Guild Wars 2

Apparently I missed the memo that it’s alt-f4 when downed week? The number I’ve seen in the last 1.5 days is crazy.

Anyway, it seems we’ve (Ehmry) lost some of our enthusiasm compared to last week. But there’s still been some good fights. Maybe I can level an alt in wvw this time around.

Shrack.8013:

DirtyBird.6093:

Shrack.8013:

Use Ruby orbs in your armor slots instead of runes. And have an offhand dagger you can toss on to build up 25 stacks of precision, then move your main dagger back over. And if you really don’t want to use Omnomberry Ghosts, you can use plate of truffle steak dinners for +200 power and +10% crit dmg more to make it 114% crit damage bonus. Though omnomberry ghosts give you a lot more sustain when AOEing so you don’t die to random splash damage.I could have even more base crit, but I use vitality instead of precision on a couple of my accessory pieces.

You really think the damage output from having ruby orbs is better than having a full stack of divinity runes? Is the difference that noticable? Just curious. You’re obviously doing a kitten ton of damage, not sure if its vs bad geared, or lowbies havent looked at the video in detail just spot watched it. Would love to know if you’ve tried the divinity runes in comparison before i go buy a new set of gear for ruby’s for a test drive. Couldn’t you run divinity with a full set of zerker’s jewelry instead?

It’s really just a slight sacrifice either way and not a huge deal. Do you want a little more damage or a little more survivability/well roundedness? It’s really up to you. The positive is ruby orbs are way cheaper than the alternative, but it is not like money is a big deal.

Yeah, if you compare 6x orbs vs (for example) 5x Scholar and 1x Divinity runes, you essentially trade (I’m going off of memory): 55 power vs 2% crit damage and 74 precision.

Orbs would give you a little more (3.5%) crit chance and 2% more crit damage, but you lose out on the base damage increase to all of your attacks (from less power). Base direct damage is linear with power (from the wiki).

StugLyfe.2134:

Blah blah you play a fotm op class and think you’re special lol ok

Why are you trolling in the thief forums? The guardian section is here

StugLyfe.2134:

LOL do you think you play well or something, 90% or the time you just spam auto attacks and hit for 3k+ with them, why would you even post this? You must really be trying to get thieves nerfed more.

Apparently, you only skim the thief forums for posts to rage at. If you had looked closer, you’d have found that the primary source of thief damage from most weapon-sets is from auto-attacking. Most of our other skills provide less damage but with some utility (especially with non-D/D sets).

Also, I see you immediately went to the thief feedback thread and complained that 3k auto-attack hits are too high. If you spent a little time on other class forums as well (like Warrior), you’d see that they can also crit for 3-4k on auto-attacks with a “glass cannon” build.

And looking at some of your other post history, you ask for anything you don’t like (portals, stealth, cluster bomb, backstab, heartseeker, and the initiative system) to be nerfed or removed from the game. It’s pretty funny, really.

Yeah, this makes me rage occasionally. Several times I’ve lost a large chunk health and died to a channeled attack after I’d already gone into stealth. It makes sense to still take damage while in stealth, but targeting and channeled attacks should drop the instant stealth activates.

They buffed/nerfed it in one go:

Before, you had to stand in the circle for a much longer duration to get the full stealth duration. If you left, you would only get a partial duration of stealth.

Now you only have to stand in the circle for a little bit (4 seconds I think?) to get the full duration. If you leave early, you lose stealth and get the revealed debuff.

Also keep in mind that sometimes you will be stealthed (you will see the buff icon), but on your screen you are not in stealth. However, I’m not sure if this is a local bug (i.e. you are stealthed to everyone else, just not on your screen), or a global bug (i.e. you have the buff icon but everyone can still see you). From my experience it seems it’s the former – you’re actually in stealth, it just doesn’t look like it on your screen.

Score:

CD: 164,295 +220
EB: 110,336 +255
Mag: 93,504 +220

Lol, the conspiracy theories are great.

Here’s an example:
Last night, my guild (and some pugs) was fighting some CD group outside of a supply camp. Mid-push, a group of Maguuma showed up and started fighting us (and only us). They were almost side-by-side with CD. After this happened several times someone in Vent said something like “Oh look, nice of them to team up on us.” To which another person in my guild replied, “No, we just hate each other, so of course they’ll attack us and ignore CD. We would probably do the same.” And we did exactly that about 15 minutes later.

