Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone I’ve been testing the chronomancer for this beta weekend and noticed that mantras don’t really have synergy with our F5 (continuum split).

I’ve tried searching the forum to see if other people have made a similar thread but I couldn’t find any, so I’m making this.

The problem arises because continuum split reverses the cooldown of certain skills and not the charges so that means the prepared mantras (power-spike etc.) do not benefit at all because they don’t have very long cooldowns (5s is longest for power-lock).

I understand this may be intentionally done because the tool-tip does specify that it is cooldowns but this just means that it feels incredibly clunky as one set of skills seems to put you at a disadvantage from picking it, as every other skill directly benefits from it.

I hope that maybe Anet may re-consider their decision and allow Continuum Split to revert the charges of mantras as well. I really do not think this will be OP as continuum split already functions with other stronger spells (Moa, Time-warp etc.)

Has anyone here noticed that mantras don’t work with continuum split?

The skill only refreshes the cooldown which the mantras don’t have, it would be nice if it also reverted the charges as well.

So during I match I got disconnected from the game because my internet was unstable and when I rejoined my score reset back to zero.

I am wondering if this is intentional and if so why was it put it in place?

So you guys are suggesting letting the guardian engage on me rather me engaging the guardian and just baiting out his utilities?

Hey guys I need some advice from my fellow mesmers.

I am really struggling against this match-up, these guy give me alot of problems when I’m playing my mesmer. I have tried shatter, lockdown and phantasms against these guys and I just can’t seem to kill them unless they are bad.

If they are tanky they seem to be able to sustain a load of punishment and if they’re dps they can kill my clones too quickly and hit like a truck. I might get them low but then once they start healing, I can’t interrupt them and after that I feel like I’m out of steam while they can keep chugging on.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated here!

Depends on the thief build and what you’re running really.

P/D is the only build that ele might have a problem with but you can run away from those quite easily.

To beat a P/D thief you have to basically avoid his shadow strike and cloak and dagger (shocking aura is a good choice) , if he get’s in stealth there is little you can do to counter his sneak attack (apart from dodging) . The P/d will probably only use those skills when he gets close to you so watch out for that. Condition removal is also crucial when fighting p/d, if you lack it there is no chance and you should just run.

I saved them up because I was leveling an alt and waiting for 80 to open them all

The problem is that it worked fine on my other characters, I could easily surpass the 3 limit on the side. I have asked my guildies and they have stated the same.

I have a feeling that if you surpass a certain number of chests problems start appearing. I think I got around 15 levels plus a few double chests putting it around 20 or so chests that just vanished. It’s not really a big deal because that’s just around 4 gold and some crappy greens.

I just want to hear what became of this as the OP never updated and the bug is obviously not fixed.

Hey sorry to bring this thread back up but I’ve seem to have encountered the same problem. I was wondering if you got any closure for your problem and if Anet actually did anything to help out.

Any info will be greatly appreciated

Okay thanks, I was being stupid by just logging out to the character select screen rather then restarting the client.

Thanks for all the help!

I’ve attached a screenshot to show what I mean.

I didn’t get a splash screen with the rewards when I exited the instance through the little door icon.

Hey guys I’ve recently been doing the personal story and seems to have encountered a bug at “Ossuary of unquiet Undead”. It currently says I have it completed but there is no green marker present to show me where to go next. I also cannot enter the instance again and redo the mission.

I notice something go wrong when the Prince spawned before I destroyed all the urns. After his defeat at my hands it triggered a dialogue scene between me and Trehearne which updated my progress to complete and gave me the option to exit the instance which I did.

I did not receive an reward or a green marker to tell me where to go next after leaving the instance and thus I can no longer make progress in completing the story.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

I think he’s talking about the frost bow 5 skill.

If I recall correctly it’s called deep freeze and works similarly to the pre-nerf basilisk venom, i.e. you can’t use stun breaks.

I thought hoelbrak runes only reduced condition duration by 20%.

Do you mind if I ask where you got that 60% condition duration decrease from?

Use this youtube channel -> https://www.youtube.com/user/DEKeyz2Chaos

She gives guides on the Meta Builds for PvE. The guides are really detailed and shows you the rotation to use as well, it’s really helpful for beginner elemetalists!

Woops you’re right when I tested the two skills I didn’t have anyone applying conditions on me. I think both are affected by immobilize right?

Also edited the original post to reflect the change.

Consider using a pistol off-hand. You can spam the #5 skill which is black powder allowing you to perma blind mobs.

