Guild Wars 2

cursE.1794:

S/D thief is a counter to D/D ele.

I’ve played D/D cel ele for over a thousand games. A good S/D thief would usually beat me or at least give me a hard fight. And now as I’m playing the S/D thief I beat the crap out of every D/D ele. It really comes down to knowing the mechanics of an elementalist, then they are very predictable because their cooldowns on attunements force them into a rotation which whill always be the same. Basically, all you have to do is

- avoid lighting aura
- dodge his fire attument
- stay on top of him if he attunes to water (auto attack and gap closers if he chills you is enough)
- burst him down after he cycled through his healing

Don’t forget that you can steal his might stacks.

It’s hardly a hard-counter. You can pressure them somewhat with S/D, but if the ele is good it’s generally not worth it. You can’t make any mistakes as a S/D if you want a chance at a kill, that can be very taxing against a good player. Also S/D is soft-countered by conditions and AoE spam.

Like someone else mentioned, you are better off finding uneven fights or using your utility more effectively. Unless ofcourse you are trying to pressure a point, then you could always try and go for a kill. I’d keep my SF to reset the fight if necessary though.

It used to be workable and I used to enjoy playing with a more sturdy character. It also allowed a bit more build versatility. I haven’t played that much lately, but it seems like these kind of builds have completely fallen out of grace due to the consistent nerfing of thief damage.

Arikyali.5804:

Meh..I get the feeling that thieves in general, are a little more ‘humble’ than mesmers. Usually. Not always. Just usually.

Mesmers hate thieves. It’s justified hate, it’s understandable hate, but it’s uneducated hate. I play both mesmer and thief, and I’ve see how they interact and counter each other. But if I try to defend a thief from mesmer, I know it’ll fall on deaf ears.

What counters a mesmer? Nothing but thief. What counters a thief? Everything but mesmer.

I agree with that sentiment. It’s exactly the reason as to why the thief/mesmer duo is so good. At the same time, I think it’s a pity that Mesmer players get shafted so badly because of how immensly uneven this matchup is, atleast from a PvP perspective and when the Thief is actually good. I think Thief will always have it’s place in PvP or WvW thanks to the stealth mechanic, despite it’s lackluster 1v1 abilities. I’ve always prefered more of a utility and support Thief, so I don’t particularely mind. I’ve barely played this last year, but this power balance hasn’t changed one bit.

Kurow.3076:

You run away.

As a thief, you should spend most of your time running away, and making fights uneven.

That’s the only thing you’re good at.

This. Atleast if they are good players.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Shiyo.3578:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Thief isn’t bad, people are just upset that you can’t spike someone down the way you used to. It actually takes a little more skill to fight. You have a crap ton of evades, blinds, interrupts, and easy access to stealth. Once you learn how to use those it is almost impossible to die in a 1v1 fight.

Thief is intentionally designed to be the worst 1v1 class in the game by the devs.

If this is true they failed miserably…

I’d like to think this is true when talking about two players of equal skill with neither player having the element of surprise. Thief could potentially drag out fights and be a real nuissance, but the lack of sustain combined with the fact that you can’t simply burst people anymore have made it so that you can’t go toe to toe with a lot of classes/builds. Having decent in-combat mobility won’t do you any good in a prolonged fight with a lot of AoE cripple and conditions, especially considering the lack of condition removal. That’s why D/P and resetting of fights is so popular, it’s the best way for a Thief to contribute.

It’s still a good class though, the utility and unique gameplay it brings make it more than worthwile. A good thief picks a fight he can win, but that rarely means aggressing into a straight up 1v1 without some trick or strategy in mind.

I can only speak for Thief and I don’t play PvP THAT much, but I found the term “meta” to be sort of deceiving for GW2 because, atleast for Thief, there have rarely been other options. I quit playing actively about a year ago, but at that point I had been discussing on guru and trying viable Thief builds for months. There were simply certain weapons which worked better with the toolset of thief and not much has changed. I’ve played a lot of S/P and P/D, but they simply don’t complement the strengths of thieves and don’t make up for their weaknessess as well as S/D or D/P. Even the utilities and most of the traits have remained the same. I still enjoy S/P from time to time, but there is simply no reason to take it over S/D in PvP.

Rimmy.9217:

Yes, it’s allowed in the game framework. But ANet didn’t make anybody do it, players did it. That’s why it’s not ANet’s “fault”.

And other than speculation, how do you know it’s netting them any money? Gold converts to gems nice and easily, and if you had the foresight to start converting to gems in the long long ago, you’re in great shape.

More balanced before people could transfer? Since when couldn’t you transfer?

And lots of guilds currently in silver and bronze have gone through a T8 phase, so we know how it is. It’s people’s fault, not the game. Read up – every single time someone suggests something to address the problem, people scream that they don’t want the change, that they don’t want to move or destack or any of the sensible things that need to happen if the game is going to have any playable longevity to it.

That’s players, not ANet.

Players will abuse the game mechanics and will do what’s best for them, not what’s best for the game. A dev with their experience should know that and should have the foresight to either not provide the framework to make this abuse possible or to alter the nature of WvW. It’s not on the players because they are not in control, Anet is.

That being said, I hate this lack of server loyalty from players. Yet at the same time, I get it. I know a lot of good WvW players who tried to stick with the server for the longest time, but ultimately had the choice to either stop playing WvW (all they played) or go to another server. I’m not hating on Anet, but they are the ones who had the power to start all of this, only they have the power to stop it.

Removing the option to transfer servers won’t work anymore though. It’s too late, many servers had their community ripped to shreds already.

