Guild Wars 2

We all know Guildwars 2 has slightly alleviated the holy trinity, however, when I command (Engineer), players will ask me who the better tank is between Guardian and Warrior.
(In World Vs World Vs World)

So I have made this post to discuss the advantages and disadvantages between Guardian and Warrior tanks, particularly for new players looking to build ‘tank’.
It seems to be a common misconception that Warriors are all round ‘offensive fighters’ whereas the Guardian is a ‘tanky healer’, from my experience, this is not the case.

Here is a small list of what I have found (in my experience):

Warrior
Advantages
- Much higher health pool (1.8x as much/nearly double) providing much safer protection from conditions, almost 6x base hp of a guardian when using Rampage
- Better blocks (channeled blocks and defy pain can block unlimited number of attacks)
- More mobility
- More stuns/daze/interrupt/fear/knockback/weakness
- Easy access to stability
- Better self sustain
- Can be made godly with a ‘booner’
- Can’t strip the tankyness from the warrior
- Can heal and attack/control simultaneously
- Can have high hp and armour
- Can instant self resurrect even under focus (good for quickly getting back to tanking)
- Can instant AOE resurrect using an Elite
- Hard to instant kill
- Survivable against siege
- Better at damage mitigation once it hits

- Shouts give high condition removal combined with low cooldown high burst aoe heals
- Banner buffs apply on top of other class buffs/boons and provide good regen

- Still capable of one-shotting glass cannons with rifle offset when full tank

Disadvantages
- No way to allow team mates to block attacks
- No area denial lines/circles
- No projectile deflectors
- Lack of sustainable boons for party

Guardian
Advantages
- Can apply boons to entire party (including Aegis)
- Can allow the team to block using shield 4 or aegis
- Several projectile deflectors
- Area denial lines/circles that knock down any enemies who cross
- Strong party wide burst heals
- Strong party wide regeneration
- Good condition cleanse
- Can self res quicker when not under focus (good for getting back to healing/supporting your team)
- Can fully restore hp of entire party in one go
- Lower cooldown (Albeit single target) ressurect in a utility
- Good passive support
- Weak against siege
- Better at damage prevention

Disadvantages
- Poison greatly decreases the survivability
- Reliant on party for damage
- Cannot have high hp and armour
- Extremely vulnerable to boon stripping
- Can not be improved by bringing a ‘booner’
- Lack of stuns
- Lack of mobility
- Aegis only affects one attack
- Easily ambushed and instant kill (even the thief’s back stab is unaffected by aegis as it does not reveal them)
- Reliant on other players triggering symbols.

- Lack of range

Comparatively the warrior is a much better ‘selfish tank’ capable of taking infinitely larger amounts of damage than a similar Guardian due to the abundance of channelled blocks.
The Guardian is still a reasonable tank in <3v3 battles but will excel by massively improving your party’s efficiency.
Ultimately, warrior has better survivability, guardian is better at improving party survivability.

For those interested in group composition, a good setup would be to have a ‘booner’ off tank guardian with a ‘shouter’ main tank warrior.

As always, I would love to hear the communities thoughts on this matter.

Hello all,
We are K?tHx Assassins, a small but expanding pact of fighters, we are a friendly guild and we are open to all aspects of GW2. Most of our members are UK based, but we are happy to play with players from all backgrounds and all areas.

We have a private Teamspeak, which is available in the Message of the Day.

What do we do?
We actively participate in all areas of Guildwars 2 such as:
*Dungeon runs
*Boss hunting
*Orr Farming
*Guild events
*sPVP tournaments
*WvW
*Pimp a Peon (optional) – collectively pooling to craft and provide armour and equiptment for those who need it

and more….

What sets us apart from other Guilds?
Although we play well competitely, we are alot more tolerant and willing to teach than other guilds and provide an non-elitist environment in which all of our members can thrive and enjoy Guildwars to the full potential.

Our primary way to blow off steam is to run skirmish squads in borderlands and EB, we often use tactics that are not typical of the meta and this alone often allows us to catch the enemy off guard. We also have guild appointed commanders who have gained their commander tag through guild funding and this is a tradition we plan on maintaining.
On Piken Square we are a valuable asset due to our willingness to fortify and defend objectives and not just ‘cap and forget’. On many occassions our co-ordinated groups have managed to defend keeps and towers in battles of 10v40+.

