Guild Wars 2

There is one issue with the build, it has no stun breakers. Protect me only breaks allies out of stun not the player who cast it, that said you do have good access to stability but none of it is instant cast which can be a pain vs classes such as thief and mesmer who have instant cast cc.

But other than that i love how the build looks and the way traits and skill synergise, and it does not run the druid line!! I adore builds that forgo the elite spec in order to take traits that better synergise.

sword/axe(or dagger) & greatsword melee ranger traited with skirmishing beast mastery and wilderness survival, quick draw caries. You can go with paladin amulet or marauder with signet of stone and a toughness rune, something like melandru or herald.

The amount of evades and cc you have is absurd, but you are vulnerable to condi spikes since your only clears are ether survival skill (wilderness knowledge), empathetic bond or shouts with trooper rune.

Ranger:
Moment of Clarity: The effectiveness of this trait has been reduced from 100% stun and daze durations to 50% stun and daze durations.

Honestly this is a fair change targeted at the druid daze locking.
Now they only need to re-adjust the scaling of celestial skills to have lower base number and scale better and ranger will be the most all around balanced class.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYVl0MhSnYvTw4Jw/EH7E1OAqt2s/WzwP4nit4KA-TJBFgAEPBgmDBw++DAnAAA

I did all the testing i need and i can tell you this will be one of the meta builds.
Since the editor is not up to date i will write down the stats and post pach traits

pain response now removes torment, assassin’s reward heals 102hp per initiative, feline grace gives 5sec of vigor.

you use paladin amulet and have:1050 power, 1050 precision(54% chance base), 2.589 armor, 18.995 hp, 178.3% crit dmg (195% with no quarter up).
You get ferocity through conversion traits and the rune and have the tankines of a engi or revenant, so basically this is a bruiser thief build

I do not own hot but changing acrobatics for daredevil and trait for Havoc Mastery, Escapist’s Absolution, Unhindered Combatant could work. I have no idea if trading acro for dd is better (believe it or not), since the former now has some seriously bad.kitten passive traits, give it a shot and drop dd for it.

Dark Pact: This skill now also converts up to 2 boons into conditions along with its innate effects.
Weakening Shroud: The effect triggered off of this trait now converts up to 1 boon into a condition.

And add the good old path of corruption trait to that and you get 5 boon converted (1 of which is in a aoe), then follow it up with a instant cast 2 sec long fear.

Core necromancer shroud might actually end up better for condition builds that want to burst.

This thread is so stupid.

If you actually did do research on ranger the class not ranger the official forum you would have noticed that hat only 2 pets are being complained about and that the 43 other pets rangers have are almost not being used at all in high end pvp.
This fact alone shout tell you about how bad and poorly made the ranger pets are (the ranger class mechanic), because only the 2 pets are able to reliably pressure a moving enemy and because of that they draw forum qq.
All pets should be able to do this like the smokescale and bristilback can and land attacks regardless if the target is standing still or running.
Therefore your statement that all ranger pets need a nerf is not based on actual meaningful analysis, and the only thing that needs a nerf is bristilback’s auto attacks (the are homing) and their skills 3 (that can instagib if you stand on top of it when he casts).

Also op gathering forum data is so stupid because ppl usually post on here when they have negative things to say, when everything is aok no one voices their opinion. Take a look at the thief forums, even when the thief was nerfed and no longer op (aka more or less balanced) ppl here were still crying for nerfs because the class takes some thought to counter (rotation and map awareness and knowledge about the class itself), but some refused to do that and just qq more so the thief got more nerfs.
Same situation with the 2 ranger pets (minus the bristilback nerfs i listed) ppl actually need to learn how to counterplay thees 2 pets because they can hit you even while you are moving, which the other pets cannot.

I am tier 3 diamond and i solo queued all the way to it. I also do not own HoT so did it without the elite specializations. Apart from a couple of games at the start of the league (which i played with my thief) i exclusively played ranger.

This is my build
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAsXTjEqQLL2wCmsAXLGYEqec78Q4b9hN15w9oDgKm6B-TZRBQBA4QAEvyAa4EAMhnAgB3fAA

For pvp rangers (specd with the druid line) act as a point holder/support and also can also fulfill the role of dps/burst with longbow (druid line is not required here but a dps build can be made with it), tho this particular play style is not very viable in the last ~4 months due to the op’nes of bunkers and the overabundance of magnetic auras but keep in mind that all of those are getting nerfed in the upcoming patch.
Another viable way to play is a bruiser build (can go full melee or with a longbow and a melee, just do not camp the bow that is a bad way to play) or a sustainable condition build (again druid is not necessary here).

