Guild Wars 2

Thanks alot for the responses. This information has me helped immensely.

Another question. My team always seems to lose the initial team fight at mid. Any advise how to go about approaching that fight from a supportive scrapper point of view?

If I understand correctly, a Scrapper is supposed to fill a more supportive role in PvP. This is what originally attracted me to playing this class as there is a severe lack of supportive players in the mid to lower ranks.

I have found somewhat success in playing Scrapper but i don’t feel like the class as a whole is as impactful as other support classes such as the Druid or Tempest. Maybe I’m just not that good at it.

If anybody who has more experience playing this role in PvP could break down how exactly a Scrapper supports his team aside from just dropping a healing turret and super elixirs when their allies are low on health and covered in dots. I would greatly appreciate it as I’m finding information to be a bit scarce on this forum.

Hvaran.6327:

full healing build is not that good cause anet didn’t made scale of healing power on a good level anywhere on engi including healing bombs so u putting alot in healing power but not getting good responce from your traits or skills.

My bombs heal for about 400-450 per bomb with this setup. Without any healing power they do something like 250 per bomb. I would say that’s a pretty decent increase and worth the gear sink. My guild runs a heavy melee train so they don’t need another semi-squishy running around amongst the heavies doing mediocre power damage or conditions that are going to get cleared by the eles anyway. I’m not trying to kill anything with this build, but merely trying to keep my allies alive while they do all the killing.

Hvaran.6327:

and in your build, if we talk about organized group of 15+ u just wasted 2 traits by vigor/swifntess combo, there are much more usefull traits u could use for even full healing build.

I find the vigor and swiftness to be very useful. Double dodging in invaluable once your if your stability runs out. The other adept alchemy traits don’t suit the purpose of the build.

I’m not saying that your comments are incorrect, just that I have made many tweaks to this build and settled on this setup and have run it successfully on countless raids.

Its actually not an uncommon build. I see plenty of engineers running elixir infused bomb builds on my server which is nice because its very effective when used by two or more engineers. The only sad part is that we don’t get any recognition whatsoever for running healing builds, but we do it anyway.

This is the build I run for guild raids.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcQQJAqelUUpPrtbx6KseRSMqQnD9w+GWtiUkfL/pgcB-zUCBoNBkaAkoGIJFKLiIjt6qIasqGYKVER1OFFRrOAACgEagUAmpMC-w

Celestina.2894:

So yeah, simple question. Just started my thief and wanted to know if zerker is viable in WvW or not.

Full zerker gear can be very good if you have the skill to survive with it. However if you’re new to the class I personally would not recommend it.

If I were you, I would start out with a mix of zerker and soldiers and slowly substitute them as you feel more comfortable about it.

Why would you want to be a Charr anyway?

Asuran engineers get all the ladies. Nuff said.

There’s always the heritage skins if you played guild wars 1. They don’t look too bad and you have unlimited amount of usages for it.

Otherwise I would suggest waiting to hit 80. Its a bit ridiculous to transmute everytime you get a new piece of armour.

First of all I want to thank all for the comments.

After reviewing it I’ve come to realize that runes of torment are a terrible choice. According to the wiki durations cannot be increased further than 100%. So with my already existing 80% duration (or 90% if I run a 30/x/x/x/x build) I wouldn’t be adding much to the durations of my torment procs. I still like the torment sigil and it wouldn’t too much of a gold sink to run with it for a while and decide if it worth hanging on to or not.

Perplexity runes will allow be to add a potential of 4 different conditions with a single auto attack of my pistol. So even if it gets cleansed, I still have a multitude of options to reapply them. The only problem with perplexity runes is that my build offers little to no form of interruption. So the 6th rune of perplexity would actually be a waste of a rune slot since I’ve already maxed my condition duration of confusion too. This leaves with an option to get a small increase to another useful stat such as vitality or condition damage.

As for shrapnel vs forceful explosions. Forceful explosions is undoubtedly better when running with a bomb kit. I plan to use the bomb kit for smaller or solo runs and the grenade kit when running with the zergball. So its good advice to go for 30 points in explosion so I can swap traits and slot skills easily without the need to reskill. Grenades just don’t feel right to me without the Grenadier trait.

Hopefully I will hit 80 by the end of this week or early next week. I’ll keep tweaking around the build on gw2skills till then. Thanks again for the advice.

