Guild Wars 2

That’s harsh…hopefully you get some better luck with your MF items…

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Stort, are you really claiming that the signit + heartseeker can close a distance of 1200+ before someone can react?

Honestly people…

I’m not claiming either way but it’s definitely possible, much like how its possible for someone in Black Ops to walk into a room and head shot 5 people without hacks.

All-in-all when reflexes are concerned some people are crazy skilled and some are slower then a stoner on payday.

That thief almost died a few times and if the enemy didn’t constantly panic they probably would have killed the thief.

Manta.7962:

Guys, let’s not forget that this skill is absolutely fantastic when you have a group of 10 or more (Like with most champion and dragon fights). If you just stand there spamming bodyshot, then you’re amplifying other players’ damage far more than if you spend the damage on attacking normally.

I’ve tried it in dungeons and we actually did better when I stopped using the ability.
But then again that was 5 people, not 10…

Zarania.6235:

Just tried myself (lvl 80 thief), couldnt get up to 25bleeds.

i call bs on this…

Then you’re doing it wrong.

Step 1
Caltrops
Step 2
Take Root
Step 3
C+D
Step 4
Sneak Attack with pistol
Step 5
Use Hidden within the Shadows
Step 6
Sneak attack with pistol

You should have 25 bleeds stacked on a single target (if your Take Root is attacking a whole lot of other stuff you won’t hit 25)

You shouldn’t call b.s. on something because you’re not doing it right…

I was doing it all day today too, consistently hitting 25 bleeds on a single veteran mob. When the Take Root attacked other targets I’d end up getting the stacks to around 18-20 which is where I think you’re messing up.

If you think this is bad go to the Starcraft 2 forums or worse yet, the LoL forums…those places are perfect examples of where a policy like this belongs because of how rude, irresponsible and uncaring the user base is.

Here, people generally keep it civil so I think this is total overkill for such a mild mannered community.

Now if everyone magically develops BM overnight and starts trolling non-stop…okay I’d be down for trying it.

wildcode.5403:

Magic Find is not as good a s people make it out to be, I usually have to spend 2-3 days in cursed shore taking hours at a time to chain the right events to make just 10G from drops over those few days. I have full MF armor with priate runes, full magic find jewels, and magic find weapons … plus omnomberry bars. Might take an hour or so to fill up my inv, sell greens and blues, salvage whites and yellows. People who are making 20-30G a day farming mobs are having much better “luck” than I am with my MF gear.

I had +5% magic find on my Slayer Coat. I found so many yellow items it was disgusting.

Found a Strong Pirate Coat of Vampirism (which I’m currently using), a whatever pistol of earth (which I’m using), a ton of axes of earth, a harpoon gun of earth, actually I’ve found one of each type of weapon (of earth) all with major sigils of earth on them…I’m actually sad I didn’t salvage it so I could get back the rune of whatever I put on my coat because of the amazing drops it helped me get consistently.

Anyhow what if magic find applied to everyone in the party (non-stackable, so if 1 person had 5% magic find and another had 15% the party would only get +15% magic find) for dungeons only?

I think that would be viable.

Agreed, the closest waypoint should be free. I’ve often wondered “what happens if I’m broke and then I die?”

Is someone supposed to happen upon my corpse and go “oh hey, I should res them!”

I get how most people do this but there could be game-breaking instances where this doesn’t happen…

This current system of double whammy wasn’t well conceived.
Make the closest waypoint free upon death and for the love of god Anet please, please, please scale the cost of waypoint to our effective level. I shouldn’t have to pay silver to waypoint in a lvl 1-15 area…ever.

gamefreak.5673:

I have a 80 necro who is a conditionmancer and I enjoy him, I have a 80 engineer who is actully better for conditions then my necro. The necro though can spread conditions to many others quickly but is slower at applying them then a engineer who can apply them quicker and more types at once with bleeds, burns, and vulnerability on crit alone for engineers.

