Guild Wars 2

@ HiddenNick
I put that zergfest and grindfest part under Challenge not Progression.

@ Astralporing
My bad, it was way back in November, so i had forgotten parts of it.

@ Alex the Precise
So far the preview notes doesn’t state anything about weapons/mats dropping from challenging content.
It’s just that in order to make ascended weapons, one needs to be at 500 on the appropriate craft and it is time gated to only once a day.

For challenging content dropping rare mats for ascended items, it will probably not happen. Anet wants content accessible to everyone, so they won’t create content that is too hard for the majority of the population.

For me, challenge is better boss mechanics, not grinding to increase my stats with X% while increasing the boss’ stats with (X+10)%.

Whether that person crafted or bought their legendaries, it ain’t no a real “easy mode”. A normal non-flipper farmed CoF1 tillz eyez bleedz (or insert any gold farm) and then proceed to buy the legendary.
The crafter, bought, farmed and forged the mats for their legendary.
So you are saying just because you forged your legendary, you are more worthy to it? The “Farm CoF1 tillz eyez bleedz” player had to work harder than the crafter, considering the fact that the one who made the legendary want to profit from it too (item and the service).
Those who buy it with their credit cards, worked for their money and then injected it into the game. They supported the game way more than farmers, flippers and crafters, they truly deserved the legendary in a sense.

So i tend to chuckle, when i see ppl arguing over who is more worthy of a legendary by ways of acquiring it.

@HiddenNicks
It was wrong because Anet said there would be no vertical progression in the game, only horizontal progression. Exotics were supposed to be the top tier items. Later they even admitted adding the Ascended Tier was a bad choice (it’s somewhere on google). But now they have to stick with it, because they already added the tier. And that is a fact, not an opinion.

Your sense of challenge is rather skewed, so you call grinding a craft to 500 is a challenge? Look around you, LS is already a huge grindfest for AP and mindless zergfests. Whether you sit in LA grinding a craft or zerging events, it is a farcry from any challenge at all.

Progression is GW is different. In GW1, character is capped at 20, but yet progresses through 3 campaigns and 1 expansion. Added skills, skins and heroes with Nightfall tying in the 3 campaigns. It is true that LS hasn’t been that impressive progress-wise. I do hope Anet does something about it in the sense of moving the story forward.

Some people make alts because they enjoy making them, not because they don’t like their main. On that note, updates so far had been very anti-alts. If you are looking for hardcore stuff, you are playing the wrong game. Anet caters the casual, the last time they visited the Dungeon section was a few days ago, before that, 2 months and before that, 6 months.

Many players will always want the best items. Others are content with any gear or stat combo.

The casuals will point out that the increase in stats is minimal, min/maxers believes the casuals enjoy being subpar and are content to be carried in dungeons. Everyone has their own idea of fun. Min/maxers loves to see big numbers/efficiency, casuals want “fun”.

In the end all this arguing over slight increased stats, solves nothing. The fact remains Anet made a bad choice by adding the Ascended Tier, which should have been exotics with an extra infusion slot and dropped only in fractals.

This game caters the casual, which is the vast majority of the game population. Making the current dungeons like that will make dungeons pretty much inaccessible for them.

Elite dungeons and Hardmode could include such features but only a small group of players will ever touch that content. From a business point of view, it ain’t a good investment.

With the increased money and T6 drops, i am guessing everyone is running to forge their legendaries. Thus the dramatic increase of precursors.

What are you doing with it? PvE/PvP/WvW?

I don’t know much of PvP and WvW. But for open world PvE, you cant go wrong with anything. But for dungeons, conditions are great, IF you are the only one applying conditions. That is pretty much never the case.
If you do decide to go that way, go 0/0/30/20/20. Lose the venoms and bring caltrops. With Ricochet, you can spread out your bleeds even more with Sneak Attack.

Anet said it is ok to skip. So you are saying if you don’t like to skip, Anet should make them unskippable?

