Guild Wars 2

I’m surprised that there has not been a thread, not even a mention of it in Ranger update thread, unless I’ve been completely blind, which wouldn’t be for the first time. :P But now that the spirits received 25% additional health, I would like to ask if you guys think there can be a viable (support) build for rangers based on spirits? I haven’t done much testing but I would now really like to reconsider a spirit build. The improvement with proper traits maybe will now give a new and fun build to play around with

Well the good thing is that it now will immobilize instantly. I believe previously you had to get pulled to foe before landing an immobilize? I guess it prevents players from getting out of range while casting it (as previously)?

teg.1340:

If you get bursted by a D/D ele, then you have to either stop running full glass canon or learn to dodge the right skills.

Yes indeed, it’s very easy to burst down a glasscanon theif. But then again, I don’t need to play D/D ele in order to do that.

Red Falcon.8257:

Anet wants to nerf AoE dmg but honestly it seems wrong to me. AoE is ok.
Healing on the other hand should be like it was planned to be, i.e. your heal skill is your only reliable heal everything else is flavor minor healing – if your health gets low and your 6 is used, you either escape or die, you don’t reset a fight.

Yes, please take away the water attunement. Maybe should take away stealth next. Cause how I see it, theif has as much the ability to “reset the fight” by just going stealth and heal up till he’s safe or just run away. Why do you theives insist to go in stealth when your HP get’s low? Why not just take and die, as you say? Flawless logic there.

Also, if a nerf is to be handed to Eles next patch I hope they will get staff buffs in return.
It’s a joke that against a melee Ele it’s a tough fight and a staff Ele is a free kill, find some balance Anet…

This I can agreed upon.

Infectious.4836:

I just don’t get how anyone can defend the current meta D/D build.

It is defended because we don’t have much options to play around with at the end. Take that away as well and you’ll have no eles playing GW2 anymore. At least nothing viable.

Ah well, since Naurgalen.2374 was actually talking about Poweful Aura trait, I see how that got misinterpeted.

Leo G.4501:

Naurgalen.2374:

I cant try it now cause I’m at work, but if the limitation is not like I write it: 1) The wiki is wrong and 2) Staff is “overpowered” and nobody uses that advantage

Yup, it works.

Funny, cause when I used Ring of Fire + Magnetic Graps a few days back, it didn’t seem to give an Aura to my party. I did it a few times as well. 1st boss in AC, had a few melee players next to the boss and myself. I didn’t know about the limitation, I just assumed then that the combo auras didn’t work with the XII water trait.

Reading some posts here, I feel sad that people want to nerf a class that already has a few viable options to play with. I think it’s been stated enough that Eles has a ridiculous low damage out put compared to their defense when you compare to some other classes. One big problem is that we are almost forced to go 20-30 points in Arcana to get faster attunement swapping (since we don’t have weapon swap and instead much longer cd on attunement swap than the weapon swap has for other classes).

A lot of people complain about how warrior, thief and mesmers are op with their insane burst and how they easily can kill you. Sometimes I wonder if it’s not those same people who play “op theives/mesmer/warriors” that are suddenly feeling kitten since they can’t kill an d/d ele. Nevertheless I can understand why bunker ele may seem op, but my concern is that people want a nerf for a class with few viable options, which in such case would lead to basically none viable options at all. I frankly would want a boost for Eles (and I don’t mean bunker elese), not a nerf. I really hope that, if Anet will come up with some balance for eles in the future, that they do it so we can benefit from other builds as well.

Also, D/D eles (I’m playing 0/10/0/30/30) do not have insane damage. I use soldier’s amulet in sPvp and mind you, anyone can play with that. Those whom I usually deal most damage to are those who play glasscanon builds. Otherwise it’s just slow but safe kill.

Hey, I wonder if anyone could give some advice on facing shatter/burst mesmers. Currently I find them to be most difficult to face 1v1. At least if you meet a good one.

The problem is that they can have some insane control and burst. Yes, I am very well aware of dodging the clones in time. However my biggest problem is their control. Daze/stun from pistol, imobilize from S#2 (which is somewhat easier to get out of) and then the daze from shatter. There’s only a limited amount of dodges you can do and in the mean while you try to kite around and heal up, the illusions do some nasty damage while you get an other daze or stun.

Leo G.4501:

For the record, I didn’t say what was in that quote :P

I know, I noticed it, but unfortunately you saw it before I edited my post xD

Edit: On a second note. One can argue that ele is underpowered to warrior and that warrior is so much better to play compared to the effort/result you get from ele. You can also argue that ele needs a boost in PvE. However it doesn’t change the fact that some people find it much more fun to play Ele than warrior. I for one wouldn’t swap my Ele for warrior. My main was a mesmer and I also have a 80 engineer. Although mesmer burst shatter build can be fun to play, I find ele d/d so much more satisfying. Just cause I do less damage, doesn’t make the gameplay any worse for me. Although a boost to eles is always welcomed wether they need it or not, in the end it should come down to what YOU find to be most fun to play. Also I’m in general not fond of playing glasscanons.

