shadowpass.4236

Takedown changes are lame

Can you make the dagger 4 for ranger baseline 300 range longer like when https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Off-Hand_Training was in the game?

Quickness on every sphere sounds like it is going to be too strong. Also, it would be better to keep Fervent Force and replace Restorative Strikes with Let Loose instead. Restorative Strikes is bad, it's getting nerfed again. Fervent Force is a much more interesting trait and hammer really needs it in PvP. Otherwise, everything else seems pretty good.

Lower CA cooldown to 10s for PvP. 20s cd is way too long and inconsistent for what you want from a support. Lower heal glyph cd to 20s so it lines up with entering CA. 24s cd is awkward because it's not up when you enter. These are probably the only two changes druid needs to be good.

1. Celestial Avatar cooldown to 10 seconds please. 20 seconds is too inconsistent as a support in PvP. Alternatively, you could make CA cooldown start while in Celestial Avatar instead of beginning after you leave the form. 2. Lower the stealth duration on Celestial Shadow to 1s if either of the above changes are made. 3. Add damage back to Gazelle F2 please. The pet is fun but not good as long as Head Toss doesn't deal damage. 4. Heal glyph should be 20s cooldown in PvP to match CA cooldown. Otherwise, the heal combo for druid support becomes even clunkier because you have to wait 4 seconds after you enter CA to heal someone with it. 5. Increase the range/radii of ALL druid glyphs to 600 for the support side! 300 radius is too short to be reliable. You have to be standing directly on top of your teammate in order to affect them. Tempests, Core Support Guard, and Support Spellbreaker all have 600 range on their support skills. Druid shouldn't be an exception. The range increase to Glyph of Equality is good but please include the other glyphs as well! Really good changes overall though! CMC did a great job with this. This is probably the best patch PvP and WvW has gotten in years. I'm glad we're finally getting mechanical reworks!

https://www.twitch.tv/blindside_tv/clip/TawdryAmazingLark4Head-teFkreeIEIovHlqP

Here's a guide for willbender on youtube. It explains the playstyle and demonstrates damage combos and defensive rotations.

Core ranger had a stronger and faster melee burst than soulbeast. Even if the soulbeast merged with their pet, the burst was still lower, but the benefit was the added survivability of the beastmode skills. Dagger mainhand is pretty mediocre in PvP. There are better weapon options. Why did you quote "remove 7 skills from a soulbeast's kit" then proceed to count how many skills a core ranger has in comparison to soulbeast?? Old soulbeast had 2x (4 pet skills + 3 beastmode skills) = 14 skills. Current soulbeast has 1x (4 pet skills + 3 beastmode skills) = 7 skills. 14 - 7 = 7 skills lost from soulbeast's kit, exactly what I said. You can't say "soulbeast-core ranger" because they will always have a different number of abilities.

If you never merged, soulbeast was (and is still) just a weaker version of core ranger for pvp. There was already a tradeoff. Soulbeast does not have ANY additional bonuses unless you merge with your pet. You get the beastmode abilities and stats, in return, you lose the pet skills and pet damage. That's a tradeoff right there. You're saying losing pet swap to gain the ability to merge with your pet is the tradeoff but in reality all Anet did was remove 7 skills from a soulbeast's kit (3 beastmode skills, 4 pet skills). Merging does not make up for that.

Soulbeast was / is weaker than core ranger unless you merge with your pet. When you merge to get beastmode skills and stats, you lose your pet's damage and skills. The tradeoff was already there. Currently, soulbeast has more than one tradeoff with the removal of in-combat pet swap.

Here's an up to date beginner's guide to PvP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsn8fcW_Ujs It'll teach you everything you need to know to get started.

I stream live commentary on twitch @Blindside_TV on all of my ranked games starting at 8:30 pm EST (an hour and 15 minutes from now) every night. I main a ranger which I saw you were interested in. Feel free to ask me as many questions as you want!

Channeled skills track targets in stealth as long as the cast started before they turned invisible.

