Guild Wars 2

Here’s mine:

• 3 Glass cannon mesmers
• 3 Glass cannon thieves
• 5 Eles (3 Fire Staff builds, 2 d/d tank)
• 5 Hammer/Rifle Warriors
• 4 Mark/Pull Necros

I can’t imagine you needing anything else besides 20 thieves these days. :-/

Could you imagine 20 shatter mesmers though…that would be a sight.

Harbinger.9645:

Could you imagine 20 shatter mesmers though…that would be a sight.

Yeah, but they would kinda get countered by thieves really…really…hard…lol. The thieves stack stealth using smoke fields + cluster bomb before the battle, and proceed to own the mesmers really hard.

Necros would also kill them, as well as trap rangers. Or even rifle warriors really.

Yea, I just want to see 20 mesmers using all their clones and phantasms though. It would be a massive army!

Y u no like AoE stability?

3 guardians
2 mesmers
3 eles
12 warriors

19 mesmers XD

5 immortal builds
4 shattercat
10 glamour

1 thief(to finish all the downed ones)
done.

Pffft your team sucks.

20 rangers all using shortbows with brown bears.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

Pffft your team sucks.

20 rangers all using shortbows with brown bears.

well try to use that bow against 10 feedback and your bears against nullfield and retaliation.
plus handle 25 stacks of confusion and retaliation…

I would love to have 25 stacks of retaliation

laughs manically

Seriously could you imagine? 9k damage to enemy that hits you lolololololololololololol. No one would ever complain about support engineers being overpowered again

Teamkiller.4315:

I would love to have 25 stacks of retaliation

laughs manically

Seriously could you imagine? 9k damage to enemy that hits you lolololololololololololol. No one would ever complain about support engineers being overpowered again

hahaha now imagine 9k retaliation dmg 4 to 5 k confusion, plus 5 k crit from shatercat trying to doge and recieving 1k confusion dmg per tick +1 daggerstorm…..

selan.8354:

Teamkiller.4315:

I would love to have 25 stacks of retaliation

laughs manically

Seriously could you imagine? 9k damage to enemy that hits you lolololololololololololol. No one would ever complain about support engineers being overpowered again

hahaha now imagine 9k retaliation dmg 4 to 5 k confusion, plus 5 k crit from shatercat trying to doge and recieving 1k confusion dmg per tick +1 daggerstorm…..

If this is a balance issue there’s a difference lol.

1) Confusion is hard to stack. It’s REALLY hard to stack up. The maximum amount of stacks I’ve seen on me at any given time was 8 (did around 2-3k per skill use), and it went down to a more reasonable 2 or 3 within a couple seconds. The point is, confusion duration is extremely short, while retaliation duration is often easy to make long.

2) Ripping boons is far more difficult than cleansing conditions

3) Confusion has a very short uptime

4) Confusion does 1/2 the damage of retaliation. Both can be increased by power and condition damage respectively, but Confusion will always do far less damage than retaliation.

5) Confusion only procs damage on skill use. Retaliation procs damage on EACH HIT. Confusion would only do one proc to a warrior using whirling axes, whereas retaliation would do 15 procs. For reference, let’s say they’re used against a mesmer with 1000 condition damage as opposed to a guardian with 1000 extra power. The warrior would be hit for 5-6k in retaliation against the guardian whereas the he would take maybe 200-300 damage in confusion. Even off of 8 stacks (which again, is extremely difficult to keep up or even attain in the first place), the warrior would only take like 2-3k. That’s if the mesmer is speccing into confusion.

Even worse, if it’s zerg vs zerg, the warrior would instagib himself if the guardian provided aoe retaliation to himself, whereas a mesmer that stacks confusion on 5 people wouldn’t…you know, anyways…

Granted, confusion does proc off of utilities and skills that cause condition damage not direct damage which retal won’t proc off of, but still.

6) They can’t burst shatter you like that if they’re try to stack confuses on you, btw. You can’t have confusion stacking and super damaging mind wrack at once. Confusion stacks most easily with a glamour build, which is a support build, not a burst build.

