Guild Wars 2

Apolo.5942:

zone.1073:

This is why solo queue must be separated from 5-man team queue. Of course pugs will “naturally” be separated from premades on average due to rating, but whenever a particular pug player performs exceptionally well and carries for multiple games, he will get knocked back down by a premade, so his potential MMR is capped. It’s a glass ceiling.

Due to the lack of proper support, more game modes and the kitten advantage of kiting vs melee, SPVP is almost DEAD you simply can not separate the Qs if you expect to play more than 1 game per afternoon.

Queues are already pretty much insta-pop most of the time. Combine that with the fact that generally a player won’t even see the same opponent 2 times in a day of play and you see we have a MUCH larger playerbase than you’d lead people to believe.

Separating queues would, at most, increase times to a few minutes on average with the current level of interest in tournaments.

ANet’s insistence on giving the advantage to zergs in WvW is only serving to increase the number of players in sPvP due to discontent with that decision; making queue times nearly non-existant(maybe they did this on purpose? :-P).

garethh.3518:

mursie.3681:

You went afk and died? I don’t see the problem.

if you weren’t afk you need to uninstall. He hit you with opening burst..followed by auto attacks..followed by 3 heartseekers…ran out of initiative and proceeded to do more auto attacks. this only happens if you are literally standing still afk. or … if you have absolutely no clue how to even move your character.

I don’t think you read that right… the person did 30k dmg in roughly 3 seconds.

We did read it right, we also saw that flame sigil (which has a 5 second cd btw) procced TWICE in that fight. That in and of itself means it was AT LEAST 5 seconds, and anyone incapable of doing SOMETHING to save themselves in that amount of time just needs a bit more practice.

There was in fact no cap at one point and you could stack duration indefinitely. Certain PvP teams would utilize a smoke field and blast finishers at the beginning of a match to get over 1 minute in duration for purposes of bypassing the enemy to get to a point.

Dasorine.1964:

If I remember correctly the stealth hard cap on duration was around 25 seconds

Used to be, was reduced a while back to 14s (think it was 14). But it can be reapplied indefinitely. In other words you won’t just drop out of stealth after 14s if you keep reapplying.

Hammerheart.1426:

Today’s Most Glorious! : Whoever earns the most glory in a given 0000-2400 period earns their name engraved the following day on a special plaque in the mists.

Do fun stuff like this for most kills in a day(Deadliest Hero!), most points captured in a day (Hail the Conquering Hero!), most people revived in a day (Field Medic Hero!) and other things of that nature.

The next day, someone else’s name is engraved.

Sounds like that would only compound the issue of people playing for personal glory rather than their team’s ability to win. We have enough “hotjoin heroes” already.

Even if it’s only 3 seconds, that is too slow a reaction time for this style game. The ability to recognize a threat and hit your stun-breaker/“oh kitten” button and initiate calculated dodge rolls in mere milliseconds is an entry level requirement to pvp in GW2.

The use of lyssa runes with a venom build is due to the 36 second cd of our elite. It gets major mileage from Runes of Lyssa.

There are plenty of builds posted in these forums even that are a bit more on the beefy side. As in able to take a hit or 2 without worry….. will you be able to sit there and never dodge and just face tank? No, no class can do that.

Has no range that I’m aware of, I do think that the target must remain in combat with you until he dies though or you won’t rally.

Invizible.2960:

Adaneshade.2409:

Invizible.2960:

I need help with a s/p build with shortbow swap, currently im running venomshare and its a lot of fun but i want to experiment a bit with it so what are some builds, gear, and skill setups that I can use for this playstyle? There might be better weapon choices for this but these are the ones that I plan on using.

Currently, my tournament setup is 30-0-30-0-10 with S/D + SB. Taking all the venom enhancing traits in both Deadly Arts and Shadow Arts trees, with the exception of the might on venom (chose to go with mug there instead).

I use berserker pendant with Runes of Divinity. Flame sigils on SB and Sword and Bloodlust sigil on dagger.

The end result is a fairly well balanced thief with plenty of burst and good party support.

