Guild Wars 2

I still have no clue why Arena Net thinks righteous indignation is a good thing.

As a solo/small man roamer, all it seems to do is dissuade me or the group from going to fight at a camp, or try to make it in time to defend a camp.

It turns WVW into this constant rotation from camp to camp, either taking it and leaving it (knowing no1 else can take it, so who cares about defending it) or trying to make it in time to defend a camp, but then that other server takes it, and you know it is pointless after that because of RI, so you just move on somewhere else…

Isn’t world pvp supposed to be a constant battle for objectives? This system with RI in place seems to dissuade fighting.

Like who the F would fight over a point in conquest if you knew you cant take it for 4 minutes. Maybe this is very simplistic thinking and I’m missing the bigger picture (like maybe they put this in to prevent servers from getting steam rolled..idk), but it honestly just seems to hurt WVW waaaay more than help it.

yeah build diversity is just horrible now

Not only did they nerf the trait lines from 6 to 3, but now the best build for each class is clearly one including the new HOT trait lines.

And the game feels so stupidly spammy now, and it makes PVP feel pretty stale after several games, at least for me.

But it’s not like PVP will suddenly become better by us complaining. It’s just gonna be this crappy aoe spam fest like it is now until the end of the game. HOT introduced too much crazy stuff.

Josh XT.6053:

Straegen.2938:

Josh XT.6053:

Thief isn’t hard to beat, but they just run away and they’re impossible to catch. Shortbow 5 should cost a lot more initiative and range shorter so that it can’t just be spammed to get away though.

The thief mostly sucks at large group play, sPvP, dueling, PvE and GvG. It is marginal in skirmish. So the plan would be to gut its scouting and roaming capability? Basically remove its ability to decap in sPvP.

Thieves are so far down the totem pole now any changes to their mobility would effectively eliminate the class from play. Even more so gutting the SB teleport would turn an already pathetic weapon into a complete piece of trash much like they have already done to D/D, S/D and P/P.

See, I disagree. There are just so many bad thief players that rely heavily on 2 shotting people and if that doesn’t work, they rely on their their mobility and stealth to get away. I’m not going to act like I’m any kind of expert thief player, but I’ve met some good ones and they don’t need to heavily rely on mobility or stealth to win fights.

lol what?

don’t need to heavily rely on mobility OR stealth? Those are the only 2 defensive options a thief even has apart from spamming d/p #3.

Just watch the best thief players in game in pro tournaments when they play, the thieves are all literally just flying around the map using the classes mobility, and as soon as the fight gets longer than 10 seconds they have to leave because the class is not great at winning small, evenly-numbered skirmishes

Yes, thief mobility with dash is crazy, and it’s probably annoying to newer players who don’t have familiarity with thief. But it’s honestly the only great aspect about the thief now. I play Mesmer as well as thief, and from my experience Mesmer stealth access is superior to thief’s now, and mesmer has access to several other tools to increase defense (blocks, aegis, etc) whereas thief only really has dodge spamming. Mesmer burst can be just as good if not better as well.

Take away dash and infiltrator’s arrow, and thief class is suddenly subpar at everything.

But yeah, I can see how newer players would be annoyed by their mobility. But I would love for my thief mobility to be toned down so that thief would be given other defensive abilities eventually (after people see how ineffective they become)

Yeah unfortunately that’s what the thief class is now. Anet decided not to give them any sort of access to aegis/protection/blocks (apart from 2 second bandit’s defense), and just gave them another endurance bar and abilities to increase endurance. So thief playstyle does seem really spammy with dodges, but it’s our only defense. Otherwise, we get downed 100-0 almost immediately.

and then you have the d/d condi thief, which is literally just dodge, #3, dodge, #3, dodge #3. Not even remotely fun to play or play against.

Hey all,

Just got my mesmer to lvl 80 and I plan on doing WVW roaming extensively. Can someone tell me what the best burst combos are?

I’d imagine GS #2 + dodge roll + shatter + #3 is up there. Can anyone give me some others or let me know what the best standard burst rotations are?

Thanks!

