Guild Wars 2

Figured i’d ask you fellow thiefers for advice on this. Not quite sure what stat combo to pick for an ascended short bow, and since it’s a precursor weapon I won’t be able to change stats later.
I mostly do wvw small scale roaming, and occasionally some pve. Power spec, standart d/p stuff with sb for secondary. At the very least I’d pick marauder stats but I’m debating if I shouldn’t get something tankier like soldier. Reasoning being that I usually use short bow for disengaging/running away, rather than to do the damagez.
So what stats do you guys run on your sb for wvw, and i guess pve?

Thanks guys for pointing what seems to be real obvious now. Yeah I am in fact running plague signet so that must have been it. I honestly completely forgot about the passive on that thing.
That said though, I feel pulling conditions from brainless guards is kinda bad, maybe Anet should change it so the passive applies only to friendly players.

Been having this strange issues while roaming the past 2 days on my reaper in WvW.

So, seems like i’m getting random conditions applied to me every once in a while, and it’s seemingly out of nowhere. And i’m talking like moments where there is absolutely nothing around me, no enemies, also i don’t have any corruption skills so that’s not it. It can’t be just random traps left by someone, as those usually do more than apply a single condition with no other dmg.
Conditions are usually very short, like a 1s burning, or 1s immobilize, then one time it was like a 20s cripple, that was pretty annoying.
Come to think of it, i should probably check my log, see if it shows up there.

But yeah, I’m curious if someone has had this problem as well, so far it looks to me like some kind of a bug. Btw, this happens only on my necro from what i’ve seen.

Thank you for posting this. I’m glad to see there are others willing to theorycraft and experiment with different builds, rather than stick to the old and very powerful (and plain boring at this point) dd meta build.
I have in fact been playing d/f myself for a while now, and also with a very similar build 6/0/6/0/2 however my build was more focused on the power aspect of it, while yours seems to be more on the condition side (burning). That’s to say i’m definitely going to take it for a spin in wvw roaming.

Can’t remember the last time i managed to do a burning speed+flash without rubberbanding right back. I guess that’s what i get for being EU playing on NA. But i honestly don’t think it was that bad like a month ago.

I’m sorry this reply comes a bit late, but i was unable to login from work for whatever reason so…
Anyway, i’ve been playing with radiance runes in wvw for a bit now, so i can answer your questions op if you havent figured it yet.
1. Both the 2-set and the 4-set have a 20 sec cooldown.
2. The light aura you get on heal, is not shared if you are playing with powerful aura (which you should if you got these runes).
3. The duration is extended by 33% on everyone affected by your auras (meaning this works just fine with aura share).

Lastly i would like to point out that in my opinion, if you want to get any bang out of these runes, you have to maximize the potential of the 6-set duration increase. Basically, focus on the auras that are actually useful (the auras themselves, not the boons you get from traits). Don’t run something like Fire’s Embrace as fire aura is largely useless. That trait is only good for spamming boons, and if you want to do that, well then you don’t need these runes (water runes would be better).

I will assume you are asking about PvE and specifically leveling up (seeing as you are lvl 58). In that case your healing spell should be either Glyph of Elemental Harmony or Signet of Restoration. Both options are good, so stick with what you prefer.
As for the elite skill, i’d suggest Glyph of Elementals. Whenever you’re about to fight a tough pack of mobs, or maybe a champion or whatever, getting the earth elemental out can help a lot, as he is pretty tanky. Another option is to use Fiery Greatsword to get around maps faster.

Just make the skill more responsive (faster/less glitchy) and i’ll be pretty happy.

Half the time i use the leap, the 2 sec immobilize is already gone by the time i finish the leap, and my target is free to dodge my following skill. And if they are using -condi duration food, they are already on their marry way.

Ok, so let’s take 2 different professions.
The first one has 2 skills that do damage:
- Skill A, does 50 damage, has a 10 second cooldown.
- Skill B, also does 50 damage, and also has a 10 second cooldown.

Now the other professions, sadly has only one skill to do damage with.
- Skill C, which does 50 damage, and has a 5 second cooldown.

Clearly, the first profession in this example is stronger (overpowered), because it has twice as many skills.

So i thought i noticed a pattern while playing around with this build, so i hopped over to the dummies in heart of the mists.
Turns out, blinding ashes does prioritize your selected target. Meaning if you apply burning to multiple targets simultaneously (most easily noticed with Drake’s Breath), the target that you have selected is gonna be the one getting the blind.

Haven’t really seen one so far on the forums, as most people dismissed the trait initially (myself included), but still i wanted to experiment and try to work out something with it.
At first i went with what seemed most logical to me (6/0/0/4/4) to keep the standart goodies from water and arcana. But that didn’t work out so well for me, so i tried a very different approach to it, and well… it was pretty good.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJAoYhcMqb23wxBf0ACAGpsQ4AQCoIO+G8DKCA-T1iEABCpEThTAwKq+wkyAe2fAKlGQ8AAAwEHiqBsnegCUCSIABjBA-w

Now, looking at the gear i put in, that’s just the stuff that i ran the build with, and it is by no means optimal! So feel free to try it with your own set of items, whatever works for you.
In regards to the runes, i knew i wanted a power rune for this (since this is a pure power build) and vampire runes seem good for 2 reasons:
1. They are very cheap
2. They provide some extra healing which is good since this build doesn’t have the standart healing traits (3 water, 6 arcana).

