Guild Wars 2

Honestly, I understand your point in competitive PvP where team fights are much more important and players are skilled enough that every bit of DPS matters. However, in solo queue where the skill levels are not always so high, my ability to kill people is not affected by S/D’s lower DPS at all. My point is that while the meta might be the theoretically “optimal” way to play, there are other specs that can be more than successful.

I play S/D in PvP. I find it much more rewarding the playing D/P. I live longer, I still do enough burst to targets for them to be afraid of me. On top of that, my sustained damage is pretty good. Honestly speaking, I’ve found that I’m able to carry my team in Solo Queue much more playing S/D simply because I can outplay people more on S/D (as well as not die as often).

IGN: Twistedlotus
Playstyle: sPvP/PvE —> I play both casually. Used to be more competitive about PvP, now I’m just another casual.
Server: Isle of Janthir
Experience with thief: Pretty much only play thief (Play engi/mesmer sometimes in PvP). Can’t say I’m an amazing thief or anything, but I am definitely better than average. Just looking to have fun! xD

This story sounds about right. It takes a lot of stomach to solo queue right now. xD

Congratulations! May good fortune smile upon you! xD

Hearts were the worst part about map completion when I did it. In order to break away from the “quest” mindset most MMOs have, Anet inevitably created another version of the same repetitive model. xD

I have seen full zerk P/P (don’t ask me for the build, I don’t know) work pretty well in solo queue. Honestly speaking, the build isn’t very good as you can’t get much glassier, but the lack of coordination in solo q means you’ll do some major work (you probably won’t get focused).

Angel McCoy.1832:

Lotus.1682:

Oh and for some reason, I find myself being attracted to older women

Well, hello there.

(couldn’t resist)

You should definitely hit me up in game. xD
Plus you’re an author

20 years old.
100% Indian
Male
Undergraduate Finance Student
I want to be an Investment Banker
Been playing MMO’s for as long as I can remember
Love to read more than anything else (even GW2!)
I read basically anything. Favorite books include: Stardust, Airborn & Wizard’s First Rule
I love PvP in GW2, but I occasionally enjoy other game modes
I can be quite vicious in game (especially PvP), but I’m actually a pretty nice guy
Been a part of Knights of the Rose [KoR] since pretty much the release of GW2 and I plan to stay there until the death of GW2.
In GW1, I was one an officer of a French guild in the Alliance that owned HzH who specialized in DTSC during US peak hours. I was 14 years old at the time.
I’ve farmed enough Kurzick Faction to get the “Savior of the Kurzick” title 10 times over.
I love watching movies. Some favorite movies include: Casablanca, The Intouchables and the Dark Knight
I take my coffee black and without sugar
In-game gold has little value to me so I end up giving it away most of the time.
I’m a thief player and I always will be a thief player.
I love Cheesecake and Oreos.

Oh and for some reason, I find myself being attracted to older women

Solo Queue would definitely make PvP fun again. xD

Play thief oz. Best class ever! xD

Yea the withdraw roll cancel can be extremely helpful in situations where you are fighting on an elevated platform and you don’t want to fall off. Although on most maps, I like to keep the full animation for the maximum dodge, I used to always cancel when I played Skyhammer. xD

The best way to kill an S/D thief is to outplay them. If you mindlessly go through skill rotations, it will be very hard to kill a thief who is simply dodging and pressing 3 on Sword. Because thieves are mainly melee classes, standard melee counters do extremely well. AoE, CC, Conditions are all brutal to thieves if you can land them. Honestly, keeping skill levels equal, thieves pretty much lose 1v1’s to almost every class (except for mesmer). You just have to make your skills count. xD

Honestly, I swear at my teammates all the time. It is just me venting my frustration at the particular situation at the game. I truly am a nice person, but sometimes things that happen in PvP really get my blood boiling. If it really bugs you, just block the person who is swearing or simply turn team chat off. Having played Player vs Player games pretty much my entire life, swearing is just another part of the experience for me. Don’t let it get you down. Just keep playing and you will eventually get better. xD

My advice for succeeding with S/D:

1. Know when to get out of a fight (with infil)
2. Dodge everything you can (rolls, LS)
3. Try to clear poison before using Withdraw (I still struggle with this)
4. Use steal efficiently (interrupt heals, steal priority boons (might, stab etc)
5. Don’t underestimate CnD; Tactical strike is great skill that is underutilized
6. Use the Short bow for more than just movement (poison fields, cluster bombs) at proper times against select match ups
7. Standard thief match up knowledge – Honestly, I hate 1v1ing on a thief since one mistake can be the death of you. However, I still think it is important to know what match ups are manageable and what match ups are pretty much impossible.

