Guild Wars 2

Confirmed. Tried with Adventurer runes today and the 6th bonus doesn’t work.

Kocoff.7582:

When you stealth, NPC stop moving. The A.I isn’t Top lvl like in HoT. So, either you aren’t fast enough to backstab or… you aren’t fast enough to backstab.

There are many times this isn’t true, and it’s easy to test. Go to WvW and fight a flag guard NPC. For whatever reason, their heal animation is a targeted skill (targeting you), meaning that they will always face you while they are channeling their heal. Even if you Cloak and Dagger after they begin their heal skill, they will continue to face you through stealth, ergo you cannot successfully Backstab them (or worse, if you’re using a sword, you cannot land a Tactical Strike to daze their heal).

I have not personally used either of those two runes in PvP. When choosing runes, you have to consider what they offer you in fights and in worst-case-scenarios.

Consider Runes of Vampirism for example. It offers a useful statistical bonus in 175 Power, in-fight sustain through two different life leech procs, and burst mitigation through the mist form.
Adventurer runes offer an acceptable stat boost of 100 Power (and 175 Condition Damage which, admittedly, is only useful for Serpent’s Touch), as well in-fight sustain and avoidability through an extra dodge every 18 seconds (or more often if Improvisation recharges Withdraw).

I’m assuming you’re mentioning Air or Centaur runes for their Swiftness duration, but unfortunately, they both pale to Vampirism (and even Adventurer!) for what they offer in fights. With respect to Air runes, Ferocity scales worse than raw Power, and the lightning proc happens too infrequently to be useful (and it could reveal you from stealth, though I haven’t tested this). Generally, Thrill of the Crime by itself will give you all the Swiftness you need in fights.

Centaur runes are almost usable, but even then they are straight-up worse than Runes of the Pack, which are occasionally seen on thieves as an alternative to Vampirism. Pack runes offer a huge raw stat bonus in 175 Power and 125 Precision, as well as superior boons since the Pack proc also gives Fury and Might in addition to Swiftness, synergizing very well with Thrill of the Crime.

Oh hey I wrote that build on reddit. Two months later and having played tons of both adventurer S/D acro and D/P meta, I still find S/D viable, and prefer it over D/P even in ranked arenas.

Link to the build in question:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYVl0MhunYpTwwJw/EHwElPNOj2oXYJRiqTgAY3A-TpBFABiXGwo9HI4BA02RAYhDBAAnAAA

S/D acro is viable as a far-point assaulter out of the gate due to its ability to contest a point by remaining mostly out of stealth, and its better ability to stand up to straight 1v1s compared to D/P. (I am of the opinion that with Infiltrator’s Return and Signet of Agility, S/D actually deals with conditions better than D/P does with Shadow’s Embrace.) S/D possesses similar or even superior disengage as D/P does with correct use of Infiltrator’s Strike/Infiltrator’s Return, which means that you can still leave losing fights with ease and +1 or decap somewhere else.

However, what puts D/P SA above S/D acro in competitive play is team utility and not dueling ability. D/P has increased res speed, they automatically stealth who they’re ressing, and they also have access to on-demand interrupts and blinds. Ideally you’d look at the team comps and decide whether or not you can take S/D over D/P. If you already have strong team fighters, it may be possible to run S/D and play the far-point game. But if you have trump card roles like power mesmer or cele necro, you are better off playing D/P and supporting them in fights whenever you are not decapping.

Even after trying daredevil in BWE2, I would almost leave my S/D build as-is, especially given the current state of daredevil’s dodges. Despite the acro line being a mere shadow of its former self, it still possesses some key traits, namely Hard to Catch, Don’t Stop, and the improved vigor (even though it’s still worse than pre-June baseline vigor).

EDIT: This is only referring to sPvP. In WvW, I actually think S/D is a far better duelist/roamer than D/P is. It can even stand up to PU perplexity mesmers, provided you properly shed your conditions with your sword and don’t overcommit.