As can be seen, it has very high power and toughness. For crits, it relies entirely on the new sigil of intelligence (crits are important to apply the blind outside of fire attunement). The only thing that is lacking i’d say is vigor. However i personally didn’t miss it that much, probably due to the high toughness. Oh yeah, and lightning flash
To give you an idea of the damage it can do, with 12 stacks of might i managed to hit 8k churning earth and 7k fire grab on a camp boss in WvW. Probably due to having +30% dmg modifier in that situation.

I wanted to try something different and had a blast with it in the past couple of hours with small scale WvW, so figured i’d share it.

This is something i’ve also been observing occasionally since the patch. Not always mind you, but sometimes i would charge in with burning speed, straight into a mob’s face, but the blast dmg just isn’t happening. Can’t say i’ve seen this behavior prior to the patch (except in cases where i was clearly lagging/rubber-banding).
Maybe something got screwed when they reworked the skill to have evasion frames.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

and yes moa morph is balanced.
it can be blocked.
if the mesmer is blind, it will miss.
if the mesmer do not have line of sight, it will miss.

So this is what makes it balanced huh?
Here’s an idea for ArenaNet for a new elite skill. Call it “Instant friggin death!” and it’s gonna instantly kill a target designated by the player. Sounds OP to you? Nah, it’s gonna be perfectly balanced, cuz it can be blocked, blinded or LoSed, you see.
Also, it should be usable from stealth, just like any other skill. Perfectly reasonable.

Back to moa morph, as mainly an ele player myself, i’d honestly trade all my elite skills (racial ones included) for the Moa elite. That’s how strong i think it is in the hands of a decent player.

Elidath.5679:

And complaining that against multiple opponents it gets you killed… well, you where outnumbered to begin with. What did you expect?

See, this is the thing, i was fighting outnumbered (although not at first), but i was actually winning that fight, until i got morphed, which completely turned everything around. Had i not gotten moa’d, i would have killed the elementalist that i was initially doing 1v1 against, and then either ran away from the mesmer, or killed him too if he was a baddie. So you have to understand that in the situation that i was in, it really felt to me like an i-win button.

Just have a quick question about this skill in regards to pvp: Why does it exist???

Seriously, i’d be fine if it changed my 1-5 weapon skills to something less usefull, but completely removing my heal skill, all my utilities, my elite skill… that’s just plain ridiculous.
In 1v1 situations, it’s probably not going to break your game entirely, but in a fight with at least one more person where you get morphed, you’re dead.
No stunbreak/condition clear/heal, makes this skill pretty much an i-win button in so many cases.

Ok, figured i’d chime in, since i was more or less in your shoes OP until somewhat recently.
First off, you are running with a staff for supporting in group fights. Now, if you are also using a staff when a thief pops up for a 1v1, well…. don’t expect to win… ever.
Sure someone might tell you how he blows people up with staff ele 1v1 or something, but let’s be real here, no good player is ever going to lose to a staff ele in 1v1, i know i never have.
Second, are you perhaps running ether renewal as your heal to counter the condi meta? If so, again, don’t expect to win vs a stabby thief. Ether renewal is the worst heal to have vs a gc thief and it’s going to allow the thief to stay a lot more offensive on you, than you’d want.
The best general advice i can give vs a thief, is to try to instantly push the offensive in your favor. You must not allow them to be doing dmg to you for more than 2-3 secs. So how do you do that? With hard CC. I play d/d primarily so when a thief opens on me, im going to instantly shocking aura/updraft/earthquake, after which you try to deal as much dmg as you can. Most roamer thieves are running full glass, so you can quickly deal enough dmg to force them to recover (meaning stealth). If you manage to get them low enough before the stealth, you should try to finish them by doing AoEs around. If not, then just use the time they are in stealth, to heal yourself.
Also, forget about mist form. 1v1 vs a good thief, that skill is close to useless. I can’t begin to count the times i’ve been backstabbed/heartseekered a split second after my mist form ends.
I realize this may seem like a pretty generic advice overall, but really,, it’s what i’m doing currently and it works for me. The fights i’ve had with thieves lately in WvW have been either wins, or very close fights.
Now… if someone tells me a good strat for dealing with mesmers 1v1, that would be grand, but then again, mesmer is like the death knight of guild wars.

oZii.2864:

The High HP of the Warrior actually is a bad thing for the signet since it is harder to get all that HP back.

Wait wait, let’s see if I am getting this right. You are saying that having higher HP is actually a bad thing because you have to heal yourself for more to get to full health? Subsequently then, vitality is actually a negative stat that you should avoid at all costs, cuz you know… it makes it harder for you to top yourself.

My mind is blown.