Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone! I jus recently got to lv 80 with my thief. This is my first character and there’s plenty (and I mean PLENTY) of stuff I don’t know about the game.
I’m mostly a PVE player, I prefer to know a bit more about teh game before going to WvW or PVP.

For not I’m focusing on getting better armor with the karma vendors in Orr temples. I’ve just gotten my second armor piece, so there’s still a lot for me to do abuot that. I don’t know of a very good way to earn karma so I mostly do events in lv 80 areas and do my dailies.

I have no idea on what weapon to use. I enjoy D/D although I’ve been told it sucks right now, it’s the one I most enjoy. I have no idea about combos or stuff. I mainly use for single target CnD and backstab, and death blossomx3 plus caltrops for more than one enemy.

I still do very little damage though, I have no idea if it’s because of my equipment, poor weapon choices, or poor anything to be honest XD

I’d really like some help both in my main goal for now (is it okay to try to get that armorset?) and maybe some opinions on weapon and stuff.

Also I have no idea on combos and crafting but I guess I could just read about that to learn more.

Hello, here are some tips that you may find helpful in regards to a few things you have stated (my personal experiences):

“I’m mostly a PVE player, I prefer to know a bit more about teh game before going to WvW or PVP.

If you’re mostly a PVE player then there is quite a lot of content catered to that specific area of the game, this includes:

• Dungeons
• Guild missions (with friends, guildies etc)
• World Boss Events
• Map completion aka World Completion
• Fractals (I personally don’t really do these because I have no idea yet)
• Living World/Story content
• Large scale events especially in the more recent maps Dry Top + Silverwastes

" I don’t know of a very good way to earn karma so I mostly do events in lv 80 areas and do my dailies.

You can earn relatively very fast karma in EOTM (Edge of the Mists) aboard what is called a k-train (karma train) which is led by someone who is tagged up on the map and they go around to cap objectives whilst killing champions which net you champ bags (loot). However, this is a hostile environment where players can kill other players so you may want to stick with the zerg (your group of allies) at all times.

Here is a list of things that grant karma:

• EOTM (Edge of the Mists) is by far the fastest karma I have acquired
• Map events in general across Tyria
• World Boss events.. ? I’m not too sure here tbh but I think they do
• Some rewards doing events/levelling up chests for specific things and/or dailies grant little tubes of karma

“I have no idea on what weapon to use. I enjoy D/D although I’ve been told it sucks right now, it’s the one I most enjoy.

My entire time playing thief I mained D/D for PvE. It is the easiest weapon set to get used to because it really feels like it’s suited to the class. A lot of players recommend short bow as an off-hand. When it comes to WvW or PvP there will be things that simply work and don’t work, this is where D/D does not shine so well because D/P (dagger + pistol) shines in so many more helpful ways due to black powder putting down blinds which can cause important skills on the enemy to “miss” thus saving your life frequently.

Nutshell:

• D/D is nice for PvE but not so much in WvW/PvP but you can still use it, whatever floats your boat
• D/P is currently considered the best set of weapons for WvW/PvP in a manner of roaming but can be used in other cases too
• S/D (sword + dagger) took a disappointing and brutal blow and is now relatively ineffective after the recent patch
• P/P (pistol + pistol) is utter trash. Seriously. It got butchered anyway.
• Short bow is an excellent weapon for various situations. Always carry one just in case.
• P/D (pistol + dagger) is the absolute king of thief condition builds and the main source of certain condition builds due to the auto-attack bleeds

“I still do very little damage though, I have no idea if it’s because of my equipment, poor weapon choices, or poor anything to be honest XD

There may be a few factors you need to look into as to where you are lacking in certain things be it power/conditions or simply if you’re using traits that benefit you overall, even to the extent of weapons/armor/food etc.

First and foremost you need to decide the following:

• What build/playstyle do you want to run as a thief? Power? Conditions? Hybrid? This is where I suggest you look up and visit Metabattle for a variety of builds that should be viable; in other words – good builds.
• Once you have chosen a build check out your weapon skills. Some are particularly shoveled into doing direct power damage (sword) and others excel at doing conditions (pistol main-hand). Always be mindful what weapons you use because sometimes your build depends on them.
• Have you considered using food/utility nourishment? Look on the trading post for a plethora of foods that can boost specific stats.
• Armor/weapon stats… the king of raw DPS stat-wise is berserker gear and a large portion of the community have been, and continue to use zerker. (With the recent patch this also means running full zerker gear makes you insanely glassy) The king of conditions varies between Dire/Rabid and other notable stats choices like Rampager/Sinister gear. Anything is fine in PvE but when it comes to WvW/PvP… running glassy builds is not always the best choice. This is where other stat choices come into place such as the standard + efficient Soldier/Sentinel/Cleric/Celestial gear because you need some form of toughness/vitality to survive against the immense amount of conditions/power based damage going on around you.

“I’d really like some help both in my main goal for now (is it okay to try to get that armorset?) and maybe some opinions on weapon and stuff.

• It’s good to set yourself goals be it long-term or short-term
• Don’t be afraid to try out different builds/armor stats. At least if you do you can conquer whether or not it is viable.
• From personal experience I can recommend condition thief as the recent patch buffed conditions in various ways. It is a fun play-style despite people labeling it as ‘cheesy’.

