Guild Wars 2

Umm… If I recall correctly, you can preview using the Total Makeover Kit

Since it’s only used up when accepting the changes, it also shows your armour on the character (Which annoyed me when I used it ‘cause it kept showing my helm when I’m trying to adjust my hair to fit with the rest of my armour)

Sir Vincent III.1286:

That formula can’t be right.

It would take 3250 Power to reach the 400 max (using the .0233 multiplier) and 4300 Power to hit the cap of 425.

How in the world can you get 4300 Power?

Full ’zerker + food + might only gives roughly around 3400-3500.

Full Soldier equipment + Soldier Crests on Weapons + 5x Runes of the Fighter, 1x Soldier Crest, 30/0/30/10/0 build, 200 Power on Kill food + Sharpening Stone + Assassin’s Signet + 25 Bloodlust = 3322 Power

25 Stacks of Might on top of that would give 4197 Power

Add a Warriors Banner of Strength for an additional 170 Power = Total of 4367 Power

Not ideal… But plausible.

My math I’ve done on the subject makes Vitality better than Toughness in most circumstances (Even more so if any points are put into Death Magic trait line)

But since the main reason to decide between Carrion and Rabid is due to Rabid providing extra crit for more Barbed Precision procs then you should be fine going Carrion (As long as your Sigils aren’t also crit based)

When a Venom procs, the damage is applied as a small number (Similar to that of Conditions) it will also proc the heal portion of it.

It’s not bonus damage on attacks, it’s a completely separate attack that occurs when the Venoms hit (If I recall correctly, it also doesn’t show in the combat log)

The increase of power scaling should mean that instead of being “0.0175 * Power” it is instead “0.02275 * Power”

100% Bleed duration (133% with Sceptre) – Via Runes + Food + Traits. 2x Krait, 2x Afflicted, 2x Centaur for 45% Bleed duration. Up to 40% from Food (Rare Veggie Pizza), 20% from Hemophillia Trait. Lingering Curse allows the duration to go up to 133% for the Sceptre Bleeds (Auto-attacks + Skill #2)

For gear, use Rabid (Rampager can also have some use in certain slots, but you lose out on some Condition Damage) to gain high enough precision to proc Barbed Precision more often (1 stack of Bleed for 1 second base (Up to 2 seconds with 100% duration)

Sigils – Earth is the standard one, it’ll proc a lot when gearing for crit to get Barbed Precision. However, the duration and internal cooldowns does make Geomancy slightly better for getting more stacks (Maximum of 6 stacks compared to Earth’s 5)

Geomancy requires either Weapon-swapping or hopping into and out of Death Shroud (Synergises well with Weakening Shroud Trait) every 9 seconds and being in close proximity to the targets (Geomancy procs in a PBAoE) but this also means you can hit up to 5 targets with those 6 Bleeds, which makes Epidemic even stronger (Possible to get 12 Bleeds out of Geomancy on multiple targets)

Due to the way that Conditions work, each point of Condition Damage will give the same increase in damage no matter what level you are or how much condition damage you have.

For Bleeds the formula is:

0.5 * Level + 2.5 + (0.05 * Condition Damage)
For damage per tick

Meaning that each point of Condition Damage will add 0.05 damage per tick (For a 10 second Bleed that’d average out at 0.5 damage per Bleed for a single point of condition damage)

This means that for condition builds (Especially ones like D/D that can stack up multiple bleeds (25 Bleeds = 1.25 damage per tick per point of Condition Damage)) there is no “Cap” on Condition Damage where it becomes less effective, each additional point has the same effectiveness increase as all the previous ones (A linear scaling)

The only other way to increase Condition Damage output would be to get Condition Duration which will increase the damage each application does (As long as you hit a plateau)

For example:

Bleed for 10 damage per tick over 10 seconds = 100 damage total
Bleed for 10 damage per tick over 15 seconds = 150 damage total

This is made even more effective by additional Condition Damage (It’s rather easy to get 100% duration in PvE/WvW without having to give up much Condition Damage to get it) as the stronger the tick, the better the damage gains are from additional ones.

All pets (Minions, Clones, Thieves, Ranger pets, Elementals etc) all got Agony resistance based off the owner in the same patch.

That’s not consistent with all other runes

Which effects are listed as what you get for each number of runes, rather than adding together all the bonuses for each number (Which would be confusing as people may think you’ll get way more stats from Divinity Runes than you actually do).

