Guild Wars 2

I’m not denying glass LB ranger can do well, but in my experience they are a bit of a joke in 1v1s. The skill level to do well on a LB ranger is much higher than it is for other classes imo. I hate the unreliability of the pet which you rely on much more heavily for CC in a glass build and it feels like you need to play perfectly to have any sort of chance esp given the abundance of thieves and mesmers that appear out of nowhere and insta gib.

I have yet to meet a power ranger that is anything but a walking loot bag. Once you get close the vast majority of them simply roll over and die.

I have found glass longbow to be one of the weakest power builds in the game for roaming. Can’t stand playing it myself. You will get absolutely murdered by pretty much everything.

I’ve played traps and it works. Dropping traps and standing in them until some noob rushes you from behind and then dumping them again is always good for a laugh. It is moderately strong overall and you’ll need to rely on HS which is a bummer.

shout ranger in my experience is pretty useless given the awful nature of our shouts and general weakness of regen in general. the only good thing imo is permanent swiftness which is nice.

I myself prefer to run the old straight up survival of the fittest condi ranger but sub out sharpening stone for spike trap and relying on the pet for taunt. Downside is you literally have the worst mobility in the game and once you’re in a fight you’re in it until you die.

Sidenti.6035:

Labjax.2465:

I feel this came up over a year ago. Not sure why it hasn’t been addressed. If they make the meaning more clear, that means less work for support.

What, pray tell, is so hard to understand about the term “unique”?

No, really. I’m seriously. What needs to be fixed on ANet’s end over this? Do we really need a tooltip that screams “OMFG YOU CAN ONLY WEAR ONE OF THESE AT A TIME THAT’S WHY WE CALL IT UNIQUE”?

Because if that’s the case, I need to find another game. I saw what dumbing stuff down did to WoW and SWTOR. I’m simply not interested in running around a world where players have to be spoonfed – it’s BORING. -Sid

BRB buying two of a one of a kind item… good logic brah.

the sneak gyro sounds like unbelievable bullkitten… 30s of stealth for an unlimited number of people… gee where have i seen something similar? oh right the EB mass stealth fountain!

WvW is gonna be gross, PVE skipping will be a huge joke… wow wtf were they thinking with this.

Figured since things are being changed now might be the time we finally get this little annoyance fixed?

Anet pls respond.

What they could do is have chests randomly spawn around OS on a timer (say 5-8m before it becomes available to open) and have everyone fight over them.

Chips.7968:

Right – read your posts again kitten . You claim thieves should “run away to drop traps away from anyone in order to stay in stealth”.

Then when I point out that you’re now saying thieves should use an offensive weapon only to ‘stay in stealth’ which is fricken dumb as they’ve far better alternatives which won’t risk revealing them.

Chips brah you’re missing the point. This is exactly how trap runes work on the other classes and it is effective (at least it was for rangers until the nerf.. there is mounds of video evidence to support this).

You don’t use the traps purely for defense either… you use them offensively when the opportunity to do so arises and this creates strategy and risk vs. reward.

I know you don’t want a thief nerf, and nobody is saying trapper thief needs a nerf but good lord permanent stealth is kittening kittenedly broken whether it is OP or not and needs to be fixed. The only way to do that without simultaneously nerfing two other classes that are not even remotely OP is to revert the changes to thief traps. if they need to buff the traps to counter this then they can go ahead and do it and nobody will give a flying kitten.

the issue is 100% stealth uptime, not the power of the traps.

As the OP of the “So this happened” thread and the maker of the video I have to agree with the OP of this thread that the current perma stealth trap thief is pretty ridiculous whether it is a “viable” build for anything but roaming or not.

Roaming:
85% boredom
5% getting rolled by zergs
5% cheese teefs and mesmers
3% gank squads/ruined 1v1s
2% real 1v1s

That being said it is a good time. Just run around, kill sentries and junk until you find a fight.

lvis.3824:

yes it’S really not understandable why 1200y ranged attacks that instant kill any zerker build are still ingame . – same with ranger pets .

Ranger pets have a 1200 range insta kill?

Wow i’ve been playing ranger wrong for 3 years lololol

Kanebrake.6192:

Since it’s the only map option we have other than EB for WvW I don’t see it going anywhere soon.

…and since EB is going to be hell on earth when the invisible players and airstrikes arrive the desert map will be all we have.