Rimmy.9217:

party buddy.4956:

Yes people are still crying about this, Many people are not crying though, but instead are just deleting the game.

The solution to the problem appears to be, let the underdog die out every time they hit the ceiling that is rank#8.
The server that reaches Rank 8 just has people quit playing wvw, and the game, and then another server can move up, get frustrated and ignored, then That server will lose people, quitting the game, quitting wvw, its an endless cycle that Anet has shown no recognition of or any interest in fixing.

They’re really not quitting when they hit rank 8. I had a look at your post history and the bulk of your posts is complaining about problems you’ve had in the game, key farming, letting guild leaders start keg brawls for some reason…

The servers are not completely balanced AND there isn’t a smooth progression from 24 to 1, and as has been explained there are four T2 servers in a tier where only three can fit, so one is displaced down to T3.

Want to fix that? Convince one of the four to destack to T3 levels. It’s not ANet’s fault or problem that players stacked upward like this. If you personally are not enjoying this week’s matchup, then do something else. Or find a way to make it fun. Or do whatever. But enough of the whining already – which of the other three T2-level servers would you have preferred to face this week?

Why isn’t it Anet’s fault? They allow for server transfers when their game has a mode which basically requires some form of server loyalty to function properly. The reason they are not adressing this is because it’s netting them a good sum of money. It was a lot more balanced before people could transfer. My server basically has no WvW players left. My entire Guild moved to another server. I’m the only naïve fool who refuses to do so, atleast for now.

I haven’t played in ages, but it looks like WvW is STILL plagued by the exact problems it had a year ago.

I haven’t played in months, just logged in to talk to some guildies again. From what I heard, the new update sounds promising enough to make me log on more often again. The beauty of this game is that I can pick it up whenever I want.

The only thing stopping me from playing more often is the lack of challenging content. The reason I played so much WoW and GW1 was because they both had a lot of challenging content. In GW1 I had a lot of fun leveling each class, getting elite skills and armors, vanquishing and doing HM missions. There is nothing even remotly close in GW2. Only things which kept me coming back for more, atleast for awhile, were : SaB, FotM, The Sunless Raids and Liandris. Two of them are not available at the moment and I’ve bored myself to death on the other two. I’m currently looking forward to Dark Souls 2 on PC. I still log on to GW2 from time to time, it’s still a great and fun casual game. But I usually play games for the content and the challenge, I need to get both of them elsewhere.

Again, the new update is looking fairly promising. I’ll definitely check it out. Bit of a shame that I had to buy 3 versions of some cultural armors before they decided to release this QoL update though.

I have no idea what this is about. I’ve played plenty of rounds, all different circumstances. No credit as of yet.

I’m sorry but WvW might be fun, but as a format it’s broken as hell unless you are on a top tier server which has a lot of good and active players. Hardely ever do I see a fair fight in UW. Either we are outnumbered or we are outnumbering them.

It really doesn’t help either that a lot of people who want to play WvW would rather whine about it and go to a top tier server than stay and try to improve. Part of me gets it, but it’s also one major flaw in the entire WvW format. Before long, it’s already getting there, we will have servers solely dedicated to WvW and servers solely dedicated to PvE.

If that happens, PvE players are the ones getting kittened over. A WvW player who wants to do harder content for PvE can still look for a group with players from another server. A PvE player who wants to do some WvW will just end up in a desolate world that’s being steamrolled by hordes of enemies or where no one is actually playing.

I agree. I’ve been thinking about leveling a warrior myself. Most serious PvE’ers seem to have one on stand by atleast. Most of what other classes can do, a warrior can do aswell and usually better.

They are also extremely easy to level. They do massive AoE damage and are the fastest class to run around with. I can barely keep up with a warrior with my mobility specced thief.

The bring way more utility and sustainability to a group than most classes aswell.

I just had a valkyrie box drop for me. I’m not sure if I should open it with my thief or my guardian and what weapon to pick. Eventhough I’d rather have the stats on my thief, I only do Fractals with my Guardian while I usually just gear my Thief first because it’s my “main”. I also have 473 huntsman on my thief, so an ascended SB is not that far away.

But if I were to take it on my guardian, I’m not sure on which weapon I should pick. Greatsword seems a decent choice, but I don’t really use it THAT much on higher level fractals. I was thinking about scepter, but you only get 5 extra AR for that. And since I don’t have my second ascended accessory on this character yet, I could use the 10 AR you get from 2H weapons. Staff isn’t bad, but I usually just use it utility and nothing else.

What would you guys do?

EDIT: Also have a storm wizard skin on GS, not sure if I want to part with it :p

You try to make thief players sympathize with you with that title and then continue to surround what could have been a valid complaint with a lot of whine and false information. I’m sorry, but you won’t get to me that easily.

Stealth can indeed be an annoying mechanic and it should be reworked and revitalized, but most of what you said in the OP is just outdated and really not an issue in the current meta. Backstab thieves have been hit HARD by nerfs.

Like someone else mentioned, only occasionaly do I encounter D/D thieves in WvW (rarely in PvP). They are usually indeed rather good players that have perfected their playstyle and build unlike most of us that switched to more viable builds. A good D/D thief can still 1vx bad players, but that’s about it.

Excalibur.9748:

The ONLY nerf to S/D kit I can advise is nerf to energy sigil, in the same way that paralization sigil is being nerfed to nerf warrior. A hit to energy sigil will hit S/D thief hardest. This will cut down on the evade spam “issue” which is really not that much of an issue since they can still be hit while they’re chaining evades.

