Guild Wars 2

so how can a max damage build stay above 90%? You make it sound way too easy.
In a max damage build, any scratch will put you below 90%.
As I said before, in any scenario, where the encounter can actually be called a fight, scholar runes are just not that good.

Only, if there is momentum. A huge blob of players rushing forward could simply blow away some meager 10 players due to the bigger mass involved.
If you want to make things realistic, then go all the way.

Ranger Runes win by far. In optimized dungeon runs, scholar runes might be slightly better, but just compare the price and you’ll know, what you grab anyways.
Scholar runes cost three times as much, while they will only provide peak dps at the beginning of the fight as long as it can actually be called a fight. As soon, as you take a hit, your dps takes a significant dive.
On the other hand, ranger runes will always provide that 5% bonus.

Now, once you start comparing them to raw stat stuff like divinity runes and ruby orbs, things get a bit more complicated. Here, you will actually have to do some calculations.

But between Ranger Runes and Scholar Runes, Ranger wins.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

The only racial worth looking at and considering for viable use is the human hounds of balthazar elite. The rest of the racials are terrible in terms of damage and/or utility. As an ele your FGS is your only good elite, and as a non-human ele you should never change it out. Tornado sounds cool but it doesn’t make you invulnerable so you will just get shot down by putting a big target on your head. Though Tornado is the only elite you have access to underwater so you might consider getting it for that.

Don’t look down on norn spirit forms. Become the Wolf, for example, gives you incredible sustain and become the snow leopard is a staple for many classes with weak elites and limited escape skills. That’s mostly WvW roaming, tho.
There are actually players, kitten-rolled to norn just to have snow leopard.

The drawback of them is obviously their very short duration and long cooldowns.

Per definition, “cuteness” does not depend on the occupation, but rather on the ears and eyes.
Even though, some ambitious individual might develop emotional attachments to certain professions or fields of work, and from there develop further attraction towards persons working in those resorts, ultimately, that’s merely a strategic interest.
The concept of “cuteness” is typically born from the natural instinct to protect anything, which looks or behaves remotely infantile.
That being said, I find Engineers rather cute, because their clumsy attempts at creating automated weaponry in fact do look like infants work to me. Those turrets are neither energy efficient nor really durable, while not even delving into any recent scientific discoveries. Instead, those skritt-brains and college rejects try to compensate for their lack in creativity by mimicking primitive Charr technology.
Look further into their creations and you will find a flame thrower with an inefficient pump system and a crude steel tank, prone to corrosion.
An asura being incapable of doing proper science and thus resorting to petty tricks and crude, but admittedly sturdy charr technology is probably the closest to what you would call “cute”.

Signed, Pathologist Noma, College of Statics

walk through a shallow puddle…
poof.
Oops. Not so shallow. Had no means to know. But fleshie is gone 8[

Nuorus.8415:

naphack.9346:

Nuorus.8415:

Zacchary.6183:

Nuorus.8415:

Thieves dies too easy when build such way. Don’t go glass cannon and u will have more survival ability. Any class dies fast if build glass cannon.

Counter to your future arguments: Perma stealth.

Permastealth makes a thief completely useless and they still die quickly.

Dies quickly only on hands of those who doesn’t think at all what skills does and when u should use em. Perma stealth saves your character from death, certainly sometimes u give up killing the enemy. You have to give something to gain something. You can’t have it all.
Your Thief is squishy? Then it kills enemies fast. Except if someone goes really not-so-smart with the equipment and the traits.

Warrior has highest base stats, doesn’t have any dirty tricks.

Guardian does have nice base stats except health, has nice utility skills to cower up the lack of hp

Elementalist has 4 elements to roll over and so wont have high hp nor armor.

Necromancer has deathshroud, almost second healthpool. Doesn’t have high armor.

Engineer has many dirty tricks to cover up the lack of high defensive stats

Mesmer has clones + short invisibility + some dirty tricks

Ranger has all the shame and weaknesses

Thief has High burst dps, perma stealth, low survival ability specially if not given up something to make it better. Thief kills fastest and can hide after that. Or it can give up perma stealth and dodge all the time while dealing nice damage.