For wvw you an go full glass with a bow or staff or make a balanced build (basically sustained dps with a stat split between power ferocity precision and toughness, you can look many variants on ytube).

Just keep in mind that the druid line does not fit in all builds and it does not make every single one better, infact it can be more advantageous to take another line instead (depending on the build).
Allot of ppl slot in the elite specializations just because of the name and cripple their build (elite specs are strong but do not fit with every build is the point i am getting across, so do not just copy what you see on the build sites try to figure out what works and what doesn’t on your own).

The issue with making sword a hybrid (and this is if we assume the power side of it then gets nerfd) will be that power builds will have no one handed main hand weapon to use and pair with oh axe or warhorn, basically it will put power players in the same position condition users are in now.

And although it has a power based aa, main hand axe is not a power weapon as it scales poorly with power on all skills and is meant as a hybrid set (burst bleeding and snaring). This is the reason i think mh axe should be the one out of the two main handed weapons pushed more towards condition builds, because it already sort of is that but it lacks umf.

Sword is not a condition weapon and never meant to be. Ppl take it because it offers short cd evades and a leap, just because it has poison application does not mean it has to get overhauled to be a condition weapon (poison is good regardless of your stats because of it’s effect).

Ranger has 4 condition based weapons: mh axe, shortbow, dagger, torch and 5 power weapons: sword, greatsword, longbow, oh axe, warhorn (ok this is a utility weapon but i am counting it as power because of hunter’s call).
Making sword more akin to hybrid builds would probably mean it gets nerfed in the power department (and anyway mh axe is suppose to be the hybrid weapon as evident by the axe trait).

I understand the need for a better hybrid main hand, but if anything it should be axe that gets buffed along side shortbow, and maybe staff be the one to get a overhaul to a hybrid set.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Devs have said Rangers are meant for sustained damage. Our weapon skills were made for sustained damage, minus Maul on GS, the only burst-type the class has.

Unrelated Reply: My math was off in my calculation above because I thought Pounce (1c) on sword was a ½s cast time, but it’s ¾s. That said, Super Speed adjusted to ¾s attached to it while moving forward covers the same distance as the current Pounce (430).

So, with Super Speed attached to both 1b & 1c, the chase-down ability/range only ends up being a 10% reduction on a full chain, or 24% reduction for Kick (1b – 300 to 230). Not a bad trade-off for all pros mentioned above.

You look like the only sane person on this forum. How can anyone defend an auto attack that animation lock you on a class (in a game) that is all about fast paced maneuvering?

Yes i know about turning off auto cast, it is mandatory to do if you want to use the sword in its current state, but it defeats the purpose of a fast attacking weapon if you need to pause between each swing to see if you should commence the next attack that will effectively disable you or if you want to dodge. This should not be a choice you should be able to go ham on a enemy and dodge mid aa chain if you need to without slowing down because of poor skill design.
Replacing the leap and kick animations with generic ones and allowing the new 2nd and 3rd aa skills to give you super speed (with their current effects of cripple and pet might) upon starting the skill will have the exact same effect as the current aa chain does. Only difference will be you will always have full free movement of your character while hammering your quick auto attacks and will still have the (as Wondrouswall posted the math) same chasing ability of the current sword aa!!!!

I detest ignorant people who refuse to look farther then their established perspective of things.

Corrupt boon change is not too bad of a powercreep, the scepter aa chain is. Idk what they are thinking making a fricking auto attack corrupt a boon. If you go through with it at least make it on crit corruption.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/This-are-ranger-pets-PETS-TEST-2/first

This is a link to a damage test a guy did with all of the pets on the moving target golem. It has a spreadsheet of all pet kill times (lol at the wyvern). Only 4 pets are actually any good when it comes to damage vs a moving foe.

anduriell.6280:

That numbers seems very fishy… Bear best DPS? since when?

>roles eyes< the numbers next the pets are their time to kill, so the bigger the number the longer it took the pet to kill the golem (and bear has the longest time). The bear being the first pet on the list has nothing to do with it’s damage.

