Guild Wars 2

If you just want to gank players or pick at zergs, something with a lot of damage and stealth or mobility like another Mesmer would be the most effective. If you want to 3vX effectively or beat good players of the same party size who have a solid group composition, something with some sustain that can take/kite pressure yet still do damage is what works the best. Celestial D/D Elementalist would be the best for a party of that size to fit this role as it has much higher mobility and damage than support builds and can stomp effectively in the outnumbered situations with high protection uptime, Armor of Earth and Mist Form. It has better mobility and sustain compared to other builds that fit this hybrid role currently with some group support and CC thrown in. A support Guardian becomes more effective than a celestial D/D Elementalist in a full group of five mainly because of group stability combined with cleanses, but it’s not bad to have the Elementalist as part of that group of five either.

The expansion is so close though, things are going to change up; the amount of cleave damage on downed players seems like it will be insanely higher (Reaper, Scrapper, Herald, Chronomancer, etc) and there will be more abilities that can reveal players from stealth. I personally think that celestial D/D Elementalist will not be as strong as the new hybrids coming into the game such as celestial Scrapper, hybrid Druid, or with strong possibility, Herald. I also am not convinced that having dedicated support classes in your group will be necessary because of the amount of damage and CC being introduced on both ends of a fight, somewhat making it pointless in a way. Ultimately you can play whatever you want and just have to adjust your group’s methods of winning accordingly. Just expect to come across some groups that counter your composition more often than if you had a balanced group composition. Don’t rely on gimmicky things for your group such as venom share, full condition groups, all stealth group, and things of that nature and you will be much better off than most.

TL;DR The third person would be best as a hybrid character of damage/sustain/support if you want to play more seriously, and glassy stealth/mobility if not, but anything works in the end if you play to your strengths and weaknesses of your group composition.

In Eternal Battlegrounds, my guild walked up behind a charr Engineer and stood there, when he saw us he was startled, dodge rolled, then started jumping while doing 360s with his flamethrower kit auto attacks. We were zerged down shortly after that because we were all laughing way too hard.

Kitta.3657:

I’mma be the party pooper because Thorp thinks he’s being so funny and a great toll – sigh -.-

Don’t go to CD for Doc (though CD isn’t a wrong server of choice). He’s a streamer that runs map blobs of upscale and terrible players. He enjoys playing with his viewers and has his own ways which are not really enjoyable for most and reading your description, it sounds like a terrible idea.

I wasn’t trolling and you don’t know me; Doc is a nice guy and I’m sure he’s fun to play with. However, I don’t disagree with what you’ve said having read over the OP’s second post.

Thanks for sharing. Although I too find condition Mesmers boring to watch, the over-the-top editing in the first half of the video made it entertaining for me in all seriousness.

You should go to Crystal Desert and join Docgotgame.8206’s guild.

I can only speak from a roaming perspective (small group fights):

The roaming guilds I can think of off the top of my head:
- Maguuma has few roaming guilds: LAG, FEAR (Fearless kitten nal of Resolve), GF, vT.
- Crystal Desert has TKVA.
- SBI has gggg (don’t know if they play anymore).

The blobbing happens but it happens in every tier.

I believe that Dire gear is imbalanced, burning is over-tuned at the moment, the new confusion hurts more, but conditions aren’t too bad overall for WvW roaming. It isn’t a skill issue as much as it is a risk/reward issue with condition builds typically being more forgiving while doing in some cases the same or better damage overall for the amount of effort put in.

As others have stated many times, there is a reason that Dire and Perplexity Runes aren’t in sPvP (the game mode balance seems to be based around). It’s also important to note that the game is in no way balanced around 1v1s which a lot of people apparently think roaming is exclusive to and in more organized group fights, condition builds do not outperform power builds for most professions.

To answer the OP, Necromancer (transfers, their main heal, high health, DS) or Warrior (can be built for high -% condition duration, traits, high health) are your best bet for these reasons and other reasons that have been have stated in this thread.

I’d highly recommend Yak’s Bend. My guild has been to every tier but tier 1 and Yak’s Bend was by far the nicest and have been one of the most solid communities in WvW we’ve came across. The only reason we aren’t on it anymore is only because in tier 2 there is virtually always too many people to fight during most hours for a guild my size (2-5 players). There are plenty of friendly guilds to join on Yak’s Bend for you if you’re interested in joining one.

Yaks-Bend.Enjin.com

In my opinion, Dire gear is really the only thing that makes conditions feel very strong in smaller-scale fights as it’s harder to counter-pressure something that does potentially it’s max damage for how tanky it is unlike in sPvP where Dire doesn’t exist. I think it’s mainly just low-risk/high-reward using conditions with these circumstances in WvW, which is the problem with a lot of builds in this game. I do like the idea of removing the -/+% condition foods from WvW that others have mentioned.