What about a wvw setup? Im not really into spvp at the moment although im considering playing it a bit more in the future

For WvW, I’m running Valkyrie Armor with Emerald Orbs, and Berserker Jewelry with the same build.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

I would rather see Stealth nerfed into the ground, and other skills the Thief has buffed to compensate to open up more diversity, so they don’t have to rely on such predictable gimmicky tricks. Honestly the best Thief I know plays S/P even after the nerf, it’s highly unexpected and he uses it extraordinarily well. He’s also probably one of the very few Thieves I actually respect for skill and diversity.

Wouldn’t bother me in the least. I do use dagger offhand, but not for stealth. I find the boon stripping and unblockable capability of S/D set to be a godsend vs bunkers.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Adaneshade.2409:

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Oh, and the fact that every thief on the planet spams either Heartseeker, DeathBlossom, or Pistolwhip (This not so much after the nerf) as though they make a thousand dollars every click of the same overused worn out button. I kind of want to see how many Thief mainers have their ‘2’ key completely disintegrated.

Shouldn’t use absolutes like “every”, it just weakens your entire argument. S/D, for instance, is a very popular setup, as is P/D; neither of which even have those abilities you claim EVERY thief spams.

In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a single thief in high tier PvP that spams any ability as it’s purely a ticket to an kitten whooping vs opponents with IQ’s higher than that of a brick.

Hi, I play high tier PvP.

I see heartseeker. Alot.

I see Deathblossom. Alot.

I also see Thieves guild. Alot.

Does it mean that my team loses to it? Generally no, despite backstab -> heartseeker being so strong. It’s just overused, and I wouldn’t mind seeing more diversity in Thief so that I might actually pick one up again and not have to rely on 2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2 or some other nonsensical skill.

Hence my statement that good thieves don’t use that. It’s a weak play-style as it’s too predictable. Predictability in ANY PvP game is a bad thing.

While I’m not denying that you and your team are of a good rank, the current ranking system is so royally kittened up that an absolute day1 noob can be put up against higher level opponents with just a bit of luck. The thieves you see doing that will not be at that level long, I can assure you.

Invizible.2960:

I need help with a s/p build with shortbow swap, currently im running venomshare and its a lot of fun but i want to experiment a bit with it so what are some builds, gear, and skill setups that I can use for this playstyle? There might be better weapon choices for this but these are the ones that I plan on using.

Currently, my tournament setup is 30-0-30-0-10 with S/D + SB. Taking all the venom enhancing traits in both Deadly Arts and Shadow Arts trees, with the exception of the might on venom (chose to go with mug there instead).

I use berserker pendant with Runes of Divinity. Flame sigils on SB and Sword and Bloodlust sigil on dagger.

The end result is a fairly well balanced thief with plenty of burst and good party support.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Oh, and the fact that every thief on the planet spams either Heartseeker, DeathBlossom, or Pistolwhip (This not so much after the nerf) as though they make a thousand dollars every click of the same overused worn out button. I kind of want to see how many Thief mainers have their ‘2’ key completely disintegrated.

Shouldn’t use absolutes like “every”, it just weakens your entire argument. S/D, for instance, is a very popular setup, as is P/D; neither of which even have those abilities you claim EVERY thief spams.

In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a single thief in high tier PvP that spams any ability as it’s purely a ticket to an kitten whooping vs opponents with IQ’s higher than that of a brick.

I see no reason why every weapon couldn’t be made available to every class with a flavor twist to make them unique to each.

Raptured.9307:

Lukin.4061:

I am sick of wars, 3 in every team. The good ones put their flags all over and start kicking for huge dps, and the bad ones use charge+frenzy for an unblockable 100% kill : O

- Says the slave driver

Anyway OP this is a l2 kitten ue. If Spvp, yeah thieves and other glasses are good. Just do TPVP and l2p for real.

Right, in general I’ve found builds that worked great in tournaments felt fail-sauce in hotjoins because you can’t count on anything from your allies other than zerg zerg zerg. Conversely, most of the popular hotjoin hero builds get roflstomped in tournaments.