I play Guardian (RET guild, btw, nice to see some PRO here)

^ Confusion really isn’t that hard to stack up. My friend and I generally get 10 stacks of confusion on an enemy quite quickly. That is 2 of us playing our engineers.

2 banner warriors ( hammer //rifle )
4 shout warriors ( hammer // sword /axe)
4 guardians (fully support all )
2 necros
2 thieves (Shortbow)
2 eng (grenades /bombs)
3 elementalists ( 2 staf / 1 CC)
1 mesmer
no rangers, too much skills fully block projectiles:)

Azaruil.3406:

^ Confusion really isn’t that hard to stack up. My friend and I generally get 10 stacks of confusion on an enemy quite quickly. That is 2 of us playing our engineers.

Oh, oops :P

I was talking more about mesmer though haha.

20 Thieves taking Ambush and Thieves Guild. That’s 80 thieves right there popping out of no where.

With culling still:
20 thieves

Without culling:
3 Mesmers
2 Staff ele
3 D/D ele
4 Guardians
6 Warriors
2 Necro

So, a 20 person team. That means the main 1v1 classes aren’t as valuable. Here is what I would want:

5 Support Guards. Constant protection, heals, retaliation? Yes please
5 eles. Aoe damage
3 mesmers. Portal bombs, veils, timewarp, etc
2 necros. Great for zerg busting
3 warriors. banners plus damage
2 ranger

Sorry engi and thief. You don’t bring enough value to the table in a 20v20 matchup.

20 people with supply.

style.6173:

Sorry engi and thief. You don’t bring enough value to the table in a 20v20 matchup.

I could agree with engis maybe, but really? Thief doesn’t bring stuff to the matchup?!?

-Theives can build for toughness and still hit like a truck. You can be almost as tanky as my guardian and still land 6k backstabs on non-bunkers. That way, you’re not a rally for the enemy team.

-On top of that they have cluster bomb, which is a deadly aoe skill on its own, but it is also the *most spammable blast finisher in the game. For an on demand water field area healing or fire field area might nothing, and I mean NOTHING, works better than cluster bomb. It makes the pre-fight might stack a whole lot quicker for your team. And there have been times where we didn’t even have enough blast finishers to go around. With a shortbow thief this will never be a problem.
-Shadow refuge is amazing for rezzing, provides a bit of healing and gives the thief’s most powerful weapon: stealth, to non-noobs who know to stay inside the shadow refuge for 4 seconds and not attack to stealth themselves. Actually once it goes down your allies just have to know to go inside (it can be up for 3 seconds, and you enter the last second and will still get the last 8 seconds of stealth). Amazing for an on-demand flank.
-Speaking of giving stealth to teammates, thieves also are one of the only sources of smoke fields and can easy stack blast finishers to stealth their team.
-Daggerstorm is one of the few skills that hit over the 5 man AOE cap causing both bleeding and cripple, invaluable skills against a zerg (not to mention reflecting projectiles.) and is very very effective to open with on an enemy zerg.
-A well timed blinding powder from my neighborhood friendly thief has saved our entire party’s kittens multiple times. It doesn’t give as long of a stealth as shadow refuge but it’s just about instant cast. Thieves can trait blinding powder on falling which is frigging awesome for those “drop from up high pushes.”
-Black powder will protect high value targets on your team from melee classes while providing smoke field for you or your friends to blast
-Did you know one of the smoke fields can block trebuchet and catapult shots? No lie
-Venom sharing is…OK I’m getting too far ahead of myself lol.

TL;DR you don’t know how much support thieves can give. They can give a kitten ton and still hit like a truck.

Teamkiller.4315:

selan.8354:

Teamkiller.4315:

I would love to have 25 stacks of retaliation

laughs manically

Seriously could you imagine? 9k damage to enemy that hits you lolololololololololololol. No one would ever complain about support engineers being overpowered again

hahaha now imagine 9k retaliation dmg 4 to 5 k confusion, plus 5 k crit from shatercat trying to doge and recieving 1k confusion dmg per tick +1 daggerstorm…..

If this is a balance issue there’s a difference lol.

