Guild Wars 2

Call me a noob or whatever but from trying to research builds for pvp on the internet I cant get stuff that is really up to date. I watched tournament matches on twitter but I dont find them very helpful for working out what builds they are using. Plus this is a bit awkward but it would be nice to have explanations as to why some weapon sets arent used much.
For example I have been playing thief and tried using a S/p glass canon build but from watching other players D/d, D/p or S/d are the main ones used( it seems to me), particularly S/d why is this ?
I also wondered what the standard team compositions were for ranked team arena? I assume a mid bunker guardian along with near point defender are common then the other roles can be roamers? The reason I asked this was I watched some tournament games recently and they looked like almost all bunker teams ?!?!
Anyways any replies to my rather long post are welcome. :P
(happy new year soon )

S/P is pretty viable after the last patch, try this build:

http://tinyurl.com/tokerpw

Usual team comps go like this:

Guardian, Ranger, Warrior, Thief, X. X can be a teamfighter like a Necro, another roamer like an Engi or Mesmer, or another Warrior.

General overview by Dantes on reddit:
Up to date tPVP build list

Although confounding mesmer is not on this list.

THANK YOU GUYS !!!!!! very useful I will look up dante’s list though isnt that 5 months out ?

Sassyjay.3645:

THANK YOU GUYS !!!!!! very useful I will look up dante’s list though isnt that 5 months out ?

The one I linked is a summary of the post-patch builds and was posted 4 days ago.

i started playing non-meta build before i shifted to the meta. i think it’s better that way so. learning meta-builds when you’re new is not gonna make you a good fighter. btw, imo, one or two power builds in a team will help to win the match faster than having all players roll bunker/meta builds.

Not all the meta build are bunker …

PierPiero.9142:

Not all the meta build are bunker …

well most of them are. :P

S/P thief is not as good as ppl make it. I play thief and have no problem dealing with them. S/P thief is easier to kill than D/P imo.

I play D/D 0/30/30/10/0 btw

The way I rank thief builds in terms of viability (in sPvP) is as following:

1. D/P
2. S/D
3. S/P
4. D/D
5. P/D
6. P/P

(SB is more of a utility weapon than a build, although if it was a build, I’d replace 5 with it and move the current 5 and 6 up to 6 and 7).

Volrath.1473:

S/P thief is not as good as ppl make it. I play thief and have no problem dealing with them. S/P thief is easier to kill than D/P imo.

I play D/D 0/30/30/10/0 btw

What S/P thieves are you playing against. You’re also playing an attrition build with hidden killer and soldiers I presume.

Attrition yes, but not using Soldiers I run with Berserker and 5 Scholar and 1 Divinity For higher crits, I maintain a constant 5+ stacks of might and can survive a lot due to stealth healing and blinds.

It is a roamer build to get in, take the kill for my team or res a team mate with SR then move on to help another point or decap far point if my team mates have the fight under control.

does someone have a good staff ele build for competitive play?

Volrath.1473:

Attrition yes, but not using Soldiers I run with Berserker and 5 Scholar and 1 Divinity For higher crits, I maintain a constant 5+ stacks of might and can survive a lot due to stealth healing and blinds.

It is a roamer build to get in, take the kill for my team or res a team mate with SR then move on to help another point or decap far point if my team mates have the fight under control.

Why berserkers if you’re running hidden killer, scholar, and divinity? That’s a marginal gain for crit damage and a big loss in durability vs soldiers.

Stix.8502:

does someone have a good staff ele build for competitive play?

Yeah it’s called 0/0/0/0/0 reroll

Arganthium.5638:

The way I rank thief builds in terms of viability (in sPvP) is as following:

1. D/P
2. S/D
3. S/P
4. D/D
5. P/D
6. P/P

(SB is more of a utility weapon than a build, although if it was a build, I’d replace 5 with it and move the current 5 and 6 up to 6 and 7).

You have no idea what youre talking about because you can’t rank thief “builds” based on weapon sets.

For example; D/P Shadow Arts is top three easiest builds to play in this game, but D/P Trickery is one of the highest skilled to play.

However D/D is not viable, it doesnt matter what your build is in PvP. The only D/D build that can do something that none of the other builds can is 25/30/0/0/15 signet one shot build and its not even viable.

Edit: Shortbow is easily one of the strongest weapons a Thief has access to. It allows for plenty of defense and great aoe team support.

Stealthasaur.2198:

Arganthium.5638:

The way I rank thief builds in terms of viability (in sPvP) is as following:

1. D/P
2. S/D
3. S/P
4. D/D
5. P/D
6. P/P

(SB is more of a utility weapon than a build, although if it was a build, I’d replace 5 with it and move the current 5 and 6 up to 6 and 7).