We need to see all of the changes before making any doom and gloom predictions even if it looks like doom, remember we saw a preview.

What i can see working for a fresh air build is a more defencive setup , that basicly deals low sustained damage but has good burst. Basically a bruiser who acts as a executioner.

the build would look something like this:
Paladin’s Amulet (1050 Power,1050 Precision, 560 Toughness, 560 Vitality) with runes of the worm ( 175 vitality 100 ferocity 7% of vit is given as a bonus to ferocity) air, earth (or water), arcane, scepter dagger (or focus).
You will have good defencive stats and gain ferocity through the rune and trait (ferocious wind), while getting a large boost to it whenever the new fresh air trait triggers (250). So you get poor critical damage, that boosts up when you got for the standard burst combo.
If you choose to go for water you can trait for stop drop and role (because of how popular necromancers will get), soothing disruption, and cleansing water and role out with cantrips (cleansing fire, armor of earth/misrform, and lighting flash) and maybe tornado as the elite for the knock backs to disrupt a team fight (or just go with fgs).

There is a viable build in there somewhere, it is just not a carbon copy of the old fresh air builds.

The best way for a mesmur to not die to a thief is to slot in a amulet with some toughness and use the new chaos aura, which will inflict the thief with weakness. So basically role out with a staff and chaos trait line, also probably null field given the necromancer buffs.

Ithilwen.1529:

bassy venom makea ALL OF THOSE ATTACKS UNBLOCKABLE if you listened to what was actually said on the stream.

Basilisk venom will make the attacks that stun (deliver the venom) unblockable so that means only 2 attacks, and also consider that you can see the venom icon on the thief and that it has a 1 sec obvious cast animation (although you can cover it with stealth).
Venom share on the other hand will be interesting. To bad that pretty much means that thief will have to drop deadly arts, and thus allot of damage and utility (poison, weakness, mug, 20%dmg modifier/improv) in favor of a easily coutarable trait line (scrapper, and revenant destroy shadow arts) all for a grandmaster trait that does nothing if you face the thief solo (which you will if he wants to go for a point you are guarding, say the home node).

Paladin’s Amulet
1050 Power
1050 Precision
560 Toughness
560 Vitality

combine this with trickery, daredevil and critical strikes. Trait for no quarter and practiced tolerance with runes of rage and you get a thief build that resembles a bruiser.

What do you think, will this be a viable build in the upcoming not as bunker meta?

+1050 power
+1050 precision
+560 ferocity
+560 toughness

This is what i want for ranger, i want it soooo badly. I there a way to make anet put this in pvp?

anduriell.6280:

They will have to adjust the trait Allie’s Aid however.

I can already see it, you start rezing a friend and your pet starts to drag him towards the enemy…through dragon hunter traps and necromancer wells.

HellShadow.6813:

+1050 power
+1050 precision
+560 toughness
+560 ferocity
pls pls pls

I second this plzzzzz Josh make it happen

If we are going to have yet another round shifting things around that dont work, might as well get this.

Why would it not work? It is like saying marauder is not working, it will work for ranger, mesmer, warrior, necromancer, revenant, and engineer. It is a variation of marauder.

Your post is better since it explains the numbers and sets up a new aa chain that closely mimic the ‘sticking’ range of the current aa chain. But the kick and pounce animations must be changed because they are the reason why you cannot move or dodge while executing the aa chain (the default thief, mesmer and warrior animations would probably be the replacement).

-marksmanship minor traits need to get the berserker ‘always angry’ treatment. The way they are set up now you need to trait remorseless to make then any good. Give precise strike the ability to refresh opening strike when you gain fury (this way the minors work without any further trait investment).

-Remorseless currently gives 1 attack 25% bonus dmg, which is a bad design because most of ranger’s damage is done via fast multi hitting attacks and the way it is now clashes with moment of clarity. Change it so that it gives x% more damage for a few seconds (lets say 4) when you gain fury. Or maybe gain x about of power for a few sec after gaining fury (a ranger version of reveled training).

-Predator’s Instinct is just bad in this iteration. It has a long cd, and condition removal is plentiful so the cripple will get removed long before it start to reach it’s full duration. I propose to make it like Refined Toxins is now: when you are above 90% hp your strikes inflict cripple (let’s say 3 sec) and while your pet is above 90% hp it’s attacks inflict cripple (again 3 sec or so), 10 sec cd for you and your pet separately (literally a copy of Refined Toxins but with cripple).