For example:

Superior Runes of the Mesmer
1 – 25 Power
2 – 15 Precision
3 – 50 Power
4 – 35 Precision
5 – 90 Power
6 – 33% Daze duration increase

This gives a total of 165 Power, 50 Precision and 33% Daze duration increase with the 6 runes. Not just the specific bonus for the number you have, but all the previous ones.

I’ve experienced this.

Occasionally it was fixed via re-logging.

Other times the only fix was deleting my web cache (Since the TP utilizes the internet, it sometimes is affected by the cache)

5 Might stacks is 175 Power (35 Power and 35 Condition damage per stack of Might)

You get that on top of the additional burst from 15% additional damage on your next 5 attacks (Often CnD > Mug > BS combo)

I think that’s fair, lose out on 5 power and gain 15% additional damage for 5 seconds.

Considering that people currently use it without Signets of Power (So they lose 90 power and gain only the active effect)

Also, if they changed (I’m guessing you want a buff) Signets of Power, then all other signets a Thief can roll with will be even more powerful.

The idea about signets is that you have a nice passive boost until a situation arises where the active effect is more useful than the passive.

I don’t get what the big deal is about these new “Boon hate” stuff…

Warriors – If going 30 points into a tree that people tend not to go that far into (Also, remember that going that far will limit build diversity. If you see Warriors in PvP, they’re most likely going to be 10/X/10/X/30 in order to capitalize on the changes that are coming in) they can deal an extra 3% damage per unique boon on the target. Which considering Protection is 33% damage reduction (Also pretty good uptime on most Guardians/Elementalists) won’t make a big difference.

People saying “Oh noes applying boons to allies is going to get them killed” but if you as a group of people have trouble with taking down/avoiding a Warrior, then you’d probably die regardless if Boon-hate…

The Block ignoring is a new active effect from Signet of Might (They said they were also buffing other actives on various signets, possibly on other classes aswell) where they stated that the next 3 attacks will ignore block. It’s not up all the time, it’s not “You’re attacks will hit through invulnerability too”, it may not even be picked up by everyone due to it taking up a Utility slot and provides little utility when fighting non-Guardians (It will give 180 power passive with an active of block ignoring. How egotistical do you need to be to think that your class is so strong that ALL Warriors you’ll face will have build themselves purely to countering your class?)

As far as Thieves boon stealing goes, the weapon set is pretty lackluster as it is (Due to how bad Thief defence is, necessitating them to go Dagger/X burst for the most part) and they never said if they’d do anything to make the second hit less easy to dodge (Currently using Flanking Strike, nearly everyone already dodges the second strike)

This is also coupled with the fact that Thief burst is coming down with the change to Mug not critting, thus it means that even if the Thief does steal your boons their burst is being reduced by a fair amount.

How to make MM viable for leveling:

1. Equip Staff.
2. Use ability #2

MM is actually one of the most effective ways to level a Necromancer, the minions do nice damage and since they’re independent of your stats you can build yourself any way you want (Power, Condition Damage or Vitality/Toughness)

With the perma-regeneration from Staff #2 (Provided they’re close enough, though with the improved size trait from Death Magic line it’s easier to get them in range) minions can be pretty survivable.

As far as minions themselves go I rate them in this order:

1. Bone Minions – There’s 2 of them so various traits get additional benefit, they’re melee and so easier to get regen on them from Staff #2 and blowing them up hits pretty hard.
2. Bone Fiend – Nice damage, and one of the toughest Minions in my experience (Others tend to get killed more often)
3. Blood Fiend – With the recent buff, is a pretty nice heal. Though I’d probably recommend Consume Conditions for the most part outside utilizing Vampiric Master.
4. Flesh Golem – Does good damage (If hitting constantly, will out DPS Lich Form in a power build, in the sense it’ll do more damage than the highest DPS rotation from Lich would do on top of your regular damage rather than instead of it) and regenerates life out of combat. Though does have a long cooldown and likes to suicide into things.
5. Flesh Wurm – One of the better performing minions, though for leveling the long-ish cooldown turret becomes “Meh” for non-event open world PvE
6. Shadow Fiend – High damage, but a squishy melee minion that seems to spend the most time dead out of any minions I’ve used.

I guess it’s similar to Thieves “Headshot” skill which isn’t intended to do damage and so only does 84 damage…

It’s supposed to be a short cooldown mobility/control skill, which it does pretty well (10 second cooldown, 3 second blind, 600 movement and a teleport rather than a Leap so it’s unaffected by movement impairing effects such as Cripple, Chill or Immobilise)

If the Ranger is close enough to hit with Fetid Ground, there’s a good chance to kill them.