You have no idea what youre talking about because you can’t rank thief “builds” based on weapon sets.

For example; D/P Shadow Arts is top three easiest builds to play in this game, but D/P Trickery is one of the highest skilled to play.

However D/D is not viable, it doesnt matter what your build is in PvP. The only D/D build that can do something that none of the other builds can is 25/30/0/0/15 signet one shot build and its not even viable.

I base it off of the best build(s) for each weaponset, evaluated based on team support, damage, sustain, and general strategy. Cry somewhere else.

Yrdur.1752:

General overview by Dantes on reddit:
Up to date tPVP build list

Although confounding mesmer is not on this list.

what is the confounding mesmer build, I can still add it to the list.

Arganthium.5638:

Stealthasaur.2198:

Arganthium.5638:

The way I rank thief builds in terms of viability (in sPvP) is as following:

1. D/P
2. S/D
3. S/P
4. D/D
5. P/D
6. P/P

(SB is more of a utility weapon than a build, although if it was a build, I’d replace 5 with it and move the current 5 and 6 up to 6 and 7).

You have no idea what youre talking about because you can’t rank thief “builds” based on weapon sets.

For example; D/P Shadow Arts is top three easiest builds to play in this game, but D/P Trickery is one of the highest skilled to play.

However D/D is not viable, it doesnt matter what your build is in PvP. The only D/D build that can do something that none of the other builds can is 25/30/0/0/15 signet one shot build and its not even viable.

I base it off of the best build(s) for each weaponset, evaluated based on team support, damage, sustain, and general strategy. Cry somewhere else.

That explains a lot and is the reason your list makes no sense. You cant evaluate a build generally in this game. Your number one ranked build could easily be hard countered by every single player on the opposite team and it becomes the worst possible build.
No one should listen to this guy because he has tunnel vision.

Stealthasaur.2198:

Arganthium.5638:

Stealthasaur.2198:

Arganthium.5638:

The way I rank thief builds in terms of viability (in sPvP) is as following:

1. D/P
2. S/D
3. S/P
4. D/D
5. P/D
6. P/P

(SB is more of a utility weapon than a build, although if it was a build, I’d replace 5 with it and move the current 5 and 6 up to 6 and 7).

You have no idea what youre talking about because you can’t rank thief “builds” based on weapon sets.

For example; D/P Shadow Arts is top three easiest builds to play in this game, but D/P Trickery is one of the highest skilled to play.

However D/D is not viable, it doesnt matter what your build is in PvP. The only D/D build that can do something that none of the other builds can is 25/30/0/0/15 signet one shot build and its not even viable.

I base it off of the best build(s) for each weaponset, evaluated based on team support, damage, sustain, and general strategy. Cry somewhere else.

That explains a lot and is the reason your list makes no sense. You cant evaluate a build generally in this game. Your number one ranked build could easily be hard countered by every single player on the opposite team and it becomes the worst possible build.
No one should listen to this guy because he has tunnel vision.

You’re a funny creature.

It’s like evaluating a slice of cheese pizza versus an entire pepperoni pizza- they’re not the same thing, but you can still measure how much each one is worth compared to the other. My GW2 theory (especially in the area of thief) is based on three pillars of thought:

1. Mathematical evaluation
2. Positional evaluation
3. Tactical evaluation

The math is fairly easy to come up with yourself once you know a couple of formulas. For positional evaluation, if you know anything about chess, I’d refer you to Dan Heisman’s Elements of Positional Evaluation. Chess is, in a sense, a relatively tiny system which can model the static and dynamic features as well as many of the good and bad effects of many different possible decisions, and given how closely related GW2 is to the strategic thought of chess (though overall less complicated), I feel that reading that book would benefit you greatly. As for tactical evaluation- again, any chess tactics book will explain to you how those work. It’s just about recognizing increasingly more complex patterns, which are featured in GW2 as well. Anyhow, if you still don’t understand how strategies work comparative to one another, that’s not my problem. There’s a large amount of empirical evidence as well as theoretical evidence backing me up, as well as a large section of the thief community that agrees with me.

And in the meantime, don’t start with calling me narrow-minded. I have a good 1.5k more posts than you do, and certainly more experience as well (given that, apparently, your first post on these forums was in October, and that a good few of those posts were attacks on me anyways).

Wow thx for the replies guys and ermmm yes, sorry for that I should have pressed the linked before I assumed :S hehe my apologies. I will check out more of dante’s list of builds thanks man. I play necro as well so it will be good to check out the dhummfire/terror build there.
One thing I can add is when I play S/p (now using cymerdown’s recommendation :P) I use SB a heck of a lot, almost more than S/p. Tt is so useful for defense and aoe (i.e against MM necro) probably about 50/50 usage between SB and s/p maybe even 60/40. The main problem I have is choosing my timing as the fights scale up (3v3 and up). I quite often dive in like an idiot and get killed or even get singled out while using my SB and fail spectacularly.