From what I just read, it seems like you're rotating fine and have the right mindset for playing thief in conquest. I'd suggest googling "gw2 welcome to pvp discord" and joining it so you can ask people there for additional help. There, you could even upload gameplay to youtube or send it to one of the coaches to go over if they have the time. I also agree with Allarius, just keep practicing and you'll be fine. 👍

Pretty good video showing how to fight a ranger 1v2 while paying attention to the pet skills. This was pre-feb patch too when the damage was higher and I'm not getting nuked by the pets at all.

You should try playing more patient against a ranger rather than porting in and throwing everything at them before you know what cooldowns they have up. How to counter those skills: 1. Barrage -> walk out of it before the first tick hits you 2. Rapid Fire -> LoS 3. Point Blank Shot -> Dodge 4. Hunter's Shot -> if the ranger stealths with this, dodge behind LoS if you know they're still in longbow or if you know they have weapon swap up, kite away so they can't maul you 5. Maul -> Dodge 6. Hilt Bash -> it's a stationary close range attack that can't be stowed, just bait it out and about face so it doesn't connect, then you don't have to worry about a second Maul 7. Swoop -> if a ranger is using Swoop to disengage, use a cc at the start of the cast when you see the ranger detarget and face away from you to try and get away 8. Counterback -> bait it out and don't hit it just like you would for Full Counter, except it's more than double the cooldown of FC 9. Pet -> kite it around and dodge the one or two important skills it has while using terrain to make their pathing horrible 10. Lightning Reflexes -> time CC for after the evade 11. etc. etc. Core lb/gs ranger isn't meta for a reason. It's not the strongest 1v1er by a longshot and even the a/d variant which is better on node still isn't great. Core Ranger is like a Spellbreaker, everything has a telegraph except for LB3 and D3 respectively.

The best way to carry ranked games is to kill things fast and power herald is definitely better than core ranger in that regard. Also, power herald has more mobility than core ranger so it can dance around the map just fine. They can rotate between points way quicker and more frequently than a ranger can. It's also pretty safe considering you can repeatedly port in and hit someone for like 7k+ as you're kiting away. Sword 2 on power herald has more base damage and range than maul while hitting in a circle rather than a cone. Also if you want the modifiers: 20% swift termination, expose defenses + exposure sigil + shackling wave vuln = 22% (didn't count this but it procs targeted destruction) for 11%, 10% destructive impulses, 7% ferocious aggression, 13% forceful persistence, 5-10% scholar/eagle runes, 5% opportunity sigil, 5% exposure sigil = 81% without counting the 22% damage increase from vuln. I also take all the might traits so I can kill things faster and what you end up with is a build that has enough damage to press 2-4 buttons and kill people in ranked.

Did you know that power heralds can get more than 80% damage modifiers towards all of their attacks? That's like getting a stronger version of ranger's moment of clarity at all times but you don't have to work for it. I played a good amount of power herald in ranked this season and it's pretty easy to get 20 kills a match and 35-40% of the team's damage cause it kills so fast that your team barely has a chance to hit the people you target. Core ranger maybe hits 5k on a full rapid fire if it crits and the pets can do some damage if the enemy decides to stand still and eat the important attacks rather than dodging. But it's not gonna farm people in <10 seconds like an actual ranked stomper build.

https://i.imgur.com/CFenVhg.jpg https://i.imgur.com/AlPoQDH.jpg If you're having trouble dodging a stationary 3/4s animation attack, wait till you get hit for 7.4k from a base 1/4s cast time True Nature with quickness from a power herald.

Learning how to dodge things that kill or hard cc you is part of getting better at the game. Pre-feb patch, equally skilled side noders would stalemate until one person messed up and the other capitalized on their mistakes. Now, I can hit every single skill on someone and it won't be enough to kill them. When strength runes were bugged and gave % damage per stack of might, I didn't die any more than I normally do. But hey, I had enough damage to kill 1vX again because I outplayed people.