Shortbow allows kiting with the #3 skill which can pretty much keep any melee based mob at bay and is incredibly effective at aoe damage with #2 skill cluster bomb.

Also a long time a go there was a D&D death blossom spam build with signet of malice which allowed high evade uptime, bleed stacks and high health regen (because of malice). Don’t know if it still works with the trait changes but you could search for it. This build made solo pve really easy as you could take out 3-5 mobs without taking too much damage.

Ahh okay I can see where you are coming from but I think they should at least make it affected by swiftness to increase it’s effectiveness.

Rush

Charge and strike your foe.

Damage: 628 (1.7)?
Range: 1,200

Ride of the Lightening

Ride the lightning to your foe, then strike all nearby foes with an electrical burst. If a foe is hit by the burst, the skill’s recharge is halved.

Damage: 336 (1.00)?
Radius: 180
Range: 1,200

These two skills are practically the same in what they are meant to achieve (gap closer or creating distance) yet one is significantly weaker then the other . The warrior skill rush does not evoke a cooldown when no target is hit, has higher damage and is effected by swiftness meaning that the it can travel up to 1600m.

The elementalist skill ride the lightening is significantly weaker as cooldown increases to 40 seconds if no target is hit, has lower base damage and is not affected by swiftness. The only advantage of ride the lightening is that it’s aoe and is unaffected by cripple and chill (although cooldown increase still applies) .

This however was not always the case. Once upon time when the ele was “OP” ride of the lightening was significantly nerfed from 15 seconds cooldown to 20 seconds and 40 seconds if nothing is hit. Since Anet have shown their willingness to revert some of these nerfs maybe they can see it in their heart to undo the nerf and change it to a 20 seconds flat cooldown making it on par with the warrior rush skill.

It depends on where you tested it. I recall the duration being nerfed in sPvP to only 1.5 seconds rather then 2.

Hey guys I’ve just read the patch note and noticed it said that the new resilience of shadow trait reduces incoming attack damage by 50%.

Is Conditions included in this “incoming attack damage” or does it only apply to direct damage?

So I was browsing the sPvP forums and saw many people classing thieves as one of best classes.

I haven’t been playing for a while so can anyone update me on what this build might be?

Basilisk Venom OP
Nerf
Pistol Whip OP
Nerf
Mug OP
Nerf
Stealth OP
Nerf
Thief Underwater OP
Nerf
Boon Strip OP
Nerf
Evade OP
Nerf
Shadow Trap OP
Nerf

These are just I few I could think of.

See a Pattern?

Remember when some of you thought that once they nerfed stealth the QQ would stop?
Remember when some of you thought that once they nerfed burst the QQ would stop?
Remember when some of you thought that once they nerfed Sword/Dagger the QQ would stop?

The QQ never stops.
No matter how hard we are nerfed time and time again, it will never stop.

Thieves are probably one of the worst classes for 1v1 fights, if that initial attack fails you start to lose momentum fast. Right now thieves are pretty much only good for ganking unaware targets and maybe venomshare (not sure how those theory crafted builds are doing).

The only chance of a thief fighting a long dragged out fight is probably with a p/d build, but quite a few classes have counters against it and is no where near as effective as something like a phantasm build etc.

If a skill misses , such as flanking strike, heartseeker or cloak and dagger etc, it costs more initiative (maybe 2 more) for the thief . If it hits it costs the same as before or maybe one initiative less. This is similar to how ride the lightning works for elementalist you hit, you get a reduced cooldown, you miss you get the full deal.

Promotes more skilled play and less mindless spamming as you are punished for actively missing or being evaded by the other player, players who can actively hit their target are rewarded.

Maybe with a change like this we can get that second boon removal back and maybe a revert to the headshot cast time changes.

Also get rid of the cooldown for Infiltrator strike, it pretty much ruins the whole sword set.

Guess this is going to be next on the nerf list…

shadowraid, you must be new here.

This has already been discussed to death a long time ago.

If the thief is invisible he is still there, I know because I play one. If you have good team mates and they saw the thief stealth they should be focusing on nuking the area around you or just auto attacking. Thieves are incredibly squishy and the 3 second cast animation make them very easy to kill. If there were no team mates around you then the chances of you winning the fight were next to 0 anyway.

Also stealth will does not affect the downstate abilities of most classes. Only the necro, warrior and engie are heavily affected by stealth stomp, the other classes have aoe abilities or movement ones so stealth does little to help. Also if you do play one of those 3 classes if you start the channel before they stealth it will track them ( like all channel abilities).