1) Confusion is hard to stack. It’s REALLY hard to stack up. The maximum amount of stacks I’ve seen on me at any given time was 8 (did around 2-3k per skill use), and it went down to a more reasonable 2 or 3 within a couple seconds. The point is, confusion duration is extremely short, while retaliation duration is often easy to make long.

2) Ripping boons is far more difficult than cleansing conditions

3) Confusion has a very short uptime

4) Confusion does 1/2 the damage of retaliation. Both can be increased by power and condition damage respectively, but Confusion will always do far less damage than retaliation.

5) Confusion only procs damage on skill use. Retaliation procs damage on EACH HIT. Confusion would only do one proc to a warrior using whirling axes, whereas retaliation would do 15 procs. For reference, let’s say they’re used against a mesmer with 1000 condition damage as opposed to a guardian with 1000 extra power. The warrior would be hit for 5-6k in retaliation against the guardian whereas the he would take maybe 200-300 damage in confusion. Even off of 8 stacks (which again, is extremely difficult to keep up or even attain in the first place), the warrior would only take like 2-3k. That’s if the mesmer is speccing into confusion.

Even worse, if it’s zerg vs zerg, the warrior would instagib himself if the guardian provided aoe retaliation to himself, whereas a mesmer that stacks confusion on 5 people wouldn’t…you know, anyways…

Granted, confusion does proc off of utilities and skills that cause condition damage not direct damage which retal won’t proc off of, but still.

6) They can’t burst shatter you like that if they’re try to stack confuses on you, btw. You can’t have confusion stacking and super damaging mind wrack at once. Confusion stacks most easily with a glamour build, which is a support build, not a burst build.

I play Guardian (RET guild, btw, nice to see some PRO here)

So, erm u have never ran into a real glamour mesmer then.
ok here is how it works:

- Yes, with a group of 10 glamour mesmer, 25 stack no problem.I alone inflict 7 to 8 stack myself
-Every time u enter or exit a glamfield u get inflicted with confusion, 10 feedback+10 Nullfields+20 portal+ 1 temporalcurtain pull=25 stacks
-confusion duration can last actually quite long with the right food.
-Every skill u use is gonna start the tick of 1.2k up to actually 3k if not more
-lets say u use a projectile u get extra dmg from feedback
-200- 300 dmg is not glamour mes ticks, thats quite low for confusion, most confusion builds get around 650-750
-Nullfield is not only ripping boons, it also cures conditions on allies
-retaliation is powerful, difference:I don’t need to get hit to deal dmg,you could be attacking my clone while i stand there watching u losing half of your life
-plus the shattercat mesmers wll keep u busy enough to use your skills.Btw nr 2 and nr3 scepter skills can cause big confusion dmg aswell.
-btw, kinda embarrassing,but 25 of us ran into 10 glam mesmers and got destroyed more than 8 times in a row.I had most of the time around 15 stacks of condusion on me….and we are all different classes: thieves,mesmers,Rangers,Necro,guardians,warriors,…all of us …boooooom….. o_0
-And actually its more than 5 people…..

-now combine that with 5 immortals and 4 shatter cats..and i permastealth thief XD

-oh, and hello RET, nice to see u here too :-)

Straegen.2938:

style.6173:

So, a 20 person team. That means the main 1v1 classes aren’t as valuable. Here is what I would want:

5 Support Guards. Constant protection, heals, retaliation? Yes please
5 eles. Aoe damage
3 mesmers. Portal bombs, veils, timewarp, etc
2 necros. Great for zerg busting
3 warriors. banners plus damage
2 ranger

Sorry engi and thief. You don’t bring enough value to the table in a 20v20 matchup.

Dump the rangers and add 2 more warriors with hammers, GS, rifle. Thieves, eng and rangers are fine classes but don’t really add much in terms of versatility or team buffs.

This I can agree with.

style.6173:

Teamkiller.4315:

style.6173:

Sorry engi and thief. You don’t bring enough value to the table in a 20v20 matchup.

I could agree with engis maybe, but really? Thief doesn’t bring stuff to the matchup?!?

