Guild Wars 2

Oxygen.5918:

I don’t see it in the list, where is it?

Descent of shadows:
Use blinding powder when you STEAL or take falling damage. Take less damage from falling.

AlphaK.9486:

I always felt that the Search and Rescue skill was kinda weak in both effectiveness and execution.

I kinda wish the skill worked this way:
Basically you use Search and Rescue and the pet finds and begins healing the downed ally. When the pet starts healing the downed ally, the Search and Rescue skill flips to Rescue which when used shadowports the pet and downed ally to the rangers location.

This I feel would both be fun, effective, and match the skills theme, plus who doesn’t like to rescue people from normally doomed situations like a zerg, deadly aoe, ect.

I love it.

On a less serious note: Let the pet slowly drag the body to your location. It would look AWESOME
Yeah. Just kidding.

It’s way harder to maintain a high might uptime.

Actually, yes, the trait probably makes it too easy.

Not everyone runs bearbow. Drawing the aggro away from the pet is not always a bad thing. And for bearbow, there’s that new trait, which gives the f2 ability taunt.

The big upside of the current guard is the surprise factor. The opponents don’t see the invisible pet coming in and get nailed out of nowhere.

Actually, out of this thread, I really like the idea to change “protect me!” to cause taunt.

The first thing, I will try with the new build is:
merciful ambush – leeching venoms – venom share.
The rest will be a panic strike setup. Trickery steal stack, mug – strikes – executioner.
Skills: Hide in Shadows(we lack cleanse), Devourer Venom, Refuge, Step, Basi.

Justine.6351:

Note how I say “skill” as tanky builds are not skill they are built to fail at being skilled.

Actually no.
Tanky builds are built to survive in situations, where skill alone isn’t enough to stay alive.
If you suck at the game, you will suck regardless of the build.
And as the trait is now, you could easily bump up a pet to 18 stacks of might from the trait alone with the right setup. I can already see the crits…

Razor.9872:

naphack.9346:

Sadly guard doesn’t have 3000 range anymore. Still, with resounding timbre, I really don’t want guard changed. You can just have your pet sneak up on someone and mess him up good. Also, it’s a low cd shout, so it’s useful with rune of the soldier.
Also, having an invisible drakehound sneak up on someone and pin him down with immobilize opens up nicely for a longbow burst.

If disabling your opponent to set up for a burst is what you’re ultimately after, wouldn’t taunt do the same thing? And I didn’t say the low cd would change.

inb4 mandatory utility skill regardless of traits.
Taunt on a 15 second cd utility. You heard it here first, guys.

Justine.6351:

naphack.9346:

Justine.6351:

um its:

YOU gain 3might6sec while being below 50% hp every 3sec. Not more dmg to low hp targets.

Did I say anything different?

I thought you were saying might stacking while attacking foes below 50% hp. Its if YOU are below 50% hp.

Ok I see you edited your post to remove the:
“Don’t need another executioner style trait”
gg…

:O
To be fair, I removed it before even reading your post. I was like “wait that sounds broken with cleaving attacks. No way it works like this. Also the name kind of doesn’t make sense this way.”

The trait still sounds absolutely fine on tanky beastmaster builds.

Sadly guard doesn’t have 3000 range anymore. Still, with resounding timbre, I really don’t want guard changed. You can just have your pet sneak up on someone and mess him up good. Also, it’s a low cd shout, so it’s useful with rune of the soldier.
Also, having an invisible drakehound sneak up on someone and pin him down with immobilize opens up nicely for a longbow burst.

Justine.6351:

um its:

YOU gain 3might6sec while being below 50% hp every 3sec. Not more dmg to low hp targets.

Did I say anything different?

Okay. If you pepper a target with a short bow from behind, with a +x% damage, your physical damage will be increased by x%.
If you pepper a target with the current trait, both the bleeds, you are constantly putting on the target and your physical damage will be improved.
If you are in nature magic, your pet will hit like a truck, too.
Also, you will do more damage regardless of whether you are built tanky or full zerk, while only zerk builds really benefit from a percentage increase in raw physical damage.