Though I do not find S/D that OP, I still think this is a very valid argument and not that bad of an idea. I also agree with the replies of Walker and evilapprentice, a lot of misconceptions about S/D always surface and make me wonder if those people actually ever played the set (or atleast not recently).

Ghostwolf said most of it. Great advise right there. Blinds are always handy, unless you are fighting Dredge.

Unlike most people I use a build which is a compromise between WvW and PvE. I’m using 0/30/30/10/0 and only switch out my gear and traits. Which means I try to go D/D or D/P as often as I can, but on high level fractals that isn’t as ideal as a power build with S/x and SB. Still works well enough though.

Osi.3504:

One thing to realize here is legendary weapons last forever so they shouldn’t be treated like raid gear in WoW/Rift and most people don’t farm for them correctly. Also the crafted precursors will add this system you speak of to the game but I assume it will take a long time gathering materials to craft one.

On a side note, how many people have 300%+ MF and farm hours in cursed shore getting nearly 1+ exotic drops a day? A guy on my server in 5 months using around 200% MF got 67 exotics or something and 2 of those were precursors (dusk/legend) from Orr. Most people say /age 2500 hours and I haven’t gotten a precursor yet! However 90% of that time was spent leveling toons or sitting in Lion’s Arch, not out getting as many kills per hour as possible yet they are the ones complaining about the extremely rare drop rate.

For the first part, I don’t get how a legendary is different because it “lasts forever”? In most MMO’s endgame prestige items aren’t related to gold farming (e.g mounts or skins in WoW, but even raidgear).

On the second part I’d like to add that this is nice of you to assume most people don’t know how to farm, but this less true than you want to believe. I’ve farmed Orr for a few months with magic boosts, granted most of this was before DR got removed. I still spent countless hours there and only have a few exotics to show for it. Definatly no precursor. Your friend his story sounds more like the exception to the rule. But even if 5 months of continious farming would grant you a precursor, you really think that’s how a game should be?

Mourningcry.9428:

rjnemer.7816:

Who said anything about making it easier? Anet was the ones that said it was supposed to really be “legendary”.

Make it WAY harder and untradeable. Thats how it should have been.

Require more items from different parts of PvE, not just a kitten ton of t6 mats.

List of Req

- At least lvl 48 fotm
- 500 tokens from each dungeon
- All jumping puzzles completed
- Solo Lupi
- Cleared All temples at least once
- Dungeon Master

Those are just off the top of my head. Feel free to add

Nothing hard at all about.

- FOTM/Dungeon/Title slots & completion can all be "bought’.
- A Mez friend/guildie can trivialize all JPs
- Temple clearing is just mostly a matter of being part of the zerg and requires no skill or knowledge.

The only non-trivial part would be a Lupi solo, but not really sure how it could be enforced.

I’m just saying, just about all tasks in game can be trivialized or circumvented. RNG, sadly, along with time, are viable gating mechanics.

There is nothing “hard” or “difficult” either about RNG and farming. Something like he proposed would just give more visible progress and add some variety to the process instead of just hoarding gold like an idiot.

Mourningcry.9428:

Shelledfade.6435:

It’s not equal if someone spent more time and gold but got nothing than someone else. There’s nothing equal about it, and that’s why its bad game design.

Sure it is. Why are you a more deserving player than I am because you’re capable of spending more time in game, or have somehow acquired more gold then me?

By your very definition, you’re saying you’re more equal than I am.

I paid the same for the game. I value my time in game. I want a Legendary.

RNG treats us equally.

And by “I”, I mean any other player.

Your logic can be turned around. Why do I not deserve one then if we are so equal? I have paid the same amount of money for it as you?

There is nothing equal about it when I’ve spent countless hours and money without ever seeing one drop while others have seen up to five.

There is nothing wrong with a little RNG, but when it becomes extreme up to the point where you should just forget about hoping for a drop, it’s a broken mechanic.

Lalocat.6793:

Where are people getting the idea that if there are not many people defending the turrets, the champions won’t spawn? It’s completely false. The last three times I tried it failed because of this rumor. The last time I just left before the fight even started because I knew it was going to be a waste of time.

Just to be clear, I never said anything like that. I’ve always had champions spawn, so I wouldn’t even know if it were true. Not sure who you are replying to

incandescence.6784:

One thing I have noticed on the turrets is that if you spam the skill button it will cause the shot to misfire. The skill will proc, but no shot will go out. So you really have to wait until the cool down is actually over before pressing the skill button again if you want your turret skills to actually fire.

Really? That’s pretty silly if it’s true. Rather vital information, so I’ll definitly add it if I update it, thanks!

Hecatonchir.9326:

I’m surprised there isn’t anything about portals here, everyone loves mesmer portals, and knows that they’re amazing when used right. All it takes is 6 or 7 mesmers and you can move literally the entire zerg to teq. I use portals to avoid the first wave entirely, more dps getting put on teq without people getting dropped and losing thier ice bows. I also use mesmer portals at the end of each megalaser defence to let the defenders stay a little bit longer and make sure that the whole zerg gets in place to attack teq during the stun. Of the fights that I’ve participated in I’m the only commander I’ve seen do this, and it works amazingly for getting everyone in place on time and dealing damage (because we all like numbers.)

I agree that portals can be handy. However, to be really useful it requires some coordination because in most zergs people just run back whenever they feel like they can or whenever they see other people moving to the next stage.