I don’t want to share my theif build but it has 40points on defensive traits, it deals medium damage and has medium survival ability, dodges a lot. I only use it on tPvP not WvW which is ofc different but I can’t say it’s impossible to copy the build to WvW. Also I got a friend who can do 1vs3 with his thief. We bouth duel a lot. Mostly 1vs1 but when we get kitteny we want more.

Lyssa runes are very effective on these medium survival ability medium damage balance builds.

iPan Get offhand pistol and find out how easy thief really is.

yes, yes, the infamous 30/30/30/30/30 builds.

This and the other answer above shows how close minded people you are. You just whine and expect things to get better like spoiled kids. Problem being learn2Play issue you blame others and go with these really unrealistic “parody” replies.

And dissing Lyssa runes? That’s my future argument to all of you. You diss lyssa, that’s the proving factor about not knowing much about the game.

Whining how not being able to be powerfull while on permastealth tells me you didn’t read what I typed, you just saw that part and whined.

Do not copy paste builds, learn to build yourself, experiment on sets, do some thinking yourself. It’s the only way to advance and learn how things works. I spent about 500g to test stuff on WvW and my main income is salvaging my old items. The ones which didn’t work. But in the result I got what I wanted. Other build than popular builds. Works. Fun. Different.

You guys want to spend nothing and gain everything. That’s your problem.

fyi, I almost never copy builds…
One of the only builds, I ever copied, was probably my condition bunker ranger, which was ripped straight from Xsorus.
If I want to copy a build, I usually evaluate the different elements, of which the build consists and then match and mix it with my own preferences. If you want something, you have to give up on something else. The difference between similar builds is usually what was given up on. This is usually personal preference.

Avigrus.2871:

I use the following set up;

Dagger (Sigil of Fire) / Warhorn (Sigil of Battle)
Axe (Sigil of Ice) / Focus (Sigil of Battle)

If you got high crit, you won’t get many might stacks from this build…
If you are low crit, your fire/ice will never proc due to being on cooldown most of the time and having a too low chance to proc for the remainder.

Nuorus.8415:

Zacchary.6183:

Nuorus.8415:

Thieves dies too easy when build such way. Don’t go glass cannon and u will have more survival ability. Any class dies fast if build glass cannon.

Counter to your future arguments: Perma stealth.

Permastealth makes a thief completely useless and they still die quickly.

Dies quickly only on hands of those who doesn’t think at all what skills does and when u should use em. Perma stealth saves your character from death, certainly sometimes u give up killing the enemy. You have to give something to gain something. You can’t have it all.
Your Thief is squishy? Then it kills enemies fast. Except if someone goes really not-so-smart with the equipment and the traits.

Warrior has highest base stats, doesn’t have any dirty tricks.

Guardian does have nice base stats except health, has nice utility skills to cower up the lack of hp

Elementalist has 4 elements to roll over and so wont have high hp nor armor.

Necromancer has deathshroud, almost second healthpool. Doesn’t have high armor.

Engineer has many dirty tricks to cover up the lack of high defensive stats

Mesmer has clones + short invisibility + some dirty tricks

Ranger has all the shame and weaknesses

Thief has High burst dps, perma stealth, low survival ability specially if not given up something to make it better. Thief kills fastest and can hide after that. Or it can give up perma stealth and dodge all the time while dealing nice damage.

I don’t want to share my theif build but it has 40points on defensive traits, it deals medium damage and has medium survival ability, dodges a lot. I only use it on tPvP not WvW which is ofc different but I can’t say it’s impossible to copy the build to WvW. Also I got a friend who can do 1vs3 with his thief. We bouth duel a lot. Mostly 1vs1 but when we get kitteny we want more.

Lyssa runes are very effective on these medium survival ability medium damage balance builds.

iPan Get offhand pistol and find out how easy thief really is.

yes, yes, the infamous 30/30/30/30/30 builds.

I have no respect for people who only see the opponent’s actions as the sole reason, they died and go to the forums to cry.
Seriously, the only time, I complain, when I die in wvw is, when I get myself killed by an unlucky last refuge pop. That’s like 5 seconds of rant, 15, if I am in teamspeak and actually do have audience, who can perceive my rant, but then it’s settled. No reason to fuss over stuff like that. You go into wvw to kill, you should be prepared to get killed and you should especially be prepared for your opponent to do whatever it takes to kill you.

