Guild Wars 2

10% or so statwise… so yes it’s worth it… going from exotic->ascended is another 10%

If you’re having problems getting exotic gear you can run dung’s for tokens… or spam CoF for the tokens, then salvage the level 70 armors (cost 30 tokens each) for ecto’s. The daily dragons events are laughably easy and also give at least 1 rare each now.

List of armor sets:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_armor_sets

Click on the dung to see which gives what stats.

Dragon timers:

http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/

It 100% depends on what you’re doing and the situation.

There have been times where I’ve wanted a quick down but I’ve been on P/D… Vs. targets with a lot of condition removal it can take AGES.

There have been as many times where I’ve been on D/D and been forced to disengage when I know I could have stayed in to fight as P/D…

Best advice is for you to try both. If you’re just starting out… P/D is easier than D/D due to the high survival.

If you’re getting your gear via dung tokens (and if you’re new I highly recommend it) here is a list of all of the armor sets. Click on the dung and it’ll show you what you can get where. Unfortunately Valk armor (which is great for keeping up hp and crit damage at the same time) is only crafted.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_armor_sets

Black Frog.9274:

It’s a changeable trait, so you’d need to do it on the trait section of your character sheet. It’s not a turn on/off button on the main UI however.

Trick shot is a 3 bounce inherent to the short bow. It can not be turned off. He’s not talking about ricochet… which is what I think you were thinking of?

In sPvP, WvW, PvE??

In any case it’s hard to say… as one will shine in situations where the other one wouldn’t. IMO it would be better to find which one YOU personally prefer.

With P/D I don’t use the caltrops utility, instead trait it on dodge. C&D→Dodge… time it right and it’ll be right under them every time you go in for a C&D. With P/D you can get in a ton of ways to get more endurance (return on dodge, on heal, on steal) That allows you to be VERY evasive while dropping caltrops constantly… and you can use another utility.

If you want even more survival you can mix in apoth gear (healing/toughness/condition damage) so that you have higher toughness and heal for more while in stealth. The loss in power doesn’t matter much at all… as your main damage comes from bleeds (you do lose a small amount of condition damage though).

3 Krait/3 Afflicted, Tuning Crystals & Pizzas are also your friends.

d/d – high burst damage, high risk/reward

d/p – high stealth time, doesn’t need to be on the target to stealth (uses bp + hs to obtain stealth). Good control skills through bp and headshot. Uses a lot of initiative

s/d – high mobility + dazes (doesn’t do heavy burst… although you can use haste to get some burst)

p/d – cond dmg (doesn’t burst), tankiest thief due to high hp/toughness from condition gear, doesn’t need to be on/behind the target to apply the damage unlike the others, majority of the damage comes from 1 condition (can have condition wipe issues)

If you youtube the specific weapon sets you can see how they are plaid differently.

Dat BSG music… so awesome…

PI doesn’t work as well on a thief. P/D can take some hits… it’s still a hit, run/dodge, re-stealth tatic… and they won’t be attacking when you’re stealthed. They should also stop attacking if they are ranged while dagger storm is up… which would stop the confusion damage that way as well (other than vs a necro who will spam circles etc.).

Thief has better utility choices than PI… I wouldn’t ever give up my shadowstep nor shadow refuge for it as a p/d… both have saved my life and allowed me to get into the middle of an opposing zerg and live time and time again. I might give one up for caltrops though… which I didn’t see you produce on dodge either and adds to bleeds + cripples.

P.S. I don’t think I saw a single one of them dodge in any meaningful way lol

Seriously… I’ve had SO many mag try to party to talk trash… what’s up with that?

You win some you lose some… just enjoy the game either way.

Orion the Cursed.1206:

guardian? most balanced class

I second this. Good in PvE good in WvW… wouldn’t even need to reset traits or get a 2nd set of gear. It is somewhat lacking in range though… scepter is unreliable after mid range.

sostronk.8167:

Lebannen.8325:

Daeqar.8965:

Lebannen.8325:

Simple fix to thieves.
Damage received automatically breaks stealth.

This would not work at all. This isn’t a like most other games were stealth lasts indefinitely.

It’s enough that hitting a thief in stealth is actively killing them – and it’s extremely easy to do in this game because of the massive amounts of aoe. Additionally automatically stripping their only form of defense is too much. Every other class spends resources and gets X amount of reliable protection in whatever form outside of boon stripping in some cases – and those cases are balanced around boon stripping. Random aoe making it impossible to stealth, especially in large scale combat, leaves the thief class fragile and vulnerable with no upside to offset it. And no, a 4 minute CD “run away” ability doesn’t fix it.

