Guild Wars 2

RedSpectrum.1975:

Arganthium.5638:

@Mrbig: if you’re going to tell me my my his wrong, you sure as hell better have the evidence to back it up. Ironically, the person I was speaking to in the thread from which my quote was borrowed also tried to say that my math was wrong, linking me to some guy named Arcturus who had come up with a different conclusion than I had. I refuted his methods through some basic facts.

And if you’re going to doubt the usefulness of Trix in my build, go do some research into the build and then tell me what you think.

Why would cereal help you in the first place? No I’m doubting you Argy….

Oh okay ; _ ; y’know, those little kids are such kittens… I feel persecuted for my taste in cereal. q.q

Bsgapollo.5364:

Arganthium.5638:

Bsgapollo.5364:

Arganthium.5638:

Bsgapollo.5364:

S/d thiefs. Barely any counterplay to it.

Stream damage (Ele scepter air auto, Mesmer GS auto), attacks with a 0 or small cast time, AoE fields, cripple, chill, immob, weakness, movement-impeding lines or circles, using LS or the auto to your advantage, evading halfway through FS, keep close quarters, a well-timed CC, and a general understanding of thief animations and aftercasts are all extremely beneficial against S/D.

Everyone has their own opinion. I know how s/d thief works, I know when to land my burst and when I shouldn’t. For example right after a CC since IS has a cast time now. Still, a good thief will run 3 defensive utility slots, mainly shadow refuge, shadow step and infiltrator signet. Making it hard to actually land something if they know how to use it. Combine that with an insane amount of evades, a leap that immobilizes you once you try to kite and voila, you have an overpowered build imo.
No one ever complained about the boon removing, always the evades. Yet Anet decided to remove 1 boon steal from LS and make IS have a cast time. ( the change on IS wasn’t bad btw. )

I can win almost every match 1v1 against a warrior or even spirit rangers, but when I face a s/d thief I absolutely stand no chance what so ever.

There’s a difference between opinion and fact. However much you think you know about S/D, I know ten times more. I’ve mained S/D for half a year, and it has been the build type that I’ve theory crafted, by far, the most.

The moment that your opponent uses Shadow Refuge for purely defensive reasons and not to rez an ally, you’ve won a fight.

The number of evades is again easy to counter once you understand Feline Grace and animations (there’s also a large aftercast on FS that can make a thief extremely vulnerable).

It’s not a leap, but it’s just as predictable as one. The damage on it is very small and the immob is extremely short. Also, the inability to kite is another reason (among many) that you shouldn’t be afraid to keep close quarters.

If you think the change on IS/IR wasn’t bad, please, go play S/D and tell me the result.

The other day I faced a meta 10/30/0/30/0 S/D thief and the vast majority of my damage came from auto attacks, and I won most of our fights. It’s very easy to play against S/D when you have a very good understanding of it. Then it’s our job to try to counter your counters.

I mean’t it wasn’t bad as in, it wasn’t a bad nerf to the class/build. but like I said before, you believe your “facts” and I have reason to believe the build is still extremely broken despise of what other people might say. but hey, I will take your advice, try to improve my skills even more with it, and maybe 1 day i’ll be able to say, well kitten, that s/d thief really outplayed me. Although that day has yet still to come.

Also if you’ve ever played ele before you know there’s very little you can do against this build, just my 2 cents

Well, part of the reason why there isn’t much you can do is that ele is in an absolutely awful place atm. Theoretically, Scepter’s air attunement should be good against S/D, but the overall weakness of ele right now ruins the advantage. Although I did create a staff ele build that focused on area denial as opposed to the regular staff ele’s burst- insanely fun, though still bad due to the relative state of ele versus other classes. Still, it must’ve had the highest skill ceiling of any build I’ve played ever and, in a balanced meta, should have a theoretical advantage against S/D thieves.

@Mrbig: if you’re going to tell me my my his wrong, you sure as hell better have the evidence to back it up. Ironically, the person I was speaking to in the thread from which my quote was borrowed also tried to say that my math was wrong, linking me to some guy named Arcturus who had come up with a different conclusion than I had. I refuted his methods through some basic facts.

And if you’re going to doubt the usefulness of Trix in my build, go do some research into the build and then tell me what you think.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Arganthium.5638:

I’m basing my list on the strategic value of various builds in team comps overall as well as their value compared to other builds that attempt to complete the same role they do. I’m also basing this off the average skill level of players.

S Tier:
1. Hambow warrior
2. Any other warr that is not extremely glassy
3. Engi point assaulter
4. Engi point bunker
5. Spirit ranger

A Tier:

6. MM Necro
7. Condi Necro
8. PU Mesmer
9. Bunker Guard

B Tier:

10. Shatter Mesmer
11. Non bunker, non DPS guards.
12. DPS guard
13. Glass warriors
14. D/P thief
15. S/D thief

C Tier:
16. Rifle engis
17. Power rangers
18. Burst eles
19. Non burst, AoE support, area denial staff eles
20. Non D/P or S/D thieves
21. Power necros
22. All other types of eles

How is Rifle engi on par with a power ranger? I’ve beaten “A” tier builds and even some “S” tier builds with a power engi, and no there weren’t crappy players. Not to mention the crazy amount of stomping/resing you can get off with one.

I think I disagree with most of this list =/ I think you’re rating them based on how easy they are, not how good they are when placed in the hands of a good player.

Rifle burst engis are rare nowadays because of how gimmicky they are, and how obvious their animations are. But like I said in the intro to my post, I’m also comparing builds based on how good the alternatives for their roles are. A rifle warr can just use Volley and become almost infinitely better than a rifle engi.

And I even specifically mentioned that I’m evaluating builds based on the skill of the average player because I knew somebody would use the argument you’re using. A good D/P or S/D thief would easily be on A Tier and maybe even lower S Tier. It’s just that, if you put one of those builds in the hands of an average player/thief, it would easily be a B Tier build.

Bsgapollo.5364:

Arganthium.5638:

Bsgapollo.5364:

S/d thiefs. Barely any counterplay to it.

Stream damage (Ele scepter air auto, Mesmer GS auto), attacks with a 0 or small cast time, AoE fields, cripple, chill, immob, weakness, movement-impeding lines or circles, using LS or the auto to your advantage, evading halfway through FS, keep close quarters, a well-timed CC, and a general understanding of thief animations and aftercasts are all extremely beneficial against S/D.

Everyone has their own opinion. I know how s/d thief works, I know when to land my burst and when I shouldn’t. For example right after a CC since IS has a cast time now. Still, a good thief will run 3 defensive utility slots, mainly shadow refuge, shadow step and infiltrator signet. Making it hard to actually land something if they know how to use it. Combine that with an insane amount of evades, a leap that immobilizes you once you try to kite and voila, you have an overpowered build imo.
No one ever complained about the boon removing, always the evades. Yet Anet decided to remove 1 boon steal from LS and make IS have a cast time. ( the change on IS wasn’t bad btw. )

I can win almost every match 1v1 against a warrior or even spirit rangers, but when I face a s/d thief I absolutely stand no chance what so ever.

There’s a difference between opinion and fact. However much you think you know about S/D, I know ten times more. I’ve mained S/D for half a year, and it has been the build type that I’ve theory crafted, by far, the most.

The moment that your opponent uses Shadow Refuge for purely defensive reasons and not to rez an ally, you’ve won a fight.

The number of evades is again easy to counter once you understand Feline Grace and animations (there’s also a large aftercast on FS that can make a thief extremely vulnerable).

It’s not a leap, but it’s just as predictable as one. The damage on it is very small and the immob is extremely short. Also, the inability to kite is another reason (among many) that you shouldn’t be afraid to keep close quarters.

If you think the change on IS/IR wasn’t bad, please, go play S/D and tell me the result.

