Guild Wars 2

I am going to love this update on the commander tags. Thanks to the Anet devs who put extra time into this. The community really appreciates it.

Oh, and they have a pink commander tag. I’m happy.

Presenting Anakysha, proud and loyal defender of the Mist Wars.

Mask: Rawhide Mask
Shouders: Whisper’s Secret Shoulderguards
Coat: Inquest Guise
Gloves: Sneakthief Gloves
Leggings: Seeker Pants
Boots: Leather Shoes
Backpiece: Chaos of Lyssa

Sword: Bolt
Dagger: Glimmerfang

Dye 1: Abyss
Dye 2: Celestial

In WvW with my mesmer…I was waiting at the top of a steep cliff in the borderland jumping puzzle. someone from the enemy team was carefully making their way up. We never engaged – had an unspoken agreement of peaceful ceasefire.

But when they finally reached the top, near the end, and so close to the chest for the key, I took my focus and threw them back into the water, all the way to the start of the jumping puzzle. Then I ran like a coward in fear of their retaliation. That was probably the meanest and most trolly thing I ever did. I’m usually a nice person.

Ever since the ferocity nerf, going full zerk in WvW is risky, since you can’t down opponents as effectively as before. And if they’re a new thief, they won’t be able to survive for long before going splat.

A mix of zerk with valk/soldier probably would be best. But glancing over their gear statwise, I think it’s fine.

Well, I’m at least happy they’re making it account bound. Most who had the gold to drop into a tag would probably say it’s not difficult to make money, but money making skills wouldn’t denote leadership skills.

D/D is best used when faced with outnumbered fights. Your main source of stealth comes off from CnD, and it’s trickier to land if there’s only 1-2 targets. In larger group fights, the chaos and confusion helps get closer to targets more safely.

Scholar runes are not that great for a thief, in my humble opinion. How often will your health stick by the 90% range?

This is my own personal preference, but it’s what I used when I had D/D focused build: Withdraw, shadow refuge, shadowstep, and blinding powder. 06620 traits hidden killer, critical haste, side strike, shadow’s embrace, cloaked in shadow, and shadow’s rejuv.

Then again, my style was very agressive, so what works for me, may not work for others. If you really want to use d/d, start off with roaming in small groups. This will give you more chance to run into other groups where D/D’s potential can be used.

I want to spoil myself with something very nice, so I’m considering on getting a fancy left-hand gamer mouse. But I wonder if it’s even worth it. I use my right hand for the mouse, but it’s only for camera control, where my left hand can fly across the keyboard. I got no problem in relearning, but I do have a problem in forking over the money if I was better off with my original method.

Any other lefties can give their input?

I will be fine with this nerf, if they can lower the reveal debuff in PvP from 4 seconds to 3.

I can’t speak for PvE, but black powder was a tiny bit OP in PvP.

Maybe PvE as well. Halmi Hammerfall farming…sweet, sweet, loot.

What: Basilisk venom
Why: almost every thief in PvP will choose this as their utility. Since it’s the mainstream choice, it must be OP. Nevermind the fact that Thieves’ Guild and Dancing Dagger are both too long of a cooldown to be reliable in short fights – that’s no excuse to favor an OP skill. Basilisk Venom should have a 30% chance of backfiring and stunning the thief while being applied. Logically, how is a thief supposed to get the venom on their weapon in the middle of dodging, running, being OP while stealthing, etc. and not get some on their own skin?

And while we’re at it, It should also add torment and confusion damage to the thief. It makes sense.

BobbyT.7192:

S/D Flanking strike: initiative cost increase from 3 to 4, and now requires to hit before it can combo into Larcenous Strike,

Dangit. No more shadowstep boon stripping?

Prince.7198:

The BlackPowder Nerf is the worst since it will make blindfield safe stomping a lot more unreliable and useless against anyone with a braincell. So they want us to go into stealth more for safe stomping (i thought previous patches were all about bringing thief out of stealth into the fight) and they dont want us to safestomp guardians without blowing shadowstep CD. Yes because guardian was clearly underpowered.

Black Powder was a little OP, really. You can avoid a lot of damage if you used properly. I’m more concerned about the dagger nerf. It probably won’t make too big of an issue (I hope).

There is one good reason why a marriage system should never be implemented: Drama.

Yes, yes yes yes and yes, make it all the same. I think I can live with reveal being stuck at 4 seconds all around (but would really prefer 3 seconds). My timing is terribly off in PvP whenever I return to it.

