anet just hates rangers. how many times do they have to nerf spirit rangers? 3 sec sun spirit proc and 33% damage decrease to storm spirit will obliterate the only viable build on a ranger.
power ranger build is never gonna be viable since rangers don’t have much burst damage compared to other classes (thieves, eles, warriors etc…). this nerf is unneeded. it’s time to roll another class and say goodbye to my ranger.
please, reroll now. if spirit ranger was the only ranger build you could play, a different class is probably the best idea.
lol XD
/15char
Spirit ranger embodies literally everything that is wrong with GW2 pvp.
First of all, it provides crazy support while also having amazing potential for winning 1v1s versus a variety of classes. This is already an example of bad design. Support builds should have a chance to win 1v1s with skilled gameplay, but should generally be at a disadvantage.
The spirit elite is the most broken elite skill in the game. 400 healing per second+ two free ressurects on either yourself or multiple teammates in a 900 radius? This is legitimately ridiculous.
The 33% damage nerf to storm spirit should be 75%. I’ve had this ability hit 6,000 damage on me from a guy wearing a carrion amulet. Let me repeat this: 6000 damage from a guy wearing a carrion amulet. That’s more than I Backstab for generally. It’s totally absurd and makes me angry just thinking about this build.
Spirit ranger is also a primary example of dodge/evade spam with Natural Vigor, vigor uptime, and 3 evades on Sword/Dagger along with 1 on shortbow, all on low cooldowns. Not to mention it gains protection on dodge. In addition to being an example of evade spam, it’s also an example of reliance on passives as well as AI.
Finally, Ranger isn’t a weak class. There are actually plenty of viable builds being blotted out by just how overpowered the spirits build is. Nerfing spirit ranger is totally necessary for the ranger class as well as PvP in general. It should be nerfed more just due to how easy it is to play effectively.
A trait like Diamond Skin is poorly designed… A cooler trait idea might be an Earth GM trait that reads
Immune to burning while attuned to fire
Immune to blind while attuned to air
Immune to chill while attuned to water
Immune to bleed while attuned to earthThis would promote active play: say you’re been chased by a shortbow 1 spamming spirit ranger? switch to earth and negate a huge chunk of his damage. It also would promote active play by opponents and it would be definitely worthy of a GM trait
Sounds OP, but daaamnit, it would be AMAZING! =O
Ele has an extremely small HP pool that can really be decimated by burning/bleeding unlike classes like warrior/necro. I don’t think this would be overpowered if it was placed as a GM trait in the earth line (even though I don’t know much about eles). And remember, as soon as they switched attunements they could once again be hit with the conditions. Most high level tournament eles switch attunements frequently so it would be a way of adding a new level of skill to damage/soft cc prevention
So, I know it’s getting nerfed but I was wondering if anyone had some useful tips for playing S/D? I find this build so unforgiving if I miss a dodge I’m usually dead.
I understand how to play basically every other thief weapon set but I actually find S/D the hardest to play o.o Kinda wondering why that is…
A trait like Diamond Skin is poorly designed… A cooler trait idea might be an Earth GM trait that reads
Immune to burning while attuned to fire
Immune to blind while attuned to air
Immune to chill while attuned to water
Immune to bleed while attuned to earth
This would promote active play: say you’re been chased by a shortbow 1 spamming spirit ranger? switch to earth and negate a huge chunk of his damage. It also would promote active play by opponents and it would be definitely worthy of a GM trait
It might shock you, but it might be you.
I’d like to suggest one thing for thief:
Fleet of Foot: Removes crippled, weakness.
I’d like to see this trait remove burning as well.
It would add an extra incentive to go into Acrobatics and burning is extremely strong on many classes. Right now engineer hard counters most thief builds due to lots and lots of burning.
Nice tournament, we should have weekly 2v2 tournaments
Basically, very skilled top tier players learned how to use S/D to avoid almost all burst while dealing significant damage.