-Theives can build for toughness and still hit like a truck. You can be almost as tanky as my guardian and still land 6k backstabs on non-bunkers. That way, you’re not a rally for the enemy team.

-On top of that they have cluster bomb, which is a deadly aoe skill on its own, but it is also the *most spammable blast finisher in the game. For an on demand water field area healing or fire field area might nothing, and I mean NOTHING, works better than cluster bomb. It makes the pre-fight might stack a whole lot quicker for your team. And there have been times where we didn’t even have enough blast finishers to go around. With a shortbow thief this will never be a problem.
-Shadow refuge is amazing for rezzing, provides a bit of healing and gives the thief’s most powerful weapon: stealth, to non-noobs who know to stay inside the shadow refuge for 4 seconds and not attack to stealth themselves. Actually once it goes down your allies just have to know to go inside (it can be up for 3 seconds, and you enter the last second and will still get the last 8 seconds of stealth). Amazing for an on-demand flank.
-Speaking of giving stealth to teammates, thieves also are one of the only sources of smoke fields and can easy stack blast finishers to stealth their team.
-Daggerstorm is one of the few skills that hit over the 5 man AOE cap causing both bleeding and cripple, invaluable skills against a zerg (not to mention reflecting projectiles.) and is very very effective to open with on an enemy zerg.
-A well timed blinding powder from my neighborhood friendly thief has saved our entire party’s kittens multiple times. It doesn’t give as long of a stealth as shadow refuge but it’s just about instant cast. Thieves can trait blinding powder on falling which is frigging awesome for those “drop from up high pushes.”
-Black powder will protect high value targets on your team from melee classes while providing smoke field for you or your friends to blast
-Did you know one of the smoke fields can block trebuchet and catapult shots? No lie
-Venom sharing is…OK I’m getting too far ahead of myself lol.

TL;DR you don’t know how much support thieves can give. They can give a kitten ton and still hit like a truck.

If this was a 5v5 then yes, thieves would be great. 20v20, other classes are simply better. The support skills you mentioned are limited to 5 people as well (except dagger storm as you mentioned). To make the skills viable, you’d need at least 4 thieves in the 20. Given the limit of 20, other classes make better choices.

IIRC the only guardian skills that aren’t limited to five people are the projectile counters. All their other boon shares are limited to five as well.

Source: I play guardian and have tried out a build using every sort of utility except spirit weapons.

Vorch.2985:

Here’s mine:

• 3 Glass cannon mesmers
• 3 Glass cannon thieves
• 5 Eles (3 Fire Staff builds, 2 d/d tank)
• 5 Hammer/Rifle Warriors
• 4 Mark/Pull Necros

I can see all of these posts are written by scrubs from lower tiers.

a) WvW is not a place for Glass cannons, if you run a GC with any class you just revived the whole enemie team in Zerg v Zerg battles.
You can run GC, but only if you are like chasing yaks, ganking ppl who are alone trying to regroop, other than that, useless .
b) Perfect team would be :
5 Guardians
3 Mesmers
5 Elementalists
5 Warriors
2 Necros
All running PTV gear
(You can bring thieves or rangers if you need someone to afk on the treb )

My ideal 20 person team would be any 20 people who are familiar and comfortable with the build and class they are playing. Ideally their builds would not be totally glassy. Other than that, I believe a mixed group of any professions can accomplish awesome things as long as the players themselves are fluent with their skills.

Your ideal band might be drum/guitar/bass/singer but I think great music can be made with any combo of instruments played by skilled musicians. The same thing applies to this game.

Teamkiller.4315:

style.6173:

Sorry engi and thief. You don’t bring enough value to the table in a 20v20 matchup.

I could agree with engis maybe, but really? Thief doesn’t bring stuff to the matchup?!?

-Theives can build for toughness and still hit like a truck. You can be almost as tanky as my guardian and still land 6k backstabs on non-bunkers. That way, you’re not a rally for the enemy team.

