Guild Wars 2

I’ve already got a rough draft going for these new changes. Relatively tanky for the damage it’ll have once the changes are implemented. Ranger will dominate with this!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNUQJATRjEqUwaDLusQ1ag9gadAUAnd7f4G2BXbRBLeA-TVCFABAt/AAXCgCVx5KlgIp87RVCE4JAkmugEVHIAACwNvZ28mBG6QH6QH6Q7mD9mD9mDtMA5bB-w

Got so happy after I heard about the changes and figured I would do this with the new changes and go dominate people

Is it also intended that conditions can easily kill us when we are in mist form? I’m trying to figure out if its intended or if its a bug that applied conditions still damage the ele when in mist form.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJArYhcMacW4wzBf0AYAC5WfSJKQ5h36B-T1hFABAcCAY4BAMy+DUp87M9A8pEcQ1fCAgAcz2MA+5P/5P/5P7m/8m/8m/sMA5bB-w

That’s what I run. Got high dps, healing, and perma vigor plus high ability to support group dps through might stacking abilities. Strength can be switched with hoelbrak or privateer runes depending on preference, funds, etc. I have no idea what the normal s/d build is for ele but that’s mine.

only thing is if they move Kz to master people will complain it is op…

Glad I could help

Thanks for all the support guys! This is awesome Trotsky, I think your idea is interesting, the only reason I am not lowering the crit chance is cause my purpose was to design a build that always crits. I completely understand your reasoning but I want to explore the idea that I laid out first to see what results are possible with this setup. Also, because this is a d/d build it would be better suited with crit strikes over trickery, but in an s/d adaption for the build I would say 100% go trickery over crit strikes as the weapon set is benefited more with trickery. I hope I made sense there, I got a little excited typing

@Ross No, it would ironic if I was from TC or JQ, or if I actually zerged. Roaming is what I find fun in wvw and that’s all I do there. So don’t give in to stereotypes, they don’t get you good places in life.

@Otaur yes it is a short time but when a thief is doing something like that they have completely committed to chain stealth by then and if they mess up they will not have any initiative left to get out of a fight so all you should have to do there is put some pressure on the thief and force them to make a mistake so you can kill them.

Liewec, that was a very good point and I actually really loved that input. The reason I said warrior though is because of the build variety in that class, there are really no “required traits” that you need to be effective. (they also have lots of weapon choices which by bringing other classes up to them I would hope would get us some new weapons) but in skill requirement yes I think they should be more like ele, bad ones get wrecked and good ones do the wrecking.

It’d also probably help if anet actually looked at wvw once In a while. Thanks for clearing that point up though, if that is the size then the thief is stupid for 2 reasons: 1) bug exploitation and 2) running from a group he should easily be able to beat… And honestly, its not a broken stealth mechanic, its a broken map mechanic. So intead of asking to not let a specific skill hit it we could just ask of anet to make walls get hit by nothing but siege. That’d probably make more sense overall as it stops more bug exploits than just the CnD one.

Nononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononono! No mounts!

@coglin I have never used a keep wall to stealth as I have never really needed to. There are plenty of ways to get stealth that actually help you more than a keep wall because it actually damages players. So just because I am bringing out a point that differs from what you believe to be true does not mean you can assume I am some Bug exploiter trying to keep my exploits usable.

As for what does the number of people have to do with it? Well The op said it was annoying to have a thief stealth off a wall when running from a group chasing them down and that it is wrong for a thief to be able to do that. While I agree the exploit is wrong, the intention of using something to gain a stealth on is very well justified because I don’t know about you, but I find it rather difficult to solo a 20 man group focusing on killing me.

I never said it takes skill, just comparatively more skill then zerging 1 person. And dude, I main a d/d thief I know it is easy.

A thief running away from a group using CnD on a wall takes more skill than bringing a giant group to chase said thief…

I actually don’t have this build made yet. I’m low on funds and cant really afford to do a gear switch at the time. This was a completely theoretical build but if I can find a way to get footage for it I’ll make sure it ends up here. If anyone knows a person whose willing to test builds and make clips with it then that’d be a big help too

@zaxon: I completely agree there and that’s why I stated in my original post that there were some things that are pushing the op window that can be brought down but the point I’m trying to make is instead of taking down an entire class to satisfy a few people for a bit, why not just buff every other class to satisfy even more people for a much longer time? This then causes warriors to not be the content gods and encourages 1) More skillful gameplay as they cant just rely on their build to carry them because a more skilled player is playing a weaker class 2) More diversity will come because every other class, instead of having 2 awesome working builds, could instead be like the warrior and have at least 5 or 6.