I agree with all sentiments pertaining to the dodge and skill animations and their clunkiness. The Dash dodge in particular, the way it recycles the warrior Rush animations seems problematic (especially with the weapons disappearing!). If animation assets are limited, might I recommend the elementalist’s Burning Speed animation instead? Though to be perfectly honest the default dodge animation is better than its current state. Because the traited dodges alter the direction you are facing (for instance, you turn around when dodging backwards), this leads to awkward interactions with skills that have directional leaps associated with them (like Withdraw, RfI, and Heartseeker). For example, when I am facing the enemy but dodging away from them, using Withdraw immediately after would evade me back toward my enemy, which is not what happens with regular dodges.

Not being able to Steal or otherwise Shadowstep during the Vault animation seems like a huge design flaw, and is thematically inconsistent with the way other thief skills can be chained with teleports.

Finally, the elite chain Impact Strike seems good on paper but is incredibly inflexible, which is bad especially for a skill that’s really only useful in PvP/WvW situations. My suggestions to improve it would be to give you a brief period to use other skills after using the first one or two skills in the chain (similar to how you can save a Larcenous Strike for later), and also to make the stomping aspect of Finishing Blow unaffected by blind (since regular stomps still work through blind). Not affecting stealthed targets like regular stomps is okay.

I am standing at the location indicated by the Enormous Foxfire Cluster (which is in my inventory), and when I interact with the Pollen-Rich Zephyr, the only option for me is to Leave. There is no way for me to create the Germinated Foxfire Cluster.

Am I missing something really obvious? Or am I doing something wrong?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsaVl8MhSnYjTwwJQ/EHwE1OQXuO0HGnRboTgAIDA-TBCFABA8EAKU9nrUCi0+DCcCASS5Xa6DW4QAIIgyB-e

This is more or less what I’d use for S/P in PvE. With the food buff, Signet of Malice, and Invigorating Precision, you can pretty much sustain all damage with Pistol Whip outside of being oneshot.

In party scenarios, you can take Thrill of the Crime over Flanking Strikes and No Quarter over Invigorating Precision. You can also swap out Assassin’s Signet for Shadow Refuge for more party support.

While you’re leveling, I would work on the Trickery line after finishing Critical Strikes, since it is common across all thief builds.

If you need more durability, you can swap out Berserker armor for a mix of Valkyrie/Knight’s.

If you’re going to run S/D, you’re better off dropping Signet of Malice for Withdraw. S/D hits the fewest number of times of all thief weapon sets so it synergizes the least with Signet healing. To stay alive in PvE, it relies on always moving and evading rather than simply lifestealing through the damage. You can also run Trickster in Trickery to lower your Withdraw CD to 14.5 s and give it condi clear. You mention Invigorating Precision so I’m assuming you’re running DA/CS/Tr, but in my opinion S/D is still better off running Acro over CS, even in its currently nerfed state.

As with all thief S/X weapon sets, autoattacking is your best DPS, so you can save your initiative on using 2 and 3 for evading attacks. CnD→Tactical Strike is also good for stripping defiance, and works well with Sleight of Hand.

Pouring out a brew for the former best trait in the game.

Hello, I was doing some searching around and I cant seem to find any help related to this issue. Basically, random polygons on everything are rapidly flickering in and out. Framerates are stable, but the game is basically unplayable with these graphical artifacts.

My specs are:

Intel i7-3630QM
nVidia GeForce GTX 660M (notebook)
8 GB RAM
Windows 8.1

I’ve tweaked multiple graphics settings in-game, and my GPU is already on the latest stable driver (344.75), so I’m a little at a loss.

Here are some screenshots to help illustrate the issue: http://imgur.com/a/BosXQ

Not just DS. Stomping and ressing both have big delays before you can execute those actions.

Bump for confirmation.

fayegrove.8437:

Race: Sylvari (possibly any)
Sex: Female (possibly any)
Class: Guardian and Ranger (possibly any)

Two days ago my friend and I made two new characters to level together. We noticed right away that not only was the other person’s avatar showing what seemed to be the male default model, but many of the other people running around in our realm looked exactly the same. We have changed various pieces of our armor and weapons from the default but there has of yet been no reverting back to how our characters are supposed to look.

