Guild Wars 2

I’ve played a lot as thief in WvW, and most of it was D/D power. Secondary set was usually S/D or shortbow. Sadly D/D is not nearly as viable as it used to be, so now I usually run D/P and shortbow.

Which melee set gives you better options to control the pace of the engagement? D/P is better imo. If you want to stealth to get away from a player’s burst, dagger offhand is risky. Miss and you are often out of options. Pistol offhand is much more reliable, and even more so if you use bound to gain stealth because the overall initiative requirement is lower than blackpowder-heartseeker.

I won’t even get into the ICD on backstab. Still annoyed at Anet about that. D/D is hurt the most by this.

One thing that dagger offhand is better at is crippling enemies you are chasing. This is very useful in group fights, and I miss it with pistol offhand.

If you haven’t played in a while, check out Invigorating Precision in the Crit Strikes line. 15% of crit damage to health is great for sustain. Get lots of precision on that gear. I don’t run the usual Deadly Arts/Trickery but go with Crit Strikes/Acro and use bound as the daredevil dodge. I know it’s not meta, but the sustain is soo much better.

1. Build saver. Currently it is a pain to change even one trait, which I do often when traveling to get a better swiftness boon on my thief. A hotkey for choosing a build would be a great quality of life improvement.

2. Overall game improvement: the UI should not interfere with mouse position for ranged attacks. Ever been on an arrow cart and want to hit that spot right in the upper right corner of the screen? Sorry, the UI is there and forces the target reticle on your own position.

It is even more frustrating when trying to use a skill such as thief’s shadow step. Often it is used in an emergency where even a split second of floundering around will result in dying. The problem is compounded when all of the visual effects going off around you make it hard to even find where the mouse pointer is. This takes time, which is in short supply when being chain cc’d and focused.

Removing the UI interference with the mouse pointer on range select would be a great QoL improvement.

Driven fortitude is a baseline trait in Daredevil that is supposed to heal for at least 456 when you evade, with a cooldown of one second. I have yet to see the heal in the combat log.

My thief is currently using conditions and dagger-dagger death blossom / evade spam. The evades are constant. The other on-evade traits are working fine. This heal would be extremely helpful for survivability if it was actually working.

To test this I was just in one of the HoT zones for an hour, constantly fighting while watching the combat log. Not once did the heal show up in the log.

I’m just wondering if anyone else has noticed the same thing.

This is something which I’ve been wanting for a long time. Consumables tend to run out right when action is too hectic and go unnoticed.

Another solution would be to allow stacking of food effect duration. Before the food effect has expired, let us consume more of the same and have it stack duration instead of replace the duration. This method would not require a change to the UI. Even just a 5 or 10 minute duration extension limit would be a quality of life improvement.

The stealth from trapper runes is not functioning quite right. Normally when a thief gains stealth, the auto attack stops. However, gaining stealth through traps with these runes does not end the auto attack. If you have been attacking and the target is in view and in range then the auto attack fires and the sneak attack is lost. I have not tested this on a ranger.

A couple of ways to work around it are to sheath weapons before laying the trap or be facing away from the target. These are not ideal because in the heat of combat the auto attack will often end stealth if one of these moves is poorly timed.

The best solution would be to end auto attacks the same as with other stealth methods.

Chests need shovels to dig them up. The only way to get the shovels is to participate in a successful event. This does encourage players to do the events; if people ignored the events there would be no more digging up of chests.

Undead chicken mail delivery. Will pay gems for this.

I’m having the same problem. The launcher starts but does not accept any inputs into the name and password fields – it appears frozen. If I run it as administrator it changes the look of the launcher but still does not allow any inputs.

Running Win8.1 Pro 64 bit. Compatibility mode with different versions of windows has no effect.

How does thief survive during combat in wvw? There are three ways as I see it: stealth, evasion and shadow stepping.

All three survival methods are getting hit with the Dec. 10 patch. They must want thieves to die more.