The other day I faced a meta 10/30/0/30/0 S/D thief and the vast majority of my damage came from auto attacks, and I won most of our fights. It’s very easy to play against S/D when you have a very good understanding of it. Then it’s our job to try to counter your counters.

redslion.9675:

style.6173:

Arganthium.5638:

I’m basing my list on the strategic value of various builds in team comps overall as well as their value compared to other builds that attempt to complete the same role they do. I’m also basing this off the average skill level of players.

S Tier:
1. Hambow warrior
2. Any other warr that is not extremely glassy
3. Engi point assaulter
4. Engi point bunker
5. Spirit ranger

A Tier:

6. MM Necro
7. Condi Necro
8. PU Mesmer
9. Bunker Guard

B Tier:

10. Shatter Mesmer
11. Non bunker, non DPS guards.
12. DPS guard
13. Glass warriors
14. D/P thief
15. S/D thief

C Tier:
16. Rifle engis
17. Power rangers
18. Burst eles
19. Non burst, AoE support, area denial staff eles
20. Non D/P or S/D thieves
21. Power necros
22. All other types of eles

I’d say this is the best list so far.

Howevwer, IMHO not hammer nor bow warrs are more towards A tier: they lack cc and aoe+easy condi clear through cleansing ire. They do one thing: rush and deal damage. They are stll strong, but not an all-in-one build anymore.

Other than that, how you define glass warriors? Are they only the ones with low armor and little condi removal and immunities or just the ones with little immunity/condi removal (example: no cleansing ire)?

Asking this because armor is definetely not the thing that most defines a warrior’s squishiness (Hambow has an unimpressive -to a warrior’s standard- 2400, 2500 above 90% health, but is one of most surviable warrior builds due to being able to afford 3 stances)

Hammer warriors might be more towards A tier after the recent nerfs (high A tier though), but LB should be a staple in almost any warrior build that isn’t glass. It’s amazing for condi removal, has a huge Fire field AoE, provides much-needed range, and has some extremely useful non-auto attacks. Warrs, however, can build to be an all-in-one if they want, which is why I wouldn’t change my choice for #2 in S tier.

To me, a glass warr is one that tries to get large spike/burst damage through maximizing Eviscerate, Volley, and/or Kill Shot damage.

So I might agree with the Hambow evaluation, but I wouldn’t bump it down much lower.

redslion.9675:

style.6173:

Arganthium.5638:

I’m basing my list on the strategic value of various builds in team comps overall as well as their value compared to other builds that attempt to complete the same role they do. I’m also basing this off the average skill level of players.

S Tier:
1. Hambow warrior
2. Any other warr that is not extremely glassy
3. Engi point assaulter
4. Engi point bunker
5. Spirit ranger

A Tier:

6. MM Necro
7. Condi Necro
8. PU Mesmer
9. Bunker Guard

B Tier:

10. Shatter Mesmer
11. Non bunker, non DPS guards.
12. DPS guard
13. Glass warriors
14. D/P thief
15. S/D thief

C Tier:
16. Rifle engis
17. Power rangers
18. Burst eles
19. Non burst, AoE support, area denial staff eles
20. Non D/P or S/D thieves
21. Power necros
22. All other types of eles

I’d say this is the best list so far.

Wait, how is that possible that PU mesmers are better than shatter ones? I’ve never seen a PU one in soloqueue due to their reliance on stealth.

I play a PU Mesmer. You’re right that the stealth is unreliable, but when used in moderation, all of PU’s other strengths can make up for its usage.

Me discussing why my S/D build takes 30 Trix instead of 30 CS to somebody…

Arganthium.5638:

The damage stat loss from 30 into Trix is offset by five facts: first, that you’re getting more initiative, and thus will be able to attack more often and be more flexible (and, by the way, you’re also getting more damage because of Lead Attacks). Second, you’re getting more sustain from Assassin’s Reward by being able to burn up more initiative. Third, the ability to swap to a Shortbow while still maintaining the same amount if not more initiative than Jumper’s build (and certainly more than Nag Nag’s) allows the build more versatility than the two most prominent thief builds have. Fourth, By investing so much into Trickery, you’re getting higher recharge on Steal, which is useful not only because you get so much utility from steal itself (four boons- three automatically, four if you hit- healing, damage, poison, double boon steal, and of course whatever item you stole), but also because Steal gives you more mobility, which, in a mobility-based build, could mean everything. Finally, all of the traits that you get in Trix are good. In CS, you get one good minor (First Strikes), one good major (Executioner), and a bunch of mediocre or bad majors and minors for the rest of your traits (especially considering that nowadays Opportunist is so awful). That’s what differentiates 30 into Trix from 30 into DS for a Necro- I do get more damage and sustain, but I also get a lot, lot more for what I invest as well. I’m not saying that my build must, by necessity, be better, but that’s the theory behind 30 into Trix- not to mention the absolutely abhorrent bonus damage you get from 300 precision and 30% crit damage…

Bsgapollo.5364:

S/d thiefs. Barely any counterplay to it.

Stream damage (Ele scepter air auto, Mesmer GS auto), attacks with a 0 or small cast time, AoE fields, cripple, chill, immob, weakness, movement-impeding lines or circles, using LS or the auto to your advantage, evading halfway through FS, keep close quarters, a well-timed CC, and a general understanding of thief animations and aftercasts are all extremely beneficial against S/D.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Np

But first remove instant cast skills from other profs and replace it with high telegraphed ones just like wars, remove abused evade/teleport/stealth skill/al/spam skills. Cut down the boon uptime greatly on vigor, protection (down to a maximum 8sec every 60sec)

Wut, nope? Okay

I do love the discussions the x skill heals more than y skill missing the bigger picture

Arganthium.5638:

Endure Pain greatly increases your life span against burst.
Thief’s Withdraw heals for about 100 HPS less than HealSig and about 200 HPS les than HS with Adrenal Health, meaning that you only need to live ~9s to start out healing thief).
Fifth, warr has the highest base health and heavy armor to shore up burst anyways.

-Endure pain has 60cd.

-Thief withdraw also removes chill, cripple/immo and evades. Imagine a situation with war and thief when they are immo. Thief will run at will if taking 0 damage. Warrior probably will eat it if they wont be able to cleanse (hint not everyone runs lb)

In this case, which heal is stronger?

Adrenal health is a trait based on adrenaline level – actually which warrior sits at full adrenaline the whole time? U can’t heal 360/3sec and cleanse 3 conditions every 7 sec, prove me im wrong and rebember to bring a vid as a proof.

-Armor means nothing in this game. DR destroys any meaning of armor. What matters is access to protection and other gimmick stuff.
Other classes make up for a tiny lower health with load of boons, teleports, blocks, invuls, blinds and many different sources of healing. For some reason guardian is still the king of bunkering while having the lower base hp.

1. Endure Pain can also have a 1s increased duration, but either way, this shouldn’t matter unless your facing burst classes over and over and over again in succession. Furthermore, even if you can only use this in one out of three fights (which, IMO, seems to be generous- 1 of 2 or even 1 out of 1.5 seems a little more realistic), then you’re still getting a major trump card in a third of the situations.

2. Thieves have very little access to immob, so it’s unlikely that they’d both be immobilized. However, even so, the small situational usage of Withdraw’s condi cleanse is completely overshadowed by HS’s far larger heal, and the fact that Cleansing Ire is probably the best condi cleanser in the game. And LB isn’t necessary- there are many other weapons with short animations and are easy to hit with burst. Still, though, it’s not my problem if people aren’t running LB.

3. Warriors have extremely high adrenaline regen, meaning they can quickly get back up to three bars after bursting. I could sit on three bars for as long as I wanted, in truth. I’d post a vid but I’m not on my laptop right now, so I can’t upload one to YouTube that I have.

4. Armor is extra toughness. If that’s not useful, I don’t know what is. And that “tiny lower health” is almost double of what many classes have, and certainly more than I could get on a bunker guard. Guard’s only the “king of bunkering” because that’s the only role that a guard is able to do nowadays, whereas a warr can just do loads of damage and be insanely effective even if he/she would also be an effective bunker.