Chase.2798:

He changes his build quite often…do you know any specifics?

it’s the sword/torch mace/shield build

I was about to start pvping on my warr and I was looking for a build. I remember watching Wilson’s stream and his condi warr actually looked pretty fun. Anyone have a link to it?

how much does that extra 400 toughness actually help?

babazhook.6805:

If it purely defense you looking at with no concern as to whether it affects offensive abilities than defender wins with bandits defense traited.

so if its better than scrapper runes in terms of defense, the only thing scrapper runes have on it is the 100 power…cause 7% less dmg taken doesn’t seem like much to me, and toughness on thieves is pretty worthless unless you really invest a whole lot into it.

anyone have experience using more than 1 of these rune sets in roaming action?

Title says it all. Anyone have an opinion on which rune set provides the best defense for roaming thief builds?

thanks!

Has anyone found like an exact crit % chance at which dmg increase starts to have diminishing returns? I’m wondering what exact % I want to get before I shove more into vitality or toughness

this is for wvw btw

Thanks!

has anyone found some good power roaming builds that focus a little more on survivability rather than just 1 combo wombo’ing people? I’m getting annoyed of the playstyle of “wombo combo someone, then run around like a little kitten so you dont get annihalated by aoe spam”. I know it’s the lifestyle of thief, but i just want the dmg/suvivability ratio that I had pre-power creep/trait changes.

I’ve tried a few builds like using some soldiers and valk gear with daredevil runes + crit strikes (instead of DA) for perma fury to accomodate lower crit chance, but meh.

Im thinking of trying marauder/valk gear + exuberance runes or something like that…try to get at least 18k hp in the hopes that I’ll have at least SOME survivability and I won’t die to people sneezing on me.

Anyone have any suggestions or builds?

roamzero.9486:

Try Defender runes and use Bandit’s Defense.

I can imagine that’s a good amount of defense added, but is dmg still decent?

Arddyn.7683:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQRApe8fnMdAlki1kCWhAElileA796udDvGBgW4SDpG0D6eA-T1iAQBa4IAUE1XKjyvZoLAAHEgGpE0GaFMoKEf4EAQo9H4wDAgUAKqsC-w
I use dis.

3 questions:

do you have enough disengage potential with this build? seems like you would be pretty slow without warrior’s sprint and would get chased down by small mans/zergs pretty easily

how much does all that extra healing power affect healing signet and adrenal health?

wouldn’t the build benefit from a higher crit chance to make use of Kings of Fires trait?

Hey all, I’m going to dust off the old warr after hearing about the April 19th patch

can anyone point me to some of the better roaming builds so I can work from there as I brush off the dust?

Thanks!

I was thinking of coming back to the game since WVW was helped out in the last patch.

Is D/P DA/trick/DD with mostly valk/zerk still the best roam build atm?

man its been months and wvw is still dead as hell

like did arenanet suddenly just think wvw isn’t an important part of the game? You would think a company becomes desperate when they see such a large part of their game just nosedive in popularity.

kitten is going on?

Tried it out a few games. It’s working pretty well so far. It allows you to fight on point more than the typical marauder/scholar build. It also helps tremendously with the main plague of thieves, DH traps. Dmg is better than I thought it would be, although eles aren’t really killable with this build.

I made a few adjustments tho. I run D/P, flanking strikes instead of TOTC, impacting disruption instead of escapists absolution when playing comps with fewer than 2 condi classes, and signet of agility instead of haste. I imagine having quickness on demand to get off impact strike is nice, but signet of agility adds a lot of staying power with the extra dodges.

Tangled depths is beautiful and almost breathtaking at times. It had the most places that I stopped on my character just to look around for a few seconds and stare in slight awe. I think it’s the most beautiful zone, yet the worst zone by far because of how confusing it is.

It’s sad how so much effort by the game developers gets largely forgotten because of lack of common sense in map layout design.

I tried to get hero points on that map yesterday. God was that frustrating. Makes me want to never return to that zone.

If WVW wasn’t so dead I would say that this is the best mmo out there. Although I like that there is ranked pvp now, it kind of filled the gap left by losing WVW to the new horribly designed maps.

But this game does have childish and uninspiring main quests pre-80. It’s so hard for me to ever care about doing the main quest for a character I’m leveling when it sounds like I am in a Disney movie for 10 year olds. I just roll my eyes when I hear the voice acting and script before HOT quests, which are much better.

There is no way its thief if you are talking about pvp. If you think you can just spam autos on thief you have never played it seriously.

Thief in general is a class that needs more twitch reactions than many other classes from my experience. If you don’t shadowstep/withdraw/dodge at the right time, there is a good chance you will go from 100-0 within 1-2 seconds.