Yes. The trait line needs an adept trait that helps pure physical dps builds better, but why not get rid of the lame revive trait?

Brutalistik.6473:

How many do they have

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadowstep_
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Teleport

and why isn’t it on a cool down?

They are. The ones not tied to a direct cool down don’t break stuns.

Is it a weapon or a skill?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_thief_skills

borya.2964:

naphack.9346:

So I slept over it and came up with this:

Rending Attacks
Each attack of your pet causes bleeding. If the target has three or more stacks of bleeding, the attack will remove a boon on hit (5 seconds cooldown).
Bleeding (6 seconds)
Bleed threshold: 3

Very bad idea.

Boon removal need to be an active skill, can you imagine saying to your mates on TS : Ok, am gonna remove his boons, well, wait for the pet to attacks guys, wel, hum, wait i need 3 stacks of bleed on the target ! You promote horrible passive play.

And if you really want boon removal, first go take a sigil or ( boon duration will be nerfed) it need to be in Nature Magic, cuz this line is pretty bad with the changes, something more like “steal” boons rather than “remove” boon since NM is the boon duration line.

I still don’t get why boon removal NEEDS to be active.
Not every boon removal skill needs to strip stability in clutch situations. Just think of it as the pet having even more pressure by constantly ripping regeneration and protection to wear down a bunker. I just don’t see, how that would be a bad thing for a beastmaster.

Ithilwen.1529:

@Faux
That’s pure sophism and bravado. This thread has made it clear that the players not wanting turret nerf are the players who are turret engis.

So the only ones, who don’t complain are the ones, who actually played the build themselves?
You know what? That sounds totally like…
like…
like…

like every other whine thread about thieves, power rangers, etc.

So I slept over it and came up with this:

Rending Attacks
Each attack of your pet causes bleeding. If the target has three or more stacks of bleeding, the attack will remove a boon on hit (5 seconds cooldown).
Bleeding (6 seconds)
Bleed threshold: 3

Sagat.3285:

naphack.9346:

Sagat.3285:

Always go necro you can never be disappointed.

Are you crazy? It would scar him for life…
He’d just instantly go back to WoW, if his first experience in GW2 was playing a necro in pvp.

Sir please calm down, I’m pretty sure the devs show unbiased love to all classes. Necro can’t be that bad even if it was why would the devs leave it like that?

Well, they added Dhuumfire. Of course, they totally understand what’s wrong with the necro class and know, how to fix it :>

Sagat.3285:

Always go necro you can never be disappointed.

Are you crazy? It would scar him for life…
He’d just instantly go back to WoW, if his first experience in GW2 was playing a necro in pvp.

Elementalist it is, then.

I’d recommend staff for the beginning. It’s a reactive playstyle. Instead of hopping between attunements like crazy to create combos, you just switch to whatever attunement you just need to provide a cc or heal and then go back to camp in fire and dish out damage.
Yes, this is a gross oversimplification, of course, there’s also a lot of combo stuff happening with staff, but it’s nowhere near to the level of scepter or dagger.

Extreme.8350:

They gonna make it so they run double longbow with quickdraw around 3k dps

Sorry, but double longbow is reserved for the “living arrowcart”…
All those cooldown reduction traits will reduce barrage cooldown to weapon swap cooldown.

Wondrouswall.7169:

I agree that Sharpening Stone should apply to the pet – but as others have suggested for Rending Attacks – removing 1 boon on hit adds better utility than the pet bleed on crit. They could also retain a “on crit” effect by bringing back Carnivorous Appetite which is so much better than a bleed. So it could be:

Rending Attacks

• Pets gain health on critical hit.
• Pets remove 1 boon on hit (5 second cooldown).

Carnivorous Appetite
*Pets steal health on critical hit.
*Pets steal boon on hit(8 second cooldown)

Mesmer, Engi, Ele.

Power ranger has a distinct weakness: In large brawls, all he can do is stand at a distance and shoot arrows. If someone goes down, he can’t go in to rezz. He can’t provide boon support. He can’t hold points.
All he has is his .30 cal assault bow and a surprise dog in case someone comes close.

Yes, hype just had to be put in capital letters.
So with all those changes on all those classes, which change gets you pumped the most? Preferrably both from the standpoint of your main class and in general.