WvW is the place, you take all your experience, all your skills and all the gear, you have gathered over time and put them to the test against other players. It was never meant to be fair, so don’t complain, if your opponent doesn’t adjust his level of strength and gear to whatever you are having at the moment. It’s a power, they rightfully earned, so they should use them to their full extent and come forth with all their might.
Being pitied by an enemy is shameful and holding back against a weaker opponent is an insult towards them.

Nokaru.7831:

I like Retaliation because it rewards me for simply receiving a Boon from an ally. I especially love it when a Mesmers uses Feedback on a zerg with Retaliation.

…which is another way of saying, it rewards you for simply standing there and taking a beating.
Not much active play involved there…

Sigil of fire actually sounds like a decent idea.

Also, if you have difficulties kiting opponents, get signet of shadows for more movespeed and caltrops to spam cripple. The combination of these two will allow you to seperate melee mobs into small packages to pistol whip away.

It does benefit from signet of the beastmaster, tho.

sword+pistol, caltrops.
with caltrops, you can keep melees at a distance, so you can kill them off in small packages.
S/P got evades on pistol whip and a blind fied to facetank mobs.
Short bow is nice, too. Poison field and spam some clusters to combo weakness, then keep autoattacking and kiting.

That’s, why I say warriors with Signet of might.
the shots will simply punch through any reflect walls then.

Nick.6972:

naphack.9346:

don’t you go reducing necro to conditions.
Powermancers are amazing.

Could I perhaps get the build if you have it please?

There is no “the build” for powermancer. Anything, with focus on physical damage is a powermancer.

What I currently use in pvp:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAndWjMaV7ZbibM8JEIFvXtEp4YUGqHrD88hA-TsAA1CnIqRVjrGTNyas1MIYRwECA
Spectral shroud build with soldier’s. very hard to take down, while constantly dishing out 4k crits with life blast. Axe/Focus is mainly because of boon removal. Can run Dagger offhand for condi removal or dagger mainhand for immob, if it suits your style.
Many powermancer builds are death shroud builds.

My current WvW build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAodWjQaZ6daiaMcKCpCYb6B3Gn4gK4+IFDrYA-j0xAoLBR6PY2rIas1uioxqXw0lER1ejioVLEQ/xA-w
It’s a rather crude well build, but it will certainly be the last one to fall, while providing protection and nice effects for the team.
If you ever find yourself going to PvE with this build drop well of corruption for well of suffering and switch out focused rituals for weakening shroud.
Still, there are better well builds out there, but it works for me.

Not doing much PvE and especially not much dungeon content, so my builds are typically not the most effective dps wise.

what I think about lava axe:

“catch!”

About the weapon: It is mostly outmatched by staff both in range aswell as in damage. Not to mention, staff is also AoE. The axe was probably meant to be a ranged option for some wonky d/f builds, but it’s just not worth the hassle… If you want to conjure stuff, go hammer. More damage, more utility and more group support.

old trick is old.
lich-wellbombing is more fun anyway…
Gotta test some stuff with norn transforms, tho. might be even better.

don’t you go reducing necro to conditions.
Powermancers are amazing.

gotta use killshot warriors.
imagine 30 guys walking like that and then seeing them all kneeling down and that simultaneous glow…
Also, that simultaneous signet of might… And all of em spamming FGJ… Holy kitten, everyone goes on about Drakkar Lake being a roleplay server… Gotta see whether there actually are some roleplayers around to do stuff like that.

BigEvs.6971:

Chaba.5410:

Gbok, it is the same, not different. There is no stopping a grenade toss, grenade barrage, or the 10x hits of ft 1.

I also play ranger, and have nearly met my demise barraging zergs using retaliation. He means that when you have channeled barrage it attacks several times over the course of several seconds. The damage and retal from grenades all occur at once, while the barrage occurs over many seconds. The difference here is that the ranger likely realized that what they did was a mistake by the first volley of arrows, but there is literally no way to stop the rest of them if they’ve channeled the skill. The difference is slim, but whereas an engineer can throw one volley of grenades and stop, and ranger must sit there and hope their heal is off CD.
It’s simply the difference between receiving retal all at once from a mistake or being unable to stop attacking and receiving retal in pulses long after you realized you should stop attacking.
The outcomes are generally the same, but saying that the actions are the same is not totally correct.