Have you noticed though, people who claim warrior is op are claiming so only because it does something better than their class? Well, if their class was able to do that equally (or as equal as it can be while keeping professions unique.) 90% of all QQ threads about warrior would be gone. The reason I say when not compared to others is that when you play through content as a warrior it feels pretty stable, things don’t generally feel too hard or too easy (depending on the content of course could lead to leaning either way) my point was to show that the warrior is in a pretty decent spot when compared to content and instead of nerfing the class, buff the other ones (as most of them need buffs anyway).

Hope that displayed my point better if not, then I am not sure what else I can do for you.

I used a human male with a winged headpiece (rarely show headpiece), stately mantle, masquerade chest piece, masquerade gloves, vigil legs, and apprentice boots. Dyed with abyss and black cherry kinda gives the mysterious wizard kind of feel to it I say with my completely 100% biased opinion. Go for the human

Warning, you are about to hear something scary……………………………..
Warriors are not op they are in a pretty decent stage right now, the real issue is compared to warrior, other classes are up. I’d say as a class w/o comparing to others, warriors feel pretty balanced. The player base (that means you guys) have to stop calling for nerfs on warrior and start calling for buffs on the other classes to get them to where the warrior is. (yes there are some individual things that can be argued for being op) Overall, I feel the warrior is balanced because you can pretty much find a way to make any build you want work (meaning any weapon set or build structure) if we buff the other classes to that point we will be one huge step closer to balancing the game.

Thank you for your time!

I love being a thief main. Makes everything in the game feel easy when you’re on other classes. As a thief, (from my experience) you tend to look at situations a little more tactically (if that’s a word) You learn very quick how to identify other peoples builds and react to/counter them. Despite the fact that people think we always run away, if you teach yourself early on to commit to a target you will yield impressive results.

After a long time of playing against almost every build in the game, I don’t really ever feel outclassed (except by engis but that’s cause I don’t seem to get fights with them very often) and when you start getting really comfortable with your build you won’t really ever feel unsurvivable because you learn all the little tricks to make you tankier/more survivable.

I personally feel useful everywhere as I seem to be able to find a role to fill anywhere I go whether it be zerging or infiltrating I can fill a spot and contribute positively.

When you reach a high skill level with your thief, yes you will feel all powerful because you’ll realize you are winning outnumbered fights all the time but you will die quite a bit in your life, that can’t discourage you from playing the class (neither can the community hate).

I personally feel you can do anything, it just may require a different approach that you may need to learn the hard way a few times but it is 100% possible to do whatever you want on a thief.

And finally, thief main is so much fun! You can go havoc or small man group with friends, do stealth missions into enemy towers and hit the back of zergs all while feeling you are actually getting better at the game instead of just spamming nonsense *cough*CONDI BUNKERS*cough*

Advice: Love d/d with your very soul, even when you die stick to it and practice a ton and you will become good enough to 1v3 in a rather short time. Though if you need practice getting used to the playstyle and positioning thing you can practice on d/p or watch youtube vids from the following people for tips and other helpful advice:
Yishis
Nightblade
xAkromaify

NinjaEd.3946: “This pi**ing contest is going nowhere, just ignore the fools who call d/d cheese. I can pull out p/p and it’ll be called cheese by someone eventually, its just how some people are nowadays.”

I already had someone say I was running a cheese build for using p/p. I was just running around seeing if the uncommonness of it would kill people and it killed a lot so at least 4 people invited me to party and called my build cheese that should be nerfed. Their main reason was stealth was op even though I didn’t stealth for the entire fight. People just complain, its in their nature.

Yeah, again I kinda just threw this together randomly and didn’t put a ton of though into the traits (if that hasn’t been made obvious )

So you think something like this?
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZEQNAoYVlsMp0pdPxwJ0PNBNBt9DGeE4uGrYGaFAA-T1BFABC8EAWS5nd6DqZ/BAOFAFq+jgKBDAgAsz2sOvZgje0je0je025R35R35RLFwoCjA-w

You could also do some changes in sigils, weps, and armour to get more health and a little more power but end up sacrificing air sigil.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZEQNAoYVlsMp0pdPxwJ0PNBNBt9DGeE4uGrYGaFAA-TVCBAB7pD4SVI2S5nhaDqU9FJeCAAcKAKa/BJVCGAABYn1ZduzAH9oH9oH9otzjuzjuzjWKgRFGB-w

Personally I prefer to have the air sigil, but this (meaning ^ that one) is for people who want that little extra hp and don’t care about the sigil

I feel a safer approach would be the server balance and color rotation options specifically because it will solve the map completion problem and the match diversity problem satisfying both wvw and pve (by that I mean those looking for map completion) players

I find invigorating precision very underwhelming. It needs a buff hard core before anyone will consider using it.