If WvW does not tickle your fancy, there is plenty more going on, as our members play for fun they are far more likely to help with any tasks or goals you wish to achieve, without pressure on the player in distress needing to provide and opportunity for maximum efficiency gold income.

What is the level requirement
NONE – players of any level will be accepted and brought under the wing, you will not be discriminated against in anyway and you will be free to join us in all areas; upleveled or not.

What classes are we recruiting
ALL CLASSES – any player of any class and any playstyle will be accepted, we are happy to adjust our tactics and reevaluate our setup to accommodate for your strengths and weaknesses. This has resulted into our groups being a hard-to-predict formidable squad capable of countering even the strongest the meta has to offer.

How often must our players be active and represent
Entirely up to you, we do not impose time constraints onto our members as we believe this takes from the pure fun and entertainment of the game. We are here to play, not to work.
It is appreciated but not necessary to represent at Guild events but we will reward those who help to achieve our goals and those who generate the influence which powers the wind behind our force.

How do I join?
You can join by mailing/pming any of these members:
*Fragment Creator
*Marouki
*Azilian

Thank you for your time and we look forward to playing with you in game.

GL HF GG WP and most importantly enjoy.

With out going in to details, from what you are describing, I would suggest ele or engineer. Both provide ample mobility and support whilst still maintaining hybrid damage and excellent roaming capabilities.
I would argue to go ele for burst and engineer for sustained, although all classes can be played to suit any role and the differences are often negligible when it comes to number crunching.

People say engineers are weak, I have mained one since the start of GW2 and I currently command for Piken square. The problem for many is the high skill floor and ceiling, this means it take skill to be mediocre but if you play well you can excel other classes through combos and utility. People complain because they are basing everything on numeric comparisons without consideration of the pricelessness of the utility which can not be directly converted to a number.

In my opinion, guardians are good defender tanks, they are good at protecting the squishies and supporting the whole party. I also believe warriors to be the best proper tanks due to the consistent channelled blocks and shutdown CC they have available, they can also support nicely with strong shout heal/buffs.
Every class can tank, they just do it in different ways, my favourite ‘survivor’ is the engineer due to the utility and high skill ceiling they can bring to the table through combos, it is this skill ceiling that allows you to be full tank and still pressure kill players that would otherwise be stalemates.
Warriors can go full tank and still do high burst damage with their rifle sniper shot, which can often still near 1 shot squishies, however, at is a low skill ceiling way to kill, it is easy to counter and very predictable.

If the play style of class interests you, go with it.

Engineer downed state is pretty nice, you have two ways to interrupt an enemy stomp, while also providing nice conditions on #1.
Engineer are also fairly effective at preventing team mates getting stomped with pulls or knockbacks. If you have any turrets down, they are also good for killing players from downed state.
If you are talking about PVE then I cant tell you much, but if your talking PVP then as an engineer from day one and a Piken square commander, I believe they are in a good position. The disadvantage is high skill floor but in return for a high skill ceiling.

Dagger pistol is an extremely effective stealther.
User your #5 for a smoke field, then leap through it for instant stealth, you can even hit with the heart seeker without losing stealth.
This allows you to keep doing this every 3 second to maintain in combat ‘perma’ stealth, you can also chain it with backstab.
With initiative gain traits you can also pick and choose your fights by having access to perma stealth without needing a target ( you can easily leap backwards and forwards through a single smoke field 3 times in a row, more with haste).
The perma stealth lends itself nicely for a pistol/dagger spam but using the bow is also very effective for the stealth root, also note that you can apply poison with the short bow without breaking stealth.

If you play skilfully enough to repeatedly pull it off, then yes it can be very effective, use of combo fields always rewards you; this is one way to raise the skill ceiling on the thief to give you that slight advantage.

If you go condition damage, the poison from auto attack combined with death blossom bleeds can be devastating. Heart seeker is a nice gap closer regardless, cripple #4 will stack with your condition duration and so will vulnerability from cloak and dagger.
So although, yes D/D is deadly with a power build, I have also had large success running D/D with condition damage/duration.