Mutual enmity; mystery solved.

Ianervan.3415:

It’s not like you’re stunned for 10 seconds. You can use skills, dodge, run away.

1) Moa is 10 seconds, Basilisk Venom is 1.5 – 3 seconds (traited).

2) Moa cannot be removed. Basilisk venom breaks on any stun breaker.

3) Yes you have skills you can use while Moa’d. 5 shiny new skills (and 0 utility skills) that I have no clue as to what they do. I have to go to the wiki to memorize them just for the 0.1% of game play when I’m in Moa form..? By the time someone uses it on you, you’ve forgotten what they are and what they do. Then by the time you mouse over them to read them, you’re dead. You’re better off running away (which leads to #4).

4) You can run. Unless someone puts one of the countless forms of CC on you. And oops, you don’t have any utility skills available to remove it.

5) You can dodge. Twice, and only on the off-chance you didn’t dodge while fighting before being Moa’d. But who uses dodges during combat anyway.. right?

So yes, everyone tries to turn around and run away while dodging. But in reality, all you see is a big red message saying “Not Enough Energy” while you’re rooted/stunned/chilled/knocked down/etc, and then you die while looking like some stupid imitation of Big Bird.

It’s the only CC skill left in the game that cannot be escaped using a stun breaker. That’s what makes it imbalanced compared to other CC skills. Fix that, and it’s fine.

They changed Basilisk Venom to be affected by stun breakers, even though it was only really useful in 1v1’s (just like people are saying about Moa).

Dacromir.6207:

Okay, but what was that duration? I got 2s repeatedly.

The problem could be that you’re counting frames. You may not be getting the framerate you think you’re getting, which would throw off the measurement. I’d slow down by time (i.e. 10% or 5% speed) and use that. Other than that, you tested it the same way I did.

I’ll retest it when I get home, and you should too. I’ll pay more attention to with sigil and without sigil, and I might even upload to youtube.

I added an edit to say I got ~2 seconds. I was using the timestamp, not the frame counter. If I remember correctly (I still have the video and can check the exact value), it came out to 1.9 something, or just shy of 2.

Not sure why it’s 2 seconds instead of 1.5 though. Maybe it’s just the graphical debuff icon that’s 2 seconds, or maybe it’s some rounding thing. But the important thing is that it’s 2s regardless of whether the sigil is used.

Dacromir.6207:

Adein.2031:

I like how they also nerfed the Daze such that the Sigil of Paralyzation doesn’t apply to the daze anymore (oh and forgot to mention that in the patch notes).

How closely have you actually tested this? I’ve heard several people mention it, but I wanted to test to be sure. I recorded some video of me using the daze on PvP golems and sparring NPCs. I slowed it down to 10% speed, and the daze icon lasted a little over 19 seconds with Sigil of Paralyzation. I replicated this several times. I’d peg the daze duration as ~1.95s with the Sigil. You may want to test this yourself more closely.

I tested in the Mists using Fraps:

1) Capture the sequence from before debuff application to after it’s gone.
2) Import the video into a video editor that allows fine-adjustment of timing (i.e. 1 frame at a time)
3) Find the time at which the debuff showed up and the time at which it went away
4) Subtract the numbers to get debuff duration

I performed the above sequence using S/D twice: once with no sigils, once with Paralyzation on the Sword.

Both resulted in the exact same duration.

Edit: Forgot to mention that the daze duration was essentially 2 seconds, as Eduardo stated above. Also, I tested using the same method a while ago (several weeks ago) and the sigil used to affect the duration (before the latest patch).

I like how they also nerfed the Daze such that the Sigil of Paralyzation doesn’t apply to the daze anymore (oh and forgot to mention that in the patch notes).

I’ve swapped away from S/D until they at least buff or fix one of it’s skills (i.e. Flanking Strike, aka “Oh look I’ve moved myself 15 units off my target”).

Score update:

EB: 59,008 +650
DB: 8,271 +45
HoD: 7,274 +0

This is the best I’ve come up with so far: a combination of venom share, stealing/boons, and stealth/healing.