As my engineer is slowly creeping closer to level 80, I’m starting to think about how I would gear him up once I get there. Just a bit of background, I’ve been playing GW2 for about a year or so. I have played a thief throughout that year and decided to break away from it recently and chose an Engineer because it is by far the most interesting and versatile class in this game. I play this game exclusively for WvW. I do little to no PvE and not really a big sPvP fan.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. I’ve been theory crafting various builds and this is what I’ve come up with.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqalIq6ZX3SfF1LJxoCdG0j8yX8KqQ+/o4tsF-jUCBYNBk8GgCBMHqIas11FRjVzATliIq2jQRzHQoWKAImGB-w

This build relies on maintaining powerful conditions like burn and torment on your opponent. I use P/P because I love blowtorch and after playing a thief for, so long I feel that I can survive without the need to block or reflect. I will probably keep a giver’s shield on call and switch between the two depending on my situation. I will also keep a spare weapon with a sigil of corruption till I reach 25 stacks then swap it out for an offhand weapon with an alternative sigil on it. I’m still on the fence about a leeching sigil but I"ll have to test that out and see how effective it is.

The problem I’m facing is the effectiveness of torment. The runes and sigils are rather pricey so there’s a big risk involved with trying this build out. The sigil and runes aren’t too good at stacking torment and I’m aware that the on heal ability has an internal cooldown even though its not specified in the description. At most I will be able to maintain 3 or 4 stacks of torment on an enemy. However I do like that they are all AoE applications. I have no idea how powerful the torment condition is which leads me to resort to posting this for help from more experienced players.

Or would I simply be better off running with perplexity, nightmare or undead runes and an earth sigil? Any advice on how I can tweak this build will be greatly appreciated. Any advice to scrap this build completely will be equally appreciated as it would save me alota money due to me buying all my gold (since I don’t PvE).

Also: Napalm Specialist > Modified Ammunition???

After a few hours i finally got past the initial download. Now I’m stuck on 2% of the actual download after another few hours. The game ran fine before the patch.

I like to chill behind enemy lines and troll rangers because most of them cant fight back due to being a sucky class.

Knighthonor.4061:

Any plan to fix this?

How do you fix that which is not broken?

Would this change by any chance come with a rank point reset?

I love P/P but I stopped playing it based on the coming patch notes. As stated, the nerf to opportunist alone is enough to put me off this set completely.

Anyway, levelling an engineer now and having a ton of fun with it.

Qaelyn.7612:

I did find through experimentation that I like S/D. The “step in step out” capability on sword #2 seems a powerful combination of offense and defense. My problem is figuring out what to actually do when I “step in”, and not taking so much damage that I “step out” and then am left wondering wht to do next.

I wouldn’t get too attached to that playstyle if I was you.

Generally, Rangers are the easiest to kill in any situation. I feel almost bad when I kill them.

I’ve had the same issue as you do with almost all games. I remember how terrible I was with my rogue on WoW. However after a few weeks of failing I eventually started tearing all classes to shreds to a point that horde didn’t bother coming to Tol Barad anymore because of me. Same with the thief class here. I’m reasonably new to the game and finally I’m starting to notice a rapid improvement in my abilities.

Irrespective of build or gear, you will get better in time as you find yourself more comfortable with your class and learn how to deal with other classes.

This video helped me quite a lot too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUmrfBr1R5s

I hate Necromancers, therefore I do not play one. You should maybe consider following that ideology instead of trying to ruin the class for the people who do enjoy it.

Excalibur.9748:

um a thief is not wanted for ZvZ or GvG. Maybe 1 for scouting, but that’s it. The only class worse in this area is ranger.

Yesterday a blue zerg was up on the hill north of longview (which was had a ton of arrow carts but no trebs in them for some reason) doing the usual catapaulting the north wall. Our zerg was somewhat smaller than theirs (probably like 2/3 the size, maybe less). When we gathered and approached them, they prepared to charge us. Me and another thief decided to cloak and dagger into their zerg and run straight through them to the two catapaulters. We took both catapaulters out in a matter of seconds and destroyed them before the enemy zerg could realize what happened.

I don’t see how you can say that a thief is not wanted for WvW, there’s so much things a thief can pull off that most other classes can’t.

Dee Jay.2460:

The only builds that would want Infusion of Shadows are Cloak and Dagger spamers. But I don’t see them being starved for Initative after the patch.

This all depends on how much of an impact the improved initiative regeneration will have. It would be nice to switch Infusion of Shadow out for Cloaked in Shadow as a D/D thief.