We know you’re angry, but please don’t just come to the forum to cry.

I understand that mace/shield combo with GS is slightly OP but something like the hammer isn’t nearly as strong.

We can’t assume that its all down to class being solely mechanically OP. It just seemed liked you were ignoring much of the information that were being thrown towards you. Sure a large majority of them were bad but I felt that some could have been genuinely helpful.

Yes people on this forum will be biased when you insult their favorite class but it doesn’t mean that due to this bias we completely ignore what they have to say.

When people start complaining, things that weren’t a problem are mixed in with the things that are. That’s when it starts to get messy.

L2P arguments never work.

Most (not all ) players assume that their defeat was because of facing something OP rather then themselves making a mistake. (whether or not this was the case here is not up for me to decide)

Just look a where the L2P arguments got the thieves, it never works, history will repeat itself and warriors will eventually suffer the same fate.

Anet always listens to whoever makes the loudest noise.

Burnfall you sure took your time to show up. I was reading this thread and was wondering “where the heck is this guy”. Your slacking mate.

Any way back to the topic, stealth is currently only a issue in WvW. However sPvP thieves are once again going to pay the price.

It doesn’t matter rangers are getting this in WvW, if you think that simply popping sic em will kill a thief you’re dead wrong. If you don’t understand the basics of stealth and the common thief combos you will still die.

A Insta-gib cheese backstab build will kill you before you can pop it and any other thief will just dis-engage when they get the revealed buff. Don’t think that thief without stealth has no mobility, they will still outrun you. The only thieves that are affected are the ones who are bad and don’t pay attention (maybe P/D) and once they are weeded out you’ll be stuck with better players and new thief builds (s/d, s/p, d/d) that don’t rely on stealth but will kill you just the same, if you don’t understand the fundamentals of the class.

And I was getting excited that S/D didn’t end up in the gutter

I would love to address all you’re points separately, but my time is quite limited today. (I’ll come back tomorrow).

So let’s address one thing right now

“You got it this one wrong. Just because someone has Ret up, doesn’t necessarily mean I would not use PW. And if they pop Ret during PW, why do I have to waste me precious dodge and shadowstep to stop PW”

Okay to the point, I personally feel attacking a target with retaliation is not worth the risk as it is not rewarding enough (damage in comparison to the damage you take).

You obviously feel differently and I don’t mind that.

The issue might not lie with a single target , but a group. If you are hitting 2 or 3 targets that have retaliation up your health will go down incredibly fast, as though you were being bursted down. So even if you could potentially move and limit the number of attacks, you would only be able to get a small amount of hits in, or take massive damage.

This is why I feel that retaliation is the main problem and not the root.

I understand the repercussions of nerfing retaliation and I’m not for it (like I mentioned in the last post) but nor do I feel that we can do anything with the root on PW, unless we were to redesign the skill completely.

This is why I want ignore this problem because it cannot be fixed without major changes (although I do quite like the idea of reducing the number of strikes).

I want to give the attack another niche to fill.

I’m gonna sound pessimistic again but Anet has confirmed that they are going to nerf S/D.

Just a word of warning, don’t get too comfy.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Caom.9251:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Caom.9251:

The problem with s/p is not the root or the damage.

It’s retaliation.

That boon will wreck you as a S/P even after they nerfed ret damaged.

The only reason retaliation is the problem its because you are rooted. >.<’

If you’re not rooted, you can move away as soon as you see the retaliation damage.

Nothing’s wrong with retaliation damage.

This argument kind of falls down to what came first : the boon or the root

If retaliation is already up you will not use pistol whip on the target in the first place, the boon is the problem. If the the target pops retaliation during the chain, this is where the root becomes the problem.

So which is more detrimental to the thief, preventing the usage of the ability in the first place or causing the thief more damage?

Well that all comes down to personal opinion. From my perspective preventing the usage of the ability as a whole seems to harm the thief more, but I can see why you feel that the root causing the thief to take more damage can also be the problem.

You’re looking at this from a very narrow view. Keep in mind that changing retaliations affects every professions, while changing PW only affects the Thief.

Changing retaliation has a potential of screwing up the balance every where, and that should not be the goal when having an open discussion. You should consider the scope of the change and what other aspect of the game will get affected.

Solving the rooting problem of PW will eliminate a lot of other problems, which in this case, taking damage from retaliation.

No, changes to any class also effects every other class.