I also have a 80 thief who i made just I could figure out ways to beat the annoying stealth and in that process i got him to 80 because i enjoyed it for some reason. Still hate stealth in this game and how it works against everyone else.

I have a guardian who is a master of virtues and spreading burning. I am now in the process of making a Mesmer. I have tons of in game practice with each of them besides the Mesmer because I just cant figure out whats best yet for how I want to play.

Condition builds have series weakeness since they cant hurt seige weapons, doors, walls, etc as a direct damage build can. They can also only stack up to 25 bleeds which can be cleared off very quickly along with all other conditions.

Which ironically has nothing to do with the topic…

frans.8092:

“If you don’t mash your skills then you’ll have initiative to spare”

No, if, halfway in a fight, you have more then 50-60% of initiative you are not using your thief’s abilities right. Ergo, not a very useful trait.

You’re implying I do one of the following

1) When the enemy is immune to C+D/Backstab/Sneak attack I should keep using it (no)
2) Spam Heartseeker (at the cost of more backstabs, so no, not unless its to finish my target off)
3) Spam Deathblossom/Dancing Dagger (vs a single target that is horrible)

I’d rather manage my initiative properly rather then go lawl SPAM IT ALL NAOW INSTANT GRATIFICATION, gain a consistent 10% damage and be able to backstab/Sneak Attack/C+D more often.

15 heartseekers all on the same enemy…oh god…what next? 15 backstabs on a single enemy? I could see a well organized and coordinated set of thieves dismantling WvWvW with assassination-style ganks.

That’s why I’ll never, ever invest in a condition-heavy build. Conditions are icing on the cake.

I’m thinking as well of getting 5 superior runes of the Infiltrator for my exotic set…boost that 25-45% additional damage to 25-65% additional damage.

Basically if I build it right…once you hit 50% hp you’re screwed in the worst way.
(I’m using the trait that converts some of per precision to vitality, it’s already making a noticeable difference…around 900 health difference at lvl 62)

It would also help the P/P thief be less reliant on “unload” spams because lets face it, P/P is boring. Spam unload, use head shot on a channeling ability, occasionally drop black powder, spam more unload.

P/D is less boring but this would definitely give it more versatility.

As a user who plans on getting 3 legendary weapons all I’ve got to say is “man, Anet why did you have to make the RNG such a pain in this process?”.

Sure I’ll do it but it’s gonna take forever and it’s not gonna be enjoyable. I’m gonna get mad.

Red Falcon.8257:

Exposed Weakness (10%) -> only on a conditioned target, pretty much all classes have this.
Dagger Training (5%) Pistol Mastery (5%) -> standard of all classes cept they get 10%
First Strikes (10%) – only when initiative is over 6, aka never after 2s into a fight
Executioner (20%) -> I don’t think anyone uses this instead of Hidden Killer, failing to crit a backstab is a much bigger fail than anything on a thief.

So in reality it’s 10% on the first 2 hits, then only 5% real damage bonus for the rest of the fight, or 15% IF target has a condition AND only on a full Deadly Arts build.

Pretty much the same as other classes have.

I think you’re downplaying this a lot.
If you don’t mash your skills then you’ll have initiative to spare. (10%)
Vital Shot means your enemy will ALWAYS have a condition (bleed) (10%)
Then there’s the 5%
Hidden Killer can be replaced by investing points into Critical Strike and having decent gear (I’ve seen people with 95% chance to crit before) this combined with Executioner doing more long-term damage means its more viable.

All-in-all it’s not 5-15% damage, it’s 25-45% damage if you play smart.

Yeah, prices were at 20 a piece now they’re 6-7 a piece. Too bad, there goes my lucrative business of candy corn selling.

Hmm I may say screw it for the Shadow Arts and put the 15 into trickery 9since I’m stacking 25 bleeds by myself the condition boost could be beneficial as will the extra initiative)….yeah I’ll just use my jewelry to boost up my toughness/vitality and use berserker armor to cover my crit/power.