Screen shots:

• My view of my friend’s female ranger.
• A screen shot of her hero panel.
• Her view of my female guardian.
• A screen shot of my hero panel.
• A screen shot of a random person running around Astorea with the same glitch.

Is your Character Model Quality set to Lowest in your Graphics Settings? If so, all player characters near you will revert to the default model to save on processing power. Set it somewhere higher so you will see player characters as they are supposed to appear.

Race: Asura
Sex: Male
Class: Thief
Armor: Mist Walker Gloves

One of the vertices on the Mist Walker Gloves appears not to be rigged to the rest of the model. As a result, when my arm moves, that point on the glove sticks out attached to my body.

Gewd.8125:

They didn’t do that because it already takes upwards of 10 minutes to find a match even with this extremely flawed system.

This is true, but getting stomped by people 30+ ranks above you doesn’t attract new players either.

Why not take a page from LoL’s book? Similar to how level 1-20 summoners will generally only be matched with each other, how about keeping r1-10 players in a separate tourney queue (unless premade)?

Welcome to sPvP, the game where everybody zergs and the points don’t matter.

Mrbig.8019:

Signet of shadow is still horrible

I hate to pick apart an overall well written post for one minor detail, but it bothers me how many thieves say this.

Signet of Shadows passive is great for roaming and general out-of-combat mobility. Its passive is bar none the best way to secure stomps if you don’t have an offhand pistol. Seriously now, what’s not to love?

I feel a lot of thieves have ego issues, which generally earns them their bad reputation. And I say this as a thief main who has had similar experiences as OP.

OP, just stop. Your past 10 posts at least have been nothing but spewing bullkitten about “range dominating melee.” Stop playing clusterkitten hotjoins and you’ll see just how long you last staying at range.

Knowing what the build is is one thing. Knowing how to play it effectively is something else entirely.

Archaon.6245:

Saital.4819:

Damage numbers on Hundred Blades are cumulative, not per strike. Not even going to comment on the rest of your post. Learn to play before posting on forums.

Successful troll is successful.

Or maybe, some times stupid people on the Internet are actually stupid.

Damage numbers on Hundred Blades are cumulative, not per strike. Not even going to comment on the rest of your post. Learn to play before posting on forums.

Completely agree. The original problem with PW builds was quickness. Now that quickness has been nerfed, I think it’s pretty reasonable for Pistol Whip’s numbers to be reverted to their original values.

Rayti.6531:

What I noticed though: the backpiece is still falling off the back and snapping back when moving backwards and stopping. No idea though, if this is connected to this specific armor… I will test this as soon as I’m at home.

It’s not. Happens to me too, on any armor I’m wearing.

Sustained damage took a hit because you can no longer string together C&D > BS/TS > auto x 3 > repeat. With Revealed lasting 4 seconds, you need to attack two more times before you can stealth again, by which point you might as well complete your autoattack chain for the third hit to gain maximum benefit.

So while technically Revealed was only increased by 1 second, they effectively doubled the time you must wait before you can stealth again.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Well, Heart Seeker has Evade,

Might want to fact check that, buddy.

FxyO.8243:

Lukin.4061:

This topic again… Do you still have problem with 100b wars too?

Sorry not everyone lives in the world of “I hover my finger over my stun break and auto attack”
Stop trolling, and to answer your question, I can see the warrior. Although yes, the same mechanic also applies. Too much damage in one skill, too little elsewhere.

What a kittenty argument. Who the hell is trolling who here? If you don’t have a stunbreaker you can reach within the time span of a thief combo, you should stick to fractals.

They mentioned it’s a mechanic that will have to be specifically specced or traited into. A thief who specs into boon hate may do more damage to boon stacked targets, but will do less overall to most targets. It’s a form of specialization and counterbuilding.

It takes a bit of practice, but I’ve gotten used to disabling auto-target and relying either on clicking on my desired target, or using the “Target Nearest” keybind.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Targeting in this game is rather crappy tbh, and because of that, it benefits some classes more than others, mostly mesmers and thieves since they have the ability to make sure you drop them as your target.