Burning is a bit strong at the moment as everybody knows, other than that I don’t think damaging conditions are too bad if you have an idea of what you’re doing.

WvW roaming (~1-5 people) is mostly dead. The vast majority of players I see are either in a map blob or a guild blob. In my experience as a roaming guild leader for the past 3 years on NA, there are very few roaming guilds (most of which are just gank guilds) that respect other roaming guilds (or even deserve respect). A lot of them will hit a 5-man group (the extremely rare times you actually even come across one) who is already fighting a 1:3 ratio or grossly outnumber their next encounter after losing the first typically because of kitten-talking, sieging, or other general bad-mannered things. I don’t believe that this is necessarily the attitude of roamers, but players in general.

WvW and roaming in particular has never been balanced, but that’s what can make it fun if you’re fighting against a larger group. I don’t believe it (or this game for that matter) is meant to be taken too seriously. Just continue to roam and play the builds that are fun to you — it makes it that much more rewarding when you’re successful.

Here are just a few easy-to-implement ideas I’m sure others have mentioned at some point that would bring more quality of life to the game:

- Friend statuses (online/offline/away) separate from “game messages” in chat
- Guild batch mail system
- Account bound raw ascended materials in wallet (lowest level of them, dust/fragments/etc.)
- Ability to hide/minimize mini-map
- Ability to hide looted items scrolling on side
- Ability to hide/minimize icons on top left
- Ability to minimize particular Personal Story quests/etc. between switching maps
- More text/UI sizes
- Ability to see cursor when holding down right-click
- More cursor options (shapes/outlines/etc.)
- Active crafting professions visible per character on character select screen

My favorite NA roaming guilds to fight: tM/Holy, DOJO/AD/Bsty/NA/EV, Ego/List/Yarr

Any kittening day now.

They probably figure it’s easier for them not to waste dev time on fixing something that is only lasting a week. I think it’s ridiculous that this is still in the game, let alone this event to begin with. If it affected the TP at all it would have been fixed ASAP.

Yeah, for a second my guild thought they were organized/good until we saw that buff.

Mesmer — can do everything right now with the right build.

It’s much weaker now with Incendiary Powder being moved out of the build and the loss of 300 power that the build had from 6 points in the top tree. I’m sure it’s still okay, but most likely just very mediocre.

Bump

Still Relevant

All power gear with a Rifle (with a Speed sigil when low-leveled before Speedy Kits), power/precision gear when high enough, power/precision/ferocity gear when even higher. Use Grenades/Bombs, Med Kit heal for the #5 (if you’re too low for Speedy Kits), Elixer B (if you’re too low for Speedy Kits). Did I mention Speedy Kits?

Just gather monsters up and then line of sight them behind a tree or something, AoE on your feet.

My charr Engineer:

RETURN OF THE WIZARD HAT.

Running 20606 grants a higher chance to beat more things that “hard-counter” D/D Thief than 2600 D/D Thief in 1v1 scenarios — I would agree it’s “better” overall, especially in group play. Against one another, 26600 has a slightly better shot simply because it can two-shot more reliably (HK, less reliance on sigil procs, etc.) and hits much harder than 20606 especially when coming out of a long stealth.

I like your videos, mainly the entertaining P/P or no weapon ones.

Roaming (at least in T2 where I’ve been for a couple months now) isn’t “dead” except for during crackhead hours or on a patch day, and not uncommonly on Thursday nights.

Been on every tier besides T1 and YB is the best community I’ve seen.

SAB FINISHER AND WIZARD HAT.

BRING IT BACK TO THE GEM STORE — DON’T CARE WHAT THE PRICE IS.

THANK YOU.

1. I’d rather have commentating with music low in the background
2. Doesn’t matter
3. Duels with good burst meditation Guardians (the bane of my D/D Thief)

The Shadowstep stomps with cliffs were hawt.

There is nothing truly cheesy in the game (AoE-cap/downed-rezzing/other stuff aside, closest thing is probably Dire or Supply Crate, but those are just strong), it’s more just people not liking the odds being stacked against them. I also play D/D on my Thief and I have a harder time with good burst Meditation Guardians compared to anything else — these guys are a joke for condition classes and not very group friendly.

My point being with the above example, as others have said, is that what is difficult to fight for some is not a problem for others, but it is frustrating (for me sometimes too, I’ll admit) when you’re clearly losing because of a build being played by someone who is playing it sloppy — but you have to know that you probably could have done something differently too and taken advantage of them playing sloppy.

At the same time, you have to realize that every weapon set or build will have its counters of some sort and have to accept that you can’t be the best at everything all in one combination of weapon sets or build — if you don’t want to change either of these, then there’s only one option: get/play better.