All it does is make the thief choose their targets more carefully. If you think it is ok to run in the middle of a zerg, kill one person and vanish at 80% life you are sorely mistaken. However, there are no developers willing to fix a stealth class in any MMO due to the large portion of players actually fanatical about it.

I will say this, Star Wars has a well balanced stealther class. Sith Assassin/Jedi shadow no matter how you spec them Tank/DPS have everything I mentioned. Its fantastic to play a stealther with the thrill of knowing if you screw up, you die.

Instead of insta-gibbing people for 5k 3 or 4 times before they can react. You know the class is broken and you dont want the fix that will make them balanced. Its ok, just admit it. I play an engineer.

My belief is that Anet do not hold the same balance opinions on thiefs that alot of players in this thread do.

From my POV it’s because they based balance off of higher levels of skill gameplay. In the lower levels of skill… being killed quickly by an opponent who they can’t easily see/track is frustrating and seemingly impossible to counter.

However, in higher levels people are totally aware of what’s going on even when they can’t see the thief and are able to react to the situation which makes the solo thief far less “OMG OP needs a nerf!”

What I’ve done was find armor on the TP that sells for 1c more than the npc price… and there is a LOT of it on there. When you’re done with it, just NPC it. That allows you to keep your gear up to date. Normally you can just find blues/greens on the TP for 1c more… that’s fine… just use those. Rares aren’t better for many levels vs greens/blues. It’s better to have up to date blues/greens vs old rares.

If you want to craft as well I would suggest jewel crafting as your first. Jewelry doesn’t keep upgrading at the same rate that you can find new blue/green armor/weapons. It’s fine for it to be a little old. It also has the benefit of being very easy and not requiring any of the blue claw/fang/whatever mats. You can get everything you need for it just from mining.

Or you want level even faster, you can pair up JC with LW and have no required material conflicts

Crafting is a good method, but it can also be expensive. The loss of gold not being able to sell the blue mats (claws/fangs) when you’re just starting out will add up. There are ways to mitigate that though.

A tip for when you’re crafting armor/weapons is that you can buy the insignia component with orders and save gold. Often it’s under 1/2 the price to order it off of the TP Vs. make the insignia yourself with the blue mats. Don’t buy it str8 off of listings… wait for the orders to be filled. You can then sell the blue mats yourself and pocket the difference.

I’m in the same boat… I’ve plaid p/d and d/d and have gotten kinda bored of both them. Was thinking that I’ll give D/P a go :P I understand the general playstyle, but havn’t come across any great d/p-ers to sort of study (seen lots of people fighting what I would consider to basically be grazing cattle though).

Any really good vids/builds/tricks/tips to help would be greatly appreciated

jportell.2197:

Aberrant.6749:

jportell.2197:

Bunker build useless? They are the only counter to a thief because the slow rendering and the haste of a thief make it impossible to render on your screen before a balanced build is dead… Can I go balanced? sure but I will die to a thief at some point instantly… I could also just go full zerk but I like surviving normal encounters too not just GC thieves.

It’s a passive defense. It’s boring. Often it doesn’t even work as you can’t kill what’s hitting you. All of my toons take a balanced approach. If you go more offensive than a bunker you’ll notice things like high vigor uptime kick in (depending on class). That means (with skill) you can avoid more damage than what a bunker can mitigate with just passive hp/toughness. On top of that you’re doing more damage than a bunker… so you kill things faster, and things still can’t kill you. Win-Win… presuming you have decent reaction time and skill (which you can get with practice). But some people can’t stay aware of their surroundings and are too sluggish and hit a stunbreaker when they see their character stop moving and then turn to stone I guess…

Here your logic is severely flawed… Bunker builds are wars of boons and attrition and its all about the bunker managing what they have. And bunkers are still a full on counter to the GC thief because it gives us reaction time before we are dead. It still takes about 1-2 seconds for a thief to fully show on your screen after they break stealth hell even on my mes when I come out of stealth (because Im like oh sheet sheet sheet run!) I turn back and see them doing nothing thinking “Why aren’t they chasing me?” Then I’m like oh yeah they still cant see me. Take a bunker Mesmer for instance I still have almost 2.9k attack total and nearly 3k armor… My shatters grant me specific boons that lead to the enemy killing themselves while they fight me… The only way I don’t get a stomp in this build is if they run (in which case I still win) or they slap more conditions on than I can remove because even when specced conditions are the bane of a Mesmer. I still do tons of damage because people are too stupid to notice that I have full uptime on retal and so does everything I have out… So It is most def not passive defense in this case. And to think other wise is just silly.

