Guild Wars 2

fantastic post, this guide is very true and very helpful. this should be a sticky.

I couldn’t have said it better, You are right on the money and thank you for your assistance, this is very helpful.

I find the Engineer forums kind of dead compared to some others, Warrior/Thief/Guardian etc. The help so far I have recieved (although I got 1 PM) has been pretty minimal, most Engineer’s will try and persuade you to be a grenadier and tell you this is the top DPS build. however they don’t understand that grenades feel clunky, they are slow to attack and very hard to use when trying to keep mobile. so my advice is if dual pistols work for you and you get the job done, it shouldn’t really matter what everyone’s opinions are on how you spec. if it feels right, then most probably it is right.

I have been watching youtube videos and finding the ones that would suit my game style (mobile/tanky and fun) – so I have been using pistol/shield (shield for the stun/knockback) and I have been using the bomb kit (slow/blind/confusion) and big’ol’bomb. although this is what I am using now, its not going to be the only build I will every use for the rest of my gaming as an engineer, I would most probably change things the way my play style changes.

So to sum this up. I’m sorry I can’t offer you good advice as I am only a level 17 Engineer, but I can offer you my perspective.

Hello All

As the title suggests, I am a new Engineer.

I have been looking over the forums to get a bit more understanding of how other people play.

I currently use rifle as this allows me to net shot for immobilize and overcharged shot to keep my distance. I feel jump shot a bit clunky to use and feel it is a bit short ranged compared to most other classes gap closers (700 range). If im playing against a ranged I will open with Jump shot but if im playing against melee I will use it for escape/mobility.

I have tried a few kits and I believe my skills would benefit from having atleast 1 kit. I have tried flamethrower and it is fun, I like Air Blast for when I fight melee, but other than that, it’s distance is quite close and If I want to stay at max range, I dont use much of the other abilities on it. I have tried Elixir Gun and this is fun, but I don’t seem to be doing much damage to my foes, sometimes I feel like I am kiting forever compared to other classes I play (Thief and Guardian). I love the grenades, they offer great utility and I would like to use this as my main kit, they blind/chill/bleed/poison my foes offering me a great set of strategic opportunities, I want to know if I can have these grenades set to autoattack or autotarget? I am not extremely good at selecting the bomb and throwing it to the location of the enemy before they run to that spot whilst still keeping mobile. does anyone have advice for a grenade kit?

So far I am enjoying this class alot, does anyone have advice for a new engineer leveling? I notice alot of talk about Dungeons and WvW, but that doesnt interest me until I am high enough (currently level 16)

Heart of Mists, Click the cross swords pvp icon and then click the button Go to the Heart of the Mists you will find Svanir, The Chief and the Blue Lord on the bottom right of the map, after first completing the trial quests.

I use Carrion for my Cond build, I would recommend going that.

Location: HoM
The Fight: The Blue Lord
The Challenge: Kill the blue lord and all his followers without using an elite skill AND they ALL need to be dead for a minimum of 1 second combined (no-one left standing for atleast 1 second)

Do this and Do this SOLO.

I have successfully done this twice with ease, I will post a youtube of my success soon. Post if your first attempt was a SUCCESS or FAIL

Welcome to the Coal Black Challenge!

ok… to the OP.. thief damage and survivability is probably the best, let me give you an example.

I call the this Coal Black Challenge – call it what you will, but I came up with it on my own.

go to Heart of the Mists and take on the Blue lord and all his followers (whatever rotation you want), kill the followers first if you must, but the challenge is to kill the blue lord and his followers without using an elite skill and having them all dead for atleast 1 second… do you think you can manage that? I have and I play a thief, I have seen rangers/warriors/engineers etc FAIL miserably on this challenge, do you want to know why? because I’m Coal Black and I Play a thief.

try it, tell me how you go, if you do it on your first attempt, congrats, if not… nuf said.

jaygregz.1958:

It’s a shame that people always complain about my poor thief. I have a shatter mesmer that absolutely blows the doors off my thief in terms of dropping newbs. I also have a warrior that does higher burst. Also I have a bunker guardian and a bunker ele.. both can survive forever. I have a condi necro that absolutely melts people.

