That quote is very vague. My guess is that it wouldn’t happen at all until an expansion is released.
I try to do what Yishis does all the time, but fail horribly, haha. I’ve had a few shining moments, but not anywhere near that level.
If that is the only match up that requires skill and timing, you are fighting terrible opponents.
My guess is Valkyrie gear mix with the trait that gives you 100 crit chance from stealth. With this set up in WvWvW, you can go with a lot less precision and still crit hard with backstab and have more health to soak blows. These builds typically run 0/30/30/10/0 or 10/30/30/0/0 trait wise, which gives them more survivability as well. I actually run a variant of this myself on my thief.
If it’s not that, then my other guess would be that the thief had protection boon up some how. Either from boon stripping traits or rune procs.
Or just a gear gap, like the above post says.
I went for a Kroenen look on my thief, the kitten assassin from Hellboy. Although, I wanted to use it on my Engineer too. =(
As someone who has played and leveled every profession a bit, I’d tip my hat to the warrior. Currently, they have it all and then some. They do well in any aspect of the game and are easy to get into.
Actually, I think sword/sword is quite okay as a power spec as well. Impale hits pretty decent and so does Final Thrust and the conditions are gravy and help to cover immobilize from the burst skill, which is quite good for singling out targets in a group fight or chasing down people. You can also drop your burst immobilize, weapon swap to greatsword, and use hundred blades while they are stuck. Or combo it with longbow and keep your target rooted even more. Of course at the moment, hammer kind of overshadows this, but it still works.
My thief in a survival/dps mix of gear feels squishier than my warrior in full glass cannon gear. Warriors can easily get away with it, as they are a bit over the top in class balance imo.
The pvp here is a different feel than most other mmos and takes a bit of practice to get used to. Honestly, the only way to get the hang of it, is to jump right in to hotjoins. You will find people trash talking, regardless of where you start. In fact, every pvp game has these types. Just ignore them or troll them with random stuff that doesn’t make sense to confuse them, which is my personal favorite.
I would hold off on the tournaments for a bit, and practice in 5v5 hotjoins to warm up for them when you do decide you’re interested in them.
Engineer was my first 80, and I guess I would consider him my main, though I do a lot of alt hopping. They are very versatile and a fun profession imo, but the style of play isn’t for everyone. I’d suggest trying it yourself, as that is the only way to know. In fact, it took me a good 40 or 50 levels before I started to get the hang of it. You can focus on different setups on an engineer quite easily, so make sure you play around with each kit, etc. as you may find yourself favoring some and not others and eventually you will settle into your style of play after testing the waters.
I did it solo on a thief with dd/shortbow and beserker/valk gear mix. I died once on the molten mobs, because I got careless. The last boss took a bit of patience and stealth play. I actually used ambush as a utility to take the mobs attention so I could dps freely a bit. Had to use both ranged and melee and dance around the whole time, time dodges, stealth, etc. But in the end, success!
Did you change your condition duration? I haven’t really been playing grenades lately, but I don’t recall any changes.
I was fooling around on a flamethrower hgh build yesterday in spvp and it did surprisingly well, but then again, it is spvp. It was very good at rezzing and stomping people with elixir b and s toolbelt skills plus the the knockbacks from shield and flamthrower.
My setup was 10/20/10/30/0 running juggernaut and hgh for might stacks. I tried to fit vigor into the build, but just couldn’t have it permanently up with this build because I find the condition clearing and reduced cooldown on elixirs more important. I used sigil of energy and runes of lyssa to help counter this. All in all, it turned out better than I expected it to be, as I was just fooling around, but quite fun in the end.
Of course, the IP change will affect this, as I also use it. I think the elixirs trait works with this build however, and boon stripping shouldn’t be underestimated against certain classes.
(edited by Cyricus.2981)
Rangers aren’t bad with the right build, however, the way you describe things that you want and what you played in previous games, point me right to the thief profession.
Try a dagger/dagger build with offhand shortbow instead of dagger/pistol. Like this guys build. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8Lh8Oogl6Y
I could never get into dagger/pistol myself either, but dagger/dagger is tons of fun with it’s burst.
Also, I’ve watched several roaming condi engineer videos and there seems to be some hate towards them. Any idea why?
If it’s WvW roaming, then it’s likely due to Perplexity Runes, as they are stupidly strong in many peoples view.
For leveling, I suggest starting with conditions, as burn is powerful at low levels when you can’t stack much power/crit damage. Use pistol/pistol and/or bomb kit. Around the mid to high levels, you can switch it up however you like when you have the talents and stats to fool around.