Lets see if I can clear this up for you without getting into some lame semantics argument… the PVT gear is passive.

You can build to make yourself and do some active things to make yourself more tanky even in an offensive gear set up (aka one way of making yourself balanced)

As you said… on your mesmer you rely on them hitting you to hit themselves… so players that don’t watch buffs/which phantasms are out/conditions. With practice you won’t need the passive damage reduction and hp pool of a PVT set to kill these players.

Balanced set ups give you time to react while still keeping good offense to be able to help more with taking towers/keeps/kill yak’s/etc… the parts of WvW that change scores…

I hope that helps

Lightsbane.9012:

oZii.2864:

Lightsbane.9012:

coming from someone who’s played every class, i can say the skill thief requires to play is significantly lower than most of the others. the things thief can do that the others can’t can be insufferable at times. i understand that thief is the stealth class, and that it is a burst class, but there is no way to reveal stealth’d enemies nor is there really a way(no matter how much armor you get, i’ve had 3200 armor and still been 50%‘d by a backstab) i’ve tried matching that damage on other classes and i just can’t. if classes like Thief’s role is damage, i recommend clearly defining in the character creation that this is their role. if other classes exceed at support, make them called support classes in their description. as well as difficulty levels in star-rating form at character creation.

I mained mesmer for when the game came out I didn’t make a thief until after the last nerf (dancing dagger damage). I found thief to be alot more difficult than my mesmer.

Mesmer is like don’t get your hands dirty except to blurred frenzy gameplay. I didn’t feel I needed to know other classes abilities on my mesmer, 100b, eviserate etc. When I made my thief and I started dying to stuff I didn’t on my mesmer thats when I began to learn more about other classes etc.

So you have my story and your story showing total opposites. I feel like mesmer is so faceroll its not funny compared to thief. When it comes time to fight I hardly ever really had to think about how I was going to engage the rotation was pretty much the same everytime because it worked. I can’t do that on my thief unless I am running p/d, or full gc blow my load build.

sorry i left mesmer out. that isn’t exactly a difficult class either.

I don’t find any of the classes in this game to be all that difficult to play and kill the vast majority of players in WvW/sPvP… I’m not saying I’m an amazing top tier player… just that I’m used to games with much higher learning curves and shorter reaction times required than GW2. GW2 also has a lot of casuals. And that’s ok… but the game shouldn’t be balanced based off of the casuals.

Thanks to friends, I’ve plaid every one at 80 and none of them were really much of a challenge to play decently… at least decently enough to kill a thief… it’s very much a skill issue vs a class issue.

Once you’re decent enough as a player you really shouldn’t have any more issues with thieves than any other class. After they open (which you should see coming if you’re paying attention) they are very predictable and easy to counter. Warrior is set up in a similar way. They have some devastating attacks that take the least amount of skill to pull of (foos class). At the same time they are very predictable. At the same time you won’t catch them killing a vet player with it very often.

As far as taking 50% with a backstab while having high toughness… is your hp low? Toughness works best as anti-sustained damage, vit works as anti burst/anti condition. Tbh… 50%… that’s not that hard to recover from and at the very least cause the fight to a standstill or be able to escape enough to run to allies… worse than that happens to me all day long when I get jumped by multiple people… and I’m usually able to recover… and get away… on any of my toons…

Columba.9730:

Chorazin.4107:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHOpACoX4ic

That video is pretty insane, id like to see him do that on a Guardian.

need we say anything else? how can anet developers look at this and hold their heads up. What a laughably imbalanced class.