On the flip side, very, very bad players complained about very bad perma-stealth players ganking them in WvW
But, thieves are not really getting nerfed because they are getting a 33% higher base initiative regen. These changes are good for the class in general in my opinion. We might even see the return of d/d to competitive play with the improved initiative regen
They also lowered Initative regen traits (understandably), without adding anything to them to make them interesting or useful (the part that doesn’t make any sense).
Common thief specs (10/30/0/30/0 and 10/30/0/0/30) aren’t going to see much difference in their init regeneration, because opportunist and kleptomaniac are bland, boring, subpar minor traits, and no one is going to slot Quick recovery unless they do something to make it not awful.
It does potentially open up some other specs that avoid worthless init based traits (which means less than 15 points in CS and trickery, very popular trait lines at the moment), but we won’t know that until the new meta stabilizes (assuming all those changes make it into the patch).
The perma-stealth change wasn’t a nerf – IMO permastealth was against the spirit of the game, the way the dev’s designed stealth, and I’m glad to see it. The 1/4s cast time on Inf return sounds like it’ll kill sword, but again we’ll have to see.
They did nothing to address Death blossom, how useless P/P is in general, and their PW “Fix” seems more like a bandaid then a real fix – on paper, it’s mostly nerfs coming to thief.
The only bright point is that 30 acro specs have a buffed Assassins reward to look forward too, and since no one in their right mind will be using quick recovery, You’ll probably see alot of thieves running assassins reward and pain response. New sundering strikes also seems like it’s finally well designed, and being in DA in a bonus because DA needs traits worth taking, but it’s nothing to jump for joy over.
I’m not sure how hard the Opportunist nerf will hit us really when paired with the new +33% initiative regen. Thieves obviously still have lots of useless traits.
It’s clear to me at this point that converting Unload to a condition based attack and converting Death Blossom to power would open up a ton of possibilities for thief in general.
Personally I’d like to see Death blossom keep it’s short evade frame but deal aoe damage of around 800 per crit on a glass cannon thief (for a total of around 2k damage). This would give D/D more survivability and finally a complete weapon kit.
For unload, I’d like to see this attack changed basically to something similar to Sneak Attack (5 bleeds, some power damage). Then I’d like to see the stealth attack changed to a 600 range attack which deals burning damage. Torment could be substituted for either of these attacks too if it was hard to balance burning.
Basically, very skilled top tier players learned how to use S/D to avoid almost all burst while dealing significant damage.
On the flip side, very, very bad players complained about very bad perma-stealth players ganking them in WvW
But, thieves are not really getting nerfed because they are getting a 33% higher base initiative regen. These changes are good for the class in general in my opinion. We might even see the return of d/d to competitive play with the improved initiative regen
Actually both competitive thief builds, 10/30/0/30/0 S/D and 10/30/0/0/30 D/P only had two small sources of condi removal to begin with. Don’t forget that we have one of the best heals in the game which removes burn, bleed, and poison.
The 33% boost to initiative regen will really help all thief specs.
In addition to that, we are seeing big nerfs to the main condition spammers of the meta, like spirit ranger burning proc being nerfed by 33%, necros having some bleeds shaved, and engineers losing perma vigor.
Thieves will never be able to wade through condi spam like warriors or transfer it instantly like necros…but they can avoid a lot of it by shadowstepping and stealthing frequently.
Critical Strike X – Critical Haste. Increase trigger chance to 25%.
I would suggest reworking this trait entirely.
For one, this trait encourages insta-ganking by engaging from stealth and gunning down your opponent before he/she can react.
Another is that a trait like this is just too RNG to be reliable.
Instead, I’d suggest changing the trait to read “Gain 3 seconds of haste when you drop below 33% health”. This would be a more skillbased trait based around winning a sustained, difficult fight.
DO NOT change :
Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.