As everyone already said, support mechanics work differently in GW2. Everyone supports each other while dishing out the DPS. One role isn’t specified to one class.

I have my guardian as a full-on tank/support, but I will never take that setup into dungeons. I bring her to EOTM or Orr for lazy farming, or WvW zergfest, and that’s it. She’s unkillable and can protect glass cannons, but she’s heavily reliant on a good DPS party. It’s fun, but just not viable in anything not lazy.

All this hate on SA is getting silly. Players are going to use whatever cheesy advantage they can to get an enemy down. It’s not a faceroll win, and not OP enough to get nerfed. Why so much hate?

Any build is a crutch to gameplay – a ‘true pro’ would be good enough to fight without traits or stats, and still give people a run for their money. How many skilled players are there like that here?

I’m no pro – I’m decent at best. I won’t fight fair, I’ll fight smart. I’m a dirty fighter, and only respect fairness in honest duels. Out in the field, all is fair game.

Felix….get into the Mists and fite me. Now.

It depends. SR is a better pick for pvp and wvw, when you’re fighting against other players – those fights are heavily situational. For more predictable fights like PvE, I’d go with assassin’s reward.

I’d also take out your crit sigils and change them for something more effective. You only have 30% crit chance – sigils only activate 50% of the time when you do land a crit – 15% chance to trigger a sigil. It’s not reliable. Crit sigils are best comboed with a guaranteed high crit chance, like a backstab.

I’d also swap out Improvisation for Potent Poison. Poison counters your enemy’s heal.

Third, your only source of condi removal comes from your shortbow. One of them is again based on your low crit chance, and the other has a 10 second cooldown. It’s going to be very painful fighting a condition happy opponent. I’d advise getting a few points into Shadow Arts for the condi removal.

Don’t get discouraged! The build isn’t bad, but it’ll need a few adjustments to match up to potential.

There are also Norn ghosts in Cursed Shore, so humans aren’t the only ones.

From the wiki:

Most restless spirits have some sort of reason for hanging around a place: an unfinished task, a wrong that needs righting, and so on. They’re often coherent, and you can hold a reasonable conversation with them. They can be obsessive, or angry, but they’re sane—sane for ghosts, at least.

Something is holding her back from going into the Mist. What could it be?

I’m just gonna bump this, since I’m still looking for assistance in a method for landing a good finishing blow.

This build adds pressure very well, but it does less damage than glassy builds. I used to play a glassy 06620 build, so I’m spoiled for ‘moar damage’.

I think I just need to brush up on my technique – I know I’m just missing something. I know there’s a way to link steal with S/D 3, and with the sigils I picked, it should be a generous burst. Anyone to offer advice?

My guess it’s from the Viper set available at the gemstore? Not sure though.

I probably never noticed it before, likely because other thieves usually did not carry legendary swords. Most I run into are d/p or p/d.

So I have just finished my legendary weapon Bolt (Yay!), and transmuted the skin onto my current sword. But then, I realized something…

The lightning particle effects follow me everywhere. While I’m glad the footsteps and electricity do not give away my location while I’m stealthed, they do appear while not stealthed. The lightning follows me when I use withdraw or shadowstep, and they create a trail of electricity as I move.

Is this going to be an issue in WvW and PvP? Can enemies with a discerning eye watch the effects to locate my position? I don’t even know if the footsteps can cause a potential issue (follow me if I’m fleeing).

How about this for the lady assassins?

I do, when people run away halfway across the map..

I’ll try it with Thrill of the Crime again, and see how it goes.

I dropped 12 random weapons + 4 mystic forge stones….and got Zap.

It’s really all a gamble.

Posting a thief build for the first time. Hope you guys like it. I did create it on my own, using another build as the basis. I just hope it hasn’t already been discovered.

This is the build I am currently using for WvW roaming: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAoa8Yl0Mp8plOx7J8PNRSRw9SQi3517ddC-TlTBwAXOCA00JkVJRYlQPOIAmVCeVZQXlI3U/BrSBUaDOu/gmTAAgHAQAAEA25O35O/5PLFge6qA-w

It’s a variation of the 2/0/6/0/6, and I find it to abuse some of the most despised mechanics of the thief class. I’m still learning to adapt to it, but it has served me quite well in WvW.

