Guild Wars 2

Now, I haven’t played Overwatch at all, but have played A LOT of MOBAs.
When you speak of a “carry” that usually means a character that is weak early on but gets stronger and stronger the more resources they acquire. In the early stages of the game however, they are totally dependent on their team-mates.

As you can see, this mechanic is impossible to implement to the conquest game-mode or to MMO-PvP in general, where a game is over in 8-10 minutes.

Carrying in general, is ALWAYS done with damage…but unfortunately in GW2 every class is STACKED with passive, low-CD survivablity. Even when you get a good, well-timed burst onto your target, it very rarely matters….which is the main issue here.

People running around with ~800 HP regen/sec (sup Warriors), perma Protection/Blocks, passive condi-cleanse, multiple invulns etc.etc. —> This is, what makes it so incredibly hard to carry.

Randomly giving people damage buffs is more of a band-aid than an actual solution.

rbbthole.9074:

BikeIsGone.8675:

Larcenous Strike + Steal: Since Flanking strike doesn’t actually have to hit the target to give access to the chain skill, you can use it as an evade. Then precast LS and steal as the cast is about to hit.

lol

true, lel. let me edit

Since i see a lot of detailed explanations on positioning and damage-modifier stacking i think, I will give you a more basic break-down.

Firstly, it’s important to notice, that Steal has no cast-time and can therefor be used WHILE casting something else, without interrupting the original attack. This means for example, that you can precast powerful attacks even from range and use steal to get into melee-range just as the attack is about to hit. This is what allows you to do some incredible burst combos.

A few basic examples:

Backstab + Steal: BS has a very short cast time of .25 seconds, so you can precast it and steal to your target just before the cast is finished.

Heartseeker + Steal: Same principle applies here. Cast Heartseeker, and while in mid air, you can use steal.

Pistolwhip + Steal. Same principle as With backstab.

As said, this is the very base principal, which you can expand with various mechanics to get an even bigger burst.

Pyromano.7365:

looking for video rotations and qntify page, the difficulty of the rotation is high more than others chars, so its so easy fail in rotation and lost damage done…

Not so much to hit buttons but difficult to success in the rotation. I tried the rotation and fails in top damage in some times, the damage deal in these times is 23k, sometimes get +30k but few times. full buffs and foods

Yes, altho the rotation is quite easy, it takes some time to get the “feeling” (=lack of a better word) for it. A few pointers:

• Stand at MAX melee range
• Do NOT target the boss
• The camera angle has to be top-down → this is especially important since your Staff#2 range will be shortened, allowing you to hit every strike. If you don’t have the camera angle right, you will move further, resulting in only hitting your #2 twice instead of three times. It’s the same mechanic you use, when stealth-stacking on D/P with heartseeker.

Also, make sure to use class-specific buffs like GotL, Banners, Spotter and 25 Vuln-stacks on the boss.

From what I have seen, these vanilla-builds can be run pretty successfully:

Condi-Necro:
https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Necromancer_-_Vanilla_Condi_Necro
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBLhZ6kGRoyGszGw2Gg/GcgLUxtOf/A4VHALANNajoF-TpQTABvWGAg9HAA

Ranger (Power):
https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_Power_Survival

Burn-Guard:
https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_Burst_Burning

Condi-Engi:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqalUUhqrY9VwdLQ7FLsFlYHNFPRYKeRvG4HWiBAA-TpQTABAs/wrlBAA
…The Flamethrower-variant is inferior imo, since the weaponkit itself is completely useless and you only use it for the Toolbelt skill. Can run deadshot and scavanging rune as an alternative.

I think there is a somewhat viable version of Ham/bow warrior too, but since I dont have any experience with warrior, I don’t know about it.

Midi.8359:

Edit: A thought, have there been any studies on the medical effects of consuming ectoplasm?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Consume_Plasma
There have been studies indicating, that plasma could truly be a vitamin bomb. Thanks to the MMA (Mesmer Medical Association), who are known to have the monopoly on Plasma, the cost of this treatment unfortunately is unaffordable for the most of us.

Pyromano.7365:

advise from people who i talked about thiefs in pve…

Change class…

then those people misinformed you.
I mean, I get the general idea…Apart from its damage, thief doesn’t really offer anything in high-end pve group play. And in comparison to other top damage classes (which i mentioned in my earlier post) the damage isn’t THAT much higher. Engies, Rangers and Eles at least bring some form of utlility (Heals, aoe-CC and a variety of combo-fields), which often makes them a better choice.