It is hard to see how much the Critical Strikes 15 trait change will affect init regen during combat without actually play testing it. I see a definite boost to out of combat init regen however. I think this change will increase out of combat mobility for the thief: more heart seekers or shortbow 5 for travelling.

The cast time addition to sword 2 really bothers me, but that is another topic.

I suspect that it is a bandwidth issue where packets are getting dropped. Tonight I was in a huge 3 way battle in EB and the lag was horrendous. Skills would not activate and even auto attacks barely hit anything even when right on top of an enemy. This has been normal for big battles.

My suspicion is that the bandwidth and cpu usage scales quadratically: a doubling of the number of players requires four times the bandwidth. Imagine 10 players where each player’s actions have to be transmitted to each other player by the server. There will be 10*10=100 messages to all the players. Double the number of players to 20 and the number of messages will be 20*20=400. Consider that battles can have several hundred players in a close area – assume 300 – and the number becomes 300*300=90,000. That is if each player takes just one action each.

It appears that the server must approve of actions such as heals before they can activate on the player’s computer. Skills often may affect other team mates or enemies in the immediate area when factoring in traits or runes/sigils, so it makes sense that the server needs this information.

A network can only handle a finite amount of packets. Anything above the maximum is lost. When it takes 30 seconds to activate a heal skill, it is probably due to blind luck for that packet to make it to the server, get processed, and get back to the client computer. And mashing that heal button – that seems to do nothing – just adds to the network congestion for every button press. More congestion equals more packet loss. The problem compounds itself.

This option would be a great help when ground targeting while in a hurry. When all you have is a split second to escape or die, you do not have time to fiddle with view angle while finding a good target point. I agree it would be a much welcome improvement.

I try to use weapon sets and utility skills that shore up certain weaknesses. For example, sword is good to keep as a second weapon set if you don’t otherwise have condition removal. Shadow step is a useful utility skill both offensively and defensively – I find it helps mobility a great deal for builds that have little initiative regen.

Likewise some skills build synergy with certain traits. Smoke bomb is really useful when traited to 30 in shadow arts. With little or no shadow arts it is not so great.

This among other nerfs – s/d – has me downright steamed. I rarely use the shortbow, but do keep it handy in case of a siege fight so I have some way to do damage. This nerf to cluster bomb range makes shortbow effectively useless in a siege situation.

I’ve been using withdraw exclusively for WvW the last few months. I find the instant cast and the dodge are both invaluable – more valuable than the stealth from HiS. It is great for getting out of aoe circles. I run with D/P so stealth is on demand anyway.

Changed up my armor runes to Hoelbrak for the condition reduction, and use condition reduction food. Instead of the stealth trait to remove conditions, I use the trait for extra initiative in stealth. Conditions don’t last long at all with all that passive condition duration reduction. I don’t miss the condition removal in stealth.

The kitty right at the end had me howling.

This happens whenever you get a lot of players fighting in one small area. Dragon events and stonemist castle are the worst that I’ve experienced. Skills will not activate even when mashing them for a minute. The only consolation is that other players are experiencing the same problem so no one is at a serious disadvantage. The problem does need to be addressed at some point.

One solution would be an extra bag slot that holds cash shop items only. Other games do this and it makes sense. It encourages usage of the cash shop by providing free space for storage.

All those boosters and town clothes could be tucked away in a player’s inventory with no worries.

Not sure if serious..

iNaddict.8021:

Withdraw should have a area targetted shadowstep mechanic…

that would be awesome.. and it would make me consider to use it.

Withdraw is fine as it is. It is instant cast which makes it the fastest thief heal. The instant cast combined with the dodge are a life saver more often that you would think. Another benefit is the short cooldown, so I’m not afraid to use it often.

The other heals have their uses but withdraw has its advantages.

I had a sigil of air on a pistol that stopped working for weeks. Finally I put in a new sigil and now it works fine. The cost is not a huge issue for me because air sigils are cheap.

