Guild Wars 2

Both are viable classes for PvE and WvW. I’ve only got an 80th Thief, so my comments about Ranger are based only on my observations.

1) The Ranger is a pet class. People either like pet classes or hate pet classes. Before you get yourself into Ranger, make sure you’re fine with high level pet management. Low level soloing with pets is one thing. Doing 80th level boss events with pets is another.

2) From my observations, the Rangers that see tend to go Longbow/Shortbow. While there are plenty of other specializations, people tend to use Ranger as a ranged combat class.

3) Most Thief players will tell you that a well built Thief should be an offensive glass cannon. It will blur in and out of melee range, while dodging and moving all over the place. Having said that, the Trait updates this week jacked up the Thief’s main mobility line (which was Acrobatics). So at the moment, the Thief forums aren’t the most happy of places.

Having said that, you can always run dark horse builds for either class. My main character is an 80th Thief who uses the Venom sharing traits. Combined with a mix of offensive and defensive gear, the character is built to Off-Tank random Champion adds when needed. Otherwise the character is on trash duty for large boss events since it’s built to added a lot of spike dps and healing for a party. (The trait revamp actually made my trait build easier to pull off, so my character style actually got a serious buff from everything.)

My point is that you need to play whatever feels like fun to you. If you get a class up to 40th-50th level and you’re feeling restless, don’t feel afraid to shelve the character and start up another one.

This post is 9 months old and is from before the Skale Venom changes (which removed the Weakness proc and added in the Torment proc). All things considered, I might switch out Skale for Ice Drake Venom if I’m running Shadow Refuge at the time.

(If you want more information about this build, click on my user name on click on View All Posts. About mid way through Pg #2, you should see 3-4 posts tied to this initial post.)

My main is a PvE Thief. I use a Sword in my main hand and I only use stealth as a beneficial side effect or for situational use. It sounds like my build might cover what you’re looking for, so see the link below.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|c.1n.h15.a.1n.h15|5.1n.h19|1n.7i.1n.7i.1n.7i.1n.7i.1n.7i.1n.7i|1n.64.1n.64.1n.64.1n.64.1n.64.8g.67|u48c.a6.u19c.0

The character is designed as an AoE buffing build. It really won’t come together until 70th level since you really need 30 pts in Deadly Arts for soloing / grouping and 30 pts in Shadow Arts for the AoE buffs. Based on my personal gear build, I threw the remaining points in Critical Strikes to help my crit rate.

1) Utility slot: Shadow’s Refuge is a situational power that is mostly use for group play. Normally I will have this power replaced with Signet of Shadows for soloing or Ice Drake Venom for grouping.

2) Elite slot: Basilisk Venom is only used for grouping and its value only shows after you’ve hit 70th level. For soloing or against a few buggy Champion mobs who are immune to Basilisk’s effects, I will normally run Thieves Guild. Dagger Storm is a good situational power for farming since it lets you damage a lot of trash mobs in a short amount of time, but it’s not a power that I primarily use.

3) Food: Omnomberry Pie is my food of choice. Between the food and the dual Superior Sigil of Blood on my melee set, you’ll be constantly healing from crits. When combined with the constant healing from Leeching Venoms, it makes for a very stable build.

4) Disclaimer: Be warned that this is a fragile build. When you’re using #3 Pistol Whip or #5 Black Powder, having a lower health pool isn’t as much of a big deal when you see all of the various healing sources that you have access to. Yet the danger of this build is dealing with condition damage. Conditions will eat you alive, so they need to be dealt with immediately. Spamming the Sword #2 can slowly remove them. Otherwise your heal (Hide in Shadows) and your end game armor runes (Superior Runes of Lyssa) are your main sources of condition removal.

Are you looking for a character build that just dabbles in venom powers? Or are you looking for a completely dedicated (end game) venom build that’s designed around giving out AoE buffs through the Venomous Aura trait? There’s a real difference and it would help to know what you’re looking to get out of it.

I’ve got one character that’s built around Venomous Aura. Then I’ve got another Thief who just uses x1 venom power when she’s soloing and has to deal with specific situations. Both come from very different philosophies.

(It’s my opinion that venoms are either situational or used in a devoted Venomous Aura build. By themselves, the venom powers aren’t that strong. You have to start layering benefits from your trait spec to make the build worthwhile.)

DirtyBird.6093:

0/30/30/10 Build

Like to swap out shadow rejuv and venom sharing in wvw. Don’t ever pvp so don’t really care this build works exactly how i want it to, for small roaming and zerg fights. So – back to the question: Does anybody know if venom share prioritizes people without the venom being shared or if its purely based on proximity and useless overlap can occur?

From all of my experiences with my PvE character, it automatically targets those in closest proximity to you. Players, pets, and NPCs are all potential targets. If you’re surrounded by NPCs who are closer to you than actual player characters, then those NPCs will get the buffs.

I’m honestly not sure about overlap. Seeing anyone playing a VA spec is so rare that I’ve never been in the same place as another VA player. Assuming that it works similar to how other AoE buffs work, the AoE venom proc buffs will likely be shared on your nearst targets. Even if they’re currently under the effect of unused venom buffs, they’ll likely get a new set of venom buffs to overlap. This would cause the unused venom procs to be wasted and a new set of venom procs would replace them.