Really, I fail to see the point of even caring about rank anymore.. Since you can already get any loot available from the single round tournament chests, regardless of rank. Atm there is no tangible benefit to being high rank vs low rank

Vapula.8210:

ilJumperMT.4871:

Vapula.8210:

I can’t get behind this idea, stacking 3+ of the same professions is a symptom of poor balance, not a cause. Bringing professions more in line with one another and promoting build diversity (fixing crap traits) will fix this issue. Like it was mentioned above, tpvp groups run different builds of the same professions. Why should they be unable to do so?

one ele is bare-able
two eles are OP and any team that uses them shouldn’t be in top 100 leader boards
3 eles are kitten and any team that run them shouldn’t should be permanently banned, not sitting in top 10

You seem to have a lot of issues with eles, and this is your misguided solution. Do you feel that it should be a bannable offense to run 3 thieves, or 3 guardians, or 3 anything else besides eles? Wouldn’t a better solution be to bring eles down, and make more builds viable so people don’t feel like they gain any particular edge running 3 of any build?

Really, I think the popular tPvP professions are all in a good spot right now, it’s the other classes that need to be brought UP to their level so people want to play them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen “You brought x class into tournaments? You should be on y or z class or you’re just dead weight.”

ilJumperMT.4871:

Bas.7406:

That’s ridiculous. Some of us do tournaments and structured for fun, and have no desire to be pigeonholed into specific class or Meta setups. I run an all-necro team setup to help other Necro’s learn some tips. Your idea is simply not feasible and would destroy any sort of fun or gimmicky build designed to counter the really strong classes. Double Engi wrecks eles and necros ;p.

Custom Tournaments for that. Problem?

Why not make class limits a function in customs? More people seem to prefer being able to use any comp they want rather than being forced to not double up on a class, according to the feedback in this thread.

Just swap to SB and drill them with some detonated Cluster bombs. They’ll run like a girl or die.

Phigment

…somechars

Swinsk basically nailed it. You need enough HP to survive conditions long enough for you to either purge them or kill your target. Aside from that, when combined with heals, toughness way outperforms vitality for sustainability.

Minion of Vey.4398:

I think there’s really only one reason that matters:

It’s pretty kitten boring to watch. There isn’t really much to see a good team do. Having people be coordinated and come to the right circles at the right time isn’t exactly something that’s going to keep me watching a stream.

Actual variety in combat in what you can do is so limited. If I watch the top guys play a profession, and I’m experienced with playing it myself, I’m probably not really going to see them do anything particularly interesting. No “Whoa that was really sweet when he did x!”.

This is due to them picking conquest as the mode. People are always going to be more interested in the kills than the point captures.

No Walking.6349:

Adaneshade.2409:

No Walking.6349:

Adaneshade.2409:

TESO’s PvP has been uncovered as a complete failure already.

Oh right, I totally forgot that there are people who can see into the future :/

No, but there are people who have played their PvP in BETA and found it to be poorly implemented almost feeling like an afterthought rather than the primary focus.

Hmm…..it’s too bad you can’t provide a link to prove this statement Go ahead and try

http://www.keenandgraev.com/2013/03/20/ruin-3-faction-mmo-pvp

Is one example of many….. but googling is just too tough for some people.

randomfightfan.4091:

I hope more ignorant players read your post so they can learn the truth about the stealth mechanic so we can possibly POSSIBLY have people learn the mechanics of this game so posts like this never happen again.

I only wish this could be the case. But you know as well as I do that noobs prefer to remain ignorant. Most people aren’t willing to admit they aren’t the top of their profession. Not to mention, searching for previous posts of the same content with logical replies like the one above is just too much trouble.

yiishing.9057:

Cactus.2710:

You do know that GW2 runs on totally different servers for EU and NA, right?? The two server groups don’t talk to each other at all … ANet has said they are totally independent.

So, they are totally independent, but yet it is still impossible to reset them at different times? Seems legit.

If they are so independent, why can you transfer or guest from one to the other?

I’d still like DAoC style BGs for low levels. WvW basically, with a single tower or keep in the middle of the map.

Seriously, if they’d put in a zone where the only focus was player kills I’d give every ANet dev a big, sloppy kiss.

+5 points for troll attempt….
-6 points for absolute failure.

Sprawl.3891:

Adaneshade.2409:

No Walking.6349:

Adaneshade.2409:

TESO’s PvP has been uncovered as a complete failure already.

Oh right, I totally forgot that there are people who can see into the future :/

No, but there are people who have played their PvP in BETA and found it to be poorly implemented almost feeling like an afterthought rather than the primary focus.

Just like GW2 beta then.

