Gliders just a worse version of flying mount
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: epandrsn.5126
Showing Posts For epandrsn.5126:
Spent a ton of karma on a set of gear, realized it was the wrong armor type… luckily it was only three pieces from that vendor.
Spent a bunch of badges/tokens and gold on the wrong armor type as well… I’ve done this a handful of times, and it always makes me rage quit. I’ll be a little tipsy or something and only realize my mistake when I go to put the gear on.
Builds are a little less critical until you start facing more challenging content like Orr. The rest of the game is pretty easy and not really trait dependant. Yeah, it can make it a bit easier, but it’s not absolutely critical. The right armor, weapons and skill choices will have more of an impact.
That said, not having anything to look forward to at each level does make for a dull leveling experience.
I think they are focusing on repeatable content… they will likely introduce more dungeons and maybe some raid instances (they do have a raid designer now), but they need to have something we can keep coming back to. It maximizes their time invested.
I also like the idea of repeatable adventures where you can measure yourself against others. The only PvE content that currently does that is dungeons, but there is no ingame system to record it.
Ha!, I sense so much anger!
If I were a warrior i’d be embarrassed to admit a thief could beat me. In fact when I used to play warrior (dual swords/bow condi banner regen), the only issue I had with thieves was when they ran away after failing to drop my health below 80 percent and I couldn’t catch up.
Mesmer is pretty much regarded as the strongest 1v1 class in the game. Someone did a rough poll on all the class boards, mesmers pretty much stated the only other classes they have issues with are other mesmers and condi engineers. I could play as a cheesey perplexity p/d spamming thief build and win like that, but who wants to play that dull set up.
Don’t be so angry at your hammer nerf, you still have healing signet.
Personally I did the stun-lock physical build (mace/shield + hammer). Whenever a thief would pop out of stealth I’d stun lock them until they panicked and went into stealth, where I would then pop my heal, get back to around ~80% HP and wait for them to show themselves so I could stun lock them again. Quite funny.
This was pretty much my experience with Warr’s… I played as a condi-thief for most of season 1, and warriors were the toughest to kill. Bursty thief builds, like yishis-style builds, do much better if they can time their blinds (blinded warrior can’t stun).
That being said, for the first time I was able to handle most mesmers with a little more ease. They are a nightmare for my necro.
I played around with the new necro heal for a little while last night, and it’s not effective. For my bunker build, I rely heavily on protection and siphons, which gives you good survivability against 1 or 2 people. Well of blood becomes the better heal though, as you gain protection and additional incoming heals when it ticks.
That being said, bunker necro is fairly useless if you get focused by more than two people or so. Once you blow your well rotation, there are no more CD’s to keep you going, and you do so little damage that you feel pretty useless.
Venom builds will remain subpar till Devs become serious and do something with them, for example remove venom share and buff all venoms.
But they give no signs of becoming serious about this matter…
I just don’t like how you pop a venom, and then immediately use it up and have to wait 45 seconds or w/e for it to CD. I feel like I cannot actively use them that way, as they are always on CD. The only one I used was the poison based venom, and that was strictly to protect bleeds… I still found it underwhelming.
It’s viable. It’s fun. It’s easier to play and more survivable than backstab builds. As others have said, pick Dire or Carrion gear and make sure your setup applies multiple conditions to add damage and cover the bleed stacks.
There are two primary downsides:
1) Your nice condition gear won’t translate well to group-based PvE play. Power/ Crit is the meta there
2) You cannot make full use of the shortbow, which is just an extraordinary weapon for thieves
P/D is getting buffed on 12/10. None of the major nerfs hit this spec, so you’ll have more initiative overall.
I agree, shortbow is underwhelming as heck with P/D. D/D is a better off-hand, as DB stacks a huge amount of bleeds while you are constantly evading. If you run Signet of Malice, it also restores 1k+ health per DB.
As far as init. is concerned, P/D almost always has a surplus of initiative. You basically only use it for CnD and Pistol 3, or Pistol 2 if your target is fleeing. I rarely, if ever run out, so it’s a sort of moot point that we get more.
It works, but can be frustrating to play at times.
Most classes carry lots of Condition cleansing so you’ll have a hard time applying pressure. You really need to spam lots of different condition types in order to cover your Bleeds.
But worst of all you cannot prevent someone from reviving his fallen team-mate. So you’re really just going to be doing 1v1 with a build that takes a long time to kill and gives everyone ample opportunity to escape if they wish.