Everything I said is from a 1v1 perspective but can also be translated to a group mentality.

I’ve played both professions (experience on everything in WvW but S/P for Thief, and only D/D for Elementalist in WvW) for almost two years now as a solo/small group WvW player and would say Elementalist is the harder class to learn and perfect, but Thief is the harder class to play without any error. Thief is clearly “better” for 1vX fights with the generic WvW 30 SA builds in mind, but it’s more of a toss-up in group play where D/D Elementalist can feel immortal. Thief is great for groups too but doesn’t have nearly as large of a cushion in group fights where burst from two players (or just random cleave from the fight) can easily take a Thief down.

In my experience, Thief takes more effort in group fights to use effectively — Elementalist is harder to solo (sometimes even 1v1 or dueling depending on the build) and win when outnumbered.

When comparing the two classes in a duel against each other, D/D Elementalist should win the majority if not all of the fights versus non-S/D Thieves and have a slight advantage against S/D Thieves.

As for dungeons, Elementalist is more flexible and useful to groups (especially experienced ones) in large because of Ice Bow, might/fury stacking, and Fiery Greatsword. Thief is still fine to great in dungeons though if you’re experienced.

This is all simply opinion from my own experiences of course.

Karolis.4261:

AkaXan.1096:

No problem with the skill it self, but very often wen i use this to travel, escape or chase. My character suddenly turns around making me heartseeker to my death. This has also blown my stealth cover plently of times. I’ve alrdy checked, and it isn’t anything like auto-targeting. the only way ive found to prevent this is waiting to do the next heartseeker when i can walk after performing the last one. Any idea how to solve this tough?

This is affected by terrain. if terrain you are heartseeking on is not perfectly flat, you will most likely start heartseeking backwards.

It is the terrain like this person said. I believe if you’re going south and the it’s a hill with a downward slope, the Heartseeker tries to go north. You just have to use them slower and not queue up more Heartseekers as the character only tries to go backwards at the end of the skill.

I’ve tried everything at 80 and geared besides Ranger and Necromancer. The two classes I play are Elementalist and Thief.

The main reason I play Elementalist and Thief is because they’re fast-paced and can be unforgiving yet very rewarding if played correctly. Also, daggers are cool.

WASD – movement (strafe, not turn)
T – Elite skill
12345 – Weapon skills
Alt – Weapon skill 5
Q – Air Attunement
F – Fire Attunement
R – Earth Attunement
G – Water Attunement
X – Healing skill
Shift – Dodge roll
Ctrl – Swap/drop weapon
123 on Naga Hex – Utility skills
4 on Naga Hex – Sheath weapon

I only let them duel if I know that it’s a duel based on the guild tag, I know who they are, or it’s very clearly a duel with people watching from both servers on the side. Anyone else, I just jump in since the only real place people should be dueling now is the Obsidian Sanctum.

This happens a lot just north to the south camp on the borderland maps.

Walker.3056:

Its wierd and sad how the Thief players are the only ones that always try to make other thieves looks bad or worse than they are.

Its like they cant admit when someones is good or even better than themselves.

Pretty much this.

I haven’t played S/D extensively in WvW so I can’t help you with anything more than I’ve already said, but this video might be more interesting to you: link

Assuming typical builds for both sets for roaming:

Pros of D/D: decent sustained damage with occasional high burst, high survivability, great mobility, great soft and hard CC, point blank AoE attacks for everything
Cons of D/D: can be hard to recover from burst damage, only melee, rather slow and somewhat predictable rotations which can leave you vulnerable to some experienced players
Example video
Base build for typical D/D is x/x/x/4/6

Pros of S/D: ranged, more unpredictable, very high and instant single target burst quite often, high but slow AoE burst/area denial
Cons of S/D: Thief prey, cooldowns, not very great sustain, not the greatest mobility, hardly any CC
Example video
Base typical build for S/D is x/6/x/x/2

In general, D/D is “better” just for it being more forgiving than S/D and more flexible in fights or group compositions. Personally I think S/D is more fun (I play D/D), but it can be frustrating in comparison to D/D.

I have a full ascended celestial Elementalist and I would say that its effectiveness depends on how big the fights you’re in are. The more people, the worse celestial becomes. I wouldn’t run celestial in anything more than 5-10. The reason for this is the more people you’re running with, the more you need to be directed towards a specific role, and celestial, though flexible in smaller fights, is average at all of them.

WvW D/D Thieves are usually the opposite of glassy in Thief terms. Most run a majority Valkyrie gear (if not completely full Valkyrie) and add in either Berserker or Cavalier gear depending on the player with Hidden Killer. It has high stealth uptime especially in group fights if you’re not bad, and you can beat anything (more than just the typical bad players with bad builds) with it if you’re smart with canceling your Cloaks in 1v1 or to a particular degree in outnumbered situations.