I had a druid main back in the beginnings of WoW myself, and I found I preferred the Engineer over Elementalist. It has a bit more build diversity and an all kit build is extremely fun and fluid to switch on the fly and exactly what you are describing. On the Elemental, it feels like I’m waiting for cooldowns too much by comparison. But hey, to each their own.
I have an idea. Make targets that are at the stack cap receive a minor burst of damage from condition appliction, therefore eliminating the need to program more stacks altogether and giving condition specs some needed oomf. Obviously, you would need to scale this damage with one’s condition damage, so as not to make power based specs that apply conditions still the better choice. It doesn’t even have to be a lot of damage, but something that would make a build less redundant would be nice. I mean power based builds don’t have to worry about the guy next to them making them do less damage, do they?
The vendors in Orr have exotic pre/tough/cond gear, which works quite well for condition pistol builds. You can supplement it with pieces off the auction if you want to tweak some stats around and such.
Hah, the original post reminds me of this game, when he starts talking about unicorns. http://games.adultswim.com/robot-unicorn-attack-twitchy-online-game.html It’s highly addictive btw.
As for butterflies, I think they fit perfectly into the illusion and chaos theatrics that the class is based on. It would be cool if we could change colors (but for all classes), to allow more customizing, but I have no problem with the current ones. I mean, just makes it seem more psychedelic.
I run a similar grenade build on conditions, more oriented as support. I use 30/20/0/10/10. It’s mainly a WvW build, but seems to work well in most situations. I use vulnerability on crit and burn duration from firearms, which gives my burn another tick and lets me stack things quicker with grenades and just switch to pistol/shield or other kits for utility.
As for my other traits, I typically have speedy kits for WvW cruising, or switch to kit refinement with EG when in groups for some heals/condition removals. I use 10 in alchemy for auto defense potion for burst protection or switch it for vigor at times.
For utilities, it’s usually some combo of EG/TK/Elixir R or S. I had planned on using Undead Runes, but I’m pretty lousy at gaining gold and I’m currently using the same armor as you, but with might sharing runes (goes well with medkit and the group oriented nature of the build as being buffer/debuffer.) And I have orbs outside of that for condition/power/vitality atm.
I am always open to suggestions, as I wouldn’t mind hearing them. I actually quite like this build, seems very well rounded, outside the lack of burst damage, but I have a static discharge build for that.
I surprise a lot of thieves with static discharge build when on my engineer. Best way to avoid it as a thief, is to dodge net shot so they can’t set up the burst combo as easily.
The Sigil of Air proc deals 10% more damage than the Sigil of Fire proc (The Sigil of Air has a 1.1 ratio, while the Sigil of Fire has a 1.0 ratio). Whether that is worth giving up the 150 AoE for is up to you (of course, the cost savings may also be taken into account…)
It seems I must stand corrected on one of two fronts.
Either I was getting the wrong information after ANet nerfed air runes (which seemed to have nerfed air sigils)
OR
There wasn’t a nerf at all and I’m just akittenEither way, at time of posting Sigil of Air seems to do 8.5% more damage (in berserker mists gear on a 25/30/0/0/15 build) than Sigil of Fire
It wasn’t Sigil of Air that got hit with the nerf bat, it was the Air Runes armor set bonus that caused a lightning proc.
As for which is more beneficial to use, I think it depends on weapon choice and spec personally, but as a general rule I find daggers/pistols go better with air and swords/bow go better with fire.
A static discharge build will probably be your best bet at that level. It’s pretty straightforward and it works on power. Use a rifle with traits in firearms, use static discharge and speedy kits in tools and spend the rest of the points to your preference. Run rifle turret for the toolbelt skill surprise shot, toolkit for blocks, pulling, and wrench burst, and third utility is up to you. I use elixir S personally, for trolling people, surviving focus fire and escaping, as well as a stomp protection on the rare day when it’s not just easier to shoot them down.
I’m typically one of two builds, condition grenades/support or static discharge roaming offense/troll/bait. I use auto elixir S along with regular elixir S to bait people after me, block with toolkit shield and lead people into overextending and zap clumps of people with wrench throw, fire sigil, surprise shot + discharge damage.
I haven’t fully settled on my grenade conditions setup yet, but I use a 30/20/0/10/10 setup with medkit for speedy kits and might sharing runes. I can’t live without my auto elixir S in WvW, so I have another 10 in alchemy. Would probably be better off putting them in firearms though if you are after pure damage. In this build I do a lot of kit switching, and typically run all kits for utility + pistol/shield or elixir R if I get tired of not having a stun breaker.
