Guild Wars 2

Good to see you devs finally coming to reason. It took you way too long though. It was stated several times, with good reason, that Quickness siphons any challenge out of PvP.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Lets-talk-Quickness/first

The other two biggest issues of sPvP unfortunately remain unadressed
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Top-3-issues-of-GW2-PvP-structured/first#post977120

I’ve not been playing the game for month but checking every patch notes and am waiting for the game to become balanced and interesting. Nerfing Quickness to 50% is a good first step, although quite late.

Victorctk.4931:

… I’m sure with more research, better interface will be developed in the future but to i disagree when you say the current UI is a fail.

I also think, deciding against AddOns is actually a good move because that way it takes less resource to monitor for botting activity.

I dare to say that movement patterns and changens in the players inventory are sufficient to identify botting and a lot more efficient than trying to monitor millions of UI actions.
Never did I say the UI is fail. It isn’t, its mediocre at best. I don’t know what were the design goals of the UI but assuming its goal was to display all information in an accessible manner, it could do a lot better.
In addition its just irrational to dismiss this huge resource “community” and exclude them in interface design, despite the well known fact that it increases customer loyalty and is a fun trait for many players in their number one competitor.
Blizzards UI still lacks behind in design compared to the community creations. Overtime Blizzard stole (or maybe bought) ideas from the community developement and thereby outsourced a huge part of UI developement.
If you don’t like Blizzard or World of Warcraft you could also look at Rift,

Cina Reas.6938:

Ephemeris.6831:

…

This is not about personal skill or blaming death count on the interface. The OP is talking about improving what we have.

I’m not inclined to response to such polemic statements as “You only want that because you suck!”. Although your wording was different, thats basically what you said.

@Nagaj: Before we establish when to consider it poor design we need to have a consensus what poor design is. I don’t think we will reach said consensus. However the MIB does happen with this interface, which forces you to shift your focus to become aware of all combat necessary information. In my personal experience it takes too long to gather all the needed information from the GW UI to make the best decision. Some information is even missing for example cooldowns in Death Shroud (transformation) while not in Death Shroud (transformation).
The timewindow I have to react is smaller than the time I need to read all information from the UI. Considering that I’m an experienced gamer and among the top 10% worldwide in Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3, I dare to say that I’m rather quick with assessing a situation correctly and responding in a matter that is efficient. Of course I can’t proof to you that most players have the same “information reading problem with the GW2 UI” but its likely to be so. The addon “powerauras classic” for World of Warcraft fixes the MIB problem entirely, by the way. Adding that functionality alone to GW2 would fix the MIB problem.

In case you missed it, here are some facts from my first post:

• Fact is MIB happens with the GW2 UI
• Fact is community developed interfaces are more popular than the standard UI. Thats simply because by evolution the best community addons will emerge and a community of hundreds of thousands has a potential developement time that a game developing studio can never achieve, thus making better interfaces than the devs can.
• Fact is community customization (or any customization for that matter) significantly increase customer loyalty and therefor potential income
• Fact is big communities lure in more players than small communities (mouth to mouth advertising). The more loyal your customers are the less likely are they to leave the game, hence the community is more likely to grow.
• Fact is humans (and animals too btw) are notorical group loafers. Once they can hide their performance behind groups they get lazy unless being lazy directly (not somewhat) conflicts with an intrinsic motivation to perform well (volutneers rarely group loaf).

If you don’t like that facts and want to replace them. Go ahead and dismantle the science linked in wikipedia to it. Be warned though, you’ll most likely fail.

I don’t have enough time for a proper respond to the other posts, so I’ll leave it at that.

Please excuse me for picking a slightly missleading title. Of course the interface isn’t invisible all the time but rather at times.

TLDR: Improve your interface, remove Motion Induced Blindness. Reconsider your stance towards an open UI and AddOn support.

To be exact the interface ignores the phenomenon of Motion Induced Blindness ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_induced_blindness )
It basically says: “Once you focus on something you become blind for movement outside of your focus.”
In other words, once I’m focusing my attention on the middle of the screen, movement outside of my focus becomes invisible. This is not new, pilots train to avoid MIB by constantly looking around. For pilots it can be deadly to be blind to movement.
What happens, once I focus on the 3D world/center screen I become unable to notice movement on my action bars. The extent to which one becomes blind to movement outside ones focus varies from human to human. As a thumb rule, 50% of humans are utterly blind to movement outside their focus.
If you don’t believe me nor wiki feel free to experience it yourself with this video, used in psychological science, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY . Be sure to strictly follow the commands of the video, it won’t work otherwise.