Is this a new record for least amount of posts in a thread before it becomes derailed about mesmers and thieves?

Xsorus.2507:

The difference between a Thief Burst and a Warriors burst is simple..

Warrior Burst is insanely easy to dodge, and the warrior can’t do it again 4 seconds later or escape the fight if he screws up.

Saying you need stealth because you die to 100b Warriors also cracks me up, Everyone can die to a 100b Warrior….Some of us don’t have stealth to save us from it, even though bout the only time it happens is if they AJ you, or if you’re frankly blind and smashing your head against the keyboard.

Just curious, who are you comparing warrior burst to that has a 4 sec CD on their combo? These are the numbers I come up with:

“Brainless” Warrior Combo:

Bull’s Charge (40s CD) -> Frenzy (60s CD) -> Hundred Blades (8s/6s traited CD) -(optional)> Eviscerate (10s/8s traited CD + endurance)

Longest CD = 60 sec downtime

“Brainless” Thief Combo:

Basilisk Venom (45s/36s traited CD) -> Cloak and Dagger (6 ini) -> Mug (45s/38s traited CD) -> Backstab (0 ini, requires stealth)

Longest CD = 45 sec downtime, 38 sec if traited

Granted, in every scenario a thief burst is indeed up faster, but the only place I could see you pulling “4 seconds” from is if you are only considering Cloak and Dagger+Backstab, which in itself is far from a lethal burst on any target except for a glass cannon elementalist.

Considering CnD+BS on its own is more akin to something like leg specialist bladetrail+100b. There is still a difference, but both classes can pull these off multiple times in a teamfight.

sorrow.2364:

every profession is designed to be capable to deal burst, sustained and conditional damage.

Please provide the developer quote that backs this claim.

sorrow.2364:

Yes, because every MMO has a profession which is capable to wipe his enemies out in less than a second if they aren’t fast enough to use the right skill at the right time (which probably the casting time make that skill useless anyway). But, most importantly, all the professions have access to that half-second-kill combo.

If we’re referring to CnD+Mug+BS combo, the key moment is between the mug and the backstab. During which you can dodge or block. If you are basi venomed then simply throw a stunbreaker in there. Even easier if your stunbreaker is also an evade (e.g. Lightning Reflexes). True, if the thief has Haste then your window of time is greatly reduced if not completely eliminated, but this is a problem with quickness in general and not with the thief.

sorrow.2364:

You play too many FPS, in the case you haven’t noticed it yet, this isn’t Call of Duty.

I’ll do you the favor of ignoring the fact that you just likened CoD to a competitive FPS title.

sorrow.2364:

Also, good job into taking a sentence out of the entire context and completely misled the point I tried to make.
Do you guys really want to keep arguing in this manner?

Point? You had no point. The rest of the post that I had omitted was bupkis, consisting of citing anecdotal “evidence” of an extremely telegraphed mesmer shatter combo, and ad hominem attacks against the guy you quoted.

sorrow.2364:

you know, not everyone has super powers, lightning reflexes and super-fast internet connection.

Please for the love of god spend some more time coming up with an argument than you are right now.

Have you ever played any competitive online game in the history of ever? Have you ever considered that maybe player reflexes are just as key to success as any mechanic within the game? Or have you thought that maybe you should actually invest in better networking hardware before deciding to play a competitive online game with 200 ping?

Based on what you have stated, Hearts is probably an online PvP game that is balanced enough for you.

Don’t even bother with P/D thieves. I still can’t believe how many people and WvW fall for this. Then you see on YouTube all these “super pro 1vX” thief videos and the thief’s opponent all make the same mistake: they try to fight him—instead of, you know, actually taking objectives or something.

Even the video that was just posted above, why bother fighting the thief? The zerg was doing nothing productive, just running around and getting stomped repeatedly. And in the case of P/D thieves, if you just run from them, they have nothing. Pistol thieves have no ability to chase and take forever to kill something. They are only useful as long as a zerg is dumb enough to be out in the field trying to kill them.

