffs with barely any cd and good active skills? Mix that in with a pet + dodging + condition damage and teammates who get passive buffs and c’mon that’s pretty ridic. Where are my guardian spirit weapon love at? Why don’t I get a passive buff for summoning them and have my cd start when they die? Why not start the cd when I summon? This is a joke build. There are plenty of spirit rangers, both good and bad. But it’s funny how most of the top % runs spirit rangers. People will always choose what’s gives the best output. Soon, we’ll have a metaknight in this game…soon

The problem is the spirit ranger dominates team fights more than any other class. But it is also a beast in 1v1. You dont have to worry about much because its all passive. You dont have to worry about condi removal because you have emphatic bond and the healing spring.

It really is insanely op. The elite espicially. I thought they want to nerf resses (signet of undeath and illusion) and make the game less lame. I also thought they wanted to nerf things like timewarp which just used to win team fights by themselves. Elite spirit wins team fights by itself.

Exaggeration.

WvW isn’t balanced.
Deal with it.

I feel demand is important. If you have alts you can hot-flip as you see an issue arise it’ll help but

Sitting on a node all day bores most, so the amount of bunkers in solo que will be less. Which generally means if you’re a damage dealer you’ll likely commonly be part of at eam with an abundance in damage dealing.
If you play a bunker, you’ll almost always get roamers/assaulters so you have to worry about comp disadvantage less since you’ll usually be the part which most comps lack.

If the top is full of bunkers/supports that means if you get to that level you can switch to DD because you’ll have enough support, but then again I’d think anyone that high up plays 2 profs or more for versatilitys sake. Lower ranks will be full of damage dealers and lacking in bunkers capable or not.

It’s not really that making a bunker makes you better or that it’s an instant boost up the boards. It’s just that if comps are important the majority doesn’t play bunker and by doing so you can fix the hole that most comps will have in solo ranked. It’s common enough to see 2-3 thieves currently, won’t change much in solo ranked until you elevate where people are more flexible.

Kharr.5746:

I just want to clarify something: Some of you are saying that the spirits follow the ranger closely, and this makes them easier to aoe.

What if the ranger moves out of your aoe? Do the spirits follow him closely? If they follow the ranger, doesn’t this make them harder to kill since no player (not even PVE players) will stand inside the big red aoe circles, causing the spirits to move out of the aoe as well?

What about the aoe cap of 5 targets (3 targets for melee)? Doesn’t this mean that there’s a good chance some of the spirits (or other players in the attack area) won’t be hit by aoes in group fights, since the number of targets is greater than 5? In WvW, people stack on each other to dissipate the aoe damage since it hits a random target per tick if the number of targets is greater than 5.

Let’s keep in mind that ranger + pet + 4 spirits = 6 targets, so either some of the spirits won’t get hit in group fights, or they’ll tank the aoe damage and teammates won’t get hit. Both of these are highly desired outcomes.

I’m not convinced that aoe is the counter.

Spirits react to the ranger if he’s moving out they’ll drag behind and still take ticks. However if you’re using a single hit aoe then it doesn’t matter since he can dodge it, but he can’t move out of something that hits once and spirits don’t dodge.

Anything you hit that isn’t the pet is pretty much productive.

Smigleesmits.7540:

So I’ve been playing spirit Ranger recently to see how good they are, and it is actually a lot of fun. One thing that bothers me however is that the spirits start their cool down once you summon them, meaning enemies have very little incentive to kill spirits as they will likely be ready to summon again anyway, also with the trait Nature’s Revenge they will even be punished for doing so. The only spirit worth killing is the Elite one, for obvious reasons. Having nearly 100% up time on my utility spirits just feels unfair honestly, and that’s probably why the build is so strong right now. I suggest the cool down should be lowered to about 45 seconds, but only starts after the spirits die.

While aoe and cleave are a frequent complaint. The purpose of skills that hit multiple targets…is to kill multiple targets. Unlike Phantasms or hell the Rangers pet. Blowing up spirits can be considerably worth your while given that they cling to the Ranger and don’t dodge…
I suggest for all the aoe that is complained about, players utilize it.

I think they’re planning to add character selection down the road.
If character locking starts the moment you pop in and then you log in on your 5 thief group and the other team is more well rounded…hope for the best.

I hope hammer & spirit got some revisions.

They just need the capability to add retaliation resist to skills as they see fit when they find that a certain skill takes more damage from it than they want it too (flame jet?).

Eg. They find x skill is taking too much damage from retal for what it contributes so they give it 10% retal resistance.