-Strider’s Defense is not to bad but it could use some more umf. The projectile destruction does not work well with sword since 2/3 skills evade anyway, so to that end maybe change it to ‘while carrying a sword block incoming projectiles for 3sec after you evade a attack. 15 sec icd’. Also add a 3rd functionality to it to make this trait mirror the greatsword trait ‘sword skills have a 50% chance to cause cause cripple for 3 sec 10 sec icd’. Cripple would fit here because of the sticky nature of sword.

-Light on your feet change to ‘gain 5% dmg and condition duration when you dodge or evade an attack’ and keep the short bow part of the trait. This way you can upkeep the buff more consistently.

-most dangerous game this is a very bad trait it need a total overhaul. Maybe something like ‘whenever you or your pet loose 20% health you gain might’ it will still encourage the same playstyle where you get more power with lower hp, but would be more consistent.

-Empathetic bond kills your pet and you cannot control when it triggers. It needs to ether be more consistent or more forgiving on your pet. So ether make it transfer 1 condition every 3.5 sec or 3 conditions every 10 sec (like it dose now) but whenever it transfers conditions your pet gains 50% reduced incoming condition damage for a few seconds (let’s say 4).

-Natural healing is almost worthless because there are only 2 pets that can actually benefit from the healing power: the fern hound and the moa, also keep in mind that the moa heal is in a small radius and you have little control when the pet uses it.
There are 3 way to make this trait alluring:
option a) ‘your pet gains increased healing power, natural hp regeneration and removes 1 condition from allies within ~400 radius with its command skill [f2] 20 sec icd’
option b) ‘your pet gains increased healing power, natural hp regeneration and increased vitality (100 vit [1000 hp])’
option c) ‘You and your pet gain natural hp regeneration while your pet is alive. your pet gains increased healing power’ (you would get 1/4 of the regeneration value the pet gets).
And regardless of the trait version the regeneration the pet has should be increased to let’s say ~175 hp/sec (so option c would give the ranger 43 hp/sec while the per is alive).

There are more traits that could use some love, but i fell these are the worst ones (honed axes i am ignoring because the main hand axe should get a rework first).
Fell free to discus/add your ideas and opinions on trait reworks.

Keep in mind that these are not all the changes, we do not know how many changes are in the 26th patch.

PLZ for the low of god add this amulet combination:

+1050 power
+1050 precision
+560 toughness
+560 ferocity

This will be highly desirable for rangers, mesmers, warriors, and necromancers who wish to play a power build. Currently thees classes can pick berzerker (an go full glass) or marauder to get some defence. The stat combination i proposed would be a competitor to the marauder amulet since the above mention classes have medium and high hp pools and getting more hp is somewhat redundant (not on all builds but still), but they all would greatly benefit from some added armor.

Back on topic i love all the item changes. The removal of celestial and introduction of these new stat combinations will force ppl to make more of a choice when making a build.

With the patch coming on the 26th. Sword aa is the main source of damage for that weapon and it punishes you for using it since it animation locks you. Keep the speed of the aa and change the final skill in the chain (pounce) to give 0.25sec of super speed when the skill starts (when you begins to swing) instead of making you leap. Also change the second aa skill (kick) to a normal sword attack (just copy the second sword aa from a thief or warrior) but keep the cripple and the speed of the current aa skill 2.

his way the auto chain will still be fast and allow you to stick to a target, but will not cause you to die because you are unable to dodge while swinging.

How we got here is simple: anet did not test their broken product.
This is not just about them making elite specs op when they said they would be on par with the core (i sound like a broken record), but also things that should have raised some heads during betas and development that got in the game and stayed.

I am talking about stuff like elementalist (tempest) traited protection 40% (that they have a stupid uptime of in aoe form) + frost aura 10% + geomancer’s defense 10% + stone flesh 150 armor and finally stone heart so you cannot be critically hit (tho this trait is not used at this moment, but when the bunker meta shifts to more burst guess what will hapen). How has anyone looked at this and though it is fine???

Nearly all classes have some bullkitten trait combination that lets them achieve a game breaking amount of one thing be it cc, sustain, passive mitigation or absurd damage. Some of thees come in a aoe form which should never have happened, but hey at least we got esports!! For top lolz look at the EU pvp leaderboard, i busted a lung laughing.

