Guild Wars 2

If you placed that treb on the floor next to the supply depot, it would still be able to fire out and be even less targetable.

Supply depot placement makes it easier to see where your shots are going (assuming there isn’t a cliff in the way like Stonemist south firing on QL) without a spotter. That’s about it.

I imagine a skilled opponent might actually be able to punish you for this, since you’re always putting your trebs in the same place. And it’s a place they can see from pretty far away.

Similar thing you can do (not saying this is needed, necessarily — but it’s an approach):

Add an “aftercast” to C&D. Doesn’t affect S/D and P/D builds very much, since they tend to take a sec to maneuver anyway. Slows down the speed of the D/D Backstab spike without reducing its damage. Easier for an average-skill player to react, still powerful when you get it off.

Shadow Refuge??

Shadow Refuge has a 60-second cooldown. You can reduce it to 48 if you run a trait that almost nobody uses in WvW/PvP.

If a thief is blowing Shadow Refuge to stomp you, it means he managed to kill you without having to use up that Shadow Refuge. Sounds pretty fair to me. Same with a warrior blowing Balanced Stance to get a stomp in, or an ele even having to run Mist Form on his bar. Someone rolled you without using utilities? That easy stomp is their reward.

Remove stealth-stomping and competent thieves will still stomp you every time, anyway. Because Signet of Shadows (practically ubiquitous in WvW for the movement buff) eats cute little downed-state interrupts for breakfast.

I wouldn’t mind raising the arc a little. I have a heck of a hard time hitting with it in WvW. Though, to be honest, that’s because I suck: I don’t get a lot of practice with melee in WvW, and PvE mobs don’t move at all like players do.

Spaceman.1063:

You can play on TC for a month long, each day, PVE and WvW, and don’t meet a single actual roleplayer. It happened.

Yup.

I run into roleplayers about once a week on TC. I keep track because I’ll, like, tell people about it in guild chat. Not to make fun but kind of as a novelty thing. Even on the “unofficial RP server,” MMOG roleplayers are rare and mysterious beings.

STRanger.5120:

Ok, so now a practical test, try to pop in and out from the castle/fortress wall, you will see my point right away….

Try to fire direct attacks at all from a fortress. It kinda sucks. You have to stand on the lip of the fort to hit anything.

Give me a 1200-range rifle and I’ll still be doing Clusterbomb, Clusterbomb, Clusterbomb.

Kristafa.9281:

I don’t think the penalty should decrease Dmg at all. I would like to see consecutive uses of the same ability cost compounding initiative… So for the first use of HS it costs 3 ini, then if you use it again before doing anything else it would cost four ini, then 5 and so on.

Now imagine this with every other skill.
- You throw Dancing Dagger at a fleeing opponent and he evades it. Now the next one costs 5.
- You try to C&D and whiff. For most builds, that’s already a 2-init penalty because you don’t get Infusion of Shadow. Now the next attempt costs 7.
- You’re fighting a boss and want to strip stacks of Unshakeable so your warrior or ele can hit him with a good long knock-down. Normally you can chain Pistol Whip to do that. I guess you could alternate Pistol Whip and Disabling Shot to do the same thing without increasing init costs, but, ugh.
- You’re Clusterbombing a mortar through a wall. This is already pretty taxing on your initiative. There’s really no other ability you can just throw in to reset costs. So…?

Thieves can spam skills. That’s just how the class is set up. That in itself is not actually a problem, at all, in my view.

If you have a problem with spamming Heartseeker, you need to address Heartseeker, not spamming skills in general. Unless you want to restructure every other weapon set, because the way they’re set up right now makes spamming skills necessary on occasion.

STRanger.5120:

And there is a big difference between melee attacks with ports and ranged attacks without them, you know?

Yeah, you actually have to expose yourself a bit. I’m well aware. Shouldn’t be a problem with SPvP.

There’s really nothing you can do in PvE with 1200 range that you can’t do with 900 range.

I do a ton of zergy WvW stuff and it’s very heavily dependent on Clusterbomb, but Clusterbomb hits like a truck. It’s also not that hard to pop in and out of 900 range to blast poison around downed enemies or get in some bouncing auto-attacks. Given the mechanics of sieges, a single-target ranged weapon has no hope of displacing Shortbow anyway.