It’s cool though because fractals is going up to 100 with no new content.

“HS is our best heal without question” – Cristobal.8640

Kitty.1502:

Sick ’Em!: The bonus will go away if you use a shout or tell your pet to do anything, basically blocking you from your pet for 10 seconds or waste the skill.

Knew it went away if you command the pet but didn’t know it was also cancelled when casting another shout…

Man why is Sic em such a borken skill apart from the reveal?

/facepalm.

bliss.4305:

vespers.1759:

if they don’t give us an option to never touch the action camera I will likely never play again.

I don’t know what you’re saying… They make it a toggle-able option completely activated on preference.

If you like what you had, great… you’ll still have it. If you like what they’re implementing, great… you can start using it after HoT.

The system is nothing but a positive change and hope it will make the content Gw2 provides more immersive and engaging.

if this is the case then there’s really no problem.

if they don’t give us an option to never touch the action camera I will likely never play again.

Cristobal.8640:

LOL at rangers not having cleanse options on traps. Do you people not know what Healing Spring does?

Healing spring is a terrible skill though.

Lynx: Lemon Sniff
Wolf: Smoke/Cancer
Pig: Da Popo
Jaguar: Swaguar
Shark: Sharkeisha
Bears: Furious George

Also for those wondering Fractals preserves pet names if you swap in fractals.

Oh you just wait until trapper runes come to PVP. Y’all are gonna love ghost thieves.

Although Anet clearly has a kitten for PVP so maybe this will actually be fixed when it arrives.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

@ Vesper

The best fix is to redesign stealth and the Thief class, what you are proposing won’t fix the issue in the least, it will provide a bandaid. Most thieves don’t even like the state of stealth but since 80% of their survivability is in stealth they defend it against cries for nerfs to thieve skills and traits, if you want a fix Anet needs to get rid of their crap stealth mechanic put in a better stealth mechanic and re design/ balance out thief Survivability.

Obviously I want a redesign too but this is GW2. There will be no redesign so there’s no point in even bothering to discuss it. We have to deal with the way things are, not what they should be.

Puck.9612:

vespers.1759:

Puck.9612:

What the hell does janky mean?

Borked, kittened up, broken, wonky, weird, clunky, uneven, awkward, random, kittenty, crap, etc.

Isn’t that what they are now? Why is it okay for them to be “janky” in a manner that makes them miss a moving target, but it’s not okay for them to be “janky” in a manner that lets their attacks land?

Oh I’m not disagreeing with you haha. I think it is ridiculous and lazy of Anet to allow this to continue but since they haven’t used the expansion as an opportunity to make major changes (and they didn’t use the June 27th patch before that and so on and so on) pretty much shows they aren’t going to change anything.

Well whatever happens to ranger, at least trapper runes in SPVP will lead to the nerf to the Ghost thief.

Maybe this a plot to make us play the new map? What will be worse; EB with invisible zergs or the eotm on roids desert map?

Puck.9612:

What the hell does janky mean?

Borked, kittened up, broken, wonky, weird, clunky, uneven, awkward, random, kittenty, crap, etc.

bettadenu.5483:

vespers.1759:

No nerfing the rune does not solve the problem because that nerfs 2 other classes that are not the issue.

thief traps deserve the nerf and that’s the end of it.

If it has damage on trigger added to it the entire problem is solved.

Yep, this is what I’ve been saying all along. It’s the solution that makes the most sense no matter how much thieves claim they need stealth for defense and that adding diret damage will make traps useless.

Haralin.1473:

Treeoflife.4031:

Would also be nice to removed the direct damage portion of traps and add that damage to the condition portion. No one uses ranger traps for direct damage anyways. Plus the direct damage doesn’t synergize with trapper runes at all.

I dont want another ghost class!

This…

No nerfing the rune does not solve the problem because that nerfs 2 other classes that are not the issue.

thief traps deserve the nerf and that’s the end of it.

Well I guess they could add effects to the staff 1 anyway or to 2, 3, 4, and 5 if they wanted to. Not gonna get my hopes up though.

On my condi build I honestly found companion’s might to be lackluster but I take it because it’s the only thing worth taking there if you’re going to take Beastly Warden. The blind is kinda useless (also the tooltip says attribute adjust +253 and i have no idea what that means?).

Sharpened edges could be good in a precision built but in a build with low crit it is pretty useless in my experience… especially given that you can take trapper’s expertise and spike trap which is a good combination.