But still…The thief rotation is so stupidly easy, that your DPS barely suffers from various boss mechanics. Eles and Engies are good example for this…If they mess up their (rather complex) rotations even by a bit, they loose pretty significant DPS. Unless those classes are played by very experienced players, Thief will almost always outdamage them.

If you have trouble staying alive, you can – as Straegen already said – always pick the Invigorating Precision trait. Paired with Signet of Malice, you are essentially immortal as long as you keep hitting something.

I honestly dont know how you get the impression that thief is weak in pve.
These “constant damage nerfs” you speak of dont exist.
With >30k dps, thief has comparable dps to top classes like Condi-Ranger, Condi-Engi and even Elementalist (!) AND is a lot easier to play. In a realistic/movement-based encounter, thief will most likely even outdamage these classes, since your optimal damage-rotation seriously only needs 3 buttons.

The only thing I agree with here, is the absolute lack of group utility. Apart from single target CC, thief has nothing to offer the group. But then again, not every class has to.

A optimal subgroup looks something like:
Chrono, Druid, PS-Warri + 2 DPS.
And thief can easily fill one of those DPS slots.

no worries guys, new reveal sigil will fix it all…

Very good build!
Fills the very important role of the “Perma dodge tank” in any wvw-raid.
Makes tanking various difficult pve encounters in wvw a breeze, while maintaining very important caltrop-cripple through perma dodges.

Although this build mainly shines in big zerg-fights, where you only have to hit each target 8-9 times (on shortbow, just to be safe) to get kill participation, it can even perform well in solo play, when in skilled enough hands. If you maintain a perfect dps rotation (takes some practive), you might even be able to clear an entire camp before the mobs start respawning.

The only point of criticism I have, is the unnecessarily aggressive rune. With Rune of the monk you can maintain pretty good uptime on regen from upper hand. If you still have trouble staying alive, you could even consider picking up Rune of Durability.

All in all a great build however, although i would only recommend it to experienced players. 10/10

You are very welcome. For reaching crit-chance thresholds with any classes you essentially just have to keep the following in mind, if in a raid setup:

Spotter (7%) + Banner (8%) + Fury (20%) = 35% crit chance overall.

now when you are a thief and run crit-strikes you get an extra 5% from Keen Observer, meaning that you just have to reach 60% on your own.

Alatar.7364:

BikeIsGone.8675:

During my placements I got asked – a lot! – if I would take close or rush far at the start of the game. Although (in 90% of cases) this is plain bad, people would still get mad at me, if i said that I would do neither. Just getting asked these questions indicate, that those people have no idea what they are talking about. And there is a special place for such people: My blocklist.

I am not sure if I understood you correctly. So where do you go or what do you do with your Thief at the start of the match?

Cynz pretty much summed it up.
Since the only classes you actually can 1v1 are revenants and other thiefs, going far solo, tends to be an incredible waste of time, since you have so little point pressure, that you cant even force a decap when an enemy is standing on it. Because of this capping close is an equally bad idea, if you get pushed. If you are 100% certain that you wont get pushed, it actually isn’t that bad. But it’s a gamble, that’s usually not worth taking.

Usually I go to the mid fight, smoke-blast with my team and try to go for a quick kill. If it succeeds, I stick around to clean up the fight. If it doesn’t, far should be empty by that time, I stealth, disengage and go for a decap.
On a map like Forest you can also stealth up as the game starts and use the beach-side exit to scout for enemy pushes.

The main problem is, as it also was already mentioned, that your team has to be aware of your playstyle. If you have a thief on your team you almost always want to play all 3 nodes. This forces the enemy team to split up, which makes it a lot easier for the thief to have an impact on the game. Unfortunately, especially in lower-tier games, people tend to only play for 2 points, which often puts thief-players in a weird spot, where they can’t really accomplish much.

I guess every thief knows that feel.
But tbh: most people are completely oblivious towards the thief’s role in PvP.

When talking about the meta D/P build, it simply isn’t worth taking (most) 1v1s, since it just takes so freaking long with all the amounts of invuln, blocks, sustain and point pressure most classes have. For reasons unknown however, people think that it’s a thief’s job to take those 1v1s and contest nodes no matter the cost.