Hope I helped! xD

It’s not really worth it in my opinion. Thrill of the crime/bountiful theft is way too important if you are investing in Trickery. If you want that much of a gap closer, just use Infil signet + steal. xD

It all depends if you can avoid the Fresh air burst. I can usually beat S/F if I can avoid phoenix. Although, I rarely 1v1 eles if I can help it. I usually wait for burst eles to use their rotations on someone else before I open up on them. xD

I think I am happiest when I am the only thief on my team. Also, when there is someone on my team whom I have played with before. xD

Or you could actually take the time to play PvP and get the dailies without even trying in one game. I very much dislike people like you. PvP is a game mode where people should take pride in testing their skills against other players. If you want to do this kind of BS, do it in your own custom arena. Do not expect anyone to follow your idea of “etiquette”.

Justin ODell.9517:

Henry.5908:

I means in this patch, anyone who not in the game when it ends.
It doesen’t register you so no win no lost?
You just minus point becuase system think you are dc or change another char?

If your aren’t in the game when it starts, or leave at any point, yes you will get flagged as a deserter and lose the max amount of points for the match.

Justin, I think this is an incorrect way of doing things. I understand that you are discouraging character swapping by making those who do so lose points. However, I think you should instead either

A. WARN players who are about to swap characters that doing so will cost them points
B. Disallow the “character select” option entirely when in a game
I think that either one of these changes would positive.

Secondly, things like disconnects happen. I don’t think it is fair to any player if he/she disconnects for 5 seconds, logs back in and loses points. In my opinion the loss of points (as it pertains to disconnects) should hinge on the following.

A. If the player is not present at the end of the match, the player obviously loses the maximum number of points
B. If the player disconnects, he/she is flagged by the system. If the player than demonstrates participation within the match (personal score, kills, points captured, etc), the flag is removed and the player receives points normally. Otherwise, the player loses the maximum number of points.

I feel like these specific changes will hurt the players who deserve it while not hurting the players who are affected by situations that are mostly out of their control.

Archaon.9524:

I just leave this here

Solo in ranked que ofc

I think the matchmaking algorithm values MMR much more than classes. Because of the new daily system (today’s being getting a win with Mesmers/Warriors), there are a lot more people playing those classes. I can understand why the matchmaking system is allowing this to happen. xD

Chase.8415:

Last night I won 1 game and lost 2 points, and I never disconnected. Does character swapping before the match starts award maximum point loss or was this a bug?

I believe this might be the case. I only started losing points when I started swapping characters at the beginning of a match….

So I’m guessing the probabilities for winning are decided before the match itself begins? In that case, I have lost a few 4v5 matches. If our original probability of winning was high, it’d make sense that I lost so many points.

I know that leaderboards won’t be totally operational until the 16th so I honestly don’t care, but I was wondering in case something like this happens in the future. I’ve been constantly playing games, but my total number of points seem to have decreased. When I check at one point, I was at 7 points and then a few matches later I was at 5. I was under the impression that you cannot lose points? Is this a bug?

Same for me. I can’t rep 100%, but I can sure rep while I’m PvPing. Let me know if this requirement ever changes. xD

Hey everyone,

I’m not really looking for a team, but more of a group of people who want to casually form up for tPvP games when we are online.

If anyone is interested, we can duo queue or trio queue or w/e and just get better at tPvP. Leave a message here or just whisper me (Lotus.1682) in game when I’m in the mists and we can have some fun.

Cheers!
Lotus

Edit: Oh yea, I play thief and engineer. xD

Best
1. Community – A lot of people list this as the worst, but I rather like the GW2 community especially in comparison to games such as League of Legends. Sure you get ragers and BM in PvP, but I mean it is PvP. Most of the game on the other hand has always seemed very good (especially if you are in a good guild)

2. Scenery – Guild Wars in general has always amazed me with its scenery and immersion. I’m not a role player, but I can understand why so many RPers play GW2.

3. Equal playing field – This is more for PvP, but I really like how the game is skill based. Although this has changed of late (Ascended armor, weapons, trinkets), the “no-gear grind” aspect of GW is what drew me to the original game in the first place.

Worst

1. Lack of Balance Updates – League of legends has over 100 champions. Riot releases balance patches at least every 2 weeks. GW2 has 8 classes. Anet releases a balance patch once every 6 months or more. Is it that they don’t know? Probably not. I just don’t think they care.