Well, definitely not better … lol.

Nilgoow.1037:

I want to be put in a dress, sedated, then punished for being naughty.

Second Life is >>>>>> that way :-P

No Walking.6349:

Adaneshade.2409:

TESO’s PvP has been uncovered as a complete failure already.

Oh right, I totally forgot that there are people who can see into the future :/

No, but there are people who have played their PvP in BETA and found it to be poorly implemented almost feeling like an afterthought rather than the primary focus.

Hypoxia.7910:

is thief class a good one for pvp ? or atm its not so good 1v1?

Thief in now, and has always been a strong contender for best of 1v1 and roaming WvW classes. However, in tournaments, thieves are typically considered weak because nearly everything they can do that contributes to winning a structured PvP match (mobility for backcapping, or bunkering), another class can do better.

Yeah, I see that coming fast as well, daydream. They are, for the moment, hard enough to play properly, though, that there aren’t just a ton of them.

Don’t hold your breath. TESO’s PvP has been uncovered as a complete failure already…… Maybe Camelot Unchained? That’s a few years down the road at best, though.

Thieves that are actually so good at their class that they perform well in tournaments despite their handicap get beaucoup respect. Mesmers currently have a build that’s very easily sucessful in tournaments, which is why so many are around, similar to the bunker eles before they were nerfed a bit. Give it time, there will be another flavor of the month soon enough.

I agree with Dardamaniac. I’m familiar with that ranger orb runner build and that’s literally ALL they can do, their dps blows and they can’t bunker, only run. I’d much rather see leap/dash effects not work with orb carrying at all.

Devata.6589:

Like I said I know it because of the finishing example. I tried to use Point Blank Shot on invisible Thiefs all the time and it never works. Now let say for some reason I always missed. (It’s likely that I missed a few times but I tried it so many times it is very unlikely I missed all the times because you kinda know where they are standing)

Then there is the example of the Thunderclap that also never worked. Could I be blinded some of the times. Of course, and I will be honest, I don’t keep a look at all the conditions all of the times but will I have been blinded all the times, of course not.

Is is possible that I did the Thunderclap to early because I did not see the thief so had to guess? No, I know that because of the time between me doing the Thunderclap and getting finished.

I would love to have made a video to show the whole mechanic but to really do that I would have to work together with a thief from another server what is kind of a problem. But if anybody does not believes it I would suggest trying it in a controlled way.

I just saw a topic here where somebody posted a video:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/My-WvW-thief-video/first#post1814936

Now is it very hard to see in an action video but I think you can see it at 3:03. The thief is there fighting with a ranger. The ranger only has cripple and bleed and just after the thief go’s invisible and before he heals himself there is a shot (from the ranger) that seems to hit him but you do not see a red number (him losing health).

Like I said, this is hard to see, best is to try it in a more controlled way.

Stooperdale.3560:

On the thief forums there are plenty of players asking for stealth to interrupt a chain attack, since it currently does not. Play a thief for a while and you will find stealth does not make you in any way invulnerable in PvE or PvP.

It does not really make you invulnerable like other skills do, but you simply don’t get damage from those attacks.

If they are invisible, how do you know if you are using these skills in the right location to hit them? On the corpse I assume, but most good thieves will use shadowstep stomping so that they are nowhere near the corpse for the channel and pop to them just before the animation finishes.

If you aren’t using the pistol offhand for blind field, a good sword thief will own you every time. HS spam may work in hotjoins but never in tournaments, at least not against any higher tier teams.

I’d use the S/P combo, but don’t bother with Pistol Whip, just autoattack. This allows you to effectively aoe farm melee based mobs, if you blow initiative on pistol whip you may wind up running short and be exposed to attacks.

Gamblit.5041:

Endemonadia.8593:

I was just wondering if there were any standard WvW zerg builds for Thieves?

I appreciate that the vast majority of Thieves prefer to run solo or in small groups in WVW but surely some of us like to run in zergs right?

For the record, i run double Pistols and have built my Thief into a strong zerging toon. Ive built him very different from anything ive read anywhere on the forums so maybe im unique? lol

To be brief, ive made a ‘Vampire Thief’ who basically selfheals for all of the damage he dishes out. Gear is gemmed into healing but stats are for Power/Precision/Crit for the damage. Elite skill Daggerstorm is awesome cos i can jump into massive enemy zergs and survive fine, even solo. Im dealing massive damage and selfhealing while im doing it so i hardly ever die. After the Daggerstorm i can vanish to break everyone whose targetted me and then smack them from range with pistols when i reappear.