About the topic at hand, there has been a lot of shuffling and merging of traits and the implementation of some novel ideas.
As a thief player, I like, how you can become a ninja nurse now by just taking a single trait in the shadow arts line with a second one(shadow protector) lining up perfectly but not being mandatory and the Grandmaster still being open. I can see merciful ambush becoming a huge trait with resilience of shadows being a minor now. The ability to rezz someone faster, make him invisible AND make both of you take less damage is just great for the investment of one trait point.
The trait spread, I will try first:
Merciful Ambush, Leeching Venoms, Venom Share.

But honestly, out of all the changes, ranger takes the cake, even with most of the traits looking fairly unpolished. There’s a single reason for this:

Quick Draw (9 sec cd)
When you swap weapons, your next weapon skill used recharges faster
Recharge – 66%

This trait is a beauty. No, really, it’s amazing. We will leave all the impractical “double longbow living arrowcart” shenanigans out of this. This trait is bonkers and I can see it having a huge impact on the pvp meta.
There’s just so many possibilities and it rewards skilled play and improvisation on the spot. Also, it does something really unique. Currently, there is simply nothing like it in the game. I just can’t wait to get my hands on this trait. Whether it’s spamming fire fields from an offhand torch, disengaging with a double swoop or merely chaining two rapid fires together, this trait will redefine a lot of ranger play styles.

metabattle will instantly start spewing out their nonsense about the perfect builds for the new meta.
No chance.

Well, nobody is gonna get it in its current state anyway. If you go into beastmastery, resounding timbre is just way stronger than the rest of the traits even if all you have is heal as one.

So yeah, buff the hell out of the trait. I love the boon remove idea.

There’s a separate warhorn trait.

I like the idea of merging the two pet abuse traits and moving HiPS(fun with acronyms) into its slot better than merging two “on stun” traits into one.
Here is why:
Having a trait, which manages two separate internal cooldowns is just weird. It’s also hard to word the trait corretcly. The first stun gets directed to the pet, the second one makes you invisible, unless the first one is ready again… It’s just an ugly trait.
Merge the pet abuse into a single trait and move HiPS into its spot. I like the idea, though I never was a big fan of HiPS.

Always took it for WvW roaming when I played D/D.
Just felt more powerful than Thrill of the Crime… But with the current trait line layout, I just don’t see any place to fit it in.

adozu.6398:

everyone saying turrets are balanced likely plays turret (or maybe one of the few decent counters like condi rangers but let’s exclude those)…

you should do a simple test: choose a different spec, even one considered by you or by the community equally “easy” and tell us if you’re winning more/less after a few days of testing and if it really is just as easy, especially when you face a turreteer.

You should do a simple test: Run a trapper ranger or a powermancer against a full celestial stack and see, how it goes.
As long as celestial builds destroy build diversity, I don’t see a reason to nerf a build, which can actually stand up to the celestial meta.

ProtoMarcus.7649:

Could also work if you add it to Moment of Clarity
When you interrupt a foe, you remove one boon
Has a _ seconds cooldown

or

Poison Master
When you poison a foe, you remove 1 boon
Has a _ seconds cooldown

or

Beastly Warden (currently adds taunt effect to foes when executing F2 abilities, on a 15s cooldown)
Add boon stripping too!
Remove 1 boon from nearby foe(or foes?) when executing pet’s F2 ability
Has a _ seconds cooldown (should obviously be pretty long if it affects numerous foes in range)

MoC: Sounds like stuff a Mesmer would do…
Poison Master: Sounds like stuff a Necromancer would do…
Beastly Warden sounds interesting.
Nah, I really think, the mechanic needs to be tied to specific skills or to pets. That’s just how the ranger rolls.
So either roll it into some Spirit active ability or give it to the pet.

Rending attacks. ’Nuff said.

Edit: Ninja’d

kiwituatara.6053:

naphack.9346:

So with Remorseless now granting a 25% bonus to opening strikes and refreshing on receiving FURY…
Any bet on whether there will be a new one shot build?
I kinda liked that video way back then with the norn ranger popping SotH and Bear Form charging at people and smashing them around for 23k damage + launch effect in one package. Any hope for something like that? Maybe double maul with quickness and some instant source of fury to refresh remorseless?