Well, there’s always bug exploits. Kidding, either get a Mesmer and two thieves to permastealth in the keep and portal you in or just hope for the best that one day you may actually get the right color.

If they had a way to balance out server population better than maybe there could be variety in wvw matchups again. And map completion may not be as big a pain in the butt.

No automated defenses, just no. It’s a pain everywhere else it’s been implemented. Though I would be for guards scaling up with number of people attacking an objective. Might help to reduce the mindless “Zerg anything that moves” attitude people have now.

Yeah, they need to invent a server balance mechanic. Or they can just re-implement the color rotation system they had pre-eotm times.

First solution is to get the rest of the server to not run every time they aren’t outnumbering the opponent. (This happens a ton in zerg fights and more often on TC as JQ is population mania. So it’s not your guys’ fault, Anet just needs to invent a system to create server balance.) You will win surprisingly more fights than you think you can. Your server should have a decent chance of winning with that in mind. Are you guys having a population issue? Cause if that’s the case you may end up in t2 eventually if 3rd is the only placement you get. I liked Anet’s old color rotation thing, wonder why they didn’t put it back in…

Good thought about the sigil swap. that hadn’t occurred to me (neither did changing the traits because I forgot I had the equipped lol) what I was worried about is the hp, if its for d/d is that a safe amount of health? I know guard stacks in wvw will fix that but when you don’t have them is that too low to be able to potentially last in a fight? Thanks for the tips!

Edit: I did the changes, now its even stronger
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZEQNAoYVlsMp0pdPxwJ0PNxOBtdAq9A4+EdoEd1CA-T1BFABC8EAWS5nd6DqZ/BAOFAFq+jgKBDAgAsz6sO3Zgje0je0je025R35R35RLFwoCjA-w

Im just gonna put a list of things, you can grab stuff from it as you wish

List of good youtubers to watch:
Yishis
Nightblade
xAkromaify

Build suggestions:
For your traits in crit strikes use side strike, practiced tolerance (this helps with hp probs), and hidden killer and in shadow arts use shadows embrace, cloaked in shadow, and shadows rejuvenation. (Don’t need infusion of shadow as initiative regen is high enough to maintain a cloak and dagger backstab rotation on a d/d build)
For gear I like using berserker weapons (with superior sigil os fire and air) and trinkets (meaning amulet, rings, accessories, and backpack) and Valkyrie armor (power, vit, ferocity) with superior runes of the pack.

Food Buffs:
Mango pie for extra regen (you can also use either spicy or curry butternut squash soup depending on how you want to buff yourself I like the extra sustain so I take the pies) and use sharpening stones as your wrench shaped symbol thingy buff

Hope this helps and good luck with thief!

Like the title says I have decided to waste time making a build with an impressive amount of crit chance and decided to post it for the enjoyment of others so… enjoy

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZEQNAoYVlsMp0pdPxwJ0PNxOBtdAq9A4+EdoEd1CA-T1BBABS8EAA4UAslyPD1HU0+DVq+jkKBDAgAsz6sO3Zgje0je0je025R35R35RLFwoCjA-w

As you can see the build is light on health but armor wise its quite tanky for a thief although the lack of power mi8ght be a little tough to deal with.

Note: This is not a serious build, I just wanted to see what I could put together with random matching and get some feedback on how I could potentially make this a serious build with more viability.

All armor valk and all trinkets and weapons zerk is how I go for dd. Also would recommend using fire and air sigils for more dmg potential and either runes of the wurm for high crit or pack for the power and precision buffs. Also go with cloaked in shadow instead of infusion of shadow as ini regen goes fast enough to support CnD+Backstab on its own

As for playing, it helps to look at vids on youtube of how other people play and then try it out. Heres a list of good people you can watch:
Yishis
xAkromaify
Nightblade

As a thief main, I can let you in on some helpful advice. First thing you need to find out is what build they are running, once you know their build you can counter accordingly.

Ray covered it pretty well but ill say some other things that ive figured out from both fighting as a thief or fighting against one.

D/P: Basic idea is to stay out of their blind fields, most of your attacks should have more range than the radius of the field. If you position yourself just outside blind range you can take them down pretty quickly. If you are running with a main axe, time your eviscerate with either their heartseeker leap or use zerk stance, clear off blind, and 1 shot the most likely glassy thief.