Pistol Shield with Toolkit and elixir C would be my instinct to run on this occasion.
Use your blocks to bounce/block the conditions before they reach you. Keep spamming the tool belt from elixir c to gain boons from conditions, then keep the utility of elixir C for an ‘oh crap button’.

Shield knockback is perfect for revealing stealthed thieves from their shadow refuge, with pull and pry bay being useful for if you can activate the pull just before they manage to stealth.
Traiting for power wrench is also great as it allows you to spam cripple on the thief and blind swing them when they are invisible.

Consider taking one of these:
- Rifle turret : Nice damage rapid fire with bleeds to cover condition removal
- Rocket turret : Nice damage with knockdown for CC
- Net turret : Nice CC…

The turret also works well with the (traited) tool kit as you can throw in back up repairs when the thief I completely untargettable, with the kit already out ready for a block.
The #5 on the pistol/shield also provides a nice ambush protection if you allow it to proc rather than throwing it for a daze. If the thief gets low, use the throw shield as an opener to spam a burst into them before they vanish.

Overall, conditions are hard to manage on a engineer, but something like the above would be good for countering thief conditions.
As always, running zerker will leave you very open to conditions.

Side note: Elixir gun can also replace the turret nicely as it provide access to condition removal (through blasting the light field from super elixir). The purge also works good for an extra spray and pray when the thief is stealthed. Super jump is a nice extra panic button and the acid is nice for placing if you cant knock them out refuge.

With backpack regenerator, regen from med turret and possibly heal from super elixir, it is a nice amount of regen to counter the degen.

Flamethrower was never a troll build, it is merely the response of the community who believe the flamethrower could’ve been more damage orientated than it currently is.

As it stands, it has some nice utility with the added bonus of high burning capability with rapid proccs from the auto attack. The problem with flame thrower as a weapon kit is that it will also rapidly proc retaliation.

I often use it in conjunction with toolkit and pistol shield as the knockback and aoe blind are nice ‘tank’ skills whilst the easy access burn allows nice pressure to replace the lack off a pistol offhand. The fire field is also nice to combo with the blast on your shield when swapping back to your pistol/shield, although a leap finisher would be ideal.

Also it is worth noting that whilst it seems a great zerg buster with walls of fire, that is exactly what the flame thrower is not that great for.

So to answer your question: Yes it is viable, No it is not too good for zerg fights, more of a roaming utility.

Dragon Ruler X.8512:
“If you want to sound snide please do it somewhere else.”

I was not being snide (as you put it) in the slightest, merely pointing out what I believe the turrets intentions to be.
I fail to see how I am covering it with false pretences.

Dragon Ruler X.8512:
“No where in there does it indicate that they are strictly for “area control”. "

You say they did not give any specifics on how they were designed to be used, the following line makes me beg to differ, the following is almost the ‘definition of turrets’.
“immobile devices that help defend and control an area.” – It says pretty clearly that their role is to help defend an area through area control.

If they were not intended for controlling an area, it seems odd that they would make a new trait that buffs all team mates in the ‘area of control’
( I believe this was implemented as an attempt to improve area control without directly buffing the damage of the turrets).

It also seems odd that supply drop would create a mini-base to help you control an area.

As per usual guild wars allows for all skills to be used to suit your play style and so there is no specific way they have to be used, but as I already mentioned, turrets seem to be heavily intended for area control.

Making them mobile would make them an offensive pushing weapon, I don’t believe this was the intention and in order to do so would mean heavily nerfing the main selling point and purpose of the turrets.

Side note:
Dragon Ruler X.8512:"
why not give us a mace weapon class – I kinda wanna clobber someone with a wrench"

Look at your toolkit weapon kit….

Just because the intentions of the turrets do not meet your expectation, does not give you the right to be an kitten to other forum members.

I think all skills have their place, just in general the class skills beat racials.
On my engineer it is sometimes useful to summon it out, fire a few skills and knockbacks off and then use 5 as a backup heal to help absorb some damage.
I find that if I am running a build with no condition removal, it is useful to summon the suit when conditions are stacking, jump inside and run the durations down using the heal from 5.