I agree with this fully. It’s a phenomenal dueling build, lots of survivability and damage avoidance. My big gripe was lack of immediate damage pressure and being very vulnerable to hambow warriors (what class isn’t, lol).
I’ve tried several variations on the build, but you will want Carrion/Soldiers for WvW. I run P/D and SB and use P/D 95% of the time. The rotation is basically stealth>pistol 1>pistol 3(if close and have extra init. to dump)>dodge through your opponent with dodgetrops>Stealth and let some stuff tick>pistol 1, rinse and repeat.
P/D is a forgiving way to learn positioning, especially with the extra soldiers gear. After playing it all through season 1, I am currently switching over to a yishis-style backstab build. As many duels as I’ve won with a P/D build, I want more of a high-damage assassin build now that I really know the class. The scariest thieves, in my opinion, are the ones you absolutely know are about to line up a brutal backstab on you. It’s nerve wracking, and nerves often win fights.
the Reason for D/D in the other weapon set is quick getaways and when you’re fighting another Thief and s/he inevitably uses Shadow Refuge when hurt, you move to the middle of it swap weapons sets (Geomancy sigil goes off) and you death blossom the field, almost 100% you get a downed enemy thief.
D/D is also great for stacking bleeds really quickly with DB. I tend to have an excess of initiative when running P/D, and it’s a great way to dump some of that extra and convert to lots of bleeds.
I was running a similar build, but Assassin’s reward is a bit underwhelming. I now run 20/0/20/15/15. In deadly arts, I basically just traited for Mug and poison on steal, so stealing now causes poison, weakness and returns ~2k+ health while doing direct damage. I run P/D+D/D.
I also use mostly Carrion gear with some soldiers and apothecary’s mixed in. I am currently running runes of speed as I like the increased movement speed, and I figured being able to have a third utility slot open makes up for the minor loss in DPS. I do good direct damage and great condition damage with 21k hp. Swap between Signet of Malice or Hide in Shadows depending on what I am doing… HiS tends to be better for roaming and picking off single foes, SoM better for groups.
My utilities change based on what I am doing as well. I mainly go for stealthing utilities. With a good rotation I have bleed, poison, weakness, cripple and blind up most of the time, with torment thrown in periodically. Debating runes of perplexity as the icing on the cake and switching back to the movement sig.
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I run Carrion/Apothecary and run a conditions build. 22k HP with bloodlust, decent condition damage and direct damage. Use D/D and P/D.
If you look at the total increase in stats… it’s what, a total of 5% if you have all the ascended items? Seeing as most of them are basically given to you over time (ascended gear via Laurels), most players should not have an issue getting at least a few pieces of ascended gear, giving someone with an ascended weapon a very, very slight advantage… it’ll mostly be psychological for those who need it.
It’s also just something to strive for over time.. there really aren’t a huge amount of middle-term goals in this game. It either takes a few hours to get something, or a hundred. They are trying to fill that gap it would seem.
For example, I just got my thief to level 80 and had him fully geared in the exotics I wanted for him and ascended neck piece in less than a couple hours from leveling. Granted, I’d done a lot of the work on another char, but it was mostly just farting around in dungeons and WvW. No real farming… it just seemed overly easy. At least now I can look on the horizon and be like “Ok, there is that goal if I choose to do it”.
(edited by epandrsn.5126)
So, what would be the active effect of signet, 180 condition damage alone is not very impressive suggestion.
As for me, i don’t care about condition damage on thief at all, because beside venoms, we can only stack bleeds on a very long way, which in turn, could be easily removed.
So, if we think about condition signet, we should introduce its active effect, iroving the tactic of condition builds. Like stealth (but this is too straight mechanic for signet), or boons (regen, protection, vigor).
But anyways, i’m refusing to use condis on thief.
I think this is sort of misinformed… bleeds can be stacked via several different skills. Between caltrops and death blossom and stealthed pistol 1, we can stack bleeds faster than most other classes (usually 15-20 within about 2-3 seconds). We can also apply torment, poison, cripple and blindness really easily with instant cast skills, which can “protect” our bleeds from being removed first. Applying just one condition is a bad strategy for any condi build for any class (played necro for several months before my thief). Venoms are sort of a waste of a utility slot as I see it.. the cooldown is too long, and there are just more effective skills. I used skale venom for a while, but it’s underwhelming without traiting for venoms.