Ghostwolf.9863:

Peow peow.2189:

haha you are the idiot, elemntalist has cool down on the burst so he hits once burst thenhas to run.

Thief press cloak and dagger and hit and rinse repeat keep 10k dmg over and over. 3 second reveal to short, need 10 second reveal on this class.

Meanwhile Elementalists kitten up a whole team with higher burst than thieves have single target, but AoE..

AoE damage and single target dmg isn’t really split in this game like in most other games. Put on some burning and fire grab hits just as hard as backstab but on multiple targets. Dragon’s Tooth, not far from the same dmg as backstab and on a 6s cd and AoE.. oh and ignores LoS and is ranged.

Coming from someone who has played both Elementalist and Thief for the whole game,

Fire Grab is not as easy to hit as a Backstab (and is on a 45-second cooldown, also having a prerequisite for it’s damage of needing the opponent to be burning) and is affected, unlike Backstab, by blocks/blinds/invulnerabilities/etc.

Usually to land a Burning Speed, Elementalists need to blow another long (compared to what Thieves have) cooldown such as Lightning Flash or Updraft.

Dragon’s Tooth takes forever to land and is just as obvious to see as Churning Earth.

It isn’t fair to directly compare professions to one another, only roles that they fill. I would say Thief is easier to play but less forgiving for the few times you can really mess up.

Conditions are fine, the reapplication is slightly too high for some things, and Dire stat combination is not as balanced. I think there’s a reason it’s not in PvP.

scerevisiae.1972:

hihey.1075:

Energy+Battle is great on DD. Actually I think it’s the best setup for both Defense+Offense.

dude, energy and battle are both on-swap sigils, and so share the same CD. it is pointless to run 2 on-swap sigils, or 2 of any other of the same type of sigil.

this is basic info.

lol?

D/D + SB 10/30/30/0/0. Still works after almost two years and you can beat anyone if you’re good enough. Just don’t blow your dodges and know when to cancel Cloak and Dagger.

Sons.5493:

Thorp.7982:

Peow peow.2189:

since the new update, thiefs are so flipping OP. I literally take 2 steps in wvw or pvp and i get backstabbed for 20k. How can they still do this with the dmg reducation?

Honetly i think this game has had enough of this class

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01wq6bm2BM4

Lmao, glad to see ppl still remember this m9s

Makes me laugh everytime.
I am D0nk3y

Peow peow.2189:

since the new update, thiefs are so flipping OP. I literally take 2 steps in wvw or pvp and i get backstabbed for 20k. How can they still do this with the dmg reducation?

Honetly i think this game has had enough of this class

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

If you were running div runes you were never a zerker, ooh snap, light me on fire!

rekt

Probably not more DPS, but more burst damage while also being more consistent assuming you do not get stacks before you fight anyone. It is still possible to use a Bloodlust stacking weapon and swapping it out even with all the changes to it, but it’s a pain in the kitten to do.

I’ve been using full celestial (weapons, armor, trinkets, back) for about six months or so now on my D/D Elementalist and it feels fine to me. I don’t agree with others that you need ~2k+ power when you can easily get to 25 stacks of might, but it’s not like that’s a bad idea at all. Celestial feels like Cleric’s with a little less healing and a modest amount of everything else, especially health (because that’s what it is).

In my opinion, D/D is not mainly about damage and is more about sustaining pressure in fights — Celestial fits best for this reason.

Yes, it works well with everything other than sceptre builds. If you’re mostly just zerging and fighting in melee range, you’ll probably want to add some armor in through a few pieces of soldier’s or knight’s gear until you’re at a comfortable armor amount.

You like scrap, Haole?!

Just use D/D or staff with full power gear -> power/precision gear -> power/precision/ferocity gear when the stat combinations become available. Use single minor runes with +10 power until you have access to two stat combinations for armor. Use one bloodlust sigil and one speed sigil to gain even more power and permanent swiftness. Put your trait points into Arcana for faster attunement swapping, Air for Zerphyr’s Boon (1) if using D/D. Ether Renewal if the content has a lot of conditions, Glyph of Elemental Harmony if you don’t need it for more swiftness when used in Air attunement for keeping up swiftness outside of combat. Just update your gear every 10 levels.

For dungeons, it’s more complicated and there are a few guides on these forums.

etrigan.4213:

Thorp.7982:

Should just make it so you can’t revive fully dead players while in combat.

This would certainly solve some issues. But the fact a zerg can still quickly mass rez a memser through a gate is an issue.

Pretty hard for a couple of defenders to get 20+ ppl in combat…

Its a step in the right direction though.

This leads to the another big issue in WvW — the 5-person AoE cap.