Also if you can fear their pet if they get it to heal (Lick Wounds can be buggy)

If their Lick Wounds bugs out and doesn’t work then there’s a better chance of beating them.

Though this is dependant on their pet being dead and pet swap on cooldown when you’re both downed (As the pet can still be attacking you along with the Ranger) since the damage you’ll take from the pet is likely to kill you quickly (Especially if Beastmaster specced/Jaguar or Raven with F2 skill up)

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|8.1g.h15.d.1g.h1|b.1g.h15.8.1g.h1|1g.7f.1g.7f.1g.7f.1g.7f.1g.7f.1g.7f|1g.61.1g.61.1g.61.1g.61.1g.61.1g.61|u39c.0.a3.u257.0|54.1|3s.44.3z.3y.0|e

Is my current build, can be pretty sturdy if minions are attacking (Lots of life siphoning)

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|8.1c.9c.d.1c.9c|6.1c.9c|1c.76.1c.76.1c.76.1c.76.1c.76.1c.9c|1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c|u6ac.0.u256.a1.0|2m.1|3r.4d.3u.4a.0|e

A tanky “Maximum Power” build that I ran whilst leveling and getting used to Power Necro

Then of course there are other builds possible with Valkyrie/Knights etc gear and various trait setups

Skladak.6143:

I’ve been wearing these on my guardian yesterday and tried to get them to pop by having a mob bring me down below 10% of health.

Don’t forget it’s not being brought below 10% health that procs it, rather it’s taking damage when under 10% health that procs it (Which is quite dangerous especially with the low base health of a Guardian)

I’m expecting a different visual of my character and perhaps an action bar change, neither ever happened.

Visually, you should become stealthed, so being transparent with just an white outline on your character. Action bar won’t change as you don’t have any stealth specific abilities (Only Thieves get stealth specific abilities)

How long does the stealth last?

The stealth should last the default 3 seconds when it procs.

Also, there may be an issue with it sharing a cooldown with other % based procs such as Zealot’s Speed and Shimmering Defense as well as being broken if something is taking damage from a Symbol (Such as the one from Zealot’s Speed)

flow.6043:

Actually the only weapon you can really be sure about is the scepter because you’ll have to go conditions with it.
All the other weapons can be used in power, conditions or hybrid builds. For example Khalifa is using an off-hand dagger in his power build.

You don’t have to go conditions with Sceptre.

My current build in full ’zerker gear (30/0/10/30/0 Minion life siphon) I use Sceptre/Dagger in my off-set for AoE and ranged damage.

Sceptre actually hits decently hard in a berserker set up, especially the #3 with a few conditions up.

The only trait I hate is Writ of Exaltation.

Due to how necessary it is to reliably get multiple hits of symbols out in PvP/WvW whilst also being in a tree with other really strong traits (Superior Aria, Empowering Might, Two-Handed Mastery and Pure of Voice for example)

Slagburst.5304:

I would rather have 5k-9k Deathly Claws with the spite 30 trait then a few stacks of might.

Indeed.

The trait is extremely powerful for Power builds.

Which it should be, what with being a Grandmaster trait in the Power line (Before anyone goes and rants about it being a condition line, all classes have Condition Duration tied with their Power line and considering that nearly all of the traits in it benefit only Power based builds it really is a Power line)

Might is not as effective as a flat 20% bonus onto damage, especially if running with groups that can keep multiple Might stacks up anyway (Heck BiP + Sigils of Battle can keep up 16 Might stacks for a decent amount of time)

My typical reasoning for going for Rangers first are:

• Pets = CnD fodder, so it’s easy to get free stealth most of the time
• The typical Ranger is pretty bad, not dodging many attacks, swapping to melee weapons and running into the middle of Black Powder smoke fields etc
• Steal is a heal, which helps to reduce risk of being killed
• If they’re at the back of the group, they’ve usually got LB equipped, the auto attack of which doesn’t very little up close
• Most rangers think they can go GC ‘cause their pet can tank (So they’re usually squishy)

This, of course, is based upon the “Average” encounter, it’s entirely possible for a Ranger to counter a Thief really hard (Traps, channeled abilities that continue through stealth, more traps, evades on melee weapons, oh god the traps)

Considering the other classes are usually naturally more tanky (Guardians + Eles with all their Boons, Necro’s with DS, Mesmers with Distortion and Confusion etc)

Rescorla.9301:

This allowed us to stealth past some trash mobs. It doesn’t tell you that in the tooltip so I wouldn’t have known about it unless someone told me.