Bearform still works (15-26k).
You can currently one-shot glassy builds with LB autoattack if you pop signets and proc fire+air sigil too (around 9k+2k+2k)
Signet + maul can potentially one-shot too.

The new traits gonna make 1-shotting more consistent

Well, back in the old days, I was on my way to create a ranger named “Nordvald the Naked” and run around naked, oneshotting people… I had him levelled to about level 30, when news came in, that the damage scaling of elite morph skills gets changed to heavily depend on the player’s attributes…
Bummer.

Maybe I will again try to create a (clothed) Norn Ranger just for the lulz.
Could give him a druid theme and look to go with the new specialization

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Ltomato.8649:

Your rapid fire won’t be auto canceled as long as you move your camera to where your enemy is pointing at you.

Nope. All the enemy has to do is close distance and run through you. Which will be easy because you’re going to have to be in combat before you swap weapons. So unless you run double longbow…

It’s also competing with 10% damage traits.

Yeah, I’ll take 10% damage traits over Quick Draw any day. I doubt anyone who wants to be efficient with their Ranger in dungeons or fractals will be using this trait.

I can see the trait not having much use in PvE, especially with the way, the ranger’s skills are lined up… But for PvP, this trait is gold.

cyclop.5934:

Didn’t read the whole thread.My thoughts are:
1 Turret’s dps must depend of the engineer stats(amulet).It isn’t now.(Right?).You can’t be tanky and do a lot of damage because of turrets.
2 Turrets must be vulnerable to conditions.ATM if you are playing condi, you cant do enough condi pressure because of CC and turrets dmg,and you can’t kill turrets because u have little power.So what am I supposed to do with that if Im playing condi.
You may add a special condition for kind of stuff like turrets and Kyhlo treb (lets call it corrosion).Which is calculated of incoming regular condis so everyone will have a chance to kill it.
3 Maybe recalculate a little turrets trait regen and health.

Can’t do enough condi pressure?
Ever played a trapper ranger against a turreteer? You don’t even need to pretend, you are fighting. Just casually walk onto the point and watch the engineer keel over. CC? What cc? He has Thumper and Rocket turret, that’s it. If he uses Overcharge shot, he’s dead, because that’s his only way to break entangle. Rocket can be evaded easily. Just take the thumper hit or let your drake take it. Then he’s out of cc. Yes, there’s the crate, but that’s on a long cd.

And for everyone, who says, turrets are hard to kill, how about I let you in on a little story?
Yesterday, I played ranked with my turreteer. Actually, I wanted to play one game for my daily, then switch to my thief or ranger, but a player from my team wanted to team up with me, probably because he saw me constantly use detonate heal turret, overcharget shot and thumper to stop stomps/rezzes, so I figured, I’d continue going with turret for the rest of the evening.

One game in particular comes to mind. I was bunkering keep on Niflhel. 2 Guys jump in from the top. One meditation guard, one elementalist. They just stood in the middle of the cap circle, on top of my thumper and did basic dps/might stack rotations. They drove me off the point in 2 seconds and the thumper went down within 4 more seconds.
As the guardian was zerk and the elementalist was either zerk or celestial… Do we really need turrets to go down even faster? Their dps would be about 60% higher with crits.

You know, the funny thing is, the old feline grace had great synergy with any endurance refilling effects like vigor or sigil of energy, because it just meant, you’d get more dodges out of your endurance. Now they removed a trait, which was pretty much defining for thief and swapped it to something, almost any profession could do.

Having more dodges… The thief class was all about this. Why you gotta try to fix, what isn’t broken? Just why, Anet?

Yes, of course, they want a more boon driven system, but on a class with so many full endurance refills independent of vigor(signet of agility, hard to catch), why did they have to make the “more endurance” thing a vigor only thing?

solrik.6028:

Ltomato.8649:

Your rapid fire won’t be auto canceled as long as you move your camera to where your enemy is pointing at you.