I’m basing my list on the strategic value of various builds in team comps overall as well as their value compared to other builds that attempt to complete the same role they do. I’m also basing this off the average skill level of players.

S Tier:
1. Hambow warrior
2. Any other warr that is not extremely glassy
3. Engi point assaulter
4. Engi point bunker
5. Spirit ranger

A Tier:

6. MM Necro
7. Condi Necro
8. PU Mesmer
9. Bunker Guard

B Tier:

10. Shatter Mesmer
11. Non bunker, non DPS guards.
12. DPS guard
13. Glass warriors
14. D/P thief
15. S/D thief

C Tier:
16. Rifle engis
17. Power rangers
18. Burst eles
19. Non burst, AoE support, area denial staff eles
20. Non D/P or S/D thieves
21. Power necros
22. All other types of eles

Slim.3024:

Arganthium.5638:

Had to comment on this…

Slim.3024:

Mesmers? Ether Feast True

Elementalist? Ether Renewal Signet is used fairly often, and Glyph is a good option to avoid the ridiculous vulnerability of ER

Engineers? Healing Turret Not true- some HGH/elixir builds run Elixir H

Ranger? Healing Spring While this tends to be true a lot of the time, all of the heals have their own uses in different builds- none are necessarily bad.

Guardian? Shelter Mostly true, though guards have another 163835284 sources of healing anyways

Necromancer? Consume Conditions Not necessarily true of MMs

Thief? Withdraw if S/D, Hide In Shadows if D/P Withdraw is used even in many stealth builds, though HiS is generally reserved for D/X, true. But you have to consider that our two other heals are absolutely godawful, except in a few highly specialized builds.

So you’re basically agreeing with me.

There are rifle warrior builds who use Surge as well, but as it stands pretty much all professions have a prevalent heal they use in their builds and not just by a small margin either.

That’s one way to interpret twist my words.

Slim.3024:

Healing Signet is absolutely fine for a class like the warrior. Current meta builds for the warrior class do not allow them to disengage at will, nor are they much of a threat at distance with their tickling longbow auto.

“Absolutely fine”? We’re talking about a class with the highest base health, heavy armor, invuln to direct damage while being able to cap a point, condi immunity, and among the best if not absolutely the best condi removal. No other class can access all of those benefits without building specifically to do so.

I run a GS/LB build that is able to disengage almost whenever I want it to. Still, though, to act like running away from an objective is an advantage is a gross misunderstanding of strategy.

The longbow auto is actually still decent if only one arrow hits (2 projectiles that can be Finishers), but the real point behind the weapon is twofold: first, to remove condis while being able to get massive control of a point, and second, to use the ridiculously OP non-auto attacks to be able to murder your opponent when you switch to melee.

And then there’s also the ability to reduce weapon swapping by 5s, so it doesn’t really matter how bad the auto is.

Had to comment on this…

Slim.3024:

Mesmers? Ether Feast True

Elementalist? Ether Renewal Signet is used fairly often, and Glyph is a good option to avoid the ridiculous vulnerability of ER

Engineers? Healing Turret Not true- some HGH/elixir builds run Elixir H

Ranger? Healing Spring While this tends to be true a lot of the time, all of the heals have their own uses in different builds- none are necessarily bad.

Guardian? Shelter Mostly true, though guards have another 163835284 sources of healing anyways

Necromancer? Consume Conditions Not necessarily true of MMs

Thief? Withdraw if S/D, Hide In Shadows if D/P Withdraw is used even in many stealth builds, though HiS is generally reserved for D/X, true. But you have to consider that our two other heals are absolutely godawful, except in a few highly specialized builds.

Interceptor.2653:

Travlane.5948:

lyssa runes are not worth sacrificing a full set of rune stats just for 5 secs on all boons every few mins.

It’s a good thing that they also give 165 Precision, 10% condi duration, a random boon every time you use a healing skill (works great with Withdraw), and remove every single condition whenever you use your elite. All of the boons except maybe Swiftness and Might are useful. Vigor, Stability, Protection, Aegis, Regen, Fury, Retaliation… all good.

You build power and crit damage via traits and gear when you use Lyssa. It’s not rocket science.

If only 165 precision was any good… It’s worth (at base) 37 power (actually less, I just decided to round down the value of power vs precision for simplicity’s sake), which is a pretty crappy damage buff unless you’re running some kind of burst D/X build with 100% crit damage, in which case stability isn’t going to help you anyways.10% condi duration is nothing, and has horrible coordination with precision.

The 4 buff is good, but not necessarily better than the buffs on other runes, especially since the prec and condi duration mean practically nothing. The 6 buff is extremely unreliable if you’re using an elite on a CD more than 1 min.

Ogre runes build much better with damage stats than Lyssa runes do.

Also, is “X doesn’t happen on an Excel spreadsheet” your only argument against the mathematics of this game? Because that’s pretty sad.

Durzlla.6295:

It DOES have counters 1) BIG Burst, 2) Constant Poison 3) have more constant damage than their heal, oh look, ranger builds….

1) what Oxygg said, and apt. Not to mention that very few classes have access to poison anyways, and even fewer to longer durations of the condi.

2) there are a few problems with this. First, it would mean that every build in the game would need burst to counter warr. Secondly, Endure Pain greatly increases your life span against burst. Third, bursts have to occur in succession and quickly- your heal doesn’t stop healing you when you’re being bursted. Fourth, you only need to live for a few seconds to have a higher HPS than the bursting class has (ie thief’s Withdraw heals for about 100 HPS less than HealSig and about 200 HPS les than HS with Adrenal Health, meaning that you only need to live ~9s to start out healing thief). Fifth, warr has the highest base health and heavy armor to shore up burst anyways. If these don’t convince you, I don’t know what will.

3) yeah, that’s how you beat any build, surprise surprise. But doing 1000 DPS to a class that heals for 300 HPS and 15k health is going to kill faster than doing 1000 DPS to a class with 400/500 HPS and 23k health.

There was a time when engis were a majestic, rare class championed by great players.

Since then, I don’t think I haven’t seen a single engi that didn’t spam every bomb kit and grenade kit skill. Kinda sad, actually.

Incurafy.6329:

Arganthium.5638:

I made my own warrior build, now I’m invincible.

No, seriously though. BS’d something, and I can’t tell you how much better I’m doing on a class I’ve played for an hour versus a class that I’ve played for 1000 hours.

Similar experience here, I theorycrafted a roamer in two hours and does practically everything my Thief does but better and with less effort. The only thing I miss is SB, lol.

Dude. SB is, like, 80% of the reason I can’t get off my thief.

Caedmon.6798:

So your complain is that you want all classes to have the same base hp regen as healig ? Now thats pretty absurd.You shouldn;t even try and make comparisons with other classes,warriors needed the hp boost from healing signet + the added condi immunity for a plausible reason back then.There is nothing op about healsig At All.I dont have a problem dealing with another warr using healsig,Again… applying Poison/Torment…bye usefullness of healsig.You people beg for easy mode,its pathetic.

It would do you good to listen to others’ arguments.

I’m not saying that all classes should have the same healing. However, warrior has the best base defensive stats in the game (highest health, heavy armor), already has a pretty good passive heal as a minor trait (which also heavily increases warr’s adrenaline). It only seems logical that the heal would offset these advantages, but it is in fact the best heal in the game.

It’s also a pretty bad argument to say that your warr can beat another. That had no relevance to how easily other classes can beat warr.

Warrs have the best condi removal in the game (Cleansing Ire is insane, especially with LB’s burst skill), and can get 8s of condi immunity anyways. Furthermore, not all classes can apply poison (Mesmer, guard, ele), and some of the ones that can can only get the condi in small quantities without either having to make a major build change or, for example w/ thief, spamming poison fields all over the place, which is highly inefficient. Plus, it’s not like poisoning HealSig is going to give you more benefit than poisoning a burst heal, which tends to be much more beneficial anyways. And even if you somehow managed to deal permanent poison to HS, it’d still heal you for nearly the same as, say, thief. With Adrenal Health, you’d still heal for more than most classes in the game.