In a standard grenade spam, by the time, the first wave of grenades hit, you have thrown 3 sets of grenades and a grenade barrage. These grenades are mid-air, there is no way to stop them and they all will eventually hit.
Barrage = 7 grenades with 3 targets each = 21 targets, the 3 sets of nades = 3 sets of 3 nades with 5 targets each = 45 targets. total: 66 targets.
Let’s say, the average retal damage is 300 to make it simple.
300*66=19800 damage. And that is only, if you immediately realize, what you did.

I leveled purely with birds.
dps>all.

hit enemy twice. drop target. Hit 1 twice in quick succession. You are now already 600 range from your opponent.
turn and use hornet sting, turn and use monarch leap. There you go.

but… Skilled players actually use the chain attacks to disengage…

8/10, but Fri sounds a bit short.

My new elementalist(just hit 80) is named Pinja Bjornsdottir.

Bjornsdottir roughly translates as “daughter of bear”.
I also chuckle, whenever I cut down a Pine tree with her

I rather have 3 immobilizes at 5 seconds each or some airborne assistance than some fluffy fellow who can’t do anything but take punishment.

Rednik.3809:

Because this is not even a duel? He cannot kill you, you cannot kill him. If you are using same logic, then if you run as bunker against bunker and no one can land a kill for 20+ min, you both must go to forum and start screaming “I cannot kill X spec, kitten immortal ANET FIX IN SO BROKEN OP”.

First you said, if I can not catch any other build except gs+s/w, I am bad and need to l2p, now, you tell me, it’s a matter of builds?
And why the kitten can’t he kill me, just cause he got a greatsword slotted? Might be the good old GS+Mace with a zerk+valk setup, who knows? A greatsword is enough to make any condition ranger/necromancer/mesmer/[insert any other low mobility class/build here] unable to kill him. Doesn’t mean, he can’t kill them. Of course, unless he runs some lemongrass melandru setup, it will be hard to catch the ranger with a skull crack and even then, he is not guaranteed to succeed. But it’s still far from “he can’t kill you”, while all it takes for him to get away is a whirl into rush.

you have to keep in mind that the 30% extra cond duration also apply to poison and burn, aswell as cripple, chill and weakness, not only bleeds. Also, the difference between 85% and 100% will probably equate to an extra bleed tick on pretty much all bleeds, you dish out. The shortest bleeds are only the most relevant ones.

as some sites use some weird rounding, I am gonna do my own calculations, using focusing crystals instead of maintenance oil, because with a semi-decent fury uptime and 65-68% base crit rate, depending on equip quality, there shouldn’t be much reason to push precision any further.
Full corruption stacks, no guard or ruin stacks:

Keep in mind, I can’t test ingame right now, so it’s all calculated on paper.

100% bleed build: 1404 cond damage, bleeds deal ~112 damage per tick.
Crippling Shot: 12 ticks, 12*112= 1356
Crossfire: 6 ticks, 6*112 = 672
Spike Trap: 45 ticks, 45*112= 5040
Splitblade: 60 ticks, 60*112= 6720
Talon: 48 ticks, 48*112= 5376

85% bleed build: 1565 cond damage, 120 damage per tick
Crippling Shot: 11 ticks, 11*120 = 1320
Crossfire: 5 ticks, 5*120=600
Spike Trap: 42 ticks, 42*120=5040(!!)
Splitblade: 55 ticks, 55*120=6600
Talon: 42 ticks, 42*120=5040

However, let’s forget those long duration bleeds here. It’s pointless to assume they will stay on the target, cause if they do, you have won the fight anyway.
the matter at hand is bleeding edges, because most of our burst comes from putting huge stacks of short bleeds on the target.
3 ticks at 112 vs 4 ticks at 120?
336 vs 420 damage? for every single potential bleed, which may proc?
that’s like a 42% damage increase on sharpened edges.
Also, if you hit the bleed cap, all those sharpened edge bleeds will remain on target for an extra 0.7 seconds, without dealing any damage, so this might also help optimizing the dps vs high hp targets, like champs when taking a tower with a 5 man group.

