Guild Wars 2

@champ Thanks! Before I stopped playing, I was running S/D with Power/Tough/Vit gear for PvE and for WvW. I’ll try zerkers now!

and thanks for the website, that’ll help out a lot!

@Jrunyon Checking it out now thank you!

Jrunyon.3012:

There is way too much new things to fit in a post, you missed quite a bit. I believe there is a page somewhere on the site that lists all of the new content, and there is always the wiki as well. Ascended gear is still in place (though if you left because of that, you may find that you over-reacted as it is not necessary at all) and there is a new celestial gear, which is an all stat combo that IMO only works for very few builds.

Groups for dungeons are most easily found at gw2lfg.com, and an in game lfg tool is on it’s way. Finding dungeon groups in game is not that hard either.

I am not familiar with any build sites however the class forums are always full of helpful tips (and complaints, lots of complaints).

Anyways, welcome back.

Thanks!

I didn’t quit because of fractals, I found them fun! I just burned myself out on the first couple months of release.

I’ll try to find that page with all of the new content on it, that will be helpful!

And complaints? Nothing new there.

Thank you very much!

Okay, so I haven’t played since Fractals have been released…what is there to do now? Any new dungeons? New gear?

How do you get groups together for older dungeons now?

Where do you look for basic PvE/PvP builds? (Stuff has changed around so much, I don’t know what is viable for S/D thieves or d/d ele’s anymore)

Thanks!

Yiyojin.3241:

35% of times the winning a fight was thanks to dancing daggers. kitten 35% of times winning a fight was determinated by cloak and dagger.
Let’s just say it 2 most inportant skills in first 5 skills for a thief was maded 83% less efective.
Now. Are you kidding?
1.67 sec= 1 initative
10 initiative = 16.7 sec
83% less damage on 16.7 sec

Thiefs most of the times has the “golden time”
The time a thief has to kill someone. In that time… most of utility skills are used + heal skill used. And the damage thiefs take is to big to survive much longer in combat.
After that a thief is a dead thief (most of the times.)

You took 70% of our wining possibilities away. Just by that.
Man. really what the hell? Good luck fighting a warrior now. Even befor was hard, what is now? for not speak against other classes. Enginiers, or mesmers. For god sake guardians, rangers? for god sake rangers. or necros??? yea, against necros? what can we do now? they have all this dead pets around them, or surviving capabilities or heavy damage. In a prolonged fight with them….. kitten This ruined thiefs man.

Don’t…run…D/D GC spec…anymore?

Still running S/D after nerfs and haven’t had any problems yet. You guys may be looking far too into the nerfs. If 35% of your wins in duels and games were determined by dancing dagger or cloak and dagger, you are clearly doing something wrong!

I really don’t know why you guys are all up in arms about some nerfs. Backstab wasn’t really touched, only the combo did. It’s an easy spec to counter anyway, so they nerfed the skill to go into stealth to lower the effectiveness of some builds too (P/D, S/D). If you get insta gibbed by a backstab thief, it is USUALLY always your own fault to not see it coming. The nerf to tactical strikes daze was needed, there was no incentive to use other skills other than dump most of your ini into cnd for tac strike. I mean, it’s still good to do with the nerf, but you have more choices now in my opinion.

I believe the dancing dagger nerf should have been a bit lower, and not this harsh. It was a bit strong though, and punished players who would attempt to rez down people because of the high damage and 2 bounces it did. In a non-glass cannon s/d build it would do 2k-3k per bounce, thats a lot. 1k~ish damage seems about right though. (Also cluster bomb was a bit too strong too.)

Also with the “unblockable” skills it made me love Flanking Strikes just a bit more. Now they just need to fix the pathing!

Still wish they’ll fix Shadow Shot so it doesn’t make it a self-rooting gap closer anymore.

Sithaco.4673:

My guess why CB was nerfed in PvP was because of people spamming 2 on capture points + condition damage. Don’t quote me on it though.

I’ll quote you.