However, I wonder about the other sigils where the effects are not so obvious: there is no easy way to confirm if they are working or not. For example, crit chance and force sigils can only be tested with extensive testing and parsing of logs.

Lord Aargadon.4135:

I willing to bet its the drops that are bugged, not the chest appearing, pretty much proving that something is wrong with either DR or loot tables, it could be items registering as incorrect quality or not looting due to bugs. In other words, everytime you see a steel or wooden chest, its not that the chest with porous bones and fur scraps shouldn’t be there, I think its that something that should be isn’t there.

This. I suspect that the entire loot drop system is bugged, and the new chest system makes it apparent. There is some problem in between when the drop is calculated and when it is placed in the player’s inventory. This same problem could be at the root of why veteran and champion mobs drop such crappy loot.

One thing I think is important is to always have an escape ability. The choice is either stealth or mobility. Lately I’ve been using d/p and using the shadow arts X trait for initiative regen in stealth. With this setup a zerg can cruise right past and leave me unmolested. I’m finding this stealth build very survivable.

The other option for escape is mobility, and the weapons that help with that are dagger main hand or shortbow. Even if you run with acrobatic traits it is good to have at least one weapon for added mobility. Sword or pistol main hand do not offer much mobility. Sword does offer some with shadowstep but it is not spammable.

Early on I played a mobile thief but now I play a much more stealthy style. It allows longer fights because I can heal up in stealth without running away when at low health. D/p is key to this style.

10/30/30 is a very good build. One of my favorites. The shadow arts traits I like to use condition removal on stealth, the 2 point stealth cost reduction, and healing in stealth. This build is very good in long fights and has good synergy with stealth skills like blinding powder and shadow refuge. The extra 300 toughness from shadow arts helps survivability as well.

One of the biggest issues with thieves is culling. My main is an 80 thief and have benefited from it as well have been on the receiving end of invisible attackers. Fix culling and most of the problems with thieves will be solved.

Another issue not mentioned in this thread is mug on steal. It adds about 4k to 5k to the thief’s burst damage and makes their opening attack that much more deadly. In my opinion mug should be replaced with something else. Thieves have enough burst damage without it.

Fleet shadow I will be trying out for sure. 50% seems too good to be true. I often like to use 30 shadow arts and this will fit in well with those stealthy kinds of builds.

LyzeUH.1398:

Ah if you’re going with S/P, consider opening the fight with Infiltrator’s Strike, the Return portion of it will shadowstep you back and at the same time remove a condition.

Sword shadowstep works very well with daggerstorm. The return shadowstep lasts longer than the daggerstorm, unlike the shadowstep utility skill. It offers a very quick escape option if you get too much aggro, and the condition removal is nice.

For general condition removal I make use of the shadow’s embrace trait often. Blinding powder becomes even more valuable as an escape skill when shadow’s embrace is traited.

Build for lots of crit chance preferably over 50%. Use omnomberry pie for the 66% chance to steal life on a crit. There is no cooldown on that lifesteal, which is 338 each proc on my thief. Dive into a zerg and use dagger storm and then shadowstep away when done. I survive about 90% of the time doing this and it can change the tide of a battle. The bigger the clump of enemies the more healing you get.

Signet of malice would work in much the same way. I’ve never needed to try it because the pie is so good.

Another problem with shadowshot is that the pistol shot must do damage or you do not get the teleport. A shield block or evade negates the skill. That issue and the root after teleport make it unreliable in pvp or wvw.

Hand planer or powered? The patch needs to know.

Knight’s is good to use for a few pieces. I can really tell when another thief is glass cannon – they have so little health and toughness they drop faster than an afk elementalist.

My thief is precision based but still has a good amount of toughness. While not a glass cannon at all it still is very deadly.

