Guild Wars 2

I quit gw2 after the first year and im back now for the second expansion. I always roamed as condi or celestial ele back then. Well I had a rather “nice” experience with a thief some minutes ago. He two hit me (well I guess a steal was involved so more than 2 hits) and was basicaly permanently evading. I used full dire gear so i was actually rather tanky. So what is that and how to deal with it because 4 years ago as celestial d/d roamer I cant remember anything dealing so much damage to me.

I dont know what you are all smoking, sure the mirrors are irrelevant and their are bugs like that axe port makes you face in the wrong direction but as a whole that spec feels awesome.

It feels like what a mesmer should have been from the beginning, a trickster, a thiefish duelist. Jaunting around and beeing bascialy a 1v1 troll is hella fun. People that cry because they lose their dodge do not realize how broken mirage cloak is in pvp.

Alpha.1308:

it’s the fact that it adds nothing new for mesmers to play with besides like 2 okay-ish additions with Jaunt and the Dodge/Elusive Mind

Its not a fact its your oppinion, I play pvp most of the time and I can assure you that mirage is one of the elites in the game that has a reallyunique play style. Weaver for example has tons of additional stuff but in the end doesnt play that much different from a basic elementalist.

I played mirage only in pvp/wvw and I think mirage cloak combined with the elite port is crazy good, like almost broken. Especially in 1v1.

Honestly I really love it even if I dont play warrior in WvW. The only issue is that
its particle effect gets culled. That skill single handedly brings tactic into zerg fights.
No longer can you just mindlessly spam stability and rush into the enemy zerg.
You have to think about what the enemy does, bait winds of disenchantment etc…
It also removes the savety net from midline necro artillery and ele aura heal bots.

This ultimate will change large WvW more than almost anything they added in the last years.

Hana.8143:

Main problem is the range and the damage. It’s low :/

In pvp dagger offhand feels almost necessary if you use sword main hand.
Lightning 2 is the only gap closer/mobility on sword.

The range seems really buggy. Some skills like sword/dagger lightning/earth weaver skill often misses even if you are almost inside the enemy model.

lilypop.7819:

I-Win OR I-Run just makes a mockery of everyone else’s gameplay. It’s as if the game designer wants to mock anyone foolish enough to play WvW. Whether its OP or not, it leaves a very bad taste in the mouth. End of.

From what I saw in the demo weekend mirage can easily chase a thief long enough to kill him. Which also means that you have to deal with two super mobile specs in 3 weeks.

Another thing to keep an eye on is if they decide to add mounts to wvw in the future, it would make thiefs mobility compleltly irrelevant.

SnowCow.5914:

Burst them first then spam head shot and auto hoping that you interrupted their heal . Also it’s good to shadow shot when they go rifle you suspect a overcharge shot. Plus watch for slick shoes by keeping max melee distance. Reset if your in trouble and repeat first process. You can retaliate faster than a engi can cause you run off of inti.

Its a common misconception that a thief can win a reset fight against a 2-3 kit engi. For example a pistol-shield, toolkit, elixirgun + x engi can easily initiative starve a thief and will never run out of good defense or offense cooldowns.

Sorel.4870:

By noobs I meant new players, and you obviously aren’t, so it’s normal for you to lose on a power-based build.

As of the p/d cheese build, the problem could simply be that he’s used to his build and you are not. Especially if you never play d/d or s/d, you won’t be used to landing CnDs. If you really want to beat him one day (we all have that one friend who destroys us on our favorite profession, making us rage!), p/d is still your best bet. One more advice: play carrion and not rabid. Vitality is superior to toughness against conditions, and your stealthed attack on pistol deals great power damage as well.

It only works if his friend doesnt know that he plays p/d. If he does he can switch to a max range traited elixir gun condi spec. Max range spamming him with weakness/bleeds witch makes it really really obvious when he tires to get a cloak and dagger of.

NinjaSonic.1392:

I’ve never really had trouble with Guardians/Ele either as D/P or S/D. S/D can be unblockable and rips boons non stop. D/P has silly burst and both classes are fairly squishy.