Shortbow & Dagger/Pistol
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/thief#3|10|2642|2788|8743|3361|4989|20|1142|1714|0|0|0|0|0|30|2384|2387|785|0|0|0|0|20|786|1740|0|19|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

Access to AOE stealth through utilities and/or Black Powder/Cluster Bomb. Use steal against boon-based enemies. Share venoms when appropriate (swap out Blinding Powder for another venom).

I’ll give it a try, but it looks.. meh.

I’ve played most of the popular builds and weapon-sets (D/P condition, S/D Crit, Venom Share, D/D Crit, etc). I started considering a support-focused build for WvW and I’m kind of at a loss. I was thinking along the lines of what other classes can do (healing, defense, utility), and it seems the only one we can somewhat accomplish is utility?

The builds I’ve thought of for Utility are Venom Share or Stealing/Boon Transfer. For relevant utilities, we have (lol)traps, scorpion wire, caltrops, smoke screen, and 2 aoe stealth skills.

Anyone have any builds/play-styles that have worked really well in a support role as a thief? I feel like the “you can play any role with any class” concept doesn’t apply to thieves, but maybe I’m just not imaginative enough?

Chalky.8540:

On day one you had more than enough players to kick our kitten and it was a great fight. Where are they now?

It’s hardly our fault your side has decided to stop turning up, is it? We were losing by 20k points, we came out in force and fought for our honour. Where was your response when we went 20k ahead of you in the middle of US day time on a weekend? Why didn’t you claw back your lead with the massive organised offensive you showed on day one??

Being outnumbered has nothing to do with it. You’re only outnumbered because half your guilds are only interested in playing if they’re already winning. Fix that and you’ll have plenty of numbers to take us on.

This. I’ve seen so much QQ in the Ehmry Bay chat lately it’s unbelievable. It’s like after winning 3 matches in a row, people think they can faceroll everything…?

“Mag and ET have an alliance, it’s impossible to fight 2 servers at once!!!!!!!”
“Mag has a zerg in every zone, we don’t have nearly enough people to match it..”

What was the deal with Friday night / Saturday morning when we (Ehmry) were rolling everything? We had equal numbers, coordination, and a (relative) lack of QQ. Then come Saturday afternoon, half of our players just… stopped playing? I don’t get it. The complaining is embarassing.

PS – Props to Maguuma and ET. Most of you have been a good challenge and you demonstrate strategy. And it’s nice to see ET come out and play, even though you don’t have a lot of WvW players.

The thief class is (according to the game designer) a tricky, hard to pin-down class (through stealth and mobility). This is amazing in pvp, but mostly worthless in pve.

However, a warrior is designed to be a class where once you get caught in melee range, he beats your face to the ground – quickly. This has some weaknesses in pvp (few escape options), but is amazing in pve.

All this stems from the PvP-centric game design. PvE is more of a side-game.

Surbrus.6942:

Ok this is just getting stupid.

EB you have so many character select/alt-f4ing when downed people with terrible sportsmanship. Four times last night, and four times already today. Only had one NSP character select/alt-f4 drop while downed in that time.

As an EB player, I run into that from NSP and SF at least a few times a night. When it happens I just laugh and move on. They saved me the trouble of taking time to finish them.

@bow.6179

Thanks for pointing me there, it’s actually interesting! That might be the first useful post I’ve read on the forums.

Nice demo of the weaponset and good use of weapon swapping and Inf. Strike.

Suggestions:

• Add a link to your build and describe your gear in the video description
• Instead of 2x Sigil of Force (I think I read somewhere that they don’t stack), try 1 Force plus a Sigil of Strength (for might), Sigil of Air (I like it better than Fire), or Sigil of Paralyzation (extended Daze duration).
• Use Steal (especially if you trait for Mug). Helps you maintain time on target and some of the items you steal (fear, mesmer boons, etc) are amazing. Open with Inf. Strike for the safe port/stun break/cond. removal, then use Steal during the fight/as-needed.
• Use C&D + Tac. Strike behind your opponent to lock down their skills for a few seconds.

Edit: Forgot to mention, ignore Flanking Strike for now, unless you’re fighting someone that is standing still the whole time. Otherwise you’ll end up 10 feet away from your target wondering where they went.

Cluster Bomb

1 large explosion: 487
detonate in mid-air for 3x: 168 (=504)

“The bomb can be detonated anytime mid-flight, dropping three bombs in a triangular pattern. The spread of the smaller bombs depends on the height when detonated, making it possible to hit one target with all three bombs.”