Personally I wouldn’t mix condition damage/duration in with a power/precision build. I don’t see a point at being decent at both but not particularly good at either.

That’s just my opinion, it could work amazingly.

Evernessince.8035:

Yeah this pretty much makes my d/p SR build worthless in WvW. Not to mention I won’t get any initiative if I want to pop blinding powder to increase stealth length.

This pretty much just makes everything crappy…

I don’t see how d/p thiefs will be useless? They still have on demand stealth with a shadowstep, daze and blind field off cooldown. Its still pretty powerful and most probably will still be the strongest thief weaponset in WvW after dec 10.

I understand people who play D/P permastealth builds play it because they feel that rolling their faces across the keyboard is the most efficient way to succeed. You wont be able to gain long durations of stealth anymore (I still have no idea why such long durations of stealth is needed anyway) but you’ll still be able to come out on top on almost every encounter or escape it.

I kind of like this idea. While I don’t have a problem with the current steal mechanic, I must admit it is a bit one dimensional. I wouldn’t even consider it a class mechanic, its more of an extra shadowstep for me.

So +1 to this. I would love to see more depth added to steal.

Also could we have the steal shadowstep work in the same was as infiltrator signet whereby it still works even though the enemy is out of range.

Karolis.4261:

“As for myself, I’ve always hated the perma stealth thief builds, both to play and to use. So really, for WvW I’ve been using either 0/20/30/20 or 0/30/30/10, both are fun, but both have used D/P”.
I have allways hated perma stealth, so i picked d/p combined with 30SA as my build. Makes sense.

Playing D/P doesn’t necessarily mean he’s playing as a permastealth thief. The build doesn’t need long durations of stealth to make it viable. The fact that its on-demand stealth with a shadowstep, daze and blind field that has no cooldown makes it pretty powerful with or without stealth stacking.

Invizible.2960:

Jordo.5913:

Neoheart.2750:

Peow peow.2189:

I saw one if the best spvp thiefs playing warrior the other day was surprised.
But thiefs get hit one way or another each latch, I’m out if this game until they actually do fair balances. Enjoy the condi spam meta

Sad but true. I’m waiting for my eso beta invite then it’s another 30gigs free on my ssd.

i can’t really say anything because of certain circumstances other than….you’ll be as disappointed in elder scrolls as you were with gw2

wildstar on the other hand is lookin pretty legit

Yeah im not really feeling eso, I didnt check out much on wildstar though.

After viewing some of the beta gameplay footage, it would seem that the elder scrolls world that was so amazing in the other games has just become another standard mmorpg game with slightly better lore. I’ll still give it a shot when its released but I’m not expecting to not be disappointed.

Camelot Unchained on the other hand has caught my attention however I’m not planning on leaving GW2 until Anet officially deletes the thief class.

messiah.1908:

in zerg imo no matter what build you tack just be careful and be aware your surrounding

i am running sometime zerk build 0,30,30,10,0 d/d+sb with 3600 attack and 2300 armor which is feets right as long as i know where my enemies are and where my group going to.
i am taking out the necros, eles, mesmer etc fast and clean and go out fast to review mu position

This is pretty much exactly what I do in a zerg situation. Long ranged classes are particularly dangerous to your group when they’re given the freedom to cast from the backlines without any pressure. Most of these players are so focussed on dpsing the heavies in the front that they don’t really take note of the thief stabbing them from behind.

When you down an easy target like a ranger, 5 or so allies will try to resurrect him. Those are 5 less enemies targeting your warriors in the front. If they realize you’re there, they start spamming areas around you. Those are areas which would have been used on your warriors.

When in the middle of a zerg, I find cloak and dagger to be far superior to the BP+HS combo. With some good positioning you can easy take out a handful of targets one at a time in the back before you need to shadowstep or shadow refuge out to lose the heat on you.

For a new thief in WvW I would highly recommend not going full berserker. Maybe later on once you feel your ability to avoid damage is sufficient, you slowly start swapping pieces out. Valkyrie Armor with Beserker weapons and trinkets is a good option. It gives you the same power and crit-damage as a full berserker but with more health instead of precision.

Personally I run a mix of Berserker and Soldier armor with soldier weapons and berserker trinkets. You won’t hit those insanely high backstabs like Mugi but you’ll find that you’ll be able to survive a lot more.

As for runes, I love travellers. The ability to free up a slot (which would have been used on signet of shadows) is invaluable in any spec. Other good options are Lyssa, Divinities or Scholars.