I’m actually going to give ANet the benefit of the doubt here and assume that they do have some sort of plan laid out for the glory system. I think the current numbers are where they are as a sort of temporary holdback while ANet creates something actually worth grinding for and spending glory on.

I just hit r39 and the glory per rank tripled from 15k to 45k instead of doubling every 10 ranks like before. If this trend continues, that means it would take over 3 million rank points per rank to get from 70-79, and over 9 million to rank 80. Pretty ridiculous.

Battlefield 2 had a similar issue with its rank system shortly after launch. For the first couple months, each rank took a ridiculous amount of time to get, meaning that almost no one had any unlocks. After the game matured a bit and the playerbase spread out, and also after expansions were announced with more unlockables, DICE lowered the rank requirements across the board and retroactively placed everyone in their correct rank based on their accumulated points.

I suspect GW2 will follow a similar path. Given how there is still that placeholder Tengu NPC in the Heart of the Mists, it’s pretty clear that the PvP reward system is far from fully fleshed out. Hopefully in the (near) future, ANet will find a way to create incentive to bring new players into the PvP scene and keep veteran players coming back.

As a full glass D/D+Sb build, I spend most of my time kiting down all the veterans with shortbow first. Once the Supervisor is alone then bursting him down is trivial.

The only difficulty comes when the camp is upgraded. You need to watch for the cabalists so that you don’t get chain-CC’d to death. I generally focus cabalists > scouts > guards > Supervisor.

Dual.8953:

I find blinds more useful then evades (because you can defend your fellow party members with them), and we have a lot of them too. I’d suggest default to blinds then have evades if blinds won’t work. SB is your best friend when kitten hits the fan.

True, blinds are generally more team-focused than evades, but remember that blinds have 90% reduced effectiveness against Champions (the only monsters where an evasion build would truly be necessitated) which makes them completely unreliable as a defense mechanism.

I run a 25/30/0/15/0 full GC zerker build with D/D+Sb. Taking Withdraw, Roll for Initiative, and Shadow Refuge as my “must haves,” I can pretty much kite any boss to oblivion using shortbow while still putting out decent damage with autoattacks (1500~2000 crits with sb).

At least 15 points in Acrobatics is key to any evasion build for Feline Grace. The Vigorous Recovery trait also synergizes marvelously with Withdraw.

Hi ANet, I just wanted to thank you for fixing the bug with the Vigil Medium Helm on Asuras. I’d like to reiterate my second issue that I posted in last month’s thread. It was toward the end of the month, so it probably didn’t make it into last patch.

Anyway, on a female asura guardian, when wearing the PvP Pit Fighter’s Skirt, I run into the same weapons-held-in-wrists bug as before. The PvE variant has the same problem. One thing I noticed is that wearing PvP Splint Gauntlets (and PvE equivalent) seems to alleviate this issue. Every other pair of gloves I wear has the bug.

Thanks for the work you guys are putting into this!

This is another reason why custom arenas would have been nice, though I understand why they were put on the back burner for the time being.

It is absolutely infuriating to want to join a 5v5 hotjoin server (because maybe you don’t want to play the same tourney map over and over) only to see that people are using it to duel. Why don’t you use a useless 8v8 server for duels, instead of 5v5’s where one might actually find decent competition outside of a tournament?

Or better yet, let’s do away with 8v8 all together so we can finally play real games in hotjoin.

There is no strategy in 8v8 PvP, regardless of map. Asking for map balance in hotjoins is just silly because none of the maps are balanced for 8v8 hotjoin nor are they supposed to be. 8v8 exists solely to farm glory. If you want a balanced PvP experience, tournies are on the other side of the mists.

mbh.8301:

Jacobin.8509:

— What percentage of gw2 population has even set foot in the heart of the mists?

There were tons of people who were initially interested in spvp and bout the game mainly for that reason. Most left simply because there was no ladder and it was hard to find competitive matches. There was nothing in between farming pugs or getting rolled by the few hardcore teams.

What I meant was more “of all copies sold of gw2, how many of those users even went to the heart of the mists? 5%? 10%?”