-On top of that they have cluster bomb, which is a deadly aoe skill on its own, but it is also the *most spammable blast finisher in the game. For an on demand water field area healing or fire field area might nothing, and I mean NOTHING, works better than cluster bomb. It makes the pre-fight might stack a whole lot quicker for your team. And there have been times where we didn’t even have enough blast finishers to go around. With a shortbow thief this will never be a problem.
-Shadow refuge is amazing for rezzing, provides a bit of healing and gives the thief’s most powerful weapon: stealth, to non-noobs who know to stay inside the shadow refuge for 4 seconds and not attack to stealth themselves. Actually once it goes down your allies just have to know to go inside (it can be up for 3 seconds, and you enter the last second and will still get the last 8 seconds of stealth). Amazing for an on-demand flank.
-Speaking of giving stealth to teammates, thieves also are one of the only sources of smoke fields and can easy stack blast finishers to stealth their team.
-Daggerstorm is one of the few skills that hit over the 5 man AOE cap causing both bleeding and cripple, invaluable skills against a zerg (not to mention reflecting projectiles.) and is very very effective to open with on an enemy zerg.
-A well timed blinding powder from my neighborhood friendly thief has saved our entire party’s kittens multiple times. It doesn’t give as long of a stealth as shadow refuge but it’s just about instant cast. Thieves can trait blinding powder on falling which is frigging awesome for those “drop from up high pushes.”
-Black powder will protect high value targets on your team from melee classes while providing smoke field for you or your friends to blast
-Did you know one of the smoke fields can block trebuchet and catapult shots? No lie
-Venom sharing is…OK I’m getting too far ahead of myself lol.

TL;DR you don’t know how much support thieves can give. They can give a kitten ton and still hit like a truck.

I generally agree with the above except a couple of points.

1) In a group of 20 situation, a banner warrior has as good or better blast finishing capability then a thief. Every banner is a bundle weapon anyone can pick up. The #5 skill drops the banner and acts as a blast finisher. The cooldown is per player, not per banner, so that’s a continuous stream of blasts with just a couple banners. As a side benefit, the #3 skill on banners can quickly stack aoe swiftness as well. Thief blast output is comparable, but eventually drains initiative unless traited a certain way.

2) Engineers also have smoke fields. They are quite viable in several ways, but not going into that here. Suffice to say, I disagree with the statement that engineers are useless.

(I’m also under the impression that dagger storm is capped at 5 targets, but like other continuous pulsing aoes it hits a random 5 each pulse, which looks like a lot of numbers all over the place. The reflect effect isn’t capped, and there’s usually a bunch of dumb people shooting the spinning thief, greatly adding to the “holy crap numbers everywhere!” effect of this skill.)

Thrashbarg.9820:

My ideal 20 person team would be any 20 people who are familiar and comfortable with the build and class they are playing. Ideally their builds would not be totally glassy. Other than that, I believe a mixed group of any professions can accomplish awesome things as long as the players themselves are fluent with their skills.

Your ideal band might be drum/guitar/bass/singer but I think great music can be made with any combo of instruments played by skilled musicians. The same thing applies to this game.

Teamkiller.4315:

style.6173:

Sorry engi and thief. You don’t bring enough value to the table in a 20v20 matchup.

I could agree with engis maybe, but really? Thief doesn’t bring stuff to the matchup?!?

-Theives can build for toughness and still hit like a truck. You can be almost as tanky as my guardian and still land 6k backstabs on non-bunkers. That way, you’re not a rally for the enemy team.