The thing is, the higher the baseline cond damage from stuff like might, corruption, guard buffs, guild buffs, ruin buff, warrior banners and whatnot is, the more the duration build will pull ahead in damage.

If you go banners, you want a long bow.
These two just go so well together. Banner range, longbow range, banner reg. Takes 30 trait points in one line.
Why longbow?
-Banners are for point defense, longbow excels at point defense.
-Drop a fire field with bow, then throw in all the banners for huge might stacks to start the battle.
-Banners pretty much keep you bound to a location, so having a 1200 range attack is great. You don’t want to be the one who has fallen into the arctic ocean and has the choice between going out of the water and dying within 5 seconds or staying in the water and dying within 15 seconds. If you are bombarded by a ranged opponent, while sticking to a banner, you can fight back easily, rather than having to pick up the banner and chase after him.
-you are specced for group support anyway, so you might aswell get some long range immobilize and a fire field.

I kind of like the build. Sadly, I just got some healing cond gear for my ranger, so I won’t get to test this any time soon(gotta equip other chars too and can’t keep cluttering a single toon with all kinds of gear… before I get a third set of gear for my ranger, I will have to get my necro some cond gear).

Suggestions:
It might be worth looking into putting these 10 points from nature magic to marksmanship for malicious training.
Will make your pet’s immobilizes even work against those melandru lemongrass monsters. Also, the traitline bonus(+10% cond duration) is probably welcome.
Also might be worth a shot looking into giver’s weapons, which might free up the runes for a full set of any rune, which would provide more overall stats and possibly some utility.

Edit: you are overstating the potential bleeds, you can dish out.
Keep in mind, Sigil of Earth has a 2 second icd.

Edit: Just made a build with my suggestions:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMMQNAnYVnIVUXZcFaBxaZgYVAQtHTy8Yi9wQO6RlspoA-jkCBIggohBiWAkqIQJnFRjtEcIaFMhVxETBjIq2YuIa1RBATA-w
70% cond duration, 100%(total) bleed duration.

Having the bleed at 100% means, sharpened edges will have an extra tick.

mobility warrior…
It’s basically what every thief wants to become when he’s grown up… :X

Flissy.4093:

redslion.9675:

We need a “Remove target” hotkey.

Escape works, doesnt it?

escape also doubles as having 2483729 other functions like cancelling other stuff, stopping autoattack, opening the menu, closing windows etc etc etc.
Sometimes you have to press it twice to drop target, sometimes only once, and if you press it too often, the menu will pop up.
In the heat of battle, you can’t observe, what exactly esc does. You need a quick fire and forget way to drop target, thus, I typically click on the ground, which is actually quite a feat, when swarmed by minions and mezz clones.

Once you are in the thick of things, finding an empty spot to click on might already take enough of your attention span for you to miss that one stun heading your way. There is even a button to put away your weapon(hell, it’s actually on the more useful side), so why not have a button, which drops target? It’s no very advanced function and having a button dedicated to only that action would certainly help.

Rednik.3809:

If you are losing to GS+Sw+Wh build – you are bad and this is L2P issue.
If you are cannot catch any other buld except GS+Sw+Wh – you are bad and this is L2P issue.
If you are losing to GS+Sw+Wh build in survival setup (PVT+lemongrass) – you are extremely bad and this is not even L2P issue anymore, just go to PvE.
/thread

tell me, oh enlightened one, how a condition ranger should catch a gs only warrior.
As soon as the target is further than 1.2k range away, it’s practically gone. The only chance is turning your back to the opponent, use sword 2, waste stun breaker, select opponent, sword 2 again… And the opponent will just whirl away again.

Nowadays, I run a GS+S/W warrior from time to time. I typically only scout, push around dollys and intercept dollys, while taking one or the other camp, tho.
The only way for me to win a duel is for the opponent to not run much soft cc removal, as I am almost entirely dependant on immob/cripple to be able to deal damage. No bonus immob duration means anyone running melandru lemongrass gets a free pass.