This is a horrendous idea. I don’t even main thief, but you’re going to nerf numerous builds into the ground. Thieves will go from being alright to being completely garbage tier with this change.
Honestly, take it or leave it, but it’s a bad idea.
Personally, I don’t mind since perma stealth isn’t THAT great. The 33% boost to initiative regen is a fair exchange in my opinion. It will really benefit builds like S/P and D/D. Most D/P thieves don’t play 10/30/30/0/0 in tournament play, and that build is pure cheese in WvW and quit frustrating to many players.
Generally, this looks really good! Nice work
The devs are struggling to put out minor numeric tweaks every 2~ months…
Adjusting AI… that’d be like utter hell for them.
Although the leaderboard is pretty bad, I’d suggest reexamining your gameplay rather than blaming the fact that you have a bad rating entirely on the leaderboard system.
I’d really love it if Anet had created two different classes: Beastmaster, and Ranger.
The beastmaster would be a pet-specialist with greatsword, staff, axes, while the ranger would focus specifically on ranged attacks with maybe dagger/swords only as melee weapons
Don’t nerf doom’s duration. Give doom a half second cast time where the overhead animation appears above right as the cast starts. This would make it counterplayable.
All of this damage was done in the span of about two to three seconds. I was dead before I even had a chance to react. This is running full Toughness/Vitality exotics with ascended trinkets.
Explain to me why this is allowed. And before you launch into the usual “glass cannon” blanket justification, any DP/shortbow thief worth their weight in salt is pretty much impossible to catch with the stealth spam even in full Berserker’s… so that’s a moot point.
First of all, he was running D/D. Second of all, he wasn’t stealthed when he engaged with you, or else cloak and dagger wouldn’t have worked). Third, you didn’t have over 3k toughness.
That’s the question I face recently in PvP.
I could play builds/classes that require skill and try and have fun…or I could hop on my necro and spirit ranger and be competitive.
I’ve played necromancer since I started PvPing and now it just feels like either the enemy team lets me spam stuff all over them or they don’t. Spirit ranger I can literally eat a sandwich and win most of my 1v1s with one hand. The game feels so black vs white, strong vs weak, hard counter now.
On the other side, it definitely is harder to have fun when you are running a weapon set you like (for me, S/P and D/D on my thief) and get roflstomped by the meta classes.
They both look like santa claus
But just so you know, s/d thief, phantasm mesmer, and spirit ranger are all rage inducing to try and fight 1v1 against.
This is basically it. Try adding the warrior on your list, OP, and you’re good to go.
So you are saying that if I win a 1v1 with, say, an Ele or a Guardian my enemies will acknowledge their loss (being it because of lack of skill or build countered) without QQing?
Most of the time yea. If you beat someone 1v1 on ele you get respect haha
I don’t mean anything bad by this at all, but if you think that any of those builds with the exception of the 20/20/0/0/30 one are viable in a competitive environment then you have no idea what you’re talking about. :S
The two builds mentioned by infantrydev are the only two real viable builds that we have, and I would even go as far as to say that the 10/30/0/0/30 D/P build isn’t even that great since you don’t even have that much burst damage and hardly any survivability.
To not be a kitten and answer your questions though, the builds work roughly like this:
10/30/0/30/0 S/D + SB: Far point assaulter and roamer, uses AA, Infiltrator’s Strike and Flanking/Larcenous Strike for great sustain and mobility and to remove boons from boon bunkers. Can survive in the team fight if necessary thanks to high evasion and 30 in Acrobatics. Can also apply heavy damage and poison when necessary.
10/30/0/0/30 D/P + SB: Same deal again, far point assaulter and roamer, uses burst combo to bring down low health targets and turn a fight in your teams favour. Cannot survive in the middle of the team fight but is able to apply heavy damage and poison with SB until a burst opportunity arises.
I can provide links to these builds if you’d like.