Yes, CB got nerfed just for that reason. It was powerful, way too powerful. (More power, less condi damage though)

Just admit it, it was really strong for a 3 ini skill. I’m glad it got nerfed slightly.

Cufflink.3985:

Yea, the high toughness S/D build I was running is the hardest hit by this, whereas D/D burst is still attractive. Go figure.

Still looks like tac strike daze is unaffected by runes or sigils, would love it is someone could verify or show that they do ><

The Sigil of Paralyzation doesn’t effect the daze anymore. Rune of the Mesmer only increases Tactical Strike daze to 2s instead of being 1.5s.

Rune of the Mesmer isn’t worth running if it only increases the daze by .5s.

Armageddon.2067:

Dreleth got me going on Charrs, so here is one I did of his character!

I love it! Thank you so much!

I chose thief because I usually play the sneaky/stealthy class in games, and usually roll with the underdog specs. S/D is a fun challenge to play, sorta similar to Combat Rogues in WoW in PvP.

I also enjoy the versatility of the thief, so many ways of doing damage and escaping/confusing foes with stealth/roots/teleports.

D/D is fun as well, I just don’t like insta-gib specs.

Armageddon.2067:

Dreleth.3647:

Wow these are awesome. Do you think you could do a charr thief one?

That would be a cool project to work on, tbh. Would love to. Bdoggw2 is my skype for any game-related reference.

Alright I sent you a contact request. (Edit: Sleeping, will get back to you tomorrow)

Wow these are awesome. Do you think you could do a charr thief one?

Sorry if there is another topic about this or part of another thread but I searched and found nothing.

Well, I’m colorblind. It makes it hard for me in WvW and normal sPvP to differentiate between friend from foe. It’s difficult to tell what keep/tower/camp is mine unless I actually go to it and see guards that I can attack, or if invaders are sitting next to it or somethin’.

I also have problems in tPvP/sPvP when I have a mesmer ally. When they go down and use their 2, it’s REALLY hard to tell between the two due to the icons above them. I know sometimes they use bandage and it’s easy to tell, but if they’re pressing 1 (which most do) it’s usually too late by around 1-2 seconds of realizing “Oh, this is the clone, lemme get up the mesm- oh he got stomped…”. I do fairly well in PvP, but these minor things really irritate me.

In Twilight Arbor, that place is just a nightmare for me (no pun intended). Hard to tell whats going on most of the time with aoe’s on certain routes. Most dungeons are fine for me though.

I dunno what the rest of the people who are colorblind are having issues with, but I really hope a colorblind mode does get implemented into this great game.

Other classes can stomp people while invulnerable. While stealthed, you can still be knocked away, knocked down, or interrupted.

There is nothing wrong with stealth stomping, and usually the thief has to be careful when doing it too.

I had an sPvP match where the enemy team had 5 thieves and 2 mesmers and mine had me (ele) 4 warriors and 2 necros

It was so great.

We’re like a flash of lightning. We appear for a split second then disappear in the wind! Just…norn elementalists can’t do that properly.

611h 54m 11s time played.

around 420 hours played on my thief alone, around 100 on ele, and 90 on my mesmer.

Personally, I love the downed state. It does add a lot more to the game, and gives you an extra chance at making your team win. Being in a downed state on a point helps your team out a lot, and gives your team that little bit of extra time to come to your help and stop the enemy team from controlling the point. Don’t forget, you don’t have to stomp them to finish them. Attacking them is a perfectly viable choice to do.

The only issue I have about downed state in tpvp is the teams that leave people downed. It literally keeps one person out of the fight for a long time, plus the rally timer. Whats the point in getting 5 points when you can make it a 4v5 for some time and get more points by controlling 2 points? They should add a suicide button, in my opinion. Like a 5-10 sec CD that takes your own life instead of waiting to bleed out or get stomped. This way, if you try to rally yourself with bandage or with another skill and the enemy keeps denying it you can just suicide. Would make respawning to help your team that much easier instead of waiting the entire thing out. Thats my two copper, though. Many might disagree.

