Guild Wars 2

So, I did quick testing and seems like:

Ascalon Catacombs: Night
Sorrow’s Embrace: Night
Twilight Arbor: Night
Citade of Flame: Night
Crucible of Eternity: Night

Caudecus’s Manor: Day
Honor of the Waves: Day
Arah: Day

Will check fractals later. Used Ghost Pepper Popper to determine if it’s day or night (might or chill). Wanted to know this myself so I could slack a bit my warrior and use just superior sigil of night instead of multiple monster specific sigils for dungeon farming. (Inquest and Dredge for SE, Flame legion for cof, under and inquest for coe, nightmare court for TA, ghost and who knows what for AC….)

No, that’s not how it works. Your bouncing knife counts as you doing the damage. The problem is that rally doesn’t work like that. Rally works when something you participated in the kill dies. Kind of like in PvE where you need not only to do a little damage but to do significant damage to get loot and XP and the like.

What happened was that the reason the wolf was badly injured was that the mesmer nearly killed it in your fight, then you finished the job with your bouncing knife but not doing enough damage to tag the kill. The mesmer on the other hand got it and he rallied.

For a while I’ve been noticing that quite a few pugs in my CoF P1 runs are playing very ineffectively. This guide is only for warriors (lightly touching on mesmer tactics) that want to maximize their efficiency via helpful techniques and proper gear/traits.

From this guide I’m assuming that you moderate knowledge and experience with CoF and will primarily only focus on small details that will improve group performance.

Speedclear Template: (3 warriors, 1 mesmer works as well, but is still inferrior).
4 Warriors
1 Mesmer

Preparation:

Gear
This is the most important factor of completing P1 in the shortest possible time. The best possible (with reason) DPS is achieved exactly by this template. In my oppinion any warriors not running this exact gear template is not performing at their fullest potential.

Armor: Full Exotic Power,Precision, Crit+ Dmg with full ruby orbs. No knights or anything.
Trinkets: Full ascended berserker trinkets.
Weapons: Berserker greatsword with Sigil of smothering/night (10%+ vs Flame legion/ during night). Berserker axe/mace with sigil of smotheirng/night for 20% extra damage.

Trait template
3 Warriors should be running a full DPS build while the other warrior runs 10 in tactics for empower allies.

DPS traits
30 power-Berserker’s Power, Slashing Power, Axe mastery
25 arms-Rending strikes, Forceful Greatsword
15 discipline

Empower Traits (should have 2,925k base power, 54% crit chance and 95% crit damage while downscaled without buffs.)
25 Power-bersker’s power,slashing power
25 arms-Rending strikes, Forceful Greatsword
10 tactics-Empower allies
10 disc- Heightened focus

Skill set
FGJ-Required
Banner of strg+disc.
On my mark ( can become balance stance during final boss)

Dungeon Initiation:
-Speak with commander Suma.
Warriors using AoE speedbuffs, the mesmer rushes to the top of the ramp, drops portal and joins the other 3 warriors stacking on the gate. The other warrior rushes to commander Suma with sword mainhand, greatsword and bulls charge. The warrior uses rush>bulls charge>savage leap (over the rock) and grabs ferrah while other players watch cutscene for 2 seconds. Next initiate paths (mesmer activates portal) and unload whatever movement skills and portal all the way to the gate. This technique forces Ferrah to teleport to you instantly and spawn mag on top of her. This should save you 4-6 seconds on your run.

-Defeat Foundry defenses.
Build full adrenaline on the gate. When Mag begins to speak, drop both banners and carry them through once the gate is breached. Mesmer pulls both mobs on top of turret and pops signet of inspiration (a warrior can you use sword burst skill to root them if prefered). All warriors use 100b>whirling attack>axe auto attack to dispatch (feedback the warriors about 1.5 seconds after engaging).
-Slavedriver
Stack FGJ>signet of inspiration before engaging. Mesmer sets timewarp, warriors use 100b>whirling attack>Eviscerate>auto attack to decimate slavedriver.
-Acolyte room
Equip sword, Gs and bulls charge to rush to the room and initiate. Kill acolytes as they spawn.
-Boulders
DPS warrior decides who will do the gate. Gate warrior changes skills to FGJ, Balanced stance and frenzy. Change axe mastery trait (10) to dual wielding. Mesmer portals warriors>pop signet of inspiration then gate warrior heads to the gate (target the gate controller and use bladetrail to hold adrenaline). The other warrior drops banner of strg which is carried to the gate controller. Gate warrior drops srtg banner uses Rush>fgj, balanced stance>frenzy once rush animation finishes>100b>whirlwind attack>eviscerate follow up. Grab banner and advance to boss. (Change trait back to axe mastery (10), you dont have to adjust your skill set).

