Guild Wars 2

Since we are already inside that discussion. Does anyone tested if you can reverse roll on Kneel stance?

But of course we are getting nerfed!
Did this prediction ever failed?

If we don’t get nerfed, we get a false buff. Like when choking gas started dealing damage.

Wow It never crossed my mind to use Major + Superior Sigil of Air.

Depends.

Dash pretty much suit all movement needs for a DD. If they are using it they can still play the role, albeit a little slower than SB.

Now Bound + Staff is somewhat selfish. Low access to swiftness make thief as slow as a necromancer

Well if you take everything in a good way, it proves that ANET somewhat understands which classes need a buff and which ones need a nerf.

At the very least we didn’t got nerfed in this joke. Hahahaha

But.. the whole point of Bound is the leap.

Metridium.2391:

This is like, the only MMO without a target of target function, lol

……….?

I am at loss. Name a few?

mauried.5608:

Theres a differance between a free market and a fair market.
The TP doesnt guarantee that items will be sold for a fair price as anyone can list items for ridiculously high prices, and provided that no one else is selling that item then its available to buy for the stupid price.
One of the arguments against player to player trading is that people could get ripped off by buying items which are overpriced.
The TP doesnt prevent this.

It does.
On TP time will fix everything.

Even if ANET released a new iten today, even if the first person try putting a overprice for it, the rest of the community will quickly drop it. Because in the end, people want to sell then as fast as possible.

Doesn’t make any difference in the slights.

Then again, my first character story choices ended up in a carnage.
I fail to remember how many NPCs died under my watch.

For irony sake, I was using a Guardian.

kamedin.4698:

So I am coming back to playing the game after about a 3 month leave. From what I could pick up, new equipment has been put into the game and I have looked into the gear my characters have been using and found that they seem to be slightly out of date. So here are some questions if anyone would be kind of enough to help me with, I would be greatful.

1. Before I left, I remember different ways of allocating stats with equipment, like weapons or accessories were better if you wanted more stats than armor could provide, Is that the same or did it change somehow with the EPak?

2. Most of my gaming is in open world with not a lot of organized people, so I thought of maybe adding a little bit of balance into my gear along with traits (which I have to redo as well), Is there a general line to go with, while trying to get some balance, (like Zerker/Knights was an older way to introduce some toughness into a build) or is it too dependent on traits that add certain boons to help (like fury/might) so that I just have to decide the build than my gear?

3. Kind of off topic but still related, With introduction of Raids, from some who have done them in Guild Wars 2, Is it more skill based or a combo of right skill/right equipment?

1- The way stats works on armors haven’t changed much since they released the game.
What changed is that some armor fixes were removed (you can no longer have Magic Find, for ex) and 4 stat combinations were added (like marauder).
Its worth mentioning that ever since the trait system changed, you no longer get atributes for builds and the stat from equipment were raised as compensation.

2- In a general way, open world content is not hard enough to bother about stats.
There are a few rare bosses that are imune to crit damage, which leads you to use Power/Vit/Toughness combinations since precision and ferocity don’t work. But those are exceptions and most people just end up using berserkers or marauders.

Worth mentioning that since the new way that conditions stack, condi builds are now somewhat worthy on PvE events. Still slight less effective than berserker for most classes tough.

3- More like right class and right build. Can’t give specifics here, I recommend checking your own class boards for Raid builds.

Well.

Every class in this game, except Thief, has at least one weapon that hits at 1200 unit range.

For exceptions, Ranger can hit to 1500 with longbow. And Thiefs can’t hit anything past 900 units.

Not all classes game play are ranged tough. Mesmers and engies, despite shotting at 1200 prefer to fight mid-range due to their skills.

If memory servers me right, current best long range DPS class against single targets is ranger and against multiple targets is revenant.

Rather rare but are easily dropped by NPCs in WvW.

Just pick a build capable of soloing camps and keep circling the maps killing both camps and scouts (the Chars near the Flag symbols).

Have in mind that’s a drop from enemy’s and you won’t get any capturing objectives.

The only thing that still kittens me is the target reticle.

its great for chosing targets, but I still wish that my channeledd skills would give preference to my CURRENT target instead of the one on reticle.

That said, I was using battlemode for like a year before actiom cam was added. I don’t even know how the base controls are anymore.

Morwath.9817:

Izanagi.9830:

I guess thats what you get if you play f2p games , poor support , no test servers….

BnS is pretty good (read: awesome compared to GW2).

You are joking right?

I am playing BnS as well and even tough its a fun game it doesn’t beat GW2 by a long mile.