Yet, people are still complaining about my poor thief.

Oh well….

Wha?!? you neva heard, thief burst is still too high. omg nerf them to the ground, they need nerf with nerf ontop of nerf. they nerf you into the ground with all their uber burst. I have done a backstab for 1000000000 deeps, nerf me please.

ok. seriously, you are right. I am also sick of people complaining about the thief. their damage is not high in comparison to other classes. but people always seem to remember that 1 fight where the thief killed them or got away, and that seems to linger in their minds so they come on the forums and complain. when they do eventually stop nerfing the thief, I will be happy to jump on their forums and complain that their classes need nerf too. infact…. here I go now.

Nerf Warrior
Nerf Mesmer
Nerf Ranger
Nerf Guardian
Nerf Necromancer
Nerf Engineer
Nerf Elementalist

asking for more CC is an excuse for a bad player to complain that PvP is too hard or without it makes PvP fail. Instead you should attempt to make an effort to understand the game mechanics and how more CC would infact ruin the game. Just because your reaction time is horrible does not mean you need CC to give you time to think, what this highlights is that you need more practice at PvP. your shortfalls because you play PvP once in a blue moon should not give you the right to say PvP fails without more CC.

No we do not need any further CC and the CC we have is as intended.

what what? what’s this pvp storage you speak of?

Softspoken.2410:

ddrake.5436:

you say that vitality is a bad counter to agony, I disagree and I will explain why.

lets say you have 15,000 health and take 5% health of agony a tick.
5 ticks = 750 × 5 = 3750
lets say you have 20,000 health and take 5% health of agony a tick.
5 ticks = 1000 × 5 = 5000

all these numbers are meaningless as you are taking a % of dmg and please do not confuse % with numbers.

5 ticks = 25% of damage at 5% health of agony a tick.

this means you will be at 75% health regardless of your HP pool.
however…. you are not attacked solely by agony, you are also attacked by monsters.

lets say you have 5000 hp and you take a bleed for 1000 a tick (you are seriously endangered) 5 sec to live
lets say you have 10000 hp and you take a bleed for 1000 a tick (you are endangered) 10 sec to live

the same could be said for toughness:

5000 hp and you take a 3000 hit however halved to 1500 from melee/ranged – halved from tough (not exact math, but bare with me) 3500 hp remain
10000 hp and you take 3000 hit however doubled to 6000 from melee/ranged – doubled from not having tough (not exact math, but bare with me) 4000 hp remain

now lets throw some fun into the mix, if you take a poison condition your healing is reduced by 33% – do you really think healing ASAP is the fix? or condition removal?

tough does not beat vit and vit does not beat tough, they are seperate mitigations and should be treated as such. to say 1 is not useful is false, it is dependant on the situation.

having 900+ healing and trying to heal through poison is -33% effective.
having 300+ healing and trying to heal after removing poison is 100% effective.

math is fun, theorycrafting is fun, but just remember there is no perfect spec/build/combo etc.

This post is almost completely irrelevant to its own thesis statement, let alone the post it was replying to.

About the only thing relevant in there is that if you stack vitality, you’ll have more life remaining (on an absolute scale) once Agony has stopped having its way with you. Which is true, but as noted in the original original post, vitality is still a poor counter because it doesn’t actually reduce the damage that Agony does to you (In fact, it increases it!), it just allows you to cope with taking damage more easily.

I understand that this wasn’t about the OP as it was stated @Retanaru.2901.
now @Softspoken.2410 learn to read quotes.

you obviously didn’t read my post because if you did you would realise that your statements contradict.

1. it does not increase the damage as it is a % damage. I fail to see how 5% of 15000 health is less damage than 5% of 20000 – the overall damage yes, but the end result you are left with 5% less health.