During my placements I got asked – a lot! – if I would take close or rush far at the start of the game. Although (in 90% of cases) this is plain bad, people would still get mad at me, if i said that I would do neither. Just getting asked these questions indicate, that those people have no idea what they are talking about. And there is a special place for such people: My blocklist.

I wouldn’t go with full marauders gear, but you can certainly run a zerker/marauder mix or even zerker/valkyrie. If you run Crit-Strikes (which you should for optimal dps), you just have to reach 60% cirt chance. In a raid environment (and with SoA) this will push you to a 100% crit chance. Once you have reached that threshold, you basically want to max Power and Ferocity.

Personally, I run Zerker Weapons and Trinkets with Marauder’s Armor, since I occasionally also roam in WvW and can’t be kitten d to craft another set of armor specifically for that. Although full zerker is optimal for raid DPS, the loss of running this setup isn’t THAT significant.

For dungeons and open world – where everything melts in seconds anyway – you can even run Invigorating Precision. Paired with SoM you basically are immortal unless the boss has some sort of 1-shot mechanic.

DPS classes should aim for about 65% crit chance. With spotter, banner, and Fury this would result in 100% critchance. If you run SoA this can easily be achieved with full zerkers iirc.

Benchmark testings usually also use raid specific buffs. Spoter, 2 GotL stacks, both warri banners and Forst/Sun spirit are added to “realistic” testing. You can ignore Alacrity, since it doesnt do anything for D/D thief anyway.

Apart from warrior still being a bit too strong and rev being a bit too weak, PvP is actually pretty balanced atm. Most classes have a role, they can perform pretty well….For as long as I have played, there has never been a meta, where this many classes have been viable, so I am pertty satisfied with that.

In soloQ its often more of a rotation/communication issue than a balance one. Personally id like some form of voice chat option to improve on that. Maybe even a chat-wheel option, where you can bind some genetic texts on ping. Talking about pings, PLEASE let us rebind the “Ping”-Hotkey!

Im still somewhat getting used to the overall less endurance regen we have now, not just the SoA. In sPvP i cant just mindlessly spam dodges for mere movement alone anymore, since I now frequently find myself entering fights with <100% endurance.

Up until now SoA was more of a midfight “Oh-kitten-button” for me; more of a disengaging tool tbh. But once I have adjusted, I think I will be fine.

I feel like it’s still a buff though. Now SoA makes +1s easier against certain classes imo. Clearing weakness and blind at the same time without having to use Shadowstep for instance, is pretty nice.

kdaddy.5431:

Why?

The 2 players i mentioned got above a 1750 rating. The ranger build was used in the finals on the tournament that helseth and sind hosted.

Warrior only has 2 builds so how is naming MULTIPLE condi builds that can beat warriors in a 1 vs 1 not a good argument from what the OP said?

Please explain

Okay, then. I most likely will get called an advocate for meta-builds for this but idm.

Since I, personally, don’t know how well Burn-guard and D/D thief fare against Warriors, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt here. So even IF those builds build’s beat warrior in a 1v1, a pickup of those over the current meta-build just isn’t justified.

Let me remind you, that we are talking about a 5v5 environment here, so gimping every other aspect of a class just to be able to take 1v1s is simply a mistake.

Just because a build excels at doing A, it’s not worth using if it is inferior to another variant that can do B-Z better. There is a reason WHY a meta exists.
People need to get over the fact, that their ‘special snowflake’-builds just don’t cut it.

In all honesty, even if the enemy team has a warrior, I would still pick a meta Thief / Guardian over what you suggested, cause they will perform better overall….and not just winning 1v1s against that 1 warrior.

kdaddy.5431:

You mean like d/d condi which you wait for warrior to pop beserker stance and you shortbow away then jump back into the fight when its gone?

Or simply use the trait that removes boon on steal when the warrior uses its healing signet? Then again to dodge until your hearts content?

Maybe the burn guardian which still works great in 1 vs 1 with warrior because once again you pop the beserker stance. Use your shelter and renewed focus when they go into beserk mode and time your F3 accordingly.

Mesmer should already win the 1 vs 1 condi version

Necro with life force will win the 1 vs 1 and is already the better choice in team fights.

Ranger has already shown to have the counter 1 vs 1 build to stalemate condi warrior

Rev…….. OMG you got it. Rev can not beat condi warrior. Jeez you are right warrior is so OP!!!!!

