Guild Wars 2

So much this. Also, thumper turret needs to activate without foes nearby as well. Them blast finishers!!

I’ve been using Rifle together with my Flamethrower recently. Think its good, but I mostly use Flamethrower and only pop into Rifle for some extra burst damage.

Linc.6834:

You could do Rocket Boots too as its also a stun break, acid bomb works well too, just be careful of where your aiming.
The shield has an excellent block+blast finisher too. I will give the OK to thumper turret tho as it had 3 blast finishers in 1 utility slot (the overcharge counts but the tooltip doesn’t say so, also you must have an enemy nearby for it to go off)

Rocket Boots launches you so far, would be hard to use mid combat. Still possible though, I’ll give it a try!

The reason I didn’t pick Thumper turret is because of its very long cooldown. Sure, it offers lots of blasts but by the time my might goes down it’s not off cooldown yet. However it would be a great choice if your fight is shorter than the might duration. If the third blast worked our of combat, it’d be amazing.

I really want Anet to fix a “Shorter Turret Cooldowns” trait, it would fit this build so well.

As I hit level 80 with my Engineer, I wanted to try a build that did not use HGH as a focus, but instead used Turret blasting together with Flamethrower’s Napalm fire field to obtain stacks of might that way.

Here’s the build: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/engineer/?2.0|4.1n.h2|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.77.1n.77.1n.79.1n.79.1n.bd.1n.7d|1n.64.1n.64.1n.64.1n.64.1n.64.cg.64|0.u58b.a5.k47.a6|0.0|2c.2w.2s.2q.30|e

I’ve only tried this build in PvE and WvW, but I’m not sure if the damage output is large enough to be good in PvE. It definitely leans towards survivability and support more. I highly doubt it would work in PvP.

What puts this ahead of HGH builds is that the Might stacking goes to allies around you, not only yourself. By using the turrets with the least cooldowns, you’ll be able to re-buff your team and yourself right before the might disappears.

So what you basically do is put down all your turrets (preferably) before the fight, shoot your Napalm and blast all turrets at the same time to gain 9 stacks of might to allies and yourself. Together with the Flamethrower trait, you’ll have around 18 stacks of might. The earlier you do it, the faster your turrets will be available again during combat.

Another good thing is that the build gives you three blasts in general, so if you’re running low on health in the middle of a fight, you can pop your healing turret field and blast it three times for an almost full heal. During fights, you can also blast your Flame Turret’s smoke field for stealth to get away from situations.

You can still use the turrets normally depending on the situation (1v1 yes, zerg v zerg no), sometimes you can even have them up for a while and blast them a bit later (for example, using the Rifle Turret twice for its Automatic Fire and blasting once it’s finished).

The cons of this build is that you don’t have other reliable condition removals other than your Healing Turret Burst. Also the fact that you’re kind of “wasting” your utility slots for Combo finisher blasts basically. Also you don’t have any stunbreakers other than when you reach 25% health with the Alchemy 10 trait, but since you’re built entirely in toughness you shouldn’t drop so fast.
——————
So for all you professional Engineers out there, would this build “work” in PvE? I’m unsure about its damage output because I just reached 80 and I’m just using rare armor and major runes. Also I haven’t tested out another build yet other than in PvP.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Atherakhia.4086:

Why run Pistol over D/D with shortbow? I’ve used a similar build, but I usually run d/d as it applies bleeds quicker and using caltrops is more streamlined. I imagine full Carrion as well?

I ran DD/Shortbow for a very long time with my thief. However, I realised that whenever I went into combat, I would spam Death Blossom and then just auto attack or switch to shortbow and just poke a bit. Sometimes I never even touched my shortbow and just ran around the enemy or stealthed until my initiative went up.

Took me a while to realise that having P/D instead of shortbow kept the bleeds up until my initiative regenerated, then I’d switch back and spam more Death Blossoms.

To escape from situations without Shortbow, turn off auto-targetting, turn away and spam heartseekers. If you have swiftness it works even better.

I got the same bug. It kept saying something like “You cannot drop a bundle in mid air!” in red text over the screen when I tried to get out. Got me killed :/

Signet of Malice does not trigger from the bleeds that Death Blossom does.

I get healed when the Death Blossom hits, but I get no heal from the bleed ticks that it does. It works fine with other conditions like poison and caltrops though.

I’d really like to see that build actually!

My build isn’t very unique or unusual actually, I’m just running a normal damage shatter build that’s fun to play with.

I don’t mind really. As a thief, I can avoid a PW with simply one shadow step. Then I just bleed them to death
But yeah, I’m glad they’re still using PW. The nerf was not supposed to stop everyone from using PW, it was just supposed to decrease output damage.
No one should ignore a skill once it gets nerfed. Although I don’t like PW as a whole, I respect it as a skill.

