Guild Wars 2

Thank you so much! Why don’t they just tell you this crap? It’s infuriating. I’ve wasted two days on this kitten because I didn’t know it couldn’t be done on the first run. -_-

No, I’ve done the entire story on my thief, but I was going through trying to complete everything on my ranger. Do I need to do it on my thief?

Also, there is no crown icon. Only an “eye” icon to track the achievemnt. there wasn’t any button to reset the Facet of Strength fight either.

I’m not sure what’s wrong, but no matter what I do, it will not give the the achievement for defeating the facet of strength! I fought him in melee the first time and never got CC’d once, because I kept up stability the entire fight with my ranger. No achievement.
Then, I decided to Bear-Bow it at 2100 range. I didn’t even lose a single Health point. No Achievement.

How the heck do you do this challenge?!?!

Also, if you fail, how do you do it again without restarting the story from outside of the library?

Thank you for your advice. I’m sorry, I’m just extremely frustrated with these challenges. I’ve been trying to do them for 2 days to no avail.

Right, but that’s why you wouldn’t be healed for the full amount. That’d just be ridiculous! Even if you dodge a 15K eviscerate, you’d be healed for 4,500 health. That’s a lot, but it’s certainly not a full heal, or even a 50% heal in full berserkers.

The 30% May be toned down, due to the amount of dodges available. Perhaps 20 or 25%…

In my opinion, the Acrobatics GM traits are somewhat lacking. So, instead what about a new trait?
I haven’t thought of a trait name, but the effect of would be:
You are healed for X% of the Damage you evaded.

I’m not actually sure if this would be possible in the Current system, but I like the thought of a GM centered around dodging that rewards both active play and intelligent use of your dodges (the ele dodge trait promotes dodging for the effect).

The first % that pops in my head is around 30%. That way, you wouldn’t get a full heal from dodging a warrior’s eviserate, but it would be a significant amount. While, dodging an auto attack would not about to much healing.

What are your thoughts about some possible problems for a trait like this?

Being able to stealth without the need of cloak and dagger is really nice, and that’s the main drawback for P/D, is gaining stealth safely.
Also, shadow trap also gives some really nice boons and effects for both Power and Condi Builds. The knockdown trap is good for any build as well. The shadow trap also gives 2 stealths in the build! One for laying down and one for returning to the opponent.

The PP was just an idea to breathe some life in that weapon set. I’m sorry for trying. :P

Because normally it doesn’t have any mobility, or stealth. But by using runes of the trapper, you’re giving up your mobility anyways.
Also, turn off your auto attack. There is a small 1 second delay after laying the trap and then stealth+super speed. This is good, because you can lay a damaging trap underneath someone, and have it go off without revealing you. But, because of the delay your AA will land right after you stealth, which will reveal you.

From my limited experience, the lack of cool downs on our skills actually leave little incentive for swapping weapons, unless you choose to use traits that benefit you. However, most of the time swapping weapons doesn’t benefit you as much as other classes with Cooldowns.
For example: most thief builds are X/X and Shortbow because that one weapon set is usually the only set specializing in an area.
Take your P/D. That’s the best Condi set, hands down. So why would you take something like D/D when it’s primarily a power set (death blossom is horrible, the consensus), over shortbow, which is used in almost every build because it’s the best weapon in the game for running away!

Something else to consider that I wasn’t able to try effectively is a hybrid build using PP. I only have Dire gear, so my unloads didn’t do anything, but with Rampager or celestial gear, you could use the sneak attack for a free unload+ condis and regular unload while you’re revealed!

These tunes give P/P builds a reliable way to enter stealth!
I say it was a gimmick, because the 2 elemental it’s I came across just ran away when they realized they couldn’t win. All I could do against them was spam Pistol 2. It worked the first time, but they learned to counter that the next time they ran away.
As for other classes? I killed guardians, necros, and warriors no problem! I actually didn’t run into any thieves, mesmers, engis, or Rangers when I tried them the other night.

It was a lot of fun using these runes. However, they do feel very much like a novelty or a gimmick.
And you’re so slow! So. Slow. Your only mobility is steal.
However, people do not know how to fight this build, at all. Which is funny to see them trying to react to something they’ve never seen. Usually they think they’re safe from a D/P thief at range, since they normally can’t stealth at range more than once with BP.