You know, you have a bad argument, when you refer to condi thief, burn guard and specific 1v1 ranger builds, to make a point.

DrDivine.5378:

I don’t think I’d go as far as to say say necromancer is bad, getting hit by their condi bursts in team fights can be devastating, it feels incomplete. The pressure can be good, but nothing special. I don’t think I ever hear people saying “Oh we NEED a necro on our team to deal with so and so.”

I think you have misunderstood me there. I never said, that necro was bad, only that it needs tons of support to work properly.

It just bothers me that the power variant works so much more independently than the condi variant. The vast majority of a condi necro’s pressure comes from poison and bleed, which isn’t good enough any more imo. For those conditions to actually become scary, you need high stacks, which you can barely get anymore with the amount of condi cleanse each class has.

Just look at all the other viable condi specs; mainly Mesmer and Warrior. Their main damage comes from a mix of Torment/Confusion/Burning, which condi necro barely has access to.

A necro’s main selling point atm, is it’s boon corruption, which helps it break bunkers like ele, druid, engi and even warrior and guard to some extend (or at least decently pressure those two). Most top-teams still have necros on their team for this especially….So no: necro definitely isn’t bad.

Necro has actually some decent 1v1 potential. I mean, every class has good and bad 1v1 matchups, but necro is by no means bad.

Playing a necro without a good support – preferably ele – on your team is pure masochism to begin with. But ye, condi necro feels somewhat awkward atm. In all honesty, I thought that the change to Deathly chill (where it only applies bleed) was only meant to be temporary measure….but it has been like that for quite some time now. With all the amounts of condi cleanse, bleeds+poison as your main dmg source just dont cut it anymore.

The power variant with blighter’s boon is much more self sufficient atm….although it still needs support from teammates.

I already have said this in another post:
I don’t think a nerf on PI would be warranted, but I think a mechanic-rework could be interesting.

In which way that rework would go, I’d leave to the balance-team, but as of now PI essentially needs Pistol OH to work properly (the daze on steal alone is hardly good enough to justify picking up the trait). Something along the lines of Malicious Reprisal (Revenant Devestation line) could be interesting, as it would make the trait more viable for other weapon-combinations as well.

Even necros and mesmers have a hard time against good warriors. Although a mesmer can somewhat manage (Still a very hard matchup that can go either way imo), a necro gets flat out gets deleted by a warri. Other than that, I gotta agree with you…Warri condi hate is a bit over the top.

I dont think that the main problem is the resistance though, but rather a combination of Cleansing Ire and Brawler’s Recovery in conjunction with Berserker mode. The synergy of these 3 is just insane. Not only can you weaponswap every 5 seconds (which already clears a condition thanks to Brawler’s Recovery) but with the generally fast adrenaline buildup in Berserker Mode and the low CDs of your burst skill you can essentially clear 3 conditions every 5 seconds thanks to Cleansing Ire. Resistance from Berserker-Stance is just the icing imo. I think an ICD on Cleansing Ire of a mere 10 seconds even, would help a lot with that…Without making condi-matchups unwinable for the warri.

gotta agree with wargameur. I think a CV nerf is inbound…although i would not like it.
When you read the forums occasionally, you see that there is A LOT of crying about the dodge spamming of thieves.

Although, in all honesty, what else can a thief do? We dont have invuln, stab or blocks (BD barely counts imo)…so evades is essentially all we get for defense. Unless we get access to some other form of defense, a CV-nerf simply isn’T justified. Maybe I’m just biased though.

What I am interested in, is if they are going to nerf/rework PI. Although i don’t think, that a nerf would be warranted, a rework could be interesting.

In terms of buffs, I’d like to see some changes to Infiltrator’s Strike and Dagger OH.

In all honesty, I am perfectly fine with topstats not giving anything what so ever. To think, that those stats indicate any kind of skill is plain wrong. Some classes are designed to do better than others regarding certain aspects. Just because a DH has top damage, doesn’t mean he did well…especially when their other teammates dont have damage classes.

Just some examples:
Druid and Ele on the same team. Ele will most likely do more damage AND more healing than the druid, and yet can a good druid be more of a playmaker than a good ele.