Also random question but how do the bleeds work now? if my pet applies some and has X condi dmg and I apply some at X condi dmg, how is the damage of the bleed stack calculated?

I find it ridiculous that a build exists that actively avoids using weapon skills offensively at all costs and kills via utilities alone.

perma invis thief trappers… DH traps doing massive dmg… and then we have ranger traps which are more terrible than ever before haha (minus spike trap because hot kitten I still use that).

Also shameless repeat posting of this ridiculous ghost thief video to show how bad we have it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_jlkY5KR00

my main issue with frost trap is that it could be our best trap but since enemies touch the edge they can just walk right out and avoid the pulses. if we could get them into the middle it would be great.

Permanently invisible thieves.

3k direct damage in full condi gear… lol…

I tested on a stationary target golem. dunno how it would work vs players. There were a lot of threads here a while back about birds being unable to hit anything because of the fancy swoops? Did something change?

Also is the beastly warden aoe circle really smaller on the birds? it definitely looks smaller but I haven’t tested to confirm it.

Even if thief traps did have direct damage the thief would still have the most access to stealth via their heal, weapon skills etc. My trap ranger was in and out of stealth every few seconds when I ran traps and they were on relatively long cooldowns.

Fact is you’ll find people to defend literally anything. Trap runes are not the problem, thief traps are.

Hm… went to test it a bit. The lynx maintains a much much higher bleed stack than the bird. I’m seeing bleeds of about 300 with bird and 700-800 with the lynx. The bird however gets to activate taunt sooner because the lynx F2 CD is 24s and the bird is 4 1/2… however the bird taunt circle is also a lot smaller. The bird grants swiftness too though which is nice…

I think I prefer the lynx to the bird.

spending 400k when the videos get under 10k views on the GW2 youtube channel..

Makes sense.

I always found the bird swooping animation to make them hit less? Was that changed? I use the lynx right now. Good crits and bleeds.

F2’s are also so kitten unreliable… spam them 6 times to get them to work. the low cooldown on the hawk sounds good in theory but it rarely lands in my experience.

Chips.7968:

vespers.1759:

Chips.7968:

I’ve already posted the precise series of events, traps and actions the thief took in this instance.

Yet people are discussing whether the traps should reveal. To be crystal fricken clear – the outcome would have been exactly the same. He wasn’t killed by stealth, he wasn’t killed by direct damage (backstab) from stealth.

He was killed by conditions.

Period, that’s it, that’s all. Whether the thief was visible and sb away would make no odds at all. He doesn’t need to be in stealth to drop the trap – he can pre-cast and steal to have it land on arrival. You couldn’t have avoided that either unless you started dodging instantly after the cleanse. All that placing a trap does is grant you stealth with the trapper runes and some super speed to move away; other runes would increase condi damage.

Seriously, the stealth isn’t the problem on this – the double condi bomb ability of off-cooldown traps (from being prelaid) are. Ranger can do the same if I’m not mistaken…

Nope the issue is the stealth because I had zero idea he was there. can’t activate pet…. can’t use any weapon skills… etc.

You do realise he wasn’t phyiscally there at the time you tripped the first traps. From then on you were dead. Stealth didn’t kill you, the re-application of condi heavy traps did.

I’ve laid traps and fought whilst revealed by “sic em” and the ranger died. It negated my shadow refuge, it negated stealth on a trap being laid… the ranger still died.

Video available if required Trapper thief 1v1 in wvw with stacks is incredibly powerful.

It would require a lot more risk to place the second set if he wasn’t invisible the whole time. Obviously when you can see them running up to drop traps you can respond… but I didn’t know he was there until the second ones got thrown at which point it was too late anyway.

Lazze.9870:

vespers.1759:

Yes I know but he specifically mentioned condi removal in the OP. for PVE I wouldn’t run any condis since zerker is better.

If I were to run a PVE condi build I might take poison master I guess? Not sure as I’ve never run one.

Zerker isn’t better, it’s situational. Condi ranger can out-dps zerker rangers in the right scenarios, but it is dependent on expensive food to match the dps and long enough fights for the build up to be worth it.

The only one I can think of off the top of my head is the Berzerker Abomination in Arah. Condi is better vs. heavy armor but there doesn’t seem to be too much of that around.