As a S/P PvE Venomous Aura character, the changes to Skale Venom hurt. Stacking on a ton of Weakness was actually useful in PvE for a lot of the time. But as of this patch, we lose Weakness and gain Torment. Theoretically speaking, I guess that some of my shared targets could do decent damage with their Torment procs since the damage output is based on the +Condition values of the person triggering the proc.

I just don’t understand all of this. Torment is really only useful for PvE kiting and shutting down mobile combatants in PvP / WvW. But at the same time, Torment is only added to Skale Venom. If I were to take my Thief into WvW, I’d instantly drop Skale for Devourer since it’s far more useful in that situation. This means that while some condition builds will now actually use Skale Venom, this change also makes the skill really unattractive for the people who were previously using Skale.

Well ArenaNet just posted up some general information for their upcoming Sky Pirates content arc for their Living Story. Amongst that page, they included a link to a blog entry about the upcoming Skill & Trait Revamp.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/upcoming-skill-and-trait-changes/

Based on the information towards the bottom of the page, Thief and Mesmer will be getting access to a new condition called Torment. From the little information provided, the condition does a minimal amount of damage per tick and also triggers bonus damage whenever the target moves.

While we don’t know how ArenaNet has changed or combined Skills / Traits, I have to admit that I’m kind of interested to see how viable Torment is. For PvE soloing, I can see it going great in a kiting build. Also it should excel in the mobile environments of WvW and PvP. The only issue that I’m seeing with Torment is that it might be worthless in group PvE since it’s much harder to control whether or not a mob is moving around.

Does anyone else have any thoughts or ideas about Torment?

mujtaba.8167:

do i specifically need an ascended weapon, and cant i just infuse a exotic trinket?

1) As of right now, Ascended weapons don’t exist. The top tier is Exotic in terms of game stats. Technically you can get a Legendary weapon, which would automatically have its stats upgraded from Exotic grade to Ascended grade if ArenaNet did choose to release Ascended weapons.

2) As of right now, Ascended armor doesn’t exist. The top tier is Exotic in terms of game stats.

3) So to answer your 1st question, no. You don’t need an Ascended weapon since they don’t exist.

4) In regards to your 2nd question, no. It is impossible to do an Infused upgrade on a non-Ascended gear piece. The entire of point of the Agony Resistance system is to create an artificial barrier of entry. Some people whined about not having enough gear treadmills in GW2, so ArenaNet added Ascended gear. While the initial level of Ascended does increase your PvE / WvW stats, the AR portion of that gear is worthless to people who don’t live in the Fractal dungeon. If you could upgrade Exotic items, then that would let people avoid large artificial time sinks, which are the entire point of the Ascended gear system. Therefore ArenaNet would never allow something like that to happen.

This is a special stat that is only used in the Fractals dungeon. You get +Agony Resistance from 80th gear that is Infused Ascended or from Infusions, which are inserted into any grade of Ascended gear. (Although I believe that Ascended infusions that were added to the WvW vendors doesn’t have +AR on them.) Normally +AR comes in +5 increments. Multiple sources of +AR do stack.

1) If you’re wondering about the ratio between your AR value and how it interacts with preventing Agony damage (in the Fractals), refer to the excellent chart in the Wiki. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Agony_resistance

2) Unless you plan on running through the Fractal dungeon (which is a series of randomly accessed mini dungeons), you don’t need to have AR.

3) For the Infusions, you need to make them in the Mystic Forge if you want +AR on them. (Scroll down to the bottom of this web page.) http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Forge/Equipment

4) Or once you get a piece of Ascended gear, you can use the Mystic Forge to upgrade it to an Infused status. This grants the item an inherent +5 AR (in addition to anything an Infusion would provide). http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infused

Condition Damage / Duration – Not shared.
PP – Not shared.
LP – Not shared.

VS – Shared.
RS – Shared.
LV – Shared.

(Venomous Aura shares the traits that have Venom in their name. VS doesn’t share anything that effects Poison specifically.)

Yes, multi-target AoE effects will use up multiple Venom procs. This is why a Thief’s Shortbow auto attack will quickly burn through any venom buffs that you’re currently affected by.

On the multi-hit LV procs, I’m not completely sure. On my own Venomous Aura character, it feels like I’m getting all of the heal / damage procs. However I do remember ArenaNet previously saying that they were adding a 1 second internal cool down on the LV procs. So while I think that you should get all of the procs, I’m not 100% sure.

(On a side note, a shared Spider’s Venom uses the recipient’s +Condition damage stats. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on each player’s build.)

Yes, you can stack multiple copies of the same condition from different sources. Chilling Venom and some other ability that causes Chill would stack together for duration (as per standard Chill duration rules).

Basilisk Venom doesn’t stack with itself and it doesn’t stack with Stun effects since it technically isn’t a Stun. Yes, it can be removed in WvW / PvP with a stun removal effect, but Basilisk doesn’t officially count as a stun. Therefore anything that would increase your stun duration would not affect BV. Nor would it stack with other stun effects since they are different categories of conditions. (Both would just count down their durations at the same time.)