On top of that, 90% of the DPS zerg will be in position and they will have plenty of time to summon weapons and buff might if they defended well and left in time. So I think it’s more of a convenience than anything else. Unless your defense was going poorly and you had to stay a lot longer than needed.

So I’m not convinced it is worth giving up a utility slot for. I might add it though, because it can never hurt to give those stray people a fast return button. THanks for your contribution!

(If I were to update this guide, I would also elaborate some more on how to defend and leave in time, but I was unsure if I was going to update this guide because responses were dieing down and it dropped out of sight)

JinDaVikk.7291:

Hot-join is a complete disaster, sorry. We have been asking for removal of hotjoin or atleast changes to it and we shall nver receive. It’s part of the reason no one starts playing pvp anymore, there is no place to learn.

It’s not just that though, the balance issues on higher level play are also very prominent on lower level play. Untill the game stops rewarding easy builds and passive gameplay, including the condition meta, there will be no incentive to even try and improve. It’s getting a bit better, but believe me that if I ever do a Hotjoin, I get atleast 5 necros. Usually more. Tanky individual conditions builds are very strong in every PvP platform and so they are everywhere in Hotjoin because they promote individual and passive play even more. Perfect for Hotjoin.

I actually had a discussion about this with a guildie. He didn’t agree, but I found that high level balance is a great barometer for the general balance of a game on all levels. This is because of various reasons, one is that people use a lot of similar builds or because the basic game mechanics are the same.

Well, he died so many times by now. I don’t think anyone is still keeping count. I’ve done roughly 4 kills with Desolation, 4 with TKS and 1 with TSS so far.

But I’m sure he has been doing non-stop on some servers

Big Tower.5423:

Ok well, thief benefits from highest single target damage (yes i dare say it)

True, we have great damage. But one thing to keep in mind is that some classes bring similar damage WHILE buffing the damage of the team immensly or bringing a great amount of utility.

So it’s not all that bad, but I find the “we have great damage” argument less convincing.

Aerlen.5326:

Finger killing squad is a must – maybe 4 people need to stay behind and down as many fingers as they can. It lessens the poison on the field during stun. People also need to not leave their kittening turrets!

I honestly don’t think it is. If some people in the zerg just pay attention and attack the closest ones, you should be fine. If you do decide to go with Finger squads, I’d advice to make atleast two parties. Otherwise too much time is spent running from one side to the other.

I would also advise against leaving your turret unless you are sure no random moron is going to hijack it. Six people defending won’t make a difference and doing turret damage on the head during stun is pretty decent. But a few randoms on a turret can make everything really hard.

It really helps though. Makes it less annoying to be in the DPS group.

Check out my guide in my signature and add your opinion to it if you like.

Aberrant.6749:

Dungeons are really good cash right now if you do the ones that give soldier/rabid/dire exotic stat weapons. If you turn in your tokens for those and then salvage you’ll have a chance at ectos, dark matter, and an inscription of that type. Those inscriptions sell for 5g+ so it’s a nice bonus.

Yeah I guess I’ll be doing some more dungeons. It can also get repetitive considering you are mainly doing the same paths. Just like in fractals there is a major discrepancy between the duration of the different paths. But it beats champion farming by a mile.

I still think it’s an issue they hopefully adress (better rewards for fractals + craftable precursors or scavenger hunt). I’ll just save up untill they do. I never actually wanted a legendary, I rather wanted to use my money to try out new builds and get the things I wanted on different characters. But at the moment, I have reached most major goals with my Thief, so I wanted to give it a try.

The drop rates are just extremely discouraging. It stings when you see people link precursors you need when they have already found more than one. I still think it’s a bit uneven when 1500+ hours of play and A LOT of gold into the MF doesn’t warrant you a single drop out of all those different precursors. And I’m not the only one, the majority of people has had it my way as far as I can tell.

EDIT: I have played a lot of MMO’s btw, and never once was the most desirable object or an end-game weapon an incredible random and low RNG world drop.

Aberrant.6749:

You could also sell the massive number of t5 mats/greens/rares from the champ boxes and use those funds to buy more t6. It’s not directly getting you more, but the end result is the same.

There is also that laurel item you can buy that will give you t6 100% of the time (iirc, I have so many alts that need jewelry I don’t use this option)

I’ve plaid quite a bit more than you and have never seen a precursor drop. The only way I’ve gotten them personally is through the forge. The rates are very low, but they said eventually we’ll have another way of getting them. I don’t expect it to be easy, but at least it’ll be something we can work towards and get it for certain. When we’ll get that… no one knows.

Yeah, I agree with you that IF there is a way to get it for certain without having to farm gold like a zombie, there would be much less reason to be malcontent. But they have been saying that there would be something like a scavenger hunt or a crafting recipe for over 8 months now.

Regardless I would still like to see challenging PvE content like Fractals or Tequatl (even SaB TM perhaps) be a bit more rewarding towards gear progression. Or even WvW and PvP could use something like that. Dungeons are reasonable at the moment, but only because you have a few really fast paths that give you a fixed amount of gold at the end, but if you want to make money you are better off joining the champ train all day every day.

Don’t get me wrong, I like that killing champions is yielding boxes. Just that everything else is subpar. I still think that T6 drop rates are a bit too low considering you need them for just about anything, but if there was more variety in where you could get them, that would certainly help.

And btw, I have thrown A LOT of money in the mystic toilet aswell. I also wasted over 500g on runes and gear. Trying out new builds without losing your t3 look, is very unforgiving in this game, but that’s rather off-topic. Just another thing which really bugs me :p

Draco.2806:

“I farm the champ train 11 hours a day and I don’t see any problems with the game.”