For example thieves have been one major factor in the disappearance of mesmers and eles due to how flanking strike was altered, another example would be necromancers. Although your suggested change may not be as “radical” it still brings problems.

Bear in mind that PW was designed with the root in mind that is why there is a stun at the start of the chain as well as an evasion component. This basically prevents you becoming a easy target when being rooted. If you can have free movement it would make it more difficult for classes who don’t have access to retaliation to counter.

Also by removing the root you are not actually fixing the retaliation problem. If any class has ret up you would not attack that target under most circumstances, this means you still won’t be able to use PW. If the target pops retaliation during your PW you can still cancel it by dodging, shadowsteps etc. Your change will not resolve this issue as much as you hope.

My suggested change was not to nerf retaliation, I merely stated that retaliation was the problem with S/P. It is the problem for S/P because you are only capable of using the dual wield ability offensively, to hit the target, sure you could use the evasion component but the slight delay at the start makes it hard to time.

What I want for P/W is a second use, I want the evasion component to start slightly earlier and be reduced slightly at the the end. This would hopefully allow S/P to be used defensively and not useless when enemies have retaliation up.

Would there be problems with my suggestions? Absolutely, but that’s the whole point of this discussion (except it isn’t about Infiltrator’s Strike).

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Caom.9251:

The problem with s/p is not the root or the damage.

It’s retaliation.

That boon will wreck you as a S/P even after they nerfed ret damaged.

The only reason retaliation is the problem its because you are rooted. >.<’

If you’re not rooted, you can move away as soon as you see the retaliation damage.

Nothing’s wrong with retaliation damage.

This argument kind of falls down to what came first : the boon or the root

If retaliation is already up you will not use pistol whip on the target in the first place, the boon is the problem. If the the target pops retaliation during the chain, this is where the root becomes the problem.

So which is more detrimental to the thief, preventing the usage of the ability in the first place or causing the thief more damage?

Well that all comes down to personal opinion. From my perspective preventing the usage of the ability as a whole seems to harm the thief more, but I can see why you feel that the root causing the thief to take more damage can also be the problem.

The problem with s/p is not the root or the damage.

It’s retaliation.

That boon will wreck you as a S/P even after they nerfed ret damaged.

We counter shatter mesmers easily due to fact that we can easily evade their burst attacks, a few evades and that shatterburst is gone .

That’s why everyone is QQing, same with Warriors and Eles, we can avoid a major burst attack without too much difficulty.

Don’t worry about Burnfall, he’s our forum’s dedicated troll. He can be a bit silly at times and write funny passages (which are always quite an interesting read).

You don’t need to take anything he says seriously we’re all here for a good time, there’s no need to get angry at him.

But it’s always nice to give him something to chew on though! We don’t want someone like him to leave, he’s a important part of our community and without Burnfall it just won’t be same, he always knows how to inject some joy in this tense atmosphere.

We love you Burnfall and hope you stay with the thieves to the end (: (You better not go cheat on us with those dirty warriors you’re talking about)

NES

Sure the meta is crap right now and there isn’t a reward system, but it isn’t as bad as all the kittening has made it up to be.

I don’t know why everyone takes Helseth opinion so seriously, he’s suggesting that the evasion component of flanking strike to be completely removed…

So my luck hasn’t been to great when trying to open the boxes, so I decide to gather shoulder scraps so I could make sure I got a pair before the event ended.

After finally finishing the last event my inventory happened to be full so It resulted my getting a spare 20 extra scraps. So I accidentally clicked “use” rather then destroy and lo behold my other 250 scraps vanished and was replaced by 20 scraps while still not getting that darn pair of twisted Shoulders.

That took a long time to gather when you don’t have that much time to play a game.

Anet what the hell…

I wouldn’t say trickery is that underwhelming, it does have a few good traits available to it, that benefit quite a few builds. It’s got some nice support skills and provides quite high initiative regen with the GM trait.

But I do agree that something like the deadly arts tree is in need of a few slight buffs especially after that lotus poison nerf. Also the GM traits aren’t really that great if you compare them to all ones we have access to.

Sorry If this sounds pessimistic but I wouldn’t rely too much on these runes, there’s been a bit of speculation on a potential nerf on them.