“In WVW zerging i feel the class is useless, I just think for everything engi can do, other classes can do it far Better.”
Jack of all trades, master of none.

Engineer has the highest skill floor and ceiling in the game, if you cant play it effectively, then you probably just need more practice. Hence they are underplayed.
I would consider this a plus, as it means in deadlock fights, making maximum use of everything at your disposal can break the stalemate and make your team victorious when having another class would’ve been too predictable.

SPvP – Rocket, Rifle, Thumper
Knights or Clerics

WvW – Rocket, Rifle, Net
Givers with Cleric/Apoth jewels.

Obviously all option are viable in guild wars if they suit your play style, but these setups seem to work for me.
This is my build, I even run it when I command sometimes as the buffs and blast finishers work great.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqelUUpmq1WxuKseNCdBF6VklQL6F2wR/pAA-TFSAABGcgA6a/BAPBAOqEsT1fMT5HAHQALeAABAQA8zf+zf+zf2P/5P/5P/ZpAMTaE-w

Turrets were intended for area control, just read the engineer description please. Turrets are not pets and the reason our turrets have 1500 and offer the utility they do when traited with experimental turrets, is because they are immobile.

A-net will not do a 180 on the purpose of turrets, they are great as they are, if you want moving pets then reroll.

If used correctly the boons from turrets allow the engineer to be played as a pseudo ‘boon tank’ pistol/shield and the boon gains just increase exponentially for each other team mate around you.

I run Healing Turret, Rifle turret, Rocket turret and Thumper turret with clerics/settler gear and although the build lacks the complex versatility that comes from having kits to combo with etc, it is able to hold its own against most enemies, especially if they are high damage low survivability spec which is common in spvp.

In WvW, I run with givers gear and cleric jewels and it is perfect for small skirmishes (<10v10) and the buffs work well even when I run with commander tag particularly as you have access to 5 blast finishes consecutively.
(Sometimes net turret is better WvW as I can give over 5mins of aoe swiftness easy)

I don’t believe turrets are op, but the amount of boons you can dish out to 5 players really does give them the ‘area control’ potential they were intended to have from the start.

I would compare the build akin to the engineer equivalent of a boon guardian except your turrets give you 1500 range with the disadvantage of being static. Overall I think the experimental turrets work well and are suitably balanced.

Quit QQing.
“Zerging. Get rid of it NOW. Every single update encourages zergfests, except the Tequatl Rising update. It is getting stupid now. This needs to stop.”
I like Zerging, I play a social game, if i want to run around in a massive group, then let me.

There will always be one way which is the most efficient way of killing.
I for one do not use Zerker (infact I use giver gear which has the least damage possible) and I do not feel like I am locked out of content, I compete in all areas of the game including killing Teq.

-AOE cap
-Conditions cap
These two combat Zergs enough.

Why bother adding combo fields and finishers if you are going to punish players ridiculously for taking advantage of them.

QQ more.

Why?
" I think npc spouses will ehance town life and encourage players to socialise in towns more to share their GW2 experiences."

Do mini-pets do this?

I will not PvE. I use PvE only for a waiting room. I will not participate in PvE no matter what you say or do to cajole me into it. I simply refuse.
This means I cannot get World Completion and cannot craft Legendarys. Too bad.
The more you try to force people into doing things they don’t want to do, the more they will resent it – and leave without telling you why.
I am doing you the courtesy of telling you why.

Now shut up, there are two sides to every story.
I don’t like PvE in the slightest, but if i want a legendary or map completion i will do it…

To this guy:
“As PvEer’s, part of our problem is that we don’t have individual control over what goal we are able to attain in WvW. We need to rely on our server’s performance each week to move us to the map we need, and then we need to rely on them again to take the objectives we need on that map.”

What about areas which are contested so I can’t teleport to them? What about the fact that I have to actually explore all of the PvE area?

Everyone who agrees with this OP is completely ignorant. Think you have it hard, imagine a flip of your scenario, atleast you have the map uncovered for you to explore and WvW is around 5% of the completion. 95% of my map completion will be to me what WvW completion is to you.