Torment doesn’t affect heals, and it does just as much damage to everybody else as it does to warrs. In fact, warrs are better off than other classes against torment because of Cleansing Ire and the insanely high base health that warrs have anyways, which shores up condi damage.

Funny for a warrior to talk about “easy mode”.

redslion.9675:

Arganthium.5638:

redslion.9675:

Well, with Unsuspecting Foe I can make FT a guaranteed crit.

And, better than that, it might definiteley be important. For example, I might down someone before he heals.

Yes, you can. But having a guaranteed crit with a +20% damage boost from power and 200% critical damage still isn’t as good as having a 50% chance of getting a crit with a +100% damage boost from power and 200% critical damage. The averages still work out in favor of power. Not to mention- if you have over 50% critical chance from precision prior, then you’re actually wasting the benefits of UF, which wouldn’t occur with power.

You might also do enough damage to a person to make his/her heal worth using, or you’ll do too little damage to down an opponent before he/she heals.

Yeah, obviously I’m talking about not so high differences. Like the one that stays between 1800 and 2000 power (I usually try to stay above 2000).

That’s fair. Still though, the truth of the matter is that the mathematics does in fact favor examples like the ones I mentioned above. For example, I just measured the benefit of 1000 power versus 1000 precision with 50% critical damage in my spreadsheet. The absurd truth is that while 1000 precision (52.1% critical chance) will amp up your damage to ~143.7% of what your current damage is, 1000 power will amp up your damage to ~213.7% of what your current damage is. That’s pretty much exactly a 70% difference in damage. That’s massive. And that’s not even rounding down on the precision (a process I don’t do because it simply makes the entire process infinitely more complex than it already is; I can just get rid of points of precision until I get an integer value for % critical chance. Usually not that much of a difference though).

This is how this game actually works; you can have a decent amount of critical damage, and precision will still get completely blown away by power.

redslion.9675:

Well, with Unsuspecting Foe I can make FT a guaranteed crit.

And, better than that, it might definiteley be important. For example, I might down someone before he heals.

Yes, you can. But having a guaranteed crit with a +20% damage boost from power and 200% critical damage still isn’t as good as having a 50% chance of getting a crit with a +100% damage boost from power and 200% critical damage. The averages still work out in favor of power. Not to mention- if you have over 50% critical chance from precision prior, then you’re actually wasting the benefits of UF, which wouldn’t occur with power.

You might also do enough damage to a person to make his/her heal worth using, or you’ll do too little damage to down an opponent before he/she heals.

It’s really not something that’s needed. Though I wouldn’t complain if it replaced Hard to Catch or Last Refuge.

redslion.9675:

Arganthium.5638:

But other arguments can be made as well- perhaps the player has high health, you get one lucky spike, and then he/she heals it back up. Just because it’s harder to predict doesn’t mean that it’s going to favor you. You could also argue that you might get lots of non-crits when your opponent is low on health, or that a good bunker will be able to heal (especially with Shelter) before he/she gets spiked to death. On the other hand, power doesn’t run into any of these problems- it’s going to be just as predictable for your opponent as it is for you. That way, you don’t start going into burst mode hoping for a lucky crit, and a good opponent will still heal his/her way through your damage just like he/she should’ve done against spike damage. Playing by hoping your opponent is incompetent is not a very good way to play.

Having higher crit chance as opposed to power could also mean that you’ll have exactly the amount of damage you don’t need at the wrong time- it’s a two-way street. It could also give you lots of damage but at a bad time (when your opponent blocks you, puts of prot, etc). It also makes it harder for you to predict how many hits it will take to take down an enemy. Your opponent might be suffering from the information game, but so are you, and there’s no reason to believe that you can get just as unlucky with your crits as you can get lucky.

Well, sure, high hp classes will have less problems. I was thinking about bunkers, who have low hp but can sustain potentially for ever. More crits might be decisive for taking down a bunker faster.

Even if you have a crit when you don’t need it, that doesn’t remove the fact you’ll be more likely to have one when you need it.

However, it’s also about the build. I’ll take the example of the warrior, because with engi is the only class I have the patience to play semi conistently, trying to avoid Fotm.

There is no worse thing for a power sword warrior to see his Final Thrust, for which he waited and spent some pretty high effort (wait until the enemy is at 50%, while waiting for the right moment to land a Shield Bash that will not be dodged/blocked), not crit.
Same goes for an axe warrior.

That means that I’ll have to stack enough crit chance to actually have a good chance for that burst to crit. Like unlocking unsuspecting Foe (by going 30 points into Arms, to get Blademaster and Attack of Opportunity too).

Less crits might also be decisive in taking down a bunker slower.

It doesn’t matter if Final Thrust hits for 6k if his previous kittens all hit for 1k, when he could’ve made final thrust hit for 3k and all of his previous hits for 2k. That’s the reality of the situation. Furthermore, taking power over precision means that your Final Thrusts are, on average, going to hit for more. Given the value of power over precision, that’s much more. If you have, for example, 200% Crit Damage and 50% crit chance, then your Final Thrusts will, on average, hit for 150% base damage. With power, that number ends up looking more like 175%, and often much, much more. The more precision you take, the less power you take, and crits also require power to be effective (note that that isn’t true the other way around- if you have 0 power, all of your crits will hit for 0, but if you have 0 precision, you’ll still hit, still for good or even great damage depending on what you get for that 916 precision and 150% crit damage). You could have 100% critical chance, but if you only have 916 (base level) power, you’re still going to be hitting like an absolute chump with Final Thrust. The unpredictability ultimately favors your opponent more than you in terms of damage, particularly given that you could do a FT at what you think was the right time when it turns out to be the completely wrong time because you don’t crit.

Stealthasaur.2198:

Arganthium.5638:

Stealthasaur.2198:

Lol, the LB was reset so you cant compare position to win loss ratio.

Which is why the Leaderboards make no sense.

No the LB makes sense, your reasoning doesnt. You can still judge someone based on amount of games played and their win/loss but you cant compare that information with their placement on the LB itself, which is what you were doing. Again, your all knowing knowledge fails you.

What authority does the leaderboard have that grants its judgements more value than win:loss ratio or the number of games a player has played?

jmatb.6307:

Arganthium.5638:

jmatb.6307:

snip

snip

What I got out of this is that you’re only looking at the relationship between precision and power, not the relationship of all three together

When your crit damage multiplier is at least 50%, the damage output of every combination of power and precision is increased considerably vs. having 0% crit multiplier.

This chart is explained more on Arcturus’ post on the first page on this thread: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/37607-attack-vs-precision/

It shows that crit damage increases average damage at the highest levels when there is a combination of power and precision and at 50-60% crit damage.

Your argument that power alone gets the job done is shown on the graph on the right side. The "extra power" measurement is a combination of prec/power and on that side is where there is no precision and maximum power. It is lower than the combination of the two in average damage because it has hit the peak of its output, whereas the crit multiplier has taken the damage past that point with optimal combinations.

Admittedly, it took me a bit to search through his text, but I found the error in his calculation. Actually, it was more like two different errors, though ultimately one surpassed the other in terms of importance.

We can now express everything in terms of "extra points in power", and make it a 2D function

I shall also use the the same definition of minimum Attack (base power + weapon) as 1500

Substituting these into the original formula gives (using 1.5 crit multiplier)

AveDmg = (1500+x)*(1-0.04-(1403-x)/2100)+(1500+x)*1.5*(0.04+(1403-x)/2100)

Recall that he had earlier stated that

AveDmg = Attack * (1-Critchance) + (Attack* critmulti * Crit chance)

where:
Attack = Base power + x x is the extra points in power

Arcturus made the unfortunate mistake of mixing up the definition of Attack. Attack...