If ArenaNet wanted to add in a condition removal aspect as a bonus to each existing Venom power, then that could be useful. Spider’s Venom would remove Poison. Etc etc. However I just don’t think that the kind of specialized condition removal skills that you’re proposing could exist as viable options on their own.

You are correct about the cap being the standard x5 targets, as per the normal AoE buffing rules. Like always, NPC pets that are controlled by friendly players will accept these buffs and they will count towards your x5 targets cap.

With our AoE radius being so small, it’s normally hard to hit the target cap. Though if you’re all tightly packed in a zerg (for PvE and WvW), this issue will come up.

I use the Ambush trap on my 2nd PvE Thief. Using it basically gives you 50% of an Elite skill, which is really powerful. Against stationary foes, you can run up and immediately spin your facing 90 degrees. When you drop a trap like that, the trap’s trigger line will go through the stationary mob in front of you and it will immediately summon the NPC pet.

Between a late triggered Ambush trap, a new Ambush trap, and the Thieves Guild elite, it’s possible to run around with a zerg of x4 NPC pets. The extra dps is really nice, they can help tank trash mobs that you’re not attacking, and you’ll be hiding in Black Powder (AoE Blind) fields that are being created from your P/P pets.

1) Sell your T5 & T6 crafting materials. That’s a very large source of income.

2) Sell your Mystic Coins. Unless you know that you’ll need a bunch for the Mystic Forge in the near future, you can always sell coins for quick cash.

3) Farm the CoF (Path #1) dungeon.

4) Play the BLTC stock market. [i](I personally find this extremely irritating and not profitable, but dedicated people can make tons of money this way.)[i]

5) Kill as many of the Daily Bonus Chest open world zone bosses each day. Getting a guaranteed rare from every kill and potentially a 2nd rare will really start to add up.

There are some other ways, but these seems to be the most common.

1) There are no forms of diminishing returns for +stats. I believe that there is a hard cap for +stats, but it’s high enough that you’re never going to potentially hit it without some AoE buffs from other people. Even then, you’ll probably be still below the stat cap. So for all intents and purposes, don’t worry about it.

2) Once you reach 100% Crit Chance, there is no point in going any higher. Having said that, you won’t be reaching 100% very easily at 80th level. Assuming that you’re constantly getting the Fury boon (+20% Crit Chance) on a consistent basis from yourself and other AoE buffs, you might get close. Yet like Answer #1, reaching the Crit Chance cap isn’t something that you need to actively worry about.

3) Skills: That kind of answer would take far too long and many of the answers would be far too subjective. Attacks which primary give out condition damage dots will want +Condition gear. Physical damage attacks want Power, Precision, and +Crit Damage. Then things start to get less clear when you’re looking at attacks which do partial condition damage and partial condition damage.

You can go down the full glass cannon route, but there are plenty of viable alternative builds. Some people try to work at least a little +Toughness and +Vitality into their builds to help with their survivability. However once your Toughness starts to get around 1,400 or more, it will start to generate more melee aggro then you might want to deal with.

Others go for tanky builds. I’m built to off-tank Champion trash mobs, which is easily possible with how it’s structured. The build is extremely unorthodox for a Thief, but it lets me play how I want. My point is that while most people will advocate some kind of glass cannon build in full Berserker gear, Thief is more flexible than that.

Aby,

It really depends on what you want your character to do. Rifle is a good single target ranged dps weapon. However most people only use it when they need a dash of ranged combat. (It’s Cripple and Knockback attacks are also nice.)

Here are some generally popular combinations:

Greatsword (2-hander) – This is probably the most common weapon choice since it provides good dps output and some nice mobility options.

Hammer (2-hander) – This is used on defensive AoE control builds. From my own experience with my Hammer alt character, you really need to have some kind of devoted build to make this weapon truly effective.

Mace/Shield – This is about as defensive as you can get as a Warrior. You got various ways of blocking and interrupting attacks, but at the expense of your dps output. If you like this weapon combination, you’ll be investing 30 trait points into Defense for the cool down reduction traits.

Axe/Warhorn – This combination bleeds the highest 1-hander dps output weapon with some nice utility and mobility options. As a disclaimer, the mega damage from the Axe #1 auto attack pattern only triggers if you let the computer automatically swing for you. If you prefer to manually hit the attack button yourself (to be able to stealthed mobs and attacking mobs that move slightly out of melee range), then you will short circuit the bonus damage on the 2nd and 3rd swings. (Due to the drawbacks of the Axe’s auto attack, I stopped using that weapon. However many people still swear by it.)

Sword/Sword – This is an attack style that focuses on dealing out lots of Bleed condition damage dots to kill your opponents. While it has great synergy with the Bleed potential of the Rifle, Swords don’t have a very good spike dps potential and you can run into issues with dealing damage in large Group Event encounters due to how condition damage stacks work.