Final Boss.
Before engaging boss you may decide if you want to swap On My Mark for balanced stance in favor of more gauranteed interrupt protection throughout the boss. Mesmer uses Signet of inspiration>timewarp>warriors open with 100b> ONLY WHIRLWIND IF YOU FOLLOW IT UP WITH EVISCERATE>swap to axe/mace>eviscerate>auto attack.
At this point the boss unloads his AoE Knockdown so mesmer should be ready to feedback.
Warriors continue to auto attack the boss (completely ignore his aoe fire attack)>swap to gs when 100b ready>100b>swap to axe>eviscerate to finish the boss if still alive.
-Concluding
Loot boss, loot chest exit immidiately and repeat.

we live in a world of convenience, and convenience is good business! that’s what I’ve learnt from watching the apprentice!
I’m sold! though still on the fence whether to get it for my alt, one of the best products on the gem store! whoever came up with this idea, is a keeper!

This thread is a compliment to JQ

In à Zerg Battle. I pritty much dont understand anything.
Why?
Cuz i cant see which enemies are Alive and not!
Why is it that dead enemies still have their names up?
Can i Do something myself about this? :0

Actually, with the % of population that are colorblind, event the losers are winning.

“Individuals of Northern European ancestry, as many as 8 percent of men and 0.5 percent of women experience the common form of red-green color blindness”

Thief traps are the worst utility skills of the game.

Remove AOE cap, lower damage coefficient by 1/2 or 1/4 and add a control effect (daze, stun, knockdown) to powerful skills.

Please don’t Smiter’s Boon Mesmer portals. 90 seconds is long enough a cooldown.

We all know that you lose the infusion when upgrading an ascended trinket in the mystic forge so if someone decides to stick an expensive infusion in the amulet, that’s on them. Besides, if someone wants to infuse their amulet, that must mean they run fotm on that character – so wouldn’t they rather add an agony resistance infusion to the amulet anyway? An alternative is to have two amulets; a non-infused version with your expensive infusion for pve/dungeon farming, and an infused version for fotm. That’s my plan, anyway. One day…

Scavenger Hunt you say…

The Sword/Pistol #3 skill was nerfed because people complained it was too overpowered, so Anet nerfed it by a 15% damage reduction.

Haste is now nerfed, and the instantaneous burst damage cannot be attained such as before. Can we get a revert of this skill? It was such a wonderful skill, especially in PvE. Sad to see that it was even considered for a nerf.

The nerf itself isn’t so bad, but it wasn’t needed.

The nerf makes playing the thief feel awkward due to the fact that your skill rotation now happens in the middle of an auto-attack chain instead of at the end of one.

EDIT: I don’t really think ANet thought this change out. I never thought for once they would add an extra second to revealed.

I thought the 3s was on purpose because that’s how long it took to complete an auto-attack chain.

Now, every single person who uses stealth as a thief has to re-learn how to play the game. Is that really something ANet wants to do to it’s players? If I were a developer that would be the last option possible it telling a huge selection of players to relearn how to play the game.

So I’ve got a chance to play wvw with my “balanced” thief spec in wvw… Not a lot, but some.

30SA
10DA
30CS

I went with mug for a little extra dps instead of mobility.

D/D + S/D as usual.

First, I want to state that I don’t think stealth should have ever got a nerf. If I were in charge I would have said “Fix culling first, then let’s talk about thieves.” I truely believe and still believe culling was the only fix to stealth we needed.