I run P/D and D/D, don’t use D/D too often but for single target backstabs spam it could be useful.

Sylvari have Take Root which is pretty bloody powerful if used correctly. Lets me easily stack 25 bleeds by myself, each turret does more damage then me and I’m spec’d into crit/power and their range/shot arch makes them able to hit things a fair decent ways away. Other then that though I have yet to see a powerful racial elite ability.

Man, I must suck at crafting…I try to gain levels crafting, I use discovery mode on EVERYTHING and in a hour I get 1/10th of a level at lvl 49.

So last night I’m grinding away some world events, there’s a veteran eagle griffin at the end of the 2 event loop in my event grind area so I decide to go “what the hell”

I drop caltrops, I use take root, I then use C+D and sneak attack with my pistol…BAM I’ve stacked 25 bleeds on my own. I thought…no way, this has to be a fluke so I go through my quest loop again and when I come up to the Veteran Eagle Griffin I do it again…25 bleeds. I actually top out at the 25 cap because I can use C+D and Hide in the Shadows to stack even more bleeds (I’d probably cap at 30-33 bleeds).

Why am I posting this? To demonstrate that the cap simply isn’t enough even for solo PvE. We need a better bleed system to help thieves and necromancers badly.

Body Shot, while having uses to support your allies is lack luster. Its initiative cost is high, its cast time is high and other professions have better ways to consistently stack vulnerability. This leads Body Shot to be a largely ignored ability.

This suggestion is to change Body Shot to something new

Enter: Blunderbuss

Blunderbuss-Shoots several bullets in a single shot, each shot causes vulnerability.

Shots are spread out in a cone shape with a 65 degree angle from the player using “blunderbuss”.

Damage: (per shot) 130
(2 stacks of) Vulnerability: For 5 seconds (per shot)
Combo Finisher: Projectile
Range: 900
Initiative Cost: 4 (its powerful so I feel it needs to have a higher cost then 3)
Number of shots: 7

It gives main hand pistol thieves “AoE”, vulnerability, some really, really good burst damage when used at point blank range and can be used strategically in P/D, P/P.

This will synergize with the following abilities

Steal
Shadowstep
Shadow Trap
Infiltrator’s Signet

Please note the numbers are rough and may need to be adjusted…130 may be too high for several shots if you activate it at point blank range vs a single target.

Body Shot, while having uses to support your allies is lack luster. Its initiative cost is high, its cast time is high and other professions have better ways to consistently stack vulnerability. This leads Body Shot to be a largely ignored ability.

This suggestion is to change Body Shot to something new

Enter: Blunderbuss

Blunderbuss-Shoots several bullets in a single shot, each shot causes vulnerability.

Shots are spread out in a cone shape with a 65 degree angle from the player using “blunderbuss”.

Damage: (per shot) 130
(2 stacks of) Vulnerability: For 5 seconds (per shot)
Combo Finisher: Projectile
Range: 900
Initiative Cost: 4 (its powerful so I feel it needs to have a higher cost then 3)
Number of shots: 7

It gives main hand pistol thieves “AoE”, vulnerability, some really, really good burst damage when used at point blank range and can be used strategically in P/D, P/P.

This will synergize with the following abilities

Steal
Shadowstep
Shadow Trap
Infiltrator’s Signet

Please note the numbers are rough and may need to be adjusted…130 may be too high for several shots if you activate it at point blank range vs a single target.

This isn’t how you get devs to take you seriously…this is how you discredit legitimate issues.

That being said I agree with your point about the skills completely. Often times I’ll hit a button to use a skill, it will not activate so I hit it again and BAM my character uses that skill twice. Yeah, because I wanted to use C+D 2x in a row, clearly…

Not sure if this has to do with memory, servers or internet connection but I would like to see a system implemented for specific skills like C+D that are totally unspamable that allows the game to say “oh this person is rapidly pressing a unspamabke skill, we’re only going to use it once”.

