Guild Wars 2

ive been there. even felt addicted for sure. trust me- take a break. go live life, go for walks, do some real life roaming and get some perspective and then you will realize its just a silly game. best wishes.

sviel, what can i say i guess one persons nightmare is anothers fun fight. Can’t say I hold it against you if all you saw was the usual plays, and no doubt there were a bunch of predictable seiging ill give you that. I will say during the 2-3 years living in the alpine bl’s I saw a lot more creative mind games then the usual ninja catas. There were some great ninja havoc groups and coordinated multi zerg moves. Some great mind games. Getting nostalgic just thinking thru all the great now defunct guilds, friend and fo. rip retired players.

simply put it was great for roaming (open land) and they were fun keeps to either defend or attack. The appeal was that it was just simple. No gimmicks. The fun of those maps came more from the creativity of the player base finding different strategies and siege spots, etc to try to take/defend a keep.

no way, i love my thief.

lol, yeah I read a lot of books while in enemy keeps.

Hiding in keeps was all I loved to do on my mesmer (Golden Mirage). There was a psychology involved to it that I loved. It punished k-trains and also managed to start some miraculous saves. Mesmers were the ace up the sleeve, the agent behind enemy lines. I recall so many times porting in my team to inner keeps/sm after flips to turn the tide of a zerg v zerg map conquest. Nothin ever in this game has gotten my heart racing as much as 1v25 for 10+ minutes in Bay while I coordinate with EB comms to come take a port.

RIP that experience.

season 2 DR/NSP/SBI where we were within 2k of each other the entire week all the way down to the wire. Was such a close fight the whole week and everyone I talked to on all servers was having a blast. Every tower, every keep every save and every wipe had significance.

I hope its ok to talk about these old matchups. I find myself nostalgic for these memories as they remind me of some of the most fun ive ever had in a video game. WvW in its glory days was something really special.

thief in wvw is fine. been solo roaming with s/d+sb core power thief valk/zerk/pack-da/cs/tr. there are uphill fights and you have to be situationally smart, abuse your environment, play mindgames and know when to disengage but its always been that way, and it should be that way. running flanking strikes/rage sigil/haste has really helped my burst also. Some fights with sustain builds are pointless and not worth fighting but its easy to disengage and leave.

imo, yeah thief is hard but it is also the only fun class in this game. Most kills versus competent opponents feels earned and i really like that about thief. Most importantly I RESPECT other thieves for staying with something difficult and challenging.

what about a base 2 seconds of protection when entering stealth on cd, non stackable? Nothing crazy op, just a way to time stealth to mitigate a burst? (what about 1-2 sec of aoe weakness on stealth?) i dunno, just a thought.

In WvW ive been running full glass (zerk da/cs/tr) s/p + sb post patch and think its definitely viable. Its not as good as d/p meta for sure but i have really been enjoying it for some reason.

I dont run any stealth on my utility bar opting for all stun breaks and condi clears via trickster trait and dont feel its made me any less survivable. Running stealthless i think has actually made me a better thief, where ive had to focus a lot on getting better at my positioning/reading my opponent as well as when and when not to burst, timing headshots right, etc. Also it is really easy to get the jump on squishy targets with basi+shadowstep/inf strike/steal/haste+2 pistol whips with panic strike proc’d. Thats safely a 20-24k burst vs glassies right there if you surprise them (but this is true of most glass thief builds).

But other times versus better players/bunkers its fun to get creative with how to bait out immob clears/dodges/bursts thru teleports and then go in for a full burst when theyve blown everything trying to catch you. If you kitten up your burst and you have been smart about saving your steal, using RFI and Steal+PW combo can reset your initiative and change the tide of the fight. Esp with IP traited heals you get back a lot of health.

There are good s/p builds and meh ones, and sadly i feel you really really have to go full glass with tricks+shadowstep on this set and learn to play aggressive but smart.

All that said, S/P is DEFINITELY NOT the best thief weapon set out there. There are huge weaknesses to other classes that good players can exploit vs you. But what can i say, i just love playing it lol- for better or worse.

(for pve yeah its fine- in SW its easy to see 30-40k pw haste chains with quickness proc, then RFI steal to reset and do it again. )

I feel you dont really need stealth underwater given how powerful spear is. Its evade+burst combos are really great if forced to fight underwater. Think like spear is s/d and harpoongun is sb and it feels pretty thiefy to me.

Most just use harpoon to get out of water to get back to normal combat. Though now i kinda wanna try some underwater duels in wvw for lols/boredom sake.

Hey ET guy, I can for sure understand your frustration. A bunch of us in DR are also fed up with T8 and are casually grinding SW for gold to pay for transfers to a more populated server. Yeah its PVE and kinda a bore but when you get a group together thats dedicated in doing something proactive in order to find better fights it’s kinda fun. Just do like us and have a beer and pretend the mordrem are SF Whisper me in game if you are ever down to join us That goes for any ET (or heck any SF we love you to) tired of T8. Best of luck!

yeah im running a tricks condi clear (+shadowstep) build with sword and lyssa runes and dont really have a huge problem with condis/stuns or immobs post patch. I dont know why people are still clinging to shadows embrace as their main condi removal. Ive had to adapt to not running SR but now i dont miss it.

Hey

I’ve also found myself turning to s/p (+sb) in wvw post-patch and I gotta say I really love it. Been running a panic strike/haste/IP/tricks build. Its kinda a one trick pony but regardless its still a rush going stealthless (sorta) in wvw. Definitely have to be aware of your surroundings! Now is the time to try out new builds and try new things i guess and its fun.

Traps is an interesting choice for the extra immobs. Why not go panic strike though (or even devourer venom)? With flanking strikes/haste and PW you proc panic strike pretty quickly.

The only thing i feel like id change about your build is maybe a limited number of escapes, stunbreaks and condi removal. (esp if you are preemtively burning withdraw in your opening burst rotation)

After feeling i couldn’t rely on shadows embrace for condi removal i turned to a tricks build with lyssa runes which ive found to handle conditions pretty well. With withdraw, shadowstep, haste, roll for initiative and basi condi clear, it gives 5 utility condi cleanses, and 4 stun breaks. Your oh kitten button being roll for initiative (+shadowstep/sb5) to reset. It makes it harder to lock you down or condi burst with those utilities, and its saved me in outnumbered situations numerous occasions already.

Anyway, cool seeing another s/p wvw’er out there. Best of luck!