Runcore.5107:

1) buff of pistol and bow skills which are now really underpowered and some totally useless (like very short daze shot or body shot which is useless)

The pistol daze doesn’t need to be longer. The whole point of it is to interrupt the target’s current action. It’s really good for that, thanks to the short cast time.

Runcore.5107:

2) rework of F1 only to F1-Fx buttons where should be F1= stealth and F2-Fx should be poisons buttons. Many other classes has many skills on F1-Fx and thief only one and most time useless because stolen skills are on 9/10 cases total useless. It really need rework and buff because other classes has useful skill and thief useless.

Most skills you can steal from players are actually very good. You can get some crappy ones from monsters, but the majority are still strong.

Runcore.5107:

5) its necessary to make thief use rifles and shipe with them. Warrior can snipe and thief not? It has no sense.

A thief can instantaneously bridge a 2000+ range distance and port back when he’s done. I really don’t think a 1200-range weapon is a big priority.

Kiijj.3594:

What about Stealth breaking on damage, and when you’re de-stealthed from being damaged you cannot re-stealth for another 10 seconds? Would this be absolutely game-breaking?

Yes.

Off-hand Dagger pretty much only exists to stop kiting and set up sneak attacks with Cloak & Dagger. Stealth-breaks-on-damage makes sneak attacks almost impossible to achieve. There’d be, like, literally one real thief build left (Sword/Pistol).

Providing a way to detect the thief wouldn’t necessarily mess things up, but actually breaking stealth on damage? Completely unworkable without scrapping most of the class.

StugLyfe.2134:

[N]o class should be auto attacking for 3k hits.

I disagree.

Auto-attacks should matter. GW2 isn’t the kind of MMOG where you’re doing practically nothing when you’re not activating one of your 50 cooldown skills.

Also, melee auto-attack chains already have their own kind of resource management: instead of a cooldown, you have what’s basically a “combo” you’re setting up, with two small hits requires before you can use your bigger-payoff final attack. And you can waste the whole chain if you miss or hang out too long. Or if you activate a utility skill.

Daecollo.9578:

How many Thieves do you see using two Pistols? None.

I’ve actually seen a ton of them in WvW this week. No idea why. I guess they work well in packs?

(Truth be told, they were actually fairly scary whenever they outnumbered me, on account of my glassy gear.)

Bunzy.8674:

I think alot of the peoples problems is that they are used to fighting with either equal or greater numbers where they see the downed state is fine, however as soon as you become outnumbered you can quickly notice how flawed the whole mechanic is.

Outnumbered how much, though?

I’ve won 2-on-1s where my opponents were very dedicated to reviving. They made me work for it to finish them off, but every time I downed one of them I also got a massive reprieve on cooldowns and incoming damage. I’ve also won 2-on-1s where my opponents were very dedicated to reviving but didn’t interrupt stomps; they were much easier.

In a more “trinity”-based game, you likely wouldn’t down any of your enemies in the first place, due to their superior volume of healing. GW2 is skewed towards offense but gives us downed to avoid every fight simply depopulating both armies to the point of uselessness. I think you kinda need this to make pushing into enemy territory at all practical in WvW.

I play a rather glassy thief in WvW (where you can gear for massive crits and C&D still does big damage). I don’t use stealth that much: usually just C&D and no utilities, and most of the time I’m on Shortbow rather than my melee set. Other than times I’ve been trying to revive another player, I don’t think I’ve ever been killed by a D/D thief without having a chance to react.

Am I just lucky? Does “react” mean something different for other classes?

Wiser with Age.3714:

I’m running x2 Superior Sigils of Blood on my melee set for the crit proc’ing heal

I’m pretty sure those don’t stack. The cooldowns on crit sigils lock out other crit sigils for their duration.

tigirius.9014:

Like disguise, an aggroless stealth like ability that is 1 minute timed with 1 minute cooldown where the humanoids think I’m friendly(that one cannot use in pvp btw).