LOL you reason is so stupid. You do realise that every pvp season will have different legend title and therefore different achievement? So if you want to stay on top of the whateverboard you are condemning yourself to pvp’ing to legend every single season.

And if you read what i wrote you will know that i did solo queue which means that i did carry my weight in a 5 man effort to win, without a elite spec.

Malediktus.9250:

Thanks to all the useless people in ruby I am stuck in the same stage of ruby for 10+ hours now.

Everyone ends up in ruby, even the ppl who never played pvp ever before. This is because before this point you cannot loose tiers. If you own HoT, and cannot make a build to steadily carry you our of ruby then idk what to tel you.
As i said above i do not have hot and i managed to do it solo. So if you, who has access to the objectively op elite specs, cannot maybe you should not pvp?

Besides who gives a kitten about a stupid title, and you can get the ugly wings if you reach ruby in 2 different seasons.

I do not have HoT and i am doing just fine in pvp…ok i am struggling while fighting err things, ok maybe i have to put in 120% effort to do the same things players with elites do with 1 hand afk…

Still managed to reach diamond while only solo queuing with my ranger, so you know i gotta say no to the idea of banning ppl without HoT from ranked.
Maybe balance the game and uphold the original statement that elite specs are going to be equal to the core ones? Anyone???? OK power creep the everything to hell and back instead? Good plan anet!

This skill is broken period. This was in pvp and and it was just 1 hit. Remember that this kitten has a 2 sec cd, and dont even bring up energy cost because it might as well not have any

I agree with everything you said op. Something else that could be neat is all druid astral skills get their base healing reduced, but get much better scaling. This way if you want to bunker you got to invest in to healing power.
And tempast aura share, maybe reduce the radius of the share effect of powerful aura trait and the shout aura application effects from 600 to lets say 450. Magnetic aura has a large uptime and with the current radius it is easy to give it to all allies in a team fight. This heavily pushes out longbow rangers, dragon hunters, and core necromancers (ranged shroud aa) out of the meta (dh not as much).

AegisFLCL.7623:

What also strikes me as odd is that Beastmastery is where the GS traits are, and yet there are no secondary effects for your pets on your GS weapon skills.

Hilt bash grants your pet a moment of clarity, but other than that as you said no synergy. If they changed the gs trait to give your pet fury instead of you on crit it would make more sense. But that would be a nerf to remorseless which is an underwhelming trait as is.

Ario.8964:

Pet damage is silly. A bunker druid should never be able to kill someone and the fact that with pets like smokescale and bristleback they are able to burst heavily is bad. Reduction of base heals (with scaling increase to benefit investment) and base pet damage should be a strong start to fixing this problem.

I have to point out that only the smoke scale and the bristlback do alot of dmg. This is largely due to the other pets having issues hitting moving targets, smoke scale can reliably burst with shadow assault and bristlback can reliably land auto attacks because it is a ranged attack with fast projectiles (unlike spiders).
All pets should be able to reliably hit like thees two, and then their damage balanced accordingly.

But yea no one can deny that bristilback’s damage is a bit over the top at the moment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-DxXEgH3Gg

Also yes, to the base heal rebalance on druid life shroud. Reduce the heals on all of the astral skills but increase the scaling so that with x amount of healing power they become the same as they are now.

DeceiverX.8361:

Marksmanship Opening Strike with a pet puts out 10 and RF another 10

True! However you also must consider that the vulnerability from the marksmanship minors last for 5 sec, and after that the 3 minor traits are literally worthless unless you trait for them and have a specific build made for it (remorseless).
Imo in their current state they are the worst minor traits in the whole game.

Plz consider bringing back a mechanic like jewels, having all stats tied to 1 amulet is soooo limiting on builds. May be make it a 3 way split (70%, 20%, 10%), this way it would be much easyer to make builds that are not all out glass or bunker.

Also i have a question: At the HoT announcement it was said that the elite specializations are going to be on par power wise with the core ones. That they are suppose to give classes play styles that they did not have before.
Now the latter is true, engineers have a viable melee build, guardians a range one, ect but the elite specs ended up, for the most part, stronger than the core ones.
My question is did the philosophy behind elite spec change to where they are suppose to be stronger than the core ones but balanced between themselves (when more than 1 per class is released), or is the original statement still valid and they are going to get tuned in the upcoming patches?