2. it does not allow you to cope with damage more easily as you are taking a … do you understand how % works? if you take 50 of something it is 50% less of whatever it is taken from if it’s 10000 or 50000 it’s still 50% so coping with it? you still see half a health bubble.

3. in the original post he mentions prec->vit… he is either saying it’s better or go prec and then pick vit, he is not saying it’s a poor counter

4. read the posts before you comment, less you make a mistake.

I understand that this wasn’t about the OP as it was stated @Retanaru.2901.
now @Softspoken.2410 learn to read quotes.

you obviously didn’t read my post because if you did you would realise that your statements contradict.

[quote=806300;Softspoken.2410:]

oh… now you know how warrior feel with Hundred Blades which has a 3+1/2 second activation time.

BabelFish.7234:

ddrake.5436:

pistol whip and haste? with 15 ini how many P/W can you pull off …. the answer is 3 maybe 4 in…. 3/4 second per PW without haste… so.. ~3 seconds without haste… ~1.5 seconds with haste do you really need more than that ? after you have blown your ini, you are completely useless, it’s a fact.

That is so silly. 1st off if you’re gonna go for a PW haste build you take initiative regen as a trait (2 every 10 seconds). Next you take Signet Use (gain 2 initiative when activating a signet) and 3rd you go a bare minimum of 5 deep in trickery so stealing gives you back 3 initiative.

If you feel inclined to spam PW you can spam it 5-6 times and after that you roll back and start using your SB until your initiative regens…only people who don’t understand initiative think the things you just said, also I guess any class would be “useless” when they’ve done their rotation and everything is on CD for those few seconds, eh?

I should also mention Haste will speed through 2 PW and kick start the activation of a 3rd, it will not last any longer.

But that’s beside the point. Why bring up something as off topic as that?

hardly, and I was only giving a rough ~ approx without getting too deep, but you want to, then I shall show you where you are going wrong.

firstly, get your facts straight the 2 ini every 10 seconds is called “Quick Recovery” and this is hardly an excuse for PW + Haste spam and complaining as you would not get your ini back until a 10 sec block has passed also 2 ini not even half a PW ability.

second, if you choose Signet Use you get a 30sec CD and that doesnt even give you 1 PW unless you pop 3 signets (good luck on that if you do), yet again. know your facts before you challenge my knowledge of Initiative. but I can see you are a new thief so I will go easy on you.

third, steal for ini is a 45sec CD, this being your longest CD I would imagine you would have your rotation based around this ability.

I am not saying it’s not possible to regen and get back initiative, there are far more options on doing so.

Opportunist – Critical hits have a 20% chance to restore one initiative (1-second cooldown).
what this means is that if you burn 3 PW in 2 seconds, you get 2 initiative back, no more. do not get this confused, there is a cooldown. and it’s 20% chance not 100%. so a single PW might not even return a single initiative but AT MOST, it will return 1 initiative

Infusion of Shadow – Gain 2 initiative when using a skill that stealths you.
This is good if you plan on stealthing to the target with steal maybe? but that’s trait points you need to spend.

Patience – Regain initiative faster while in stealth.
I don’t see a PW thief stealthing often to regain stealth as this is time lost on a fight.

So …… to sum it up…. at MAX you can get 3-4 PW in ~3sec I don’t care if you can regen like a god, you can only regen MAX 1 per PW if you are lucky, 2 per 10 seconds, and 3 from a steal, that gives you 1 extra PW so ~4 PW at MAX 2 seconds with haste, DONE… you can complain all you like, however this will not give you any more initiative in 4 seconds of haste I highly doubt you are the only person fighting and doing high damage output… 4 seconds of haste with 2 seconds of 4 x PW’s every 45 seconds does not seem to be worthy of a complaint.

P/P with SB is a good combo, why get in close combat, if you want to stay at ranged
however P/P with your D/D is also good. there is no ‘perfect’ build, only the build that feels right to you.