Have you tried Shadow Refuge? I “steal” skill point nodes and mining resources out from underneath monsters all the time using SR. All you seem to be asking for is an easy-mode Shadow Refuge that doesn’t require you to be quick about doing whatever it is you want to do.

tigirius.9014:

a distraction ability to turn enemies around or even make them run off for a few seconds thinking a greater threat is elsewhere,

I’ve seen this suggestion multiple times. I don’t get it. 80% of the time I go to stealth in PvE, the monster will turn around and start walking back to its starting position, just like this feature that’s being requested. What are y’all missing, exactly?

tigirius.9014:

nothing to sap or stun with outside of combat,

If you’re hitting things with stunning attacks, then by definition you’re in combat, aren’t you?

tigirius.9014:

no real stealing

The problem with this is that uneven drops are a mechanic that’s 1% roleplaying/“immersion” and 99% farming.

I disagree with all these points. The current downed state rewards actually playing for positioning, which I think is good — in a pitched battle, the side that pushes hard gets rewarded with the ability to revive its comrades and stop the enemy from doing the same. Easier kills would push WvW battles closer to pure attrition.

My one complaint about the current is that some classes really can’t engage in counterplay — as a thief I can reliably stomp anyone other than a mesmer or elementalist on the first go, thanks to various nifty insta-cast skills that counter downed-state survival tricks — but some other classes just don’t have the tools to interact as meaningfully with downed opponents.

What are you looking for, style-wise?

If you already have an armor set you like, please post a picture so we have an idea of the overall look you’re shooting for.

Quenta.2978:

You can take this message as a chest thump.

Here’s the thing. Even if you’re totally indisputably the best of the best in WvW hands-down, that message is still nothing more than a ridiculous chest thump. :/

SteepledHat.1345:

culling issue

We are all waiting for this to get fixed. With baited breath. Please stop turning “culling sucks” into a class matchup issue.

~

Mesmer vs. thief in 1-on-1 is a matchup that depends heavily on builds, reaction time, and battlefield awareness. Mesmers have a lot of abilities that can make life difficult for thieves, and vice versa. If either player is ambushed, though, the fight is likely to be over quickly.

atheria.2837:

A zerg isn’t skill… it’s murder, slaughter, not pvp/skill.

Avoiding encounters you can’t win — both knowing how to and knowing when to — is a significant PvP skill. If you do it right, you can get a handful of them to peel off, and then you turn around and slaughter them. Or you can distract the whole zerg from whatever its original objective was, which is a net win for your team.

Why do people form large groups?
Because sometimes you need a big group to take an objective, especially one that’s well-fortified, quickly.
Because pitched battles between large armies can be fun in their own right.
What do you expect, exactly? A 5-on-5 battle for control of Stonemist?

You absolutely must bind “Look Behind” to an easily-accessible key. It’s just way too useful not to.

If your mouse has extra buttons, dodges and stun breaks should go there.

~

Here’s my setup, mainly as an example of how you can still have everything close at hand even if you’re hooked on the game’s standard six-button (WASD + QE) movement:
WASD + QE = movement
~ = switch weapons
1-5 = weapon skills
Mouse 3 (scroll wheel) = heal skill (also 6)
Mouse 4 (big thumb button) = dodge (also V)
Z = utility 1 (also 7)
X = utility 2 (also
Mouse 5 (little thumb button) = utility 3, which is usually my stunbreak or other fast-reaction skill (also 9)
F = action
G = look behind
R = autorun
T = switch to called target
C = target nearest
Shift + S = turn around
Shift + Mouse 5 = Steal (also F1) — not 100% happy with this at the moment

Being a thief involves dodging and quick reactions. But not, like, always. You can totally go into easy mode if you’re not feeling it (just not in WvW or dungeons).

The other day, I was running around Orr gathering some for my daily. I aggroed two Risen Abominations. Just after I put down Black Powder, someone said something in guild chat that made me pop up the guild screen — I was looking to see whether the folks who wanted to do Fractals had already started, IIRC. So I sat there skimming through the guild list while these Abominations were trying to kill me. When I closed the window, they were already lying dead at my feet.

Now, because of how criticals work, it’s totally possible that Black Powder would have expired before my enemies did. In that case, I’d be alerted to this fact by my health dropping like a rock and my character making that trademark sylvari squeak. But then all I’d need to do is hit Black Powder again, maybe throw in a stun break if I got hit with a knockdown, and go back to what I was doing.

Einlanzer.1627:

Having superior mobility though, is neither a class component nor an armor component (like it should be), and is instead baked into individual skills and traits, which makes those classes gimmicky and hard to balance. This makes lighter-armor classes harder to play effectively and very punishing if you don’t have the right builds.