In fact, you can find people mentioning gw2 on bns foruns…. in a good way.

Only stuff in GW2 that still kittenes me off is the total lack of 1×1 and arena modes. I know it’s ANETs design decision in that department, but it still sucks.

So… if I get this right?

You guys wanna know who the “Target” is targeting too?
Basically a visual feedback of who is holding the agro in a boss fight?

The answer is a straight no.
It’s your job to keep track of agros, if you are getting insta bursted because you haven’t noticed who the boss is aiming or not its your own issue.

On PvP, calling targets is a strategic decision. If you tell your enemies who your team will be targeting, than people will simply stop using.

Never gonna happen.

In fact, in that point alone it only gets worse.

Most of your worries are unfunded.

Thief has indeed some problems at high End content. But only at high end content.

Lastly, have in mind that any classes at the rock bottom are the first candidates for godhood. Take Mesmer and Elementarist as examples.

Azukas.1426:

pariah.5093:

I know why pvp is unbalanced. Its the only game mode that lacks more pve! They ruined enhanced wvw by adding more pve, so why not add it to pvp?

Hello Stronghold

Come to think about it.
We should add bomb’s kit Scritz to WvW.

DeceiverX.8361:

Frankly, the only thing that really wont give you experience in the open world is grinding monsters in the same location. The game’s spawn rate decreases if you are nearby the spawn locations of creatures as to prevent bots and getting people trapped while also prohibiting the mob-grind playstyle.

Sword + Pistol 1 or Pistol + Pistol for weapon set 1 are considered very good leveling sets due to the defenses on Black powder, stuns, invulnerability frames, and good damage.

Shortbow is considered as an excellent weapon for set 2 as it provides the best AOE and evasion/defensive combat as well as high movement speed and a ranged advantage.

This ^
Sword + Pistol will make 99% of the Mob encounters a walk in the park.

For the ranged enemy’s, you can just hide behind a pillar or a corner and wait the ranged enemy’s to arrive in your Black Powder, you get used to it.

For traits, I recommend going for Trickster First, then Deadly Arts or Critical Strikes (whatever first, the other you learn right after) and Shadow Arts next (extra stealth time will help you exploring high lvl maps, but you wont need it until then).
(Acrobatics won’t help much, you may learn it only close to lvl 80 since it addeds little to grinding)

For utility skills, start with Sigils since you will find yourself using then a lot. Second is deception so you can get some stealth skills. Learn Tricks to boost your damage. Leave Traps last for the same reason as Acrobatics.

Grinding from 1 – 80 gives you the exactly number of points to learn all Skills and Traits, so there is no need to save points.
After 80, if you have expansion, you can start hunting for extra points to learn Daredevil skills and traits.

For equipment, use only Master Work and if you want to waste money: rare weapons.
You do get a great chunk of itens from leveling, but its still recommended to change equipment every 15~20 levels.

It will make risk jumps a lot easier tough.
In the end its more Air Time and More distance.

Plus you won’t die if you fail a jump.

Argilla.8340:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x912taGC5b0

This video drived me insane.
Why is no one capping the darn point.

Its worth mentioning that 99% of the comments here are related to the new Raid Mode.

Thief still does fine on Dungeons, World Bosses (not like you class matter here…) and any open exploration event. You are also free to do Fractals until highers lvls.

Now, if you take END GAME content in count (high level Fractals and the current Raid) Thief is indeed in a bad spot.

PS: Worth mentioning that the only Raid available in this game needs the expansion, you don’t need to worry about it right now.

quaniesan.8497:

What if people can see perma stealth on demand.

But what is the problem that the Thief (one class of 8 ) being able to see traps (one utility type out of 5 for 3 classes) in the whole game?

Are thieves reporting on Team Chat there is a trap at the feet of the Dragon Hunter at middle that broken?

And scrappers already have revealed on demand. 2 skills in fact.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVn8lCdmidPBmOBkmiFYCbOEWCbhaJgAQGY7CscGUA-TpxBABvXGAgjAgQ7PgxhAohHAwDnAAA

My version.

I believe i could get to Saphire~Ruby with it (currently emerald) but I am not even planning to use thief of Saphire or higher due to prejudice.

Advantages:
- Quick burst. C&D is less predicable then D/P base rotation and it’s faster. Works great on current meta where people are too distracted hitting your bunker.
- Paralyze on demand. Slow on Demand.
- Is totally capable of killing reapers (little hard), scrappers and power revs. And can gank others non-bunker builds
- Movement wise its the fastestes class in the game. You can pretty much go from middle to far faster than a mesmer can active their Portal skill to follow you.