Protip… CC is a thief’s weakness. Immobilize/daze/whatever the thief then smash. A group of players should have far more than enough people to immobilize/daze/knock the thief away and prevent a stealth stomp that way… or a couple of players can just quickly revive downed players before they get stomped. I can easily do all of the above on my guardian/mesmer/engineer. Thief isn’t the issue. The issue is that the vast majority of WvW players act like clueless grazing cattle

As far as the guardian comment… no he stay in another group like that… but what he can do in other ways which the thief can’t more than makes up for that. I’ve pushed back entire zergs with LoW + WoR before. That has a far greater impact on the overall state of a WvW match than killing some random people mulling around. I would love to see a thief do that.

jportell.2197:

Bunker build useless? They are the only counter to a thief because the slow rendering and the haste of a thief make it impossible to render on your screen before a balanced build is dead… Can I go balanced? sure but I will die to a thief at some point instantly… I could also just go full zerk but I like surviving normal encounters too not just GC thieves.

It’s a passive defense. It’s boring. Often it doesn’t even work as you can’t kill what’s hitting you. All of my toons take a balanced approach. If you go more offensive than a bunker you’ll notice things like high vigor uptime kick in (depending on class). That means (with skill) you can avoid more damage than what a bunker can mitigate with just passive hp/toughness. On top of that you’re doing more damage than a bunker… so you kill things faster, and things still can’t kill you. Win-Win… presuming you have decent reaction time and skill (which you can get with practice). But some people can’t stay aware of their surroundings and are too sluggish and hit a stunbreaker when they see their character stop moving and then turn to stone I guess…

RoninDB.9540:

Thank you to DB this morning for great fights in EB. Again, I need coffee? Can you give me a few minutes to wake up please..?? The fight at Jerrifer’s was tough and painful.

Tea > Coffee

I used to work at a coffee shop and they would give us free coffee while we were working. So many days of having too much coffee and feeling all paranoid/hyper/as if my heart was going to explode from my chest T.T

Another vid of a thief killing players who act like cattle chewing grass…

Jayne.9251:

Iris Ng.9845:

Jayne.9251:

Iris Ng.9845:

P.S.: BG has their own Sailor [Moon] team. Perhaps, it’s time for TC to have one, too. Don’t you agree

I believe we do have a MOON guild on TC They’re incredibly hard workers and are instrumental in controlling supply as well as fighting.

Could be my mistake. Last I heard they’re in BG, but I also see them in the Tumbler party. Maybe they’re truely TC. I can’t wait to be in a tier where everyone has their own cheer leading squad.

It’s probably another MOON guild too …. Several guilds can have the same acronym.

My bad Iris … I didn’t check out the video until just now. …. That’s awesome!

Yes, next match we are together that will be each servers mission … Cheerleading video brilliant idea!

The two MOON guilds are unrelated. The TC one has nothing to do with sailor moon (sorry to disappoint). I’ve been apart of guilds where they’ve seen others from other guilds with the same names in overflow and gone o.O who the heck are you? lol

I would be fine with numbers showing when hitting my thief in stealth. To me it’s a valid way of trying to detect the thief. It would only show to the players who were hitting the thief (it makes sense that some one who is hitting something would be able to tell that they are hitting something lol)

Esoteric.5490:

oruma.4092:

fine for openfield battles not fine for keep/castle

24 people can zerg any keep in seconds so orange >white

esoteric organisation? you would sit solo and guard watch towers and keeps with not getting any benefit while the rest has fun/loot/badges.
pretty sure i dont

My guild rotates players watching towers and keeps. We even have guard duty assignments to watch after other borderlands late at night when we have to start switching maps to keep our points up. I am the guild leader and I spend my share of time on guard duty as well. We take turns scouting white swords on the map. Being in VoIP is always fun talking to your guild mates or server mates. I don’t mind guarding something at all because after 15-30 minutes, we’ll swap someone else in to guard it. It’s about organization. You can’t expect everyone else to always scout for you or call out enemy positions for you. Take initiative.

Think about the organization it takes for ONLY 24 people to hit a keep so as not to make swords. I also think the swords count 25 total and not per side, but I’m not positive. Your server needs to match them with equal organization. I’ve seen forces of 40+ wipe repeatedly at a tower to about 15-20 people. It happens all the time because of coordination, siege, and communication to respond to threats. Orange swords are the lazy player’s method for map awareness. The proactive player with initiative, scouts objectives for their team and players that are selfless are willing to guard a castle while their team takes a tower, then someone switches with them. WvW is about teamwork on a large scale, not individual rewards. The loot, badges, and event rewards are laughable compared to anything else in the game if you wanted individual rewards.

Please don’t take any of this the wrong way, It’s just for discussion and not intended as an insult/smack talk, nor meant to be condescending.