That’s already embedded into the design of the whole game, though.

For good or for ill, playing a class with low hp or low armor — any class — requires paying more attention to skills and traits. But the existing traits and skills are very much all built around that assumption. It’s not something that can be easily changed without tweaking hundreds of abilities. I really don’t see that working out well.

I feel like a lot of these suggestions are rather overreaching…

tigirius.9014:

1. making enemies turn around to look behind them, a Distract: This is such a useful missing component that would improve this class in strides. You have 3 other F keys would love to see a distraction ability sometime as while stealthed it’s quite a pain to begin with an adequate backstab.

Monsters already turn around and start walking away the second you go into stealth. Like, so much that it’s downright silly.

Soulja.7024:

Pistol off hand for example should have an option for stealth; maybe instead of just dazing, it should also Stealth the Thief for a short duration.

It’s a trade-off. You can have spammable stealth (with */Dagger) or Black Powder (with */Pistol). If you don’t like Black Powder, there are other weapons for you. If you want both Black Powder and stealth (and don’t want to use HS combo to get it)… well, that’s asking a bit much, in my opinion.

Soulja.7024:

I understand not having a bunch of healing skills, as it doesn’t fit the lore of a Thief, but Thieves should have naturally higher regeneration of stamina. That’s something that shouldn’t be exclusive to certain builds, it should be exclusive to Thieves.

There are soooo many options for extra evasion. 15 points in Acrobatics. 10 points in Acrobatics and Vigorous Recovery. Shortbow. Daggers. Withdraw. Roll for Initiative. You’re not pigeonholed at all in this respect.

quercus.9261:

so reading this thread it sounds like thieves are a little underpowered in WvW and could use some buffs

Not at all.

80% of my time in WvW is just using Clusterbomb and knowing how to dodge, with occasional bursts of trickier play. But thieves are very effective even just doing that.

Thief is WvW is a very satisfying and powerful class that rewards battlefield awareness and gives you plenty of ways to punish enemies for their mistakes. It can be pretty skill-intensive, too — the folks who complain about spamming certain abilities are making a category error about what actually constitutes player skill. And fixing WvW perma-stealth cheese (culling and stealth-capping) will only improve the gameplay.

PinCushion.7390:

I don’t find it to be a big deal. It’s just another flavor of “Lag Killed Me.” It’s existed in every MMO I’ve ever played. At least we’re not getting mass DCed because 40 other dudes charged into battle the same time we did.

It’s really awkward when only one class brings the lag, though, y’know? Oh, well, devs promised a fix soon, for both this and the stealth-capping thing.

Xyrm.5602:

And our defense is supposed to be stealth.

I don’t think that’s true, though.

Thieves get blindness spam, dodging and evasion up the wazoo, and shadowsteps.

Stealth is much more of a mixed offensive/defensive tool. A thief who chooses it as his only form of defense is intentionally playing a very fragile build.

Culling is a serious thing. I think it depends on a lot of factors, but generally a thief gets 2-3 extra hits before you can see him, and this happens again every time he pops in and out of stealth. You’re right that the instagib factor is massively overstated — I play a thief myself, with armor made out of freakin’ paper, and an enemy thief has never been able to spike me down from full health in one burst — but the extra stealth from culling does force you to run away when you could otherwise counterattack your enemy.

There’s also the issue of contesting camps while hidden, which isn’t insurmountable but it is massively annoying — and different from how it works in SPvP.

chubbs.3189:

We can provide blinds if we go S/P, but this is a huge initiate-drain and causes the thief to do little-to-no damage; basically making your group a 4man-with-blinds squad.

Sword/* thieves don’t actually need initiative to do damage at melee range. Flanking Strike and Pistol Whip don’t add much DPS over your regular auto-attack chain.

Tolmos.8395:

This should affect WvWvW. If someone is OP in sPvP, why wouldn’t they be in this pvp?

Because what’s broken in 5v5 capture-the-points gameplay could be perfectly fine in a different context?

Consider the SPvP downed-state health reduction, for instance. With the larger number of players in WvW battles, the downed-state health pool really isn’t much of an issue. If you’re downed in an inopportune place, 5-10 enemies will quickly spike you down even with the rather generous health you get while downed. Would applying SPvP’s downed-state change, designed for 2v1 and 3v2 situations, to WvW really improve how being downed plays in 10v10 and 30v30 battles?