Crafting

As a brand new player who doesn’t have any rich players giving you some start up cash, you would be correct. Crafting does tend to be more expensive than just buying what you need. Having said that, it is also a great source of +xp for you character. If you find yourself falling behind the leveling curve and don’t want to simply go to a different low level zone to catch yourself up, then crafting is a good option.

Shortbow

The SB is for AoE ranged dps. Its auto attack his multiple targets, creates AoE damage through Cluster Bomb, and even creates poison fields. Having said all of that, my own S/P character only uses it as a rare resort for specific situations. Between Sword #2 and Steal, you already have enough melee closers. People use the SB to shore up the weakness of S/P.

Pistol/Pistol

On my 2nd Thief, this is my ranged weapon set. While it does have some nice spike dps if you’ve got a lot of initiative to burn, the sustained dps is rather poor. I find P/P enjoyable on my caltrop dropping alt since it gives me a nice single target ranged kiting weapon choice. Yet it’s still very limited and doesn’t even have a Blast combo finisher (which SB has access to through the Cluster Bomb skill).

Builds

There are a bunch of sticky threads at the top of this forum with various builds. If you’re running a S/P & SB build, then you’re going to want to avoid all of the stealth focused trait choices. Your 1st choice should about how you play S/P. Are you usually going to hold your ground while you Sword #1 (while hiding under the Pistol #5 blindness field) or Combo #3 to Pistol Whip people to death? Or are you going to be constantly dodging around and only pausing to melee things down?

My assumption is that you’ll just sit there and melee things down. In that cause, you might want to also skip many of the mobility focused traits. That reduces us down to builds that are either dps focused, tanky focused, or some kind of support build. Dps S/P builds tend to focus on traits in Deadly Arts and Critical Strikes. Tanky builds might focus more on Acrobatics and Shadow Arts. Support builds tend to focus Trickery (for the AoE buffs when you Steal) and Deadly Arts/Shadow Arts (for the Venomous Aura AoE venom buff sharing).

My own personal build for my S/P & SB character is a tanky AoE buffing build. I’m Deadly Arts 30 / Critical Strikes 10 / Shadow Arts 30. The point of my character is to be tough enough to off-tank when needed while I provide AoE buffing through my devoted Venomous Aura trait spec. Yet the price that I paid was giving up most of my skill options and almost all of my trait options to make this spec work. I’m happy to link it if you’re interested, but it’s an extremely non-traditional Thief spec and not something that you average Thief player wants.

My main Thief is a S/P & SB build. That was pretty easy to level with. I personally prefer the HiS heal, but that’s a very personalized decision. Pistol #5 gives you AoE Blind fields that lock down targets in your melee range. SB is there for when you need a bit of ranged AoE combat. This build went a more group focused route that was designed towards eventually getting the Venomous Aura trait. Deadly Arts 30 / Critical Strikes 10 / Shadow Arts 30.

I’ve also got a Thief alt that I’m leveling with S/D & P/P. Though P/P is weak in the dps department, it works well for short bursts of ranged dps. This build is focused on using Caltrops through the Utility skill and the Trickery 10 trait. Basically you dodge all around and create overlapping caltrop fields. Then you either melee within that mess or you ranged kite the mobs through those fields. (Caltrops applies a Cripple effect that makes this easy to pull off.) One surprising part about this build was my falling in love with the Ambush trap skill. Using my Acrobatics 10 to reduce the recast timer, I’m constantly running around with x1 Thief NPC pet through that skill Or when I also activate my Thieves Guild elite skill, I can swarm with x3 Thief NPC pets. Critical Strikes 10 / Shadow Arts 10 / Acrobatics 30 / Trickery 20.

Faux.1937:

Yeah, but does healing power effect it?

As stated above, yes. Healing does affect the AW healing values. Yet the reduction multipler to your +Healing stat hits you really hard, which means that there’s little point in taking +Healing gear for that trait.

With the Lyssa proc, please remember that there is an unstated cool down of about 50 seconds for the Elite’s proc. While this note was originally part of the Wiki entry, some idiot removed the note. If you’re a venom spec’ed player using Basilisk Venom, you’re only going to get the proc every other time (unless you intentionally wait in between Basilisk uses).

Niyo.5920:

But what I meant at my post was not that the player is sure that he/she deactivated the mine. I asked if you are sure that Canach hasn’t reactivated them.

I’ve checked the chat logs and the combat logs. Canach did nothing to affect the false-positive mine, which is what hacks me off.

As an example, I tried to figure out the issue last night. Knowing that false-positive mine results could happen, I was cautious before getting close to any mine. On one mine, I hit the poison cloud ray and it turned green. After a few seconds of my paranoid waiting, it instantly reverts back to the red hostile state. My response was to hit it with the poison ray again. Green…. then red once again. <Bleep it!> Just to be sure, I tried to immediately hit the bugged mine for a 3rd time and it immediately flip flopped back to the hostile state.

During that period of 10-15 seconds, there were no chat log messages about Canach re-arming the mines. I hit that mine consecutively for x3 times and it still flipped back, as if taunting me. This is the kind of issue that we’re complaining about. It is simply unfair and malicious.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

are you matching the proper mine defuse skill to the appropriate mine? An icon over the mine should match the icon of the defuse skill.