Am I complaining that I have to enter PvE? No
WvW and PvE ARE 100% the same game, they are the areas where everyone isn’t automatically maxed out with equal opportunity. You are like kids who can’t get their cookie, there are two options.

1. The current system whereby PvE and WvW are seperate from sPvP
2. Remove WvW as a separate entity, make PvE open world PvP. From then on, I will come and hunt you down while you hunt trash mobs for pointless loot and I will slit your throat and teabag your face every time I kill you.

Option 2 would be my preference to be honest, but apparently my care bear victims don’t like that and they cried to NC-Soft when they took this approach in Lineage2.
Be thankful that you got your way, other wise my way would be in place, and good luck trying to get your map completion when i’m camping your completion required spot.

I ALWAYS use this trait, it is one of my favourite, loving the longer cooldown in exchange for longer stealth
Couple with the new Elixer S and Elixer H with cleansing formula
I do think a good solution would be to add a teleport back when it triggers, similar to my thief if i remember rightly.
Im not saying remove immobilize, just let the engineer get teleported forwards/back a few metres, even if they accidently blow the stealth, they can still use element of suprise to take advantage of the teleport.

Because they hate us and they hate our turrets.

My ideas for balance:

1. Turrets should be boosted to have higher HP.
– I feel around 15k hp for a normal turret such as rifle turret
– 25k for thumper

2. Turrets need mobility, but they shouldnt be over the top
– Perhaps place global cooldown on the overcharge skills
– When picking a turret up, the skill cooldown should be on around 10-15 seconds
– Increase all turret cooldowns to about 45-60 seconds

3. Make them scale
– Reduce power and condition damage of turrets by 15%
– If engineer is gear specced full “power” damage ~ 30% more normal damage
– If engineer is gear specced full “condition” damage ~ 30% more condition damage
– If engineer is gear specced primary “toughness” ~ 20% more armour
– If engineer is gear specced primary “vitality” ~ 20% more health

As a non-necro i have to agree, I think the water field would bring more support optons to the necro aswell and would prevent the “overlap” problems in WvW. Necros have no mobility, atleast bring them up to the level of my engineer with his heal turret out.

Start using venom share, honestly, as an ex tanky support (knight/cavalier gear) sword/dagger thief I can say that the venoms are definitely not just “wierd skills”. I currently main an asuran engineer now though as it is my commander.

Try using leeching venoms with venom share, the leeching venoms applies to your team mates also.
use shadow refuge, skale venom, spider venom, basilisk venom

When using this tecnique solo, i swapped out skale venom for devourers and swapped basilisk for thieves guild.

The “true damage” from the life steal on venoms will destroy an opponent as you stack on them and the life steal will keep you alive.

This was before the recent increas to the range on venemous aura (and the visual radius), and skale venom got buffed also.

When running with my brother who was dagger/dagger thief, we could perma stealth and instant kill any enemy whilst they turned to stone. We both used pistol/pistol as secondary weapons and we caused more carnage than i can even explain.

Also, we occassionally took thieves guild each, swapping my shadow refuge out for an extra poison and instead relying on his, this essentially made us an 6 man mini-zerg.

I agree, the current state is ridiculous and is the whole reason ive never spent a penny buying gems, why bother when it will just be wasted in RNG

Nothing, there is nothing at all to gain from attending the events other that for kittens and giggles.

+1 to race change

You give us ascendeds, you give us world xp, you give us fractal levels, you give us commander tag.

Even if i reroll and get to 80, thats not even the half of it.

I feel this topic speaks volumes for the guild wars 2 community as a whole.
As a veteran of gw1 + expansions and preorder gw2, I loved Guild Wars and the time in Guild Wars 2 when exotics were top tier.
Now it is going against everything they stood for in favor of grind and elitism. I play the game, but it feels like nothing is ever achievable because the lead programmer got trigger happy on the numbers.
If I play during the Halloween event, and i play for 8 hours a day for a week, i should be able to at least get something to show. I win the clock tower event and I get an exotic glove (which I expected to at least have a skin other than invader gear) and that’s about all i take from this event…. wow, great joke.