As another example, character stats themselves are different between WvW and SPvP, because of the difference between normal gear and PvP amulets. You can’t stack crit damage as high in SPvP as you do in WvW, for instance.

I’m pretty sure you’re revived with 25% of your max health, not 50%. Certainly every time I get back up, my health is critically low and I hit my heal immediately. Also, if you down an opponent quickly after he’s revived, he’ll have fewer hp in his downed state (eventually he’ll just die instantly instead of being downed).

Thieves actually have it pretty easy. We’re hands-down the best profession for finishing people. The only class with a protective trick you can’t trivially negate is the mesmer. Everyone else will die from the very first stomp thanks to some combination of blindness, stealth, and shadowsteps.

My favorite place to defend is Borderlands garrison south side, because it’s got those nice wooden bits with no walls. Clear sign that this is a problem.

On the other hand, though, if you can’t area-attack the wall effectively from down below, some classes have almost no way to participate in the siege and even dealing with light siege gear becomes super-frustrating.

Maybe having the ledges block projectiles situationally, like Smoke Screen does, would be a good start?

Critical builds are all about the multiplicative synergy between Power and Critical Damage (and having the Precision to make crits happen all the time). To me, “significant amount of either vit or toughness from equipment” implies neglecting at least one of those stats. At which point you’re not really getting the big crits that define critical builds.

If you like Acrobatics, you’ve already got really powerful built-in defense even without gear, thanks to tons and tons of dodging.

walsd.4968:

I’d appreciate it if any thieves with lots of experience could post their favorite PvE/WvW build from any GW2-calculator and explain why a particular type of gear goes with the build.

Here’s what I’ve been running recently in WvW:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsYVlYmiO3cS5E+5Ex2jdKUeyfwo9M4qVB
Sword/Dagger + Shortbow
Withdraw, Shadowstep, Signet of Shadows, Infiltrator’s Signet, Dagger Storm
Critical Strike – 30: III, VIII, XI
Shadow Arts – 15: V
Acrobatics – 25: III, IX

I run around in full Zerk/Zerk gear, with Sigils of Air and Paralyzation in the sword and dagger, respectively.
I also carry a Pistol to switch to Sword/Pistol when I want to kill a bunch of NPCs.

~

The overall gameplan is to rely on mobility and big damage to get things done. I use Shortbow heavily in sieges and group battles, and melee attacks to kill routed players or stragglers on the edges of a battle. Learning to use Clusterbomb to pressure the enemy zerg or down enemies through the walls is more important than actually using Sword/Dagger well. Big-hitting Clusterbombs and sword attacks are essential to actually killing things; with so much evasion and some shadowsteps, I don’t stick around in one place long enough to make trading Power/Precision/Crit for defensive stats worthwhile.

Shadowstep is a great scouting/chasing skill. WvW gives you plenty of opportunities to swap skills ahead of a fight, so I bring in Scorpion Wire, Smoke Screen, and Shadow Refuge as needed. (I usually put Signet of Agility in that slot underwater.)

I mainly use the signets for emergencies and stomping enemies in the middle of an active battle. They save my butt.

~

When I’m too lazy to retrait for PvE, I just switch the Shadow Arts skill to Master of Deception and run around with Sword/Pistol all day.

On the subject of Backstab…

Players are unpredictable, attack quickly, and have fairly limited health pools. Oftentimes you only need to kill one or two to accomplish some objective. Bringing an enemy player down as fast as possible with Backstab is a good plan.

Monsters are pretty dang predictable and the harder ones usually have boatloads of HP. And you usually have to kill a lot of them to get anything done. This makes Backstab occasionally useful, but not nearly as appealing. Consistent damage output and endurance — not necessarily “survivability” in the way people use it to mean upping Toughness and Vitality, but the ability to stay in combat for a while without dying, however you do it — are more important than spike damage.

Whichever weapon set you go for, you’ll want to focus on consistent damage output and damage avoidance.

…

I usually run around PvE without any stealth skills, or just Shadow Refuge if I’m on a team (it’s a good skill, though a bit overused, in my opinion). If you need to disengage, movement buffs and shadowsteps work pretty well, since monsters have a limited chase range.