P/P… P/D …. D/P ………

there are plenty of builds. it’s not just the weapons you choose, it’s the utility/elite and traits. do some research or check out the forums, every page people are talking about their builds.

pistol whip and haste? with 15 ini how many P/W can you pull off …. the answer is 3 maybe 4 in…. 3/4 second per PW without haste… so.. ~3 seconds without haste… ~1.5 seconds with haste do you really need more than that ? after you have blown your ini, you are completely useless, it’s a fact.

human female – always have, always will

Retanaru.2901:

I’ve been having luck going glass cannon equipment with a few valkyrie pieces to get up to 15k health and then traiting for survivablility. 1-10 signet of malice and well timed pistol whips are all you need even if you trait full glass cannon because you can kill the veterans extremely fast and switch to a better heal for bosses/evade tank the bosses. From there traiting for leeching venoms is quite good. With my build my venoms heal for 300+ so the spider venom heals for 1.5k or so, coupled with pistol whip and signet of malice I can often heal for more than 3k while damage multiple enemies (pistol whip itself can heal for 2.7k if you hit 3 enemies the whole time). Eventually I’ll have to switch to some other equipment to go farther since vitality is a bad counter to agony, but until then this works quite well.

Regeneration thief may be the only way to live through agony once you get hit by it all the time since our heals aren’t exactly too good. I’m thinking traiting for assasins reward, lifesteal venom, heal in stealth. Then have Spider venom and shadow refuge on the bar for the extra heals.

you say that vitality is a bad counter to agony, I disagree and I will explain why.

lets say you have 15,000 health and take 5% health of agony a tick.
5 ticks = 750 × 5 = 3750
lets say you have 20,000 health and take 5% health of agony a tick.
5 ticks = 1000 × 5 = 5000

all these numbers are meaningless as you are taking a % of dmg and please do not confuse % with numbers.

5 ticks = 25% of damage at 5% health of agony a tick.

this means you will be at 75% health regardless of your HP pool.
however…. you are not attacked solely by agony, you are also attacked by monsters.

lets say you have 5000 hp and you take a bleed for 1000 a tick (you are seriously endangered) 5 sec to live
lets say you have 10000 hp and you take a bleed for 1000 a tick (you are endangered) 10 sec to live

the same could be said for toughness:

5000 hp and you take a 3000 hit however halved to 1500 from melee/ranged – halved from tough (not exact math, but bare with me) 3500 hp remain
10000 hp and you take 3000 hit however doubled to 6000 from melee/ranged – doubled from not having tough (not exact math, but bare with me) 4000 hp remain

now lets throw some fun into the mix, if you take a poison condition your healing is reduced by 33% – do you really think healing ASAP is the fix? or condition removal?

tough does not beat vit and vit does not beat tough, they are seperate mitigations and should be treated as such. to say 1 is not useful is false, it is dependant on the situation.

having 900+ healing and trying to heal through poison is -33% effective.
having 300+ healing and trying to heal after removing poison is 100% effective.

math is fun, theorycrafting is fun, but just remember there is no perfect spec/build/combo etc.

get rid of the music in the background. I cannot watch it.

This video contains content from WMG, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.

WOW? really? I’ve clocked almost 400hours of /age and I havn’t even picked up 1. so much for fair.

vit beats +cond build
+tough beats +power/prec/+critdmg build

great player > good player
good player > bad player
bad player = bad player

I hope this sums it up for you. it doesnt matter what build / gear you have, it also comes down to how bad/good/great of a player you are. having 1 spec is only half the battle and even then it comes down to the matchup.

I don’t use any toughness gear as I am not expecting to get hit, I instead spec +vit so when I do get hit or take cond dmg, I can survive. my traits are the wild bill trait spec using P/D – I have no stealth on my bars as I use C&D for my only stealth requirement. I am very tanky while doing tons of +cond. I find myself ressing ppl more and more in fractals because they go glass cannon.

Hey guys

we have been receiving patches/updates to the game but no mention of what was changed. please keep us in the loop.