@Elloni – The downed state for ele is much more better than it was before. As an ele also, I welcome this change. To be honest, it’s a lot better than most downed states now since you can use vapor form to stop stomps and move to a safe location to be picked up by an ally. The damage in downed state is pretty noticeable too with 1 and 3 buff. Only issue I have with vapor form is that it still kills you when it runs out, instead of just putting you back in a downed state so you can look at the death recap.

@ArmageddonAsh – Each downed state brings something to the table, like a single target fear, aoe daze, a knockdown, cripple, a scorpion wire, e.t.c.. If they would make everything the same, it would be pretty kitten boring. The way it is now is very unique, but there is some tweaks that need to happen.

Personally, I find the dungeons to be easy. All you need is group communication! Some dungeons require more time, or a learning curve for some fights/events in the dungeon.

Also, stop building a glass cannon build and/or high damage with no toughness/vitality! The longer you survive, the better you are to the group. If you are downed all the time, you’re making the dungeon harder for yourself and your group since they have to waste their time trying to get you up constantly.

As for the loot, I find the loot very bad. I understand running dungeons give you tokens for, basically, free exotics, but there are no other incentive for running a dungeon. I rarely get a rare with over 60%+ MF. Most of the time I salvage the rare to get ecto’s. I find you get enough money from just completing the dungeons. At least the devs recognize the dungeon loot problem.

My Charr thief Zakhar Wyrmfang! Using Duelist armor set with blood/abyss dye. Made it look this way to try to recreate the Bloodfang armor set in WoW. Using CoF Dagger/cultural tier 2 dagger in off hand!

I personally find Charr fit the thief role perfectly, with the Ash Legion as your legion of choice.

I play a charr thief, the armor fits them perfectly. The cultural gear looks even more awesome. (Tier 2 is the best imho)

Being a stealthy kitten, running on all fours, and the overall look a charr thief is awesome! (Have to be a small/skinny charr though, not a big bulky one. They look uglyyyyyyy)

@Aeden

Leap finishers also grant stealth in smoke fields.

With 20 points in the Shadow Arts trait line, you can chain CnD without losing any initiative at all (time next CnD cast time with stealth duration to hit the enemy with CnD right when stealth wears off to gain stealth again). With this, CnD only costs 4 ini and during the entire stealth duration, you will gain your ini back. You can do this also with backstabbing right when stealth ends to not gain the revealed debuff, and instantly re-stealth. Not sure if the 100% crit still remains if you do this (Hidden Killer trait), I’ll have to check into that.

Darn Stiv posted before me :<

I don’t…understand.

A thief was denying you from capping a supply camp?

A thief can chain stealth for quite some time, but when he’s stealthed he can’t stop the capturing of the point unless he’s visible. He might have been hiding behind something to stop the camp from being captured.

It could have been the rendering issue in WvW with stealthed units, where they don’t show up until a small time.

I really don’t understand what you mean though. Please go back and try to be more clear so people can understand.

I personally think the PW nerf was needed. Even without running quickness/bugged rune of divinity pre patch, PW was still hitting for a lot. It’s still viable, people just need to adapt to the change and not rely on lol3333haste33333IKEELU.

To the players saying it’s easy to counter, it truly is. Some classes couldn’t handle it though.

If you don’t like the change, go roll d/d and mash your LDB key to victory until that gets a nerf too.

Is it almost always required to have a short bow in sPvP/WvW? (I know it is AMAZING to have in WvW since it’s one of our only ranged dps choices, plus infiltrator’s arrow gives amazing mobility around the map)

For example: If I’m running a D/D back stab/stealth focused build (not glass cannon) is it really required for the short bow for the off set? Can I run D/P instead for supporting allies for denying/helping stomps get off, and to stick to my target with shadow shot? I know the mobility with short bow is great, but can it be substituted for something else?

An example of a build I was thinking of running was this: http://tinyurl.com/8akjep5

Thanks for the help.