If you’re having initiative problems, these will get better over time as you gain access to Opportunist (15 points in Critical Strikes) and Quick Recovery (20 points in Acrobatics).

Your damage will also increase as you level, since you’ll have access to real crit-damage gear.

If you just want to skip past the early levels with as little pain as possible, easy mode for leveling is Sword/Pistol. In most cases you can literally stand in one spot, hit 5 every once in a while, and auto-attack.

In more detail:
See a monster or a small group. Run up to it and use Black Powder. Step back a foot or two to draw the monsters into the center more.
Auto-attack 5-6 times (6 is ideal, since your third attack hits hard, and because you want to conserve initiative; but Black Powder will expire around the fifth attack, and then it’s a matter of hoping the blindness is still up).
Black Powder again.
Rinse and repeat until stuff is dead.
Against spread-out groups of ranged mobs, you have to play more carefully, at least until you have Dagger Storm; but basically you want to use Smoke Screen to block some damage while you kill one, or maybe Scorpion Wire to pull them together into the same Black Powder field.

Points go into Critical Strikes and Acrobatics to keep Black Powder going. This basic build will allow you to roll through everything until you face Dredge at, like, level 50. By then you’ll have the traits to dodge a bunch while you Pistol Whip or Clusterbomb them to death, or the ability to switch to another, more trait-dependent build.

Whatever you play, I recommend taking Haste off your bar. Dodging is one of your best resources. It’s not worth it to wipe it out in PvE just to get a few faster attacks.

You can also get Vitality from traits. I don’t normally recommend changing traits just to get attribute points, but the Acrobatics line has some really sweet stuff in it — especially Feline Grace and Quick Recovery.

Quick Recovery helps a lot when you’re spamming Cluster Bomb in WvW.

Amins.3710:

2) Can use Full zerker build and still have the same survivability and very little downside compared to other classes that have to spec for survivability (at the cost of dmg).

I don’t think this is exclusive to thieves. The game mechanics naturally favor active defense and big damage over passive defense and mediocre damage.

I play a thief in WvW and PvE.

In WvW, I think the complaints about thieves largely stem from players having a difficult time interacting with thieves, due to overlong stealth and super-quick spikes.

1. Culling. Every time a stealthed thief attacks me, I get hit 3-4 times before I can actually see him. I know this isn’t intentional because NPCs see you instantly after the first attack lands. I always shadowstep away when Backstabbed, because there’s no way I can make up Backstab and several other free hits. I understand that WvW culling is a big issue in general, but it’s especially annoying when it impacts you repeatedly in the same fight with thieves.
2. Contesting camps while stealthed. There are counter-strategies, but it’s still an annoying process. All the same reasons you can’t do this in SPvP should apply to WvW as well.
3. Big super-fast spikes. Lots of players complain about these. The overall damage itself is actually fine, in my view, but the spike compression — not damage! — that you get from C&D->Steal->Backstab is a bit much. My impression is that the problem isn’t that Backstab does a lot of damage, it’s that you get C&D and Mug and Sigil of Air all hitting at the same time, then Backstab almost immediately afterward. I think the best fix is turning the Backstab combo into more of a clear two-part spike, with a greater delay between the initial C&D burst and the Backstab follow-up, thereby giving players a chance to dodge, block, &c. My preferred solution would be adding an aftercast to C&D rather than tweaking damage numbers.

More generally, I think the game has a problem with quickness. We’ve seen both thief and ranger nerfed because they had abilities that were alright by themselves but over-the-top ridiculous with quickness. Seems like every ability is potentially problematic with quickness, which points to quickness itself needing some scrutiny.

You know, on second thought…

The gold star is pretty impressive. There’s nothing else quite like it, in the sense of an achievement that’s actually in-your-face always-there.

How do you get the gold star?

You get a handful of map completions as you level.
You do Orr and Frostgorge Sound for the rewards.
So, before you’re even trying for it explicitly, you’re, like, 50% of the way there.
At this point, what’s left? WvW and going back and blitzing through the other low-level areas.

WvW map exploration is the only part of the gold star that really requires working at it (even then, it’s more of a matter of planning and timing than spending a lot of time).