Actually it kinda does…

“Creates a pulsing refuge at the target area that heals allies and cloaks them in stealth”

It then lists what is given per pulse as “3 seconds stealth + 1420 healing” and 3 seconds * 5 (There are 5 pulses as it lasts for 4 seconds + 1 initial pulse) = 15 seconds of total stealth then due to 4 seconds being stood inside it there is ~10 seconds left after it fades of everyone affected by it being in stealth.

I read on another thread if you use Shadow Refuge and fire your SB thru the combo field functions as a lifetap and heals you.

This is because no tooltip actually explains what Combo Effects various finishers create when used in the different fields.

Are there a lot of other examples of thief utility not documented on the tooltips?

I can’t think of anything that isn’t stated on the tooltips…

I guess Shadow Steps not having a “Doesn’t interrupt Stomping” line may count (Though due to the mechanics of the game you can work it out. Instant cast stuff like Shadow Steps don’t interrupt abilities)

No.

There are no % Damage increase affects condition damage.

Condition Damage is only affected by the Condition Damage stat.

phor.7952:

Precision and Critical Damage affect power scaling in a non-linear manner, so the comparison you make between power and condition damage directly (while true) doesn’t come to a conclusion that is useful for players trying to decide how to gear (outside of levels 1-20).
20-60 you need to include at least one other stat(precision/critdmg), then at 60 the comparison should involve power/precision/critdmg vs conditiondmg/duration.

When comparing the damage per point granted by Power at various levels to the damage per point granted by Condition Damage, including other stats is irrelevant.

Then considering comparing Condition Duration would really need to be about a level 60 or higher character (Though with most people leveling, it’d be a level 80 character since people tend to not buy Runes whilst still going through gear at such a high rate)

Involving other stats, would in-fact just go to counter your original point that “Condition Damage > Power/Precision” in low levels due to scaling with “Power/Precision scaling better at higher levels”. When it’s been shown that Power on it’s own scales better than Condition Damage at all levels, but more so at lower levels than at higher.

Involving other stats such as Precision and Critical Damage would further increase the scaling that Power provides at all levels.

Taking just two data points at level 1 and 80 and comparing only power and condition damage just won’t do it.

It does. It shows what the scaling is like at the very beginning, and also what it ends up like. Therefore you can know that during the leveling process the scaling will drop from the starting scaling (0.973 damage per point of Power) to the end scaling (0.369 damage per point of Power) whilst for conditions they will always have the same damage per point (Bleeding is 0.05 damage per point of Condition damage)

But to say that you can compare the scaling without the actual armor values (when armor is a divisor in the entire direct damage formula) is just crazy.

You don’t need the actual armour values when comparing them. You can use the tooltip armour values aswell, which while slightly higher than most NPC’s actual armour still gives valid results (If it scales better even when it’s being divided by a larger number than you’ll encounter in most PvE, then it’s even more kitten to the idea that Condition Damage scales better)

There isn’t a way to remove Aegis/Hide the effect currently.

At the moment, the only way to do it would be to get hit and have 40 seconds before it reappears (If using Virtue of Courage before getting hit, the window of opportunity will increase to 90 seconds)

phor.7952:

I never said we CAN’T know.
I was simply implying that Dasorine hadn’t done the necessary work to make that statement with any sort of confidence.

:X

Well… He can…

Especially when comparing it to Condition scaling.

Conditions scale linearly – A percentage of your condition damage is added on to the base damage of the condition (The base scales with level). This means that the effect of Condition Damage on the damage of conditions doesn’t utilise level into the equation, thus it scales the same rate at all levels (Thus meaning it’s better at higher level when gear has more stats on)

Direct Damage scales at a decreasing rate. Since it’s a multiplier that gets divided by armour, due to the way that armour increases as level increases this means that the damage gain from Power decreases throughout levels.

Of course he can’t be certain about it being every 10 levels (Theoretically it’d be every level it gets weaker, but just on a very small scale that’d be hard to notice without a weapon with no attack range (Similar to the “Steady” weapons in Heart of the Mists) due to an increase in toughness upon leveling (Toughness directly correlates to additional armour) as well as a natural increase in armour)

For example:

Low level:-
Weapon dealing 142 – 150 (Average 146)
Base of 24 Power
Attack with a coefficient of 1 (Makes it simple)
Armour of target is 150

146 * 24 * 1 / 150 = 23.36 Damage

Increase of 20 Power = 146 * 44 * 1 / 150 = 42.82

An increase of 19.46 or 83%

High level:-
Weapon dealing 905 – 1000 damage (953 Average)
Base power of 916
Attack with coefficient of 1
Armour of target is 2600

953 * 916 * 1 / 2600 = 335.7

Increase of 20 power = 953 * 936 * 1 / 2600 = 343.08

An increase of 7.38 or ~2.2%

This shows that at higher levels of armour the damage gain per point of power decreases, even when factoring in Average Weapon damage increase as well as base Power.