It is also known that MIB stops happening once the movement outside your focus becomes “strong enough”. In other words if you (the developers) would allow a setting for constantly shaking the UI, the MIB would dissipate proportionally to the amount of “UI shaking”.

This is, by the way, one of many reasons to support UI AddOns. In GW2 PvP it is very important to be aware of all combat necessary information: cooldowns, my health, opponents health, number of enemies, conditions, boons, number of conditions, number of boons and so on. The current interface utterly fails at presenting the important information in a fashion that allows one to make educated decisions quick enough, due to MIB.

For funs sake, let me give you more reasons for AddOn support:

• higher customer loyalty through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_customization
• less pressure to correct the interface yourself via outsourcing it to the community (which of course only applies if the community picks up on UI development, which it usually does)
• Highly pleases the Achiever player type, because he has more stuff to tinker with
• Increases interest of geeks into the game, due to the possibility of adding content (interface UI) to the game. Geeks tend to be very smart and smart customers can be able to give valuable feedback, hence you have a higher chance for valuable feedback and free hints for increasing your game
• remove the phenomenon of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_loafing by AddOns that allow to assess other players performances
• If you anticipated negative usuage of interace API you get a neigh free chance for positive Black Swans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
• UI AddOns increase community growth. Every game with AddOns (or other usergenerated content for that matter) has fansites dedicated to the game. In other words: free advertising, higher gravity towards your game

In short: you are being irrational by deciding against interface AddOns.

I know Quickness is one of the reasons two of my friends and I lost the interest into the game. We are PvPers and Quickness is one of the biggest issues we have with PvP.

The imbalances in downed states and finishing capabilities are core issues of GW2 PvP. I’d still consider Quickness the top issue though https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Top-3-issues-of-GW2-PvP-structured/first#post851656

Still the Top 3 issues of PvP

Carighan.6758:

Equalizing the #2s would be one of the most boring things they can do.
If this were to happen, then please absolutely sPvP exclusive. The flavour is quite strong in the Downed states, and I’d rather see them tweaked and shifted than be homogenized.

They don’t have to be the same but downed states have to become more similar in power. The current situation is unbearable.
Homogenizing downed abilities would be the simplest way to address the issue.
When did homogenization become the devil anyway?! Shooters are fine and as homogenized as they come…

Schwahrheit.4203:

@OP

Add Kylho and how much of a joke it is in tPvP.

Actually I like Kyhlo. The Trebuchet adds a nice twist to the map. MesmerPortalRepair is an issue though.
However I like the concept of vehicles anyway, my favourite shooter franchise is Battlefield, while the vehicles make a player more powerful than a regular soldier, they are also limited and add another layer of gameplay. I consider the trebuchets the same, they add a metagame to the map.

evilapprentice.6379:

Fiesbert.9816:

Imbalanced downed states
The downed#2 has to be equally powerful for all classes. While its fine to have them being a little different accross professions, its not fine that some downed#2 will prolong your life garuanteed while others might help you against a single guy.

• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vapor_Form – garuanteed to prolong your life. Invulnerable to damage and heals you back to 50% downed health. The best downed#2
• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deception_%28mesmer%29 – second best downed#2. Will buy you a couple of seconds and some are still too stupid to stomp you instead of your clone, despite you having an extra symbol over your head. Can’t be countered but at least one can still be damaged by conditions and attacking thin air at the right spot.
• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Escape – Third best downed#2. Safes you against a stomp from limitless players. However you are still prone to attacks and debuffs.
• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Thunderclap – A very balanced downed#2. Can be countered by blindness, blocking and stability. Might buy you some time but is still counterable. This it what downed#2 should be like.
• The downed#2 of warrior, engineer and necromancer are equally crappy http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fear_%28necromancer_skill%29, http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hammer_Toss, http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grappling_Line . One shouldn’t even bother trying to do something while downed against more than one guy, won’t help you much. While Warriors and Engineers at least have a strong downed#3 Necromancers have it the worst and are basically dead after they used their downed#2.