Please A-net
I think that, following the ‘successful’ reception of the new halloween skins available for candy corn cobs, it would be beneficial to create a new item which will give you a random green item with one of the halloween skins in exchange for 1 candy corn cob.

I think it is the only reasonable way forward, I mean because obviously the halloween recipes were just a joke/“trick” or treat at us players.

So come on, you almost had me, enough of the joking around, show us the real vendor.

Combo Field: Light

WTF WTF WTF

Yet again, great job A-Net

Could have atleast made it a dark field…. you know, as necromancers are dark and “blood” skills in gw2 translate to life steal.

I think making a heal skill heal your allies when they shoot through it, and blinding enemies when you cover their face with blood via a blast finisher still makes alot more sense to me than blasting blood = retaliation _ and covering your teammate in diseased rotten corpse blood cures their poison.

or yea ^^^ water field giving more heals and regeneration for giving your allies blood still make much more sense.

Im shocked my flamethrower fire field isnt a water field with A-nets judgement.

I wish they encouraged spot selling more, we done it and loved it in GW1 so why not in GW2.

“GW2 will be everything you loved in GW1 and more” – No its not, we have went from non-grind skill based combat with cosmetic expansion to gear based combat with verticle grind

edit: almost forgot, and RNG

It is a joke, but do they kitten care

Absolute bull kitten.
I got a fused ticket, wasnt too bothered about the skin as I had a COF shield skin.
As you know storage is ridiculous because they are tight kittens who want to pin me on my back and milk my nipples.
So in order to clear up my bank, I used the skin on a random weapon on an alt that I had.
Now my skin is on my lvl 24 Warrior and I see everyone else is who saved the item now rich.

Great!!!
One person who actually found a use for this event.

On other note, if you are max level there is actually crap all to do in this event.
Lunatic Inquisition – No point, I spend 10 mins to get 3-6 candy corns.
Clock Tower – Completed within 5 minutes of trying (my first time at this event too)#
– Glove reward crap, rubbish runes and why bother when i have exotics.
Mad King Labrynth – What is the point? I went there and it was a zerg fest, no real rewards

Skins – Well since I missed the glorius first halloween event, I was looking forward to getting my hands on a skin.
Not a chance with this corn on the kittening cob

name a single game were end game gear is obtainable only through crafting

Lineage2 which is also made by NCSoft
… case closed

Stop moaning, would you rather have no ascended and have a huge gap between exotics and legendary. Shut up and play, they are doing a great job.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

TLDR: the hundred other posts about this topic.

As soon as this one gets off page 1 I will be making 101.

You mean 102

Go get a ballista and learn spread shot.
Case Closed.

Yep i agree.
I do not understand how people dont see that ballistas are the answer to countering a zerg.
I play as a commander engineer (which is commonly thought as under powered).
There have been times where I have been in a guild team of 4/5 players and we have been defending against a mini zerg of around 20-25 players.
Generally the lack of communication gets them killed, we simply set up a ballista or two on a bridge or other choke point and have a couple of arrow carts set up on the tower we are defending to prevent rushing the ballista.
The zerg comes over the group like ‘woahaha we gonna stomp’, suddenly i command for spreadshot from our 2 ballistas…
all of a sudden, the 20 man mini zerg is now the 8 surviving players on 3/4 hp.
This is before you even take into account the fact we are using standard ballistas, imagine the same scenario with superior ballistas

I spent £680 on my computer.
Crappy motherboard with just enough slots for what i need.
8 GB Ram (with that patch that lets me go over 4GB or w/e)
Intel quad core 2.6 —> OC to 3.0 GHZ
Nvidia 660MX TI (nearly half the cost of my pc)

I run on ultra high with a few selective options toned down for PVP purposes (ie hiding some grass etc)

Old Case from 1994
Originally had my temperatures at 90 degrees C (obv very bad)
Had FPS between 10-50 FPS

Went and paid £20 to replace stock heatsink on CPU with new one
Paid around £45 for my silent fans
I now have 3 intake fans, 3 Outtake fans, the fan on my GPU and one on my CPU
All fans are silent (for when my GF sleeping)

Temperatures dropped from 90’c to 23’C
I now get between 70-110 FPS in almost all areas.
Minimum of ~35 FPS in WvWvW zergs (ie at stomemist with all players around)

Havent yet tried changing from standard drivers, will give that try when can be assed. May also be worth upgrading my onboard sound card.