Just using the values for the 2 extremes (Level 1 base stats and level 80 base stats) it’s possible to see the change that has to occur to get from the level 1 stats to the level 80 stats.

Meanwhile, Conditions will always use exactly the same scaling regardless of level (5% of your Condition damage for Bleed, 25% for Burning, 10% for Poison, 15% for Confusion) with the only change level induces being the base damage (Half your level + 2.5 For Bleed, 4 times your level + 8 for Burning, your level + 4 for Poison and 1 and a half times your level + 10 for Confusion)

So you can see how they scale both with level and with gear.

If you want to know:

Armour = Defence + Toughness
Defence = Armour rating on gear
Stats = Base of 24. Levels 1-9 give 4 stats, 10-19 give 6, 20-29 give 8, 30-39 give 10, 40-49 give 12, 50-59 give 14, 60-69 give 16, 70-79 give 18 and level 80 gives 20

phor.7952:

Dasorine.1964:

every 10 levels the scaling of power gets a tiny bit weaker due to the way things scale

In order to make this statement, you have to know the armor value of PvE mobs…

Implying that we can’t know armour value of PvE mobs?

Which is simple to figure out…

Level 80 tooltips use an armour value of 2600 (Actual NPC armour varies, but you can use this slightly higher base to still figure out how scaling would work)
So you can work out the coefficients for skills using Tooltip number * 2600 / (Average weapon damage * Power)

Then using this coefficient you can rearrange the equation to get armour using any level tooltips:

Coefficient * (Average weapon damage * Power) / Tooltip number = Average NPC Armour

darkwombat.3695:

I was wondering if anyone had both a Norn Guardian and Warrior? Are you concerned that they are too much alike, both wearing heavy mail?

I have a Norn Guardian and a Norn Warrior (As well as Norn Engineer, Norn Elementalist, Norn Thief, Norn Ranger, Norn Mesmer and Norn Necromancer)

I don’t find them too much alike…

My Norn Warrior is dressed in “Barbarian” like armour, to show off tattoo’s and to fit the playstyle of running into a fight and causing as much chaos as possible (Or to blast away targets with a few rifle shots)

Ny Norn Guardian is dressed in more plate armour, to show the favouring of defence over mobility, appearing as a sturdy combatant rather than a furious maniac.

This isn’t to mention the differences in the playstyle (Warriors are more about hitting things with large weapons, Guardians use more magical attacks)

So just because they use the same armour type, doesn’t mean that you have to use the same armour skins (That’s what Transmutation Stones are for)

Well, Mesmers are one of the strongest classes for 1v1 since they can counter most classes;

• They have burst damage and Confusion to counter Thieves and Engineers
• They have boon stripping and burst damage to counter Ele’s and Guardians
• They have condition removals to counter Necro’s (Along with enough damage to at least keep pressure up if not outright burst them down)
• They have high in-combat mobility to counter Warriors
• They have multi-target pressure to counter Rangers (Can easily take out pets while keeping pressure on the Ranger) and other Mesmers.

The tools they have available make them really strong in 1v1 regardless of what they’re up against (Though, they won’t have the direct counters to all builds all the time, they will have to prepare weapon sets and utilities beforehand)

Base regen is 1 initiative per 1.33 seconds.

Patience gives 1 initiative per 3 seconds you are stealthed (Unlike other “In stealth” traits this doesn’t tick upon entering stealth)

Angus.7460:

My questions are:

• What sort of HP pool would I be looking at with 1700 vitality?

18645 health.

With the 1714 in your build you’ll have 18785 health.

• Would I be better off aiming for high toughness?

The question of which is best (Vitality, Toughness or mixture) has arguments for both sides.

The math I’ve done shows Vitality being better than toughness when taking more than 500 DPS incoming (Including factoring in healing)

• What sort of critical chance would I be looking at? I’m intending to have 100% crit out of stealth trait anyway.

24.38%

• Does critical damage cap at 100% (which would be 250% of normal damage?)

Nope, Critical Damage can keep increasing above 100%

• Which exotic armors give Valkryie stats?