Suggestion : Change all downed#2 to PBAoE stuns/dazes/knockdowns, whatever fits the profession best. Downed#3 should also be about prolonging your life and never about damage.

I’ve pointed this out before, and I’ll point it out again. You’re looking at downed states in an entirely selfish fashion. This isn’t Rambo, the MMO – it is a team based game. While Ele, Thief and Mes Downstate 2’s are powerful, they only achieve stomp avoidance for the player using them. There is no way their ability can be used for anything else. Ranger, Necro, Engi, Guard and War Downstate 2’s can be used to interrupt a stomp, interrupt a revival, or interrupt a stomp on a teammate.

It could be that the downstate 2’s are still slightly imbalanced (Ele HP reset after mist form seems a bit silly, but not enough for me to complain about it), but their different strengths and weaknesses are constantly ignored in “Normalize Downstate” posts because people tend to only think of themselves.

Rambo the MMO?! How did you come up with that?
Its imbalanced, as simple as that. Downed state is a core element of combat its very bad for the gameplay for it to be imbalanced. Downed power has to be somewhat equal, currently it isn’t. I wouldn’t mind more complex and interesting downed states. However it should be the priority to balance its current state before thinking about redesigning it.

Very nice effort!!
Though its time that developers understandt that complexity always has to be accessible. GW2 is one of the games that offers depth without sufficiently explaining it to casuals (noobs without any ambition to improve or learn about the game).
Although its not a problem with GW2 but rather all modern games. Ohh… I miss the times of gaming being a geeky spleeny hobby. People were able to think for themselves back then and depth was always a good thing…

dreamer.1675:

The quickness might make some sense but the rest 2 points of your post can be summarized like this – “Give all classes the same abilities and remove anything that seperates one class from another. Make all classes BORING because that it totally what this game needs.”

“Remove stealth from a class that relies on it for survival due to lack of armor and health.” – A thief in downed state gains stealth for a very short period of time. Not that hard to follow. As for stealth stomp, well stealth is a core mechanic of that class and unless you remove it, there aren’t that many ways to deal with it. If you do look around this forum, there are many threads that try to deal with the stealth issue. No point saying the same thing over and over.

“Remove downed state clones/illusions from a class that is completely based around that concept.” – It buys around 2 seconds tops and anyone stupid enough to stomp the clone has simply not played enough spvp or does not know anything about the class he is playing against. Moreover as the above poster mentioned, the cast time almost makes it completely predictable. Start stomping, press escape when mesmer uses #2, wait for him to show up and then proceed stomping.

“Remove a unique and a pretty easy to follow ability(mistform) from eles.” – For god’s sake, you can see exactly where the ele is going in mistform. How is that hard to follow?

All the above “OP” abilities are almost expected when you stomp them. Just plan for them and you’ll be fine.

Thats a lot of fantasy you put into what I wrote. Maybe you should consider reading it again. I didn’t state anywhere that classes should be the same or even similar for that matter. However the power of downed states has to be similar, anything else is bad for the game or simply put imbalanced.
Never did I say stealth should be removed, never. Stealth stomping however, is almost uncounterable and bad for the game, very bad. If you’re actually too simple to see that… well… I’m sorry for you then!

Hammerheart.1426:

With all the topics dedicated to how “bad” everything is, I think the devs need to see that some of us out there are enjoying the game in its current state.

What you guys have here is an excellent combat system, one of the best I have ever seen in a mmo. My friends and I enjoy the simple act of smashing people’s avatars into dust, and with this game, we get it in spades. Heck, we even smash each other sometimes.

Sure, there are bugs, but can you show me a game that launched with no bugs?

So everyone, post a simple, “thank you,” so the devs can see those of us who will continue to support, and more importantly, continue to enjoy Guild Wars 2.

Thank you.

Good for you
I wish you, with all my heart, that you won’t ever undestand what makes sPvP as flawed as it is and can continue having fun!

Raytek.6193:

Quickness Stomp
Stability Stomp
Knockback
Knockdown
Stun
Daze
Damage the downed enemy

Problem?