I was thinking more for PvE. Might try out a P/D and D/D build that utilizes backstabs with stuff like sneak attack, etc. Would be good for crowd control and single target burst damage…in theory/

I was thinking more for a P/D thief for C+D and general vital shot spams. backstab thiefs are…meh overdone.

Exposed Weakness (10%)
Dagger Training (5%) Pistol Mastery (5%)
First Strikes (10%)
Executioner (20%)

is 45% additional damage, 25% additional damage if the target has above 50% health.

Has anyone else built their Thief using these damage boosts and if so how’s the damage performance?

Jiminy.8340:

Or simply getting it to stack multiple instances of vulnerability would work.

It already does, it stacks 5 vulnerability. Problem is that it takes forever to cast and takes tons of initiative.

But you can’t speed it up without making it too powerful because of how much a single shot stacks…

Undocumented nerf #3. What’s going on here Anet?

I’ve actually been noticing a trend specifically with thiefs, we seem to be getting a lot of undocumented nerfs. I mean a lot of them…

half-agree. it shouldn’t cost as much as it does but I still feel it should cost something to travel extreme distances. Maybe just have it cost us silver/gold/bronze to travel to a different zone but make it free for the zone we’re currently in, kind of like how it works when we’re in a city like Lion’s Arch.

Sounds like a bug that needs fixing. Thiefs seem to have lots of mechanics issues…

Personally, I see Body Shot as a fairly useless ability. Don’t get me wrong the stacks of vulnerability are great, the problem lies in high initiative cost and long cast time making multiple Body Shots not last long enough to really profit off of.

Now I understand that buffing this ability would probably be overpowered so instead I came up with a neat system for Thiefs that gives them utility while maintaining the functionality of Body Shot.

Body Shot-Make your foe vulnerable with a body shot.

Damage: 110
1 stack of vulnerability: 5 seconds
Combo Finisher: Projectile (20% chance)
Range: 900

This reworked ability would have the same cast time and cooldown as Vital Shot and wouldn’t cost initiative. It would function as a second auto-cast attack ability and would be usable as a sneak attack.

This would allow the Thief to stack vulnerability, save initiative for abilities that actually pull weight and in the case of dungeons and other events where stacking 25 bleeds is common, allow them to stack vulnerability effectively.

Since the day I got GW2 I’ve been using pistols, I love them.

P/P gives me good single target burst damage, stuns, black power…it’s just a solid weapon set. P/D is the same, very, very solid skill set however they both suffer from a useless ability: Body Shot.

Between its high initiative cost, it’s long cast time and its low damage the stacking of vulnerability is almost never worth it, just because to get any meaningful stacks it means I had to blow all my initiative and because of the long casting time I don’t even get to profit off of my stacked vulnerability.

Something needs to change so the ability is worth while and to me, because of how the thief operates off of initiative I’d like to see Body Shot become a secondary attack ability that doesn’t use initiative.

Essentially it would work just like vital shot except the trade-off would be lower damage and instead of bleed it would apply 1 stack of vulnerability for 5 seconds.

Short Bow is better for multiple mobs because of the AoE but P/P is far, far superior for single target damage.

Unload is pretty decent for burst damage (it’s still too costly in regards to initiative though) and head shot is one of the most underrated abilities in GW2.

I think your best bet would be to use P/D though for a few reasons:

Vital Shot stacks bleed, does decent damage.
Never use Body Shot, it’s a trashy ability.
Shadow Strike deals decent damage and increases the distance between you and your target (great survivability)
Dancing Dagger allows you to perma-cripple your target and deal phenomenal damage to multiple mobs.
Cloak and Dagger allows you use of invisibility and sneak attack with Vital Shot which stacks multiple bleeds…it’s amazing.