Jana.6831:

When I’m on my ranger: one rapid fire = 21 stacks of vulnerability

Rapid fire puts out 10 stacks at the most – 10 shots each applying 1 stack. I have no idea where you got the 21 idea from since there are no traits that augment it (quick draw lets you cast rf twice in a row, but that is 20 stacks for using the skill twice). Not that all of the shots land anyway so you almost never even get the 10 stacks.

Rezzet.3614:

you clearly dint even read the skills asides from the “big” damage
you cant even compare them either backstab doesnt even have a CD

Backstab has a cooldown and it is 4 sec in pvp, elector whirl has a 6 sec cd and is a reflect. Stop defending a over-tuned and broken weapon.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I
I’ll agree that hammer hits hard but it’s much more of a sustained damage weapon than it is a burst damage weapon. It’s like Warrior 1h axe, it consistently does high damage but doesn’t have a lot of ways to actually burst

So elector whirl hitting for ~7k is not considered burst? It deals similar damage to a back stab but can cleave, requires no setup, and is a reflect and only has 2 second longer cd (reveal lasting 4 sec in pvp and it acting as a cd for stealth attacks).

Hammer has way to high damage given the fact what is is loaded with utility. The aa, although not high on damage, stacks might and vuln you have a block on 20 sec, a reflect on a 6 sec(!), a aoe stun on 24 sec, and a mobility skill on 10 sec.

Ether the damage needs to get lowered or the utility needs to get tuned down. Pick one.

If they put pve in pvp, does that mean that they will also put pvp in to pve. Just imagine you doing dragon stand and all of a sudden a hammer revenant appears out of nowhere and oneshots 5 ppl. Does it not sound like fun?

Skittledness.5106:

You plebs don’t realize how stupid you are. Healing turrets synergy with the inventions trait line is what makes a scrapers op.
Also the DMG is fine…..after all their wearing marauders amulet:/

The fact that you use the word plebs makes me not take take anything you write seriously.

sinject.4607:

why is any of this, at any point, ok? who let this through the development process? why were skills with ridiculous utility also given ridiculous damage while weapons like Thief’s shortbow only offer passable utility at a steep cost of damage?

I’l tell you why, because they want to sell copies of HoT and the most surefire way to do that is to make the elite specializations broken op. Tell me when was the last time you saw a class not using it’s elite spec in pvp? Whenever i spot one that is not it’s because they did not buy hot.

Also just as a reminder elite specs were suppose to be on par with the core lines suppose to give classes different play styles (melee engineer, range guardian ect), and the ‘elite’ name was to do with the fact you can only have 1 slotted (when they release more). Something along thees lines was said by the game director when they first revealed HoT and the new trait system.

It’s ok there is a new outfit coming to the gem store soon.

StickerHappy.8052:

I appreciate all the posts.

But still the verdict stands, how come those two players I mentioned can play their class really well, amidst all these weaknesses you mentioned?

Really well to the point they can dominate matches.

With their performance, I could barely see some of the stuff you guys mentioned here.

Like i said idk who those 2 are or if they play solo, but there is a simple way to find out why we all wrote the above and how it all works (falls apart). You know what it is, all it takes is a non-occupied character slot.

Ario.8964:

HoT provided all classes with increased defensive abilities and sustain. Thief got some yes but it wasn’t as much as what everyone else got

This is not really true. The main defense/sustain thief got is with daredevil in the form of a 3rd dodge. But we already had that with acrobatics before it got butchered and resold as a part of the ‘elite’ specialization. We can get some more weakness and the 10% mitigation after a dodge true, but the main course the 3rd dodge we always had.

This is why the daredevil came as such disappointment to me.

basically thief is in the same spot as pre buff necromancer, where you can be good and impactful IF you have a team build around a thief. That means teammates that compliment your play style, can support you and can help you set up a burst all while constantly communicating the target’s position they want you to burst on.

As you might expect almost none of this can happen in a random ranked game where you solo queue and have no communication with the team you get (voice or otherwise), let alone any build synergy.