...is derived from adding the character’s power attribute and the max weapon strength of the equipped weapon (or average of max weapon strength if two one-handed weapons are equipped).

However, as that link also states, as well as the Damage link, it turns out that Attack has nothing to do with how much damage you deal. Attack is just the sum of power and max weapon strength, but the damage formula actually uses the product of power and average weapon strength. His initial equation is, therefore, inherently flawed.

After making adjustments to it (I changed 1500+x to 916+x, which is the base amount of power), I got the attached equations (crit damage values go from outer to inner, 1.5 is the outermost and 2.2 the innermost parabola to intersect with the x axis). Interestingly enough, the optimal level of power before investing into precision with 50% critical damage is in fact slightly higher than the value I showed beforehand- approximately 1335 power is required for 1 point of power to equal 1 point of precision. It’s probably due to a few little odds and ends, but nevertheless, there’s no denying that I was at least very close to the actual measurement if the equation listed above with its adjustments is perfect, which it probably isn’t.

Anyways, to tie up some loose ends here- there’s obviously no doubt that having more critical damage is going to increase your damage, no matter how much power you have. It’s just that that critical damage must often come at a cost, and the fact that it comes in such small quantities makes it difficult to justify over getting, say, 100 Toughness, at least in some situations. Still, it’s undoubtedly a good stat to try and get when possible. It’s just that the value of power over precision is markedly higher no matter how much critical damage you can realistically have in sPvP. That’s clearly displayed by the maxima of the parabolas, the point where power starts becoming less beneficial than precision.

Caedmon.6798:

Dee Jay.2460:

Arganthium.5638:

I made my own warrior build, now I’m invincible.

No, seriously though. BS’d something, and I can’t tell you how much better I’m doing on a class I’ve played for an hour versus a class that I’ve played for 1000 hours.

This is true. Close to 1600 hours on a Thief, 100 hours on a Mesmer, 2 hours on a Warrior.

Playing with the Warrior gets me the most wins in tPvP and is the most valuable class to most teams.

I agree that the whole CC-spaming is over the top, but the only serious balance-offender is Healing Signet which for some reason avoided a nerf on December 10th, for no good reason.

Honestly..if youre not able to outdmg 400 hp/sec there is something terribly wrong with your build.Poison/torment can deal with healsig alone.

That’s not the point. We’re not arguing that warriors are unable to be killed (though doing so is extremely difficult, what with their heavy armor, 18k base health, and highest healing skill in the game). What we are arguing is that Healing Sig, along with all of the other natural defensive abilities warrs have, is the most OP healing skill in the game. Name one heal that can consistently outheal Healing Sig. In truth, there isn’t one. Even Mesmer’s new Signet of the Ether heals for 70 points less per second than HealSig with 3 clones out. That’s insane. Other heals, like thief’s Withdraw, are literally over 100 HPS lower than Healing Signet is. If I remember correctly, the next highest healing skill is Ether Feast with 3 clones out, and that still heals for ~20 HPS less than Healing Signet does. Mesmers don’t get the luxury of having 3 clones up all the time anyways, and spawning new ones takes time, even if that means just evading. Heck, in those calculations, I haven’t even considered cast times, which reduces HPS for all of those other heals by even more. It’s absolutely absurd that Warrior, somehow, is able to heal for so much more than every other class in the game when it already has the highest base health and heavy armor.

We can do more than 400 DPS (though it usually needs to be more like 500 DPS with Adrenal Health). Still, though, your heal significantly dampens our damage, especially when you compare with other class’s heals, and that’s why HealSig is completely OP.

Interceptor.2653:

Arganthium.5638:

That’s like saying […]

No, it’s nothing at all like that bad analogy you just made.

It’s honestly not even usable.

Nonsense. Lyssa by itself is viable on Thief, and is usable with any elite, not just DS. This exists as an option if you’d like to have 13s+ of Stability in a fight: slot DS and burn it early. Otherwise, don’t. Very simple. Almost everyone understands how decision trees work, and if you don’t, I suggest Googling it.

You just said that it’s “not ideal from an efficiency standpoint”, and now you’re telling me that it’s actually usable. You’re basically building entirely around just being able to get stability, which is no way to play, to say the least. Perhaps you WvW’ers don’t realize this, but runes are used for much more than giving you a bit more stability just for the heck of it. The decision is almost entirely lopsided; either I can possibly sacrifice the value of my runes and my elite for a relatively small amount of stability given that it only applies to one person, or I can just slot Shadowstep and one or two other stunbreakers/stomp ensurers that work with my build anyways and hope that that’s sufficient. Just because something exists as an option does not in any way make it viable, as you seem to be arguing. Not to mention- Lyssa’s only any good with Basi Venom anyways.

Stealthasaur.2198:

Lol, the LB was reset so you cant compare position to win loss ratio.

Which is why the Leaderboards make no sense.

Interceptor.2653:

Arganthium.5638:

Sounds highly efficient […]

I didn’t make a judgment call, I just listed a way to do it. It’s obviously not ideal from an efficiency standpoint, but there are literally (an aside, this is the proper use of that word: take notes) no other options if you want consistent access to Stability on Thief, thus the price you pay.

That’s like saying “well, if you want a house anywhere in the world, the cheapest you’re going to get it for is $10 million”. Might as well not even bother.

It’s honestly not even usable. It’s not that you might be able to use it to get stability- it’s just too demanding. There comes a point when something becomes so inefficient that it might as well not exist, and this is one of those situations.

Stealthasaur.2198:

Solo Q – 50% Arganthium.5638 Knight Wisdom 70 72 49.30% Eredon Terrace

Team Q – Nothing

I can understand how you come up with these theories by playing WvW or hotjoins or whatever it is you do.

You’re telling me to read a book that relates to chess to help me better understand GW2? That would make perfect sense if our characters didn’t have any skills, tree lines or thousands of possible builds. IF we could only move in certain directions and GW2 pvp was only about positioning, Id take you seriously.

You’re trying way to hard and you still have no idea what you’re talking about.

Nice to see that you’re a big fan of #yoloQ

I used to play it a lot, back when S/D thief was good, along with Team Arena with the GW2 Esports guild. Well, I quit the game for a couple of months (I was in the top 1k at the time), came back and I was around 7%. Wasn’t planning on working my way up to the top again.

You do realize that #yoloQ is a joke, right? Its MMR calculations are absurd; I know people that are 20-30% higher on the leaderboards than me and yet have a smaller win to loss ratio than I do. Hell, looking at my personal friends list, I have one friend who’s got a 65.71% ratio with and is still at 35% on the leader boards, whereas Ostrich Eggs has a lower win ratio and is still number 73. In fact, even Ostrich Eggs, with ~2.1k games and a 64.48% win ratio, is lower than Kirito, who’s played about 580 games and has a 60.48% win ratio. If that’s not enough to convince you how stupid the Leaderboards are, I don’t know what will convince you. That’s why I quit, though I’d be happy to duel slaughter you anytime. Almost toppled an entire guild once from a single duel, that was fun.

Positional evaluation is very much related to skills- area denial, AoE, immobs, cripple, player movement- all of those are relevant details. GW2 has much more to do with positioning than you think, but most of the parts that aren’t explained by positioning are explained by tactics, which often go more into the force of different attacks. Mathematical theorycrafting helps create a web that combines those two together.

So why should I believe that you know what you’re talking about? You still have much to prove.

Interceptor.2653:

Saikano.7853:

i want stability for thieves!

Use a full set of Lyssa runes, activate Dagger Storm and then evade-cancel the channel animation, so that you can fight normally. That’ll give you 13+ seconds of Stability every 90 seconds, more if you spec Acrobatics or use boon duration food.

That’s the price of stability on Thief.