Tulisin.6945:

Hanzo.9624:

I cast it while running away before CnD > Steal. It guarantees a Backstab or a Sneak Attack, stops them from using any abilities (aside from stun breaks) and interrupts abilities. As 0/0/30/20/20 it shares to any ally including NPC’s. Sharing spider, basilisk and skale venom with your team when attacking a node is huge. On a 45 sec cool down. As 20/0/30/20/0 it’s 36 sec. The only change I could see is to make it a 1/2 sec longer and instant but I think the premise when used correctly is fine. It’s people who cast it then attack when the target is obstructed or when they have a defensive cool down up so they waste it that have the most issue with it.

The problem is that Basilisk venom is balanced around setups like yours where pushing a bunch of trait synergy can make it worthwhile. This means that in every other situation it is incredibly mediocre. The fact that it is the only underwater elite available makes this situation doubly frustrating.

It isn’t a bad skill, but it doesn’t deserve to be an elite. The best “fix” for basilisk venom is just to make it a regular utility skill and develop a new elite.

I agree, make this into a regular utility skill and develop a new elite. also allow us to use other elites under water.

I agree with kenshinakh. As a player you can report bugs, however when it comes to making changes based on your gut fealing or your experience, this does not flow on for everyones experience. the devs are the ones making the games, not us. we need to inform them of issues however their is a fine line we must tread and not mistaken issues/flaws/bugs with skill.

I enter WvW and sPVP with P/P and destroy people. 3 unloads generally kill 1 person at 900 range. If I pop haste I can do that in half the time. nothing is broken with P/P it is working as intended.

lol everyone screaming for backstab build nerf LOLsauce. I pop haste and do 3 unloads on someone at 900 range, dead. haha. everyone always remembers the losses to a thief.

I give you an example of a pessimist, you drive down a road with 10 sets of lights and hit 3 red 7 green, at the end you say… why did I get so many red lights.

I give you an example in terms of thief. you enter a zerg fight and kill 5 players, you start to run away with 50% or 25% health and get finished of by a stealth+mug,backstab,heartseaker build.

It’s justified.

This is not working, stuck at 0

I’m glad we finally had this discussion, my 2 cents:

I also believe we need an elite to syn with dual pistols as this is my build. thieves guild is good, but just doesn’t feel right. maybe a gun manouver or grenade throw like an engineer? I don’t know, but I agree with OP that they need to look at this for dual pistols.

well, not sure how the above thieves play, but I generally do 9k dps an unload and from what I’m told this is pretty good.

considering it’s 900 range (so medium safe distance) and I have stealth to get out of combat when I pull too much aggro. (i.e. the boss you hide behind the boxes in arah, I had him kited for 90% of the fight because of too much damage).

think what you want, but every class is viable in pve and pvp, this is what anet have worked hard to achieve.

edit: also arah is the hardest dungeon in the game, so that should tell you something.

why do we thieves continually have to defend the class we play purely on the basis of unskilled players having a QQ. I have argued many points which get glossed over and soon forgotten, I feel we need demonstrations to set things in order.

Now seeing as this forum is filled with thieves taking on other classes easily, I want to see the QQers post their loss to a thief in a vid format (fraps etc, but not a screenshot). We deserve the right of innocent until Proven guilty, what I mean is that we want to examine and explain ourselves if we are indeed OP. but if it turns out that you are just so bad that you shouldn’t be in pvp, then atleast we can make that judgement together as a helpful forum.

post your loss to a thief on this forum and we will all decide happy loss.

I agree with OP, we are severely under powered and need more buffs than nerfs, we don’t have that much burst and when it comes down to it we have one of the smallest HP pools. a few seconds of stealth while we can still get hit means very bad mechanics, we need stealth to make us invulnerable for the period.

Knote.2904:

ITT: Thieves try to defend OP Steal abilities, and talk about how much better Necro’s are than them.

Ugh.

of course we are defending thieves, your on a thief forum, or havn’t you noticed?
BTW we aren’t talking about how necro is better, we are defending their class for them. because clearly they don’t know their own class and need a thief to explain it to them.