Nope. All the enemy has to do is close distance and run through you. Which will be easy because you’re going to have to be in combat before you swap weapons. So unless you run double longbow…

It’s also competing with 10% damage traits.

The rapid fire will automatically always turn towards the enemy for as long as you don’t move after activating rapid fire.

And who stops moving in a PvP situation?

LONGA.1652:

Well it they change last refuge to pop on downed. Concealed defeat might look a lot more nice thing to to have with.

Too op lol
I mean, combine it with concealed defeat and you have a smoke field, which gets blasted for a total of 7 seconds stealth.
Just who is supposed to stomp/dps down a thief, when the thief can just blink somewhere, start rezzing, and even if he gets found, he will still be stealthed for long enough to pop a downstate stealth and blink away again.

WEXXES.2378:

Last Refuge: Gain Invulnerability and Resistance for 1 second upon taking lethal damage and use blinding powder. 60s CD.

Now its useful no matter what situation you are in.

We are thieves, no necromancers…

So with Remorseless now granting a 25% bonus to opening strikes and refreshing on receiving FURY…
Any bet on whether there will be a new one shot build?
I kinda liked that video way back then with the norn ranger popping SotH and Bear Form charging at people and smashing them around for 23k damage + launch effect in one package. Any hope for something like that? Maybe double maul with quickness and some instant source of fury to refresh remorseless?

Really, put in infusion of shadows and if the 2 initiative proves too much, just reduce it to 1 initiative upon entering stealth.
Just why does this trait stick around?

Hunter.4783:

And to further add to my point:
From a statistical point of view, it might all work out. Since most games will have a 2 or a 3 person premade, some of them on my team, some on the other. So in the end the wins or the loses from the respective situations will balance out, but at the end of the day, i come out learning nothing from these games.

Normally after a game you would wonder what you did that made you win or lose, as well as how you can further improve on. However, if im getting carried one game, and crushed 500-40 the other, i might as well not bother trying to improve, or get better with my character, as things are pretty much predetermined from the RNG draw. Haven’t you had your fill of seeing players afk when their team is getting crushed. This is exactly what this current system will lead to.

“Oh kitten, 4 man premade, gg all, afk” is a trend which is slowly starting to develop, especially when you get 3 capped 1 min into the game, and when you get zerged 1v3 the moment you step into far. Even if players are willing to play against the odds at the start of the match, not many will play till the end.

Well, yesterday, I had ONE game, where I was totally outmatched and got mauled hard.
The thing is, it was still my fault. Yes, the opponents were better, had better coordination, jumped me on sight, etc…
But I still played like we were evenly skilled. I still tried to look for solo snipes on low health players or for 1v1 kills, even though I KNEW, their mesmer was so good, he’d just frag me with chained interrupts, when I do things kitten. This got me killed way too often. Yes, the rest of my team was also constantly wiping, so I didn’t have many openings. But due to my over-eagerness to immediately jump into D/P range and duke it out, I was never in a place to spot openings anyway, which means, I wasn’t in a position to help my team, which led to my team not being able to create openings for me. Your own actions determine, how well your team can help you. Yes, it didn’t help, that I spent half an hour in the PvP lobby, waiting for my friggin mate to unlock a skin and wanted to vent my frustration at the first Mesmer, I spotted. Playing with such a state of mind will just wreck your gameplay. That being said, even if I played at my peak, we still would have lost.
Yes, situations, where you are outmatched happen. The problem is, you can only tell, you are outmatched, once you get mauled hard. It goes like “ok this guy is better than me.” “Ok this guy is better than me, too.” “Ok, I finally get it. I am the weakest link on this team.”
The big problem with conquest mode is, that the initial contact counts for a lot and sets the pace for the rest of the game. As you don’t know the difference in strength between the teams, being careless at first contact could be fatal.
Especially on Foefire, it’s really hard to play from behind. But I’m totally fine with this. That’s just how the game is. That’s just how competitive games are. You underestimate the opponent, you get mauled. The problem is not with the matchmaking. I’ve seen worse. The problem is, that many people got their objectives backwards. The daily system is partly to blame for this. Many players want to have their easy win and be done with it.