D/D celestial ele’s are the total opposite from squishy, thats why they are in the meta. Even if you get one to 20% hp he can instantly heal to full again and again and again…

Puck.9612:

Tempest.4507:

Puck.9612:

Tempest.4507:

Puck.9612:

Mayama.1854:

Puck.9612:

Shiyo.3578:

Not as p/d they don’t. It’s like dying to a PU mesmer.

and what do you run as a secondary weapon for p/d? What does a thief’s class mechanic allow him to do? What do several utilities let you do?

If you chase with bow as p/d you have no initiative to deal damage, if you deal damage with p/d you have no initiative to chase.

Oh yeah of course.. I mean unless you count all the bleeds that caltrops applies, the confusion that steal applies, the poison on shortbow, proccing the condi’s from krait runes, and whatever condi’s your shortbow sigils apply.

If we are chasing, how are we gonna drop those caltrops? Stealing? that thing has 22 secs cooldown.(That is if you have traited for it. Normally 35) Confusion?(only if you are traited for it) Again, how will it help chasing someone down? The posion from shortbow? You mean a projectile that is slower than person who threw it? And only applies 1 stack of posion? Only thing the posion field is useful right now is for increasing the ress time on downed enemy players… As for runes and sigils, they are there for all other classes aswell.

I guess when you aren’t used to weapon cool downs 22 seconds must feel like an eternity….
But you’re absolutely right, the profession with the best mobility has no chance of chasing anyone down, thief is terribly under powered, might as well uninstall.

Best mobility? HAH! You are a funny one. Try to catch a warrior. Our shadowstep does nothing at all except wasting 6 kitten initiative which is half of what we have. If we go ahead and try to chase someone down we end up dying to a burst.

Edit: Tried to chase down a guardian in WvW. He managed to reach to his keep from SM without even trying to hit me once.

?
That’s not even an argument. Warrior comes in a close second for land speed but thieves have repeatedly proven to be faster. When you start adding in their ability to quickly traverse vertical terrain through ports it’s not even a contest.

As far as you not being able to stop a guardian who literally ignored you…. that says way more about you than it does the profession. I mean guardians are annoyingly tanky but maybe you need to add some immobilizes or something to your build because that is embarrassing.

Dude when im on something like a staff zerker mage in WvW and a P/D tries to gank me I just walk away and he can literaly do nothing against it. P/D thieves are well know for their lack of chasing power.

Puck.9612:

Shiyo.3578:

Not as p/d they don’t. It’s like dying to a PU mesmer.

and what do you run as a secondary weapon for p/d? What does a thief’s class mechanic allow him to do? What do several utilities let you do?

If you chase with bow as p/d you have no initiative to deal damage, if you deal damage with p/d you have no initiative to chase.

DarkSyze.8627:

Tempest, you are correct: thief is not a fun class to fight, so i understand why you had bad experience. Where is challenge when you not design to not be challenge? Like i do in my experience when encounter with thief: i do not run but stand and die.

Like a warrior code: Die With Honor! Why Die With Honor? Thief class is not challenge class, that is why.

Thiefs are not fun to fight if you dont know what you are doing or you play something like a shatter mesmer…

because a zerker warrior has a big red sign with FREE LOOT for every other zerker build/class written on it.

DarkSyze.8627:

Arena net thief stealth have no consequence at all for make mistake: they reset every time when make any mistake.

I highly disagree with that and im not a primary thief player, you can only endlessly reset in WvW and thats a game mode in which almost any class has unfair advantages in one way or another.

In tPvP a rogue cannot endlesly reset and if he does he makes the enemy team win because reseting means not capturing points. You also forget that D/D elementalists and condi engis can reset way better than rogues. They dont even have a downtime like a thief without initative because they can circle through their bazillion skills. Theirs always a def or burst skill off cooldown.

- Its a common misconception that the thief is the master of reseting in tPvP.