The problem is that those abilities are spread out uneven accross professions. Daze doesn’t work against downed enemies btw…
Could it be that you safely stomped enemies with Distortion and Stealth so far?

I disagree. The idea of downed states is great. The real issue is how the downed states are imbalanced accross professions and that abilities that allow safestomp are uneven accross professions. Both are described more in depth here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Top-3-issues-of-GW2-PvP-structured/first#post851656

Quickness
Quickness is simply too powerful. While its somewhat okay in 1vs1 situations it utterly ruins 2vs1. A 2vs1 is an uphill battle, like it should be, but with quickness a 2vs1 is simply impossible. Once a guy with quickness joins a 1vs1 its basically over. Since one probably has used up stunbreakers and other “oh kitten!” buttons already the Quickness attack will hit and kill you. And thats only the most pressing issue of Quickness, there is Quickness stomping, Quickness healing… It has to be changed like yesterday
Suggestion: Change Quickness to +50% attack speed and remove side effects. Also remove Quickness on chance.

Imbalanced downed states
The downed#2 has to be equally powerful for all classes. While its fine to have them being a little different accross professions, its not fine that some downed#2 will prolong your life garuanteed while others might help you against a single guy.

• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vapor_Form – garuanteed to prolong your life. Invulnerable to damage and heals you back to 50% downed health. The best downed#2
• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deception_%28mesmer%29 – second best downed#2. Will buy you a couple of seconds and some are still too stupid to stomp you instead of your clone, despite you having an extra symbol over your head. Can’t be countered but at least one can still be damaged by conditions and attacking thin air at the right spot.
• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Escape – Third best downed#2. Safes you against a stomp from limitless players. However you are still prone to attacks and debuffs.
• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Thunderclap – A very balanced downed#2. Can be countered by blindness, blocking and stability. Might buy you some time but is still counterable. This it what downed#2 should be like.
• The downed#2 of warrior, engineer and necromancer are equally crappy http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fear_%28necromancer_skill%29, http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hammer_Toss, http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grappling_Line . One shouldn’t even bother trying to do something while downed against more than one guy, won’t help you much. While Warriors and Engineers at least have a strong downed#3 Necromancers have it the worst and are basically dead after they used their downed#2.

Suggestion : Change all downed#2 to PBAoE stuns/dazes/knockdowns, whatever fits the profession best. Downed#3 should also be about prolonging your life and never about damage.

Access to abilities that allow you to safestomp is uneven accross Professions
While some classes have abilities that allow them to “safestomp” enemies on their Profession mechanic, on one of their weapoins and several choices to “safestomp” for their utility slots (Guardian, Ranger) other Professions can’t even slot a utility skill that would allow them to stomp and need 30 traitpoints in soul reaping to do so (Necromancer). Some Professions even can stomp invulnerable (Elementalist, Mesmer) or invisible (Thief, Mesmer). Its too much imbalance to simply list it here but
that needs to be dealt with in near future.
Suggestion Every class should have one weapon set with an ability that allows safestomping, a utility skill that allows safestomping and stomping while invisible or invulnerable should be impossible.

You still can’t outplay enemys significantly and Quickness remains unchanged. Stealth culling got fixed at least.
In summary PvP is still a casual fun instead of the advertised competetive environment.

Hundred Blades is fine, Quickness is the real issue. Like Quickness + anything. Still amazed that the devs didn’t address the +100% attack speed insanity…

Hundred Blades is fine. Quickness + Hundred Blades, like Quickness + anything isn’t.
The issue is Quickness and I’m baffled that they still didn’t adress it but bandaid around the real issue, a +100% attack speed ability.

Oozo.7856:

Fiesbert.9816:

WvW is meaningless PvP since you can outgear your enemy.

So, in other words, a fight between two equally geared people in WvW is meaningless since some fights in WvW aren’t between equally geared people.

It’s a kitten shame that logic isn’t taught in lower level education.

Thats thin ice claiming I’m unfamiliar with logic due to disagreeing with you.
Anyway, since you can’t tell if players have equally good gear and there are buffs available that aren’t in tPvP, WvWvW is less meaningfull.