D/D: This set is strong but only when the thief remains close to you. Their stealth relies on cloak and dagger and is easily countered by aoe dmg and stun chains. When you are fighting one in wvw, make sure there are no pve creatures around as the thief can use them to get off their cloak and dagger.

S/D: This is a particularly annoying fight because of the large number of evades a thief can possess (forgot how to spell that word lol). What you will need to do is time your attacks around the thiefs evades to hit them in the small window that they aren’t evading. (use same strategy for shortbow thieves) If you can time a stun in the small window and get a good dmg combo off its pretty much a gg moment. Also, DO NOT stack might by itself as the thief will rip it off and kill you even quicker.

S/P: I do not have a ton of experience with this so im not able to give that much advise here but like D/P watch for blind spam and work them down from there.

P/P: This is really uncommon and requires just a little burst to take down the thief as they have very few evades or escapes with this set.

P/D: bring lots of condi clear abilities and watch for their cloak and dagger, getting a good stun chain and dmg combo on this thief will probably be all you need as long as you can keep their conditions off long enough to kill them.

Hope that was helpful and good luck gaming

Despite the many uncalled for nerfs we have suffered, I still have faith in the Mesmer. I designed this build to have enough tankiness to take a few hits if you mess up or the fight goes longer than intended while being able to dps the kitten out of most enemies.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhEQNAR8alknpMtlqxNNcrNCrxg6uy6MSOQAlsirB-T1CFABKpkoJlIAcRAKUFnrUCikSBBeCAOpMKNdD1s/QiqHEAAB4m3Mb2mBDdoDdoDdodzhezhezhWIgRbBA-w

If anyone can overlook this build and give me tips on how to improve it id be very grateful. Thanks for any contributions made

Thanks, I’ll make sure I check those out.

I just started one cause I thought the class seemed pretty cool and I wanted to start pvping with it, anyone got some tips to help me get going?

Thanks for all contributions

For s/d I like pack as then you can have near perma fury while in combat and still get lots of might when youre spec’d correctly.

No idea for s/p as I don’t really play it very much.

AH I actually have experience with and I find it is pretty good as a set of small sustaining heals similar to regen which is something the build has quite a bit of. The point of my build using AH is to allow me to capitalize on sustain in the build and give me more access to condi removal via shouts and some extra tankiness if I need it. I personally like it better than mf with meditations but that may be just me.

And to answer his question, yes you should use shelter instead of signet of resolve because the block prevents you from being interrupted unless you run into a line of warding or something. Plus, it has a much shorter cooldown meaning you also can mitigate more damage over the course of the fight.

Travelers is still relatively expensive and in my opinion is not needed for a guardian because there are lots of better choices for rune sets that would work better and with the right setup you will most likely not need to run away.

I like this for solo roam:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVEQNAR8dlsApVo1CxfH8DNR8AVVAw+J/PLXvjjcDA-TVCBABap04MlgYpMTinAAAXEAVVxpq9HyT3QmqHEAAB4m3Mb2mB/8n/8n/8ndzfezfezfWGAztA-w

Its got tankiness, dps, and sustain in good amounts so I love it.

Don’t have a pvp build to share as I am still working on tests for them and such.

In pvp this eats them alive:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAR8dlsApVo1CxfH8DNR8AVVAw+J/PLXHjjcDA-TJBBwASuIAAeCAV3focZAA

In wvw:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVEQNAR8dlsApVo1CxfH8DNR8AVVAw+J/PLXvjjcDA-TVCBABap04MlgScRAwSZGAPBAVVxpq9HyT3QmqHEAAB4m3Mb2mBDdoDdoDdodzhezhezhWGAztA-w

Have fun

Ok shadow, yes it was in fact helpful they were valid points so thank you for contributions now back to the post you are not very happ with me calling unhelpful, I figured it would be common sense to use up all character slots before deleting and therefore was unnecessary to state but I admit I was wrong to say that so now I give you my apologies. And Bhawb, nice idea I will do that. So now that this has become very helpful I shall thank you all one final time and go dungeoning. Goodbye!

I want to clear things up: not looking for attention of any sort I was merely asking a question regarding the Mesmer as a class and whether an experienced Mesmer player could tell me the benefits of having one and if it would be worth 1) leveling again 2) deleting a warrior. and I have filled my 7 slots to answer questions about slot filling, yes I could buy gems but id rather save money and just figure out which class is more worth having from an enjoyment standpoint.

So my thanks go to Penguin and Bhawb for actually making helpful comments. Carpboy, you really think anyone wouldn’t have thought about that already? (though it was good for laughs I’ll give you that) and shadow, I’m not even gonna go there with you.