The way you want to play it.

I play a stealth bleeding thief that bleeds and disappears. Loving WvW so far, as I can disturb a zerg for a few seconds and still make it out alive.

Not really. However, I still keep it with me with my condition build (in PvE and PvP) to escape situations with the 5 ability. It’s still usable as a condition damage dealer, but barely.
In PvE, you can get close to the mass of enemies and spam the 2 button, making the bomb explode just as it shoots, and shoot another one.

Link isn’t working for me, but I’ll try to help.

An easy-ish way to deal with many at the same time is going full condition damage and using the utility skill Caltrops. You can then kite the enemies with a shortbow+poison skill or use Death Blossom with D/D.

I’ve been playing a DB spam build for so long right now, removing it would end up in me making another character.

Personally, I think it fits my playstyle perfectly. Since I’m not looking for huge numbers, I have very very low Power but very very high condition damage. I’ve beaten most Pistol Whip thieves in WvW with this build, and I definitely think it takes more skill to use efficiently. I can also play in dungeons efficiently with it, with lots of AoE damage.

However, all bleed builds I’ve tried in PvP never work since people actually know what they’re doing there, removing their conditions.

Definitely Mesmers and Guardians. Sometimes I get lucky though. In WvW, Mesmers aren’t that hard.
Guardians however have an easy time against my spec since they can remove conditions and heal full health as well. This usually ends in me stealthing my way out of the situation to avoid death or pointless attacking.

For those trying to count the initiative wasted, remember there’s a trait that gives you 2 initiative whenever you enter stealth. This means C&D only costs 3 (if it costs 5, can’t remember).
But I’ve never heard of what you’re talking about. Exiting stealth with an attack makes you unable to stealth again for a few seconds. The only perma-stealth I know of is stacking lots of stealth abilities to get around 25s of stealth in one go.

Well, if you use Smoke Screen and Cluster Bomb, you can make Area Stealth, giving you and your friend Stealth similar to a smoke bomb.
Other than that, the rest of the points are kind of imaginary to be honest. There are lots of different ways to play the thief. I use lots of bleeds then go stealth with Blinding Powder while their health is draining extremely fast. Then I jump back into the fight, bleed, and shadowstep away. If they don’t have a condition removal, they’re dead.
Doing this in WvW masses of people is so fun. I can distract around 6 or so people for a minute, even more if I manage to kill one person.

I’m the opposite really.

I dislike how the S/P Pistol whip ability literally locks you in position while you slice and dice the enemy. I prefer moving around so much, and D/D Death Blossom is by far my favourite skill. Sometimes I run around the enemy for fun while just auto attacking, cause I love moving around.

I guess you’re not forced to like anything in this game, and can always choose depending on what you prefer.

Believe it or not, Mesmers are the one class I’m worthless against with my Backstab build in sPvP.

They always disappear and put a clone in their place, so I stab the clone instead making my attack worthless. This usually results in my health going down, and the mesmer’s health still high.

I think the skill is called Decoy which really annoys thieves (and me). Also their stealth skill is good to avoid the first few strong attacks from the thieves while giving the thief lots of annoying clones to deal with. This is when you go in and confuse the brain out of him.

I always take risks, so I’ve died a lot. I’m very survivable though at the moment with lots of ways of escaping situations.

EDIT: Just to add more info, I use Blinding Powder during extreme situations where I need to go. I like to solo strong enemies though, so I do die in PvE.

I have only played as a thief since launch, and only have one character, and I’m ashamed to say I’ve never used or bought shadow trap. I have all other traps though.

I never understood how it worked though. If I put it on top of a tower, and jump down, if it gets triggered, will I teleport all the way up to the top? Doesn’t that mean it acts almost like a mesmer Portal for yourself?

Also, does the person who trigger it get some signal that he triggered a trap? Like if I’m running away from an enemy in WvW and put it under my feet and keep running, will I just disappear for him or will he figure out that I teleported behind him? I usually just use Blinding Powder and immediately start running the opposite direction to enemy, but this trap can save me tons of time.

I think I’ll start using it in WvW anyway to get away from enemies. Sounds amazing thanks to Dagins.

I know just the solution… I think.

Since Backstab thieves rely a lot on instantaneous hit in a short amount of time, all you need to do is somehow defend yourself during that time.

I’m not sure what the skill is called, but it’s an Elxir that makes you small and invulnerable. That is by far the best counter against the backstab. I’ve had some Engineers use it on me in sPvP. After missing my hits, I’m pretty much screwed and try to run away, but the Engineer never let me run.

The problem is though, you never know if they have that build or not, so you can’t really use it “before” the attack (unless it’s a stun breaker as well). Also, you must have at least some defensive skills in WvW, even if you’re offensive.