Disavantage:
- Unless you are really good at it, you can’t 1×1 other Thiefs with D/D.
- Can’t kill any of the 4 current metabuilds. You may as well stay away spamming poison until your team do it for you.
- If killing a DH with D/P is hard, with D/D is downright impossible.
- Movement and quick kills are fun but useless in the current bunker meta. Unless for some miracle you are capable of killing the guy at home alone, you are cursed to +1 fights since you cant get freecaps.

I haven’t tested properly, but on the last Closed Beta I could “cancel” the kick from bandid defense by dodging.

I can’t seen to be able to cancel the kick now.

I’ve used a lot that skill on CBT, it was a 10 sec stun break and could basically block ranged attacks freely.

Kodama.6453:

I don’t like this idea. Seems like a too strong hard counter for traps to me. And it would make the trapper rune less useful too, because if you are setting a trap to stay invisible, the thief can tell where you are by seeing the trap.

I would just decrease the damage of dragon hunter traps and call it a day. The other traps are fine in my opinion.

Just because you can see a trap doesn’t mean we can do anything about it.

You can’t expect the thief to kill a DH using Shortbow.

I am totally fine with thiefs being able to see traps. But a disarming mechanics would still need more discussion.

Puz.8529:

I solo queue all the time, sadly I lost too many games going in as thief. You get people to afk or leave the game just because a thief is in their team. Meaning you’ve lost before you get started.

Losing because of a underdog class in the team and losing because of a kitten bag are 2 completely different situations.

DeceiverX.8361:

A lot of these were extremely abusable/abused. I’m not saying that the thief should stay weak, but I don’t agree these are the mechanics the thief should be pushed into for the sake of arbitrary buffs in the name of balance. The thief needs a lot of reworking across the board to make its build options much more solid while not being overbearing.

I dont agree with this kind of argument.

have you ever saw any class not using their standard broken tactics because of pity or anything?

Have you ever saw Warriors not abusing Shield Bash + Executioner when it was the thing?
Have you ever saw Warriors not spamming rush + quickness + 100b back in the day?
Have you ever saw turret engies not spamming elites left and right when they could slaughter everyone at SoloQ?
Have you ever saw a Guardian not bringing shouts when bunker Guardian was pretty much unkillable until engies got buffed?
Have you ever saw any Necro, Engie or elementarist not using divine amulet when they could stack might like tards?

Every class always abused their best options in the game. This is what means to be competitive.

I usually solo queue with thief and I switch to DH or Necro if needed.

Then again my biggest frustration is when I change to DH (as begged) and notice that no one in the team is rotating capture nodes.

Must be all those years playing thief, when I see that Far free cap our when the enemy steal our home node and no one moves a finger to do anything about it.

and yes, moving my DH fat kitten there is a bad plan, so I must spam the map until someone gets the idea.

DRIVES ME INSANE.

Errm.

I know that thiefs are in a bad spot overall but…

Why did you made a condi Ascended set for PvE?

C&D also have a Damage reduction on PvP.

Mug no longer Crit (tough I do prefer the extra health that was added as compensation, somewhat).

Personally, D/D had all kinds of nerfs back when thiefs were broken. Would be great to get something rolled back.
If you stop to think about it, all 5 skills of D/D got multiple nerfs around thief history, including auto attack.

D/D could get some damage, and Shadow Return could have its range extended to at least 3.000 units. (reason it got nerfed was because of WvW and not because of PvP).

Either way, we can only dream

I personally would rever Pistol Whip, S/D initiative changes and Sword 2#. This would be enough to get sword back in meta thanks to Daredevil traits.

BTW
Class “X” is bad at PvE nowaydas, means being bad at the new Raid mode.

Assuming you dont mind adapting your build here and there. There is not a single dungeon, world and Mists content you can’t do. (tough yes, thief may have some difficulties on High lvl mists).

About Raids…. well. Better read a few guides before trying it.

SPvP wise Thief is finally trashed to the sidelines!
I say finaly because after all those nerf bats, it took a bit long for us to reach this spot.

Thief is still fun to play nonethless. And daredevil complement or builds pretty fine despite everyone else getting broken.
Fell free to play Thief on Amber and Emerald Leagues, but you may choose something else past (unless playing with friends).

WvW your class doesnt matter.

Charr has the best heartseeker animation of the game :V

Regardless of what you pick, don’t use norm. And use the smallest size character you can have.

Some thief skills have very low range, and it sucks when you character animation has more range than your skill tip.

C&D is a pain to hit anything excep mobs. Low range, delay, only front, blockable…..