Maybe you were timing/aiming the detonate in mid-air differently than before? If you don’t get the timing and aim just right, you won’t hit them with all 3 and will do less damage than 1 big hit.

As others have said, counter with melee, ground targeted aoe, boon removal, cripple, root, etc. It’s only good against people that don’t know what to do.

You can counter it with almost anything except shooting projectiles.

I would really like to see more options for the badges. Right now you have: 1 set of weapons/armor with the same stats or the gift for the legendary. Having more choices with different base stats would be nice.

Also, why not add the option to buy upgrade items or consumables like Superior Runes/Sigils, Food, etc? It would add more purpose to the badges for long-term WvW.

Honestly, I don’t see why everything shouldn’t be autolooted. What is the point of having to manually loot bags or corpses? The only thing it adds to the game is hassle and the opportunity to lose out on the rewards for killing something.

Add “Last Post Time” column to the forums so that people can tell how old threads are or if they’ve been updated while scrolling through them.

Shadowstep would be ideal, but since it would make the action much faster, the evade wouldn’t be active very long. But at least you could hit someone with it. I’d even be happy if it just left me where I was and I whacked them in their face twice.

For now, I pretend my keyboard number keys go from 2 straight to 4.

In my testing I was S/D spec, since I was just checking the revealed duration. However, I’ll be swapping back to P/D tonight anyway to troll people in WvW, so I’ll check with that weaponset. I’ll try frapsing the entire sequence from C&D->Sneak->Auto x ?->C&D to see if there’s something else that’s changed (e.g., maybe there’s now a delay between sneak attack and the revealed debuff applying).

I just frapsed and viewed the resulting video. I see no change. My revealed debuff comes on at 2.91 seconds, and goes away at 5.91 seconds in my video.

I’m at work so I can’t do this right now, but a simple way to check is to use fraps and review the video to get accurate timing on the debuff icon.

I’m surprised that people are disappointed, given the drop rate of loot in dungeons and elsewhere.

And based on some comments from this thread, it seems like it’s time for some math:

Let’s define the probability of getting a skin from 1 chest as X.
So the probability of NOT getting a skin from 1 chest is 1-X.

The probability of getting at least 1 skin from opening multiple chests is the same as the probability of not getting all junk (i.e., getting 0 skins from every chest).
i.e., P(at least 1 skin) = P(not getting all junk) = 1 – P(no skins)

P(no skins) = P(no skin . no skin . no skin …) depending on how many chests are opened.
or
P(no skins) = (1-X)(1-X)(1-X)…

Therefore, the probability of getting at least 1 skin from Y chests:
P(at least 1 skin in Y chests) = 1 – (1-X)^Y

Now for examples. Assuming a probability of 2.5% (someone earlier used as an example), you get:

P(at least 1 skin in 20 chests) = 1 – (1-0.025)^20 = ~ 40%
P(at least 1 skin in 100 chests) = 1 – (1-0.025)^100 = ~ 92%

Those seem too high, so let’s look at 1% chance of skins per chest:
P(at least 1 skin in 20 chests) = 1 – (1-0.01)^20 = ~ 18%
P(at least 1 skin in 100 chests) = 1 – (1-0.01)^100 = ~ 63%

That seems closer to what people are reporting, but we don’t know the real rate.

TL;DR: Like others have said, it’s really just a form of gambling. If you don’t enjoy the game of chance, don’t gamble.

Granted I didn’t play much on Sunday, but on both Friday and Saturday there were plenty of good fights.

My guild [SLAY] usually goes out in groups ranging between 3-15 people and we focus on finding other small groups, taking supply camps/weakly guarded towers, etc. Sometimes holding a bridge/control point behind a large enemy group can be quite fun (until the other server gets angry enough to roll you with a larger group). Zerg is boring.

I will give credit to both BP and AR: while you have less people than others we’ve played against recently, it seems you have more quality players than ones I’ve run into in previous matchups. I’ve also seen more guild groups instead of massive zergs of random pugs.

So to BP and AR: don’t give up, there’s still fun things to do. Avoid the zerg, stay mobile, find a popular bridge/island/road/control point/camp/etc and hold it (until you can’t).