Guild Wars 2

This is a great post. I’ll be making a similar one soon for people who complain about stealth where I’ll hopefully shut down any arguments people make about it. Seems we are thinking alike Mr. Yolo

Hey!

So if you’re gonna run with a zerg you could always try a tankier version of a static discharge engi. plenty of mobility to stick with the zerg and the aoe you get is pretty nice. Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdEQFAUlUUpmqlcxELseRCdBN6wMlnAyFUBRtwPFAA-TFSBABQqEkLlVUq+TEPAguUqQ0+D4pDAgLAQAAEgbezAwQH6QH6QHa3co3co3colBgZMA-w

Not the highest damage but its good enough to tank a bit of damage. the aoe from grenades and static discharge will get some strong aoe off and tag enemies. Healing turret provides a bit of aoe heal for the zerg. range increase allows you to be in the back line and still get kills.

Just kinda made this on the spot but for a dps build its pretty nice and it still has the condi reduction from soup. You could swap it for a damage food if you wanted too.

Hope this helps and good luck

definitely making one on launch but it’ll have to be decided what race I’ll have it be. Might do a norn with the desire to guard the mist and be that mist imbued legend or something along those lines.

Indeed it will. Either way I’m excited to try out the new prof and see what it’s like to play.

It may be a spear, and if it is then it may be specific to the revenant class. That will all be learned once more information is released about the expansion.

Will we be given a character slot to try out the new class when the expansion comes out or will we need to buy one?

If I could get an official answer on this that’d be fantastic. Love the new features coming, just made my year!

If we want it changed and they want it to be stealth related how about just make it heal next time we enter stealth below 25% hp. It could be like mug’s heal so it wouldn’t be op but could still be the life saver it was intended to be. Problem solved.

Have a good day

Edit: We could also have it remove an extra condition if necessary. Doubt it will be needed but wanted to put it out there just in case.

Not that anything can be done about this but really the issue with might stacking builds isn’t cele or might stacking in itself, it’s the ease with which they’ve been allowed to might stack. Before the april 14’th patch that changed runes and sigils dramatically ele might stacking still happened but they used rune combinations to get boon duration so the stacks would stay on them. The reason it was okay was cause they were still able to get a ton of might stacks but it was something pretty much unique to the elementalist as a class and therefore didn’t cause any real problems because it was up to them to perform their combos correctly or else they wouldn’t be able to deal damage to an enemy and theyd likely lose whatever fight they were in.

Post april 14, everybody can stack might with no worries, just equip a might stacking rune and a battle sigil and you’ll easily stack might with no reason to do fire field combos. just build tanky and get perma 25 might stacks because you can.

So really imo the issue goes back to the ease they allowed might stacking to occur, not the actual boon getting stacked. So because there’s really no way they’ll ever change the stuff back we are probably going to be seeing more nerfs as people will cry OP to everything instead of adapting and playing better. Sad truth but that’s how it is most of the time.

Though despite these nerfs I don’t believe the meta will really change at all, might stacking with cele will still be the best combo for people. they just may have to invest a tiny bit more into might stacking. So really, d/d ele will still be great and people will still complain until it’s not worth playing anymore so enjoy the ele while you can still compete with it.

Have a good day

@Chairface. Pls for the love of all things holy do not bring condi thief into this. That is NO reason to argue stealth is op. NONE AT ALL. Everyone who has taken time to play every class and learn how different specs play can tell you the issue with condi thief is not stealth, it’s the fact that they can build full bunker and still do a ton of damage because of the way condi was designed in this game. Remove condi damage as a stat and just give it a base amount like in GW1 and you solve pretty much all the problems. Or just reduce everybody’s access to condi via auto attacks.

Just do something that does not punish every other spec on thief that uses stealth because condi bunker anything is too forgiving. D/D is constantly getting harder to roam with because all we get are stealth nerfs and damage nerfs because either noobs try to facetank as a glass cannon against a backstab thief and cry op or others refuse to look at the core issues in the game and instead get one classes specs nerfed completely while the core issues in the game still exist.

Explanation over.