2. Skyhammer – Not even going to explain how bad this map is. Put it in hot joins and custom arenas. No one should be forced to play this game in Solo Q. But will this ever change? Probably not.

3. Lack of transparency – Almost every patch Anet makes changes to the game that they never release on the patch notes. This is incredibly annoying and frustrating for every player. Who do they think they are fooling by leaving things out of the patch notes? The devs should always let the players know what they are changing. Sure, stealth buff dungeon encounters (I don’t give a kitten, I rarely dungeon anyway), but kittening tell me about it so I can let newer players in my guild know about it.

Just my 2 cents. xD

Sure it depends on what spec you are running, but with the nerfs to direct damage, a power thief is pretty much pigeonholed into running full zerker gear with Strength runes in order to function similarly to their pre-patch role. Valkyrie armor I’m afraid, just doesn’t give enough damage. Roamers have made up for this in a few ways. I like using the zerk/valk trinkets instead of the full zerk trinkets for a little bit of added HP. Also, acrobatics S/D thieves are quite strong now so the added Vitality from running 6 points into Acro can also help with the HP problems. Then of course you have your 5 stacks of Applied Fortitude.

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Well, of course it’s hard to kill, you’ve taken trait trees dedicated to survivability and utility. That’s like complaining a bunker guardian is hard to kill when their build revolves around being hard to kill. The issue is the much higher damage you can now achieve in PvP with that build.

The entire reason it’s meta is because the fire and air sigil change and the ferocity change in PvP meant we could get good damage in PvP without critical strikes. Arganthium tried for a long time before that patch to get this build popular to no effect, as has been pointed out. Who actually came up with the build is a side issue: investment in critical strikes was needed before the patch for thief to fulful it’s role as a high dps roamer, now it is not, and that’s what makes the build viable.

The other reason this build is strong is that it directly counters the boon heavy meta that’s going on atm. People use strength runes for silly stacks of might, so of course a build that steals those stacks is going to be strong.

I personally think it’s only that strong in the hands of a very skilled player, I regularly get my kitten handed to me when using this spec by players that simply outplay me.

If you want to change something then by all means do, but nerfing 2/0/0/6/6 S/D thieves because of the sigil/rune/ferocity change makes as much sense as nerfing D/D ele because strength runes made that spec much stronger.

This! This! One Hundred times this! xD

Can’t really expect any balance changes until another feature patch that will probably come out in the winter probably. One of the few reasons why I dislike this game >.>

D/P against Hammerfell is really easy. If you have a large number of tickets to spend, I suggest you run 4 gambits instead of 5 dropping Squeamish. With 4 gambits, it is much faster to kill him and the extra one gauntlet chance you get from the 5th gambit isn’t worth the extra time it takes to kill him with reduced damage dealt.

I think you meant “Hard to Catch”. I rather like this trait in the current meta. With all the hambows, fear fear fear necros and turret engis, a free psuedo stunbreak is pretty nice. It confuses the hell out of opponents and it can get you out of some pretty sticky situations (my favorite is Engi crate). Only time where the trait is a problem is Skyhammer, but well everything is a problem on Skyhammer. xD

I’ve always believed that pretty much any class will destroy a thief provided they outplay. Imo, thief doesn’t really hard counter anything. To win as a thief, you kind of just have to outplay your opponents…
That being said, pretty much anything condition heavy is difficult for thieves to play against. I always have tons of trouble against Necros and Engis. A smart player will try to 100% poison a thief, because it puts a huge damper on withdraw.

A MM necro can slam his face on the keyboard and beat a D/P thief….

For PvE, I recommend running S/P pretty much everywhere. Blind fields, Evade frames from Pistol Whip spamming and the AoE damage is absolutely amazing. Couple S/P with Shortbow and the Signet of Malice healing skill and you’ll pretty much never die to trash mobs.

Run; 5/6/0/3/0 –
DA: Sundering, 5% dual skill dmg,
Crit: Side strike, Practiced Tolerance, Executioner
Acro – Power of inertia (I take 3 in acro instead of trickery because I love dodges)

Oh and full zerk or valk gear is best.

WvW is kitten an uplevel thief because a thief relies heavily on good equipment to do damage. I’d probably run a condition build because of how strong it currently is. P/D condition with krait runes on dire gear.

0/0/6/2/6

SA: Shadow Embrace, Infusion of Shadow, Shadow Rejuvenation
Acro: Power of Inertia
Trickery: Uncatchable(Switch this out for Thrill of the Crime when not fighting), Bountiful Theft, Bewildering Ambush.

