Guild Wars 2

Having previously played both GW1 and Lotro from their respective betas, I recently picked up GW2 for all the obvious reasons. As you may have guessed, I picked a Thief as my main, and I’ve progressed to level 34 with much enjoyment, but not without frustration. This frustration almost entirely stems from my perception of the Thief’s trait lines.

Now, comparing similar functions in both Lotro and GW1, each of those games have obvious, well defined trait lines, in the case of Lotro, and attribute ‘types’, if you will, in the case of GW1. So, I expected the same from GW2; but alas, that’s not been the case. Each trait line seems genuinely jumbled and disjointed. It seems to me that each line doesn’t specifically cater to one type of play style, whether it be varying weapon use or simply differing combat tactics.

I’ve nearly lost my mind over trying to figure out how to incorporate duel pistols, venoms, and deception use all at the same time, with trait points spent that benefit someway each of those aspects. For instance, the last trait line has condition damage+, while the first line has condition duration+. Now, one would think, “Hey, I’ll do both and be Mr. Condition damage man!” Sadly, I can’t seem to get something like that to work. I get a heap of other traits that I simply don’t want, and seem to be there for reasons I know not of.

To close my rant, I suppose I had only thought trait lines would be more fluid and logical, but what I see is a total mess. It would make this class more enjoyable if I could pick out an archetype and try to fit things to it that make it, make sense gasp!, but from my point of view, trait lines seem to shove players into only a few categories, all of which would be more effective if traits were reorganized.

Any thoughts upon this would be nice, as I can’t believe I’m the only one running into this mucky mechanic.

the trait lines are far from mucky, they just take getting used to. the stats from a trait line don’t mean as much end game, compared to what the trait bonuses are. power gives several damage boosting and venom boosting options, and the bonus power/condition duration helps those work to their full effect. the crit line focuses on burst damage, while boosting crit chance and damage. shadow arts mainly focuses on stealth, and also gives a boost to toughness and healing power. acrobatics mainly modifies our maneuverability and our ability to dodge, granting bonuses to boon duration and vitality. trickery is focused on our class mechanics, it amplifies steal and changes our initiative system. certain trees also have the ability to shorten the CD on certain groups of utilities, like in trickery you can make tricks cool down faster.

the game isn’t built in a way where if you want to do X, you go down this trait line and this trait line only, using only X weapon. you have a lot of freedom in your builds, weapons, and gear choices. the down side to that system is that it takes time to understand.

tl:dr the trait lines are meant to be versatile, look at the major trait options over the stats the trait lines give you to find out what they are used for, each has a theme. it takes some getting used to.

P/D D/D Condition bleed thief
0/0/30/20/20
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.7.1.6.13.13.0.0.0.0.156.173.176.168.179.9.9.1.0.0.0.0.0.0.484.485.481.497.505.0.513.517.0.0.0.30.20.20

is all about synergy of traits

Kajin.5301:

P/D D/D Condition bleed thief
0/0/30/20/20
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.7.1.6.13.13.0.0.0.0.156.173.176.168.179.9.9.1.0.0.0.0.0.0.484.485.481.497.505.0.513.517.0.0.0.30.20.20

Its all about using one of 2-3 viable builds

fixed it for you

Neither link works for me :S

I do like the fact that trait lines make you think hard to bring together a great build. You really have to weigh up your options about what you can and can’t take. This is good because you won’t be able to fit everything you want in one build.

However this idea sometimes gets taken a bit too far. Having the +5% shortbow damage in the stealth/healing tree for example when SB has no intrinsic way to enter stealth is just stupid. It’s 20 points in too. Waste of a potentially useful trait as I don’t see anyone wasting 20 points for that. The deadly arts tree doesn’t do anything for me either.

I guess it’s good in theory, but needs tweaks. I know other professions feel the same way.

I didnt changed anything at the link, I just changed the last line he wrote in his post.

But Sarrow gave a good example on uselessness in a trait tree with the shortbow trait example. There are also other ones like “Exposed Weakness” in the Deadly Arts tree. Deadly arts focus alot on poison dmg, yet Poisons/Conditions dont benefit at all from this trait. The condition duration helps other builds who take Deadly Arts for its power and direct dmg not much either.
Also the pistol traits which are in Trickery (Condition dmg based) and at the same time 2 traits which are in Critical strikes (Direct dmg based) dont fit together with the weaponset pistol.
The weaponset pistol all in all is pretty strange anyway as the auto attack of it is condition based, so is the sneak attack while double pistol unload is direct dmg based.
The same problem is in the D/D setup which has a strong condition attack but otherwise only direct damage abilities. For me it feels as if Anet tried to make thieves into half condition/half direct damage chars to add more diversity at their ability rotation, but failed in the end at it. You see that even at the shortbow, while the autoattack is direct damage based, clusterbomb is both and the poison field is also rather condition damage and duration based and shines with the deadly arts tree, which is again somekind of condition/direct dmg hybrid.