P/D gives you the PvE utilities you need, survivability, high single target damage, conditions, viable crowd control…as long as your mechanics are solid this weapon set can do just about anything from a distance.

vespers.1759:

the running animation is actually one of the more realistic ones. it’s the in combat animation that looks incredibly ridiculous.

Yeah when mine holds her pistol she looks like the weight might break her wrist. Oh well. I still <3 her.

nachtnebel.9168:

Wait until you see certain bosses, glass cannons are just not worth it if you encounter them.

You can do well as a glass cannon in single pve or world pvp, but that doesn’t mean that a build like that is viable in highlevel dungeons.

You mean like eye of zhaitan? Yeah, I got bored and solo’d him at lvl 46 naked.

Glass cannons are viable but from what I’ve seen lots of people don’t have good team work so they don’t know how to play with glass cannons. If I get downed in a dungeon I have my team mates reviving me asap because I do more damage then any one of them can do and because I have a small enough health pool that I revive quickly.

To me it sounds like you just don’t understand how to support your Glass Cannon team mates properly. :/

nachtnebel.9168:

Okay, since you talked about Raids I assumed that you were already or at least close to 80. Once you are there, you will notice, that dungeon groups don’t like glass cannons and, at least at my server, tend to kick them if they refuse to change equip and traits if something goes south.

No offense, but in my book glass cannons are more a burden to their group than anything else. GW2 just doesn’t support that kind of playstyle.

The purpose of the glass cannon is to dish out insane amounts of damage.
Their survivability may be low (although I won’t have incredibly low survivability since I’ll have a reasonable amount of toughness) but their damage output will be massive to make up for it.

The problem lies in the fact that people think it’s good to have more then a single glass cannon on their team and as such they lack any damage absorbing capabilities.

This is why when I party up my requirements are at least 2 warriors/guardians or 1 warrior/guardian+1 necromancer…this way it doesn’t matter if we have a D/D thief who spec’d berserker armor and 30/30/0/0/10, because it can live long enough to backstab for that 20k damage.

Glass cannons are only burdens to people who don’t understand how a team functions.

Agreed, dueling would be fine. Open world gank would be horrible.

nachtnebel.9168:

BabelFish.7234:

When I dungeon I need a tank I do insane burst damage…to the point where I will force aggro on myself constantly despite often being a lower level with inferior equipment. I do get what you’re saying though, tanks aren’t nessicarliy needed unless you have glass cannons in your party.

You can avoid that by using a suitable dungeon build. Dungeons in GW2 are not like those in most other games, they are not about taking down mobs as fast as possible, they are about surviving them. Once a group realized that they start to have way more fun.

I don’t know if you do Arah or not. But if you do and you play as a glass cannon (below at least 14k HP) you can’t afford to get hit by even one of his single target attacks, and that’s nothing a tank could change cause Lupi picks his targets by random.

Atm my thief is lvl 49 I’m not doing Arah just yet. Bar ranged mobs I don’t get hit (I use P/D so I perma-cripple) but I also plan on boosting my toughness quite a bit (15 into shadow arts and my jewelry will focus largely on ToughnessVit while my armor/weapons will focus on my power and crit).

P/D isn’t about crazy condition damage…it’s about survivability.
You gain the ability to infini-kite with DD and CD. If you build properly you can deal an additional 45% damage to your enemy (25% if they’re above 50% health).

Leave the heavy condition damage to the D/D builds because they can spam it easy…

nachtnebel.9168:

Besides the fact that Arena Net said on multiple occasions that there are neither healers nor tanks you might be right …

I know what they said and from a testers point of view the tank still exists…it’s just not as absolute as a traditional MMORPG. I like the soft-tank status Guardians have much like how I enjoy the soft-DoT/Debuff role Theifs have.

To me it seems like each class was designed with one major role in mind but given the ability to fill other roles competently and this is where I believe their statement comes into play…although it’s misleading for them to say there is no “tank”.