If I lose the fight, it’s basically warhorn to remove any soft cc, immediately savage leap, swap to gs and whirl, evading any possible followup cc, then bullrush into rush into weapon swap into savage leap.
In an instant, I have created a 3.5k range gap, which pretty much warrants a free ooc.
Now, you said, slotting bull rush would weaken your defense, because it takes the space of a stance.
Bull rush is kind of needed in this build, as for actual combat with rather low damage, you just need that one interrupt to make a difference.

Why is it not a won battle for the opponent, if I survive?
If I survive close to a camp of ours, they are not free to take it, as they would, if they had killed me. As soon, as they engage it, I will jump back in. I may not be able to kill everything in a straight up 1v1, but someone, who is immobilized, crippled and poisoned with the occasional blind spam and knock down? I’d be a moron to lose that fight.
Same with fights in enemy territory: You may have driven me off, but I don’t have to walk from spawn, I am still around and free to take a camp or slap a dolly.
There is a distinct difference between driving off a stealth thief(which is a win on your part) and driving off a mobility warrior: The stealth thief is strictly pvp, with the occasional yak slap. If he can’t get a kill, he wasted his time, because he’s out for kills. The warrior can do dangerous stuff like soloing camps quickly and sniping yaks from halfway across the map within a blink of an eye. It’s a calm, calculating playstyle, taking, whatever is in front of him, while controlling the supply flow on the map.

I certainly would not mind, if GS 5 was nerfed. That skill really feels a bit too convenient.

I run with full Valk armor, ascended berserker rings and Amulet, rest exo bers.
As for WvW, I find 36% crit chance pre buffs to be sufficient.
Depending on the food and bloodlust/guild buffs etc, that will be around 60% crit chance, once fury kicks in. Enough to get plenty of crits when laying down some heartseekers on the target.

I’ve ran something similar with dual rifles. Truly feels like a sniper, but it just lacks any sort of utility.
With the rifle build, I evetually turned to Rifle/Long Bow and gave it a spin in spvp. It can dish out horrendous damage(pin down → kill shot) against bads and that’s about it.
The thing is, if you got fast hands, you can swap almost twice in the cool down time(9 s) of the sigil. No need to waste all the utility for a one trick combo.

Sigil of Intelligence is not a bad thought with these skills, but you shouldn’t overdo it by going double sigil with the same weapon… Especially, if you are a warrior and got fast hands.

As for the axe, some set with a stun/root and the axe in the other set might do the trick.

Something like sword/mace(leap, point blank tremor, eviscerate) + axe/axe or bow(pin) + axe/mace sounds deadly.

Auesis.7301:

Instead of removing Reanimator, like every sane Necromancer has begged them to do for months, they buffed it.

We’re not losing Last Refuge.

Next patch:
Last refuge: Cooldown reduced to 30.

On a more serious note, I for my part don’t mind that little bugger from reanimator. It’s a tiny poke of damage and shields one ally from AoE in a blob. There is only one situation, where this trait actually tries to outright kill you and that’s Lupicus.
Last Refuge can kill you anywhere, any time. If you have 10+ stacks of confusion and try to cleanse them while below 40% hp… boom. Dead. If you are in a fierce melee battle and try to CnD to regain some spacing… Poof. Revealed. Possibly dead.

As I have a level 2 engineer, I feel as qualified to answer to this thread as all the stalwart defenders of retaliation.

Let’s simply analyze the answers, we got so far, which stated, retal is fine, as it is:

1) “Don’t run full glass canon.”
Now, if they don’t run gc anymore, the disparity in damage will only increase. Then, retaliation will not only deal a bit more damage than they dish out with their attacks, it will deal significantly more damage.
The difference will be that they will still proceed to kill themselves, while they at the same time pose far less of a threat.

2) “Don’t attack when the have retal”, might as well say “accept your fate and die.”
Guild Wars 2 is no highly strategic game. The one who keeps dishing out damage while reducing the damage he himself receives in the most efficient way, will ultimately win the fight. It’s not like there are any ways to turn the table, and if there are, they usually don’t benefit from you just sitting there and taking hits without fighting back beforehand.