And yes, bleeds can be removed, but again, we can stack them back up in just a second or two. Also, if you are attacking someone whose build is focused on condi removal, just choose a different target or GTFO. We have that luxury… not something you get with a condi necro with no escape skills.
As far as a condi signet goes, I think being able to apply a seperate condition would be ideal to further protect bleeds/poison/torment and keep them ticking. Burning is unlikely, but would be amazing.
I have been running D/D and S/D in sPvP as a conditions thief, and it can be awesome. I usually blow a lot of my initiative and endurance spamming DB and Dodgetrops, then stealth, switch to pistol main-hand and stack five more bleeds real quick. I initially was focusing on evades/dodges, but started moving more towards stealth with a newer build. Pistol 1 is a great way to stack bleeds, and people can’t target what they can’t see.
You get a ton of evades obviously, plus you are constantly healing yourself quite a bit as you hit sooo often. It’s amazingly survivable, plus you can stack up a ton of bleeds very quickly with DB and Caltrops. Even classes that cleanse condi’s a lot will eventually start to slowly break down while your health stays pretty full. Just run 0/0/30/20/20 and signet of malice, and mix carrion/apoth. gear.
I am pretty much basing the build on Selfrij’s build (search it on youtube), but using DB quite a bit more. I just use pistols when the init. gets low, as pistol 1 can stack bleeds without using any. So far it’s put me number 1 for kills in quite a few PUG sPvP matches, and a lot of times I won’t even go down.
The second you switch to P/D, you’ve lost the point – you’re not surviving without heavy stealth, and that’ll force you to lose the point.
Like I’ve been saying, it might be fun, it might be good at getting kills, but that doesn’t make it a good SPvP spec.
That’s just my current build, and yes, it is more about having fun and practicing for WvW. I initially used a build that relied a bit more on initiative generation and used stealth basically just to remove conditions. If you go full death blossom, you tend to stay on point and apply a lot of pressure to most classes as you stack bleeds really, really fast.
I have been running D/D and S/D in sPvP as a conditions thief, and it can be awesome. I usually blow a lot of my initiative and endurance spamming DB and Dodgetrops, then stealth, switch to pistol main-hand and stack five more bleeds real quick. I initially was focusing on evades/dodges, but started moving more towards stealth with a newer build. Pistol 1 is a great way to stack bleeds, and people can’t target what they can’t see.
You get a ton of evades obviously, plus you are constantly healing yourself quite a bit as you hit sooo often. It’s amazingly survivable, plus you can stack up a ton of bleeds very quickly with DB and Caltrops. Even classes that cleanse condi’s a lot will eventually start to slowly break down while your health stays pretty full. Just run 0/0/30/20/20 and signet of malice, and mix carrion/apoth. gear.
I am pretty much basing the build on Selfrij’s build (search it on youtube), but using DB quite a bit more. I just use pistols when the init. gets low, as pistol 1 can stack bleeds without using any. So far it’s put me number 1 for kills in quite a few PUG sPvP matches, and a lot of times I won’t even go down.
I think there are some imbalances, but I’ve really been enjoying my conditions thief. Using P/D or D/D and relying heavily on Death Blossom and dodgetrops. I only really struggle with a few specific builds, but I’ve been finding that I can 1v1 most classes without too much problem. Just use a mix of carrion/apoth. gear and bleed duration runes. Stacking 15-20 bleeds can be done faster than any other class that I’ve seen.
I played necro for about 8 months, but have just grown a bit tired of it. I used to absolutely hate mesmers, but now they are pretty simple to take down.
My biggest issue was stun lock type situations, but if you use roll for initiative, shadow step or something along those lines, you can often break it and turn around and whittle the warrior down now that he’s blown his CD’s and you can counter him.
full zerker. axe/focus for stacking 25 vuln. switch to DS and with proper build you can spam piercing lifeblast for 8k in pve. life transfer will full zerker builds melts for about 6k aoe.
Life transfer should be closer to 8.5k+ in my experience if you have some might stacked. Jumping into a clump of twenty people in WvW and dropping half of their life bars seems a bit much.. but god it’s fun. Got my 50 kill monthly in record time last night diving into a poorly led zerg and dumping a bunch of aoe skills.
Also, if you want to really burst, stacking your wells, maybe a few bleeds for good measure and then dumping LB will get you some really high damage numbers. Even better if you have a pet or two out. Somewhere in the area of 10-12k per second, petering down to ~7-8k/s after about five seconds.