Initiative is key to using the thief in unconventional ways. The last few days I’ve been experimenting with builds using Shadow Arts 30 and trait XI for that nice health regen in stealth. You can use cloak and dagger, regen while in stealth, when you reappear reapply cloak and dagger and repeat – non stop. A great way to heal up in a fight and cause confusion. This would not be possible if cloak and dagger was on a long cool-down.

I use the very inexpensive Emerald orb. +20 precision, +14 toughness and +14 power. Stat wise it is hard to beat the orbs. They just don’t give any specials.

I’m thinking of upgrading to thief, lyssa or speed. They all have specials that look good for a thief.

It is so annoying to run around in Orr. So much that I hardly want to go there to farm anymore.

You were probably in combat and didn’t know it. If a mob aggros on you and then gives up and returns to its spawn, you will remain in combat if you remain within a certain range- even while the mob is sitting there passively.

A good way to tell if you are in combat is to look at the utility skills. If the little arrow is at the top allowing them to be changed, you are out of combat. Otherwise the game has you in combat mode. No harvesting tool changes, weapon changes, or skill changes are allowed.

Use shortbow on the ranger. The auto attack shot bounces off the pet and hits the ranger twice. If pet is dead then switch to melee. Easy.

Shortbow is essential in WvW. The 5 ability is so good for chasing or getting away, and is a good AoE ranged weapon.

D/D is great for skirmishes. Aside from the high single target damage from daggers, deathblossom gives you some AoE when there are more than one enemy or if a thief goes stealthy and you need to finish him.

Yesterday I was experimenting with D/P. Black powder + heartseeker gives you a stealth combo that is more reliable than cloak and dagger, but the drawback is you have to stay in the circle before using heartseeker. This combo allows a thief to control a fight with plenty of stealth and blindness.

You are asking for options which already exist in the game. Try to choose traits with initiative recovery and it becomes less of an issue. Mine is built using the bottom 3 trait lines and has little problem with initiative recovery. Cloak and dagger with the 2 initiative recovery on stealth makes it a lot cheaper; essentially you can use it non-stop every time stealth immunity wears off.

But no matter what, spamming Death Blossom will deplete your initiative quickly. I have the feeling it will be one of the thief skills to be nerfed. Do we really want it to be even more overpowering by recovering initiative from its use?

Core-2 duo at 2.4 GHZ, 4 Gigs ram, ATI 5850 graphics card.

At lowest graphics settings it is a smooth 60-70 fps in low population areas. In WvW it gets as low as 5 to 7 fps and yes it is horrible.

What gets me is how the game uses up a large percentage of the cpu even on the login screen. There is no good software engineering reason why that should be happening.

That can only lead one to believe that the same waste of cpu cycles is happening in game which severely affects performance. It is just not as much of an issue for those with powerful rigs.

I agree consumables are a bit clunky at the moment.

A similar solution would be to give potions and food a slot to drop them in where they would be used automatically. A key-bind or visual toggle would be useful to turn off the auto consumption when not needing the buff.

You might want to check out the level 78 exotic pieces to upgrade your gear until you can afford the 80 exotic. I found they were cheaper than the level 80 rares with better stats – and almost as good as 80 exotic.

42k karma will buy an armor piece from vendors in Orr. If you have WvW valor tokens the cheapest pieces are about 262 each. It takes a lot of play to get enough for one item at those prices.

It is hard to say if levelling up armorsmithing will save you any money. It costs a lot to get to 400, and because so many players are crafting there is little profit to be found from selling of crafted items.

Earning top level gear in this game is not nearly as hard as many other mmos. Play to enjoy the game and eventually the gear will come.

Pistol whip is hard to land against players. The initial stun takes so long to cast that good players will avoid it. And it is a channeled skill, so often you will be whiffing away at nothing while frozen in one spot while the target is getting away. The sneak attack with sword is really weak as well – not that you will get into stealth often with that combo.

Of all the dual wield combos my favorites are dagger/dagger and pistol/dagger. 20 points or so in shadow arts is key to getting the most out of the dagger offhand to set up sneak attacks for a cheap initiative cost.