-On top of that they have cluster bomb, which is a deadly aoe skill on its own, but it is also the *most spammable blast finisher in the game. For an on demand water field area healing or fire field area might nothing, and I mean NOTHING, works better than cluster bomb. It makes the pre-fight might stack a whole lot quicker for your team. And there have been times where we didn’t even have enough blast finishers to go around. With a shortbow thief this will never be a problem.
-Shadow refuge is amazing for rezzing, provides a bit of healing and gives the thief’s most powerful weapon: stealth, to non-noobs who know to stay inside the shadow refuge for 4 seconds and not attack to stealth themselves. Actually once it goes down your allies just have to know to go inside (it can be up for 3 seconds, and you enter the last second and will still get the last 8 seconds of stealth). Amazing for an on-demand flank.
-Speaking of giving stealth to teammates, thieves also are one of the only sources of smoke fields and can easy stack blast finishers to stealth their team.
-Daggerstorm is one of the few skills that hit over the 5 man AOE cap causing both bleeding and cripple, invaluable skills against a zerg (not to mention reflecting projectiles.) and is very very effective to open with on an enemy zerg.
-A well timed blinding powder from my neighborhood friendly thief has saved our entire party’s kittens multiple times. It doesn’t give as long of a stealth as shadow refuge but it’s just about instant cast. Thieves can trait blinding powder on falling which is frigging awesome for those “drop from up high pushes.”
-Black powder will protect high value targets on your team from melee classes while providing smoke field for you or your friends to blast
-Did you know one of the smoke fields can block trebuchet and catapult shots? No lie
-Venom sharing is…OK I’m getting too far ahead of myself lol.

TL;DR you don’t know how much support thieves can give. They can give a kitten ton and still hit like a truck.

I generally agree with the above except a couple of points.

1) In a group of 20 situation, a banner warrior has as good or better blast finishing capability then a thief. Every banner is a bundle weapon anyone can pick up. The #5 skill drops the banner and acts as a blast finisher. The cooldown is per player, not per banner, so that’s a continuous stream of blasts with just a couple banners. As a side benefit, the #3 skill on banners can quickly stack aoe swiftness as well. Thief blast output is comparable, but eventually drains initiative unless traited a certain way.

2) Engineers also have smoke fields. They are quite viable in several ways, but not going into that here. Suffice to say, I disagree with the statement that engineers are useless.

(I’m also under the impression that dagger storm is capped at 5 targets, but like other continuous pulsing aoes it hits a random 5 each pulse, which looks like a lot of numbers all over the place. The reflect effect isn’t capped, and there’s usually a bunch of dumb people shooting the spinning thief, greatly adding to the “holy crap numbers everywhere!” effect of this skill.)

1) Ah I see, sorry about that. I noticed a 10 second cooldown on the banner 5 skill haha so that’s what I assumed.

2) That’s probably true actually.

Straegen.2938:

I think we are all forgetting the “21st man” on the team, Vent/Mumble/Teamspeak. Any team running on a voice channel with a lead has a massive advantage over a group that doesn’t.

Isn’t it safe to assume that the perfect 20 man team would be in Vent/Mumble/Teamspeak? Does ANY organized, self-respecting team NOT run together in some sort of second party voice comms?

war.3790:

I can see all of these posts are written by scrubs from lower tiers.

a) WvW is not a place for Glass cannons, if you run a GC with any class you just revived the whole enemie team in Zerg v Zerg battles.
You can run GC, but only if you are like chasing yaks, ganking ppl who are alone trying to regroop, other than that, useless .
b) Perfect team would be :
5 Guardians
3 Mesmers
5 Elementalists
5 Warriors
2 Necros
All running PTV gear
(You can bring thieves or rangers if you need someone to afk on the treb )

We love running up against PTV zergs, you can kite them across the map without them being able to kill you. Group play is about synergy and glass cannon is acceptable if played right and the synergy from the group provides them the protection they need.

Granted if your a scrub, regardless of tier, then everyone in PTV might make the most sense for you.

Niim.9260:

war.3790:

I can see all of these posts are written by scrubs from lower tiers.

a) WvW is not a place for Glass cannons, if you run a GC with any class you just revived the whole enemie team in Zerg v Zerg battles.
You can run GC, but only if you are like chasing yaks, ganking ppl who are alone trying to regroop, other than that, useless .
b) Perfect team would be :
5 Guardians
3 Mesmers
5 Elementalists
5 Warriors
2 Necros
All running PTV gear
(You can bring thieves or rangers if you need someone to afk on the treb )

We love running up against PTV zergs, you can kite them across the map without them being able to kill you. Group play is about synergy and glass cannon is acceptable if played right and the synergy from the group provides them the protection they need.

Granted if your a scrub, regardless of tier, then everyone in PTV might make the most sense for you.