I honestly think necro is pretty lazy and easy. After playing engi/thief/warr/rev/necro extensively in pvp, I can say that necro was the easiest to pick up and had the least amount of ability management or twitch reactions needed.

Engi had most ability spammage, thief had highest twitch reaction necessity.

^^ what that guy said

You can clearly see the difference in balancing philosophy between Anet and Riot. Riot fixes core problems underlying a champion’s ability system. ANet does number tweaking.

I still have trouble with DH following balance patch.

Anyone have any legitimate advice? Other than the usual “just dodge through the traps noob!”

its hard to know exactly when to dodge when there are 3 invisible traps just sitting there, sometimes not exactly on top of each other but overlapping.

honestly, the class is so fun to me, because it has so much mobility both between combat and during combat. I just feel like most other classes are so stationary and slow during combat itself.

And I cannot play tanky/bunker classes. Playing a class just to exist long enough on a point does not sound fun to me at all.

Didn’t seem like arenanet was focused on adding to thief’s defensive utility. They will most likely just be better at +1’ing now. 30% more auto attack dmg isn’t going to suddenly make the best at 1v1’ing, and they still wont be able to fight on points. And they will still be very weak in team fights by getting 100-0’d in under 2 seconds from random ae dmg.

PVE gear progression seems to be largely cosmetic once ascended gear is attained. In my opinion, it makes items feel less unique and worth attaining. I know Arenanet doesn’t want to have different tiers of armor/weapon strength so newer players aren’t at a disadvantage. But I had this idea that might make gear progression a little funner for people who want armor to have more than just a different skin.

I had the idea of having specific armor/weapons in the game with special combat effects that once attained, can be transmuted to other armor pieces that are lvl 80. Now these combat effects would be very minor, similar to how stats on ascended are only minor increases from exotic.

For example: Some gear piece like medium Gloves you get from doing events/achievements has the special effect: “increase pistol range by 20”, or “increase critical hit chance by 0.5%”

These effects would be minor, but would make people feel that urge to complete more pve content to attain these sought after items, without causing a huge imbalance like WOW gear did, and might even indirectly increase transmutation charge sales. It would keep the game newb friendly and also appease to those min/maxers out there.

Lemme know what you all think!

I pretty much played WVW 90% of my time in gw2 after getting geared before HOT.

Now? I don’t WVW at all.

To me, the new borderlands are a complete disaster, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating by saying that.

Hey all,

So I was having fun lvling the ele and was planning on doing roaming in wvw + pvp mostly. But that was before HOT, and it seems like there aren’t that many eles around. Are they still a strong pvp/roaming class?

I know ppl out there will say “play what you want”…but I did that with thief and warr, and those 2 classes aren’t that strong currently and it’s disappointing to put so much effort into a class only to find out how weak it is compared to other classes. Any input would be nice.

Thanks!

Hey all,

I mostly roam wvw GS + axe/shield…I can do well against most classes except the good mesmers and d/d eles.

Any tips for fighting d/d ele? I can never get off a clean evis. They have so much dmg mitigation and then even if I get them to 25% they can heal up an incredible amount.

Any pointers would be really appreciated, thanks!

I have yet to craft a legendary but wanted to make Twilight.

Would it be faster to just farm SW for like a month straight and buy it? or doing those steps like world completion and then crafting it?

So just looking at all the other elite spec’s and the revenant class, and watching twitch streams right now….so many classes seem like they have these huge changes that make their character stronger, with amazing animations.

I don’t see anyone streaming on thief. I saw a few try, but they just rage quit and went to other classes. The thief daredevil spec and staff just looks so uninspiring. It looks like ArenaNet didn’t really try.

I already feel like my main class thief (the only real reason I even still play the game) is a weak class now after several nerfs and the power creep following trait changes.

Can anyone convince me that there is anything to be excited about for the thief in this upcoming expansion? I’m so uninspired that I haven’t even bother buying the expansion, and I might just leave for good and go back to playing console games.

Yeah burning is definitely too strong right now. I’m pretty dissapointed that ANet hasn’t fixed it yet, but I’m being optimistic and hoping that they are incredibly busy making the expansion amazing, rather than just ignoring balance in pvp/wvw

title says it all pretty much

How has burn not been toned down since the june 23rd patch? Is ArenaNet just focusing all attention to HOT right now? I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in thinking that 1 second of burn application leads stacks doing 2-3k per tick. All my builds focus on condi management, but regardless, burn seems to just be on another level when compared to the other conditions.