Hahahaha

I’ve posted a guide which has a lot of similar suggestions in it. Check out my signature

Aberrant.6749:

Precursors… good luck.

Champ boxes are great for t5/6 mats and skill points (you’ll need some for clovers which also can yield t6).

The vastly lowered amount of karma we receive now will make things even harder.

Keep in mind that legendaries arn’t meant to be easy to obtain.

There is not easy and there is this. I know that champ boxes, just like bags from dredge fractals are pretty decent for T6 mats, but it’s still fairly low. When I opened about 600 champion boxes, I think I had about 20 of each T6 mat MAX.

And when it comes to precursor, considering I’ve played close to 1500 hours, I’d imagine I would have seen atleast ONE precursor even if it was a bad one. Alot of people I know that have played as long as me have never gotten a drop. Funny thing is that those who have actually got more than one :p

Better rewards for high level fractals would be a start, because I really don’t enjoy farming champions days on end. Granted, earning money has gotten a lot easier. If I would save up while playing a lot I could get a legendary in a few months I recon. It’s just depressing that more difficult or fun content isn’t really rewarding compared to farming champions and that there are such major discrepancies between the drop rates of absolutly worthless items (99% of the items in this game) and those that are useful or atleast worth something.

EDIT : Perhaps some guaranteed way of getting T6 mats? It feels like the RNG is a major bummer in this game.

This random drop rate is really annoying. I know some people who have gotten 3 precursors just from playing occasionaly while the vast majority hasn’t even seen one from less than a mile away.

We were told that there was going to be crafting of precursors available. The thing is that this will probably be pretty kitten expensive again, if you look at how expensive ascended weapons are. Plus I never liked the crafting in GW2, it’s very cluncky and annoying to navigate.

The biggest annoyance in this game seems to be the drop rate of T6 materials and of precursors. Those two categories have such a huge discrepance in drop rate compared to pretty much everything else in the game. There are so many things which need a lot of T6 materials to acquire, yet the drop rate is fairly low and it is not really profitable to farm it.

The introduction of luck was a great start to bridge the gap, but it’s far from enough.

I would get ascended armor just for the second option. Even more convincing than better stats to me. I’ve wasted over 500g on runes and armour, always converting stuff to my t3 cultural looks is just painful.

It’s a great tool. Though it is rather annoying that I have had parties with 3 rangers for higher level fractals or that I get people that have a level 36 character that want to join for level 38 daily.

I wouldn’t go with my thief if you have a different class available, unless you want to go defense. Same story with ranger. They are good on turrets and defense, but not really that great in the zerg.

Check out my guide in my sig :p

Not really gave up, but I’m cutting down the hours I was spending on this event. The event is great fun with a coordinated group, but the waiting and the overflows are just sooooo tedious.

It might be a daily chest, but it takes a bit too much time for a daily. Think I’m going to make it a weekly or bi-weekly event for my own sake.

So you guys use shift and have no problems reaching the numbers? Maybe I need a new keyboard because I hate how I have to move my hand to get to 1-5

Fishbait.6723:

http://taugrim.com/2011/04/07/guide-to-strafing-movement-and-keybindings/

Like you even read my post. I’m not looking for the basics, I had a specific question. I’ve never used the 1-5 buttons in any game. I found them hard to reach and I was wondering if it’s a matter of getting used to or if it’s something others have experienced.

I just started to play an elementalist and my keybinds are annoying me. I’ve put evade on shift because I’m used to play fps games and that’s usually my sprint. I could get away with this on other classes, but now I’m short on keys.

My attunements are on 1,2,3 and 4, but I found these keys rather annoying to reach. I don’t have to move my hand THAT much, but it’s a lot less convenient compared to the keys around zqsd (azerty).

So what do you think, should I rebind shift or is getting used to 1,2,3,4 really not that big of an adjustment as it now feels?

At the moment I have :

Skills : F E M4 M5 m3
Utilities : X C V (next to eachother on my keyboard)
Attunements : 1, 2, 3, 4
Dodge: Shift
Loot: Ctrl

Anchoku.8142:

I hate to put War, Guard, or Ele on turret instead of doing dps. One Elementalist can run around the East or West turrets doing big heals and help mop up invaders. All others should be in the dps zerg.

I agree with you on that. I’ve done about 8 organised runs with different groups so far and I think we had flaweless defense on 6 or 7 of them. I’m usually defending east and rarely do we have an elementalist there and if we do, he is the only one. Turrets should really be fine if you make sure to catch the mobs in time and if you focus the fingers.

One mistake a lot of people make, is pulling the mobs that spawn at the waypoint to east. But those mobs usually go to west or just roam around. Pulling them makes it a lot harder. I think only during the second turret defense stage after about a minute, do some mobs usually come and attack the most western turret of the east turrets. Besides that, it’s mostly enough to gib the finger and funnel the mobs near the bones in the east.

Destroyer Bravo.5391:

For engineers you want conditionades in the back, but might stackers w/ bomb kits kits or flamethrowers, Elixer B, and ELIXIR R (for res, and dodging alot is very useful if you double dodge the waves or whatever). I play a conditionades, so not sure what the build for mightstacker is.