And about shortbows, I don’t find them to be that amazing in terms of damage. Its alright-ish. However a well placed infiltrator’s arrow could save you from certain death.

Straegen.2938:

Its not a significant buff or debuff if a player was already using Opportunist. The math seems to indicate that Opportunist will work as well as it did before. Players who don’t trait Opportunist will see a noticeable improvement in overall initiative regen though.

It depends really on what weapon set you’re using. Sets that use rapid attacks such as Unload or Pistol Whip usually have high initiative costs. Opportunist alleviates some of the stress of this. I could easily gain at least 2 initiative back on every unload I do however if my target evades or for some reason I don’t land it, it really leaves a big hole in my initiative supply. I haven’t done any testing on this but I’m sure I can get just about 2 unloads off in 5 seconds which would cut my regular initiative regeneration down to a fraction of what it used to be. The increase in base regeneration will not make up for this.

Excalibur.9748:

Critical strikes is still mandatory. 30% crit chance, 30% crit damage alone can not be passed on.

Now add onto that executioner or hidden killer…..

CS tree still mandatory for non-condi thieves.

Agreed. As useful as Opportunist was, there’s still too much other reasons to be forced to sink 30 points into critical strikes. This change will not give us any more variability than we already have.

Daendur.2357:

I rewrite here my suggestion for this trait:

Opportunist
Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase base cooldown from 1s to 10s. Cooldown is reduced by 0.3s for each point spend in Critical Strikes

at 15 points : 10s – (0.3*15) = 5.5s
at 20 points : 10s – (0.3*20) = 4s
at 25 points : 10s – (0.3*25) = 2.5s
at 30 points : 10s – (0.3*30) = 1s

You should also not change trigger chance, making the trait almost useless for a 15 points spender but letting it rewarding for deep critical builds.

This way no one will go for 15 points just to have this trait, but ppl who do like critical builds will not receive another nerf.

Thank you.

This would make more sense if you left the trigger chance at 30%.

Because Vekk was awesome

hihey.1075:

For D/D and D/P it’s actually a huge buff.

explain please?

Kanenas.4906:

1. Critical Strikes V, Pistol Mastery trait : Add “Using Unload will return 1 initiative for every 4 bullets hit”. This way it can return up to 2 initiative, and solve somehow the main problem the power PP builds have. It will also work good with the new Body Shot immobilize.

Or they could simply not nerf Opportunist, it would have the same effect.

ryan.6217:

Kaizer.7135:

Link not working for me

It’s just a meme of the joker saying, " Thief gets nerfed after every patch, nobody bats an eye… Nerf warrior once and everyone loses their mind!"

It also contains an image of Heath Ledger dressed as a nurse.

The second link contains an image of Cartman drinking tears off Scott Tenorman’s face, if I recall correctly this was after he tricked him into eating his own parents.

I just like stabbing people with butter knives.

On a slightly related note, the other day I went 1on1 with a warrior. I was playing D/D at the time. He pretty much ran around in circles spamming auto-attack while I was getting easy cloak and daggers off on him. After I downed him he whispered me and told me he reported me for hacking and that my mother would be proud.

I suppose the only way a thief could ever beat a warrior is if he was hacking. Warrior logic 101.

What if you’re asuran?

Despite all the negativity from the proposed changes. I’m happy that they finally doing something about D/P thieves. I’ve played the spec and do occasionally switch my offhand to pistol when scouting or trailing a zerg and I can admit that it really needed this nerf.

As for the nerf to vigorous recovery, there’s still bountiful theft you can rely on for a good uptime of vigour but still feel that this nerf is totally unnecessary.

Looking forward to every thief running a D/D setup (or rerolling warriors).

Not to mention that was the trait that made P/P bearable. Coupled with the nerf to quick recovery I might never use my pistols again.

Personally I would prefer to focus on a Power/Crit build. Splitting your stats up between Power/Crit and Condition damage will just make you okay at both but not exceptional at anything. (Correctly me if I’m misunderstanding the discussion.)

I play power/crit P/P with high initiative regeneration traits and I find myself not using Vital Shot nearly as much as I do unload. For that reason I don’t see squeezing a little condition damage as a viable option. You’ll simply be shooting yourself in the foot and make it bleed a little more.

If you want to go for a build like that, I would say go for P/D instead.

Non-stealth builds can work really well most of the time except when up against a stealth thief. The best you can do is make them run away but you wont ever kill them. Most of them wont leave you alone till they kill you (I guess they’re trying to prove some kind of a point or something) and disappear as soon as you start damaging them.