Solo Q – 50% Arganthium.5638 Knight Wisdom 70 72 49.30% Eredon Terrace

Team Q – Nothing

I can understand how you come up with these theories by playing WvW or hotjoins or whatever it is you do.

You’re telling me to read a book that relates to chess to help me better understand GW2? That would make perfect sense if our characters didn’t have any skills, tree lines or thousands of possible builds. IF we could only move in certain directions and GW2 pvp was only about positioning, Id take you seriously.

You’re trying way to hard and you still have no idea what you’re talking about.

Stealthasaur.2198:

Solo Q – 50% Arganthium.5638 Knight Wisdom 70 72 49.30% Eredon Terrace

Team Q – Nothing

I can understand how you come up with these theories by playing WvW or hotjoins or whatever it is you do.

You’re telling me to read a book that relates to chess to help me better understand GW2? That would make perfect sense if our characters didn’t have any skills, tree lines or thousands of possible builds. IF we could only move in certain directions and GW2 pvp was only about positioning, Id take you seriously.

You’re trying way to hard and you still have no idea what you’re talking about.

Nice to see that you’re a big fan of #yoloQ

I used to play it a lot, back when S/D thief was good, along with Team Arena with the GW2 Esports guild. Well, I quit the game for a couple of months (I was in the top 1k at the time), came back and I was around 7%. Wasn’t planning on working my way up to the top again.

You do realize that #yoloQ is a joke, right? Its MMR calculations are absurd; I know people that are 20-30% higher on the leaderboards than me and yet have a smaller win to loss ratio than I do. Hell, looking at my personal friends list, I have one friend who’s got a 65.71% ratio with and is still at 35% on the leader boards, whereas Ostrich Eggs has a lower win ratio and is still number 73. In fact, even Ostrich Eggs, with ~2.1k games and a 64.48% win ratio, is lower than Kirito, who’s played about 580 games and has a 60.48% win ratio. If that’s not enough to convince you how stupid the Leaderboards are, I don’t know what will convince you. That’s why I quit, though I’d be happy to duel slaughter you anytime. Almost toppled an entire guild once from a single duel, that was fun.

Positional evaluation is very much related to skills- area denial, AoE, immobs, cripple, player movement- all of those are relevant details. GW2 has much more to do with positioning than you think, but most of the parts that aren’t explained by positioning are explained by tactics, which often go more into the force of different attacks. Mathematical theorycrafting helps create a web that combines those two together.

So why should I believe that you know what you’re talking about? You still have much to prove.

Lol, the LB was reset so you cant compare position to win loss ratio. Everything you say makes no sense.

You’re right though about everything.

Stealthasaur.2198:

Lol, the LB was reset so you cant compare position to win loss ratio.

Which is why the Leaderboards make no sense.

Arganthium.5638:

Stealthasaur.2198:

Lol, the LB was reset so you cant compare position to win loss ratio.

Which is why the Leaderboards make no sense.

No the LB makes sense, your reasoning doesnt. You can still judge someone based on amount of games played and their win/loss but you cant compare that information with their placement on the LB itself, which is what you were doing. Again, your all knowing knowledge fails you.

Stealthasaur.2198:

Arganthium.5638:

Stealthasaur.2198:

Lol, the LB was reset so you cant compare position to win loss ratio.

Which is why the Leaderboards make no sense.

No the LB makes sense, your reasoning doesnt. You can still judge someone based on amount of games played and their win/loss but you cant compare that information with their placement on the LB itself, which is what you were doing. Again, your all knowing knowledge fails you.

What authority does the leaderboard have that grants its judgements more value than win:loss ratio or the number of games a player has played?

Enzo.2784:

what is the confounding mesmer build, I can still add it to the list.

Shatter version.
Very strong in teamfights, basicly a shatter build but with 10 points from illusions into domination. Chaos storm is nearly perma dazing/stunning anyone caught without stab and is a perfect anti-stomp ability. Combined with halting strike every interrupt will be quite painful.

Defensive variant.
Not so much a shatter build anymore, but taking 20 points into chaos allows a high uptime of protection as well as 20% cd reduction on staff (28s cd on Chaos storm). This build is somewhat better in 1v1 than the first, considering it’s taking up debilitating dissipation. Another alternative could be to take bountiful interruption (Chaos VIII) instead of chaotic dampening to get some might stacks off of interrupting people – which is basicly what these builds are all about.

Hope this helped