Anyone with a condition removal skill can turn the tides against me. That’s when I use my stealth skills to bail out!
Also, some guardians. I was happy when I was able to take one down in WvW though.

Luckily these changes don’t affect me. You see, I use conditions

Still, they pretty much made the elite skill worthless. They should just make it a utility skill now, it doesn’t really deserve the title “elite” any more.

This is not exactly a bug, and I’m not sure if people have said this already.

The utility skill Shadowstep needs some kind of 1/2 second pause from when you shadowstep and when you want to shadowstep back.

Since I always try to find the maximum range while having Fast-Casting on, I move my mouse slowly while spam hitting the button. Suddenly, it triggers twice, making me return back to my position like the same instant I went forward. Sometimes it’s lag that triggers it so I don’t have time to react once I’ve already shadowstepped.
This really sucks in WvW when you’re quickittenrying to get away from the enemy as fast as possible, only to find you went back to them, resulting in a death.

Just a tiny cooldown after teleport would help tremendously.

This is my current looks until I get my awesome armor!
80 Asura Thief reporting in!

As a condition based thief, I still use steal and don’t understand why people are complaning about it.
I don’t have as many abilities for steal, but I do have one that gives me 5 initiative so I can use Death Blossom, and the poison one. My main strategy is to spam Death Blossom basically, and stealing gives me another 3 stacks of bleed on the enemy which is awesome. Did I mention my Heal gives me six initiative? and Roll for Initiative gives me another 6. Love playing this build, haha.

I use both, one for each dagger. Do you guys use two of the same on one dagger or?

Try changing the 30 points on Critical strikes to 30 Deadly Arts, or divide it somehow. Your output damage isn’t enough to kill your enemy, even if your critical damage is high. This is my assumption though. If that doesn’t work, go for a condition build, 0/0/10/20/30 and stack lots of bleeds. This is how I survive there, and I even die less than other classes.

I used Pistol/Dagger for a long while as well, doing the same tactic as you do while trying to stack as much bleeds as well.
When I got the courage to get close to enemies, I swapped to Dagger/Dagger. Honestly I didn’t know they can put bleeds too, found out around level 40. Haven’t switched back since.

WASD for movement
Steal – 1
Q – Weapon skill 1
234 – Weapon skill 234
E – Weapon skill 5
Mouse 5 – Utility 1
C – Utility 2
V – Utility 3
5 – Elite
Swap Weapons – X

Very tight, meaning I don’t really need to move my fingers much. Much easier for me. Especially the weapon swap key.

The Shortbow Skill 1 for the Thief is amazing. it hits every target for the same damage, bringing all of them down so quickly. Don’t know about the other professions though.

I found this site a couple of days ago. Haven’t tried the guide, but it seems very detailed and really good. Check the left column for the guides.

https://sites.google.com/site/guildwars2crafting/home/

I don’t look for jutes, I salvage all the armor I get from loots which nailed me lots of jutes. Even had excess Jutes after finishing that crafting level.

I need to try a backstab build at least once. Seriously, that’s amazing.

Really good guide! Helps a lot, I always used to think that elite was worthless and I totally forgot about the venom spread. Great job, I’ll definitely try it out!

When doing dungeons, I roll with almost exactly what you have except 20 in Acrobatics and 30 in Trickery. Since I depend on condition damage for my damage, I run D/D and Shortbow, almost exclusively using Death Blossom with D/D to get the bleed count up. Shadow Refuge helps incredibly much and is a must in dungeons. I use tripwire to knockdown the enemy, and Shadow step to get away.

My tip for your build: If you’re going Trickery instead of Power, you might want to switch to the dagger for the bleed. Or you can use the poison from your short bow and attack with your sword, but I’m unsure about how that will work since sword hits for high power mostly. You could also remove 10 from Acrobatics and put them into Power, or just go all out power, acrobatics and shadow arts. It’s all experimenting, even I haven’t tried enough so don’t depend on my ideas.

I really don’t know how to support in SPvP, so hopefully you’re talking about PvE.

LoreChief.8391:

You cannot combo stealths. We have a debuff called visible, which gives us a period of time where we cannot re-enter stealth. You will likely use a stealth that will last for about 5 seconds, which is not enough time to sneak just yourself past the zerg, let alone a group.

When I say “combo stealth”, it is the stealth duration that gets comboed up. This means, after the 5-6 shots of cluster bomb onto the smoke screen, you will have a total of 10 seconds of stealth in one go.
That debuff only occurs if you get detected, aka leave stealth. As in, you go into stealth, then get out of stealth you get the debuff. If you manage to combo quick enough before your enemy approaches you, you will succeed. I know because I’ve done it before in WvW, and it did work. I use it all the time now to get through even PvE areas.