To me this shows the mentality of some one on a large zerg server. However, the dev’s have stated in the past that they want the individual players to feel more important in WvW. They don’t like all of the current zerging. Hopefully the upcoming WvW patch will move us more in that direction.

The sword limit… it really should be lowered to something like 10 imo. I would agree that 5 is too low… but at 25 it’s set too high. Large zerg forces being able to have 24 people go bang on a door and not get picked up means that you need to leave people to just sit and watch… everything… while not being rewarded for their time. Watching a tower is boring and sucks.

Even the person who I quoted who says they like doing it… does other things to pass the time… despite only doing it for 15mins at a time. Other servers who don’t just have a few large guilds can get stuck doing it for much much longer. It’s not fun, it’s just a chore. The dev’s did say they would start rewarding players for watching areas… so we’ll see what happens with that.

I also disagree that telling 24 people to go attack something requires a lot of organization… esp. for servers that have guilds set aside to go and do certain missions/maps. It’s literally hey you, you, you, and you… your parties go try to take that thing over there. (We’ve done it on my server as well and that’s all it is)

If it was set to 10 or so… smaller hit teams would still have value, but large groups will still get picked up with orange swords. A team of 9 can easily take down a tower, but for something like a garrison it would take more… and at the least that should spawn swords for such an offensive force. As it is now with 25… why bother with anything small anymore? Just have a few people sit around and then have a 24 man zerg go take stuff… To me that’s far less interesting/fun/dynamic gameplay.

sahamk.5672:

It is a matter of skill. Noob thief or just a thief is not a problem. But good thief… He could kill you, your teammate and a guy who was just running with you. I met such a thief. It was totally impossible to kill him. I dont know how good were those two guys, but they were killed and me so… The same thing with mesmers. Mesmer is a free kill, but when mesmer’s skill reaches some point, he becomes unkillable.
Anet should change some mechanics so noobs wouldn’t be a free frag, and skilled guys wouldn’t be ubstopable…

To me this shows that skill matters. This is a good thing. If anything I wish they would make skill matter MORE than numbers in WvW (stupid mass res’s from downed state).

Btw… I’ve also had people whisper me on my guard and on my eng and tell me that the class is OP… and yet I’m able to smash most other players who are playing the supposedly OP class. It’s a skill thing, not a class thing. Thankfully A-net has said that they don’t balance based on the lower/mid levels of skill.

Note I’m not trying to say I’m a godlike player with any class… just that I’m better than most randoms in WvW. It also took some time/practice/thinking on how I can counter other classes.

jportell.2197:

A thread a few days back asked why so many bunker builds are popular in wvw… the one answer is thieves… if one class can make every person in wvw want to try bunkering there is a big problem

I find that bunker builds are nearly useless and are just a crutch for bad players. I can mitigate/avoid/deal more damage in a balanced set up Vs. some one who just refuses to learn to react to attacks with something other than passive hp/toughness. That doesn’t therefore mean thief (or any other class) is OP… it does show how many people are unwilling to practice and learn though…

Well glad to hear it’s not just me… it’s horrid and I won’t play in these conditions (other than to force myself to deal with it to do my daily and then log out). If I need to dodge my timing will often be off… that can be fatal depending on the attack (or in a pvp fight in general this means death). It’s very very frustrating.

I’ve been getting a lot of intermittent lag since the last small update. On my thief Every 5th or 6th auto-shot with a pistol it lags and then 2 shoot out (all other actions are delayed at the same frequency but that should give you a good idea of how often it’s occurring). As it is I cannot play the game in its current state.

I reinstalled my graphics drivers, but the problem persists.

My internet is fine and I live in California.

I’ve plaid this game since the 3 day early launch with NO problems until this last small patch.

crewthief.8649:

Aberrant.6749:

Chainspell.5697:

jportell.2197:

Aberrant.6749:

So bunker builds are popular because quickly popping a stun breaker is too hard even in a balanced build? Ok… I can see that… sadly…

Its not the popping of a stun breaker… Its using those stun breakers to avoid the damage… But the perpetrator can just reset and do it again while your stun breaks are on cd.

This is why whenever I see a Thief open up on my D/D Ele I just pop my Mist Form > Lightning Flash and RTL away and never come back. Fighting a thief is pointless, a bad one will stealth, keep resetting the fight or just down right run away when things don’t go their way. A good thief will probably do the same thing, so far in WvW you can’t really tell the difference because 99% of what I said is a normal encounter with a thief. Don’t get me wrong, I will fight any other class, but fighting a thief(in WvW anyways, not PvP) is the equivalent of banging your head against a wall.