Lazze.9870:

vespers.1759:

Perhaps I was unclear on OP’s goals. I thought this was a build for PvP/WvW he wanted. For PVE you shouldn’t be touching poison master with a 1 million foot pole.

It’s the other way around. The condi removal options are rarely necessary for a pve condi build.

Yes I know but he specifically mentioned condi removal in the OP. for PVE I wouldn’t run any condis since zerker is better.

If I were to run a PVE condi build I might take poison master I guess? Not sure as I’ve never run one.

Only reason I was doing them at all was for the money so nope.

Chips.7968:

I’ve already posted the precise series of events, traps and actions the thief took in this instance.

Yet people are discussing whether the traps should reveal. To be crystal fricken clear – the outcome would have been exactly the same. He wasn’t killed by stealth, he wasn’t killed by direct damage (backstab) from stealth.

He was killed by conditions.

Period, that’s it, that’s all. Whether the thief was visible and sb away would make no odds at all. He doesn’t need to be in stealth to drop the trap – he can pre-cast and steal to have it land on arrival. You couldn’t have avoided that either unless you started dodging instantly after the cleanse. All that placing a trap does is grant you stealth with the trapper runes and some super speed to move away; other runes would increase condi damage.

Seriously, the stealth isn’t the problem on this – the double condi bomb ability of off-cooldown traps (from being prelaid) are. Ranger can do the same if I’m not mistaken…

Nope the issue is the stealth because I had zero idea he was there. can’t activate pet…. can’t use any weapon skills… etc.

Rizo.9534:

vespers.1759:

poison master on condi builds was strong pre-June 27. Now it is stronger than ever. You can pound out 2k ticks with it.

BUT

they’ve put all our condition cleanse in one line so where you used to take SoTF/poison master, or empathic bond/poison master you now only get one. If you can find a way to get decent condi cleanse and still get poison master by all means take it. it’s strong as hell.

you can do 13k bleed tick and 14k burn tick, but same as poison master, your enemie have to brainless stand in all your AOE.

Perhaps I was unclear on OP’s goals. I thought this was a build for PvP/WvW he wanted. For PVE you shouldn’t be touching poison master with a 1 million foot pole.

lvis.3824:

Just add 20sec icd to trapper Rune and it would be fine.
But all the rangers would cry then

Except no rangers would cry because no rangers are running trapper runes anymore. the change to our traps has made the runes useless.

poison master on condi builds was strong pre-June 27. Now it is stronger than ever. You can pound out 2k ticks with it.

BUT

they’ve put all our condition cleanse in one line so where you used to take SoTF/poison master, or empathic bond/poison master you now only get one. If you can find a way to get decent condi cleanse and still get poison master by all means take it. it’s strong as hell.

Remember when Search and Rescue was a viable skill to take in some instances? I am starting to forget it was so long ago.

Although someone did use it on my during Teq yesterday and it actually worked which was nice.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Dardamaniac.1295:

Im calling it now. Druid will be better than ranger at every aspect of this game…

Since Druid is just a traitline and mechanic within Ranger, then if Druid is better than Ranger, its a straight upgrade for Ranger. What’s the problem? And Druid will not be better at straight DPS, since none of its traits or Staff have any DPS components.

Not for PVE maybe but Druid line has some pretty nice traits for WvW.

Oh you mean like this?

lmao

As for stealth traps… I think it’s ridiculous you need something like that to kill a solo player. that siege is intended to be used vs enemy zergs and such. Speaks volumes about the balance imo.

Hero.2319:

Guy guys guys…The thief in the video was me. Cherry Fang from TC [Hats] guild.

The OP did the best he could in his situation from my perspective. I did indeed prelay the traps at the narrow gate so everything was off cooldown and I was already stealthed. I got lucky with the “steal” skill reset so that’s why I was able to pop so many traps in short duration.

You can watch some of my other videos from my perspective on one of my recent posts.

-Cheers!

I can confirm this is the thief. I’m actually interested to hear what you think about the build since you play it.

Cynz.9437:

just a side note: devs themself said that wvw was never ment to be balanced… trapper thief is a joke in pvp so no matter how much someone would complain about this build it won’t get touched (nor i think it should tbh, it is only good vs new players w/o condi cleanse)

Every other game on the planet manages to balance things. Arenanet is jsut lazy/ doesn’t give a kitten about WvW.

Don’t for a second buy that they can’t balance things.