Robert,

Yes, the fight is super buggy.

1) Based on my own attempts last night, I find that about 25% of the correctly oriented shots just won’t register on a mine. The mine won’t trigger, nor will it change color. If you didn’t know any better, you would swear that you never shot at that mine. (This was the main cause of my deaths last night.)

2) There are also false-postive mines. You’ll shoot them with the correct ray, the hit will register, and the mine will change to its green color. However within 2-3 seconds after the color switch, the mine will instantly revert back to its hostile state and it will trigger if you’re close. These mines seem to be rare and only showed up around 5% – 10% of the time. Once Canach does his move to trigger all of the mines in a room, these false-positive mines un-bug when they respawn (though they can still be affected by Bug #1).

The whole fight is extremely frustrating with all of these bugs. I had to eventually switch to a durable 80th alt who could take a couple of consecutive mine explosions to the face and still survive. It’s one thing to have to work about the mines when Canach is doing his knock back. But it’s quite different when the instance is so horribly buggy that the game is consistently stealing away your chance at victory.

If GW2 was the kind of game that dropped unique pieces of loot that had custom stats and only dropped through RNG at specific areas, then I could understand having /inspect in the game. Over the years that I played in EQ2, I found the inspect option to be very interesting since it sometimes provoked some very interesting conversations. When I saw a piece of gear that I was unaware of, I often sent the wearer a PM to ask where it dropped from. Or if they were wearing something rather unorthodox, I would often get into a conversation about why they chose to use that item. The exchange of different perspectives was usually pretty interesting and it helped me to refine my own gear build philosophies.

However that same kind of thing just doesn’t work in GW2. We can PM each other and asking about gear appearances since the rarer ones tend to deal with the RNG systems, but we can make about anything in this game. In this game, we don’t have to scavenger hunt all over the place for the right pieces of gear. Instead we just craft whatever we want, and equip ourselves accordingly.

Sometimes it just helps to pick a theme. For example, my charr warrior’s color scheme is based around different shades of blue. I’ve got something like 6-7 rare blue dyes and tons of common / uncommon ones. After I finally got enough colors, I found that right combination of dyes and I stopped experimenting with my color scheme.

While we can all suggest different things, it also doesn’t hurt to just collect dyes and fiddle with things. For a charr, a color scheme that blended 3-4 shades of red together could look nice. Really any color would do. If you’re trying to avoid that hordes of people who are using black and white shades of colors, a unified color theme is always available.

At the moment, people are farming like mad in Southsun with the insane +Magic Find buff from the Living Story NPC. Others are chest farming the Settler Instigators in Southsun. Either situation means that a lot of people are generating a lot of loot to be torn apart for ecto. By starting to flood the market, the prices are gradually going down.

Also there really isn’t a lot to spend your ecto on, besides the usual. If there was a vendor released tomorrow that have a bunch of items that all costs 50 ecto and some other special form of currency, the value of ecto would increase since there would be a large influx of people buying up ecto for all of their various characters.

If you want to play some kind of single target glass cannon that relies on stealth and extreme uses of your resources to kill a single target in a spectacular manner, then you’re going to have trouble in PvE. So many people play Thief in PvP, but then run into a lot of trouble when their PvP builds get crushed in a PvE environment.

PvE Thief builds are completely viable, but the class will play differently from a person’s PvP expectations.

The Thief forums are generally negative because people feel like that have been consistently singled out. Why? A significant part of the general MMO player base has real emotional issues when it comes to encountering stealth mechanics in a PvP situation. These players don’t like dying to a steatlh build, regardless of the MMO. This causes them to loudly complain until they can get the game changed until it’s not longer possible for them to die to stealth tactics.

While my own main character Thief is a non-stealth build for PvE / WvW, it seems like a large majority of the people on these forums are based around stealth builds. With every tweak or nerf to stealth mechanics, a majority of Thief players get hurt. Then when this continues to happen again and again, it starts to make people angry. As if this isn’t bad enough, PvE Thief players also notice that a Warrior’s PvE potential isn’t being nerfed. At this point, Thief players start to get bitter.

At this point, I’ve got x2 Thieves, x2 Warriors, and x2 Engineers. I’ve seen nerfs and buffs across many levels. Some classes have more of a well deserved right to complain, while others don’t understand about just how good they have things. Amongst all of these Thief players seem the most bitter and it’s really easy to figure out why. Anti-stealth players are permanently messing with this class. The same goes for anti-burst players. Until this class gets the promised “mobility” buffs to replace what people are losing, I’d expect a noticably portion of this forum to be an angry and frustrated place.

Like the Wiki states, there are a few ways to buy them. My suggestion would be to go around Fireheart Rise (which is the zone that hold Citadel of the Flame). You should be able to solo there at 80th without a ton of trouble. Then using the Wiki as a shopping list, you complete the various Heart events to access their karma vendors.

As a FYI, each of the pieces in that zone won’t actually have the item name of Conquest. Without the Wiki, it could be really confusing for people.