I find it funny that some one complains about a thief being able to disengage from a fight… and then tell how they are able to do it themselves.

/facepalm

How about letting people enjoy the game the way they want and not worrying about it? There’s alot of damage flying around out there, some people just appreciate the increased survivability. Myself, I play my Mesmer full-on GC shatter. I can honestly say that this “issue” that you’ve brought to the forums, has never bothered me a single bit. It may also help to not be quite so condescending in your replies to people.

Hey if some people find it fun, then fine… I find it very very boring to fight vs bunkers and still wonder why they don’t at least go for some offense… In the past 2 weeks or so I’ve seen a lot more bunkers around and it’s making it so I just hit them a few times… see the result (or lack there of)… know we could endlessly fight 1v1… hold them there (since they sure as heck can’t kill anything that’s not a wet paper bag)… ask a team/guild mate and just 2v1 them.

They still die trying to hold points anyways.

They also fail while trying to take points. It gives the other team far too much time to respond.

That’s not very useful for the team.

That’s also not really all that much fun on my side and I still don’t really see how it’s fun for them either.

Sorry you find my text to be condescending…

Chainspell.5697:

jportell.2197:

Aberrant.6749:

So bunker builds are popular because quickly popping a stun breaker is too hard even in a balanced build? Ok… I can see that… sadly…

Its not the popping of a stun breaker… Its using those stun breakers to avoid the damage… But the perpetrator can just reset and do it again while your stun breaks are on cd.

This is why whenever I see a Thief open up on my D/D Ele I just pop my Mist Form > Lightning Flash and RTL away and never come back. Fighting a thief is pointless, a bad one will stealth, keep resetting the fight or just down right run away when things don’t go their way. A good thief will probably do the same thing, so far in WvW you can’t really tell the difference because 99% of what I said is a normal encounter with a thief. Don’t get me wrong, I will fight any other class, but fighting a thief(in WvW anyways, not PvP) is the equivalent of banging your head against a wall.

I find it funny that some one complains about a thief being able to disengage from a fight… and then tell how they are able to do it themselves.

/facepalm

jportell.2197:

Aberrant.6749:

Junkpile.7439:

Knight gear for the win. Some crit dmg runes and crit dmg jewels. Works like charm.

I approve of this… knight’s + zerg + valk is what I use on my guard.

jportell.2197:

Aberrant.6749:

So bunker builds are popular because quickly popping a stun breaker is too hard even in a balanced build? Ok… I can see that… sadly…

Its not the popping of a stun breaker… Its using those stun breakers to avoid the damage… But the perpetrator can just reset and do it again while your stun breaks are on cd.

If they are the full GC thief they’ll have to wait a while… or they’ll have to go in with less damage/no stun on the 2nd try. In either case you should be able to mitigate the damage or avoid it completely.

less damage but still more than most other classes can fathom in a full zerker set up… In any case my full bunker build is not only meant to be a counter to thieves but rangers/killshot warriors/eles/ condi necros/and whirling wrath guardians… i only have a problem with some other mesmers and d/p thieves on occasion.

Or you could learn to dodge/mitigate damage… but I guess people just wanna go bunker which makes for boring skirmish fights and take forever to take a camp with : /

Junkpile.7439:

Knight gear for the win. Some crit dmg runes and crit dmg jewels. Works like charm.

I approve of this… knight’s + zerk + valk is what I use on my guard.

jportell.2197:

Aberrant.6749:

So bunker builds are popular because quickly popping a stun breaker is too hard even in a balanced build? Ok… I can see that… sadly…

Its not the popping of a stun breaker… Its using those stun breakers to avoid the damage… But the perpetrator can just reset and do it again while your stun breaks are on cd.

If they are the full GC thief they’ll have to wait a while… or they’ll have to go in with less damage/no stun on the 2nd try. In either case you should be able to mitigate the damage or avoid it completely. So the more I’m reading the more it seems it’s because it’s easier than having some skill (you don’t even need a lot to avoid a GC of any class).

So full bunkers are popular because quickly popping a stun breaker/tele/knockback/whatever to stop an initial burst is too hard even with a balanced set up? Ok… I can see that… sadly…

Halo.8976:

Aberrant.6749:

How is a full bunker even fun at all?