LordByron.8369:

ALL current posts on gw2lfg specifying class requirement…..

LF3M P1 runs. warrior/guard/mesmer

LF1M DPS warrior for kitten FARM.

[LF 1 guardian] only !

HIGHLY EXPERIENCED MESMER LFG SPEED RUN COF1 STRICTLY NO NOOBS ALL DPS WARRIORS/GUARDIANS Must be able to do it at least 3 times.

LF1M cof exp speed farm! need 1 warrior (high dps only) If we don’t have enough dps a new grp will be formed
Should i go on?

Maybe one shouldn’t run with pugs.. Find a good guild or a perma group to run dungeons (fractals) with on regular basis. No one likes pugs anyway (no matter if they are ele, mesmer, theif or warrior). Maybe that’s what you get if you play with randoms, but in my guild a guild member (even if it’s an ele) is prefered anytime over a pug warrior. Better safe than sorry, since we always use TeamSpeak while doing dungeons/fractals. I just can’t care any less for what random pugs are demanding. And even so, it’s hardly a problem to find a pug group if you decide to. CoF is one of the easiest and most popular dungeons. Others (HOTW, SE) are so rarely done that people will take anyone. Fractals past 20+.. No one takes eles huh? Well maybe in the pug world that is so, but what would I know, I just do it with my guild.

Sorry, didn’t read everything that carefully, just wanted ask though if you are running 0/10/0/30/30 none condi build, how do you utilize/combine earth element in the staff build? I rarely swap to it, using the other 3 elements mostly.

Although I am nervous about how this nerf is gonna go, especially when I just recently re-rolled into ele, I think we need not to forget that Anet stated that they wanted single target dps to be on pair with AoE and other builds to be more viable. Hopefully this will mean that staff will instead be strong (or stronger) in form of single target dps. Also I’m not sure that those small blasts AoE really gonna be affected by this (e.g Fireball, burning speed, etc).

I really don’t know how they intend to nerf it, but if it’s gonna be damage reduction or radius reduction, imagine what it would do to Engineers, removing 2 viable builds (bomber and grenadier, not to mention that grenadier was nerfed in the previous patch). I mean.. Some builds are made around AoE, if it bothers them so much, then why not just remove AoE’s completly. I’m just saying.. the changes can’t seriously be so devastating that those builds will become unplayable. Cause it makes no sense to rebuild classes so that they cannot even be played anymore at all, removing all viable options.

LB provides much better burst damage than SB (skill 5+3+2) , while SB auto attack could out damage LB’s auto attack. I think both are situational and can complement each other well. LB can be well used for burst while SB is build as a kiting weapon and good for close range. Therefore I like to combine those two.

To comment on some remarks posted in this thread..

People that argue for SB as a better weapon damage wise.. I find it rather ridiculous that you would stand and just auto attack for maximum damage output (since SB obviously lacks strong attacks and the burst of the LB). Of course I wouldn’t say that SB is worse than LB, but if you want to provide the most damage out of your weapon you are basically forced to use skill #1 on SB and that for me is just boring game play. At best you would also use QZ + #1. That’s why I prefer a combination of both.

Secondly some people argue that if you play with LB, it is difficult to stay at max rang to provide better damage from #1. This is also why I think SB may complement LB very well but I do disagree to a certain degree with this argument. It is often much preferred to stay at max damage (especially as a pure dps build) and many situations requires it and it isn’t uncommon either. Dungeons and certain bosses is a very good example of this. As well as in WvW, honestly I don’t know who wants to stay in a middle of a zerg (unless you are melee and are forced to). Personally I like to stay at max range no matter what class I run and keep doing it as much as possible (maybe that’s also why I prefer playing ranged classes).

So I’ve been thinking of starting playing my ranger again. Atm I have lvl 80 mesmer and lvl 80 engineer. Recently I started playing thief, witch I think is lots of fun, but I feel that the only place I would wanna bring it is sPvp/tPvp or small scale WvW. So although I wanted to level my theif I decided I don’t want to use it in regular PvE game play.

One of the main reasons why I decided to starting playing ranger again is cause I want the legendary longbow (among all the legendaries it is the one I like the most!) and that doesn’t leave me with many other class options (I don’t want to play warrior).

Don’t get me wrong, Kudzu is not the only reason why I’m getting back to my ranger. I do enjoy playing it, but the reason I stopped in the first place (I only got it to lvl 42 though) is that the class felt sort of… inferior to other classes in PvP and PvE/Dungeons. Still I’m willing to give my ranger an other chance cause I feel like I would have lots of fun with it (I just love playing with bows).