What Incurafy says is correct. Also, D/P functions as a steal /basi daze/stun build with mediocre burst but decent sustain due to blackpowder on pistol offhand.
For me, tPvP thieves have basically been reduced to mobile decap bots who can’t usually even go toe to toe with builds like spirit ranger in a 1v1 scenario
If you are having trouble being called a noob, perhaps the internet isn’t right for you.
But just so you know, s/d thief, phantasm mesmer, and spirit ranger are all rage inducing to try and fight 1v1 against.
Try playing a clerics pistol/pistol thief and you’ll never have the problem of getting smacktalked after winning a 1v1 again -trollface-
Divide them into teams of 1,3,5,7,9 and 2,4,6,8,10 by their rating.
That’s an outrageous advantage for the first team. Are you sure it’s as easy as you think it is?
A dev has already explained the different models he’s working with in pretty decent detail in some other threads. It sounds like the new model will be ready for the next PvP update.
That isn’t nearly as bad of an advantage as many matches currently have 5 top 500 players vs people from the 80th percentile
Your thread doesn’t even have the two actual competitive builds available to thief…
10/30/0/0/30 D/P
and
10/30/0/30/0 S/D
you mean there is no chance low MMR can beat high MMR?
Thats the other 10% of games. Where it’s close or the low MMR manages to pull one out.
The funniest thing though is when horrible match making combines with horrible leaving rules and a team of 4 super high MMR players beats a team of lowbies.
I’ve both won and lost like this on the incredibly imbalanced map, Spirit Watch.
What an utter disappointment.
Think about how many solo queue games you see end with a difference of more than 200 points…
Think about the fact that this could be fixed in a day. Literally. It’s such an easy thing to program correctly. Find 10 players. Divide them into teams of 1,3,5,7,9 and 2,4,6,8,10 by their rating.
Add a tournament limit of rank 10 before you can join team/solo queue.
Exactly why does the sPvP community have to wait for essential, basic changes like these while you pump out PvE content by the truckload?
Literally 90% of my games are blowouts or 4v5s.
Axe isn’t nearly as good as dagger imo for a power necro build. Dagger mainhand hits like a truck on auto and you can generate lots of lifeforce with it. It also has a great immobilize to make your opponent stand in your well.
Here’s my power necro build that I played for a while:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBIhZakRrSPTzTjePhA949wFnJqwwQ9YdYnPE-TsAg0CnIQShkDJDSSksINo4Yx8DA
How about putting a grandmaster trait in Deadly Arts that gave dagger autoattacks a chance to proc either torment or bleeding?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Charges-instead-of-Chance-on-Crit-Hit/
is how I feel about that.
well, perhaps it could add stack of torment to the second skill in the dagger chain, and 1 stack of torment to the third. that would make it so that people wanting to use dagger for condi application would have to try and stick on a target maybe synergizing with dagger #4
I’d like to see death blossom be a power based attack which stacked vulnerability and crippled a target for maybe 1-2 seconds. Keeping its evade it would allow D/D thieves to latch onto a target, apply lots of vuln and keep them crippled while the team could then focus that target as well.
A lot of the rage would go away if Anet fixed its matchmaking system to not match high mmr vs low mmr.
Games being constantly decided by a 200+ margin is definitely contributing to the problem.
How about putting a grandmaster trait in Deadly Arts that gave dagger autoattacks a chance to proc either torment or bleeding?
have been playing warrior over a year, a week ago I made a thief just for pvp… was easiest class I have ever tested… I give hardest to drive -title to engineers ^^
Hotjoin herooooo
^Because Jonathan Sharp wants warriors to be big beefy manly chunky hunks of meatiness.
I totally agree… Less conditions and less condition removal would be an amazing thing for the game from a tactical and positioning standpoint… Imagine if getting a cripple or chill on someone meant you could actually kite them. Imagine if you got torment stacked it would actually make your opponent want to stay still. Imagine if poison was an actual counter to healing and bunker builds. It would be nice.