I have degree in Applied Computing, i built my first fully custom pc at 9 (im now 21), but must admit im more of a programmer than a hardware master.
I find it funny how people can pay over a grand for a PC and still have lower performance than my <£700 computer.
I agree about the Alienware hardware being highly overpriced, then again I have always built extremely low budget performance PCS.

You are paying to be able to carry more supplies, therefore you have the mitigation. All WvW skills cost alot at the higher levels, if you change to your proposed system, you eliminate the usage of supply drain.

Yes this is defo normal, spreadshot is locked onto the same Z axis, so you can only use it when you are on the same ground as the player, this leaves you very vulnerable. The cooldown is low enough to defend from small scale pvpers, but high enough to result in you getting face rolled by a group of players after u miss.
Spreadshot will and should instant kill anyone stupid enough to try and tank it.

Even with no siege bonus damage and lvl 1 spreadshot, i can often take 2/3 of the health from 3 or 4 people at a time if i land it correct, it often results in my ballista being wiped. but i then mop the floor with them all on 1/3 hp.

Sirendor.1394:

Zenguy.6421:

lordkrall.7241:

The main issue is that the feedback added by players are in most cases vastly different and in some cases contradict each other. So who should they listen to?

Yes, there’s a lot of contradiction and threads never arrive at a consensus on these forums. Which means that if you look to these forums for ready packed solution backed by common agreement you’ll be right out of luck.

But if you read deeper than that you’ll see that the good ideas do shine through as does the overall concensus of the community.

You only have to take a broader view of the WvW forum over the last month or so to for it to be apparent that:

The Bloodlust buff has been a PR disaster
GvG matters to enough people that it needs attention
Imbalance between servers and its impact on match-ups is a huge issue
The broken party functions and stone age commander system are ongoing issues
There is a growing reaction against power creep in WvW
The upcoming League is highlighting rather resolving all of the above problems

None of these things are new, they have all been apparent in these forums for a long time.

You asked “So who should they listen to?” Rather than follow a single instrument they need to listen to the symphony overall, because that’s where the bigger movements are played out and where the persistent themes will be heard. If Anet don’t have anyone who can do that for WvW, then they either need to get someone who can or accept that WvW will continue to be a difficult part of GW2.

strong post +1

+ 1

The way I play, I am more survivable than any warrior or guardian (I have both), the closest to this is my shout healer warrior.
Engineer are very very strong in meele.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqel0picX3ShF87IxIFdW0hUgfDL6R+1vjB-j0BB0HAUIgUBIlNFRjVNjIqWbDzguIa1SBIrwI-w
Just try it!

I play as pistol shield. There are a variety of builds i use. I have more tools up my sleave than I can even explain.

But to sum up the essentials for me:
Perma Swiftness, Perma Vigor, Perma Retaliation, Perma Regen
Quickly shoot my poison at my main target, add bleeds from auto attack.
Use shield to bounce projectiles, finish with a KD
Throw my shield to daze them, or let them stun themselves on me if they hit me.
Throw in quick AOE blind with some confusion.
They generally run at this point.
Swap to toolkit
Throw caltops on ground
Get elixer gun out, poison them more, cripple them
Spray acid on ground
Dodge around with my vigor
Get regen from elixer utility.
Swap to toolkit
Pull them into caltops and acid
Smack em in the face with my prybar, add more confusion
Might have a quick heal from my utility skill on medkit.
Maybe use a few medkits if needed
Throw my wrench to cripple them if they try to run again.
If they still hitting me through the confusion stacks, swap to elixer again, drop light field.
If recharged use acid again for burst heal and more damage.
Change back to toolkit, use the block channel.

Swap and change kits to suit the situation.

If too many enemies, run away, drop caltrops, use light field, acid on it for heal and gain distance, dodge dodge dodge dodge. Escape as im much faster. Other times, i will just use my wrench to smack a group of people at the same time while i dodge around.