WvW is meaningless PvP since you can outgear your enemy.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

Does healing power affect life stealing yet ? ( vampiric master and vampiric )

Unfortunately it doesn’t. At least it didn’t before the patch.
I agree I should have uploaded the video before starting my “secretive marketing”. Although I’ve made a few videos I’m still pretty new to video editing. If someone has hints how to shrink the video without reducing its quality, please PM me. Until then I’ll continue trying to upload it with my limited skills.
Sorry for the video incovnience :/

Fynd.4890:

Fiesbert.9816:

• a reliant way to counter immobilize + burst combos (Plague Signet)

If someone immobilizes you from behind, Plague Signet will fizzle and do nothing if you are not facing them (180 degree trajectory window).

Thats false. If you release the camera and don’t push movement keys it will work in every direction, because your toon will turn towards the target automatically. Try it out against NPCs.

ArcticRed.3068:

PinCushion.7390:

He described it with words, and other people just posted the build based on his description because they are supah sleuths!

Thats what i thought, OP hasn’t actualy posted a build or a vid. He just throws “i have the ultimate build!!” out there then lets people start guessing, then he just picks the best one and says, “By god you got it old boy!”

It beats making a post asking for an OP WvW build, just make another topic, “Guess my Ultimate WvW build” then take the best one for yourself, EPIC!!

lol

Or maybe the look through my posts and find it like he did
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necros-are-overpowered/page/2#post736055
;)
@Gamefreak
I made the build for tournaments. I can’t imagine it performing in WvWvW very well. Survival without invul abilities should be very difficult considering how many potential attackers you can have (I’m thinking zerg vs. zerg). It would be quite difficult to get Mark of Evasion off, since you’d have to be in dodge range of your enemies.
For WvWvW I’d either build towards supporting my group or highest burst possible at range.

Gryph.8237:

Dude, I play necro and I friggen good at it, and I have no idea who the heck you are, but I highly doubt you have hit some new build that makes necros op, or that has not been posted prior to this post full of a ridiculous string of excuses. Post a build and a video where your fighting decent players and I’ll rescind my statement. Until such time, put up or shut up, oh mighty savior

Thanks captain obvious! I’m well aware that the number of builds is finite.
Its less about pointing out the one build I found but rather about sharing a mistake I made. There are some things needed in an sPvP build that I oversaw. This is one of the build that containts it all:

• a reliant way to stomp downed enemies (Soule Reaping IX)
• a reliant way to counter immobilize + burst combos (Plague Signet)
• a source of swiftness to traverse the map quickly (Warhorn 2)
• at least one stunbreaker (Plague Signet)
  Those are must haves, I just happen to like condition damage on the necromancer better than powerdamage and build the rest around that preference. Since I can avoid melee damage easier without sacrificing the high dps from dagger, while using Scepter/Staff.
  In addition I consider Staff a must have, since its one of our 2 active sources of fear and Putrid Mark is too good to pass up.
  Having high toughness and good kiting abilities protects against melee damage. Since melee damage dps is twice as high as ranged power dps, I’m not afraid of non melee power weapons. Which left one weak spot: conditions.
  With Consume Conditions, Plague Signet and Putrid Mark I have 3 abilities that remove ALL conditions. The last two even transfer the conditions with my damage stats applied. So the build is very strong here too.
  The two major downsides of this build are the weak life blast and the weak downed 1. Although the Life Leech is increased to 300 and the fear is increased by 50%, its still weak in a downed duel. Which are rather decided by other players or the +50% downed damage traits anyway.

A shame that I’m not at home right now. I’d love to stomp you in duels to throw its power in your face.

Saying “GW1 didn’t have this or that on release” doesn’t count.
It doesn’t matter what games were like years ago, Guild Wars 2 competes with the games that are out now. People are stating valid points where Guild Wars 2 is surpassed by the competition.
However, Guild Wars 2 also surpasses their competition in some regards. Always wanted to have MMOish combat without a gear grind for example
Still some things are just baffling like

• only 4 PvP maps
• 8vs8 and 5vs5 on the same maps
• only one game type (doesn’t bother me at all, I love conquest – still I can see how others want more game types)
• no dungeon finder
• no UI customization
• no macros (very important for socializing)

barti.7685:

3 to 4 hours to upload a movie to youtube how big is this movie ?