Crafted Valkyrie stuff gives Valkyrie stats.

mrauls.6519:

Another question: What’s the damage reduction with 2,910 toughness

63.55% (49.87% increase over base)

tiffycat.1264:

Woljnir.7810:

My Norn thief. Only level 27 at the moment.

what armor is that? i’ve never seen it before.

Chest: Krytan Armour (From Gem store)
Legs: Norn Cultural Tier 1
Boots: Prowler
Gloves: Various different possibilities
Head: Outlaw

I’d assume that to gain the highest DPS as a Guardian a build like:

25 II, VII
25 VI, VIII
0
20 III, IX
0

Full Berserker gear. 6x Runes of the Scholar (If you can keep your health above 90% otherwise 5x Runes of the Scholar + 1 Ruby Orb)
Utilities: Sword of Justice, Hammer of Wisdom, Whatever you want for the last slot.

Allowing for:
10% damage vs Burning targets
5% damage with Greatsword
10% damage with Symbols
10% damage vs targets with conditions
3 stacks of Vulnerability (1% increased damage per stack) on Blind
1 stack of Vulnerability per pulse of a Symbol

For a total of 39% additional damage (49% if getting the Scholar rune bonus)

That said, I’ve not tested out the DPS. It’s possible a Might stacking build would do better.

In any case, this is an outline for a very glassy build that would need to be played very well in order to live since it’s trading all possible defence for offence.

They do work, it’s just it’s not shown in the character sheet.

Same problem with Rune bonuses and such that also work yet don’t show on the character sheet.

Travlane.5948:

taril …only if on flat terrain. ifin a valley or around rocks. the ccamera angle is very debilitating. its rather tough on many cases. i think they should let us bring out the max distance from camera a lil more. seems too close.

Still better than the similar skill that Mesmers have.

Which not only has the same limitations (Due to both being teleports) but also is uncontrollable and requires a target to use.

I’ve not had much issue with camera angles myself to be honest, the only times I’ve failed with Shadow Escape is when there’s rocks and stuff on the ground that the teleport get’s caught on.

Silver.4798:

The only time I want to swap out of hammer time is when I can no longer stay in the fight and live, i.e. took too much damage need to get some heals off, or I’m being ranged by some annoying dredge or other mobs, etc. Staff offers some ranged utility but doesn’t really address the kitten I gotta stabilize or else I’m dead!" issue.

I’d suggest Mace/Focus for this.

Mace provides:

A Heal in the #1 chain
Regeneration granting Symbol on the #2 (If traiting for Symbols, this and Hammer symbols are used very often and will get decent benefit from the traits
A block on the #3 that can provide Protection if you aren’t hit

While Focus provides:

Regeneration, Blind and Condition removal on the #4
Block for 3 attacks on the #5 (Which can be used while CC’d or when using other abilities)

This allows for a fair amount of healing whilst avoiding some damage. Mace also feels similar to Hammer when using it due to similar auto-attack speeds so that’d be a bonus aswell.

Shadow Escape is extremely good at stopping stomps.

The ability to choose the direction and distance it travels means you can stop any number of people stomping you most of the time (Uneven terrain may prevent this)

It has on many occasions provided me with enough time to use Smoke Bomb to again stop any number of stomps regardless of Stealth/Invulnerability/Distortion/Stability.

Compare Shadow Escape to something like Mesmer’s Deception skill which teleports randomly (Which can allow them to still be hit by the original stomp if it doesn’t take them far enough away) and requires a target to cast it on.

The only upside to Mesmer’s Deception is that people often waste time stomping the Clone and that the Mesmer and the Clone can stack up a crap tonne of Confusion on a target making it unsafe for low health players to stomp…

iKeostuKen.2738:

Their legendary for a reason tho :/. I dont see whats so legendary about a sword that looks cool but does nothing significantly different from a normal sword. Nothing is really making me strive to even obtain a legendary atm.

There are a few things to do at max level:

1) Get nice looking gear (Either crafted in Mystic Forge, Legendaries, Dungeon gear, Karma item)

2) WvW

3) Fractals

4) sPvP

Neither of these will grant bonuses to the player that will make them (Both what they have the skill to achieve and what they’ve spent time achieving) more powerful than anyone else (Aside from the small bonuses that WvW exp gives)

When so much of the end-game is about vanity (Look at all the different Exotics and then look how easy it is to get a set from crafting/the Trading Post) the motivation around going for Legendaries becomes Prestige (Look at the luck, time and money I put into getting this (Or, look how much disposable income I have to get the gems to trade for gold and buy a Legendary off the TP >.>)) and the unique skins (Also custom particle effects such as Auras, Footfalls, Trails and on hit effects)