Currently I’m using a d/p build that focuses around blinding enemy units with black powder/ #3 skill (forgot the name, sorry!). It really helps on trash, as it prevents a lot of the damage that the enemies do. Also it’s great for getting in and out of fights with the #3 skill used as a gap closer and a nice execution with heartseeker. I use the shortbow for ranged if I cant’ stay into fights. I’m not that experienced in dungeons as I’ve only done up to TA exploration with this build, but it works so far. Don’t know how it would work in CoE/CoF/other stuff.

Skills I use:
-Shadow Refuge to bring up downed allies
-Shadow Step for condition removal, stun breaker, and mobility
-Scorpion Wire to pull enemies close to you and your group, also makes it easier to black powder groups of mobs
or
-Caltrops for the AoE cripple and bleeds for kiting.

For healing, Signet of Malice for the sustained healing passive or Hide in Shadows for quick aggro dump, but it has a higher CD.

Sorry if this isn’t good enough or useful for you guys. Hopefully another more experienced dungeon thief could help you guys out.

Painking.4703:

Blind only has a 10% chance on working on bosses/champions with the Unshakable buff, which100% of all bosses and champions have.

Okay! Thank you so much, I was just a bit confused.

Hello, I’ve been playing a d/p build with thief that revolves around blinding enemies and preventing damage for my group. I’ve noticed that when I blind bosses, the attacks still hits and do damage anyway. Does blind not effect them that much? Is there a DR to blind on bosses? Does it only reduce the damage the attack does after awhile? Thank you for anyone who can clarify this!

I know PW isn’t that interesting. I like watching d/p plays.

I would play d/p myself, but I don’t know any good traits/builds for it.
Any tips? (Not looking for venom share stuff, either)

I enjoyed the video a lot, even though I dislike most pistol whip thieves. Nice job man

I would loooooooove to see some d/p or even some d/d builds from you too.

@EasymodeX I do the #3 all the time! Standing around and doing 1111111 and the enemy would think one of the clones would be you. If they catch me though, I just drop stealth, roll and act like a clone somewhere else. People get so mad sometimes

Phase Retreat through a wall or under the ground hasn’t happened to me too often. It only happened twice: Once in the Ascalonian Ruins while doing a DE (Charr 1-15 zone) and once while in an inquest research lab in a 40-50 zone (I forgot the zone name, but it’s where the Shatterer is)

I don’t have a problem with crits. In most games, crits are RNG anyway. In DotA, building a Daedalus will give you a 25% increased crit chance. Of course it’s RNG, but if you actually crit it’s amazing.

Now in GW2, I don’t find the crit RNG that terrible. I’m sort of used to it when playing a subtlety rogue in WoW. I actually find critical chance in GW2 more rewarding than most games.

Time Warp is waaay better than Moa Morph. It has an ethereal combo field, which is amazing, and gives 10 seconds of quickness to 5 people?! Yes please!

In a 1v1 situation, which is what you keep referring to, Mesmer’s should win most of the time without Moa.

Also, Moa roots the caster in place when they cast it, plus it has a pretty long cast time. It’s very easy to spot when a Mesmer is casting Moa.

If people think that Mesmer’s shouldn’t be in a group, then you probably shouldn’t group with them.

They have so much utility compared to other classes. Chaos Storm/Illusion of Life/Feedback/Null Field are all perfect examples of that. The Ethereal combo field is amazing as well for confusion/chaos armor.

You also constantly apply conditions to enemies with your staff #1 and #5 while applying many boons to allies. When you trait for the extra bounce in staff 1, it becomes one of the best auto attacks in the game.

You also have on-demand daze with F3 and can avoid and eat powerful attacks with F4.

When your clones and illusions take a hit from a boss, that can save someones life and help reduce the amount of damage the party is taking whether it be minor or major damage.

Personally, I love running dungeons with a Mesmer. I also love playing one. I find that they have the best support abilities in the game.

First off, what kind of weapon combination do you use? GS/Staff? Sword+Pistol/Staff?