Or, a thief +1s a 1v1 on any node, downs the enemy with a quick burst and immediately leaves without even getting a single tick on the node.

steelheart.7386:

Necro is not easy at all. Its the easiest class to kill in the game and some of the most common classes in solo queue like Warrior eat necros for lunch. If you dont know how to kite and pre-kite you are nothing but fodder playing condi necro because unlike when it was 5v5 you at least had teammates that could coordinate to rez you or pressure people off you if you were in a group. Seriously I don’t know where this came from but Necro is not easy to play in solo queue at any level. Sure at lower levels people will be worse at calling targets and focusing but that doesn’t change the fact necro still easy to kill. I don’t recommend Necro at all for newbs in the current environment.

WoW ….Did i trigger you? Cause i dont really know why. Both our posts about necro essentially say the same thing.

I never implied that necro was easy. I said it was easIER (!)…and by that, i meant in comparison to mesmer.

It’s hard to come up with a general ranking, since it comes down to player skill alot. A good Dragon-hunter for instance can single handedly carry his entire team in bronze-silver (and maybe even gold) tier while it falls off HARD in higher tiers. Ranking classes by pro-scene usage also doesn’t make sense on the other hand, since we are talking about SoloQ here.

As for the both classes you specifically asked about:

- Mesmer. Essentially comes down to player-skill. A LOT. A good mesmer can be invaluable for any kind of soloQ comp, while a bad one can often be the single cause for a loss. Obviously this goes for a lot of classes, but even more so for mesmer. Although mesmer provides some decent teamfight-utility (with a lot of downed-controll, aoe-cc, heals and single target pressure) it really excels at smaller skirmishes and map-control. It requires good map awareness and rotation-knowledge. Definitely one of the harder classes to successfully play in soloQ.

-Necro. A pretty capable teamfighter with insane damage potential. As a necro you basically want to be in as many teamfights as you possibly can. With a lot of boon-hate, necro is one of the best bunker-killers out there, pressuring the likes of ele, engi and druid (which usually are quite hard to bring down) with ease. The main drawbacks of necro is, are its below-average mobility and the lack of self-sustain, making the class a go-to-target in Solo Q. Unless you are a masochist, you should always play with supports. Learning how to kite and knowing when to defensively are key to playing necro sucessfully.

As you can see, both classes have their pros and cons, but both are indeed VIABLE in SoloQ. Imo it comes down to how much time you want to invest to learning the class. Necro is definitely easier and excels in low and mid tier matches. Mesmer on the other hand is incredibly hard to play effectively but has overall more potential.

Azukas.1426:

The problem with bound being a leap finisher is you can’t interrupt the stealth.

THATS bad design

The balance with OH pistol has always been you can stop the on demand stealth. When they introduced bound that went away. That’s not a good thing

Also if you ever noticed any decent thief dueling build uses bound. Thief isn’t winning duels with Dash.

How is that a balance issue? You are completely right, stealth through dodge isn’t interruptable, but well, you used a dodge.

Bound basically encourages high risk / high reward gameplay, where you use your dodges aggressively rather than for defense. If you are not able to burst correctly (or it gets negated by blocks, evades, weakness and what not) you pretty much have no defenses left.

UC main selling point (apart from the obvious mobility boost) is the imob/cripple/chill cleanse. As of right now, every class is stacked with these soft CCs and not having to use – our very limited – cleanses like Shadow Step or SoA, is actually invaluable.
Just the thought of going up against an ancient-seed-Druid or any kind of reaper without UC gives me nausea.

I dont know, what kind of PvE content we are talking about, but since you indicated that you run around solo a lot, I think we are mostly talking about open world here.

If you feel confident enough in your survivability, I’d suggest to switch some of your gear to viper stats. Full trailblazer’s might be a bit overkill on the tankiness if we are talking about -and please correct me, if im wrong – open world PvE. Dagger autoattack, CnD, Stealth-attacks and a good chunk of your other abilities as well, scale fantastically with power and crit-stats, resulting in a significant DPS boost with viper’s stats. You also dont loose any condition damage since the condi-stats are the same as trailblazer’s.

If you feel like you need more sustain with vipers, you could also try to go for the signet of malice healskill. It synergizes really well with DB and the fast dagger autohit chain. I don’t know about the DPS however, since it would affect the Lotus-Training uptime.

Oh ok, thanks for that!
Guess I have to learn more about 2v2 matchups, cause I genuinely thought that Necro (who was condi indeed iirc) cant sufficiently pressure Warr/Druid, with their insane amount of resistance/cleanse.