3) “Choose another kit, then.”, might as well say “play another class then.”
Let’s look at the possible weaponry, engineer can bring to a zerg fight:
-Flamethrower: Auto attack toasts yourself, big nuke not really spamable.
-Grenades: Retal kills you before you can react
-Pistol: Retal fodder w/ coated bullets, not really useful without
-Rifle: Auto Attack pierces, rest of the skills seem to be built towards dueling
-Tool Kit: Smack, Whack, Thwack, Smack, Whack, Thwack, …
-Elixir Gun: Doesn’t offer much in a zerg fight besides throwing yet another light field over those useful water fields. Got some useful skills, but it’s definitely no main damage source.
-Bomb Kit: It’s an awkward melee weapon, but it’s the only thing remotely usable besides sitting there with a rifle, autoattacking. It has its own limitations in mobile zerg environments, mainly, that you don’t have any frontloaded damage or cc, the moment, the zergs collide.

Maybe the answer is to nerf retal. Maybe not.
Maybe there simply need to be more ways to strip boons in an AoE.
At the very least, everyone should realize, that a mechanic, which locks an entire profession(or at the very least 90% of the potential of that profession, leaving one and a half builds) out of a game mode is far from being a balanced mechanic.

I have pretty accurate numbers, as I paid close attention to this during the wvw season. would be great, if someone could compare this to his experiences.
I run a pretty straightforward D/D backstab build without rejuvenation, so the numbers will probably be different for 10/30/30.

Numbers are from the begin of the season till now.

Times, Last Refuge outright killed me by double-triggering confusion: 2

Times, Last Refuge outright killed me by popping mid-CnD or just a split second before a planned CnD in a situation, where I would have otherwise been able to disengage or win the fight: 8-10.

Times, Last Refuge did not specifically kill me, as I was in over my head anyway and last refuge popping mid-attack or at an awkward time only sped up the process of me dying: 15-20. I still raged :P
(with shadow rejuvenation, some of these situation might have been survivable, if LR didn’t pop)

Times, Last Refuge helped by prolonging already active stealth: 10-15
(I don’t run a full 30 in shadow arts, so it’s hard to tell, how much having longer stealth actually helped. Also, as I tend to be more mindful of my distance to opponents than someone who has a huge regeneration backing them up, the number pretty much reflects my playstyle. It helped with some jukes, but in other situations, all it did was giving away my position to the opponent by suddenly creating a smoke cloud on the ground.)

Times, Last Refuge helped conceal my movement during a retreat from a ranged opponent: 5

Times, Last Refuge saved my kitten by popping when I was stunlocked and out of options: 3

Now, what would be useful?
1) Banish the trait into the major traits and beef it up somewhat(like also giving protection). Maybe put another major trait in minor.
2) Rework the thing to do something completely different.
3) Replace the stealth effect with a special effect, which doesn’t trigger revealed, when broken, but behaves like stealth in any other way.

bhagwad.4281:

Now that Illusionist’s Celerity has been moved to a master trait, how about we take out 15 points from elsewhere (10 from Dueling and 5 from inspiration) and use the points to get that trait?

The build got like 3 unneeded traits in its current form, which are candidates. Sadly, they are covered by more or less vital traits.
Candidates for removal:

Dueling:
Confusing Combatants, covered by Blade Training

Inspiration:
Compounding Celerity, which was taken only to spend those last 5 points anyway.
Mender’s Purity(!), as the new heal will not be as spammable. This, however, is covered by phantasmal Strength.

Personally, I’d remove 15 from inspiration. The sword training does make a difference by lowering some defensive cooldowns aswell as the cd of iswordsman.

Comparison:
version 1(10 from duel, 5 from inspiration):
+15% phant damage
remove condi on heal
move faster for each illusion
+100 vit, +100 healing

version 2(15 from inspiration):
20% sword skill reduction
+150 precision(8% crit chance)
+10% crit damage
confusion on illusion death

comparison, matching offense against offense, defense against defense and junk against junk:
15% illusion damage vs 150 precision, 10% crit damage
condi remove, 100 vit, 100 heal vs 20% sword skill reduction.
move speed per illu vs confusion on illu death.