“Also I have no idea on combos and crafting but I guess I could just read about that to learn more.

• Neither do I and this is why ANet should make a tutorial on combo fields because half the time I have no idea what I just did to proc that field
• Crafting is costly but is also one of the fastest ways to level. I have levelled a lot of alts this way but I recommend the k-train in EOTM for fast levels/karma too.

Sorry for the lengthy post but I hope this helps you a bit.

What I would say is if you mostly just PvE and even then, aren’t doing expert dungeon or fractal runs, you can ignore most of the hate certain weapon sets, including D/D, are getting on the forum. Almost all of those comments are referring to PvP balance at the moment so from the sounds of it, you won’t really be able to tell what they’re talking about as far as survivability goes. The general PvE in GW2 isn’t particularly challenging once you know what you’re doing so any weapon set is viable really (except P/P now. No AoE options anymore so really hurts it. Everyone’s right about that one lol)

Zephyra pretty much covered everything. Just play for a bit, find a certain groove you enjoy playing in, and make a build around that. Websites that offer build templates to tinker around with armor, runes, trinket stats, etc help a lot in figuring out what sort of stats you’ll be getting before you end up buying everything and realize it’s not giving you what you want.

Not sure what temple armor you’re going for but do keep in mind that each temple offers different stats, so keep an eye out that you’re not getting gear for stats you don’t want.

As far as the D/D skills you say you enjoy using, as well as caltrops, you could look into a sort of hybrid Power/Condition Damage build. The lack of damage you’re feeling could be that caltrops and death blossom really do the most when spec’d into Condition damage to get the bleed going strong. Or if you do just prefer raw power, don’t forget about skill 2 Heartseeker. It’s pretty cheap on init, has a combo finisher, and does decent damage once their HP get’s low.

And as far as combo’s or anything like that goes, just keep playing around until you find something you like. What helps a lot is going to the PvP starting zone place. Click the sword icons up top, and it’s just a sort of town/practice place. They have training dummies in the NW area of the zone you can mess around on. They don’t attack or anything so go wild. IMO, you’ll have a lot more fun if you find attack strings and builds out yourself rather than copy/paste from websites.

thanks a lot for all the replies, they’re very useful to me.
I’ve tried world bosses and it’s pretty fun actually. I haven’t checked on how much karma I earned by doing it though. I’ll put more attention to that and see if it’s faster that way. The same thing with karma in EOTM, I’ll definitely give it a try too, I have played just around 2-3 rounds of WvW so far and it was fun, although I died a lot.
Also, great to know that D/D can be used in PVE and it works good enough.
I enjoy condition or hybrid builds so I’m thinking in something alongside those lines.

For now I’ll try to keep getting my karma to get the orr temple. I’m trying to get the balthazar set but it’s hard to buy it since the temple is 99% of the time under risen attack.

I’ll also practice a bit in the PVP starting zone for combos and other stuff.
thanks again, everyone!

If you want to be effective in PvE, the answer is very simple: full zerker gear, and as weaponsets use D/D or S/P, with SB as secondary set.

D/D is useful vs single, high hp pool bosses, while S/P gives you the best efficacy vs groups of trash mobs (cleave + evade frame of PW).

Regarding gear, I strongly advice that you get, for the moment, exotic equipment NOT from karma/wvw vendors, the reason is simple: they’re not salvageable, so if you put expensive runes/sigils on them, you’ll lose them (and no, the extractor is not an economically viable choice at all).

So, start to farm some gold in order to craft your own weapons/armor, you can find guides on how to craft to 400 and 500 with the minimum possible cost, after reaching 400 you can get your own exotic equipment which will be salvageable in the future when you’ll be ready to craft up to 500 and craft yourself ascended gear.

For ascended gear, first craft weapons (which give you a net +5% on dmg, stats aside), then, if you want and are a fractal frequenter, you can dedicate yourself to the armor. As far as trinkets go, try to get the ascended ones as soon as possible, rings are very easy to get (10 pristine relics for each), and you can get the others with guild missions/laurels.

So, where to go to farm gold? Atm, the best solutions are: Silverwastes (event run+chestfarm) and dungeon fast, meta runs.

Ah, so you think it’s better to craft my own armor than earn karma to buy the orr pieces, okay. I’ll see how that goes, I’m watching some leatherworking tutorials and I have to see how expensive it is to get the needed materials for it.

Use this: http://gw2crafts.net/

Regarding what crafters to level, go for weaponsmith and leatherworker at first. You can play with exotic sb/pistols (they need the huntsman profession and SB it’s not a damage weapon in the end), so it’s better to get ascended daggers/sword first.

Luckily, the leather is the cheapest mat in the game, so you won’t spend that much in leveling it.

It’s better to use crafted exotic armor because of the runes, as I said before. Keep in mind that scholar runes cost around 4,05g each, and other runes like strength cost a LOT more (strength atm is around 13g each). So putting them on a karma armor it’s a huge waste of money as soon as you have the money to upgrade to ascended. And even if you don’t want to upgrade to ascended armor, the moment that you wish to change build, and thus runes, will be easier cause you can salvage with BL kit the armor, sell the runes and get the new ones. A lot less expensive in the long term.

whoops I think I posted on wrong thread