Maybe Im just biased as well, since I personally have a hard time +1ing classes that can self sustain (especially Warri and Druid) very well. Anybody maybe has a link or something that show good and bad matchups for those classes?

Thanks to both of you for responding!

As for watching the health bars. You are right, Wargameur, maybe i should have paid more attention to it, but since the DH had a support with him, I couldn’t really tell how much of his cooldowns he actually had used already. Realizing that he has used most his CDs already, as I entered the mid fight, made the whole rotation a bit awkward.

bluri.2653:

Go close to kill them so ur necro can rotate to mid and win the mid fight instead, the druid full caps far by the time u killed close and he prolly goes mid so u can decap straight after. Then go mid and outnumber cus respawn prolly goes their close and fullcaps

Could you please eleborate a bit more on this? What is your thought process on this?
I guess it makes sense that the druid would have gone for the mid fight instead of close anyway; so basically I could have capitalized on the guaranteed 3v2 scenario on close.
Does this sound about right?

Hello there, fellow thief players!

I know, that there is no “general-rule” when it comes to rotations, but i was wondering if there are any high-tier players (like plat III and higher) that could help me out with this.

I know that thief is most effective in the +1 role, but somethings there are scenarios, where there are multiple fights all around the map and personally, I find it hard to decide where to go sometimes.

For instance, there was the following scenarios in one of my latest games (Temple):

I just decaped far, Enemy-druid comes on point and I immediately disengage. Now there were 2 fights i could have gone to:
Mid: Ele+DH (Ally) vs Engi+Necro (Enemy)
Close: Druid+Necro (Ally) vs Druid+Warri (Enemy..and yes, they had 2 druids)

Now I +1’d the midfight, jumping the Necro, trying to go for the momentum play. Unfortunately the DH got pressured hard by both the necro and the engi and had to play rather defensively, which bought them enough time for the druid (who I managed to decap earlier) to enter the fight as well, forcing me to leave again. I went for another decap but unfortunately my allies then died in mid.

It was a pretty close game (470ish to 500) and at the end of it my team blamed me for overrotating. My question now is: What would a other thief have done? +1 on close? Stay in the fight and maybe try to counterpressure the enemy necro a bit more? On which criteria do you guys decide where to +1 when there are multiple fights on the map. Is it about killing potential with your teammate? Durability/Sustain of the enemy? Or just go for a decap whenever you can? Momentum vs Points? Do you prioritize to pressure certain classes (like Necro or Rev) regardless of other fight participants?

Also, I gernerally dont try to +1 allies that are in a winning matchup like Mes vs Rev or something like that. But personally, I have a hard time to figure out the best +1 if there are more smaller skirmishes around the map.

since when has improv ever been about using the F2 twice? I mean, on certain skills its nice (like the plasma) but the real value comes from the utility reset.

On topic:
From a pvp POV most skills are fine (Mesmer steal is incredible and Necro/Rev are quite good). Ranger-steal is very situational, so i dunno about it. The only ones that are a bit lackluster to me however, are the Warri and the Engi ones. At the moment the only good value you can get from Gunk shot is, if used on a downed body and even then the cleave area is just too small. The warrior one needs a complete rework imo….a random burst-damage skill would be better, maybe even a block (which would be the nicest option tbh).

As ragfell already mentioned: as a thief you need to rely a lot on dodges/blinks/stealth to stay alive. Since you played ele before (which is a naturally tanky class) you might need some time to get used to the more “hit and run”-oriented nature of the thief gameplay.
You also dont really want to do a lot of teamfighting.

Map awareness is key to successfully playing the class, as you mainly are looking to outnumber / +1 smaller skirmishes or 1v1s. Dont waste any time on drawn-out fights and avoid to 1v1 tanky classes.
Thief has the best mobility in the game, so make sure to take advantage of it. If fights take too long, just stealth up and leave….going elsewhere on the map to get a possible decap.

If you play the class long enough you will get used to its mechanics eventually, so dont worry to much about that. The real difference between a good and a bad thief (at least imo) is their map awareness. It really is all about the “thief mindset”.

If you have any questions and play on EU servers, feel free to add me^^

i experienced this bug as well. It was on temple of the silent storm. Happened twice in one game. After downing a necromancer / thief their bodies would just slide in the direction they were running in.

hello there,

im not specifically looking for a guild, but rather for a grp of PvP-players.