I think it's ridiculous that the best way to play ranger in comp has been to run decap druid because the rest of our side node options have been nerfed so hard it's basically pointless to run it against any of the meta builds. So imagine the balance team nerfs a class so hard that its is relegated to spamming knockbacks that don't do damage just so we can have some semblance of node presence. ... and then the knockbacks get nerfed too.

Is the unblockable on lesser call of the wild still going to stay if the daze is going away? Ranger isn't meta and keeps on receiving nerfs over and over. There have been so many options, skills, and effects removed from ranger by now that I feel like I'm playing half the class I used to compared to what ranger had 2-3 years ago. Removed: 1. Greatsword auto evades 2. Greatsword crippling throw 3. Knockback range from greatsword 4 4. Combat pet swap on soulbeast 5. Damage on really important pet cc abilities like Gazelle F2 which is a nerf to 1/4th of its kit 6. etc. etc. 7. And now the 2 stacks of unblockable on lesser call of the wild? Not to mention the balance team basically increased or doubled the cooldowns on: 1. Maul from 4s to 8s 2. Swoop from 12s to 18s 3. Counterattack from 15s to 30s 4. Hilt Bash from 20s to 25s 5. Celestial Avatar from 10s to 20s So every single skill on ranger greatsword has had effects removed or nerfed AND its cooldowns increased significantly. Why???? Is anything going to be done to even try and bring ranger into the competitive meta? Because there have only been a handful of rangers that even made it to the monthly finals and even less that won. My favorite build to play was lb/gs boonbeast with smokescale and gazelle and every single aspect of it has been nerfed so hard the build doesn't even remotely function anymore.

Warrior can spam CCs, the old spirit weapon dh could spam burns, there's also things that just cancer the node but at least you can hit those builds. Any builds that can spam blind is easy mode. People don't even have to pay attention 80% of a fight running that blind spam thief build cause none of their opponents' skills are going to hit hard or frequently enough to actually kill it in a 1v1. Not that the build is unbeatable, but it hard counters a lot of things cause they don't have multihits or enough sustain to 1v1 it for an extended period of time. Anyways it's not fun to fight against but that's just my opinion, I don't really care if it gets nerfed or not.

Blind spam isn't fun to fight against in my opinion. Any builds that can spam or pulse blind frequently are pretty easy to play cause they just mitigate so much damage for free. And yeah the only build I've seen that can easily take and kill this 1v1 is prot holo with laser disk and that's only if the thief overextends instead of just shadowstepping away. I know you listed a ton of builds but it doesn't matter what they're running. If they don't have a lot of very frequent and constant multihits or extremely high uptime on resistance, this thief build can basically negate 90% of their skills or more if the player is better. Just to give an example, burn builds can't kill this cause the cleansing dodges + blind + cleansing sigils can mitigate the condi well. Keep in mind the thief doesn't just have to spam his rotation. Dodging ccs properly like you would on any other class, coupled with the blinds basically makes the build unkillable in most 1v1s if the thief doesn't shadowstep away. 1 shot soulbeast is countered by smokescreen. Crev damage is pretty easy to avoid for the most part and the thief can just steal the resistance off at key moments to kill. Regardless, I'd like access to blinds to be reduced overall. It's big value if you're able to spam them and frustrating to be on the receiving end of it when 9/10 of your skills aren't hitting anything.

Yeah it's basically like playing pre-nerf ranger with lb/gs or decap druid. You can decap and maintain neutral nodes but you can never hold them fully capped because of the stealth. This thief build can't bunker the node while holding the cap but it can pretty comfortably push into many different 1v1 matchups just cause the blind spam nullifies 90% of the damage they would normally take without them having to really burn any defensive cooldowns to avoid them. I've played it and against it enough times to know that it's pretty low (basically nonexistent) effort with medium to high reward depending on the matchups you're taking cause your opponent cannot hit you the majority of the time and probably won't be able to close on a kill even if they get damage in. Of course, there are builds like prot holo that can fight against it fine but there are some classes that don't really have a way to counter the blind spam in a 1v1.