Yes, thieves abused culling and didn’t even know it. The reason half or more of the people could never see us is because every time we stealthed we re-entered the “culling queue”. We would also render late on the enemies screen.

Pre-patch, when I saw a zerg, I didn’t care. I knew any kind of stealth would save me and put me into culling problem.

Post-patch, when I see a zerg, I freaking run. The second they get close to me all 100 people are throwing everything they have at me.

I haven’t had a chance to try to fight in the back fields in a large zerg fight yet, but I imagine I will get toasted in seconds.

I honestly feel that the difference between 3s revealed or 4s revealed literally change nothing about how I play 1vX, but add too many people and I will have to retreat or die where as before, culling saved me.

About the 4s revealed. ANet, why? I am having to relearn my rotation of skills all over again. I have screwed up my CnD countless times because I am so used to the 3s vs. the 4s.

3s revealed allowed for 1 auto-attack chain from sword or dagger, then you could use CnD. It was easy and it made a lot of sense to me for this 3s timer. I was very much used to it and if I screwed it up I died.

Now, it’s 1 auto-attack chain and then 2 or 3 more from dagger. You literally have to stop in the middle of your chain to use cnd. That makes no sense to me. Same thing with sword. You swing 4 times with sword, which is 1 auto attack chain plus another swing.

Seriously, imagine if ANet changed all the timer on your classes rotation and that the new rotation made absolutely no sense skill wise. That’s what it feels like to play a thief now.

Maybe it’s because I used to play a thief before change and new players won’t have this problem, but I really feel awkward on my thief now and I have no idea when to land my CnD anymore. I’ve screwed it up countless times because there is no good way to tell when to pre-cast it.

This is all for wvw, in spvp I believe there is only one viable build, pure dps. I have respec to a modified jinzu build. I believe the changes made to thief have only pushed me more into a burst build rather than a balanced build.

sPvP the thief has a lot of problems. There are tons of build where the thief can stay alive but under performs in dps and staying power. There is only 1 build where a thief can take out any class in 2-3s, assuming they don’t get a good stun break off. In 1v1 this build is terrible, but in a spvp environment it’s great because you can kill people already engaged with easy and use shortbow to escape/evade until your timers come back up.

sPvP the condi thief got nerfed really hard. Why? I thought ANet said they wanted to improve the condi thief. Any other build which is going to be S/X or D/X is going to be more of balanced build usually. There are plenty of burst builds for those but nothing beats D/D jinzu in burst. The balanced builds just don’t have the dps or the defense to really do a lot. Thief can negated by 1 ability most of the time because we are so weak. I really think this patch just enforced the “Play thief as burst or don’t play thief at all” mentality in spvp.

People cry so hard in hotjoins when I play my thief. I destroyed this elementalist like 3 times and he thought thieves were OP. I would mug him to 50% and kill him with the BS. Wouldn’t even need haste. If he was a good ele, I would never be able to kill him. He’s probably complaining to ANet right now at how hard he got owned and ANet will probably listen.

I predict, burst thief going to get nerfed next.

EDIT: Long read, I know. Sorry!

twoscoops.6913:

Please explain why you completely nerfed our dungeon viability by adding 1s to the revealed debuff.

Were we overpowered to begin with?

Thanks

Please explain what Anet did to COMPLETELY nerf your dungeon viability.

Try switching your weapons and builds up. My thief was 100% UNTOUCHED by this update and I’m still out there kicking kitten with my pre-patch build.

i’m currently at work … will login in few hours….

I like it this way. I no longer feel as if I am being lumped into the Flavor-of-the-Month-Whats-The-New-OP-Class crew.

stof.9341:

We’ll just have to admit we lost one Elite skill today then.

Also our only under water elite skill…

You should be using Executioner anyway

Title should be:
Skilled Thief Over Powered Me – QQ.

A way to fix that might be to make instinctual response and last refuge give you the non-stealth stealth(the one denoted by the little mask) that the npc in CoE gives you occasionally. This wouldn’t trigger the change to backstab, so it would become purely a defensive trait, and even if you’re immune to stealth(real stealth) you wouldn’t be immune to the alternative stealth.