On top of all that you can just play a shiro revenant (or a melee ranger with quick draw, seriously give it a try) and achieve the same play style, but with somewhat less mobility (especially vertical mobility) but in return you get more sustain/survivability, and more ability to stay in a fight. There is a good reason why pretty much every ‘pro’ player dropped their thief in favor of, well anything. Risk vs reward and the thief has a disproportionate amount of risk for little reward. This is largely due to overnerfing because allot of players whining and refusing to learn how to outplay, but also because of the current state of the meta (op elite specs, aoe cc spam, passives on top of passives riding passives, ect).

For what it’s worth my main was a thief before the specialization pach, i swapped to ranger.

Also i never heard of the streamers you mentioned, then again i do not watch twitch much.

mysticsicness.7598:

Tempest is not as strong as Mesmer atm. They do not use a cheap spam daze mechanics like Druid. Nerf Druid/Mesmer, then maybe we can talk about Tempest.

No instead tempast uses cheap aura spam and 40% mitigation protection spam with frost aura (another 10% mitigation), with brain dead aoe damage spam.

In truth almost every class elite specialization needs nefing tempast included.

Shadowflare.2759:

Sure, nerf the healing. Give us some active damage mitigation (blocks or evades)

No no no no no we do not need more blocks and evade frames blinds or invulns, there is already way to much random evades on every class as is. Besides elementalist can already get a ridiculous protection uptime (that reduces 40% mind you) so you do not need any buffs to sustain or mitigation.

If healing/group support gets nerfed (which it should) then yes the offensive trait lines should get a bit of a buff. Then you would be able to ‘defend’ yourself by pressuring the opponent and making him go on the defensive, thus reducing the damage he deals to you. We do not need more mitigation skills, there are too many as is.

There is way to much aoe after hot, and most of it is more powerful than singe target skills! This is a terrible design and makes for unfun fights. Things like dragon hunter traps, tempast overloads, scarper hammer 5, chronomancer wells, ect.
All of thees (and other skills) cover a point and do not require a target or anything, all it takes is for the caster to be on the point and facerole his keayboard. It is not a fun play style and it is not fun to fight against.

Ranger had a trait that made their spirits follow them that was removed not because it was uber strong, but because it was annoying to fight against that build. Well it is the same scenario here except it is not one class or a trait but aoe in general that is, not necessarily op, but kittening annoying to fight.
If the the fun/frustration argument could be used to remove the trait, then the same reasoning can be used to change/remove (not all of them) the stupid aoe skills in to something less facerole and more fun to fight.

NightClaw.4758:

“Don’t play base specs” And yet, if I remember correctly, I would have to buy HoT in order to play the elite specs. I neither have the money nor the desire to buy HoT, especially if the current state of GW2 PvP is as awful as other people have told me. If base specs are just worse than elite specs and elite specs are behind a pay wall… the game has gone Pay 2 win and I have no desire to ever touch it again.

I appreciate the advice and the information. It saddens me greatly to hear that GW2 is in such a bad spot right now.

The thing that bothers me the most is that at a HOT presentation it was said the elite specializations are suppose to be on par with the core ones, that they were suppose to give classes play styles that they did not have before (like melee engineer). But what they did is make every single one op to make ppl want to buy HOT (going as far as nerfing one of thiefs core lines only to later sell it back as the elite spec).

This makes me wonder what will they do when they inevitably release the next expansion and a second set of elite specializations. Will they make them more op than the current ones to make ppl want the next expac?

Or change all revenant weapon evade skills to give damage reduction instead of evade frames. Something like 70% or even 90% damage reduction while in the animation (skills like unrelenting assault, staff 5, hammer 3, ect), this way the revenant can still use them to avoid almost all damage but is at risk of getting interrupted.

Hot gave way to many blocks and evades to every class in the game, where before weapon evades were a thief and ranger thing, with the exception of 1 elementalist and 1 warrior skill.

Take sigil of blood.

Both have the same cooldown and on paper fire deals more dmg (because it has a slightly higher base dmg and because it is aoe), but blood ignores all defences (armor, protection, weakness, ect) and gives a heal (453 with no healing power).

But in practice blood will deal more dmg in this meta because it ignores all defences, and is far better in a attrition fight (again this meta). Lets say you fight something for 90 seconds, that would mean that the sigil can trigger 18 times in a perfect world. Since there is no way that will happen lets say it triggers only 12 times, that is still 5436 hp restored and a even more dmg (idk the power scaling of the sigil).

Much better than fire any day of the week.