Yeah, it is pretty much a set bonus for having all of the same type of armor, like in other games. But here, you can actually match them to the armor style you prefer instead of being stuck with something fugly.
Yeah, a guardian setup with proper traits, runes, sigils, weapons, etc will probably feel most like a healing class of another game. Elemental is good too, but doesn’t feel like a healer in the traditional sense, and same for Engineer.
Weird, I can make a thief run away all by my lonesome. I feel sorry for those 12 people. But anyway, have fun on your future endeavors. It’s good to take a break sometimes.
Stealth isn’t restricted to one sense, aka sight as in this case. Stealth is avoiding all of whatever senses might detect you, so it’s perfectly logically to exploit the dredge in this manner by means other than sight.
I get my kicks for pvp in WvW, as it is much more fun and varied. I find the instanced pvp bland and uninteresting, other than to screw around on occasion. I just don’t like the maps or the game mode. In fact, I enjoyed the holiday pvp events more so than the actual ones we always have.
Also, I’ve been getting more and more WvW queues lately, not the opposite. Just because people find one aspect of the game uninteresting, doesn’t mean the game as a whole is dying. It is booming in other areas. The population is also more spread out doing different things compared to release time. Although, a lot of my guild hardly plays anymore, so I wouldn’t say everything is hunky dory, but there are also a lot of new people still coming into the game. I think the majority of people that didn’t like the game are already gone, and I don’t feel like it’s bleeding out in game either. It actually feels like it’s slowly increasing again due to holiday sales/activity.
I dunno, if I was roleplaying, I’d have fun with the current situation. That seems like it could make for interesting roleplay.
people don’t render when theres too many objects it makes roleplay excessively hard, and the animals destroy any immersion.
its fun for the first hour, but after that its stupid.
make a slash command to destroy these.
Roleplay is story telling, you don’t actually need the pixels, not to mention you can just go to another location. The world is massive. I sat around a table with a piece of paper as my character for years and roleplayed. I have roleplayed on games and forums as well, and a crafty roleplayer can easily work around things. I’m sure it will be fixed, in any case, but why not have some fun with it? Roleplay doesn’t have to be serious all the time. I’d report it and move on with having fun instead of being negative about it.
I dunno, if I was roleplaying, I’d have fun with the current situation. That seems like it could make for interesting roleplay.
People complain about lack of returning to other areas for stuff, so they put in achievements to help put people back into other areas and of course people still complain.
Call me crazy, but a power/crit dagger/axe necro with wells feels a lot like an enhancement shaman with totems. Obviously, they are different in flavor, but the mechanics feel right to me. I don’t really know what shamans are like any more though, as I played WoW ages ago.
Elementalist is the other choice I’d pick, but it leans more towards an elemental/resto shaman imo. And of course, it’s got the whole 4 elements thing going for it, so that could be a plus, unless you are just looking for menchanics/style of play.
I pretty much use the exact same thing, except I run the auto elixir S potion (for avoiding thief mega burst combo when I can’t otherwise avoid it and being zerg bombed) and elixir S instead of goggles as well on top for doubling up to run away to safety, as well as using sigil of fire instead of air for more aoe damage for the group fights. So it’s a little more aoe and survivable instead of single target burst in comparison. It works well though, been using it a long time now.
I also use blind on crit with the rifle instead of speed, as I find speedy kits is enough for me.
The truth is you should take what people say about the classes on the forums with a grain of salt, as most is gross exaggeration. Could rangers use a few tweaks? Sure, and so could a lot of the classes. The real question is do you find it fun and does it fit your playstyle. If so, stick with it.
As for leveling, you can hop around the different racial zones (not just the cities) if you start out leveling hearts. I typically do this anyway to get a bunch of skill points at the start of a new character. Gather mats, even if you aren’t a crafter, they award xp and can make you some cash along the way. Do every event and chains you come across, as these are a big bulk of xp. Crafting also gives you a good chunk and finally there is WvW. If it’s active, it can be quite fast for xp gain as well.
I use the timed charge on harpoon and sometimes net, switch to grenade and burn through the cooldowns, and then elixir gun them. Before, I’d just spam grenade one since it was so powerful.
I like to use this for my pistol/pistol build, as I don’t like running the standard pure elixirs, because I find the kits give more flexibility and utility and I like the switch on the fly playstyle.
Things of note with this build. Toolkit can be changed out for anything you like, but I use it for block, pull, aoe bleed/slow and mainly for WvW. I also use FT a lot in this spot and sub a few traits to flame/elixir kit ones. You can sub in whatever you want here though. Same goes for the third utility, choose as you like/prefer. Sigils and Runes are also personal preference.