EDIT: Did find a build —> http://xmesa.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/gw2-engineer-might-stacking-build/

I’m fairly clueless when it comes to engineer, what do you mean with “you want conditionades in the back”?

evilapprentice.6379:

Lucentfir.7430:

evilapprentice.6379:

Reesha.7901:

At 9:32

Jonathan Sharp:
“I think the S/D in particular, it got damage, it has boon removal and it has evade all at the same time.
I think what we want to do is shave a bit of the damage… maybe, or maybe take out one of the boon strips… maybe or maybe the skill itself should cost a Little bit more.
So there is different ways we can deal with it in different game types.”

It was not clear which would be implemented in what game type. Or if they had decided for sure on which change would be implemented. In his list of the maybe changes he also mentioned a maybe regarding steal (I think?). But I couldn’t hear it clearly.

The original FS had 1 boon strip, and it wasn’t horribly effective. In fact, most boon bunkers would eat the FS swing because they knew you were stuck in kitten animation for the second part, and could punish you heavily for it. With the new pathing and ability split things are likely different, but something tells me stripping 1 boon at a time isn’t enough to counter the rate at which boon bunkers can generate boons (as the LS change was intended to do).

It’s been suggested before to force LS to only pop up if FS actually hits, but this isn’t good either – thieves will just get better at evade tanking, and that’s not the intended goal (or good for the game, imo).

What I would suggest is flipping the damage numbers – make FS the hard hitting attack, and LS the low damage utility attack. This way, the FS->LS combo isn’t so weighted toward LS. If this doesn’t work, you could normalize the damage numbers (so overall DPS is the same, but both swings do the same damage). Nerfing the overall damage of FS->LS seems silly – it does similar DPS to AA, and costs initiative to do so. It isn’t a burst still, it’s a sustain skill. You can’t reduce FS->LS damage and move it somewhere else (Like AA chain or Inf strike) without upsetting S/P’s balance, so that doesn’t work either.

From my understanding S/D was supposed to help counter boon based builds, not completely rip them apart by spamming 3. Most Guardians have to use boons in order to be efficient, and it’s part of their mechanics. It would be like if they gave guardian a weapon skill that could remove stealth/apply reveal on hit. Anyways boon bunkers aren’t really even a problem now, they have so much going against them with All the necros and Condition spammers running around, and not to mention S/D thieves are basically the only ones you see now.

Nothing says you have to put up all your boons in 2 seconds like bunkers did pre LS, because there was absolutely no cost associated with doing so. LS has a 1/2s casting time, and it’s arrival is further heralded by the extremely visible spin move thieves pull before hand. FS does pretty awful damage, so a bunker (likely under protection) can eat that swing and save their dodges/interrupts for LS, and guardians have plenty of interrupts.
Yes, a thief could Inf strike to pin you down beforehand (which only prevents evades, not interrupts), but now we’re talking about 8 init to steal 2 boons…and that’s just the first time. Its 10 init (because you have to clean up the SR before you can Inf strike again, or waiting 12 seconds for it to expire) for the next 1s Immob.
FS->LS spam is just as bad as HS spam – it owns inexperienced players and can be dangerous when multiple people are locking you down, but it’s an easily countered, poor playstyle except in extremely niche cases. Additionally, you can only really spam FS->LS if you’re running double S/D with quick pockets, which is nigh useless in team fights and has poor mobility due to the lack of a SHbow.

This is exactly why I don’t think S/D is anywhere near OP. A lot of people that are talking about them being OP, even if those people are really great at the game, mainly encounter that playstyle in those niche environments.That quote from Jonathan Sharp is taken somewhat out of context by the way. I think it’s very important to know what he said right before and right after that.

If this guide helped you or if you think it could help some people, help it stay alive by adding a comment. If that happens, I will keep updating it. If not, let it drown on the forums!

In most PvE content you can go whatever you want and still blow through everything. Stealth is handy for Dredge Fractals and for skipping with stealth (e.g Arah). In general though, we do great damage but bring a lot less utility to the team compared to other classes.

While we might do more damage than some, we don’t “teamplay” perse. So while other classes are close to us in damage, they will also buff their teammates and debuff enemies. So I find the point moot that thieves do great damage because your party will end up doing less damage or taking more damage compared to when you would take a warrior, mesmer or elementalist.

Zacchary.6183:

Good thieves are OP vs scrubs.

This. Times a thousand.

Thieves have a high skill ceiling. Playing a thief is great if your opponent is worse at his class than you. But if he or she knows how to play his class and knows how to play against a thief, it’s not so great. If you know the weakness of each thief set, it’s rather easy to counter them. Maybe I’m mistaken, but I still think that a great player (besides perhaps a truely gc one) will NOT be killed or even forced of a point by a thief unless he get’s surprised or unless he gets punished for a positioning error in a team fight.

When a good thief fights a good thief, a lot of the times it’s just rather funny because then you see how ineffective most sets are when you know how they work. Both stealth builds and S/x builds rely on a very gimmicky type of play. It’s getting harder to burst people down, so we have moved to more sustained and prolonged fighting. So we have to rely on either stealth or evades to make up for the fact that we are made of paper, but even then prolonged fights aren’t the forte of the thief.

I think thieves are fun, but really not OP. We are getting nerfed to the point where I would rather play something else in PvP and PvE. Even in WvW I only feel really useful in small skirmishes or against bad players. Usually (no offense) people that think thieves are OP are those who can’t play against them.

We are however very good at annoying people. Evade all day or stealth away!

EDIT: by no means do I think thieves are bad, just not much we can do that another class or build can’t do better

Guide updated with some, if not most, of the tips already added in the comments. Thanks for your contribution guys!

Hippoid.6904:

Good work – covers most of what I have learnt. Maybe add “WP IF DEAD” – should be obvious but there are always a few…

Haha, I’ll add it just to be sure. I also seem to have forgotten buffs, I’ll add a section about that tomorrow. Thanks!