My build isnt exclusively for zerging as its very useful for small groups as well and also great for Dungeons and Fractals (got to lev25 fractals with zero AR). It is however pretty weak for 1 v 1.

Anyone else run anything similiar to this?

And does anyone have any other great Theif zerg builds?

~Ende~

Since Gunslingers don’t have AoE, what do you do about the other 69 enemy players when your Daggerstorm is on cooldown?

Can use SB as secondary it tags tons of players as well. The poison field is amazing for that.

Bailey.6892:

Adaneshade.2409:

naphack.9346:

Tanking stuff is a bad idea in GW2…
Especially with a thief

You’d still obviously dodge major hits, the difference is a missed evade is a minor deal. This works as I’ve been running a build like this for months now, can laugh in the face of any burst build. (literally, stand there and laugh in their face while they barely dent ya :-P)

Would this work well with crafted gear? If so would you go knights armor and zerk trinkets or? Right now I am 20/30/20 with berserker gear/trinkets and runes of the ogre using d/p. Trying to get something made to help support friends and the small grp I run with.

For a tank build? Zerker nothing. I use full PVT with exquisite emerald jewels in PvT jewelry, but a mix of knight’s and valkyrie might work if you must craft it. I’d go like Valkyrie armor with Superior Crest of the Soldier x6 and full Knight’s Emerald Jewelry.

Selver.1307:

We’ll be necroing this thread before it’s stickied! :/

So after trying to play every class again, i still come to the conclusion i am a thief.

I think this is the first mmo i cant alt-kitten…

I’ve never been able to alt…. The very thought of it sickens me. I was fortunate to pick one of the most dynamic and enjoyable classes in the game as my main.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

You use the Sigil of Perception to build a stack of perception. This added precision will show on your character page.

Correct, that’s because it actually increases precision by a numerical value which impacts all skills. Accuracy only increases by a static % and only affects weapon attacks, much like proc based sigils.

naphack.9346:

Tanking stuff is a bad idea in GW2…
Especially with a thief

You’d still obviously dodge major hits, the difference is a missed evade is a minor deal. This works as I’ve been running a build like this for months now, can laugh in the face of any burst build. (literally, stand there and laugh in their face while they barely dent ya :-P)

Simple fix would be to have the results of any game you enter applied to your character whether or not you are there for the end of the match. If you leave you are only increasing the chance to have a loss on your record.

naphack.9346:

If you wanna go into survivability, you might want to get runes of the adventurer.
+50 endurance on heal = 2 dodges with 15 pt acrobatics trait.
And they give cond damage and power, which is not that bad.

Right, that’s an evasion build, we’re talking tank builds here though. Damage absorption through high armor + steady heals rather than evasion.

Yeah, I’ve not checked healing as all I’ve seen is the 415 damage procs, not how much it heals me for. Just assumed it healed me for that much as well.

Mesmers have way more access to stealth than you guys are letting on. Is it as much as a thief? No, but it’s still quite a bit, in addition to clones no less.

4th skill on Torch offhand
Decoy
Mass Invis
Veil
Desperate Decoy (V Major Trait in Dueling)

evilapprentice.6379:

Adaneshade.2409:

evilapprentice.6379:

Adaneshade.2409:

Damage and heal are a 1:1 ratio

That’s what I thought, but then I thought it was silly that +healing power would contribute to damage in that manner. I guess I was wrong.

Right, it’s affected by power, not healing power as of a patch not long after release. (Not certain if might scales it up, but i think it does.)

I’ll have to test later today, but I believe healing power still affects it (though I do remember the patch change your talking about).

I’m assuming you’re using a soldiers ammy? If so, Soliders + 30 points in DA puts your power much higher than mine (I’m at around 1800 not counting weapons), yet my venom procs at 578, and yours at 415. There may have been some might stacks involved, but I dont believe they could account for a 163 point difference. (Plus your testing probably also includes those might stacks)

Correct, Soldiers ammy and Runes of Divinity.