I’m not at home right now. Tried to upload a whole tournament, we went up to Kyhlo but my mates kittened up.
“Whos going to use the trebu?”
“We don’t use it.”
“Errrr… okay…”

Regrets of Sini.6083:

I don’t see what so great about this build. Forget “OP” claim, I don’t see it meeting “good”.

Any well build relies on other people’s stupidity. I don’t think any specific build is needed for killing stupid people.

Its not a well build, not at all.

nolop.8095:

Fiesbert.9816:

Minionmancer. You’ll be very actively shouting “FOR THE LOVE OF GOOD MOVE YOU BRAINLESS kittenS!”

or if you use the golem..
“oh i’ll just sell some stuff at the trading post because my bags are.. oh my god where did those ..” blargh dies

thanks for pulling that champion brolem

He does that but what he likes even more is train charging through the most dangerous enemies around

Minionmancer. You’ll be very actively shouting “FOR THE LOVE OF GOOD MOVE YOU BRAINLESS kittenS!”

I thought that would be your answer any proof that it works? while not under water

Didn’t test that. Should be simple to find out though. Just look if your condition damage changes when applying a condition damage rune to the rebreather.
Sadly you are right with assuming its buged first. Seems to be an ANet thing

Levian.6742:

I like how it’s basically a condition build with a twist – sometimes it’s hard to break from the usual setups when you find something that works well.

The only thing that sort of doesn’t work in my mind is mark of blood. First it has to be triggered by an enemy before you can get the regen, and you have to stand inside the mark to get any regen. Even with greater marks it’s still a fairly small spot to be fighting on for a little extra healing.

Seems pretty solid overall though, I’ll give it a shot if I ever ditch my power build

The regeneration application area is greater than the mark itself. Same applies for the condition transfer area of Putrid Mark. Basically you’ll always be in range for it while fighting over a point, which is what tPvP is about. In between points I’m not trying to kill enemies but wasting their time, either slowing them and walking away or

Oh and about the myth of Plague Signet being buged, its not. It misfires while strafing your opponent/walking, which is probably due to lag/interpolation – enemy players being displayed on your screen wrong what makes you look into the wrong direction. If you stand still while using Plague Signet it never misfires. Try it out yourself on the AI professions in Heart of the Mists.

merch.1026:

erm 5x afflicted +2 lyssa?

Ever tried to put a rune in your rebreather?

Andele.1306:

Fiesbert.9816 – Please tell me how does anything on your build stop me to use my aoe blind/stealth on the pvp alt theif and just escape with most of your skills on recharge and just trying the cnd mug combo agan?

Marks stay 30 seconds on the ground (except mark of Evasion). If I spot the thief before he attacks I drop all my marks and Corrosive Poison Cloud under my asuran butt which will send him runnig for 1,6 seconds after using steal before he can backstab. In addtion he will have poison, chill and 3 stacks of bleed on him (>300 dps).
Dagger Thiefs are very predictable. Sooner or later he will use Shadow Refuge and will want to stay in it to benefit from the healing and stealth stacking. While I won’t know where he is exactly, I know hes probably within the Shadow Refuge area, in which I’ll plant all avilable Marks, http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grasping_Dead and http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wail_of_Doom for good measure . Convienently my marks are almost as big as the Shadow Refuge through http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Greater_Marks . Of course I only continue attacking the refuge if I saw one of the marks getting triggered within it.
This will throw the thief of their game and wear them down in between stealth attacks. Most thiefs are scrubs and fail at assessing the bad spot they are in and continue doing their thing despite their weakened state. Good thiefs will run away stealthed which is basically a win, since tPvP is conquest first and deathmatch second.
Oh and I’m getting used to dealing with the culling bug. Although the thief won’t be rendered his destealth animation will. As soon as I see the destealth animation or damage numbers flying I’ll dodge away, use Plague Signet if I’m immobilized or fight back by platning marks beneath me.