Without WvW, 100% map completion is just devoting some time to revisiting maps that are really easy for a downscaled level 80 with reasonable gear. I think this thread makes a better argument for adding dungeons to map completion than for removing WvW.

For women, the ones that look least like sweatpants are Vigil and Human Cultural T3, because they are straight-up not pants. Vigil leggings have bare thighs, Human T3 are pretty much fishnets. The catch with these is that they both look super-tacky without the right top.

For both sexes, there’s also Kodan (from Honor of the Waves) and Priory, which have straps to break up the lines a bit. Or Whispers pants with the stripe down the side.

GreyFeathers.8175:

The game is joining two groups of players with two very different goals and it’s a flawed design.

I don’t think it’s that clear-cut, really. My guild has a weekly WvW night and a weekly dungeon night. Mostly it’s the same players doing both.

I wouldn’t be opposed to removing WvW from 100% map completion. I think it’s great that it shows up in monthlies from time to time, though (to get people to try WvW; the penalty for not doing it is pretty low).

As for whether WvW should figure into legendary weapons, I’m conflicted. On the one hand, some people will just grind jumping puzzles or do some other useless thing to get the badges. On the other hand, the Badges of Honor requirement is one part of legendaries that isn’t just farming Orr over and over.

I wouldn’t run Master of Deception just for Shadow Refuge, since it’s a situational skill rather than one you just burn on cooldown all the time. If you had, like, both Shadow Refuge and Smoke Screen on your bar, though, it’d totally be worth it.

Going for crits at early level is troublesome because you need all of Power + Precision + Crit Damage and you can’t get all three stats on low-level gear.

You can go all Power/Precision with Sword/Pistol because you just stand there not getting hit, anyway. It’s a really boring way to level, but it is dependable.

It’s the same amount of initiative over time. And you don’t have to pop your “save my butt” skill to get it.
You can mitigate the shadowstep. Target one of the adds. Or target nothing. Or dodge away.
Having a single counter to immobilize and stun on your bar with a 60-second cooldown is kind of a crap deal.

Get off your high horse with this “Only I know how to play and don’t you dare talk back to me” nonsense.

lexieternity.7468:

• Don’t spend trait points on vitality, since it’s a losing proposition

I wouldn’t take it just to boost Vitality, but the actual traits you get in Acrobatics are good, though. In particular, Feline Grace (15-point minor trait) and Quick Recovery (20-point major trait).

NightyNight.1823:

But haha..why take roll for initiative.You have withdray .Its not like its a break stun, and gives you 6 initiative to blow more damage and a reliable dodge no ..I’ll roll SoS because I’m pro.I bet you are.

6 initiative and a stun break every 60 seconds is hardly spectacular. A traited Infiltrator’s Signet gives you 2 initiative and a stun break every 24 seconds, and you’re getting initiative when you don’t activate it, too. (It’s the same overall initiative as you get from Roll, by the way.)

Evade + stun break on one skill is nice, but I don’t like having the immobilize removal, stun break, and initiative gain all glued together like that. Oftentimes, half the skill is just going to go to waste when you activate it.

NightyNight.1823:

25% speed usefull for what exacly?

Moving around a bunch, which is a thing that thieves do constantly.
It’s not the best skill for every situation. But it’s quite good in most.

NightyNight.1823:

But who in the right mind would take Signet of Shadows over Roll for Initiative.

Someone who’s already running Withdraw, which is Roll for Initiative’s far superior cousin, perhaps?
And why do you have Roll’s 60-second cooldown stinking up your bar when you could get a much more consistently-available stun break from other skills?

Dee Jay.2460:

Let alone when you add a few mobs in PvE or get pulled into 2+ Orrians. Even Last Refuge won’t save you then.

You can have the glassiest build in the world and run over “2+” Risen easily with some active defense and a stun breaker to save your butt when you screw up. So the real question isn’t “Do you have enough Toughness/HP,” it’s “Does D/D and 15 in Acrobatics give you sufficient ability to avoid attacks?”

Dee Jay.2460:

Sundering Strikes is pretty useless. Mug is much better.

Mug’s extra damage every 45 seconds is pretty negligible in a dungeon. I’d honestly rather run Back Fighting. (Although I’d rather save the points altogether, but I suppose if you’re going D/D putting 15 in Deadly Arts for Lotus Poison isn’t a bad idea.)