P/P is pretty much the lowest consistent dps option that a Thief has available to them. It’s not bad for a single target spike damage option if you really need to fight at range, but people normally use the far superior SB. Combining both together means that he will have a much lower dps output than your average Thief. He’ll be constantly trying to kite mobs around.

You could compliment this with almost anything. A tanky melee oriented Thief could work. Warriors and Guardians are cliche choices, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t effective. Even the Mesmer, Engineer, or Ranger options would work.

1) Decide what your shared combat style will be. Will one of your tank while the other attacks? Do you make builds to trade aggro back and forth? Perhaps you’ll just kite things all over the place through both of you playing mobile ranged builds. There are a lot of opportunities.

2) As a P/P & SB Thief, he will be horrible in the condition removal department. If you pick a class with some AoE condition removal, then that will help to cover one of his weaknesses. Engineer has some good options with the Elixer Gun weapon and Elixer skill/trait specs. Also both Warrior and Guardian have AoE condition removal. I think that a Spirit spec for a Ranger could also do something like that.

1) For class advice, I suggest asking in the class specific forums below this forum. I’m not that experienced with Elementalists, so you should probably ask them for more specific information.

2) It’s really easy making a guild. A IRL pal did it by himself when he was online, then invited myself and another person at later points in time. There isn’t a minimum player group size for the creation of guilds.

3) You need to level up all x3 of your gathering skills. Harvest everything that you see. The raw materials can be sold for funds or they can be used for crafting. While crafting is a bit more expensive for a new player, crafting experience will help all of your characters level up.

4) In general, people don’t create formal groups in the lower level of GW2. While it’s needed to run instanced dungeon content, the Dynamic Event system of GW2 basically gives people the benefits of grouping whenever they’re near other players. Some people still make groups in order to comunicate through Group chat and being able to track each other’s location on the map, but that’s about it.

5) Some of the dynamic event “boss” events will be ones that you’ll come to love. Others you will probably loathe and avoid at all costs. All of our personal tastes seem to be a bit different for that kind of thing. Each of the Group Event bosses, which are Champion grade mobs, have their own quirks and script tactics for beating them. Some are just tank ’n spank, but others require situational awareness and watching mob animations.

6) For finding a guild, you can either use the Guild forum below or just pay attention to the guilds that advertise in the level 1-15 starter zones. After a couple of nights, you should see who is consistently advertising. Then send them a private message and start a conversation. It should help you sort things out, which should let you find the type of guild that you’re looking for.

It really depends on his Thief’s spec for weapon, trait, and skill choices. Thief builds can be all over the place, so it’s hard to give a blanket statement. Assuming that he’s playing some kind of cliche D/D glass cannon route, you’d want to play a class that was capable of getting and holding aggro. Yet all of that is pretty subjective.

I’m sure that you know that any class match up would work. Mesmer isn’t the best for holding aggro, but it is a pretty flexible class. If you were both going in and out of stealth and kiting mobs all over the place, then it could be an interesting pair.

It really depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. For example, my Venomous Aura S/P & SB character runs full Knight gear (and Ascended gear that favors +Precision over the usual +Toughness in Knight gear). In addition to the standard goals for a VA trait spec, I wanted to be able to hold a piece of land in PvE and off-tank when needed. Between my traits, skills, and gear, I can successfully tank Champion trash mobs in large dynamic events. Holding down one of the Jormag trash mobs is one of my personal joys.

Just be warned that increasing your Toughness score will directly increase your PvE aggro potential. Between my high debuffing, high Toughness, melee range, and respectable dps output, I am an aggro magnet. My character is specifically designed to survive that kind of PvE environment, so it’s not a big deal. Yet if you don’t want to be constantly targeted, then don’t use full sets of Soldiers or Knights gear since it’s more Toughness generated aggro than you would want to handle.

It’s a constant AoE field that generates +3 seconds of Stealth per tick of the field. Then the field has a duration long enough that SR applies multiple +3 second duration Stealth buffs if you sit in the field for the entire duration. While in this field, you’re losing a bit of Stealth duration (as your existing net timer runs down) in exchange for getting back more Stealth than you’re losing.

I’d assume it is for PvE. The damage for WvW / PvP is something like 50% or 66% of the PvE damage.

Don’t be afraid to ask in Map chat. In a lot of the later zones, certain Skill Points are notorious for being a pain. People often need to help each other for those certain SP targets, whether it’s through a Thief throwing down a Shadow’s Refuge AoE stealth bubble on the communing spot or just a couple of heavy hitting players to help you deal with the mobs.

If you ask in Map chat during prime time hours, you’ll likely find at least one player who still needs that SP or is just willing to do a little charity since they know that you aren’t just being lazy.

GreenNekoHaunt.8527:

I see, thank you very much. I wonder if I could figure something out for WvW and PvE without the need of reskilling everytime. Or maybe I find some other build fitting more.

Either way, it’s not a perfect sitution. On the one hand, mobs usually attack slower than a player. This means that your Retaliation and Confusion damage doesn’t trigger as often, but it is still at 100% damage output for the raw abilities. Then on the other hand, PvP / WvW players will attack far more often. While they will now trigger your Retaliation and Confusion abilities at an increased rate, ArenaNet also has both of these powers coded to do a reduced amount of damage in PvP / WvW.