And if you do for some freak reason do happen to kill them, they’ll party you and rage about how you cheated and want a rematch.

I would say thieves guild would be the most useful. It will allow you to solo more powerful mobs pretty quickly.

What race have you chosen?

I’ve noticed this happens with the Hidden Thief trait that gives you stealth on steal. Only with a pistol main hand too, never with s/x or d/x. I made a P/P build that revolved around stealth via traits and utilities but didn’t really work out because of this. Would be nice if it could get fixed.

GOSU.9574:

I just started playing my thief today after shelving her for months. While using her in WvW I began to notice if I had stealthed and used a stealth skill she was revealed. Is this an old, intentional change? Or is this a bug?

Could you be more specific because this is very vague. The person above me pretty much summed it up but I just wanted to add that you will also be revealed when using Cloak and Dagger before your stealth expires. It happens to me a lot because of lag or poor timing etc.

I’m not going to tell you how to play P/P because quite frankly its one of those builds that hasn’t yet been set in stone. First of all, don’t listen to those people who say P/P sucks because its a really powerful set once you get over the fact that you wont be hiding in stealth 24/7 like you do with other sets. Unloads does damage more or less equal to that of backstabs and can be hit a lot easier and more frequently without putting yourself at too high of a risk.

You’re traits look pretty solid. The only problem I see with your build is your lack of condition removal. Currently the only form of condition removal you have are your Lyssa Runes coupled with Daggerstorm. Lyssa Runes usually work better with Basilisk Venom due to the cooldown. Spider Venom doesn’t really serve a purpose in your build and I would suggest your replace it with Shadowstep. It removes 2 conditions on return and it has huge range which helps a lot for escaping (it breaks stuns too) or chasing down an enemy using our shiny new body shot. Also shadowstep stomps are awesome since you wont be able to stealth stomp.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAqa8YlYm6OHdS4E/5Ey2DgqC5J/DOYPDuyqA-jUDBoLDimoAgsAiII0JPCiZPKrlhFRjV7ATVKpKXCy2bBymD2bQZVKgIWGB-w

This is the build I use when I run P/P, it may not be the best but its what I’m comfortable with. It focusses more on dodges, initiative regeneration and damage buffs under certain conditions. I use S/D as my offspec for the infinite amount of dodges with my high initiative regeneration and condition removal with infiltrator’s strike (when all my other options has been exhausted). This build also has alota damage multipliers such as +10% from pistols, +10% when endurance isn’t full (which it never is), +10% when initiative is over 6 (most of the time) and +20% when your enemy is under 50% health. You could improve that even more using runes like scholar, thief etc. or the flanking strikes trait. I’ve seen my unloads go up to 10k already with the help of some external might stacks.

Its best to keep experimenting with the possibilities of the weapon set. Most players just set it aside without giving it much thought due to its lack of stealth or terrible auto-attack.

I would say a d/p thief. Even a bad one. Maybe I’m just bad but I find it really hard to fight something you can’t see for most of the fight.

Or you could just try running along with the karma train on the eternal battleground. You pretty much just get karma for being there.

The difference between ascended and exotic weapons are really small. Its something like 4 power and 3 precision on a one handed weapon. I’m not sure if that’s going to change or not. I’m also unsure what the stats are of the upcoming ascended armour are but if its anything like the weapons I wouldn’t bother with crafting. Exotic gear isn’t hard to get so stick with that until you find you have enough time and money to invest into crafting.

If you’re running with the zerg, P/P can be very effective in killing enemies quickly from a reasonably safe distance. Running a build like 0/30/0/25/15 you can have that initiative regeneration you need to keep unloading and have a potential damage bonus of +40% when you’re enemy is below 50% health and your initiative is above 6 and endurance is not full.

Technically you wont be supporting with dual pistols but I see it as support when you help to kill you’re enemies fast.

Elxdark.9702:

I’ve tried P/P with my own build and is kittening fun, but it lacks of escapes, if we face a class with short range(aka another thief, warrior,guardian) we’re pretty much kittened.
We can only rely in our evades and that’s all.

I run with Roll for Initiative and Withdraw. Combined with shadowstep you can put up a big enough distance between you and your enemy(*enemies) to escape almost any situation. Swiftness on dodge with vigor on heal helps a lot to keep up swiftness or roll with centaur runes for perma-swiftness.

The new immobilize isn’t too amazing but its an improvement compared to what we had before at least.