I would absolutely love to see spear on warrior, thief, guardian, and mesmer. It won’t ever happen though.

Thanks for the rune suggestions! I know, the Exotic Dire pieces are just what I had laying around, and I didn’t want to spend 70s on yellow berserker gear I would have soon anyways. I’ll get my last piece tomorrow from CoF.
I’ll make sure to slot vigorous recovery instead of the condi removal on dodge!

Thanks for your replies everyone! Based on what you all have said, I did pretty well by not letting her kill me. She must have just gotten frustrated, which is why she berated me.

As for my build, does anyone have a link a real S/D build? I’m just using 2/0/0/6/6 and traits I thought would work, with almost full zerker (Dire shoulder and legs because those are the exotics I have for those slots for now. haha).

The biggest conundrum I have at the moment are which traits to choose for my Grandmaster and master traits in the acro line. I don’t switch my weapons, I’m not in stealth very much, and the healing on initiative use would be negligible. So, I’ve been using the Condi remove on dodge and Condi remove on 75% health traits for master and GM. Is there anything else that would be more effective?
Also, a nice rune set that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg would be much appreciated!

So, how can I beat it next time?

Did my first foray into WvW this morning! I was pretty pleased with my performance. I got into a really nice fight with another, really experienced thief running D/P. We weren’t able to kill each other, it was actually a lot of fun! Thanks to the mobility from S/D, she kept couldn’t catch me with my pants down by disengaging and re-engaging. This leads me to my first question:

She would destealth and incredibly long distance away. How did she achieve this? Did she swap to SB by using up all her initiative on SB5 after using Shadow Refuge?

My second question is: Is S/D supposed to be a direct counter to D/P? After a few minutes of neither being able to kill each other, she started berating my build for not being able to kill her.

Finally, I would really appreciate some more tips on how to beat D/P in the future. My biggest issue it I couldn’t interrupt her heal after using my steal as a gap closer (I had to, infiltrator’s return reset takes so long!).

Use it. Gold is easy to come by once you hit 80.
Plus, the dye will most likely be much more expensive by the time you reach 80. Use it now so you don’t have to pay more for it later.

I thought this change would be horrible for players making new characters. I have been playing with this change for a few days now, and I have gotten my thief from 1-46 pretty quickly in this new trait system.

I still hate it.

My character is level 46, but he is crippled without the proper traits. I have unlocked the majority of the traits for Gendarran Fields, Kessex Hills, Harathri Hinterlands, and Fields of Ruin. I still only have traits mostly for the first two lines, and even a few of those adept traits aren’t all unlocked.

When my thief hits 80, this is just going to create a massive barrier, for me, an experienced player. As someone who has played since launch, I do appreciate leveling still, and forcing me to wander around the would to be accepted in end game dungeons makes me hate it. As an experienced player, I just want to buy my rares/ a few exotics and jump right into the dungeons. Once I’m all geared out in exotics, jump straight to WvW. However, now I need to get into WvW to unlock some of my traits. That means fighting other players at a severe disadvantage, because traits are literally the CORE OF YOUR BUILD for every facet of the game. Expecting new characters to fight experienced PvP’ers without all of there traits accessible to them is ridiculous.

I am extremely disappointed by this change. It makes adjusting to the level cap even more difficult. It adds another, unnecessary layer to grind out before you can start running dungeons with any group.

Thanks! I had no idea this existed. Has there been any word from developers?

Something I just realized- every single trait needs to be unlocked in order to slot them. I just noticed this on my level 30 thief. My other characters were all grand fathered in to the old system.

Why are they adding even more gates before I can start to play end game dungeons on a profession? The cost to unlock every single skill is absurd! especially for a new player. 28 gold (I believe, I did very quick calculations that may be wrong) and 250 Skill points.
Why did anyone think implementing this system would be a good idea?

I was just curious because I see people that keep making sweeping statements about how the DE nerf coupled with the vigor need will ruin the shatter builds beyond all repair. The vigor need is justified, and if DE will work the way I think it will, it won’t have much of an impact on shatter mesmers. DE will hurt PU mesmerism the most, because they rely on clone deaths from creating more clones.