New camera screw up Steal. New camera mode also screw up any ranged weapon simply because we can’t force the game to shoot our kitten target instead of that reticle.

Shadow Step spots keep changing without warning. Like how you can climb to the top of Kyho on one side but can’t on the other side. Stuff like that.
Oh, and it still fails now and then.

reikken.4961:

Gibimo.2193:

Its not like old days
Every single profession has reavealed and also has potential of stealth.

except warrior, ele, necro

I swear to all gods, Necros and Eles don’t need it.

Iohanna.4863:

Anymoify.8132:

U will never win a mid fight.

Why is that necessary for winning the match?

Because controlling middle on most maps means that you can reach far and home faster.

In the end the “mobility advantage” is killed by having to walk longer distances

Hold a minute.

Who will cast swiftness for the team at the beginning of the round now :c ?

Dunning-Kruger happens on every game.
Who never went by the “Noob or Hacker” syndrome on other games?

At least on GW2 you can blame the “invisible user” that we call team (laughs).

Not like it matters in the end. Everyone will have 50% win rate unless you made a 4~5-man premade.

Morwath.9817:

SoulSin.5682:

This is not really an issue if you have a power build around. But on Pure 1×1, condi builds are done.

Wow, it’s like complaining that you can’t kill 1v1 Bunker Guard/Druid with Bruiser.

It’s team game, you aren’t supposed to do everything on your own with any build.

I get your point, but it’s not likely a Bunker will be able to kill a bruiser either.
Getting locked until help arrives is different from a straight downhill fight.

On voice you can call help, but on Solo you can run and pray that the Ele will stay behind to cap the point instead of chasing you.

Worth mentioning that I dont play Condi builds, but i can somewhat understand the frustration from that trait.
I’ts like engies in the past while using power builds. You simply couldn’t kill then, but they could kill you.
(to a lesser degree, Diamond Skin isn’t meta, at least)

Mirrodin.8729:

NeXeD.3042:

No because I get accused of being a premade all the time when I’m solo qing.

OmG they are beating us they must be a premade because there is no chance I could ever lose to a team of pugs.

WTF you talking about, it clearly says which one is on a premade right after the match ends on the end game board, if there are people around believing that everytime they get stomped is a premade well, they should just forget that Hotm exists

Negative. Well not quite.

It only takes 3 members to be in party (of the same guild) for the game detect as Premade.

I remember when once I got marked as part of a Guild I never joined before while SoloQ because of the rest of the team.

Then again, fighting 3 people on Voice while soloQ warrants a straight defeat. Most of the time. (won’t deny that).

Premades isn’t all roses tough. Once your MMR rises a little you start getting matches against REAL full premades and then everything hits the fan.

Problem of Diamond Skin is that elementarist have a Full Condi Cleaner every time their HP floats between 89% and 90% Health.

This is not really an issue if you have a power build around. But on Pure 1×1, condi builds are done.

I surrender to mordy.

Last fight is straight of impossible because of all the bugs.

- Platform simply destroys itself outside the AoE event. This usualy ends with a floating rift that you can do anything about.
- Platform isn’t destroyed but no NPC can step on it because they “recognize” it as destroyed.
- The timing of the Glider is TERRIBLE. Those air currents MUST launch you higher. If the glider doesn’t open on the first try, you will get on a infinite loop of Launch-gets damage-fails to open glider-fall, launchs-gets damage-fails to open glider until death.
- Sometimes the air current launches you instantly, sometimes you have to press F, what gives?
- After too many retrys, the AoE event will bug and Mordy will throw rocks right on the first round. I you happen to survive the first 2 AoE’s, you will enter the final phase of the fight without having all characters. What happens is that they will still appear and you will have to deal with another floating Rift issue because of it.

There is also:
- Pale Tree damage is simply to high, squishy classes get one shooted making the last phase of the fight a real nightmare.
- Carnach HP is too high, the fight is simply to long because of it. Also the shield at the end of the fight has terrible timing, took minutes to finally get past that phase.

KuriBunny.3657:

I really hate the new format of making you start a fight all over in the final battles. If you can’t let us pop back into the fight and continue where you left off it would be nice to at least have a repair anvil or something waiting for you when you are ported out. It feels like a ploy to make us buy instant repairs…

BUT AT THE VERY LEAST – If we have to start the fight over can the stage be reset also? Because having the rifts spawn in mid air really sucks.

I understand it’s supposed to make it more of a challenge or whatever… But I’ve experienced a ton of glitches in the new area and story (not to mention the many game crashes). I enjoy many of the new features but i’m getting really tired of having to restart my game, instance, story etc. countless times because of stupid buggy issues.