^This

Alot of classes have built-in survivability. Glass cannon CAN be perfectly viable depending on class and player skill. As a caveat, there are certain classes that absolutely kitten themselves running glass cannon, but Mesmers and Thieves, in the right players hands, are totally viable.

crewthief.8649:

Niim.9260:

war.3790:

I can see all of these posts are written by scrubs from lower tiers.

a) WvW is not a place for Glass cannons, if you run a GC with any class you just revived the whole enemie team in Zerg v Zerg battles.
You can run GC, but only if you are like chasing yaks, ganking ppl who are alone trying to regroop, other than that, useless .
b) Perfect team would be :
5 Guardians
3 Mesmers
5 Elementalists
5 Warriors
2 Necros
All running PTV gear
(You can bring thieves or rangers if you need someone to afk on the treb )

We love running up against PTV zergs, you can kite them across the map without them being able to kill you. Group play is about synergy and glass cannon is acceptable if played right and the synergy from the group provides them the protection they need.

Granted if your a scrub, regardless of tier, then everyone in PTV might make the most sense for you.

^This

Alot of classes have built-in survivability. Glass cannon CAN be perfectly viable depending on class and player skill. As a caveat, there are certain classes that absolutely kitten themselves running glass cannon, but Mesmers and Thieves, in the right players hands, are totally viable.

In general a thief that builds for about 2.5-2.6k toughness can still hit a kittenload of damage. (you can watch Yishis’ videos, and his build). He can still hit those 5k backstabs on bunker guardians, still drop lowbies with a single backstab, and still 2 shot glass cannons. I would much rather prefer a thief with 2.5k-2.6k toughness and 17k hp in my party than a full GC thief, while hitting only maybe 20% lower. And I’d rather fight a GC thief than a bunkery thief because I can drop half a GCs thief’s with one attack from my hammer that is both AOE and recharges every 4 seconds whereas a toughness thief? Well let’s just say he’ll be using his utilities a LOT less than a GC thief.

But yes, you can be GC and “survivable” but…not really…especially not ikittenvZ where you have meteor showers dropping everywhere because you know 10 staff eles.

Teamkiller.4315:

crewthief.8649:

Niim.9260:

war.3790:

I can see all of these posts are written by scrubs from lower tiers.

a) WvW is not a place for Glass cannons, if you run a GC with any class you just revived the whole enemie team in Zerg v Zerg battles.
You can run GC, but only if you are like chasing yaks, ganking ppl who are alone trying to regroop, other than that, useless .
b) Perfect team would be :
5 Guardians
3 Mesmers
5 Elementalists
5 Warriors
2 Necros
All running PTV gear
(You can bring thieves or rangers if you need someone to afk on the treb )

We love running up against PTV zergs, you can kite them across the map without them being able to kill you. Group play is about synergy and glass cannon is acceptable if played right and the synergy from the group provides them the protection they need.

Granted if your a scrub, regardless of tier, then everyone in PTV might make the most sense for you.

^This

Alot of classes have built-in survivability. Glass cannon CAN be perfectly viable depending on class and player skill. As a caveat, there are certain classes that absolutely kitten themselves running glass cannon, but Mesmers and Thieves, in the right players hands, are totally viable.

In general a thief that builds for about 2.5-2.6k toughness can still hit a kittenload of damage. (you can watch Yishis’ videos, and his build). He can still hit those 5k backstabs on bunker guardians, still drop lowbies with a single backstab, and still 2 shot glass cannons. I would much rather prefer a thief with 2.5k-2.6k toughness and 17k hp in my party than a full GC thief, while hitting only maybe 20% lower. And I’d rather fight a GC thief than a bunkery thief because I can drop half a GCs thief’s with one attack from my hammer that is both AOE and recharges every 4 seconds whereas a toughness thief? Well let’s just say he’ll be using his utilities a LOT less than a GC thief.

But yes, you can be GC and “survivable” but…not really…especially not ikittenvZ where you have meteor showers dropping everywhere because you know 10 staff eles.