Those threads are a jumbled mess of everyone saying, “No, you’re wrong, THIS how it will work!”
And I still don’t understand why we think we should be the only ones with a super powerful 5 point trait they’ve already fixed across the board.

I don’t understand the Mesmer community’s reaction to the vigor nerf? Didn’t they already do the same thing to engineers, Eles, and Guards?

Also, how does the new clone mechanic work? If you have 3 phantasms out, will you be barred from producing more clones? Or will the clones still replace the oldest phantasm?

Yes! Oh please yes!! LOTRO had this mode, and it was supper useful in raids and dungeons. Less micromanaging for the Loremaster, which to this day, has required more micromanaging than any other class I’ve played in an MMO.

Fast paced and ranged? Something tanky? It really sounds like the ranger is for you! We bunker really well, and our power builds are now starting to see the light of day with some recent buffs.
Stay away from the Ranger forums. They’re a bunch of doomsayers.

Most of these “nerfs” are bug fixes, so they weren’t really needs. Especially the ones that allowed us to shoot behind us.

How do you deal with this? The only area of condition removal I can find with out limiting the build are sigils of purity and empathetic Bond, which usually doesn’t work when I need them to.
I like this build because it shuts down thieves and is so strong with kiting. I’m running Axe/Dagger and SB with TU heal and frost/spike/flame traps with entangle.

Using a 10/30/30/0/0 build

I really like using a trapper ranger. They are really strong against thieves, because the traps give their position away. A thief the other day actually remarked on how he’s never been kited like that before.
This will destroy guardians, since they have such a small amount of soft CC.

The biggest advantage to the build is that people don’t know how to fight against it, because it isn’t the “meta”.

I use SB and Axe/Dagger (maximum kiting ability) with Spike, Flame, and Frost traps

Lexandro.1456:

Bombsaway.7198:

Well, I think it is quite clear that furious grip isn’t supposed to have 9 seconds of fury on a proc of weapon swap that occurs every 10 seconds if you so choose.

50% uptime is realistic. 90% is a bit much.

Tell that to warriors who can have 100% uptime of fury if they so chose.

We are not warriors, so stop comparing us to them. I hate when people compare classes. They aren’t supposed to be the same!

Meraxes Thundershot – Iron Legion Engineer

I’m still not sold on the surname. My warband overwhelms the enemy with overwhelming firepower from our cannons, hence the “Thundershot”.

When I log in, or Transition maps I get a black screen. Every part of the UI is displayed, weapon sets change underwater, and I can see my cast bar, but the actual game won’t display. Is there a way for to fix this?

EDIT: I found the problem. Why does Render Sampling affect this?
I can play with Subsample and Supersmaple, but “Native” makes my screen go black. And Selecting “Native” with “Windowed Full screen” resolution brings in a still shot of where my character last was. I move around on my map, but not on the screen. I can still see my cast bar.

This really saddens me. I don’t understand why they would do this. It comes off as disrespectful to the people playing humans. Like we aren’t as important. : /

For an “all around” build, I would suggest a BM bunker. x/x/30/x/30 with sword/dagger and axe/torch, or vice versa.

OR

a Signet ranger, there are many builds for this but I personally use 30/20/20/0/0 with a GS and which ever bow I feel like using.

I use both of these builds for all aspects of the game. Bear in mind, these are both bunker builds.

I’m currently using 30/20/20 build with GS/SB when I roam. With Soldier gear (no runes, I’m not sure what to a lot yet!) and 1 berserker ring and accessory, with 1 knight ring and accessory
First question: I’m using 2 sigils of hydromancy- is there a better alternative?

Now, on to the topic: hello everyone! I’m looking on tips for fighting thieves 1 on 1. Was getting stepped on by back stabbed this morning in sPvP duels, and I got into a scuffle with an evasion theif this morning in WvW. The backstabbers give me problems because I don’t have very much burst to hit them when they pop out of stealth.
The acrobatic kept stealing from me and leaping through the water field. I made a few mistakes at the beginning of the fight and ended up sitting at half health the entire fight, but so did the thief.
Any suggestions?

You’ll never get better by just using the most OP builds for a class…

Go into one of the 1v1 practice rooms and practice there. I’ve had success using a signet power bunker and a Regen condition bunker. People there are usually willing to fight you multiple times so you can learn how to fight there class.