I use P/D as my 2nd instead of SB – I find Dancing Dagger a better kite ability than the shortbow disabling shot.

Shinjo.6092:

I’m so tired of being punished for rolling a thief. It took me quite a while to get to level 80 because I have a day job. I get kicked out of dungeon groups because quite frankly, no one wants to see a thief in their party. I dread every time I see a new update because I just know we’re getting hit with another nerf. HS, PW, Basilisk venom, Assassin’s Signet, Revealed time…now people are crying about dagger storm…sigh~

I took a while to level 80 too, but I am always welcome in dungeons and in-fact I usually run dungeons with 1 or 2 other thieves, not sure what you are doing wrong, but it’s not a broken profession in dungeons, sure some skills/weapons etc etc are broken, but that isn’t reason enough to not want our profession in dungeons. we offer great damage and utility.

What fractal is also saying is just make sure you are clear on your %duration, if you want to stack duration make it in 25/50/75/100 but not at the cost of +con.

1 dmg over 100 ticks is 100 dmg
100 dmg over 1 tick is 100 dmg

but here is some fun for you, find the medium.

50 dmg over 50 ticks is 2500 dmg

don’t forget you scale to the area you are in, if you are level 80 with 75% crit chance in a level 80 zone, you will have ~%30 in a level 20 zone. these numbers are not real, I just pulled them out of my kitten but just using it as an example.

has anyone from Anet spoken about the stealth issue? or is it just a localised lag issue? maybe you all need faster internet connections and not a fix for the game.

VictorTroska.3725:

Only good part was that good mesmer fight. Rest are just simply put: “I screw up but I still kill em all lol.” and thieves on forums preach that other classes need to play perfectly and predict thieves actions to survive against them. It wasnt bad video but I got bad taste of it because if I do one mistake vs thief in PvP, I die on my class while you were allowed to do so much and yet rewarded for it.

you say you do 1 mistake, I say you do multiple. you are making an argument based off your own judgement of skill level. I play a thief and I find that there are 3 skill levels to players. I will make my own judgement call since you made yours.

[bad] – you
[good] – me
[great] – people that post on you-tube [look at me I can 1 shot everyone 1v10] which I am presuming are 5% of the entire thief population.

@konvay

don’t forget the rest of your fear type traits

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Terror – fear does damage (like steal+mug)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Reaper%27s_Protection – fear when you are disabled (this is the best example of using your traits)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fear_of_Death – fear when you are downed (another fear)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Master_of_Terror – fear lasts longer

don’t forget your stun breakers

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Necrotic_Traversal
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Plague_Signet
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spectral_Armor
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spectral_Walk

now when I say L2P what I mean to say is do not complain about our class, until you learn to play yours.

AFAIK, questing and events are the sure way of making money.

You asked for an explanation as to why this is balanced, the following are examples of how the steal is balanced.

45sec CD
%chance of the fear ability from the necromancer table of steal-able abilities

I believe this is balanced, especially for dungeons like AC. please note that steal is single target. Thieves specialise in single target and therefore because we can rarely attack with AoE we need to have ‘something’ to keep us alive from multiple enemies.

Thieves need their steal to actually steal the items from the enemy.

• If we steal from a Dragon, we should get teeth or talons or scales.
• If we steal from a Boss, we should get their weapons and armour
• If we steal from a Player in PvP they should run around naked while we sell their stuff on the trading post.

IMO, get rid of your magic find and just steal everything

Skill: Shadow Refuge

how did you manage to get 7-8 body shots in 10 sec? how much ini do you have?

Stealth isn’t animation enough? did you see him stealth?

HS spam? not quite the distance… but with this it’s not doing anyone damage by retreating without hitting anyone? hehe, funny image of people traveling the map at lightning speed > Backwards.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying you need to be a bunker to survive, I would counter with

“Study the animations of your opposition and counter attack”.
“Practice the dodge mechanic on the Golem in HoM”
“Get a better ISP”