Do people really fear dying THAT much?

Says 80 lvl thief.

I have 4 80’s… none of which are bunker built. I play mostly on my guardian and mes as of late. If you need help dealing with thieves and how to kill them feel free to whisper me in game.

Bunker ele from what I’ve seen doesn’t do that much dmg… it just has survival… but more dmg than most other bunker classes do (still not much)

Why not toss in some knight’s gear at least to get some damage while keeping up toughness (defense)?

You can still not die quickly as a balanced build… and still kill things. 1v1 Fights aren’t over in a few seconds nor do they drag out for 30+

I can’t remember the last time a thief has downed me while being in a balanced setup. It gives you enough time to react while still being able to down them quickly. If you’re having issues vs thieves leaving fights when you don’t want them to, I suggest adding in more CC. CC is a thief’s bane.

DD Eles can still do some damage as full bunker, but even then why not go for a more balanced approach? (Just wondering as I don’t have an 80 Ele)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-The-Immortal-Mesmer-Build/first#post1250083

^ Bunker Mes.

No bunker isn’t shorthand for trouble defeating, it’s full defensive stats/builds.

You might not encounter that many on a lower teir such as NSP though… but that was part of my question.

It might just be in my bracket… but I’ve noticed a LOT more people going full bunker in WvW. Bunker guard/war/mes/eles are all over the place.

It’s boring. You can’t you can’t be killed… but you won’t kill anyone either.

What’s the point?

How is a full bunker even fun at all?

Do people really fear dying THAT much?

Why not go for a balanced approach instead? (Ex. My balanced guard & mes are tanky but not to the extreme of not being able to kill something in under an hour… and bunkers still can’t kill me)

If IS is bugged it needs to be fixed (I haven’t plaid s/d in a long time nor tested this though). I don’t see why that’s even up for debate…

@Noktern… FS can save your hide. It’s great for evading when you’re out of endurance. It’s great for ripping off protection/fury/stacks of might. The 2nd hit of it does the same damage as C&D so make sure it does that 2nd hit. It’s not something you spam though.

With a group of 4 you should be able to quickly res up anyone they’ve downed before they can finish them off. It shouldn’t even be a worry or care. Solo Thieves are just harassment unless the opponents are very bad. In that case they could have killed you all with any class.

Omaris Mortuus Est.2738:

I do like that when it comes to the JP a lot of people actually think, “should I kill them or let them go”

Anywhere else in WvW you would attack them if you think you can kill them, or call in help to kill them.

But I find it funny when you come across a player who wants to kill you when you arent going to kill them, and even gesture to show you wont attack. They just see red and run at you.
I think last week, RS took our Bay, may have been BB maybe this week; I was on my ele and was standing on the bridge at watergate. RS didnt sweep. I stood there for a few minutes noone came to sweep.
So I decided it would be fun to see what would happen in I, a wee little asuran elementalist decided to have a nap on the bridge.
Minutes later a RS invader, even seeing me just lying there attacked with everything they had! I jumped in the water, I had the permanent speed boost from the signet skill, so was outswimming them. 10 seconds later I look back and 10 other invaders had jumped into the water and killed me.

All I wanted to do was sleep on the bridge
But there you have it, some players would have laughed at the fact an enemy invader was sleeping so openly in an enemy keep, others will just attack you.

The only good invader is a dead invader. I don’t know what you’re up to but you must be killed on sight. Your little corpse might have a precursor inside as well :P

Why should the other teams just let you get free siege for your side? Having the JP and denying your opponents quick free siege is a powerful thing. If they are camping it, take them out. If you need more than just yourself group up. They disabled siege in the jp’s so I don’t see any reason to complain now.

P.S. Dear Dev’s… remove the badges from the JP and put them in as a WvW daily already. Too many are abusing the chests so they don’t have to help their team in WvW for their badges/legendary.

Thanks for the fun in the EB JP BG campers!

Also thanks to my guildmate Kresnik Bloodedge (not shown) who helped :P

With my gear/trait set up I’m ticking at 135 with super veggie pizza/quality crystals, going up to 145+ with might stacks (usually have a ton of might from stealth/dodges) and +66% bleed duration. I use 3 Krait & 3 Afflicted… the higher food wouldn’t have bumped it up to another tick so I don’t bother for just the 10 vigor.