Looks like it didn’t turn out so short as I intended… lol.

Ranger

Rangers also do reasonable DPS, but they might be better for defensive groups since they can apply plenty of cripple while doing reasonable AoE damage. Signet traited Rangers are also great on the turrets, their pet can function as a lightning rod and keep the poison away from the turret, saving you precious time to help the zerg (thanks to KehxD for this tip).

Thief

I main a Thief. Unfortunatly they are less useful in the DPS zerg than other classes. Most thieves don’t even have PVT gear, but even if they have, they bring little utility to the team and are still fairly squishy. Your best option as a thief is to be on a defensive team. I usually just go Berserker with shortbow and “Signet of Malice”. You could run the caltrops on dodge trait and/or “Caltrops”, but it’s really not needed if your defensive team works well. If you end up in the DPS zerg, go shortbow and use clusterbomb or go P/P with richochet trait. Besides that, “Smokescreen” is a great utility. It blocks projectiles and has a fairly low cooldown. It can also be used to stealth yourself and allies when needed. This really only applies if you have the correct traits (like the one that heals allies when you stealth them) and you need to hit the field with a clusterbomb. It should go without saying that “Shadow Refuge”, one of the best utilities of the thief, is a great tool here. “Heartseeker” does reasonable damage on Fingers and can be spammed due to the initiative mechanic, so bursting down a Finger of Tequatl can work great with a Thief if you spam “Heartseeker” on it (Thanks to PopeUrban for pointing this out).

Warrior

Warriors have one utility that is really great in this fight. Namely their elite skill “Battle Standard”. It is very likely that a zerg will have a lot of downed players and “Battle Standard” gets them all up. Don’t waste it on just a few people that can easily get revived. Warriors are also perfect for the small finger killing groups. Melee damage is the best way to deal with the fingers and this way they can still use their “Battle Standard” when they see the zerg being downed and they can still add to the DPS while Tequatl is stunned.

The Fight! Don’t let him get away this time!

Phase one – Getting him to 75%

This is probably the hardest and most demotivating part of the entire encounter. Don’t give up, this can easily take more than 10 minutes. Use icebows that spawn, try to instantly revive downed players unless there are too many (then they will get rallied by a “Battle Standard”) and try to either jump over the waves or dodge them. Also remember to kill the Fingers of Tequatl when they spawn close to your zerg. Keep up the DPS , the faster you get him to 75%, the more likely it is you will kill him (Duh) !

Phase two – Protect the batteries!

This is usually not a big problem. Everyone should spread out and defend the batteries. It could help to send one commander to each battery. Remember that the Mega Laser also needs a lot of defense. If I see the chance, I switch out my utilities for this fight and take a lot of crowd control. Cripple, immobilize and blind all work great here. North gets a lot of wurms (I forgot the correct term), stomp them if you can! East will be hit by a lot of Bloated Creepers, try to slow them or stop them before they hit the battery. When there are only 20 seconds left for this event and you think that the batteries will be safe, rush to tequatl as fast as you can.

Phase 3 – He is stunned!

After Tequatl got hit by the battery, he will be stunned and will take five times as much damage as normal. During this stage EVERYONE (except for turret users) should rush to his feet and go melee on them. Both zergs should stack on the claw on their respective sides, stack might and use “Time Warp” and go to town on it.

Once he gets out of the stun, return to your original positions. If you did enough damage, these phases will repeat themselves in a very rapid succession. If not, you will need to DPS him down to 50% before a new cycle starts.

Disclaimers:

- I am not a native English speaker, so any blatant grammatical errors can be pointed out. I won’t be offended and I’ll take the opportunity to adjust this guide.

- I mainly play Guardian and Thief, so the class section might not be that detailed for some classes. Any help or advice would be great. I’m especially looking for advice on weapon sets and builds for different classes. Leave a message here, or pm me ingame at : Mirri Sterling or Tormin Steelgrip. Cheers!

EDIT: Will edit tomorrow with other info given, keep it coming!

Getting ready : Class, utilities and gear.

If you are defending, anything goes but AoE damage and cripple helps a lot. If you want to DPS, PVT (power, vitality, toughness) is the way to go. You can’t crit on the Boss so precision and crit damage are wasted. On top of that, you will go down very fast in Berserker gear. As most of you already know, condition damage is subpar in big fights because of the stack limitations. I’m not saying PVT gear is required for everyone to make this fight work, but it’s the best option and if you want to help out and you that gear is in your bank, go for it! I’ll go into each class with more detail, but there are some general rules that apply here when it comes to which type of skills benefits your zerg the most :

• Reflect projectile skills
• AoE damage skills (hit more than one spot on Tequatl)
• Stability skills
• AoE healing skills
• AoE might skills

Elementalist

Elementalists are great in this fight. If you are an elementalist, start spamming “Summon Icebow” near the zerg even before the fight. If people pick it up but don’t use it yet, they will have an icebow when the fight starts. Keep using this skill whenever it gets off cooldown. You can also use “Summon Fiery Greatsword”, this weapon does nice damage, especially during the melee phase (more on that later). As an elementalist, you have a lot of access to AoE damage. This type of damage is great during this fight because you can hit more than one ‘hitbox’ of Tequatl. So make sure to use it. Elementalists can also equip a focus and use “Swirling Winds”, this skill destroys projectiles. Just like “Feedback” from a mesmer it can stop projectiles coming from each side, so it’s ideal to prevent your zerg from wiping on the poison (thanks to Haros for this tip).