I suppose I’m a glutton for punishment, then. :P I’ve been using GS/SB both with Hydromancy sigils to promote active weapon swapping. This way I can keep the pressure on with dazes. I usually start the fight with my spider and Shortbow, using F2 as my opener. I kite as long as I can, once all my SB CD’s are used up, I switch to GS in melee range.

Thanks everyone! I’ve been playing around with the SB on a tankier build in sPvP and it’s great! A guardian got mad because he couldn’t get close to me, between 3,4,5 my drake hound and spider. I really enjoyed using the short bow over the longbow this morning! Too bad it isn’t very useful in PvE.
One last question: would you recommend a celestial SB or Rampager SB on a power build?

Spider immobilize→Swap to drakehound→ leap-knock down→ F2 immobilize while they are down. They either die, or are forced to pop their cooldowns. I love it!

I know this sounds like a redundant question, but people seem to treat the bleed on shortbow as only an added bonus. That being said, can the short bow be used in power builds since the 3-5 skills are purely for utility?

Why the grief? Vigor is getting nerfed across the board for all the classes. We have it better than most classes still, because we have evade on more of our weapons than any other profession.

Order of Whispers. Even if you’re not in whispers with your Necro, you can buy it on a toon that is, transmute it to a white chest piece, then retransmute it onto your necro.
Also, this helps! http://www.gw2armor.com/asura/male/light_list.php

What gender/race are you?

On my female necro, I’m using the Arah pants, the Masquerade mantle, Whispers chest, CoF boots and gloves.

I love the Arah pants, because of the way they flare out. TA chest pieces looks extremely nice on females if you like “flowy” stuff.

I’m almost positive it’s a HotM Skin.

The biggest issue I see, is that you’re not committed to a damage style, but at the same time you’re not a hybrid spec.
As for your weapons: Use scepter is a condition weapon. You can’t use it as a power weapon. Focus is a power weapon, you can’t use it as a condition weapon. This means the two don’t mix. The best off hand we have for condition specs is dagger offhand.
Axe war horn can work, but it’s tough because you have to be in melee range for warhorn to be effective.
My recommendation for weapons set is the following:
Power:
•Axe/ Focus- both are ranged, and focus compliments the axes ability to stack vulnerability.
•Dagger/War horn- The war horn is strongest in melee, and dagger is our only me lee weapon, so naturally they work well when paired together.

Condition:
Scepter/OH dagger- 2/3 of the scepters skills apply conditions, while the third does more damage based on conditions. Dagger off hand’s 4 skill allows you to give any conditions on you to your enemy (more damage on scepter 3) and dagger 5 applies very long conditions (more scepter 3 damage).

See how each of these sets synergizes with each other? That’s how you should plan your weapon sets.
Staff is an oddball here. It’s our only 1200 range weapon, and it can be used in power and condition builds. Condition builds utilize it’s conditions AND it’s utility (fear and Regen), while power builds can only effectively use it’s utility. This leads most condition users to use scepter/dagger and staff. Power builds tend to use axe/focus and dagger/war horn.

That being said, find what you like. In my power build, I use axe/focus and staff. I use these because I like them. And my trait setup allows me to gain Life Force with the staff at extreme ranges, which is useful for bosses like Lupi in Arah.

The issue here, is it would encourage players to actively kill their pets, which I don’t think Anet wants. This goes against the entire concept of relying on your pet for utility. Managing the pet is part of the class.
The only builds that wouldn’t utilize sending you pet in a blender to get it killed would be BM builds.

This nerf isn’t directed towards us. Guardians, Mesmer, Engineers, Rangers, and Ele’s are all getting their access to vigor reduced. I don’t know why you guys should think we’re more special than the others.

Thanks! That build looks awesome and I’m currently building towards it. Do you think Soldier or Knight’s gear would be better with it?

Yeah, I totally missed it. :/

Same here with AC! I didn’t see this post and made my own thread. Sorry for the multiple topics. :/

I was playing literally 20 minutes ago and just Ran Hotw AC path 3, I left to finish Homework. When I came back to hop into AC I was disconnected 3 times while trying to enter the dungeon.