This one depends on your gear. If you go full berserker, having the points in inspiration will probably yield more raw damage, but once you start mixing in some other gear, like celestial or soldiers pieces, the precision and crit from duels will probably pull ahead.

venom share thief with a phantasm mesmer is always good for a laugh.

Meteor Shower throws out loads of hits, too, but it’s no issue there, because you will actually dish out similar damage to your targets.

You forgot the biggest retal victim, tho: Feedback bubble. Throw that onto a ranged zerg and watch your hp melt.

Pyrite.9641:

Sounds like my experience with a ranger alt yesterday.

I didn’t know that the GS/LB ranger was “not viable” so imagine my surprise when after a while I wanted to share the awesome build I had made, (I was top of the leader boards in every match, I figured I’d somehow made a good build) I found out that apparently only newbs who don’t know how to deal ‘real’ damage use similar builds. I once dropped a 6.5k Maul with the GS and was like “kitten, that’s firegrab terriory on a 3 sec cooldown”.

Longbow/GS is severely underestimated. The Greatsword as defensive sidearm allows you to go all out glass canon on the bow(for example 30/20/20 or 30/25/15).
However, it’s a pretty tactical playstyle, so the typical player you encounter in spvp would probably not be capable of pulling it off.
It’s all about mastering the GS to move around and using the 1500 range vuln/damage spike on opponents, who are already in battle.

Back to ele: Ele is not in that bad a spot right now. Engineers are probably still worse off.
What annoys the hell out of me when playing ele is the amount of choices, you are forced to make.
Playing the aforementioned ranger is fluent. You got skill A, which does X, skill B, which does Y and skill C, which does Z. Elementalist, on the other hand got skill G, which causes H, I, J and can also be used for K or L, when combined with skill F. When you then consider that there are also 5+ traits, which directly add additional side effects to G, you will at some point realize, that the whole thing is just plain overloaded with effects. And that while those 20 weapon skills ar your disposalare still pretty much sub-par to other skills and only become good, when you factor in skill rotations with quick attunement swaps.

If you wanna go celestial, you need loads of might.
That’s the rule of the thumb. Get some might duration bonus from your runes and slap some traits/sigils, which grand might. Without a good bolster of might stacks, your damage might aswell not exist.

EverythingEnds.4261:

Omg, dat necro xD.

I read the (very) 1. post and was thinking about “wtf, nobody is playing c&d backstab thief anymore”.

Then I saw the date xD.

I do
A pure do or die backstab build. none of that rejuvenation sissy crap. I don’t need the ability to restart the fight 30 times over, as the strategy is so one-dimensional, if it doesn’t work the first time and not on the next 2 attempts either, I got no more reason to stick around. I prefer some extra initiation range over the ability to stick around forever as an annoying bug, as just sitting there, doing nothing is bad gameplay.

If you really want some healing power, splashing in some clestial pieces is probably a better bet than getting clerics.
Celestial will at least give you some crit damage, while also bolstering your thoughness and vit by a bit, so you can dish out some damage. You will be highly reliant on having those might and bloodlust stacks to boost your power, tho, preferably with some external source of power(read: warriors) cause the base power on celestial is rather low.

aussieheals.6843:

Tricare.2946:

not trying to brag

Hard to take that seriously with your foot note

“Vezin – Considered by many players to be the best WvW roaming roamer from Maguuma”

The question has to be asked:
What is a roaming roamer?
And are there roamers who don’t roam?

@topic: anet is probably afraid that if they buff ranger, skilled players will be unbeatable due to the way player skill influences performance with the ranger.
But I don’t get, why they don’t “dumb down” the class a bit then.

don’t need ts for solo roaming, pushing around dollies or watching over structures.
However, you need ts if you run in the zerg or any other bigger group.

Sceinna.3561:

Why is Blobaddon being completely ignored here? -:P:P:P-

Dude, the forum warriors from Surmia are just mad, they couldn’t win the bronze league after announcing, they were gonna win the bronze league anyway, so every respectable guild should join their server for an easy ride…
…Then they complained about our numbers…

aww, man… Me and some thief spent like 7 hours pushing dollys across the map and defending the spawn camp at surmia bl, so we can get a waypoint in bay and as soon as I log out, those guys drop the ball and bay goes back to surmia.
Makes me want to kill…