As for zerkids, there are plenty of ways to mitigate damage. Blinds, blocks, evades, reflects, invuls and dodges. Do it right and won’t take that much damage. Or you can still wear zerk gear, imm/crip/freeze bosses and range them to death.

Anet’s policy is play the way you like. Stop complaining of other ppl’s playstyles (aside from bugging stuff) and form your own parties already.

@OP dungeons are ok-ish now. I would like some form of hardmode where bosses display some real mechanics. If all dungeons get revamped ala AC, there will be much more senseless QQ.

For dungeons, the valk gear is wasted. For mobs just blind them and use D/D for bosses. All that extra Vit/tough is useless when you are taking 0 damage. Though it does take time to learn it, so i do suggest starting out with some tankier stuff with zerker trinkets and weapons.
Once you are confident enough, switch to full zerker.

1. S/P or D/D with SB as secondary weapon.
2. 25/30/0/0/15
3. Dungeons.

Is this for dungeons? If it is, then i don’t think it’d be very useful. Bosses hit for a gazillion dmg.
According to wiki, your sigils heal @ 370+(0.1*HP) each and regen for 10sec. Let’s say both sigil heal about 1.2k and a full duration regen about 3.3k +3.5k from SR (no real math done, just estimating and counting only 1 application of stealth). 8k heals sounds nice, but @40%-ish of it is regen over time. And then you need to wait SR CD, weapon swap CD, since you switched to your Shortbow, you can’t heal using the sigil of water.
Those numbers are moot compared to how hard bosses hit.
If the aim is for healing mob dmg, then it is better to use Pistol #5.
Thrill of Crime is outshined by “For Great Justice!”. Thief support options don’t come in the form of healing, but in the form of blinds, weakness (nerfed a bit), stealth and Clusterbomb. And all of which can be done in a dps build.

If this is pvp or wvw, just ignore me :P

Ofc those who find them easy are just a very very super small minority. Running with the same group for a long time, with optimized builds and all. I know this because i also run with a personal group.

Now ditch your group and join a pug. P3 is very easy, P2 is also very puggable, lots of ppl have trouble with running in P1. And P4 is down right hellish.
Not to knock on pugs, but i think pugs are in general of good quality, but for Arah, that quality seem to drop off considerably. Especially now with the AP chests and daily gold, lots of newer players join up and stay quiet.

Anet caters the casual and for casuals Arah ain’t worth 3g. So Anet should give more rewards for Arah because the vast majority are casuals. (And i would want that easy gold )

Hey, i’d like to join the guild and am experienced with Arah. I’d like to learn the art of meleeing Lupi all 3 phases. I could bring several class, but i prefer my thief.
My hours are very random, but usually around reset.

Before this patch i used to repeat several paths on several characters. I do that mostly because i enjoy them. Paths like Arah 2 and 3, CoE 1,2,3. Now i all i can do, is run each of them once, because subsequent runs are worthless.

Since the patch i had been running pretty much every popular path every day. Sure i made more money, but i’d rather make a bit less gold and rerun certain paths if they reverted the token nerf.

That is the beauty of glass builds, once you know the bosses, you can stay alive and put some major hurt on him. Sure you get downed from time to time, but the dmg output is worth it. Dungeons is a matter how well you know the bosses and mobs.
I wouldn’t suggest a new thief starting out as a zerker. But you should know that thief rely on active defense.
If you decide to go 40+ fractals, zerker is the way to go, because no matter how tanky you are, you will be 1-shotted.

Personally i run 25/30/0/15/0, full zerker with ruby orbs. As for weapons, i always switch according to the situation. S/P for mobs, D/D or S/D depending on the boss.

If you can keep yourself @90%+ hp all the time, scholar runes are better. In the glassy thief’s case, pretty much always, because if you are not, you are most likely downed.