Could get a bit more with better crystals… but these are just so much less expensive :P

Still debating if I should get ascended for my guard or thief first… so it’s all just exotics atm.

I definitely agree with mixing carrion with a apothecary. I run 5 Apoth armors and the rest is carrion gear (including carrion weapons)… and have no problems tanking a war’s 100b… which they seem to love to try to do when you go in for a stealth stomp.

I wouldn’t go full apothecary though… vit works as anti-burst/anti condition. Toughness is anti sustained damage. Having both together works very well while keeping your condition damage high… and then toughness has that annoying DR when you stack it high…

EASY way to get ecto’s…

Run CoF

Turn in 30 tokens for level 70 RARE armors (you’ll have enough from each first run on each toon to do this twide)

Salvage

Profi… err… Ectos.

You may now continue on about how getting 50 ecto’s is just too hard…

There might be a valid argument that this would put another step in between you and legendary jewelry… if/when legendary jewelry comes out though… but for now I see no conflict

Sarrow.2785:

It’s a risk vs reward thing. Shadow refuge kills thieves just as much as it helps them. The big house pretty much says “AOE here! I’m tryna res a downed guy!” A month ago I would have agreed it was too strong. Now, people have learned to deal with it.

AOE damage is rubbish… I can easily tank/heal through multiple aoe’s while in refuge. AOE is NOT a viable counter to stealth

They would need to push me out of refuge with a non-target specific knockback and hope I don’t just dodge it… and with return endurance on dodge that’s very easy to do.

Atm there is no real counter to stealth… and the revealed debuff is virtually nullified with rendering issues/culling… giving thieves nearly unlimited invisibility that’s the real root of the problem.

Setun.4368:

The best way to utilize the scepter to your advantage I’ve found is for baiting. The projectiles are easy to dodge, but that’s part of their strength. If you can make someone dodge your autoattack and use up their endurance, just so you can follow up with a guarenteed immobilize via #3 followed by smite #2 immediately after, the combo possibilities while that person is immobilized are whatever you want to make it. I personally love doing that combo mentioned before, followed by using torch #5 at the same time. Smite is constantly hitting them, the aoe flame breath is likewise pummeling them, and if you cast zealot’s flame (torch #4) while #5 is channeling, you can use the 2nd effect for #4 immediately after #5’s channel is over. Against anything that isn’t a bunker build and depending on your build as well that combo for me will do anywhere between 40-70% of the person’s health while they’re just standing in place or just starting to run away. Plus the cooldowns on scepter skills are so fast that unless they gain serious distance from you you can easily pester them since the orb on scepters do have a slight homing ability. But like I mentioned before if you can bait your opponent(s) into wasting dodge rolls on the orb then more power to you as that leaves them that much more vulnerable to whatever moves you have planned.

If only they needed to dodge instead of just change direction every few seconds this would be valid…

It would depend on what you’re going for and your stats… but accuracy/force for a flat increase, bloodlust/perception for stacking are good.

I’m not a big fan of the blood sigil as it has that 5 second internal cooldown (despite the tooltip saying 2)

Smite condition, Contemplation of Purity, Signet of Resolve/Purity (depending on when the 10s condition removal happens), runes of lyssa (eliete skills turns all conditions into boons) will all remove it.

Anti-condition duration food (lowers immobilized time as well as all other conditions)

JI & Flashing blade will move you to a new location but will not remove the immobilized… but with the distance on JI that’s usually enough time for it to wear off.

Stun breakers do not remove immobilized.

WolfHeart.1256:

I disagree with the bow option too. What I would like to see (as an improvement to the Scepter if you will) is a homing ability for the orb. The speed is fine, but make it follow the target so they have to evade the attack, not just take a step to the left or to the right. Other than that I don’t see any problem with the Scepter as a ranged weapon.

I concur. Either dramatically increase the speed or make it at least some what homing. Then we would be ok at range without being OP.

I wasn’t expecting either focus or shield to be in here… both are fine as is imo… I was expecting sword and scepter… those two are in far greater need of a rework. Dear holy god increase the speed of scepter orbs already… or give us a real long ranged weapon -.-

More might procs for the entire party on crit not included in the formula… accuracy.

For my scepter + shield I use accuracy + fire. It procs that aoe very very often with the rapid attack of scepter & smite. I would highly recommend that set up for you scepter + focus.

Thank god I still had enough to just re-deposit the gold for gold hoarder… the survivor one… ugh…