I have 1200 condition damage with Rabid amulet and 39% crit chance. On crit I have a 60% chance for a 5 second bleed and a 66% chance for a 1 second bleed. Both bleed durations will be increased by 45% with the runes I’m using (5 x afflicted + 2 X lyssa + Spite II).
In addition I have a 25% increase on poision duration.
Blood is Power is for the 350 extra condition damage through the 10 stacks of might, in addition you apply a bleed on your enemy and can transfer the bleed on yourself onto him as well.
Corrosive Poision Cloud is a 15 (!!!) second poison combo field and applies poision to everyone within. While the poision condition damage isn’t that impressive it decreases all healing by 33% while up, which is a game changer.
My bleed ticks for over 100. BiP, MoB, Mark of Evasion puts 10 stacks on bleed on your target, while 4 stacks will fade after 8s*1,45= 11 seconds the BiP bleeds will stay on target for 30s*1,45=43,5 seconds. Granted having bleeds active longer than 10 seconds is rather unusal. Still the fight just began and my enemy has 10 bleed stacks dealing more than 1000 damage per second alone (thats more than Dagger 1 does). At this point I can decide to let him bleed a little avoiding him or add even more to that damage and all that while I’m enjoying 10seconds of regenration and having my 600 DPS golem creeping up on him.
Its only a bunker build with Shamans amulet, its a damage build with insane survivability.
If I’m really out to destroy my enemy quickly I’ll use Chillblains (to slow him first), BiP, Mark of Blood, Mark of Eavasion, Golem Charge (2 second knockdown), Putrid Mark, Reapers Mark (1,6 seconds fear), Dark Path, Doom (1,6 second fear), switch to scepter, Warhorn daze ( 2 seconds) which will apply poison through Sigil of Doom). That finishes most enemies while severly hurting other enemies nearby and applying regeneration to your allies.
About the Flesh Golem dying quickly: you forge that he’ll has regeneration up as much as you do. In addition many players still underestimate this 600 DPS monstrum and choose to ignore it. Granted this spiky guy is somewhat unreliable due to AI problems but still more benefical than once every 3 minute abilities.

Hufflepuffer.4201:

But… this isn’t overpowered at all? It’s basically a condition build with stability

I sometimes wonder if people who make threads like this have played other classes. The nice thing about GW 2 is you can roll any profession to level 2 and mess around with them in the mists. I have done so for thief, mesmer, warrior, etc. and I recommend you try the cookie cutter FoTM builds if you haven’t. Rolling around as a D/D thief in sPvP makes me feel dirty

Also, it makes a big difference whether you’re talking about WvW or tPvP with threads like this. I can 1v1 baddies on my naked lvl 50 elementalist in WvW, so what might seem “overpowered” there will fall apart in a more competitive environment (although this build doesn’t seem so bad for tPvP — that was more a general statement)

Anyway, I like the build. Ditching Curses for the DS stability isn’t a bad choice, as all you’re losing really is +200 condition dmg. How do you build up your life force reliably without the 3% life force per mark?

Its overpowered because it has no weak spot. You need to make a lot of mistakes playing the build to lose. There is no such thing as “shoot I just used quickness and he dodged away” or “shoot I shattered my clones and now he dodged” or “shoot I used my elite and now they all ran away”. Even in 2vs1 situations your opponents have to bring their A game to kill you before you get one of them. Since most of the damage comes from Marks its applied to both attackers. Same goes for Corrosive Poison Cloud.
For the most part I’m ignoring Life Force generation. If things go bad you’ll get Life Force through the Spectral Armor passive, if things go well you’ll get Life Force through killing stuff. Sometimes I switch to scepter and use Scepter 3 if my opponent has a lot of debuffs on him (corrupt boon + scepter 3 is a good combo). In addition I immedieately leave DS after applying DS2 and DS3. Life Blast is too weak with this build to do meaningful damage and you’d rather have that Life Force if you need to soak some damage.

Youtube is still processing the video. Feel free to watch other great vids from me like “Catch the tower” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-drn85E9xHE or BC2 vs BF3 destruction http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j43V6iCMtE0

Nice job merch, thats the build.
Although you can move the 10 points of spite by peronal preference. All other traits can’t really be changed.
Swapping Rabid with Shaman provides more healing and toughness and thereby increasing your survivability a lot.
Slot 2 options are

• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blood_Is_Power or http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Corrosive_Poison_Cloud (weakness doesn’t matter for your build, powerdamage is insigificant anyway) for dueling.
• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Corrosive_Poison_Cloud or http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Well_of_Corruption against bunker builds
• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Well_of_Power against condition heavy teams
• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Well_of_Darkness against powerheavy teams