So far only 1 group i ran with, stopped for 2 champs, the rest of them ignored every single champ. And only 1 said something like, “There goes my chest.” Personally, i don’t bother much with them champs in dungeons.
It is only a small sample and only 2 days after the patch, but so far, not much interest in the champs. (On 2nd note, i do join speedrunners.)

Yeah, i agree with laokoko. The cof warriors’ approach, is optimized builds and efficient runs. With that mentality and approach they will get the hang of it soon.
Ofc pretty much everyone sucks their first time on a new path.

@OP: You are trying too hard to make CoE p2/p3 pugs look hard. Those pugs are generally not that bad. Sometimes there is 1 or 2 that fails in dodging. Even the best gets downed by Subject Alpha from time to time.

-1

During development the Engineer was supposed to have heavy armor, iirc the Engineer was supposed to be a mid-range heavy.

Giving the Thief heavy armor won’t make a dent in survival, thieves are designed to dodge and evade the dmg, not eat it. Even worse, you will see more thieves faceplanting, since they’d be thinking they’d survive because of heavy armor.

The Dervish is more or less integrated into the guardian (GW2 boons are comparable to GW1 enchantments and the holy warrior bit). Maybe it’s better to ask for a Dervish directly instead of changing the Thief in order to justify the Dervish. (But only humans have Dervish, so nvm)

Also at this rate, might as well ask for light and medium armor to have heavy armor values. And allow everyone to mix and match the skins they want.

While ppl complain about dps makes things trivial, 20sec Lupi etc etc. How many pugs actually do that? You want Anet to punish zerkers because of that 1%?

If you enjoy tanky builds, just post on the lfg site “LFM TANKS ONLY! PING GEAR OR KICK”?

Yeah, dungeon encounters should be more interesting. But if that requires ppl to bring tanky gear to fight a boss of a million hp then i get something better to do.

The biggest drawback of the pet is when your group stacks on the boss. You can set the pet to passive, recall it, swap it, heal it, it will die anyway. Do it twice and you will be sitting 30-40secs without a chunk of your dps.
Or you can always range it, keep your pet alive, most likely bad mouthed by your pug and kicked afterwards, because you refused to stack.

You cannot expect your pug-mates of 4 to cater you (1). And the most effective strat on most dungeon/fractal is stacking. The moment your 2nd pet dies, you are not pulling your own weight dps-wise (many will even argue that ranger never pulled his own weight dps-wise).

Unless Anet decides to change things in dungeons and fractals, making every encounter ranged-only, allowing the pet to evade when the master dodges is a good fix. And the cherry on the top, your pet can keep attacking while evading.

Strife’s Anchor build is a good one, just google it. It’s not only a tanky build, it also dishes out some pretty good dps.

I think it is bad to advice someone to join a lvl 20 group when he is not ready. Good players or bad, GW2 is all about knowing what to do. (I do admit i joined groups in the 30’s while lvling my alts)
If he doesn’t know the content and keeps dying, he is only keeping the team down and will be kicked very fast.
While 1 or 2 good players can carry a team through the 20’s, i find that the 20’s are fielding some pretty bad teams lately.

To the OP, you can always read/watch the guides beforehand. While i don’t mind explaining other players, it does makes it much easier for you.

Yeah, i already mentioned everything you did. We are still 2nd banana behind boon based support and reflects. Our dmg ain’t bad, but it ain’t top dog.

You are not taking what the other classes offer into consideration, what they bring is better than us except for stealth and spammable blast finisher. We are good against trash, but against bosses, our support is inferior.

Support-wise we aren’t exactly the greatest since our type of support doesn’t work against bosses. For trash mobs, it’s pretty good with blinds and weakness.
The spammable blast finisher, Smoke Screen and stealth are cool, but we cannot compete with boons, reflections and blocks.
As an active defense profession, i think we are pretty good on the survival department.