I have been playing for roughly 1 1/2 years now and mostly do PvP…except for some casual PvE content like low-mid Fractals.
During Season 1 i made it to Diamond playing mostly Revenant (and a little bit of Engineer), but since the balance patch this week i have gotten back to Thief.

PvP stats:
PvP rank: 80
Games played: ~1700 (of which ~500 are ranked)
Most played classes: Revenant>Thief>Necromancer>Engi
Season 1 league: Diamond

Personal Stats:

Age: 23
From: Austria (GMT +1)
Server: Kodash (EU)
VoIP: TS3, Skype

I dont really care about how big of a group you are, as long as i can effectively communicate with you and you are somewhat decent and open minded players…
If you can teach me one or two things thats a nice bonus for me ofc

If you are interested, feel free to add me under my Player-tag.

thanks for the great help so far guys, i really do appreciate it!
i just stumbled across this supcutie guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoCMS-0WGX4
This is exactly what i was looking for (well its only mesmer vs mesmer, but the commentary is superb), so thanks for pointing me in that direction.
The linked soloQ guide is awesome as well

Cheers

Ross Biddle.2367:

As for learning to Mesmer, I think you’re going to have to be more specific with what your problem is. It’s hard to address any one thing when there could be so many reasons for your trouble.

ye, i guess i should have addressed that in my initial post …was a bit worried it might get too long tho :P

i dont really think that my positioning is off, or that my movement is particularly bad: when contesting a point or in teamfighting, i tend to stay at range, letting my teammates do the initiation and try to do as much dmg as possible. When i see an isolated target, i try to jump and burst them. i also avoid going into already lost fights (except maybe when i see, that reinforcements are on their way) and go for farpoint decaps / fullcaps instead.

I feel like my problem is to fight 1on1 effectively. At my level of gameplay it comes more down to player-strenght than class-advantages/disadvantages and imo i loose too many 1on1 fights. Engineers, Rangers and (especially) Thieves are particularly hard. Unless they are supported, or in a 1vX scenario, the heavy armored classes arent really much of an issue (altho some fights tend to last quite a while). Personally i think that my shatter combos get evaded / blocked / mitigated too often. Are there any tricks on how to secure a burst?!

maybe its a rotation issue? (i know, i know, there are no “rotations” in pvp but until my judgement is good enough i still need some guidelines)

for my standard rotations i usually start by getting 3 clones (in order: phantasm > clone-weaponskill > dodge) followed by F2/F3 (F2 for light and medium armored targets and F3 for heavy ones), getting 3 clones again + F1. For the F1 shatter i try to stand in melee range as well, to get the IP bonus. After the F1 shatter and blurred Frenzy-dmg i try to put some distance between me and my target again.

hey fellow mesmer players,

i just recently started playing GW2 and am fairly new to the mesmer as well as pvp itself (but i really enjoy it ). Even tho i have watched a lot of mesmer guides and having tried most of the builds out already, i still feel completely lost. I thought if i focused on 1 build (GS/SS shatter build) and stick with it for a while, i would eventually get better, but nope….i still suck (very) hard and i cant really figure out, what i am doing wrong. Since i have only played ~70 games of unranked arena so far, it might as well just be a case of “practice”.

If somebody could tell me (if they still remember / are going through the same process as i), what helped them in improving their gameplay, i would really appreciate it. Just please dont link “build”-guides, because i feel like i have seen them ALL already, and they dont really help at all

Hey ladies and gents,

I am quite new to GW2 in general (have played it for only a couple of weeks after release; quti; and have finally returned now) and even more of a beginner when it comes to the elementalist profession. I like the versatility of the class and, as of late, have developed somewhat of a compassion for PVP. I am mainly playing with 1-2 friends of mine (or solo if i feel like it), so i am not really in an organized team.

onto the my question then:
Apparently THE build for eles atm is the D/D build, but i am really bad at it QQ.
I dont necessarily feel like my positioning is off or my decision making (in terms of which fights to take and which to avoid) is bad, but my damage output kinda seems underwhelming… i guess all that might-stacking while ALSO focusing on everything that is going on around me is my weakness.

I would really appreciate it, if some1 could give me a SIMPLE burst/DPS/might-stacking rotation or some overall advice, on what to look out for.

Furthermore, it would be nice, if some of you could point out the major advantages / disadvantages of other builds, like the Staff or S/F builds, since i actually am still trying to find a suitable playstyle.

Thanks already in advance!