I’m already glad, I won’t lose damage anymore for not wanting to drop a ton of trait points into skirmishing… Survival of the Fittest longbow here.
But I’m still more hyped, how this change will affect my Teef.

Mork vom Ork.2598:

Josh Davis.6015:

DeWolfe.2174:

btw, who uses Turrets in WvW?

Static discharge builds.

Nope, they use the turret toolbelt and maybe the trait for knock back on blow-up. Nobody int their right mind uses the turret in WvW or PvE. After this change even the few limited uses left in PvE (e.g. Archdiviner in cliffside fractal) will be gone. And the only viable elite skill of the engineer as well.

You say you want to bring turrets on par with other pets. If that is the case give them:

• ability to deal critical damage
• mobility or much shorter cooldowns
• boons
• heals
• damage scaling with engineer stats

I’ve seen some guys drop thumpers during toxic offspring events…
But the fact, this instantly caught my attention is just more proof of how uncommon it is.

And honestly, with turrets becoming vulnerable to conditions, even the thumper diversion for toxic offshoots will disappear for obvious reasons.

for silver doubloons: As a PvP player, you are bound to have a lot of level 21-25 characters flying around.
Park them at some jumping puzzle and log in daily, press f, log out.
It probably won’t get you the full amount, but it will get you there. Because they can only be obtained at a certain level range, they are on the expensive side and you’ll be glad for every silver doubloon, you don’t have to buy off the TP.

Well, I went for the easy route and made the Dreamer. Compared to most Legendary’s, it’s laughably easy to craft.

Awaltir.5302:

Sagat.3285:

Awaltir.5302:

Sagat.3285:

Awaltir.5302:

Yes i think we will get this stick right in the a…. , because some “lucky” profession will get traps for specialization and it will be probably us….

That would make me happy no sarcasm.

Yea especially when they will be as viable as traps we already have…..

I use traps in WvW with runes of the trappers if they make them better or had weapon/heal/elites that fits with them it’s a +. This is the same process that created revenant that I stated before have the best design out of all classes.

I do understand that you like traps but let’s face it , most people don’t , also how do they fit the theme of fast agile fighter who relies on stealth and dodges?

As for traits I dislike that i can’t decide if i want 2 adept traits . Rest is ok , most of the traits are placeholders anyway so if they will make some real choice it will be nice.

They fit the theme of a kitten, who uses everything at their disposal in order to win.

Actually, I am fairly certain now, that infusion of shadows will be the new minor trait.
If they have to reduce 6(7) minor traits to 3(4), it makes sense to throw out the ones, which received lots of complaint first. Especially in a trait line as stacked on adepts as shadow arts.
That still leaves a lot of traits hanging… If they remove shadow protector, the ninja nurse will lose like half of its appeal…

As we are already dissecting the shadow arts line:
The major traits will probably drop both power shots and hidden thief, which makes room to move one minor trait up.
My prediction:
Minor adept – infusion
Major adept – protector, embrace, (MoD OR Pulse)
Major master – patience, cloak, leech

rest remains unchanged.

Isn’t the lore behind the Guardian class, that they historically emerged from the Paragons?
By that, the specialization is already set in stone…

I don’t see a problem.
Are all 13 of these current traits even viable choices?
Let’s be honest, would you slot concealed defeat in your grandmaster slot?
Currently, for most parts, we have the illusion of choice. While theoretically, we could shift around traits wildly, most trait assignments make absolutely no sense, while we have powerful “must have” traits overshadowing everything else.
Honestly, especially for thieves, there’s currently only a few cases, where adept traits are picked for the master slot anyway.

See this change as a chance for more build diversity. Especially with the stats being dropped from trait lines, more possibilities will be opened.

As for the infusion + embrace thingie: With traitlines being locked down to “take all or take nothing”, it’s now possible to move infusion of shadows to the minor slot. Regaining initiative on entering stealth could be a baseline ability of shadow arts builds.

Currently, it’d be stupid because having such a strong trait with a single point of investment would be overpowered.

More importantly: What happened to 14/14/14/14/14 builds?

Look at popular builds for other classes. I’m already glad, thieves didn’t get the short end of the stick this time around.