So I’m looking for a dps Longbow build (shortbow as secondary weapon, or possibly 1h sword/greatsword) that would fit well in dungeons/fractals and WvW. I really don’t want to run a condition/trapper build outside spvp cause that’s what I’m playing in spvp now and I want to have the fun with Longbow that I feel is limited inside sPvp.

I wonder if Longbow berserker build (maybe mixed with some valk and knight trinkets) is viable in Dungeons and especially fractials.. Cause from what I hear people really hate the longbows for some reason =/

I practiced soMe more with this build and i’m really starting to like it. I swap to d/d at less than 30% to burSt down enemy with heartseek

@WakkaJabba: Ok but what is the point of this tactic? You not gonna get anyone killed with just stealthing.

Sorry if this might sound newbie, I’m kinda new to theif, just trying it a bit in spvp (mostly played P/D condi build), but wanted try something else. My score started to top the score boards after I tried this build, though I’m still a bit doubtful to it. First off, in spvp it doesn’t seem to work that good. With sword I only crit around 2k dmg (since you cannot get 109 crit damage in sPvP and I’m a bit fuzzed how you even get that much in PvE, the most I ever had on a lvl 80 full zerker mesmer, was around 89 crit dmg).

Nevertheless, it just feels like a hell to chase down your enemy with S/D. Because often I’m trying to use Infiltrator’s Strike twice (because of a miss or just a 2nd time when the target is trying to get away) and instead I get Shadow Return (which wouldn’t be a problem if it didn’t get me even further away from target). So in such case, heartseeker for me is much easier way to get to the target.

But my main problem is that it feels like waaay too much like messing around. When I meet other D/D zerker thief they usually put me down in 2-3 hits while I only get them down by half while messing around with infiltrators strike, c’n’d and tactical strike.

Also I didn’t fully understand your C’nD tactic. It sounded like you were trying to stack stealth using C’nD twice in a row but that doesn’t work since I get reveal buff on 2nd time I use it. Atm I’m trying out your build and a similar tactic but with D/D and S/D as secondary weapon set. Though maybe I just need to practice S/D a bit more.

This is very interesting As I understood from this thread, most non P/D burst thieves have an easy time to counter the P/D thief.. So far I’m low level and haven’t tried it in WvW but in spvp I find it to be much easier to kill the burst thief. When backstabbing theif uses up his burst on the first attempt to kill, he usually fails, so when you know he’s there it’s much easier to prepare yourself for his next attempt and put him down.

On utilities I run with Blinding Power, Shadow Refuge. As a 3rd I use caltrops but I often swap it for Shadowstep (since I have caltrops on dodge anyway) to get out from the immobilize/stun and the insane burst that follows.

Thx for your responses I’ve tried some burst builds in spvp and still don’t like it. =/ Might see if it changes as I level up my char, but atm I feel that I will be sticking to a condition build.

One more question, are condition thieves good at taking supply points in WvW compared to burst thieves?

I’ve tried and disliked playing (burst crit) thieves, until I found a condition build (that I mixed from a couple of builds I’ve found). I’ve just played it in spvp/tpvp so far and now planing to level it to 80. So I’m running P/D+D/D, traits 0/0/30/20/20 with carrion amulet + schaman jewel. Now I’m really loving my build, I find that I have extremly good survivability due to lots of stealth, regeneration with other nice traits and utility skills. I feel that I do kill quite fast, but of course not as fast as burst theives. I might try out a burst crit build now that I feel more confident playing thief but so far I feel it’s not my play style. What I wonder is how good can condition built thieves be compared to those insane bursty thieves, for example in WvW (solo roaming for example)? I will probably not get as many kills and I will always be weak against those with good condition removals. But on the other hand something can always be countered by someone, but not everything by everyone.

So my question here is basically, can condition thieves stand a fair chance compared to the insane crit thieves? Or is crit thieves just way too superior to a condition build?

Really nice build! I tried out a similar build in spvp and I loved it. And it’s sick how good survivability you have with low vitality and no toughness (though my spvp build got around 18k+ hp). I tried tons of builds before – all from pure condition build, to mantra builds, trying to balance out toughness and vitality with good damage, but with this build you can kill so fast and still have it easy to escape your enemy.

I have a few concerns though… Regarding WvW I always felt that ranged is better since you don’t want to end up in middle of a zerg. I haven’t read all comments so possibly you’ve mentioned this before – a) but how is fighting in larger WvW groups? I guess it’s then better to just use staff and clones and use Mind Wrack on enemies. b) Do you run this build in PvE and dungeons? If so, whats your experience from that? And my last question, is about something I noticed in your videos. I noticed how you do a lot of confusions (ranging from 800dmg up to 1500). Since it’s not a condition builds I can’t figure out how you end up doing so much. Since F2 shatter does very low condition dmg…