Engineer

I’m not familiar with engineers, so this space is reserved for a future update.

Guardian

Guardians are invaluable for the DPS groups. They do decent damage on the Boss in PVT gear and they can supply healing and boons to their allies during the fight. There are a lot of viable options here, but I’ll point out some of the better ones. When it comes to weaponsets, staff and scepter are a great choice. Scepter does decent AoE damage while you can provide might and some healing with your staff. Utility wise reflect projectiles and stability skills are great. I usually take “Wall of Reflection”, “Shield of the Avenger” and “Stand Your Ground”. Put your reflect projectile skills between you and the fingers when they spawn. This will help your zerg a lot and prevent potential wipes. Use stability skills when there are waves coming towards your zerg. In an ideal scenario everyone should jump over them, but this is never the case. So stability helps those that can’t jump over or helps people to keep up their cast while they get surprised by a wave. As an elite skill I usually use “Tome of Courage” for massive healing. Traits are up to you, but considering a lot of utility skills are taken by stability and projectile reflect skills, I usually take the trait which removes conditions when I activate virtue of resolve. This is a great thing to have IF Tequatl fears everyone

Mesmer

The Mesmer provides two important utilities to the DPS zerg. The first one is Feedback, which is also a skill which reflects projectiles. The second one is “Time Warp”. This is especially great during the phase where Tequatl is stunned and you can hit him for more damage than you initially could. So try to make sure it is up when that phase hits.

Necromancer

The Necromancer is generally known for it’s condition builds, but with a power build it can do massive AoE damage to Tequatl. Just like the elementalist it can easily hit more than one spot with a lot of damage. Even when specced into condition, the damage is not that bad if AoE gets spammed. Might is great in this fight, so anything that gives might like “Blood is Power” can really add to your DPS. A great choice for your elite is “Lich Form”, when in Lich Form your base power is tripled and your attacks will hit like a truck (thanks to Mad Queen Malfide for this tip).

I’ve decided to write a short but detailed guide on the fight with Tequatl. Some worlds, uncluding my own, still haven’t been able to kill him and I figured that every piece of information is welcome.

I’m not all-knowing so if you notice anything I missed or if you think I’m wrong, please feel free to correct me or to add to this guide.

Pre-event :

Organization is key in this fight. Any VoIP software helps a lot, but it’s not required if everyone knows what to do. Unless you are in an organized group, a lot of people will not be on VoIP so it never hurts to give some general guidelines before or during the fight. A lot of organization could also be done without VoIP if people atleast a few people know the fight, which is why I wrote this guide. Hopefully it will help the less organized events.

There should be atleast 5 groups with different tasks in this fight and sometimes it can help to add a 6th group. Only when Tequatl is stunned after the battery phase should everyone (except for turret users) rush to his claws and go melee (if available) DPS :

1. DPS ZERG A :
   A zerg that piles up near the left claw. It helps to stack on commander tags. If done right, you shouldn’t be moving all that much but it can still help to make a personal waypoint on the spot so you can move back there fast between phases. It matters where you pile up because the turrets need to be able to hit you to cleanse the poison clouds, so make sure you figure out the right spot before the fight! The elementalists in your zerg should be spawning ‘Ice Bow’ during the ranged fight and ‘Fiery Great Sword’ during the melee phase, make sure to pick them up! When you pick up an ‘Ice Bow’, just go through the skills and drop it. If you pick up a ‘Fiery Great Sword’, remember to untarget Tequatl and use your fourth skill, this does massive damage if aimed correctly (thanks to Haros for proper usage of summoned weapons).
2. DPS ZERG B :
   Same as above, but near the right claw. Again it helps to use a commander tag for this or a personal waypoint.
3. DEFENSE EAST :
   A group of 5 to 10 people.These turrets will get the brunt of the attack. Most mobs will come from the east and it’s beneficial to stop them before they get to close. This will help keep your eastern turrets safe. The bones sticking out of the ground there can function as a funnel for AoE dps. There will be a lot of mobs spawning right to the north of these turrets. Ignore them. At some point some mobs will come from the west side, so always have someone keep an eye out. Killing fingers that spawn between turrets is an absolute priority!
4. DEFENSE WEST :
   A group of 8 to 15 people. These turrets will get less attention from mobs. The general strategy is the same as for the eastern turrets. Killing nearby fingers is very important
5. TURRET USERS :
   There are 6 turrets, so 6 people to operate them. I have little experience here, so it’s best to consult other sources aswell (see sticky) and please correct me if I’m wrong below. The jist of it is that you cleanse the zerg with your third skill and buff them with the fourth and fifth skill. It’s also really important that you do your second skill on Tequatl when it’s off cooldown. If you don’t, a bone wall will appear which makes Tequatl invulnerable. This will slow down your kill by a fair margin. Your first skill has the lowest priority, but is still very useful. It will do a lot of damage if aimed at the head of Tequatl. Setting yourself a target on his head is pretty much required for this task.
6. FINGER KILLERS :
   Not really needed. Most zergs can take care of the fingers themselves. It can help to assign a few people to do this, this will avoid overkill damage and people won’t need to switch targets.

These groups are mainly important during the stages when Tequatl is fighting back. As soon as the battery phase starts, everyone should rush to defend them. After a successful defense of the batteries, he will be stunned and all groups (except for the turret users) should rush to his claws to DPS him. As soon as he is no longer stunned, everyone should return to their original groups and tasks. But more on the fight itself later.

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