Additionally you don’t need tanks at all, my current Arah farm group consits of nothing but scholar professions and we usually do everything first try.

When I dungeon I need a tank I do insane burst damage…to the point where I will force aggro on myself constantly despite often being a lower level with inferior equipment. I do get what you’re saying though, tanks aren’t nessicarliy needed unless you have glass cannons in your party.

If Arena Net would have unlimited ressources I wouldn’t mind, but since that’s not the case and most of the Dragon Events – I only say most just cause I don’t want to say all – are boring as hell, I don’t want any more of them. They should rather focus on more encounters like Lupi, Dwayna or Alphard, those are interesting fights that don’t require more than 5 people.

To me, that’s the only area WoW had right, raids that were interesting. Sure they took 90 minutes but they were epic and entertaining if everyone played reasonably well.

I’d like to see GW2 take the things other MMORPGs did right and adapt them to their game because GW2 has a massive amount of potential and I want to see GW2 become incredibly popular. Anet has a gem in the rough here and I want to start seeing some polish.

Rizzy.8293:

BabelFish.7234:

In terms of the bonuses, Shadow Arts. But because condition damage blows due to its max of 25 stacks I’m finding Deadly Arts to be the more useful trait.

Shadow arts: Stealth = 2 stacks of might

Useful, very useful (I respec’d from using that+trickery because I needed higher damage output) but with my build I do a extra 45% damage to my enemy if they’re under 50% health. If they’re over I deal an extra 25% damage.

runeblade.7514:

Mini-dungeons, and jump puzzles allows unlimited amount of people.

We need more open world mini-dungeons more than raids.

I like this too, just more in-game events where you see 20-30 people all working to take down a singular, epic boss.

Daryl.4621:

if you do that how will you target an enemy?

In a perfect world you’d hold down the right mouse button to make the cursor appear again and disengage the camera lock.

Thiefs ARE squishy. Use stealth, cripple and dodge to stay alive. Personally I’m always circle kiting and using Dancing Dagger/Caltrops to maintain constant cripple. If you can’t circle kite properly because the area is small/cluttered you can still kite in a oval which works just as good if you time your dodges for when you double back.

Right now I have 20 in Deadly Arts and 19 in Critical.
When all is said and done I’ll have 25 in Deadly, 30 in critical and 15 in Shadow. My gear will provide me with power/precision while my jewelry will provide me with toughness and vitality.

In terms of the bonuses, Shadow Arts. But because condition damage blows due to its max of 25 stacks I’m finding Deadly Arts to be the more useful trait.

I’d like a option to have the camera locked into control with the mouse without having to hold the right mouse button down non-stop.

Maybe it already exists and I haven’t found it yet but without holding down right click I find the game unplayable…

Just send players who have a activity pattern reminiscent of what bots do a piece of mail. They then have to send a reply back confirming they’re a person (if they do not within 10 minutes the game disconnects them). When the player in question logs back on they most reply to their mail within 10 minutes or they are disconnected again and this will continue to happen until they respond.

Once the player responds they get a bonus of their choice, be it gold, karma or a boon for a hour…they just get something for verifying they’re human.

nachtnebel.9168:

BabelFish.7234:

In GW2 you’d have your tanks (Guardians/Warriors) who were absorbing the aggro/damage

Sry, I’m out after that. GW2 has no tanks and should never have them. If there should ever be Raid in GW2 they definitively should use the same mechanic as the regular dungeons: random aggro.

If GW2 has no “tanks” go take a P/P thief and try to soak up the damage from a dungeon boss. Next go take a Guardian and try it. I don’t understand where this notion of there are no tanks in GW2 comes from…there’s no dedicated healer doesn’t translate into there’s no dedicated tanks…

In general I’m shocked to see such horrible responses to the ADDING PvE modes…do you guys want the same old boring crap over and over again…? Why wouldn’t you want additional non-compulsory events that require more people? Isn’t this what the new Dragon events are essentially, raids?