It’s also unlikely to make it into pvp, just look at the mad king runes , they have been out for around 10 month and have barely even been mentioned in SoTG etc.

cheshirefox.7026:

 
i already beat liadri, but i support the club
didn’t mind the ‘glitches’ too much, if there are any.. i mean, it’s a huge game and for the most part i think the game builders do a good job.. they could have smoothed out a few things to make it easier in theory

as for the direction the game is going, i’m simply appalled
every aspect of queen’s gauntlet is a huge red flag stating how ArenaNet doesn’t want to build their customers an enriched gaming environment and how they simply want to corral their cash cows every chance they get

How is Anet corralling their cash cow when you don’t even need to pay any real money to access or defeat the boss.

Anet is doing a wonderful job building the enriched gaming environment, they added a more casual piece of content as well as something harder, for players who want to challenge themselves a bit more. You don’t have to do the queen’s gauntlet no one is forcing you to( Anet has also mentioned that the queen’s gauntlet will return in the future so it isn’t a once in a lifetime opportunity you’re missing out on).

Also if you’re wanting that mini, you need to understand that you won’t get everything you want in any game, there have been plenty of times I’ve missed out on stuff like titles, rewards etc… , you need to accept it and move on.

These things all depend on what you are doing pve, wvw or spvp.

Condition build are not nearly as strong as you think they are, thieves unlike engies or necroes can’t apply mass amounts of “junk” conditions to block the hard hitters such as burning or bleed from being cleansed. Most builds won’t be able to apply more then 3 conditions constantly and venoms have long cooldowns and aren’t really worth using. If you are talking about the death blossom spam making the thief invincible all you have to do is kite him by lobbing a cripple or a chill on him. The tracking on death blossom is really bad compared to something like flanking strike so it’s quite easy to avoid.

In sPvP shadow spec is really not worth taking as the thief is pretty much forced into the burster niche or s/d spammer. If you use stealth spam in combat the point decaps and if you run off it counts as you losing the fight as the opponent still gains points.

The only time where the thief might be considered strong our even “OP” is WvW roaming, this is where getting away from people actually matters and there are alot of low level players for the thieves to instagib.

It’s okay for every other class to have high damage, just not the thief.

Seriously though I don’t even think thief has the highest burst any more, with the mug nerf it pretty much brought thief on par with the other classes and the thief burst isn’t even aoe like say the mesmers.

What I think where all the QQ is coming from is the fact that the thief applies his burst from stealth and when people try to counter stealth they can’t see damage numbers popping up so they think they’re not doing any damage. This kinda creates the idea that the thief can burst you down and you can’t really do anything about it.

Mostly a issue with learning the mechanic.

I just thought I was lagging a lot, but maybe that isn’t the case?

Skills were quite unresponsive and weren’t really activating for me in the last few matches of PvP I played.

Hope this helps.

I wouldn’t say it’s entirely useless, just useless if you’re going for a melee orientated build.

I ran a shortbow build a while back and I gotta say it makes kiting a lot easier and prevents you getting caught in stun burst combos quite reliably (mesmer daze/stun shatter burst would be a good example).

I can see why it would be a pain if you’re going for a build that wants to stick close to a target though.

I would say vinceftw is correct.

Retaliation would be the real culprit for this and maybe conditions, ret hits really hard when you use multiple quick attacks (imagine confusion but much more difficult to remove ) and conditions keep ticking (before invulnerability would protect you from conditions during the duration of that attack).

Kinda sucks but when the people start to cry there ain’t much you can do.

Isn’t it annoying when the QQ screws you over?

I know this itself can be considered as QQ so I’m being a hypocrite but something needs to be done about this.

Thief haters and Thief sympathizers you need to understand that developers rarely come into these forums since your QQ is not productive you don’t provide constructive criticism just Thief is OP or Thief is UP etc.

You are wasting your time and just blocking away players who want to build a nice community like so many of the other class professions have. I have been to several of them, not posted but observed and their community does not have 5-6 QQ threads every day on the front page.

My opinion to the state of the thief does not matter, there is a giant QQ thread that was created specifically for the purpose of complaints that used to be a great deterrent to QQers but now everyone seems to be wanting to post their own special thread to talk about the same issue, why do you feel it is necessary to spam a forum?

Both parties are guilty of flooding the thief forums with rubbish, not just the ones who say the thief is OP but those who bump up threads ( I myself have been guilty of this but I am going to stop) as well as those that create threads claiming the thief is UP.

So thieves on this forum don’t post on QQ threads you are bumping them up and cluttering up the frontpage.

Thief haters post your opinion on the giant QQ thread you are not special, you do not need a new thread post in old ones or don’t post at all. You are ruining a community, most thieves act like kittens to you because you make them sound OP giving them the boost in EGO that you despise.