Sounds highly efficient, even better than Guard’s AoE 10s Hallowed Ground which is a regular utility on a CD that’s 10s shorter and gives a Fire Field, does damage, and increases boon duration. /sarcasm

I don’t think thief really needs stability, but it does put us at a disadvantage in a decent number of situations.

16. I don’t care if you’ve got facts/vids/tournament plays/builds/etc behind you, you’re wrong because I got beat by X class with Y build that one time when I engaged in combat with only 2k health left and that makes X class OP.

Acandis.3250:

Please reply with the following information:

• Would you be willing to participate (y/n)?
  • If yes, how much would you be willing to pay to enter (5/10)?
  • If no, please elaborate.
• Do you have a team (y/n)?
  • If yes, would the rest of your team be willing to pay the same entrance fee (y/n)?
  • If no, would such an event create incentive for you to find a team to compete with (y/n)?
• What region do you play on (NA/EU)?

Thank you for reading and I look forward to hearing from all of you,
Ac

• I’d be willing to participate, but it depends on exactly when the tournament is. Usually busy around that time of year.
• I’d be willing to pay $5, $10 if it’s really high quality and there’s a good prize pool
• I do not have a team
• I’d be willing to find a team if the tournament had a good prize pool (right now, unfortunately, it’s difficult to find many good players since so many have left). Also depends on the date.
• I’m NA

Stealthasaur.2198:

Arganthium.5638:

Stealthasaur.2198:

Arganthium.5638:

The way I rank thief builds in terms of viability (in sPvP) is as following:

1. D/P
2. S/D
3. S/P
4. D/D
5. P/D
6. P/P

(SB is more of a utility weapon than a build, although if it was a build, I’d replace 5 with it and move the current 5 and 6 up to 6 and 7).

You have no idea what youre talking about because you can’t rank thief “builds” based on weapon sets.

For example; D/P Shadow Arts is top three easiest builds to play in this game, but D/P Trickery is one of the highest skilled to play.

However D/D is not viable, it doesnt matter what your build is in PvP. The only D/D build that can do something that none of the other builds can is 25/30/0/0/15 signet one shot build and its not even viable.

I base it off of the best build(s) for each weaponset, evaluated based on team support, damage, sustain, and general strategy. Cry somewhere else.

That explains a lot and is the reason your list makes no sense. You cant evaluate a build generally in this game. Your number one ranked build could easily be hard countered by every single player on the opposite team and it becomes the worst possible build.
No one should listen to this guy because he has tunnel vision.

You’re a funny creature.

It’s like evaluating a slice of cheese pizza versus an entire pepperoni pizza- they’re not the same thing, but you can still measure how much each one is worth compared to the other. My GW2 theory (especially in the area of thief) is based on three pillars of thought:

1. Mathematical evaluation
2. Positional evaluation
3. Tactical evaluation

The math is fairly easy to come up with yourself once you know a couple of formulas. For positional evaluation, if you know anything about chess, I’d refer you to Dan Heisman’s Elements of Positional Evaluation. Chess is, in a sense, a relatively tiny system which can model the static and dynamic features as well as many of the good and bad effects of many different possible decisions, and given how closely related GW2 is to the strategic thought of chess (though overall less complicated), I feel that reading that book would benefit you greatly. As for tactical evaluation- again, any chess tactics book will explain to you how those work. It’s just about recognizing increasingly more complex patterns, which are featured in GW2 as well. Anyhow, if you still don’t understand how strategies work comparative to one another, that’s not my problem. There’s a large amount of empirical evidence as well as theoretical evidence backing me up, as well as a large section of the thief community that agrees with me.

And in the meantime, don’t start with calling me narrow-minded. I have a good 1.5k more posts than you do, and certainly more experience as well (given that, apparently, your first post on these forums was in October, and that a good few of those posts were attacks on me anyways).

Stealthasaur.2198:

Arganthium.5638:

The way I rank thief builds in terms of viability (in sPvP) is as following:

1. D/P
2. S/D
3. S/P
4. D/D
5. P/D
6. P/P

(SB is more of a utility weapon than a build, although if it was a build, I’d replace 5 with it and move the current 5 and 6 up to 6 and 7).

You have no idea what youre talking about because you can’t rank thief “builds” based on weapon sets.

For example; D/P Shadow Arts is top three easiest builds to play in this game, but D/P Trickery is one of the highest skilled to play.

However D/D is not viable, it doesnt matter what your build is in PvP. The only D/D build that can do something that none of the other builds can is 25/30/0/0/15 signet one shot build and its not even viable.

I base it off of the best build(s) for each weaponset, evaluated based on team support, damage, sustain, and general strategy. Cry somewhere else.

redslion.9675:

Arganthium.5638:

There are only two differences between power and precision: first, that power is more consistent (though I use the averages from precision in my damage formula, so it doesn’t really matter), and second, the way power scales with damage as compared to precision. Precision is only 1/21 of a single percentage of critical chance; power scales directly with damage. Protection isn’t overridden by critical hits, though even if it was, the small amount of prot you can get in this game would still make power a very powerful trait (especially since I have some boonsteal, anyways). Your logic seems to be “if I see a large number in red on an opponent with protection, then power must suck because you don’t see a large number in red on an opponent with protection”. In all honesty, I use averages, because that’s the only way to objectively compare between stats, and because matters of chance are always going to trend towards an average anyways.

About this issue, you should also remember than spike damage is better than sustained damage. A big spike can down an opponent that is going to heal, is important when focusing targets and might be the ture thing that takes down a bunker.

The fact that someone can heal a lot over a long period of time is irrelevant if he/she can’t last that long.

Increasing crit chance might end up in less sustained damage, but has a higher chance of bringing exactly the damage you needed at the right time with a crit.

From what I’ve seen, glass cannons that really are glass (not hambows, and some might argue not even s/d because of their evades) play on burst, not spike.

But other arguments can be made as well- perhaps the player has high health, you get one lucky spike, and then he/she heals it back up. Just because it’s harder to predict doesn’t mean that it’s going to favor you. You could also argue that you might get lots of non-crits when your opponent is low on health, or that a good bunker will be able to heal (especially with Shelter) before he/she gets spiked to death. On the other hand, power doesn’t run into any of these problems- it’s going to be just as predictable for your opponent as it is for you. That way, you don’t start going into burst mode hoping for a lucky crit, and a good opponent will still heal his/her way through your damage just like he/she should’ve done against spike damage. Playing by hoping your opponent is incompetent is not a very good way to play.

Having higher crit chance as opposed to power could also mean that you’ll have exactly the amount of damage you don’t need at the wrong time- it’s a two-way street. It could also give you lots of damage but at a bad time (when your opponent blocks you, puts of prot, etc). It also makes it harder for you to predict how many hits it will take to take down an enemy. Your opponent might be suffering from the information game, but so are you, and there’s no reason to believe that you can get just as unlucky with your crits as you can get lucky.

S/D, generally speaking, isn’t a GC. It might be a spike build for some. For me, it’s certainly a sustained damage build, but that shouldn’t be interpreted as being a tank build. It just means that I’m trying to maximize my long-run damage.

I made my own warrior build, now I’m invincible.

No, seriously though. BS’d something, and I can’t tell you how much better I’m doing on a class I’ve played for an hour versus a class that I’ve played for 1000 hours.

The way I rank thief builds in terms of viability (in sPvP) is as following:

1. D/P
2. S/D
3. S/P
4. D/D
5. P/D
6. P/P

(SB is more of a utility weapon than a build, although if it was a build, I’d replace 5 with it and move the current 5 and 6 up to 6 and 7).