For stats, I wear a mish mash of things, but in general I like to keep crit at 30+ and health at 18k or above, I then dump the rest into toughness and condition damage and the cond/prec/tough gear is what I lean towards with other supplemental equips.
Flame Blast is the most frustrating thing about playing my Engineer, as I use FT a lot. I basically have to pray to the gods, hold my breath, hunt for a four leaf clover, cross my fingers, and rub the belly of Buddha to make sure it hits what I am trying to target. I thought for sure it would have been fixed last patch, and I was pretty annoyed with the lack of FT changes. I’ve played very little since the patch because of this.
As for the Walking Dead reference, it doesn’t hold much weight and has to take game balance into consideration. The closest thing to that would be a FPS game, if that’s what you want your experience to be like; where grenades can one shot you or a couple well placed shots. This game has too many variables and things to consider to make them “realistic”.
Edit: And I forgot my rabbit’s foot, so Flame Blast missed yet again.
I agree with Liquid. Necro isn’t too bad either, or if you like simplicity a thief with clusterbomb spam does alright, but it sounds like you want Ele or Eng glass cannon to me.
In Deadly Arts, there is a trait called Improvisation that resets all skills of one type. If someone used Shadow Refuge twice like that on a short cooldown, it was likely due to this trait. It’s unreliable and a gamble though to use the trait. He just got lucky.
I’d say thief, with either sword/pistol or sword/dagger, you can make some interesting builds that do not rely on stealth whatsoever or rarely.
I’d probably say staff for Mesmer. I haven’t played my Mesmer too much, but the staff was the only weapon that felt like I could just run around and stay in without too much worry or if I was feeling lazy.
Guardian, with a scepter build or staff build to avoid having to switch for ranged. You can make a pure hammer or GS build, but the lack of range might hurt in some situations.
For Necro, the choice is definitely staff, as it has so much utility and is range. It can stack conditions (although not the best) and hits decently with power builds (though it’s slow). It’s pretty much the standard to run a staff as one of your weapons in any necro build and it has many traits to enhance it’s performance. However, you will never do the most dps if that’s what you want to do, as those fall to other weapons. You’d best be served going support.
I prefer to lean more towards offensive stats with a scattering of vit/tough on jewels, at least for leveling. I’d rather annihilate things fast and use DS/dodge/CC/minions/regen to soak the big hits or some of the damage and cruise along faster. Necro’s have a lot of ways to avoid damage inherently if you play correctly, so it’s easier to focus on more damage oriented stats/traits for general pve. I have a couple different variations I use, but I’ll share one less common build that works well for me.
Minion build (sub Spectral Walk for the Wurm minion in more stationary fights): http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/necromancer#3|15|1201|1194|1199|9243|4693|30|1255|1563|2242|10|2324|0|0|10|2243|0|0|0|0|0|0|20|1257|1256|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|
Lots of CC, AoE, and Mobility for scooting around faster with this build. It’s great for leveling.
Unless it’s against competition, it’s a hollow victory in my eyes. But, I guess it is a good tactic to rally people into WvW for your server.
Using available weapons, I’d go with;
Warrior: Torch
Guardian: Axes, longbow
Engineer: maces, hammers
Ranger: Rifles, staff
Thief: maces
Necromancer: greatsword
Mesmer: pistols
Elementalist: swords, shortbow
And if I were to add new weapons to the game, I’d go;
Warrior: 1 hand spears, greataxe
Guardian: 1 hand spears, polearms
Engineer: Cattle/lightning prod/conductor, fist weapons
Ranger: 1 and 2 handed spears/javelins
Thief: fist weapons, whip/garrote, darts
Necromancer: Greataxe/scythe, whips
Mesmer: whips, darts
Elementalist: Krull style boomerang/magical throwing star
Welcome to Guild Wars 2! A MMO minus the “multiplayer” aspect.
Actually, lots of MMO’s are like this after a few months from release. Everyone is on their mains most of the time and in the endgame zones. Sure, you’ll find some people, but you will never find a ton of people there again unless they do events/change something to an area.
Finkle is Einhorn!
Well, I could see it working in a group setup maybe, but it lacks two things I would never go without in a pvp build. Stun breaker and condition removal, which I see as nearly mandatory, unless you have team mates to cover those weaknesses. I’d still give it a go though, I mean what can you really lose? Engineer is fun in that way, so many builds/styles to play with, even if they aren’t viable all the time.
Rifles are completely viable at endgame with the right build and setup for general play, standard pvp/pve, and WvW. Dungeons require certain things at times and tournament pvp it’s all about your role, so it will change based on that or revolve around your team mates setup.