I have an 80 warrior and it has been alright as a class but not a very high skill cap and therefore is limited in its max potential. I have been beaten many times by Mesmer on almost every class so it seems like Mesmer is in a pretty good place. So my question is: should I delete my warrior and start over on a Mesmer? I mean, is it more worth the time to play Mesmer? Do you get a higher degree of challenge from it?

I appreciate all responses and contributions, just saying that ahead of time

and what I am suggesting is what traits probably SHOULD do but most of them are not very good so they don’t really accomplish that. This is just another way to potentially help with that.

Oh and as for the no offense, none taken. I did say I wanted constructive criticism and debate so thank you

LastDay, I want to make it clear I am using the term “meta” as it is used in build/game discussions, not by its dictionary definition so half of that post was completely irrelevant and while I understand that yes you could just balance signets so people take them along, why not give them more options for things to use? If someone is stuck trying to get their stats up to snuff or trying to get extra movement speed why should it have to take up their skill bar therefore eliminating their skill possibilities because they want to be able to have some extra stat points. This idea, even if you disagree with it (which is totally fine as we are humans and we do that sometimes) is a way of addressing those situations. It also takes care of anets supposed “lack of build diversity” by now freeing up people skill slots for different skills that would normally have to be taken up by a signet because they need their build to be competitive. Now, while I do think you have a valid point, I disagree that just making signets have other active effects is not the way to go Why not just make them a passive buff in a separate slot you can choose from because most of the actives are crap anyway?

The way I see it, part of the balance issue is lack of diversity which allows there to be a “meta” build for each class and builds that counter each meta. The metas are seen as op and unbalanced and then when someone makes a good counter its automatically seen as unbalanced and op. By allowing more build customization and decreasing the chance of everyone running the same build as eachother you decrease the chance of a meta build appearing which basically eliminates half the challenge of “balancing” the game. (I use "" around balancing because its really purely subjective) And I guess I don’t see how this is making things worse so if you guys could elaborate on how it would make things worse I would appreciate the insight so I can take that into consideration when I look into future discussions about this topic.

So I have been thinking about this for a while now to see if I could work out a decent system for this idea and this is what I have come up with (please note that some things would need to be changed for balance reasons but that can be easily done). Okay, so what I am thinking is this: remove signets from the game as utilities and make them a separate section for a buff choice.

How it works:
You remove the option to take a signet as a utility skill and instead create another 3-slot bar on a character that is dedicated to signets. Meaning every character can equip 3 signets with a permanently passive effect/buff. For example, a thief could equip their utilities as “shadow refuge”, “black powder”, and “shadowstep” and then take their three signets as the precision buff, the movement speed buff and the power buff. The signets are not able to be activated so they just keep the buffs they have equipped as a way to give them an edge in an area they want to be stronger in. Basically, I would think it could promote build diversity by not only giving players more build options through choosing the utilities they want to be able to use but they also now have separate selections of buffs that they need to choose from to create their build.

Balancing:
Of course some signets would have to be altered to prevent them from becoming op. a few suggestions include:
Healing signet and signet of the wild- change to 200-300 hp/sec depending on what the devs see as reasonable and no scaling with healing power.
Signet of undeath (or whatever the one whose active transfers condis to your foe is)- maybe transfer a condi to a foe every 10 sec or something like that. Just kinda depends on how anet wants to do balancing.
then I figured it would be best to leave the stat buff signets as they are and of course some other signets would have to be reworked plus engi would need some signets added to be able to equip or maybe some sort of alternative, depends on what anet thinks would work best with the class.

How it would fit in (unlocking)
This would be a rather easy thing to implement as you could have signets be unlocked at levels 5, 15, and 25. I picked those levels because then up until level 30 you are getting a new unlock every 5 levels which makes it more motivational and a lot easier for players to get into leveling because after 30 they are earning traits so it will be like you are always looking to unlock the next thing in your leveling process. And another bonus is the vacancy for signet buffing traits and signets as utilites would leave room for anet to add in more skills and traits. Everyone is happy

Conclusion:
So now that I have explained my thoughts on this and why I think that way I would really appreciate some feedback from players out there. Do you think it’s a good system suggestion? Do you agree with my balance changes? If not, what do you think would work better? Please keep all criticism constructive and please be sure to communicate clearly why you think that way in order to promote healthy discussion and a potential thing for the balance team to look into doing one day. Thank you for any and all contributions you give And if you have any questions feel free to ask and I will answer as soon as I can.

I actually didn’t know that. Thanks for the tip bro.