1)
Don’t forget when they use Death Lotus you can still damage then with confuse, try to get some stacks of confuse on them with your F2. Also having some sort of condition removal ability would be helpful. (Null Field, e.t.c.)

2)
With warriors, just kite them. Most warriors use signets to gain tons of buffs, remove them asap. Dodge their charge and hundred blades, and make sure to use your phantasms after he used his aoe abilities so they won’t get destroyed so easily.

Warriors are really the most simple class to beat once you learn how to kill them easily, it just takes time.

3)
No clue, never used MoC. Sorry.

This is mine, only level 24 though. Still awesome!

Hey! A fellow GW2 Furry (<— Dragon, rawr!)

Your story is similar, except with a couple close friends recommending it to me during the beta. All I could say was “GW2 can’t be that good, and it’s only in beta. It’s just going to be another WoW clone like the rest.” Man, was I wrong.

My MMO experience comes from 6 years of playing WoW, 2 years of EQ, and 1 year of FF XI. I’m more of a PvPer when it comes to games, which all I did in WoW was do arena’s everyday. When Blizzard announced MoP, and I heard all of the other MMO’s starting to die, I lost hope in all of the MMORPG’s.

I heard GW2’s PvP was going to be seperate from PvE, and that it was going to be more skill-based and less based off of team composition (the dreaded RMP/RLS in WoW). So I decided to dump 60 bucks on a game that I wasn’t sure about and I was instantly sucked into the game right when I created my charr mesmer.

The exploration, story missions, awesome characters (I love most of the charr characters, they have awesome personalities. <3 Dinky), fun and exciting sPvP/WvW. GW2 has really sucked me back into the MMORPG scene, and I’m glad.

Keep up the good work ArenaNet.

-Dreleth

I’ve been leveling with a GS/Staff too. Level 40 so far and it’s still pretty strong.

I’ve been seeing some power/precision builds with GS/Staff focusing on shatters with mirror images and GS #2 with using the iBerserker/iWarlock/staff illusion for damage.

In sPvP GS/Staff is more about the conditions/confusion/shatters with good support. I may be wrong.

I dunno about WvW though.

I agree. It should be from your warband, I would LOVE to see my Dinky. I’m pretty sure if they did do this, they could balance it for certain sparring partners and legion choices.

valdamus.6289:

and yeah mounts.

Waypoints. No need for mounts.

My main character is a charr named Dreleth Dragonclaw. I use Dreleth for everything, so yeah.

I like skinny/small charr. They look better in my opinion, but that’s me. I like things skinny.

At first when I was creating my Charr I saw the Dinky choice and I thought he would be annoying to have so I chose Clawspur. When creating my second Charr, I decided to go with Dinky. Oh my, do I love my Dinky. He makes me laugh every time I do a story mission. You can tell he’s trying to be serious too, but he’s just so special!

They are kittens! Cute kittens with…horns.

Also, are scepters worth using? I’ve never seen a scepter mesmer.

@Galmarrar Yeah I understand the sword/pistol and the danger of being in melee. That’s what scares me the most, and why I like GS + Staff. Sword/sword is a blast though, that iSwordsman hurts.

@Saraneth do you use a GS for 2nd weapon set too? Or a sword/anything?

Also, thanks.

So is a power build with GS/Staff any good? And should I focus on using shatters or mostly phantasms (berserker/warlock)? Or is it just play style preferences?

So far I’ve been doing okay with using a shatter build with using GS #2 and mirror images + mind wrack. Or is it just poor scaling since I’m level 41?

I’ve been very confused on how to build my mesmer. I usually roll with GS + Staff or GS + S/S. Should I focus more on condition damage, power, or precision? I have not found any topics to help me, so this is why I’m posting this. Thanks you for the help!

Rolo.9248:

And don’t forget Bloodcovered Backstabbin’ Blackjack the Blade!
:D

I LOVED that story quest. When he said my name was that, I laughed pretty hard.