I was fiddling around with a sword/sword warrior build earlier, and I ended up dueling a (greatsword? I dunno, he was Asura and really hard to see details on) Ranger, and I noticed that even with Leg Specialist, multiple ways of applying Cripple, and even Stomp and Bull’s Charge, it was really hard to keep him slowed down. I don’t know jack about the Ranger class, so I don’t know what it was that was taking Cripple and Immobilize off him so quickly (looks like there’s a 30 point trait that transfers conditions to the pet, maybe that was it), but I was spending a lot of time slowed down, while he was spending most of the time zipping around with no conditions and Swiftness.
Near as I could tell, it was happening as automatically as me applying those Cripples and Immobilizes, and it’s not factoring in both me and him spamming our dodge like crazy. Between condition removal speed and evasion… it just feels excessive.
Switched back to my Warhorn build for the next game, and… it’s really pretty ridiculous how easily I was removing/converting conditions on myself and teammates.
I don’t know enough about the game to say what should be done about it, if anything, but it just doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s because WoW is the only other MMORPG with PvP I’ve ever cared to pay attention to, and things worked… quite a bit different there.
Anet could do so much for this game by simply making condition damage augment/supplementary to ‘vanilla’ damage. With condition damage as a secondary form of damage, we could then talk about toning down condition removal which would allow soft control conditions such as chill, cripple, immobilize to really shine when used in a smart way to contribute to offense or defense.
Dunno why everyone kittenes about Healing Signet, yea maybe it should be reduced a little bit but you make it seem to be invincible. If its so good how come I get absolutely murdered by conditions if I dont have berserker stance up?
Probably because you go romping in the AoE like its a field of flowers because you play warrior
hahaahah omfgf i just spit my drank out….ROMPING IN THE AOE LIKE ITS A FIELD OF FLOWERS.
Can’t tell if troll or srs o.0 lol
I totally agree… Less conditions and less condition removal would be an amazing thing for the game from a tactical and positioning standpoint… Imagine if getting a cripple or chill on someone meant you could actually kite them. Imagine if you got torment stacked it would actually make your opponent want to stay still. Imagine if poison was an actual counter to healing and bunker builds. It would be nice.
To be honest I really like the change for rangers. In tournaments, that spot is much better off being used as a stunbreak or spirit, signet, etc.
But, in WvW, if a ranger wants to solo roam, one of their main enemies and biggest counters will be stealth thieves, so that utility could be worth taking. It doesn’t really hurt thieves in tPvP but helps WvWers deal with them more effectively, meaning less QQ and therefore less direct thief nerfs.
At least warriors are varied in terms of builds and play styles – unlike classes like Necros and other classes who are just clones of each other. Every Necro, Guardian, Mesmer, etc is the same in every match. This goes with many classes other than warriors.
This is only because they are so strong that it doesn’t really matter what they play. Most classes can compete against warriors only if they run their most powerful spec.
^This
Dunno why everyone kittenes about Healing Signet, yea maybe it should be reduced a little bit but you make it seem to be invincible. If its so good how come I get absolutely murdered by conditions if I dont have berserker stance up?
Probably because you go romping in the AoE like its a field of flowers because you play warrior
The good:
-Tooltips are helpful and informative
-Condition floaters are better
-Sigil fixed (finally…)
-Buffs to underused traitlines/traits such as Blood Magic and Venom Share are definitely appreciated.
The Bad
-Nothing done about horrible rewards, match making, leaderboards
-Warriors had completely unneccessary buff to imobilize and hammer #4 which is inexcusable
-Pistol Whip nerfed accidentally
-This patch ultimately did not provide enough valuable changes for the 4 months we waited.
Not working for me either. sigh.
First off all, there is no way you can get 5sec AoE chill by yourself. Venom doesn’t work that way. If your AoE hit 4 people then everyone of them will get 1.25sec chill and thats all you will get from a single use Ice Drake Venom.