Making it so that Legendaries give an inherent advantage over people without them (Even if just for PvE) would make it so that people have to get Legendaries in order to be the best that they can be. For example, lots of people don’t currently want a Legendary either because they don’t want to put that much effort into just a skin or because they don’t like any of the Legendaries for the weapon types they’re using, making it so that these people would need to get a Legendary to stay on par with the people who have them would cause them to get upset (Rightly so)

That said, if Legendary weapons got unique attack animations (Without effecting how skills work, activation times or post-activation animation cooldowns) in the same way that they have unique particle effects, then that’d be a great addition that would help bring some more vanity effects to the weapons. Though the major issue this would cause is trying to recognise what abilities people are using in WvW and to a lesser extent PvE.

Guardian:

Good DPS, multiple ways to play (Can be Bunker and never die, Support and provide lots of boons to allies as well as condition removals, can go DPS and be pretty tough while putting out damage with high mobility (Through Meditations))

Lower health means that you need to focus on utilizing Boons to stay alive, which can be fun to do (Also gives nice defence even if going full zerker)

Warrior:

High damage capabilities, a few ways to play (Healing shout builds, zerker builds and the 1-shot KS build is also viable for WvW skirmishing)

Higher base health but lacks active defences to prevent Conditions and burst damage (Outside of some CC and Block on shield) but makes up for it with higher uptime of offensive Boons like Fury, Might and to a lesser extent Swiftness (Prevents kiting when mobility skills are on cooldown)

So it comes down to more defensive style (Guardian) or more glassy burst style (Warrior)

For me, I favour going a DPS build on Guardian and putting out good damage with decent survivability.

That said, I do have a warrior for the 1-shot KS build:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru_rXq2LYg0

Which is so stupid, yet hilarious every time…

mrauls.6519:

Barely a difference lol! Would the gap between 3,000 and 3,050 be larger with Heavy armor?

The numbers I posted are with heavy armour. Including the base damage reduction increase ignoring the heavy armour bonus (In the brackets)

If you mean how much damage reduction will you have with 3000 and 3050 Toughness:

If using 1836 (Light armour base) as the base of damage reduction (So 1836 armour = 0% damage reduction, giving the heavy armour base 2127 armour as 13.68% damage reduction) then it would be:

3000 Toughness = 64.19% damage reduction (Increase of 50.51% over base)
3050 Toughness = 64.54% damage reduction (Increase of 50.86% over base)

Moira Dryade.6498:

Fail that I let him go into stealth? Oh Lord please tell me how I can prevent them to do this? I’m very interested.

Dodge the CnD (Very obvious animation, half a second cast time, costs half their initiative to use thus dodging 2 of them = no initiative left on the Thief)

If they’re D/P interrupt the Heartseeker (Combo costs 75% of their initiative, so if you counter it once, then it’s likely that they won’t have the initiative to try again)

If they pop Shadow Refuge to stealth, then Fear/knockback them out of it to give them revealed or spam AoE’s into it (Since they have to stay inside it for the full duration to get the stealth)

If they use Hide in Shadows you can interrupt it (It’s a 1 second cast time with obvious and shiny heal animation) or alternatively, let them cast it and judge how long it’ll take for them to walk over to you, and get behind you and then dodge the inevitable backstab attempt (After which, the stealth will most likely run out and they’re now down a Heal skill for 30 seconds)

If they use Blinding Powder, then judge how long it’d take for them to get to you and get behind you (Pro-tip, if you are constantly moving and changing direction it becomes less likely that a backstab will be successful, and a higher chance of the Thief getting a Facestab for considerably less damage and the revealed debuff) and dodge the backstab. This is one of the 2 Stealths that can’t be countered due to it being instant cast and targetless (Though it’s not used very much due to the little utility it brings when stuff like Shadowstep removes conditions and stuns and Shadow Refuge provides healing and long duration stealth)

If they use Shadow Trap… Then I don’t know how you’d counter that since I’ve not faced anyone who actually used one…

I did used to use Torch.

Back before the nerf to Life Siphon on crit food I made a highly damaging Sword/Torch build that used the rapid attacks from Sword #1, Sword #3 and Torch #5 to proc the siphons from food (With Torch #4 being used for nice AoE burning)

This build allowed me to go full-zerker whilst still having good survivability.

Now though, the 1 second cooldown on the food means that all these multi-hits (Sword #1 with the 3 hits on the third chain, Sword #3 with the 2.6 attacks per second and Torch 5 with AoE 2.35 attacks per second) aren’t as good with the food since they won’t proc more often and don’t do as much raw damage as something like Greatsword or Hammer.