Velron.3729:

Thesilentflute.8761:

Ill just stick with my rank one. This creates a new market of stuff to put on the gem store I sure hope they don’t end up making ones that out shine the rank ones because we work hard for those.

No matter how flashy they make ones you can buy…they still will only say “I bought this in the gem store”

You rank finisher says “I have kittened up a lot of people in PVP”

It will always be superior in my eyes.

For me Idgaf where it comes from so long as I can get it and it looks awesome.

Requesting a sped up gw1 sin dance as a finisher
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whWmL7Pp-Zo

and dancing abbadon finisher.
Will pay 1000 gems a piece.

Chase.8415:

It’s going to be full of Bunkers.

This is what I am thinking.
It’s like playing a Monk in Random Arena’s.

No it’ll just rapidly change direction to hit them if they are behind you.

Vena.8436:

Chrispytoast.3698:

Any game type besides Capture Point?

Southsun Survivor: Deathmatch in its purest form.
Aspect Arena: Capture the Flag.
Sanctum Sprint: Mario Kart.

All of these are PvP, they are alternate modes, and they exist in-game. Go play them.

Put em in the mists cus we lazy.

Shar.3402:

garethh.3518:

Arganthium.5638:

JonPeters.5630:

Look at that! https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/august-06-2013/

:)

Which says

PvP Solo Queue
Solo Arena matches allow you to get right into the action of PvP matches in a competitive environment without gathering a full team or finding yourself fighting against a pre-formed group. Solo Arena has its own leaderboard so players can earn rank without affecting their Team Arena standings.

Now, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m incredibly happy about this. SoloQ needed to be separated from Team queuing for a long time, and we finally got the change we wanted. Personally, I think that this is going to be a better indicator of how good a player is, not how good his/her team is. It’s also going to be a lot easier to just go join Solo Queue, without having to worry about ratings dropping off a cliff.

Ty Anetttttt <3

There needed to be a casual verse hardcore sort of queing.
That’s the core of the issue.

Solo queing being the casual probably wasn’t the best idea, but whatever… its not like mediocre ideas are new to this game.
Random groups of friends looking to mess around weren’t the issue and never will be… now they get punished… just what a game desperate for population needs…

If you think that soloQ will be casual, you’re in for a lot of pain I’m afraid…

This.
Solo Q is ranked, it won’t be casual. Won’t be surprised if players become more demanding. Still it is progress regardless.

Daecollo.9578:

Why play S/P when you can play D/P?

Stun,immobilize,condition removal and Cleave.

Evan Lesh.3295:

True target of target is coming Soon. I will look into the aoe rings and hud background.

Fixed for consistency :P.

S/P has a lot of control and can cleave relatively safely compared to even S/D and the D/ sets. When a guy tries to red his teammate and you smash them both without external consequence the sets obviously useful. Outside of group retal its quite strong.

P/P though leaves something to be desired.

Authority.6145:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

HS-Spam is viable? since when . . .

Since D/P thieves started focusing S/D thieves and now S/D thieves are asking for a nerf on D/P.

Sarcasm.

We back in January?

Devourer Venom is plenty strong.
Problem with venoms is high CD’s keep them out of the game for extensive periods of time. Making them all flat forty-five seconds doesn’t help the attractiveness of things like Ice Drake venom when it’s sitting next to Devourers.

Im surprised it isn’t a dev class.

Jon was on vacation? Makes sense seemed like he disappeared.

Oh and Jon can’t remember if you or chaplan but I remember the last beta event A Jon/john said Hunger Royale may return later on out though obviously needed polish for being made in quick haste.
Has anyone touched that since last august or is that a currently “too be decided” thing?

/offtopic.

It is for me, just in small doses. Can’t play it too long without burning out atm. If you take this game too seriously without having a serious commitment to it, you’re just stressing yourself for nothing.

official.4658:

and how is that build cheese have u seen s/d play???? im using skill to win what about that is cheese

i posted a edit on the paralyzation sigil if u would have looked…. i run the condi removal sigil instead ofcourse u can use fire or w /e if u want too

They don’t know. I run a acrobatics version but may switch to SA. 10 SA has been enough for me

Just plug in soldier amulet.

Yeah, but for the traits mostly. It’s good enough to take be nice if it removed a condition but that’s probably just my reaction to the amount of conditions that have been flying around as of late.

pmnt.4067:

Maybe some mechanic to discourage spamming the same skill. Each subsequent skill use costs additional 1/2/3/ initiative. Or, it could scale with the base cost: + 50%/+ 100%/+ 150%/…

That would give thieves the option to burn the initiative for a burst (or using multiple evades in an emergency), but bringing down an opponent to “burstable” health would require a “rotation” of at least 2 skills.