1. Changed “Thrill of the Crime” to “Long Reach” – the surprise assault is worth the loss of boons, in my humble opinion. I’ve been able to catch up to several other roamers running away, or gain a surprise attack on those who were not ready to face off a thief.

2. Drop 2 points in Deadly Arts for 2 points in Acrobatics – This is to accommodate WvW’s situational needs. Vigorous recovery helps in outnumbered fights, and fall damage reduction is easy to switch back and forth with.

3. No SB weapon swap – I know, I know. The standard WvW havoc thief demands the shortbow, but it’s not much effort to switch from one of the sets, to the SB. However, I find the thief’s natural mobility, plus speed runes, to make up for the loss.

4. Superior sigil of intelligence? – I was a cheapskate. No other reason.

5. Mixed up ascended accessory stats? – Don’t judge me! Go full zerker if you want, I just like the slightly added toughness/vitality/little bit of healing power. Annnnd the accessory themes matches my thief. Don’t. Judge. Me. (How could I say no to Tybalt’s appleseller trinket?)

Pros
-High survivability and mobility
-Good steady damage
-Useful in outnumbered situations
-Boon stripping
-Great escape
-Great gap closer
-Strong use of crowd control (daze and basilisk venom)
-plethora of blinds
-Compliments very well with duos of other classes.

Cons
-Lacks reliable burst damage. Fights can sometimes take awhile, especially against guardians and celestial elementalists. It’s a bit tricky to land the final killing blow yourself. (or maybe that’s just me still learning how to use it effectively). Thankfully, it cuts through glassy builds pretty well.

Any input (like how to accommodate that ‘lack of burst’ I mentioned) would be appreciated.

The OP has a very good point. What the mesmer is going through now is similar of what the thief class went through for rebalancing. A majority of thieves left, leaving behind only those that were willing to conquer the nerfs and adapt to the changes. Thieves are still a pain in the neck, but no longer for the reasons even the high tier thieves called ‘faceroll cheesy gimmicks’. I’m expecting mesmers to rise up from the ashes.

…As embarrassing as it is, I’m probably a better thief than a mesmer. >.>;

This is the general build I run for zerker dungeons: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAsdWlknpIttqxUNUrNCqxgqvIdEBURp/47DA-ThSBwAmVCeV5XkjAwN1f6cCAwrJAlegFPAAAHCgm7PEAABgrLxJOxJOxiA8GD-e

Naturally, I swap to whatever weapons/utilities are needed for the fights, and whatever dungeon specific potion is needed. Survivability is not an issue – I want advice on how to add more dps to this setup. Any advice to change or tweak the build, would be appreciated.

Edit: Had the wrong trait. Fixed now.

I like the new version…Mind wreck!

I found myself to be fairly lucky when it comes to the forge: upgrading mats from T5-T6, I got double the value back. Also got all my Mystic Clovers with a surplus left over. I don’t know if that luck can carry on to precursor fishing, but I’m really the kind of person that wants to see solid investments, and the forge is quite risky.

Thanks for the advice. I’ll farm the gold, but drop a large portion of them in mat investment (never a good idea to dump it all into one type of investment). Meanwhile I’ll flush down dungeon weapons and see what comes of it. Wish me luck – I’ll need it!

I would prefer it as a random stealth, instead of blinding powder. Last Refuge has saved me a few times, and I remember it once helped me get in a very risky stomp. But it has equally allowed me to take out fellow thieves, or pinpoint their location by the flurry of powder.

It suits me fine since my playstyle is very aggressive, but what works for me wouldn’t work for everyone else.

I am crafting my legendary, and the only component I’m really missing is the precursor. I’m going for Bolt, so with Zap going from 1000g – 1400g on the TP, I really would like to find a different alternative. Which would be the ‘best’ in your humble opinion?

1. Farm the necessary gold (with the amount of time it would take, the price may inflate more.)

2. Gamble the Mystic Forge? I’ve heard it averages to a total of 600g, almost half the price of the precursor itself – pretty tempting. And I have 100+ Mystic Forge stones saved in my storage.
—Exotics are a better choice than rares, so:
a. Craft a bunch of exotic swords to feed to the MF
b. Buy the swords off the TP myself
c. Nevermind focusing on swords, and get whatever ends up being the cheapest exotic and dump it in. If I get a different precursor, sell that and farm the difference.