- Stealth means nothing when you fight a class with good aoe in the hands of a decent player

- A complete reset is worse than dying for a thief in tPvP. He needs to wait and the enemy team knows his location. When he dies the enemy team has no info on his position and is forced to be prepared to get jumped at any time.

If you dont want to level in pve just do some pvp because it will give you tomes of knowledge. Its actually faster than doing the last 10 levels in pve. It also gives you exotic weapons and maybee a exotic armor piece.

Yeah but what do we get as one element elementalist because 5 weapon skills + 5 extra is kinda lame. I guess it might be elemental specializations would give you the ability to weapon switch so you end up with an average number of skills.

Today on the internet: PvP in a game is kitten when you play solo!

Roleplay a vulture, prey on the weak.

Condi mesmers are super easy because you can concentrate on defending all the time because the AI fights for you.

Best advice for newbies:

- Look for circles on the minimap that do not have your teamcolor

- Does it look like their is no enemy close to that circle?

- If the answer is yes than go to that circle and stand on it

Gratulations you are now better than 50% of the playerbase.

True fact: When I started to play PvP I won matches without fighting a single time

Akikaze.1307:

Mayama.1854:

nope every moba and mmorpg pvp is balanced around the top players

Definitely not. DotA2 actually uses both the general public AND competitive scene to rebalance many of its heroes. While the competitive scene is often the reason for a nerf/tweaks, the public scene is the testing ground for a complete restructure of a hero’s abilities. All new heroes or heroes with new abilities is based on average player’s feedback before allowing them into the captain’s draft (competitive) mode. Sometimes heroes are buffed/nerfed solely on basis of the hero is played too often (or not enough) from statistics.

Every buff, nerv in dota1 /2 is made with an eye on the competitive scene. You even said it yourself without realizing it. Every hero in dota is only alowed into captains mode if its ready for the competitive scene.

King Noob IV.3560:

WTF what’s with all these people saying thieves sucked I thought they were feared by squishies and one, if not the best duelist in the game

Squishies are not really in the tPvP meta right now so theirs nothing a thief can burst down and people also learned that stealth isn’t god mode.

Cynz.9437:

let me guess:
you play from EU
you are possibly telekom customer
or you get routed via telekom/telia node

MIND… BLOWN…

edgarallanpwn.8739:

Mayama.1854:

edgarallanpwn.8739:

and “balanced” for tournament play where everyone is a god and knows what theyre doing for the .01% of the population, doesnt affect the other 99% of players. Most often times in terms of balance majority rules

All PvP games are balanced around the top 1000 or so players

Er what. No you have it backwards. They balance around the majority of the players, but don’t make changes until after major events due to Publicity.

LoL is a key offender here. They hold out on needed nerfs (that they obv make because they know they need to) but wont do it before championships or tourneys or major events to make any major changes going through that could mess up what people are used to.

It’s not balanced based on them, its balanced AROUND them.

the top 1000 players can make a kittenty champ be good, and make an even better champ shine. that’s why they’re top 1000.

Basing your system off extreme variables is a horrible system destined to fail, which is why nobody does it.

nope every moba and mmorpg pvp is balanced around the top players

edgarallanpwn.8739:

and “balanced” for tournament play where everyone is a god and knows what theyre doing for the .01% of the population, doesnt affect the other 99% of players. Most often times in terms of balance majority rules

All PvP games are balanced around the top 1000 or so players

Fingod.3819:

but enough of being salty ^^ gl hf

What is with people like you, go around and ask people on the forum what has more diverse roles and builds engi or thief… I doubt the majority says thief but go live inside your bubble of hundreds of thief builds.

Fingod.3819:

Kurow.3076:

Fingod.3819:

oh and i don’t rlly count it fully different build if u change one utility or one trait but u clearly do ^^

That’s cause you’re being ignorant.

1 kit changes way more than 1 weapon change on a thief.

The skills also don’t all share the same resource pool.

i don’t agree but whatever ^^

Ignoring reality and living inside a made up bubble of pseudo knowledge doesnt change fact

Thank you for giving me a reason to use my engi again!