In my opinion, there are 2 ways to buff the thief. Overhaul our utilities so we can bring more support. Or buff our dmg, we have to make it up in 1 area, might as well be dmg

They can also adjust Defiant to be less effective vs. blinds and weakness, but that’s less of a thief buff rather than an overall boss nerf :P

Zerk melee thieves are viable in dungeons and fractals. The most important thing is knowledge of the encounter.
Thieves don’t rely on hp and armor for survival, they are an active defense class. But with barely 13k hp, only a small mistake will get them downed. It’s all about practice.

To the OP, the thief can be extremely relaxing or boring to lvl if you go S/P. Just use Black Powder and auto ftw.

No way dude! Daggerstorm with dual Quip! Wear the pirate armor, dyed very funky and parents all over Tyria will hire you for their kid’s bday party. Who doesn’t love a pirate/clown hybrid??

The idea itself is pretty good i think, it just need some polish. But this is a 1-time event, so i think this is as good as it gets.

My only real beef is the teleporting, my pc loads a bit slow, sometimes i am already dead after tp-ing into the arena.

Builds aside, first few times in a dungeon are brutal. Dungeons in GW2 is simple practice, after a few times, you can breeze trough them quite easily.
Not only do you know what mobs will do, but you also get to know your class better.

The difference between open world pve and dungeons is very big. There is no content in open world that prepares you for dungeons. The dungeons themselves are not very hard once you get used to them, it’s just that the initial gap is very wide. It’s like throwing you into a zombie horde with just a pen :P.

Now, you just need to pay the repair costs, pay attention to the mobs/bosses and learn from it. And you can do any dungeon in no time.

If you want to melee, go thief. Go ranger if you want ranged. Want big numbers, thief beats ranger, but melee is trickier to pull out. Ranger is also on the lower end when it comes to dps.
In the support department, thieves offer weakness, blinds, stealth and Smokescreen. While rangers spread some boons and a water field. Difference is, thieves can spec full dps and still offer support, but rangers need a more specialized build.
Overall, ranger is a bit easier to play going full ranged, where your only concern is micro-ing your pet.

If you are bored with your warrior, ranger is even more boring in my opinion.

Stealth is meant to be both a defensive and an offensive mechanic. If stealth is replaced with invul, than invul has to be have some kind of offensive capability. You can’t take a class designed around stealth and replace it without reworking some of the stuff.

Then again, an Invul thief will make ppl QQ even worse. Bring a group of thieves, let them rotate in and out of invul for capping. The invul ones drop poison fields and caltrops. Drop ambush traps and Thieves Guilds. Ppl will be swimming in caltrops, poison and thieves. Their sensors will be so overloaded, with all those thieves and cripple, they will be BS-ed. Thieves will change from single roamer to a thief horde.

WvW will then feature stare down wars, as thief hordes meet each other on the field and caltrops dodge while being invul. When out of endurance, they just stare at each other in SR with a whole bunch of Thief npcs fighting around them.

This changes everything, players expect thieves will no longer jump them when they roam outside of a zerg. That is true, because all the thieves are now too busy being in a zerg. Instead they get jumped by some random class, get pwned and come to the forum to QQ of the FT engineer who just owned them.

Just strictly speaking from WvW pov, since i don’t PvP.

Yeah sure they can, but in reality, how many rangers do that? The few that do, half of those can’t keep their spirits alive. It is not about theory, but reality.
The fact that very few rangers ever manage to do that means it isn’t balanced, all that extra effort is better spent on a better support class. And when was the last time any of us ever saw “LF1M need Spirit ranger”?

Like i said earlier, it’s an exception, not the rule. The sad reality is, rangers need some buffs.

Geshque.1326:

Well it’s not the problem to survive in any kind of dungeon. And my pet also rarely dies from agony with my 45 AR. But it’s all about the effectivness of ranger. It is not viable for speedruns, it can’t contribute anything to the team, it’s dps is lackluster. So basically the group doesn’t benefit from having a ranger. So you can dodge and evade with tons of vigor as much as you can – no one will appreciate it unless you can provide them with something useful, not only yourself. Surviving with ranger is quite easy – it is abcense of utility that hits us hard.