I have no idea why OP would say that, mace is probably one of the best weapons on guardian. Great utility, everything hits really hard (mace on my build which is not zerker easily crits 4k on aa) the block is very nice and the regen+damage you can get from symbol of faith gives you probably one of the most useful Aoe skills in the game. (especially when traited with writ of the merciful so you get over 500 health per second regen with a very low CD). Combine with focus for one of the best weapon sets available to guardian (imo better than SW/F because of the utility and defense you get on top of the damage which is almost the same on both sets). There ya have it, enjoy the game

I’m pretty sure I have a better build than this. Just saying.

Hey guys, thanks for the builds. I’ll definitely be trying these out.

First, be patient with your fights. Burst is good but don’t stay out in the open too long as you aren’t particularly tanky as a thief. My advice for some traits (just cause it never hurts to have more input) in shadow arts would be to take shadow’s embrace for condi clear and then shadow protector with shadow’s rejuvenation. Initiative regen covers your expensive CnD so the extra regen you get from going into stealth helps you fight outnumbered in the many cases that happens and then in 1v1 it gives you crazy sustain.

Tricks that are nice on D/D are combining steal with CnD for a near guaranteed stealth. I also like having withdraw as a heal 1 for evades 2 for the low cooldown giving again, more sustain in a fight. While some thieves like to use basilisk venom as their elite, for roaming as a thief I would suggest dagger storm. It’s especially helpful against projectile heavy classes like LB ranger and Staff ele who if not paying attention will do a full burst onto your reflect and kill themselves.

Another trick/tip:
Despite the fact that some call this cowardly or cheap, stealth stomping is your best friend in roaming situations, especially outnumbered. Shadowstep stealth stomping is good when the other team puts aoe or cc on the downed person.

Hope this helps, if you have any more questions feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to answer.

Anybody have a fun build to play around with that isn’t condi based? As the title says I’m kinda bored with the builds available to thief in wvw atm. If anyone has a dps based build I can play around with I’d really appreciate it if you’d post it. Just for fun’s sake

First thing, the only removal you will probably need is zerk stance and cleansing ire, then the sigils and runes can be used for might stacking or extra condi application. Second thing, Condi bomb engi in my experience is very fragile to condis that arent removed by healing turret. Best way to beat them is to bait out healing turret with a few poke condis like shortbow 6 with a sigil of doom active on the weapon. Unless they know what you’re doing they will probably pop healing turret then you can switch to s/s and start condi bursting.

In terms of defense, watch for their supply crate and well… bombs. When they drop their big bomb get out of the readius or dodge. The best way to beat a condi bomb engi is to deny them the ability to put condi on with their bombs. If they miss their bombs they have no point control.

Not sure how much sense that made so if you have any questions feel free to ask. Good luck!

I read one that said for Cof “all paths. must be stoned or drunk”

I hope this makes sense, wvw in itself is not dead just stale, but ROAMING in fact is dead. There were times when anytime you went into ANY server you would find roamers to fight with. First mistake anet made was making condi bunkers such low risk high reward builds. Cause back near release when roaming was popular it was popular because it was skilled players running builds that took skill cause they were all straight up dps builds not condi bunkers and tanky might stackers. The meta anet has created has ruined roaming because it has killed the necessity for diversity and skill.

Second mistake they made was wvw ranks. The idea was really cool but the implementation was awful, all they did was encourage people to zerg and karma train for loot. I found it much more entertaining when small group activity was the popular thing to do if you didn’t want to go solo but that still took skill as you were only with 4 other people so you still had to be somewhat self reliant. Now it’s all 50 man blobs spamming one skill to try to get loot.

So wvw, isn’t dead but roaming is and anet killed it.

Just some other thoughts:
When looking at this game things like condi builds shouldn’t even exist. Degen is an interesting playstyle but you shouldn’t be able to amp up the damage it does. GW1’s system of condis was better and if there are any changes ever to be made to condis they need to be made more like the ones in gw1, set amount of degen and no buffing it. In, addition they need to set rewards and other content to encourage small group roaming if they ever want to return wvw to it’s former glory. Start making changes and nerfs to mechanics and builds that cause toxic and stale gameplay and add things that encourage people to not blob and discourage heavily cowardice and hiding behind siege inside a keep and that nonsense.

Just my 2 cents on what wvw should be. feel free to discuss.

Looks like the waterfall in brisban wildlands. But then, so many places look quite similar to one another.