Well, I do agree with enough planning and research, you can build a tough, durable character with nearly the same amount of damage as a glass cannon. And I suppose I was referencing from a small group perspective. In ZvZ warfare, a glass cannon is quite a bit more hazardous for your health…but can still be pulled off factoring in player skill and class. I think what I was getting at is that certain classes are at least VIABLE as glass cannons. There are other classes however, that completely miss the mark by gearing glass cannon. Of course, if you’re looking for optimal performance in all aspects of WvW, I think a durable toon is the way to go. I like Valkyrie/Knight mix with some rubies in a few spots.

P.S. Pretty sure you meant 2.5-2.6k armor rather than toughness. Not sure 2.5k toughness is even possible.

Yes my bad haha, it is indeed impossible to achieve 2.5k toughness. I did mean armor.

Yes, I’ll admit that GC’s are viable roaming, but I was just referring to the fact that I would much prefer being with a more tanky player who hits almost as much so I do not have to pop stability to revive him all the time lest he becomes a rally for my foes.

In ZvZ unfortunately there’s very little in the realm of player skill that will save a GC THIEF. A more bunkery thief can survive because he’s not going to take a meteor shower that 2 shots him, he’s not going to go down to one combo from a fire ele trying to hit the zerg, he’s not going to go down in one hit to that GC warrior using a whirling not meant for him, he’s not going to get 5-6 shotted by a guardian spamming his staff’s 6oo range aoe autoattack twice per second. Instead, he’s going to be able to take a couple meteors and dodge, he’s going to tank the fire combo and force the ele to ride the lightning, he’s going to be able to tank the whirling attack and stealth. He’s going to be able to close the gap to the guardian and pressure him enough force a weapon change that stops buffing his allies to deal with you, who I might add, poses a much greater threat to all these foes than a GC who wastes his burst and must run away immediately afterwards or just die to AOE not even meant for them.

Sorry, while GC thief may be viable roaming, definitely not for ZvZ where you can’t avoid the onslaught of a kittenload of AOEs since you know, you have limited dodges and stealth doesn’t make you invulnerable.

- 4 Tanky build hammer wariors (CC kings) cause target focus.
- 3 Tanky support Gaurdian Boon builds chaining between team buff skills and healing ULT’s if needed.
- 3 Mezmer clone builds (bulk out the force and throw in decoys) and the DPS.
- 2 Necro full condition damage/condition duration builds.
- 2 Ele Aoe dps builds.
- 2 full Stelth glass Thieve’s for stelth spikeing/targeting squishy ranged foe’s.
- 3 Longbow ranger’s for Aoe cripple and pet focus on squishyer targets.
- 1 Engineer CD/direct damage utility build (kits-Granade, Med, Tool)

20 Necros using full +vitality +toughness +condition damage. All with staff as a main and axe + warhorn alt. Well of blood, Signit of undeath, spectral grasp, epidemic and plague. If anyone ever dies, no matter how many opponents you are facing, there is a problem.

With 20 Tankcatz (turtle build) engineers my team would be unstoppable force that would wander around aimlessly and not be able to kill anything. It would be top notch trolling and my team would complain about their wrist pains from all the toolkit swapping and rolling.

10 Hammer warriors
4 Guardians
4 Ele
2 Mesmers

20? Cut 19, throw me in.

Hey! My contribution is as valuable as all the other posts in this topic!

“Simulated Culling Mishap”
You know, when it’s gone maybe we’ll miss it.

20 D/P thieves running:
Ambush trap
Shadow trap
Caltrops
Thieve’s Guild

Now, hide the group around a corner, litter the area, each member stacking his own traps. As soon as the enemy trips ambush (and spawns an NPC thief) they’ll also trip shadow trap. Hit shadow pursuit to warp to enemy, hit thieve’s guild, and lay down caltrops all over the place.

INSTANT ROLLING PHANTOM ZERG.

Thieves work in units of five, focus firing while the enemy is busy going WTF and having trouble ressing due to the caltrops everywhere and those annoying 3 NPC thieves per player.

Utter hilarious chaos.

Would it be the most effective 20 man? Nah. But it’d be one heck of a laugh.