Yup, that’s pretty much it. You can stay alive as long as you want, but the ranger’s contribution in a dungeon is pretty much minimal.
Before any “L2P” critics, with all the pet micro and great evades/dodge timing, try putting that effort on a different class.
Evades and dodges great on ranger? Try thief and do way more dmg. Like to micro? Try ele with 4 bars worth of skills and be able to fill in pretty much every role.

There is a difference between loving a class and it being actually good. Every class is viable, but none are equal. Rangers may excel in certain encounters, but that’s the exception not the rule and another class will do better anyway. Dungeons and fractals favor DPS and support, which ain’t the ranger’s strength.

And for the record, a zerker warrior with 30% downtime still does more dps (and offers offensive support) than the average ranger plinking away at max range with a dead pet.

Heheh, sure they are the same family, while the Kraken is the more fearsome one, the Tentacle Monster is his more pervy cousin. Most ppl say they got “tentacled” rather than “krakened” when hit by Maw. But i am going way off topic now.

More topic, i thought Cantha wasn’t very well received because they mashed all the Eastern cultures into one big …uhmm… pie? Stew? BBQ? The Cantha from Factions may not exist, but a redesigned one is allowed (at least it’s what i deduced from it). If it is indeed true, then i hope they leave Cantha out.

That ain’t no Kraken, that’s a Tentacle Monster, it’s even more stereotyping then the Asians surrounded by Europeans thingy :P

The thief in your group just needs to learn the boss. Zerker D/D thieves can melee him perfectly fine, even in the 40’s. And he probably didn’t die because of the initial blast of the ice breath. He may be 1 stack away from being frozen and the rest of the blast finished him off.
Honestly, if you don’t know the class and need to come to the forum for advice, you shouldn’t be giving anyone advice on that class.
Best advice you can give anyone is, stay ranged and bring snares

Not trying to burst your bubble, OP, but i’d like to hear the other side of the story first. I have pugged all the way into the 40’s and every other dungeon and was never kicked during the run, as a thief nonetheless. I was kicked a few times before we started, because of ewww thieves.

Also you’d be surprised how some players in the 30’s still don’t know the mechanics, players can be carried through the 20’s and 30’s.

And i am not implying anything, except for needing to hear the other side of the story.

EDIT: @ robroyman.3728:
Don’t join dungeon groups with Lfm Need x Class tags or anything full capitals. If you ever need some dungeons done, just pm ingame (NA server).

My sylvari accidentally burned some trees after she woke up. After that she decided that she loved to burn things.

Up until recently i have used my engineer as a mule, but it proved to be rather fun after playing around a bit with her.

My question is, how viable is FT for dungeons? Can it pull it’s own weight Dps-wise? I don’t plan to get very serious with my engineer, but also don’t want to kitten a group too much (probably going 10/30/0/30/0 and zerker).

And my 2nd question is, Sigils with effects on weapon swapping. Do they work when i swap between let’s say P/P and Kit? Or only from Kit to Kit?

I fight lupi with a fairly glassy thief, i usually get most of the aggro during phase 1 and phase 2. In phase 3, he ignores me as long as i melee him. The moment i back out, he will keep using his life steal skill on me.

Silver.4798:

@randomfightfan, can u elaborate a bit more about how you would control a fight while avoiding damage? I’m defn taking too much hits with sword mainhand.

Know when and how to use Infiltrator’s Strike or bring an offhand pistol for Black Powder.

It would be cool if they increase the duration of non-TW skills, but i don’t feel so awesome with a 10 sec frenzy :P

Most important thing for any class is to know the bosses/encounters. That counts double for thieves, because it’s very punishing in dungeons as a thief.