Just try your best with the traits/gear. Hard without a level 80.

TBH though, if you want to join an EoTM zerg fest you could just slap on some Soldiers gear, put points into SA and Acro just for added hp/toughness and tag people with SB 1.

Enjoy thief. xD

1. Equip Hammer
2. Equip Longbow
3. Call in friendly neighborhood thief to steal Lich Form’s stability
4. Proceed with the Hamboning.
5. xD

You have to break around 95-96% to get into top 1k in North American Solo Queues. As people said before, ranking is based on a hidden MMR system. I’m not entirely sure how it works, but if you take a close look at the current state of the leaderboards, you begin to realize just how broken they really are. Hopefully, they get overhauled soon. I quit League of Legends a long time ago, but I really liked how they managed ranked matches into different brackets and divisions. Of course, Ranked League has a much higher player base than GW2 Solo Q, but I do hope Anet introduces a similar system. xD

First of all, loot from champion bags have always been scaled to the level of the character that opens them both in PvE AND PvP. Although I do agree that Anet has shown bias towards the PvE aspect of the game (as they probably should since more than a majority of the players don’t even touch PvP), in this case, Anet has done absolutely nothing wrong. I find it extremely odd that you weren’t checking the loot you were receiving right after opening the box. You would think that SOMEWHERE in the 1.5 tracks worth of boxes you opened, you would have realized you were getting level 14 loot and paused to wonder why exactly this was happening.

So you got stuck with a bunch of level 14 greens instead a bunch of level 80 greens. Just suck it up and move on. If you’re PvPing for loot, you’re doing it wrong anyway. Go Boss Blitz or something. xD

Not going to lie, this build looks much better for WvW than it does for sPvP. I don’t think a Ranger built around regen helps the team out in anyway. Sure you’ll win some 1v1’s against less skilled players, but in a teamfight, this build is close to useless.

Just my two cents from glancing at the build. xD

Reward tracks.
./end sarcasm

Seriously though. I play PvP because it is pretty much the only non-static aspect of Guild Wars 2 right now. WvW is too zergy for me (not to mention my computer can’t really handle it) and PvE is well PvE. Regardless of the Hambows and the 4v5’s and the afkers and skyhammer, at least every match offers me some new opportunities to test my skill. xD

Skyhammer will never be removed. Some Anet bigwig probably has a vested interest in keeping this map in solo queue which is why the higher ups have enacted a stringent “No devs on Skyhammer forum posts” rule. Either that or some 3rd party is paying Anet a lot of money to keep it.

Skyhammer is a conspiracy. Skyhammer is the kittening New Coke of Guild Wars 2. Guess we just have to live with it. xD

These changes look well thought out. I like it! xD

I got bored of the GW2 Daily grind as well. I used to log in, do my dailies, run dungeons for gold, jump from world boss to world boss etc. That’s why I pretty much only play PvP. I do WvW frequently and PvE once in awhile, but PvP has held me over until the next big thing Anet decides to release.

Sadly, the biggest problem is that Anet likes to these massive updates once in a blue moon instead of constant updates like some other games. Constant updates are required to keep people entertained. Living story is a good example, but a lot of that content can be completed extremely quickly leaving people once again with little to do. xD

Balthazar runes need nerfs.
/end thread

I consistently play in the 90%‘s. For me it’s just this never ending cycle of almost breaking top 1000 than losing a bunch of games in a row due to one reason or another. Congratulations on breaking 1k either way. xD

Lux.7169:

9/10 times…? You have a 50% winrate… and have never been top 1k in solo Q…

…but thanks anyway.

We all know you’re a good player Lux. No need to be such a large kitten. He wants to help newer players do better and I give him props like that. Elitist flamers such as yourself are just hurting the community. Instead of talking so much kitten on the forums, why don’t you just play the godkitten game and leave the people who want to make a difference alone.

It doesn’t affect your armor rating. You just can’t look sexy in PvP at lvl 2. Anet does all the account bound stuff with dyes and WXP to encourage alternate character play yet they pull kitten like this on PvPers who regularly reroll characters for PvP play.

Yea AI has been buffed to some extent without our expicit knowledge. Thieves Guild is kittening ridiculous now. xD

Play necro. Pretty much the most forgiving class ever and you have a large health pool so you can make mistakes and still come out on top. Necros are also extremely strong right now so rolling players shouldn’t be too difficult. xD

Phoenix Finisher is probably the best finisher in the game. Shark comes as a close second. The Dragon finisher didn’t impress me at all… xD