The damage stat loss from 30 into Trix is offset by five facts: first, that you’re getting more initiative, and thus will be able to attack more often and be more flexible (and, by the way, you’re also getting more damage because of Lead Attacks). Second, you’re getting more sustain from Assassin’s Reward by being able to burn up more initiative. Third, the ability to swap to a Shortbow while still maintaining the same amount if not more initiative than Jumper’s build (and certainly more than Nag Nag’s) allows the build more versatility than the two most prominent thief builds have. Fourth, By investing so much into Trickery, you’re getting higher recharge on Steal, which is useful not only because you get so much utility from steal itself (four boons- three automatically, four if you hit- healing, damage, poison, double boon steal, and of course whatever item you stole), but also because Steal gives you more mobility, which, in a mobility-based build, could mean everything. Finally, all of the traits that you get in Trix are good. In CS, you get one good minor (First Strikes), one good major (Executioner), and a bunch of mediocre or bad majors and minors for the rest of your traits (especially considering that nowadays Opportunist is so awful). That’s what differentiates 30 into Trix from 30 into DS for a Necro- I do get more damage and sustain, but I also get a lot, lot more for what I invest as well. I’m not saying that my build must, by necessity, be better, but that’s the theory behind 30 into Trix- not to mention the absolutely abhorrent bonus damage you get from 300 precision and 30% crit damage…

The damage also “flies off the charts” with just a zerker amulet (which is what I run nowadays, particularly since Sword is not nearly as good with boonsteal any more and because other classes have far surpassed thief in a number of areas). Having a high critical chance means nothing without high critical damage, and even so, it requires a lot of power (earlier I said ~1280) just to make 1 point of precision equal 1 point of power with 50% critical damage.

There are only two differences between power and precision: first, that power is more consistent (though I use the averages from precision in my damage formula, so it doesn’t really matter), and second, the way power scales with damage as compared to precision. Precision is only 1/21 of a single percentage of critical chance; power scales directly with damage. Protection isn’t overridden by critical hits, though even if it was, the small amount of prot you can get in this game would still make power a very powerful trait (especially since I have some boonsteal, anyways). Your logic seems to be “if I see a large number in red on an opponent with protection, then power must suck because you don’t see a large number in red on an opponent with protection”. In all honesty, I use averages, because that’s the only way to objectively compare between stats, and because matters of chance are always going to trend towards an average anyways.

With Soldier’s amulet, the build was designed to sustain and provide team support via boons and boonsteal, and even then it did a fair amount of damage. If you still think I’m running that amulet- I’m not. I haven’t been for somewhere around… 5? 6? months. I can take out tanks and bunkers easily.

My build is the only build that takes into account how damage works- just look at the math.

jmatb.6307:

snip

Funny you say that I “don’t know the right math”, nobody’s ever bothered to try to refute it before from a mathematical standpoint. I’d like to see you try though.

It’s just a simple fact- precision is a godawful stat in comparison to power. The increase isn’t linear, either (I suppose that it at least appears logarithmic or radical), but either way, that’s besides the point. Just looking at the power formula, as well as the formula for critical chance, you see that the marginal benefit from a single point of power is much larger than that of precision. In WvW, things would be different due to the sheer volume of stats you can get, but we’re talking about sPvP here.

Being a philosophy major is different from being a math major. However, since I presume you have at least some degree of knowledge in the field- if the damage formula is (1-Critical Chance)(Power)(Skill Coefficient)(Weapon Coefficient)/(ArmorToughness), which can be simplified to [(P)(Sc)(Wc)](1+(Crit Dam-1)Crit Chance)/(Armor+Toughness) {note that I’m doing this all in my head- it’s different in my spreadsheets- though I do think that my simplified answer is correct so far}, then what is the formula for the marginal benefit of power?

Well, first, we’re going to assume that we’re talking about damage amplification solely from stats, so we can ignore Skill Coefficient by assuming it’s constant to itself in our marginal formula (which is coming in a second). We can also assume Weapon Coefficient is constant for the same reason, but we can also assume that it’s constant based on 1) it’s nonmoving average for a single weapon type and 2) that it is assumed that the Weapon Coefficient is independent of power and, for that matter, every other variable apart from a weapon and it’s range of possible weapon coefficients. Furthermore, we’ll assume that we’re using the ceteris paribus assumption, and that there’s not going to be any direct relationship between how much power you have and, for example, how much precision you have, since we’re evaluating the benefit from a 1 increase in one variable. Since power increases by values of 1, we can say that the marginal formula is [(Power1)(Other Variables)/(Defense)]/[(Power)(Other Variables)/(Defense)] = (Power+1)/Power, which is the formula that I use for my spreadsheet. It’s actually slightly more complicated than that when you consider things such as specific damage amplifiers (i.e. 5% from Force Runes, 15% from Assassin’s Signet, etc), but since those same types of amplifiers are applied to the value of critical damage and precision as well, it doesn’t really matter anyways.

EDIT: apparently the forums don’t like math too much, so some random parts are underlined, which I can’t fix without something else bugging out on me… Either way, I’m sure you’ll be able to understand it.

jmatb.6307:

Because being a “famous” S/D player makes you an authority?

lol your build didn’t even put crit damage on a direct damage build through traits. No precision. I looked at that build you posted and it is so incredibly bad.

You act like you’re supposed to be important when all you’ve ever been in the GW2 PvP scene is a guy who piggybacked off of Jumper’s build, tried to convince people that your build was better, and are apparently depressed that Anet finally realized they screwed up with making S/D what it became.

Let it go.

Somebody’s full of hate. I just watched The Purge, sounds like it would be a good way for you to let out all that anger.

I’d post the usual statistics- that 1 point of power is worth ~4.688 points of precision, and that even with 50% crit damage it still takes ~1280 power for one point of precision to equal one point of power… But that won’t convince you, it never convinces anybody. Maybe because their ignorance is bliss, and you’re just another sad little sheep standing with the crowd.

I have no doubt that many, if not most, of my cries against Jumper were immature… But to cast away my build so easily, so dismissively, does not make you any more respectable. Have you actually tried out the build, by the way? Not that I really need you to answer that question, because most of the scrubs that have criticized it haven’t. At least, not the ones that used what you used as their argument.

I could also ask you to give me objective evidence behind the build being as bad as you say it is, but that’d be in vain as well. “No 30 in CS?!?! lol noob” is the same dogma you and your circle of pals spew, which makes it even more difficult for me to find any reason to respect you.

I really couldn’t care less if people like you don’t respect me, I don’t respect you either. I’m not famous, but at least I contribute to the community and I give the most objective answers that I can. I’m certainly not the only “famous” one who’s complained about the sword nerfs, but apparently my saying it makes the idea instantaneously ridiculous. I’ve got over 1.5k posts on these forums (unfortunately), but if people like you can’t possibly bear to hear what I say, and then call me a noob, inexperienced, bad- whatever, then go ahead and whine about it. I’m sick of having to deal with others’ personal problems just so that I can maintain any sort of reputation in the face of garbage-slingers like you, and I certainly won’t miss the vast majority of this community when I’m gone.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Arganthium.5638:

Which is why Cruuk was able to use SA effectively. Though I’m not necessarily sure I’d say that his build provided little team support.

Actually it’s been pretty much covered. There is a reason why we don’t see PU messes being played in upper-level tpvp now, and (before perma stealth nerf) there was a reason why we didn’t see d/p thieves predominantly use cruuk’s build.

To each their own, sure, (most people don’t know how to deal with a good far point assaulter) but this has been pretty much covered.

As I said, Cruuk was extremely skilled at what he did, and if you watched his videos- whether or not his playstyle could be countered effectively, he obviously did what he did very well. There’s a large difference between theoretical value and practical value, and he displayed that difference very well.

Swagg.9236:

Arganthium.5638:

Also, by being forced to hit an opponent to get IR, thief will become the most condition-vulnerable class in the game.

I’m pretty sure that Mesmer would still hold that title.

Null Field is more condi removal than virtually every thief running D/X without SA has, and Sword 2 is, as I said, thief’s only consistent way of removing condis (other methods have a fairly long CD or are not useful for a wide variety of situations).

I didn’t nerf condi-removal. I changed the teleport.