Fingod.3819:

Mayama.1854:

Fingod.3819:

i couldn’t disagree more O_o
thief is most versatile class in the game and has more viable builds than any other class.
it just might be hard at first because u need quick reflexes and great knowledge of other classes.

Never seen anything besides roaming thieves in PvP. Its the class with one of the worst possible build variations. Engi for example is a class with a real broad spectrum of builds.

build variation and ur job in pvp isn’t rlly the same now is it? ^^
as a thief u have 3 viable power build atleast + some not the most viable but still working like p/d power.
and u also have the condi builds.
as for a engi u have cele rifle static discharge whitch is semi troll and u have ur condi and condi bunker.
engi has rifle,pistol/pistol and pistol/shield for weps and as for thief u have d/d, s/d, p/d,d/p,s/p and sb so build versatility is much higher than with engi imo also the play style changes alot more than with engi or any other profession but this is just my opinion

Rapid condi engi, bunker condi engi, turret engi offensive, turret engi defensive (you can play any turret build condi or power too), static discharge, full zerker power rifle, mightstacking power, might stacking hybrid, 3kit engis (their are at least 4-5 combinations of that used), elixier focused power build, bleed stacking elixir gun build etc etc etc… thats just from the top of my head. You cant define engi just by their weapon sets, every kit is basicaly a weapon set with no cooldown attached.

Edit: i totaly forgot bomb or nade focused builds their are at least 4 that I know that work really good in pvp. About playstyle changes… a full power rifle build plays completly different from a turret bunker even if they use the same weapon sets. Engis have like 20-30 options in PvP

Fingod.3819:

i couldn’t disagree more O_o
thief is most versatile class in the game and has more viable builds than any other class.
it just might be hard at first because u need quick reflexes and great knowledge of other classes.

Never seen anything besides roaming thieves in PvP. Its the class with one of the worst possible build variations. Engi for example is a class with a real broad spectrum of builds.

Puz.8529:

darres.8203:

it’s like none of the devs are efficient at thieves and they just keep nerfing them
until they manage to beat us

Sadly, they can hardly nerf the class enough to make everyone stop playing them. It’s just the style I like best, even if I can only tickle people to death, I’ll find a way!

It might even be that the harder they make the skill vs reward ratio the more reward we’ll feel when we do win that 1vs1 or x-vs-x..

They will never beat us!

You realize that thieves still have the best reward/risk ratio of all zerker builds?
Thieves just suffer right now because the meta is all bunker/celestial etc… and a thief cant win, from a strategic tpvp perspective, against builds that outlast a thief cooldown/initiative wise like bunker engis or cele D/D eles

Puz.8529:

darres.8203:

it’s like none of the devs are efficient at thieves and they just keep nerfing them
until they manage to beat us

Sadly, they can hardly nerf the class enough to make everyone stop playing them. It’s just the style I like best, even if I can only tickle people to death, I’ll find a way!

It might even be that the harder they make the skill vs reward ratio the more reward we’ll feel when we do win that 1vs1 or x-vs-x..

They will never beat us!

You realize that thieves still have the best reward/risk ratio of all zerker builds?

People asked for this since beta.

If I say to you in tPvP “go run and fight I cap that” its not because I want to mock you or whatever its because im the defensive staff ele and you are the thief theirs no reason why you try to stand on that point with me and waste time.

swinsk.6410:

I don’t play wvw anymore and if it weren’t for hot joins I would have quit this game long ago. Simply because thief has the most rediculous and illogical nerfs in the game.

4s reveal in spvp only.
Steal healing/no crit
Classes with abilities that negate 2/3 of our builds.
Dumb traits like equilibrium and such.

Prob could go on. A net just doesn’t understand thieves…

You could say that about every class in the game beside maybee guardians and warriors

coglin.1867:

Mayama.1854:

coglin.1867:

Makes me laugh that so many think Anet has anything to do with it.

Yeah exactly, weird old cables only affect gw2 and no other games… sure…

I never said it did. No need to attempt to disingenuously suggest I did. I simply stated sometimes folks lay blame in the wrong direction, and shared my story. Although after reading some other technical forums, I have learned that can indeed be the case because of the I formation level being transfered graphics wise.