Empathy: 60 sec cd
Shatter clones and phantasms aoe shatter adding a debuff to an enemy that reflects all damage done by them at themselves and heal their target for the amount of damage done to themselves (i.e. a thief has debuff and tries to backstab Mesmer with 5k hp left for 10k dmg the thief would take 10k damage and the Mesmer would be healed for 10k health). Effect lasts 2 sec per clone.

As a serious build I’d go with 2/6/6/0/0 on d/d then if you just want to screw around and have fun go 5/6/0/0/3. Mostly it’s up to you but when I do d/d that’s what I’m using. (oh and tip: shadow protector works on you too so going with SE, SP, and SR as your shadow arts traits will make you super hard to kill)

Yes, I like all of this tbh. Only downside is the amount of people who will complain about us being op. Then we will get nerfed again. Favorite one is the swap with shadows embrace and last refuge, if only 1 of these comes out I hope that’s it.

Kinda sad they didn’t cause my dragon wings skin didn’t save in my wardrobe when I had it for some reason, now I have no wings

Just a build I made for wvw roaming and small group stuff. Possibly not the most optimal but surprisingly effective (and SUPER fun) with high condi management and extremely high sustain and defenses (making it highly effective in outnumbered scenarios). Also not too shabby with damage either(meaning it’s crits on sword aa are like 3k on most targets and backstab crit is like 5k on heavier targets) Reason I call it "adapting is because it has all the evades an sd thief does with all the blinds and stealth of a dp thief. It ALWAYS has the ability to take down an opponent, sometimes it just requires a simple weapon swap to turn the tide…

Here it is, enjoy and feel free to give feedback:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZEQRAoa8Yl0Mp0pdPxzJ0PRBNhwdtSz8LsWB6LKA-TFCBABXq+DEHEgzUCilyPJeAAAcGAKa/h80PEAABYntZb2mBDdoDdoDdodzhezhezhWIAsbBA-w

It’d be interesting to see that implemented but I’d rather have a new game mode. One that doesn’t have a 4s reveal time and doesn’t revolve around capture points cough RE-IMPLEMENT FORT ASPENWOOD AND JADE QUARRY MODES!!!! cough

Seriously though, It’d actually be a nice little change to have that.

Counter [TREB]
Ive got a jar of [DIRT] (just thought that would be a great name for anything)
Stealth and Supply [TRAP]

Because apparently if we don’t have a 4s reveal time we are too OP because “permastelth backstab spam with no window to hit them in”

Basically the whiners of the community got us nerfed because they are too ignorant to learn how to fight a thief. They want pvp to be as easy as pve.

I didn’t know they didn’t have dishonor up yet. Maybe that will solve issues. Thanks!

When they whisper you about you being the noob just say, I’m not the one whose dead now am I? And if they just start raging after you win just say “GF” and it’ll make the abusive comments hilarious. Just screw around with the person raging at you, eventually they’ll give up and ignore you.

Have fun!

Why is this still happening so much? I am constantly having matches where my team loses the game because of someone leaving the match and making it a 4v5. I just had a match where the score was 440-300 in my teams favor, one guy left and we lost the whole lead we had and the entire game. Btw, this is ranked so it actually kind of matters. The new system is supposed to take care of it so why is it happening more often to me now than it did pre patch?

Please don’t take this like I’m arguing, these are legitimate thoughts/questions:

1) I normally run full zerk on shatter but this was more for looking into the potential to have a tankier edge to help survive burst a little better without sacrificing too much damage. Your input was greatly appreciated in that respect.

2) Again with the tankier approach I chose speed runes to keep my health higher without losing mobility, Though I do see how traveler would work so I’ll probably switch that. Again thanks for the input there.

3) (this is really my question) Why would I want IP if I’m running with a staff/gs combo? Being at range means I’ll be shattering from far away and the alternative trait allows me to get aoe with my halting strikes giving more damage overall. I could be mistaken and if I am please inform me so I can improve this build.

I created this build with the intention of being a little bit tankier (hence the armor choices) but I was wondering, does this version of a shatter build sacrifice too much damage or does it have plenty of damage?

Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhEQJARWlknpMtNqxINcrNipxg60OrNS+QAlMkxB-TFiFAB4pLoKlgGp8rRVZA4JAYz+DHq2QCXCgAAIA38mZzbGYoDdoDdoDtbO0bO0bO0CBMaMA-w

Indeed, I was looking forward to the match between Abjured and TCG as I had been rooting for both of those teams in their respective regions all through the tournament up until the final match.

There’s the issue, people assume that because someone uses a “cheesy” meta build that they are noobs and lack skill. Honestly, since when is it a bad thing to use a build that is effective in a certain area? The fact that these guys are playing at this level says enough about the fact that they have skill (talking about tournament stuff). If anything, they are even smarter for going with a build that is guaranteed to be effective in their situation rather than risking their entire competition to try something that isn’t meta just to appease the whiners on the forums.

Well aren’t you a ray of sunshine. Even if Yishis isn’t killing the best players around, the information he gives in his commentaries is still very useful and is definitely worth watching.

Most of it is forum whining as I play a ton of Mesmer and Thief and don’t really have as much trouble as people claim to have. Yes, there are some parts of the game where skill is required more on thief because there are weaknesses to the class because really not the way the class is but because of the way the game mode is. Despite there being those types of problems sometimes it’s not as bad as people make it out to be because with a super versatile class like Thief you’ll learn how to adapt to the situations you’re in.

Regarding picking up specs, some are harder than others but mostly it depends on how you play naturally that determines how hard it is to play some of the builds. Like for me, I prefer to put out a ton of direct damage so when I try a p/d condi thief I actually fail pretty hard because that’s not how I’ve learned to play. I even have trouble with s/d from time to time because I main d/d for wvw roaming and outnumbered fighting. For you, the first thing you will probably want to do is try out some of the builds and see what you have a better natural feeling with and go from there.

Summarized spec answer cause mine sorta went ranty: The specs are tricky at first but if you take some time to analyze the possible uses of the skills you have available and how all the stuff in the build is supposed to go together you will notice some pretty impressive results during gameplay. If there’s anything else I can do to help or if you have any more questions feel free to ask cause I’m willing to help as best I can

Hey, glad you decided to jump back in. Thief is still really srong but the issue you may have with wanting to do different game modes is that there are certain builds for each mode that you will want to run so you will end up practicing on multiple builds (some of which can take awhile to get used to so that’s a fair amount of practice at the start, later you don’t have to practice as much to be competent and helpful) Overall, I don’t find thief as a class terribly difficult to play so you can stop searching, you have found a wonderful class to play

BUT, the thing that takes awhile to learn for thief is tactics and positioning. By tactics I mean how to set up your attack, knowing what skills to use when, how to confuse your enemy, etc. Melee is honestly what I would recommend to you (partially because I’m heavily biased against p/d condi builds and I’m not afraid to admit that I think those builds are stupid and shouldn’t even exist). But take shortbow as an off-hand for utility just because you’ll learn to love it.

So, summarized answer: Thief will take some practice but once you get it down you will be free to do whatever you want on other professions and still be able to jump in and be fairly competent as a thief player. (Will not require hours of practice and dedication).For any builds you need you can look up meta battle or ask around for some. Good luck with learning!

Exactly my thought. Except as I said in my post before this there would have to be a little access to healing skills to make the game fun for people who want to heal or to allow for more advanced gameplay within the mode.

I’d rather stuff that discourages mindless zergs and encourages people to do small group stuff. Like 5- man groups more often in wvw and less of the 50 man blob nonsense.

Ah, I get it now. Good point, I guess what could happen is because this would be a separate game mode they could give people the option of playing as a monk class available only in FA or JQ. Another alternative would be a bundle or giving every profession a set of 3 skill slots apart from utilities and weapon skills and a set of skills specifically for healing, protecting, doing monk like things, etc. What those would be is again up to Anet to decide.

You guys are all noobs. You fail to realize that Antarctica is truly the best region!

I think the rng based track is what we have all agreed on if it ever gets implemented.

Yeah but then it makes gameplay more challenging in some areas as people can no longer spam heal the turtle or Gunther. Though I guess there are always water fields and blast finishers. It also plays into the idea of upgrading things, one of them would be to give the turtle, juggernaut, Gunther, etc. hp regen so that it could heal up when its not being actively attacked. Now that I think of it I didn’t go into upgrades all that much.