Any plans by ArenaNet to tone it down a bit?

I’m surprised it’s not unanimous among players that burning is too strong right now.

I mainly do wvw so maybe that’s why I have this perspective, but 1 second of burning application giving 2-3k stacks almost instantly seems overpowered to me. No other condition can stack that quickly to do that much dmg per tick in such a short application time.

yup, just got 1 shot twice in a row on a thief with 17k health, 2nd time i was in stealth at full health (so 25% dmg reduction) and I still got one shot

I just got literally 1 shot twice in a row from an engi with grenade barrage, and the second time…I was in stealth. I run all valk gear too so im running 17k HP

It was so frustrating I just logged off to kitten about it on the forums and then go play Witcher 3. small scale fights are just turning into who one shots who first

As a thief I love burst, but this patch is too much burst from nearly all classes. Roaming on my thief has turned into a “kill opponent instantly or die instantly” in many situations. It’s the reason why many thieves (in my experience this last week, around 60%-70%) of thieves are now condi p/d in wvw.

I feel like I still do relatively well compared to pre-patch using my d/p build, but a lot of fights just arent as fun anymore. I am now consistently one shotting other thieves, and they can one shot me even though I’m wearing valkyrie armor set. Mesmers can pretty much one shot me in a combo, engi’s obviously have that ridiculous grenade crap, and condis are so insane if I don’t clear them in under 3 seconds I’m pretty much dead.

I much preferred BS’ing for 6k consistently and having more survivability and longer fights than having this new 8-12k backstabs but also getting one shot in return if I stay out of stealth for over 1 second. It was just more fun for me that way.

Yeah i feel like I’m made out of toothpicks now compared to two days ago when roaming. Feels like if I even get touched, I’m dead. Survivability is completely gone. Bout to give up on the class/game (since all I play is thief) unless I find some new build that doesn’t die instantly when its suddenly a 1v2 or 1v3., yet still has good dmg.

thanks in advance:)

Hey all, my d/p build seems to have gained a whole lotta dmg, but the loss in survivability is so huge that roaming is no longer viable. Can’t seem to get into stealth as much without that trait that gives initiative upon gaining stealth, acrobatics line doesnt seem as good, and class abilities now seem to do 20-40% more dmg across the board.

My current build uses all valkyrie armor + scholar runes and zerker amulets. Im thinking of getting some more soldier or knight armor or jewelry + traveler runes to combat this all around increase in dmg

has anyone had any success with stacking more toughness/vitality to counter the dmg increase across all classes? And if so, is thief dmg still good after that? I just want to ask before I put in the time investment of farming cash, cause I honestly just wvw in this game now and I might switch games instead of trying to re-gear my whole thief class.

Came to this game expecting WvW to be like RVR in DAOC, with 3 realm (servers) battling it out for some greater goal, with realm (server) pride.

Unfortunately, 3 weeks into WvW, I’ve concluded that, at least on my server, no one really cares about WvW….no one actually cares if our borderlands is completely taken by another server, because it doesn’t effect them in any way. And the rewards for taking keeps and camps seems like such fluff.

Now obviously the main objective of WvW is fun, and I know some people here will say, “Hey the incentive is to have fun!!!” but you can have fun in lots of other ways in this game, with much greater rewards.

Maybe server wide buffs or substantial rewards at the end of the week to the winning server would help this out…I wish I knew. DAOC had an amazing dungeon called darkness falls (where you leveled the fastest and made the most money) that only the realm with the most keeps could enter. There were also relics, which everyone wanted to take and defend because they gave everyone on that realm +% to melee or magic dmg/healing. When relic keeps were under attacks, there would be server wide messages stating such, and everyone would get off their lower lvl chars and get on whatever highest lvl they had just to defend. It really promoted realm pride when there was this incentive to protect your frontier.

I wouldn’t doubt that everything I brought up has been discussed at one point, and maybe the makers of GW2 don’t want WvW to really be the main goal of their endgame, I don’t know….But right now I just can’t find myself giving a crap about taking camps or towers. I need some incentive.

Hey all,

I’m just starting to solo roam as a D/P thief, and against certain players/classes I just get smoked because I don’t know the ins and outs of their class just yet. Is there any guide out there that talks about strategies for a thief against other classes?