Personally, I have had issues decline s since release. I haven’t had issues as of late at all. Which begs the question, what is different that is effect a few players and not others?

Im on kodash and I usually do some smalltalk in allchat when I wait for a new match in the mists. Other players from my server have the same problem at the same time. People said it has something to do with Anet testing the expansion, who knows.

Jana.6831:

Yeah sure, I’m absolutely certain that you’re right and my 20 roaming and duelling thief friends certainly agree with that as well – they have no clue.

Hes right I just came back from a long pause which means im super rusty but most thieves in WvW have no clue what they are doing. Half of the thieves that I find while roaming on my blinding ash signet ele kill themself spamming their skills into my fire shield. It doesnt even demands skill from my side. They just dont have a clue what they are doing.

You forgot to select the traits and amulet in the build editor :P .

Nice guide

coglin.1867:

Makes me laugh that so many think Anet has anything to do with it.

Yeah exactly, weird old cables only affect gw2 and no other games… sure…

Everything else sucks compared to cele DD, this spec is too good and everything else ele has right now is not good enough

The whole mode sounds like they want to turn gw2 into a moba

Its not even weekend… seriously

When GW2 launched i had zero lag issues in PvP. Nowadays I lag out every third game. Nothing has changed at my side.

From my experience most players that cry about specifc “OP” builds are players that refuse to change their playstyle/class/build and expect it to overcome everything.

SultrySofia.3126:

Yes! Aquamancer! Pleeeeeeeease!

Ultimate: Can talk to fish. gg

Hey really nice guide/build. Tried it out yesterday on my old ele and it was a blast. My only problem is (… and that might have something to do with me not playing my ele for almost half a year) that I dont know what to do when im not cycling through my combos. It feels like this build only works if you are attuned to fire and at least 2 other attunments are off cooldown.

It plays a little bit like a thief without stealth, you wait on the outside of a teamfight for a chance to burst an enemy down. The problem is that it takes way more skill to do it properly without stealth ^^. When it works it works great though but I dunno if it has something to do with people not expecting you to burst them down in 3 seconds.

We already had that with warriors one shoting zerkers at max range, I dont think we need it again. It was a plague.

Sviel.7493:

I don’t really understand why thieves are, in general, ridiculously strong , but P/P is so underwhelming.

Thieves are not that strong, people in general are just bad. Play against a good player on something like a terrormancer or condi engi and tell me how powerfull your felt while fighting one.

Any type of multible kit engi because you will never run in a situation you cant handle + best teamfight ulti

When I roam on my necro I kill thieves in 3 seconds and get killed by thieves in 3 seconds (ok ok it takes a bit longer). The first thief goes to the forum and whines how weak the class is and the second one responses with “lol noob”. So where lies the truth? I guess somewhere between skill and luck.

Edit: and never consider WvW if you talk about balance decisions, in WvW the balance is completly of. Food etc makes it completly over the top.

Lygon.4896:

Thieves are now shoehorned into the class that has high risk/high learning curve and little rewards (if any). Only build where we get it easy is that cheesy P/D condi build and I hate having to bring out my condi set but all I ever see in wvw is condi class condi class condi class. Also why is P/D condi considered by many as super cheesy when theres condi engis/condi necros/pu mesmers?

I think a balanced way to buff thieves would be to give them more defense or defensive tools/options. People say stealth is too op, but any smart player doesn’t find stealth a problem because thieves can still be hit when theyre in stealth. and usually when we’re in stealth the enemy has no immediate threat since we’re not attacking.

Either raise defense or nerf condi’s in this game. (a condi cap limiting the amount of condis you can have on at one time for spvp/wvw) Make the condi builds have to choose their preferred damage method instead of just having it all

The problem is people are forced to go condi, I play a engi and necro too and I would LOVE to play power in WvW roaming but good luck doing it… if you are not one of the top players that plays it for the lulz their is no reason to not go condi.