Probably a good deal more than that, actually.

…for a free trip to Lion’s Arch. (:

Saital.4819:

Saital.4819:

snip

I’m back again! This time as an Asura Female Guardian, though I believe gender in this case doesn’t matter as both genders of asuras seem to use the same animations.

Anyway, this was in PvP, but I believe the same bug would persist with the PvE equivalents of what I’m wearing.

Equips are (And all were socketed with PvP Superior Rune of the Dolyak, if that’s important.):

- PvP Scaled Helm
- PvP Banded Pauldrons
- PvP Scaled Coat
- PvP Heavy Plate Gloves
- PvP Pit Fighter’s Skirt
- PvP Plated Boots

With this combination I again run into the weapons-held-in-the-wrists bug that many asuras seem to run into. This time I have narrowed the culprit down to the PvP Pit Fighter’s Skirt. If it is unequipped, my weapons are held correctly. None of the other equips in this set affect the issue.

ADDENDUM: This issue seems to be caused by how the PvP Pit Fighter’s Skirt interacts with other pieces of armor. I tried switching the gloves, and wearing the PvP Pit Fighter’s Skirt with the PvP Splint Gauntlets alleviated the problem.

Saital.4819:

snip

I’m back again! This time as an Asura Female Guardian, though I believe gender in this case doesn’t matter as both genders of asuras seem to use the same animations.

Anyway, this was in PvP, but I believe the same bug would persist with the PvE equivalents of what I’m wearing.

Equips are (And all were socketed with PvP Superior Rune of the Dolyak, if that’s important.):

- PvP Scaled Helm
- PvP Banded Pauldrons
- PvP Scaled Coat
- PvP Heavy Plate Gloves
- PvP Pit Fighter’s Skirt
- PvP Plated Boots

With this combination I again run into the weapons-held-in-the-wrists bug that many asuras seem to run into. This time I have narrowed the culprit down to the PvP Pit Fighter’s Skirt. If it is unequipped, my weapons are held correctly. None of the other equips in this set affect the issue.

Do you have the “Revealed” debuff when trying to stealth? Normally, if you attack out of stealth, if become Revealed and cannot restealth for the next 3 seconds. Trying to stealth while Revealed will pop up with Immune text like you’ve been seeing. This is the most likely scenario you’ve been running into.

Briix.6872:

Saital.4819:

Yeah, P/P is all good fun in hotjoins. I have yet to find a build that works in tourneys though. :/

Caed’s mini guide is a good place to start :-)
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Caed-s-Thief-Walk-through-and-Guide-Mini/

What are you trying to show me here? Caed says absolutely nothing about P/P thieves in that thread.

I already know how to play a burst thief in sPvP, and the thief class in particular is what has gotten me to where I am at r37 now.

Shadow Refuge in particular is just too good of a spell to pass up. In PvP and WvW, every thief and their mother runs it because you’d be needlessly gimping yourself if you weren’t. I personally hate the skill but I’m forced to use it because it’s simply the best “Oh %$&#” button we have right now. It also allows bad thieves to get away with doing really stupid things—like running into a disadvantaged fight—and getting away scott-free. Shadow Refuge removes any sort of punishment for bad play and that’s just wrong.

Yeah, P/P is all good fun in hotjoins. I have yet to find a build that works in tourneys though. :/

I pretty much agree. If I hotjoin on my thief, I pretty much go around taking buffs, sniping svanir/chief, backcapping points, using the treb, and leaving the server when Capricorn rolls around. If I get triple-teamed by the zerg it’s time to book it and move to the other side of the map. No real strategy in hotjoin as long as 8v8 is still in the game. Whoever gets the worse team loses.

EaGrimdarK.7849:

The only luck in pvp is RNG, even then you can have a say in that too.

Edit: You will probably think RNG means ranger, since I dont expect much of you I will explain to you what RNG is: RNG stands for random number generator, and its the thing that factors in your stats and their stats and poops out the numbers when you hit your “luck” buttons.

Practically everyone (especially on the sPvP forum) knows what RNG is. Go be a kitten somewhere else.