“We need to discourage the use of a skill more than once on the mechanic that purposefully allows a skill to be used more than once and discourages it by removing your ability to use other skills by using one more than once….by adding another discouragement to using a skill more than once.”

“Why bob”
“Well, while using a skill 3x in a row is generally impractical against people paying attention and many thief sets are not considered viable at the moment, we’ll put this in because we visually don’t like seeing skills used more than once and it makes us upset.”

Nuka Cola.8520:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Nuka Cola.8520:

You know what anet should do? Remove the stupid initiative mechanic from the game and give thieves a CD like everyone else. Oh yeaaaaaaaaaah!! i know this comment will make some thieves cry but that’s the only way to fix cheese such as stealth spam and S/D evade all day bs.

This won’t happen because they would have to scrap the entire class and build a new one. I can’t even imagine have HS with a CD, especially with the way it works now. Same for black powder, or even all the pistol skills.

that’s what i always thought but this is an mmo, here to stay for half a decade or more, they have time to rebuild a class completely (would like that for my ranger as well)

Considering the pacing, does anyone have the patience for such an update?

It’s almost as if the other professions live in some magical pixy land where they do not have rotations and generally optimal skill choices for specific situations. Oh wait they most certainly do. The blatant attempt at simplification and trivialization honestly already makes this pretty much fruitless to discuss any further.

I don’t really care about calculations and all this crap. I’ll make an initial critique because this wasn’t in your opening post nor was it even really in the first half of your build explanation and it bugged me.
You don’t really say what your purpose is. When I looked at your traits I knew immediately but before that Im skimming through trying to figure out wtf you feel you’re bring to the table and that irked me. Please put a more clear cliff of purpose in the opening, just makes it a lot easier to go into it at the beginning.

Anyways. My personal opinion on looking at it? Feels weird I remember tweaking a couple builds for the purpose of FS + Bountiful before the FS april patch and found that ineffective now you steal more boons, and bountiful is always handy but everything just seems so….unnecessary?

You say you have success with this and I’m sure you’ve managed to find it working for you, do what works for you without doubt but eh. I mean if I just wanted to go to far and cause havoc temporarily before jumping to mid I’m trying to picture the charm. It reminds me (for whatever reason of a 30 SA 30 acro build Cruuk did with his S/P, D/P as sort of an inbetween at that, but I’d say the damage is probably even lower though there is more straightforward trait util, but in exchange without SR your utilities themself aren’t as directly team supportive as his were.

Backing off is a fair point, but I know in my own play, if I assault far I’ll do it in zerkers 90% of the time and don’t really need to spend much time backing off. I suppose it’s something you can only really see in practice, but for the maybe 6s if that, that I have to back off are you surpassing the damage? Presumably you too eventually need to push away.

As if I do say 12k dmg in my zerkers in 10s and then back off (low-balling) at what point do you put out 12k damage or support teammates enough for that to make up that damage and if that time is longer than 10s for instance then is that a trade-off that should be made when you need immediate results over a sustained approach?

I’ll sample it probably tuesday night but these are my initial thoughts.
Also you seem really bitter at Jumper in this guide. I get that he has rubbed some people off in the wrong way, but probably should leave that out of the guide.

I’d probably use dancing daggers if it wasn’t slower than my grandma. Multiple times you try to use it for actually catching someone, and it can’t even catch them, so how are you supposed to with the cripple that never lands.

Body shot I like now, the duration is just too short to let me get full use out of it. 3s vulnerability? Can barely do anything in that window.

The class will never create good gameplay in its current state, within a years time it has only gotten cheese-ier than ever..
[As a sidenote, I’m not saying thieves are OP, because they aren’t… I’m saying thieves create kittenty gameplay for the player and opponent (constant evade spam, infinite stealth, backstab in a game built around active defense)]

Did you even play thief brah?
From Launch till December (well technically even after that) S/D demanded quite a bit out of the player to get effect that mirrored a more simple to succeed with D/D and D/P (and S/P until PW nerf). From PW nerf till the haste nerf, S/P was in the exact same state. Bottom line S/ sets have for the majority of GW required good use of all of their skills for optimal effect. They’re really not about spamming while S/D is more so about it now (and in some cases this is an overstatement) that didn’t hold true before.

Think I’ve repeated this like clockwork but it always holds true. The thief doesn’t “Spam” when it has reasonable choices for success. It can do so but the mechanic of initiative has every action have a global opportunity cost that other professions just cannot feel as heavily when it’s firing on all cylinders. That and predictability being a weakness in itself.