3. Wait for Anet to implement precursor crafting? Whenever that will be?

Lishtenbird.2814:

…“okay, I can do it on my main, but I should just get my staff guard and tag for tons of loot here, or get my zerk ele and AoE those LS achievements in one go.”

The painful truth.

…how’d they do that? I wvw a lot, but never saw that before.

I took a peek into EOTM this week. The side I was on (red) was heavily outnumbered by green. It resulted in the red zerg getting wiped and unable to karma run.

I was a bit surprised to see people raging about the mean green zerg flipping everything and spawn camping people that were obviously running to their death. Someone also complained how they came here to level, and were now having their time wasted. To me, it was all fair and legit – if people didn’t want to be spawn camped, they shouldn’t go running straight into the jaws of death one by one.

EOTM is not wvw. At all. It’s territorial karma train. And when people don’t get their territory, they complain about it. People feel privileged to get their train, as if its the purpose of EOTM.

I left and did something else. I’m not a lemming giving out free bags to spawn campers. I went back to the real WvW.

NinjaEd.3946:

C
P.s boon stealing for w/e reason does not prioritize their 20+ stacks of might, so it “might” be a while.

I see what you did there.

I should mention this is for pvp, mainly duels. I don’t run into too much problems against warriors in WvW.

Zacchary.6183:

Shows you what kinda people play it, eh.

Just for the record, that “good warrior” was probably on an alt.

Hambow is THAT op, eh?

Your second post is interesting. Only a few days ago 2 pvp duelists decided to badmouth and talk trash since I was practicing duels, as I main as a wvw havoc thief. I’m sure they were good duelists, but their braggart attitude was overbearing. As if they thought they knew everything about pvp/wvw. I know that’s not the image of every pvper, and it’s a shame I had to be introduced to those loudmouths.

In PvP, I don’t feel pressured. I don’t need to be as aware of map surroundings. I don’t need to worry about trash mobs. Heck, in duels I don’t even need to worry about outnumbered fights. If I die, I die. If I don’t, I don’t. WvW is a lot more situational. To me, pvp is always fair and honest. In WvW, it’s downright dirty fighting, using everything you can to get the upper hand. If I use a ‘cheesy’ build in PvP, I get called out on it. But if I use it in WvW, then it’s your fault you couldn’t counter it.

Charr engineer and charrzooka. Nuff said.

My mesmer is still my main – I mostly go for speedy dungeon runs. I am planning to brush up my pvp with her too.

…a hambow warrior? I have downed very few of hambow warriors, but that was because they were just terrible. But against a good hambow, how does a thief beat them? My friend replied with “you can’t”. Are they really this OP?

I’m one of these people that run away…..only so they think I’m actually gone, and I can backstab/stomp them.

WvW is about fighting dirty. If you don’t want people to run away, catch em.

My funniest memory is borderline trolly mean. A havoc group took the north camp on an enemy borderland, then upgraded and sieged it up. The enemy couldn’t even get close without getting punted back into their citadel by our superior rams (that’s plural).

I was expecting all present npcs to jump my sylvari – or at least, be on the defensive and try not to provoke a wrathful outburst. But instead, they trust her 100% and will back her up entirely. Totally not the next she-villian.

I know. I already used all of my free total makeover kits. ^^;

It’s so very annoying. Whenever my asura is in combat, her braids stretch into buns over her ears. Can we get this teeny glitch fixed?

Whenever there is a new hairstyle/facial release, I would love to be able to view them ingame before I make any choice to purchase. The same goes for an outfit or a finisher – I want to see what it looks like before I buy it.

I know there are sites like Dulfy (props to them) that post previews of the new content, but I can’t really see how they match up to my characters. I’m the kind of person that spends over an hour of customization to get the perfect look. And I want to be sure I like it before I go out and buy it.

Is there a way to do it? I play the mesmer and thief classes the most, and for my thief, I don’t want auto targeting, while I do for my mesmer. Since I swap between the two classes, I have to open the options each time and manually toggle the auto attack.

You don’t need to download a program to do a ‘zoom hack’. I suppose it’d be more of a…glitch exploit? I don’t know what you’d call it.

If people want to karma train, I really couldn’t care. But as much as people are allowed to karma train in EOTM, other people are allowed to defend and do pvp. It only becomes trolling when it turns into harassment.

To me, it’s the lesser of the two evils. At least karma trains stay out of the real WvW maps.

(Do people really talk trash to defenders in EOTM? I only went there a few times.)