In the end, the net damage output in each scenerio is a lot closer than people are acting like. I’d still say that the damage output will be a bit higher in WvW, but that’s no reason scrap an entire PvE character build.

Hard to say. What kind of weapons, skills, and trait spec do you plan on using for the Warrior?

For example, I have a couple of Warriors myself. One is a tanky Hammer build that focuses on area control while the other is an AoE buffing offensive build that increases the dps of those near me. Based on my play style for each character, they have different strengths and weaknesses. I’d want some kind of dps focused class build to compliment the Hammer character’s control effects and either a tanky class build or pet class build for the AoE buffing character.

Odokuro.5049:

…. I have heard to use Asura as my race because of the animation difference and it’s hard telling what their going to do.

FYI. The Asura have a unique racial animation for their dodge mechanic. It’s a jumping flip, regardless of your class. This means that the blurred aura effect of a dodging Thief isn’t available. While I love the dodge animation for PvE since it makes it extremely easy to predict where you’re going to land, this can be a real flaw for WvW / PvP.

Having said that, they are also the shortest race and their melee animations are unique. If you’re looking to play some kind of melee spec on your Thief, it should look at least a little different. This could be an advantage in your favor. Just keep in mind that your having predictable dodge jumping arcs is the price that you pay for these other advantages.

It is my understanding that guild memberships are game wide. However each server has its own specific version of your guild’s current upgrades. So if you had a ton of guild amenities on your current server and your guild hasn’t established a presence on your new server, then you’d be the only member of Guild X on that server and would have to effectively level up a copy of Guild X all by yourself on the new server.

Some guilds like the Operation Union people use the guild as a game wide LFG system. In that kind of situation, they have members spread out over many servers and they’ll Guest to a single server for dungeon runs. Yet these kinds of guilds seem to be the exception to the rule. Many people de-guild when they transfer servers because they want access to an upgraded guild that has the amenities that they desire.

From my own Guesting experiences, it looks like Guild Chat messages reach across servers. I don’t know whether this influences your choices or not. It was nice to chat with my guild during breaks when I was on another server as a Guest.

PvE only. Solo and group.

Ha. I could see my human noble character actually using that mini pet. His old pal Faren always used to follow him around in the Personal Story. Now I can have Faren tag along on my future adventures.

I’ve finally started my 2nd Thief. My normal routine is to make x2 characters of a profession. Basically I pick up all of the stuff that I thought was interesting, but couldn’t fit into my 1st character.

With this in mind, I’m running S/D & P/P. This builds is far more mobile and aggressive than my original S/P & SB Venomous Aura character. As I’m looking things over, I think that I’m going Acrobatics 30 / Trickery 30 / (Undecided) 10. The issue is deciding what I should take for those final points. I find myself debating between Shadow’s Embrace for condition removal or Pistol Mastery for when I’m forced to ranged combat.

I’m already used to having poor condition removal on my 1st character and I don’t mind slotting some kind of removal in a Utility slot. Pistol dps is notoriously poor for sustained fights, so increasing its capabilities is attractive. However I’m just torn. Is the damage increase from Pistol Mastery that noticeable? Would it be worth taking for both sustained fights and for when I need to dps spike things down?

EDIT

Does the condition removal from Shadow’s Embrace happen immediately when I enter stealth? Or would I have to wait around for a few seconds before its effects can be seen?

Zaxares.5419:

What were prices like before the introduction of the Blooming Passiflora nodes? I didn’t really pay much attention to them before.

I can’t remember, but they were much higher. It was somewhere around 50s – 70s. They were about half way in between the value of an Ecto and a Lodestone. The whole Southsun event has severely de-valued. The harvesting proc rate on those things is normally insane. Even with the Black Lion rare harvesting tools, you can easily go through 2-3 rare sickles and still not get a single Passion Flower.

I’m not sure. Based on my obervations with how the game works, I’d say no. Since venoms apparent use the recepient’s +stats for determining damage, I’d assume that they would also use the recepients +Condition Duration stats.

I expect this event system to end in a group dungeon, but I’m not looking forward to it. It would be one thing if there had been Flame & Frost: Open World Solo and Flame & Frost: Dungeon Progression. Over the years, I’ve seen some other MMOs break this down like this. A game developer could release content for both sections of their player base and they would avoid alienating them both.

One of the key aspects of GW2’s dynamic event system is that it features “grouping” without the need for formal groups. We buff each other, we heal each other, and we can even revive each other. The social environment that this system creates is a bit different from any other MMO. Yet ArenaNet throws this out of the window for the Living Story system. Instead of providing a permanent content update, they introduce the 1st LS arc. While stringing people along with solo instances and open world dynamic events, they then pull a fast one and say that you have to run a group dungeon to actually get credit for the LS arc. And by the way, you can only complete this dungeon for a couple of weeks.