A lot of thief ‘spam’ is still overstated and higher success generally goes beyond just hitting any individual button the most you can (or you ini starve yourself). However in certain respects the profession has been dumbed down (FS) and in other’s it has been deepened (HS and PW nerfs for example). In some respect they just removed choice and forcibly dumbed you down not by one thing being too effective but options just not being respectable uses of ini either to use multiple times or in any sort of rotation (death blossom and dancing daggers).

It feels like quite a few here spew horse kitten about the profession as if it lives in some magical pixy land where hitting 1 skill multiple times in a row really breeds success against people who actually care to better themselves.
D/P, S/P, SB use all their skills, S/D does as well but that used to be far more visible than atm. If all you do is hit 3 on D/P, you’re going to get trolled against people with a pulse, Hitting Pistol whip all the time is going to get you either blocked by stability, or straight up interrupted, hs spam has been beaten to death.
Generally optimal success of a thief actually requires full use of a weapons abilities outside of D/D, P/P and previously P/D (don’t know how that fairs now).

If you want to address spam you don’t have to do anything other than create meaningful choice by other skills not being incredibly niche or mediocre. Even then spam is frankly overstated if you want to look at spam, D/D condi spam is a lot clearer when a lot of the cases pressing 3 really is huge because there is nearly nothing else there to facilitate that style of play or similar with P/D up till last patch (don’t know it now) utilizing Sneak attack heavily, because condi damage pretty much was coming from nowhere else, and as a physical partner set nerfs to CnD and DD have put it primarily into disuse when it was already struggling. Or P/P hitting unload because VS puts out pretty much nothing, 4 and 5 don’t do credible damage, and 2 is more of a set-up skill than a damage alternative.

It’s almost an entire laugh when your examples are "Flanking strike, Inf strike, Shadow trap, " When 2 of them weren’t even in play until two months ago, and inf strike’s been semi-prominent in play with S/P (and early game S/D) from launch until the haste nerf (though a couple people say they always disliked inf).

Then again same thing happened to Necromancers I guess, Anet changes something and now everyone wants to kill staples that have always been there instead of going back on the new additions that were the source problem.

Don’t remember anyone crying about Death blossom thieves spamming evades considering they sucked, are still mediocre and easy to disfuse. So it seems to me that if the evades which have existed and been prominent in some cases before hand are only now something to whine about, that a) there was something about the evades that was actually broken or b) something new has been added on in addition to evades that now makes it a problem….I wonder what that is.

The spirit dies the moment you actually care about it.
Considering it’s a destructible elite where the rez can be denied by
a) interrupting it’s initial cast
b) interrupting the spirit itself
c) Destroying the spirit.
The amount of options they give you to deal with it are more than enough.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Soon you will all realise that it was only us necros keeping the uber lameness of AI spirit rangers and kitten engis with perma speed and vigor and knockbacks in check. New meta is gonna suck balls.

Pistol whip solves everything.

P/P Doesn’t suck because of retal wtf. P/P at most ticks 8 ticks of retal. Pistol whip ticks up to 25 in one cast and is still a better set that is one of the most suggested for PvE and useful still in pvp. S/P can’t stealth either, same with the shortbow.

P/P is lame because it’s a duck set with no mobility unlike literally every other thief set. Vital shot’s damage leaves something to be desired and body shots vulnerability has a duration that is simply too low.

Yeah Guardians are clearly decimating everyone with that Burning spec.

Certain skills need to get a Retaliation resistance. Something like 15% resistance to retaliation, just so it’s kept in sane levels.

Are we still pretending that GW2 isn’t a game that plays itself?
In two years time I think most of these auto-skills will no longer be such but until then it is what it is. I lol everytime I see a leap rapidly change directions like the person is possessed by the spirits in Ghost Buster.

GW1 had plenty of shutdown and “Don’t touch anything on your keyboard or you die” skills from Mesmer and necromancer. But the Monk was there and he kept you alive through all of that.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks Folly!

ilr.9675, I definitely understand your point of view, but understand that observing the CoC/ToS is very important on these forums. I would post on there more, but I think my PvP title makes people think I only ever care or think about PvP (which is definitely not true). I don’t think it’s possible to estimate how many skills we would have to split, but I can say that if we feel it is absolutely necessary for the health of the game, we will split a skill/trait.

I’ve got to ask because I don’t understand.
Is there something that stops the PvE devs from going back on certain encounters if a skill balance makes a profession hard to play there? As far as I know half the professions feel neglected in that area, but shouldn’t the content there be varied enough to make those professions worthwhile?

Is the skill-split just the most reasonable option that the devs are able to do in the time they have? I’d think their is a pve balance/encounters/dungeons team that isn’t entirely composed of the same people who do skill balance.