That is, in effect, nerfing the condi removal. The more difficult it is to use IR, the more difficult it is to remove condis.

I see nothing but sword Thieves. It isn’t a rare weapon at all to see on a Thief.

So why don’t you prove it to us, then? Because I see very few sword thieves, and the ones that I do see tend to be the same ones I’ve seen before anyways.

Not at all. It’s to prevent Thieves from spamming the dash to freely move everywhere at incredible speed. This could simply be prevented by a cool-down, but Thief “design” goes against that.

Again, evidence. IS/IR doesn’t allow a thief to go “everywhere at once” while still being even remotely efficient- it costs too much initiative to just spam over and over again.

I’ve made plenty of points already back in my other thread about why certain mechanics currently in place in GW2 are game-breaking. I don’t need to repeat myself because nobody’s ever tried to counter my points. Also, I don’t have any recording programs, otherwise I honestly would. Last time I ran sword/pistol thief, I was kicked from a server. That was a good time.

Yeah, nobody’s ever tried to counter your points about D/P’s Shadow Shot damage being unblock able, or how it’s basically a free Meteor Shower… It’s not a matter of not countering your points, it’s a matter of how you compare skills to one another, in which regard you seem to be severely lacking any half-decent method of comparison.

And I’m glad you ran S/P in hot join, you must be a pro.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Arganthium.5638:

That’s not entirely true. Cruuk, if I remember correctly, used to run 30 in SA.

Cruuk’s build was to push far and keep at least 2 people on far point (their home) while he stealths up and backstabs people. This should create an advantage for your team at mid. It’s similar to what a PU mesmer would do. The biggest problem with the build, as with PU, is that it provides little team support.

Caed’s build can’t necessarily keep 2 people at far, but it is far more team-friendly.

Which is why Cruuk was able to use SA effectively. Though I’m not necessarily sure I’d say that his build provided little team support.

And, of course, Caed obviously played a very different playstyle, so it’s difficult to make completely accurate measurements between them.

The problem with asking for the most common builds is that the vast, vast majority of thieves run extremely different builds, and pinning any one down as one of the three most common would be extremely difficult. There is, however, a different method that you could use which would be much more efficient IMO. Simply break down thief builds into three different types. Personally, I’d break them down as following:

1. D/P and D/D builds (which are, incidentally, the two most common thief weaponsets, but they have absolutely massive build diversity) (very similar weaponsets)

2. S/D builds (very, very different from all other thief builds)

3. S/P and P/D builds (should be the shortest section actually, they’re fairly similar to builds of other classes but IMO inferior)

I’d be delighted to help you with your guide if you wanted. I personally specialize in S/D but am very proficient with D/X builds as well.

EDIT: I’m saying that you should break down builds into these three types because within each type, all of the builds are extremely similar or are very easy to relate to one another. The exception is S/P and P/D, but those can be compared to warrior builds and necro builds, respectively, quite easily.

Everybody says PU mesmer is inviable… :/ I think it’s pretty good. Perhaps not for holding points (although I’ve been fairly efficient in doing that), but it can certainly hold points neutral for ages. Honestly, I think it’s a perfectly viable build.

That being said, it’s fairly counterable (especially with warr’s condi cleanse), and the clones really don’t deal that much damage… If you play correctly, you can make a little “safe zone” for yourself which’ll be difficult for the mesmer to enter without being CC’d or hit heavily, and it’ll be a lot more difficult for the PU mes to keep the point or keep it neutral.

EDIT: still a fun build though, though probably more practically useful than theoretically.

vincecontix.1264:

ethanc.2947:

Right now, this is what I am playing and I have a lot of success. Last game I had 16 kills.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAV4alUmaPHcS5E95Ey2jdqC5JuHJlT1UaFoJA-TsAg0CnI4SxljLDXSuscNsYRxGCA

Some people will probably tell me that it’s a bad build or that it is selfish. :c

Build isn’t that bad but for mid to high level tpvp you really cant afford to spend any trait points in SA line. To have any chance at getting a decent bunker off a point you kinda have to go full dps and even then the odds are not in your favor. For hot join and low level tpvp this build is fine though the skill lvl of tpvp lately has been terribad.

That’s not entirely true. Cruuk, if I remember correctly, used to run 30 in SA. But he echelons above the next best player of his particular play style as far as thieves go. Caed belonged to a different playstyle, and while he was very good at it, there were also many people pretty close to his level below him. Cruuk was… Infinitely superior to every other player that I can think of in playing the way he played.

Volrath.1473:

Travlane.5948:

the power of THIEVES*….

My first thought as well xD

That was my first thought too, but then I saw the video and I bursted out crying on the inside…

Swagg.9236:

Infiltrator’s Strike

• Initiative Cost: 4
• Cast-time: 1 second (channel)
• Dash at your foe to deliver an immobilizing strike.
• Damage: 252 (0.75)
• Immobilize: 1 second
• Super speed: 1 second
• Range: 600
  • Uses the Warrior [Sprint] attack animation with a shorter total sprint distance.
  • Using this skill places a unique debuff on the Thief called Infiltrator’s Pursuit. After 3 seconds, Infiltrator’s Pursuit drains 2 initiative from the Thief. Infiltrator’s Pursuit is removed by dealing damage. Infiltrator’s Pursuit cannot be removed by condition cleanse skills. Infiltrator’s Pursuit stacks in intensity.
  • If you strike a foe with this skill, it chains into another skill upon use: [Infiltrator’s Return]

Infiltrator’s Return

• Initiative Cost: 1
• Cast-time: 0
• Evade backwards and lose 1 condition.
• Evasion: ¾ second
• Evasion distance: 600
  • This chain skill remains active for 20 seconds.

All of these changes look either to beat a horse that was already beaten to death ages ago, or are completely random. First of all, your changes would significantly hamper thief’s mobility with S/X; in fact, the only real reason to run S/D nowadays is because of its mobility, and that’s already difficult enough to convert into an advantage.

Also, by being forced to hit an opponent to get IR, thief will become the most condition-vulnerable class in the game. Already we only have two consistent ways to cleanse condos, SA IV for D/X and P/D builds and IR for S/X builds. Very few people take SA IV because it gets in the way of being able to take other traits that are much more valuable to D/X builds (P/D builds take the trait often, but they are already loaded with so many other problems that it really doesn’t matter). Furthermore, the more points that are put into non-DA and CS trees, the more gimmicky that stealth builds become, and the easier they are to counter. So, it’s obviously fairly undesirable to go too deep- if at all- into the SA tree. Sword is different because it actually has a single condi condi cleanser on one of its weapon skills. Even so, it requires a lot of work not to get absolutely annihilated by condis- the probability that we die increases dramatically once we have 3 or more condis on us. Nerfing the condi removal by making IR much harder to be able to be used is going to absolutely destroy what few Sword thieves are left out there. It’s already bad enough that we only have 3 usable skills, and one of those completely interferes with the fluidity that is expected out of a mobility build anyways (IR’s insanely long and queued cast time).

The “Infiltrator’s Pursuit” nerf is absolutely horrible and unjustified. I presume that it comes from some kind of deep hatred within you of sword thieves and spamming 2 (which no half-decent sword thief does, unless he or she is desperately removing condis). IS already deals negligible damage without a combo finisher, and, as usual, you fail to consider the skill in the context of the weaponset. You continue to compare the skill with Savage Leap, but you fail to realize that SL is a crippling attack in a condi weapon set that’s supposed to help set up for the next two skills much more easily. IS doesn’t give any kind of amazing benefit for being closer to your opponent- its other two skills are fairly lackluster compared to other weaponsets in the game. The skill only really helps (occasionally) with fluidity, which is already relatively close to complete with the other two skills anyways.

I don’t understand you, man… Why don’t you go play a S/D thief, make a video, then post it so that you can actually try to justify what you’re saying.

Shadow Trap is okay.

Literally every other trap that the thief has is absolute garbage.