Secondly, you have no initiative regen to pump out your Unload as much as you can.
Third, you can do very good damage IF no one dodge your obvious Unload attack animation.
Fourth, in a game like GW2 where jumping on someone and then burst him down is a simple task and you still think 2 dodges, 2 Stealths and one Shadowstep is enough to keep you last the fight then I have no idea what to say.
Lastly, 300 toughness is NOT going to touch the skin of what D/P offers in term of defensive and offensive.
You are right about the 5 second AoE chill. However, P/P with a venom proc halves a D/P thieves HP right off the bat. It also locks on even if the thief stealths. (It can probably do almost 10k in a mid fight if I’m being buffed by allies. You are also forgeting that Shortbow has a dodge on 3, shadowsteps on 5.
This is a build I made today and started using in tournaments more successfully than any P/P build I’ve tried before.
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-cRRV;1Rwk0-Z57PFd0;9;4T9T;037B4;018B;4INV4;2KJG4KJG45BI
Leeching venoms adds over 2k damage onto your unload skill as well as a 2k heal (from spider venom, less from the other two).
Basically you buff your teammates giving them longlasting might stacks and venom procs while dealing large amounts of damage from range with unload for single targets and clusterbomb for team fights. Try to stay out of the middle of the fight except to share your venoms.
how many tPvP did you win with this crap?
or should I say, did you even find a team willing to play with you with that crap build?
sorry mate, I seriously like when people try to theorycrafting something unusual, but let’s not post everything that comes to mind
Well, yesterday I believe I went something like 10-6 playing this build against people anywhere from 80%-top 100 in solo queue. I’m currently ranked at 86%, floating between 80%-800 depending on what class I’m playing.
It’s kind of funny how hostile the thief community is toward P/P. I posted this build because it’s the only thing I’ve ever tried with P/P that hasn’t gotten ground into a pulp, and because I’ve seen many people interested in trying to play P/P in medium level tournament play.
I am surprised that you actually live long enough to use all those Venoms before you go down.
Well, proccing the venoms separately is about an extra 4k heal on a 36 second cooldown as well as a lyssa rune proc during most fights using basilisk venom. Then the fact that I am usually kiting or standing somewhere out of immediate reach. Since I’m also taking shadow arts, that gets me an extra 300 toughness over a regular 10/30/0/0/30 D/P thief as well, even if it doesn’t help much.
This is a build I made today and started using in tournaments more successfully than any P/P build I’ve tried before.
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-cRRV;1Rwk0-Z57PFd0;9;4T9T;037B4;018B;4INV4;2KJG4KJG45BI
Leeching venoms adds over 2k damage onto your unload skill as well as a 2k heal (from spider venom, less from the other two).
Basically you buff your teammates giving them longlasting might stacks and venom procs while dealing large amounts of damage from range with unload for single targets and clusterbomb for team fights. Try to stay out of the middle of the fight except to share your venoms.
Useless kitten.
I made this build believing both venomshare and p/p to be trash, and I was surprised that they turned out to not be. I suggest you don’t bother commenting since you obviously haven’t tried venomshare.
So, you pick 5 second chill over shadow refuge (assuming you manage to land it)?
Utility you bring is almost non-existant, and you deal no damage as for a glass cannon. Putting 30 points in shadow arts gives you nothing. Pure trash spec.
A 5 second AoE chill if I use it on clusterbomb. As well as a 5 second AoE chill for anyone on my team near to me on the point, which also does 1600 damage for each of use and a 1600 heal for anyone proccing it. If you think this build does no damage, I’d suggest actually trying it and you will be surprised.
Spider venom in addition is extremely useful for dealing with warriors because it allows for near constant poison duration on them in a midfight.
Here is my ranking of the classes for solo queueing:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Best-Classes-for-Solo-Queue-Ratings/first#post3063175
I think most people would tend to agree.