Well of darkness also provides you another safe way of stomping, unless someone CCs you from outside the well.
Usually I start a match with http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Corrosive_Poison_Cloud its great for attacking or defending points.
Regenration has 100% uptime through Mark of Evasion and Mark of Blood, in addition you can apply Regeneration by dodging while not having the staff active, which increases both damage and healing a lot.
Another thing many people underestimate are the Life Leech traits. You leech life for every player/object hit. Life Leech of marks is doubled if you fight a ranger, since you’ll lech from him and his pet. Having in mind that regenration merely heals for 155 a second and scepter 1 applying 1,2 attacks per second thats 39 * 1,2 = 46,8 health per second or 30% of Regeneration.
It adds up to a nice amout of healing throughout a fight.

Ahhh… I hate youtube! Uploaded the vid all night and now it doesn’t work. Ill cut it shorter and upload it tomorrow. Was nothing that special anyway, just recorded a tournament to show the build in a real combat scenario.
The build:
Is almost immune to conditions
Can’t be kited
Has 4 sources of CC
Applies 70% of the damage to all enemies around you
Breaks bunkers
Survives burst
Applies regenration to you and all allies
Has 2 ways of removing conditions from allies
Solos Svanir and the other dude
Solos keep lords without getting a scratch
Is fast due to swiftness source
Provides a safe stomp every 10 seconds
By swapping out the amulet it can be either a bunker/support or offense build
By swapping one skill slot you can adapt to any class composition
By swapping to dagger/beserker amulet you can easyly destroy doors/trebus

Getting caught by Moa Bird destroys you and you better have cooldowns/DS ready for quickness attacks but thats rather because Moa Bird and Quickness are broken and can be expected to be addressed. In additon thiefs and eles can decide to end the fight by simply leaving but thats also something that can’t be avoided.

I wonder where Fosters is, I showcased the build to him yesterday.

http://youtu.be/JPdlx5Y_pS4

Im uploading the vid overnight. Can’t play with a fully loaded upstream. You’ll be able to see it in action tomorrow.
The only thing threatening to me is Moa Bird but that applies to everyone so I dare to say its an overpowered build since it has no weak spot to be exploited.

100% is simply too much. Just recently http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Assassin%27s_Signet got changed from 150% once to 15% for five attacks. Why? Because any modifier above 50% is just plain stupid.
The damage alone is broken with quickness adding stomping and reviving to the list should leave no doubt how out of place this skill is. If the devs insist on keeping it as is, it should be handed out to all professions and removed from PROCs entirely.

KoKaLo.7539:

Build or it didn’t happen

Lets watch it in action first, shall we?

Burjis.3087:

Regeneration can go up to ~350 hp per second if you go big on healing power. I sometimes use a high healing build with wells which is pretty tough but I just laughed when I read that a build based on regeneration is considered OP and I’m still laughing. That build is very easy to counter. It’s inferior to guardian or even engineer defensive/healing builds. Trust me, I’ve seen eles doing that more effectively than necromancers.
Besides, what’s the point of staying alive if you can’t even keep your butt on a capture point because you don’t have stability cause you can’t waste 30 points on SR when you need boon duration and toughness (which are essential for regen builds).

Plain wrong, not even close to my build what you describe here. It doesn’t completly rely on regeneration it rather utilizes it very well.

Reyka.8965:

Fiesbert.9816:

I found one build that is rediciliously strong.
So far I’m undefeated, even 2vs1 fights often go into my favor and teammates supported by me will demolish their enemies.
Won’t tell you the build yet, though. Until the patch goes live, I’ll keep it for myself. One hint though: regeneration.

Do you think they are gonna nerf your build if you say it before the patch?? lol

They should, its too powerful. But things will shuffle around anyway once the Golem AI works, the 600 DPS will change a lot.

Will post a vid soon

Thiefs are actually the easiest enemies if they are dumb enough to fight til the end.

Once the Golem actually applies its 600 DPS people will whine a lot about us.

I found one build that is rediciliously strong.
So far I’m undefeated, even 2vs1 fights often go into my favor and teammates supported by me will demolish their enemies.
Won’t tell you the build yet, though. Until the patch goes live, I’ll keep it for myself. One hint though: regeneration.