Most MMOs would have left that dungeon available as a permanent piece of game content to help enrich the game. I’m more than a little baffled about ArenaNet’s decision to remove the content, despite their formal explaination. While I do understand that ArenaNet wants people to be constantly logging in, I don’t understand their desire to punish people who weren’t available for those final weeks. It’s one thing to miss out on some flimsy solo quest activities. Yet it’s something else entirely for people to permanently lose out on experiencing a full dungeon, which is a much greater time investment from ArenaNet.

1) I really don’t see the point of deleting an 80th Asura for an 80th Human of the same class. If you’re doing it for some kind of vital Racial skill in the Human skill selections, then fine. Otherwise it doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you really dislike the Asura visual appearance and signature animations.

2) Thief is getting some kind of nerf in almost every major patch. Originally the game launched with the class being a stealth-focused alpha striking class. Due to PvP balancing, the class is slowly being gutted of its stealth and ultra spike dps capabilities. The final goal is to rebuild Thief into a class that is focused on “burst” damage and mobility. Yet what does burst really mean? When are they ever going to buff a Thief’s mobility options? These are eternal questions and many Thief players are getting frustrated.

If you want to build a Thief that is mainly a non-stealthed build (or only uses stealth in occasional situations), then you should be mostly unaffected by the constant tweaks to the Thief class. But if you were looking for some kind of stealthy assassin that puts other players / mobs down in just a few key hits, then I would tell you to avoid the Thief until things get more settled down within the next 6 months.

Cspence.6921:

And again its not just talking, its playing with other people as well. Doing things together, if I wanted to talk to random people who serve only as acquaintances I would chat people up on facebook or …join a guild.

One of the key components of how the dynamic event system works is that it basically promotes the completely opposite environment of what you’re looking for. People will quickly and silently work with each other when they find themselves at the same event. They will watch each other’s abilities in order to proc Combo Field effects. Through intuition and observation, players will adapt their combat style to mesh with those around them. Then once the event is finished, people will tend to go on their seperate ways.

The entire mechanic system for GW2 is pretty anti-grouping. We get all of the grouping benefits without having to ever create formal groups. Our AoE and group buff effects will still hit players who are in the area. As if this isn’t enough, we can even help each other rally or we can revive dead players. I have always been impressed by just how many experienced players will help each other rally whenever it’s not suicidal to help their fellow players. It says a lot about the spirit of the community.

You seem to want to create formal groups, which then leads to a tightly knit group of Friends List contacts. People can still find this in GW2, but it isn’t the natural reaction to the GW2 system.

Like it or not, this is the direction that the industry is moving. In a bunch of my past MMOs, lots of people had permanently disabled Map / Level chat. Once they found a guild and a regular set of people to group with, they intentionally became very insular. Over the past 5 years, I’ve seen this MMO trend continue to grow and flourish.

A lot of guilds now have voice server requirements. You MUST be logged into their chat server whenever you’re online. While having a microphone is “strongly” encouraged, they claim that technically it isn’t a requirement. To be completely honest, I don’t like this trend. There are many days where I’m exhausted after dealing with frustrating people and I don’t want to feel obligated to continue talking on my personal time. Sometimes a little peace and quiet would be nice, yet that’s not what a growing faction of MMO players seem to believe.

I’m told that some servers like Tarnished Coast do still have a vibrated Map chat population. That is the unofficial RP server for the North American server cluster, so a lot of people make random in-character and out-of-character chatter over there. If that’s what you’re looking for, then it might be in your best interests to start over there. (You can either pay Gems to transfer to a new server or you could delete all of your characters and switch for free.)

In GW2, people tend to talk in Map chat as a means of general coordination. We alert each other to zone bosses spawning, when we’re going to zerg towards a multiple group objective area (in end game zones), and when we’re trying to coordinate our server’s movements in WvW conflict. Beyond that, people only use Map chat when they’re chilling out in Lion’s Arch or when they’re camped out at a boss’ spawning point and they are waiting for its spawn to proc within its spawn window.

Beyond that, people aren’t that chatty in the general Map chat. We’re dodging, buffing, rez’ing, and fighting in a constant dance. While we could stop to randomly chat about nonsense topics, there usually isn’t enough time to both play the game and also chat. If someone asks a question in Map chat, they will usually get a quick response through either a Map chat or private Whisper chat response. Yet that’s a specialized set of circumstances.

From what I’ve been able to gather, most of the random talking that you’re looking for is located on private voice chat servers. Most servers have an unofficial chat server or two for their player base. Some use theirs for WvW, while others also use it for PvE. A lot of guilds will also have their own private chat servers. People need both of their hands to actively play GW2, so speaking into headsets seems to be the ideal solution.

I’d suggest going to Lion’s Arch and asking if there is an unofficial voice chat server for Anvil Rock. Beyond that, many guilds will advertise themselves in 1-15 zone and in Lion’s Arch. If you’re looking for a guild (and people to chat to), those are good places to find what you’re looking for.

A someone who is built to off-tank in Knight gear, I can confirm that my 2k Toughness is really an aggro magnet. If you’re a melee range character who debuffs with high Toughness and has at least a respectable dps output, then you’ll be holding aggro most of the time.