I get the feeling man, I get the feeling.

Watching the video for the first time
Isn’t the damage a tad to low?

Checks build
OMGFZ, He is using Carrion!

Smart mate, just smart.

Critical Strikes is fine.
It’s pretty much our Damage trait line.

Problem with CS is that we will rarely ever do a non-pve build with it.
We are currently slaves to Trickery because of boons and initiative.
We MUST slot Daredevil to use our new ability (duh)

And for the last slot, we have to decide between condi removal (Shadow Arts) or more CC (Deadly Arts… that also has executioner and poison access, which are both important). CS simply doesn’t have a spot.

For acrobatics…. oh well.
For acrobatics to be usefull, it must compete with the DareDevil or the Trickery Slot. Currently it is far from it.

xavios.3601:

SoulSin.5682:

No one is implying you are anything. We are just affirming that your class isn’t meant to chase anything.

Your best bet against thief on WvW is to burst then down on a single breath.
If they survive and cast Shadow Refuge, you need to spam AoEs in that area and kill it before it can leave the circle.

In an advanced tactic, you can intentionaly drag the fight long enough to make the waste Shadow Step so it makes then hard to run. Believe me, you have enough health to do that.

I drug the fights out between myself and anyone who went 1v1 with me, after i switched to Dire condi. That particular Thief wasnt even running SR. He was using Infiltrators Signet, Blinding Powder, and Shadow Step. Doesnt surprise me seeing as the sheer amount of mobility and interrupt coverage from S+P/P means he shouldnt need to heal if he can kite. At least thats how i understand it. Of course i can be wrong.

As i also have figured, having no toughness against an AA chain that did 6-9k crit damage in a rotation or two was a mistake. Just doesnt seem like a winnable fight cause they will just stay out of my range until their endurance comes back if they are that hard pressed for evading. Its almost as if Reaper cannot win with GS/RS against any good DareDevil. I dont see that as fair. Then again, i still havent figured out if there really are hard counters. A high mobility class being a hard counter to a hard hitting, slower hitting class sounds pretty par for the course.

Dire is always a nice choice for Necro on WvW. No shame on it.

When I mentioned to kill the thief in a single breath I was talking about this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRz-BgRHJgw

xavios.3601:

Auesis.7301:

It’s almost as if a Reaper has been thematically designed to be a slow-moving powerhouse and thus shouldn’t easily pursue a profession designed to be mobile as its sole source of survival outside of Stealth.

Its almost as if this is obvious from the available tool kit and maybe you should try to be constructive and add information instead of calling other people stupid. Im rather aware that im not going to be chasing anyone down as a Reaper. I never said, nor implied, otherwise. :\

No one is implying you are anything. We are just affirming that your class isn’t meant to chase anything.

Your best bet against thief on WvW is to burst then down on a single breath.
If they survive and cast Shadow Refuge, you need to spam AoEs in that area and kill it before it can leave the circle.

In an advanced tactic, you can intentionaly drag the fight long enough to make the waste Shadow Step so it makes then hard to run. Believe me, you have enough health to do that.

Well. In a Thief point of view, necromancer is a walking fortress that can instantly spam damage on our feet.

Reason that people spam AA on you is because Necromancers can’t be bursted down. Our AA is most of the time our best DPS option against a target that moves.

For the rest, I sorry to say that’s entirely a build issue.

A standard powermancer without reaper can easily kill a Thief using Wells and ranged attacks (DS AA is 1200 range, despite being slow, and the 4 skill can’t be dodged). I tell for experience since I main a Necro as well and I never had much of an issue against Thiefs.

Lack of mobility is, sadly, a characteristic of necromancers at the same time that is Thiefs strong point. Can’t really complain here.
If you think the other way around, Thiefs don’t have the same damage contribution and capability of eating damage as Necros.

Warriors always had root problens with GS 5#. Guess now thiefs feel the same drama.

More pressure on devs then.

Ignoring PvP, as asked, Staff Auto Attacks is better than Dagger AA.

If you add vulnerability to the count and AoE damage, any situation with multiple mobs or where you can’t move to the back of the target, staff is better.

Vault deals pretty much the same damage as BackStab as well. Just add the 10% damage staff trait and it technically deals more damage, in AoE, without the need to dance around the target.

That’s for targets above 50% health of course.
Below that Heartseeker + executioner beats everything as far as Thief goes.

Lastly, why not? You don’t really need SB for PvE either way. Staff AoE damage beats SB 2# by a long mile.

I might ask what use we have for swords now.