True… well, since I have that “swiftness when dodge” trait, I get that “wind” sound instead, which is kinda cool and partially replaces the effect. Human roll looks so slow now that I’ve played as an asura for a long time, haha.

I’ve played WvW with a Thief for a while now. There are lots of things I can do which no other profession can do. My mobility is so high I’m able to get to areas the quickest, check and look around and inform my team about the situation. If spotted, I can move so fast they won’t even bother chasing me. It once took around 20 people to get me down after running across the map for fun. You can use Smoke Screen and Cluster Bomb to combo up to around 10s of stealth to everyone around you, together with your heal that’s around 13s of stealth, enough to sneak past a zerg thats chasing you.

You can also catch up with runaways so quickly because of your awesome mobility. Escape from situations because of your awesome mobility. Seriously, I’d rather play Thief in WvW than anything else. They fit my playstyle perfectly.

Anyone out there crafting to make stuff they can use themselves? You just feel much more proud wearing an armor set you’ve created. Buying the material off the trading post costs a lot though. I’ve wasted around 1g to get 100 levels in leatherworking. Worth it though.

Basically, if you’re gonna start crafting, make sure it’s something that can benefit you and not just hurt your wallet.

Isn’t there a LFG system already? Although I never see it being used.

Type in “/LFG” in chat, or open your Contacts/Friend list and it should be in one of the tabs (you can also make your status from Online to Looking for Group).
Why is no one using this? Am I the only one on Tyria who knows about it? Is it broken?

I do the same in sPVP. Going to mists seems like the only way out.

I haven’t played keg brawl before though. Going through mists to get out of there sounds ridiculous. Waypointing out if it’s in the same map maybe, but paying to leave also sounds ridiculous.

Mesmer – The real double has a red “finish him!” symbol above their character.

Warrior – They don’t “auto-rally”. They’re able to get up for a couple of seconds. If they kill someone while they’re up, they rally and stay alive. If they don’t, they instantly die after some seconds. I recommend you to run away if you missed the stomp. They’ll just stand there and die eventually (don’t risk yourself dying or they’ll win).

The question I’m mostly wondering about: When will free-transfers close down?

I want to play with my friends, but I don’t want to switch home server because my guild is there. Guesting would fit this perfectly, and I don’t want to be blocked out because the server becomes full again while I’m away or something.

It’s hard to buff up the difficulty in events where very many can participate. It either becomes too high HP to kill which means longer fights, or too strong which means people will probably get insta-killed and not bother with it anymore. In some events, the boss really is strong and almost two hits you if he targets you or does an AoE. I’ve had to constantly revive people during some battles as well. It’s an issue that doesn’t really have a proper method to solve for now I guess.

I’ve heard they want to avoid the spamming of duel requests, so they haven’t put it in yet. Don’t remember when I heard this though, but I think they mentioned it sometime. Will definitely implement it later though I think.

I’m Asura. Instead of a loud dodge, I get a freaky cool spin dodge in mid air which looks super awesome.

I haven’t reached that high level to be able to know much, but I’ve always played with condition damage ever since I started my thief (~65 ish now). I’d say if you’re focusing on condition damage, stay with condition dmg and “ignore” precision. I rarely get critical hits, but my high condition damage make up for it a lot. Haven’t tried going both crit/power/condition, not sure how it would work.

In survivability, I believe it’s overpowered. You can instantly teleport when you go down, which can get you away from a boss making it easier to get resurrected. Invisibility attack can lose aggro of enemies if they’re far away enough. Damage wise it’s pretty high (I don’t expect to kill anything while I’m down anyway, so I don’t really care), and I don’t even have that strong trait.
You can also survive/postpone death for quite a long time in SPvP (although not always recommended). If you die a lot, try getting the 5 trait shadow arts which makes you go invisible right before dying, and use your heal right after.

I’ve survived for 69 levels without Lotus Poison (15 in Power).
What I go with is 20 in Acrobatics for that “gain 2 initiative per 10s” trait, 15 in Trickery for the Condition damage, 15 Shadow Arts and 5-10 Power (haven’t unlocked the last book yet).

Basically, the strategy here is to only spam Death Blossom (D/D) to get their bleeds as much as possible. Steal to get initiative (trickery trait), and use it once more. During your 4 Death Blossoms, you evade all attacks. You can either stay and use auto attack (or a utility) until you can use Death Blossom again, or switch to Shortbow.

I’ve been able to survive too many fights with this, and can take around three enemies at the same time since Death Blossom attacks all enemies around you. Basically, try focusing on movement, dodging, acrobatics and lots of condition damage. Use the support utilities to interrupt your enemy, block projectiles and stuff to stay alive. The only very annoying enemies are ranged enemies, but you can get smoke screen to kiiinda get through that. Hope this helps.