I would class myself as medium range, IE I dont have long range skills but i am good mid range and can fight in meele with ease. Anyone at long range will get pulled into my acid and caltrops for prybar and be near death almost instantly, often the confusion from static shot and prybar will outdo a heal or two.

If I am ever downed, drop revival elixer before you go down, spam auto attack, use 2 to KD the first person just as the about to execute me or pull into my team.
When they come back use three to do AOE knockback. I am now ressed from team/4/my elixer.

I am Commander Engineer, yet to find anyone to beat me full hp vs full hp in 1v1 (although i focus on group fights and do exceptional there too).
The passive support i give to my teams makes me invaluable, magnet, cripple, daze , kd, reflect etc.

I play using Giver stats (cant remember other names)
But i am maximum toughness with healpower and boon duration, I never once considered getting more damage as it would be wasted as my damage is hybrid.
Dont understand how people think engineer is Under Powered, sure its hard to master, but once you do, you are absolutely unstoppable. I have around 30k hp i think.

Put it this way, once a pistol whipper and a backstabber ganked me with haste on, the pistol whipper stunned me, the dagger thief died almost instantly from the reflected damage and confusion (he was probs <10k hp) after spamming out his skills. I was left around 3/4 hp, blocked the damage from sword thief, regened hp and then killed him with ease.

Other times I have been defeated 2v1 and ended up on the ground with one enemy on about 5% hp, they get grounded from bleed etc, they spam auto attack on me to try kill me while other executes, but the elixer keeps me up, i use my ccs to block the execute and kill the guy on the ground before im executed, then get rallied and kill 2nd guy.

I think that all cash shop items that give statistical advantage such as regeneration/speed buffs should also be banned. Leave Exp and magic find ones allowed though.

1. Most currency should be account bound. Its our time, we earned it, let us spend it.
2. STOP adding currencies, everything should be accomplish-able from WvWvW or PVE alone.

Build: 16845
Error Code: 42:6:3:2158

but it will move it closer to being viable if you go with thrill of the crime etc for your team.

Currently venomous aura only gives venoms to those within around 250 units of the caster. In pvp, this is almost impossible to utilize, particularly on basilisk venom (which is quite “meh” at the moment anyway) as it has a one second cast time.
Im not saying that basilisk venom needs the cast time removed, as it is easy to see why this is necessary; the range of venom sharing simply needs to be increased as it is could be one of the best options available to thieves for supporting.

1. Yea that is a nice idea, allows me to get weakness through my poisons, aswell as providing poison outside my autoattack on the d/p set.

2. Leeching venoms scales from power not healing power. Healing power only affects yourself too, so doesnt even increase ally regen or shadow refuge heal.

ty for input though

Here is my build:

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mVkzMc0zMMFhwmMMhFmx0x0amRbcsbV8khk7kii7khs707khs7khf7kIa70V7owY70m

I am trying to create a support thief, as I spend the majority of my time hunting around in WvWvW skirmishing with other thiefs in my party.
The idea is I focus on maxing my boons whilst still providing boons and buffs to my team mates through the use of venom sharing.
The deadly arts allows me to apply poison as I steal in and buff my teammates. After this we will apply the stone, chills, weaken, vulnerability to the enemy followed by more vulnerability from cloak and daggers of my team mates.
-Residual venom is nice for basilisk venom.

Shadows arts allows access to two of the selected heals available to thiefs, giving regen on stealth to allies and leeching venoms (which i am not 100% sure if they apply to team). Also SA provides the all important venomous aura which makes us sick buffers.

Last ten points for Thrill of Crime, which provides nice buffs to yourself and team mates.

The armour stats allow for nice health and armour whilst still keeping insane power.
Lyssa runes also give nice buff bonuses especially free buffs on elite and the only condition removal available in this build.

The weapons sets allow for easy range venom to help your team initiate aswell as alowing easier chases for yourself. I focus around shooting and slashing with number 3 initially to keep on the enemy and the damage is almost as good as back stab, heartseeker is a nice finisher, 4 5 provide nice support conditions aswell as allowing 5+2 combo for stealth and regen.

Hide in shadows is needed for instant access stealth, Shadow refuge…. best support skill to thief.