That said, Torch #4 is still amazing and I miss it from my Sword/Focus weapon set I’m using (For defence and mobility; Blind and Shadowstep (Lightstep as Guardian?) on Sword #2, Projectile absorb on Sword #3, Blind and Regen from Focus #4 and 3 blocks on Focus #5)

Cleyran Knight.8291:

Burn also suffers from an even worse scaling problem: It only ticks every second. Do you know how many 1 second burns there are? A lot. Do you know how much do those benefit from having 95% extra condition/burn duration? Zero. In order for condition duration to affect these short lived burns, you have to stack them with more burns, until you get a number that’s >= the next natural number.

Just like to point out:

Due to the way that all conditions tick at the same time (Based off the first condition applied)

Applying a 1.5 second burn 0.5/0.4/0.3/0.2/0.1 seconds before the next tick occurs will actually give 2 ticks of damage. So having 99% condition damage when using 1 second burns is not useless (You end up with a large chance for the second tick if there are currently conditions on the target)

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Then why does Jump Shot break it and cause Revealed if it damages something?
Disclaimer: I don’t know if other Leaps break it or not, since only Thief and Engineer have Smoke fields on land, making it far more difficult to test on anyone else.

Most likely because Jump Shot does 2 attacks, one when going into the air and another when landing.

I assume there’s some sort of interaction with the first shot giving stealth and the second one then removes it (Sort of like when using BP > HS whilst already stealthed, hitting a target will cause revealed)

Travlane.5948:

imo you shouldnt run crit items/gear with a bleed build. they dont mix well.

When it comes to Bleed builds you have 2 main options for gear:

Carrion – Condition Damage, Power + Vitality.
Rabid – Condition Damage, Precision + Toughness.

Now, the Vitality and Toughness both work as a defensive stat (How well they work can be saved for a different discussion) leaving the additional stats to compare being Power and Precision.

Power – Increases the damage of attacks that apply the Bleeds (Sneak Attack, Vital Shot, Death Blossom)

Precision – Increases chance to do additional damage on attacks that apply Bleeds (A pseudo damage increase) in a way that also bypasses Weakness and also allows “On crit” procs to occur such as Sigils of Earth (Extra Bleeds), Strength (Might = 35 Power and Condition Damage per stack), Generosity (Condition Transfer) and if traited for it Opportunist (Chance for extra initiative, which is highly valuable for Death Blossom spam)

Meaning that Crit Bleed builds actually have more synergy than the Power Bleed builds do.

Dasorine.1964:

Not heard that it caps at 100% before (though I tend towards not bothering with duration that much) you sure about that?

Yeah.

Condition and Boon durations can get to a maximum of 100% bonus (Double the length of base) any points above this are not used.

The only case in which something can achieve higher than that is Necromancers with their Grandmaster trait that increases the duration of conditions from their Sceptre by 33% which for some unknown reason allows them to go up to 133% condition duration with their Sceptre skills.

Fade.7658:

It depends if that extra 10% agony would bump you to 25%/50%/75% duration etc.

If you only have a total of 10% condition duration, another 10% won’t make much, if any difference. You need to hit the 25/50/75/100% increments to see any benefit.

The 25/50/75/100% Plateau’s are for 4 second duration conditions (Such as those from P/D condition builds)

For D/D the Bleeds from Death Blossom are 10 seconds long so have 10/20/30/40/50/60/70/80/90/100% Plateau’s for additional seconds.

For Caltrops the bleeds are 3 seconds so has 33/66/100% Plateau’s for additional seconds.

This means that for a D/D Condition Thief the only time a 10% increase will do little to nothing is when already at 100% duration, where it will do nothing.

Ultramatum.5162:

Hope that helps.

Well, that makes sense…

I hadn’t really thought about the lack of Stun Breaks on Consecrations, which would heavily favour SM for the ability to break CC.

I guess with my Shout build I won’t necessarily need 3 Stun Breakers (Though, ideally more Stun Breakers are good Stun Breakers if going against multiple targets and can’t get enough Stability out)

If you already have the Revealed debuff from attacking from stealth within the previous 4 seconds you won’t be stealthed from Blinding Powder.

Occasionally if you have a ranged attack flying to a target and pop Blinding Powder before the projectile hits the target, then the attack can break the stealth causing Revealed.

If you have a ground targeted AoE patch on the floor (Such as Caltrops or “Throw Gunk”) the ticks of damage it does can count as an attack and break stealth immediately.