Upgrades:
Because all npc’s start at the normal level, players can pay points to upgrade them to veterans, and in some cases, champs.
Can grant health regen which can be increased as more people feed points into it (will be a cap but the amount is for anet to decide)
Can upgrade armor, health, damage, healing power, etc.
Can upgrade gates to be stronger and have more defenders (turtles can do the same)
Can pay to make all bonuses permanent (so when a gate is destroyed and then repaired or a turtle killed and respawned it will retain all upgrades purchased for it)

That’s just a small list of the things I had in mind but I’m sure anet can figure out other things they could implement.

Terror has a good point. I agree with him. And for all you who say “pvp has exclusives, so should pve” (I’m gonna get so much hate for this) PvP actually takes skill to play (most of the time). And honestly it can be kind of difficult if someone who has never done fractals before wants to get started cause the only groups you find now are “Experts only, no condi, noobs get kicked, must have 10,000 ap and 20+ ar” Having a fractal track that is rng based like terror said will give people an opportunity to get what they want without having to deal with elitists and still getting to play the way they want. (which is what anet had in mind when they put in reward tracks for pvp in the first place)

I’d have thought the same thing except he was using his lb and auto- attacking with it which would port him just out of range of any of my dagger strikes.

Glad you all think this is a good idea so far. Again if you have any ideas for how I could make this proposal better please post them here and let’s get Anet’s attention with this!

Edit: Rym, I’m not entirely sure what your post meant. Could you explain it to me?

What are they exploiting? I mean, what actually happened? If this hasn’t been made obvious I’m kinda clueless over what exactly happened.

Title says it all, not about point caps, just about killing stuff. This would still allow for reward track progression and the mode would have it’s own separate leaderboard for people who want to competitively play Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry game modes. Another reason to do this is because they were so popular in GW1 when there was a large community playing the game. With the right implementation they could be even more popular in GW2. The games would be made of 10 man teams instead of 5 giving more variety in who you fight and allowing for a larger map to be created for the modes. They would both be set up the same way they were in gw1 fundamentally. Only while matches are going on players accumulate points that they can spend to upgrade defenders, gates, juggernauts/siege turtles, etc. That of course counts more towards contribution so players are encouraged to spend points for upgrades and communicate with their team to figure out which upgrades each person will purchase.

Differences from pvp:
People get to select the stat combo for each of their armor pieces, weapons, accessories, etc.
No capture points
Rewards based off of personal performance and contribution to your team rather than win-lose
Automatically put on a team (prevents team stacking cough hotjoin cough)
Spectate mode available but not from within the game (people outside the match can watch but people in the match cannot leave to spectate)

Similarities:
People still get to choose runes and sigils as well as skills, traits, etc.

Pros:
Other builds encouraged (ones not dedicated to point capping i.e shadow arts thief builds, gs warriors, staff eles, etc.)
Less stress from teams yelling “CAP CAP CAP” 24/7
New pvp mode for players to enjoy
Some builds are discouraged (turret engi, hambow, bunkers in general)
Larger teams mean 1 person DC-ing has less of an impact to the team (still an impacxt but it doesn’t screw over the team)

Cons:
More stuff to balance
(that’s really all I can think of)

Let me know what you guys think. I’m open to suggestions for changing this to make things better but I hope I’m not the only one who would love to see this put in again.

Was fighting a ranger while I was roaming and I went into stealth to backstab him and star some nice burst to try to end the fight. He started walking backwards and auto attacking (nothing strange) but then for some reason when he was attacking he started teleporting backwards. I wasn’t having lag issues at all he was just porting around and I couldn’t hit him. Later I was fighting the same ranger with a Mesmer buddy and we have him almost down but then he starts porting around again, we couldn’t target him and we couldn’t hit him and he just ported in short distances all the way back to his tower.

So my question:
Was this guy hacking or did I have connection issues when everything else in the game was working exactly as it was supposed to?

I appreciate any info I can get cause that whole situation didn’t really make sense to me.

You can always watch Sizer or Caed, they’re really good thief players. Heck, you can still watch Yishis on youtube. his stuff is old but it still has really valid info in there to help you get better on thief. There’s also Nightblade and xAkromaify.

Another option is try out a different build and see how you perform on that. Like, switch from s/d to like d/d sniper and see how you do on that. It may just be you need a different build to suit the situation you’re in.