Many mobs are pretty easy with offhand pistol/smoke screen. Sword is a great dungeon weapon and it’s my preferred weapon, with Infiltrator’s Strike i don’t have to dodge bosses. S/P + SB and Soldier’s armor is a good combo to start. Unless a boss absolutely oozes melee hate, you can melee it.

As far as support is concerned, the thief’s support is very subtle. Blind and Weakness aren’t as visible as Aegis and Protection. Thieves also offers stealth rezzing, stealth someone with low HP and a spammable Blast Finisher. With enough points in Shadow Arts, stealth removes conditions and applies regen on allies, plus you get the option to share venoms. Ofc we are not the top dog in support, but it’s not bad at all.

Eventually you’d want every weapon set (to counter any scenario) and wear zerker gear as you realize Vitality and Toughness are useless.

Simple solution, make your own group and rules. Post your intentions during recruitment and before you start off. Stop complaining and trying to force ppl to play the way you want. That way it’s win-win for runners and crawlers, no more threads of ppl complaining about things they actually have power over.

And the devs themselves are ok with this.

This a game, not real life. In-game mechanics, you need to compare the available sets in order to get the best use out of them. I don’t claim P/P is worthless, just ok and more situational than the other sets we have available.

You have compare weapon sets with each other, then what is the point of having multiple weapon sets? Each set has it’s own use, if you don’t compare them and use them when they are the strongest. Might as well stick to 1 weapon set.

The red circles during phase 2 are projectile-based. They jump from red circle to red circle and if you are in the path of the traveling projectile, you will be hit. One way of dealing with that is, move all the way out to the wall.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Bunmaster.9734:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The damage from P/P is not from Unload alone. You have to couple it with condition damage also — atleast 25pts in DA. I used to run with 25/30/0/0/15, P/P and D/D build.

Then you should also know that +10% also applies to your daggers. P/P + 10% dmg is still inferior to D/D + 10% dmg.

That’s not really a good comparison since P/P used for the first half of the target’s HP and D/D for the last half. Unload + condition damage will do the job very well in bringing the HP down to 50%, then switch to D/D where Heartseeker shines.

You should not narrow your views into one weapon set, rather expand it that having both P/P and D/D allows us to play as if we have a D/P or P/D weapons sets also.

I carry all weapons 24/7 (3 pistols, diff sigils) switch out weapons according to the situation presented. P/D is the one i never use because i am not condition specced. I use the 25/30/0/15/0 build, since it is versatile enough to accommodate pretty much every weapon combo. I flip my traits +10% pistol dmg, dual skill crit + dmg, spam some unload when such a situation present itself, decent, not impressive.

Of all the weapon sets i use, P/P is the least used. I’d say those, who specced P/P or any weapon set only, are the narrow-minded ones. And i am not bashing P/P itself, but comparing it to other sets, it is subpar.

Mobs in high fractals will pretty much 1-shot most builds. I still melee some mobs, mostly Infiltrator’s Strike and Black Powder. Got my pistols in my bags when ST situations are needed.

Edit: Yeah i know the topic is PvE. Everyone has a different play style. I like to melee bosses, but won’t go all out on bosses i don’t know. I learn bosses by using P/P not youtube, because it’s more fun :P

The same way you withdraw, immobilize and shadowstep, a sword thief can do the same.He can keep more pressure on you than you can on him.
Of course i am speaking of 2 thieves of the same skill lvl, which in pvp is very rare. Should you face a superior player, you will lose most of the time and should you fight a lesser skilled player, you will win most of the time.

Regardless of the individual skills, P/ kitten till mediocre, but still viable.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The damage from P/P is not from Unload alone. You have to couple it with condition damage also — atleast 25pts in DA. I used to run with 25/30/0/0/15, P/P and D/D build.

Then you should also know that +10% also applies to your daggers. P/P + 10% dmg is still inferior to D/D + 10% dmg.