Guild Wars 2

Well, the raid leader is right that scholar runes are better. If I were him, I would be worried, but not because of the runes themselves causing problems (it is a small difference).. I wouldn’t trust anyone who is just lazy with their gear like that. Sure, you’ve probably done the content a lot, but there are plenty of very mediocre players who get everything cleared just because they had groups good enough to make it through, despite them.

If you really don’t care about getting your gear perfect, which is the easiest part of raids, I don’t see how you’d expect others to have confidence in your actual performance.

@OP: Find a good guild. Raids aren’t nearly as enjoyable if you’re not doing them with a group of friends that are reliable and fun to be around for hours at a time. Seriously, don’t force yourself into this content with a group you don’t enjoy.

If you’re in need of a guild, keep a look out in the ‘looking for’ section of the forums or just make a post yourself to ask for interested guilds.

I’d rather see the current weapons like axe and GS made more viable. =/

Yea, a warrior would definitely boost your DPS the most. However, I’ve heard a lot about MM necro builds lately and that they can trivialize most of upper level fractals. However, it’s been a while since I’ve messed around in there and never got to try this myself.

I’d even say that a hammer DH would be a better addition than a thief. You’d get AoE protection, aegis blocks, and extra condi removal. The reflects wouldn’t be entirely necessary with an ele and chrono, but putting wall of reflect on a guard frees up your chrono to run an extra well instead for more alacrity/quickness.

The more I’ve done this fight, the less worthwhile I think the Sigil of Impact is (unless you’re trying to do a speed run or are using less than 10 people). It’s really not hard to hit the DPS check of this fight when you handle the mechanics correctly and if you’re borking the mechanics, added DPS won’t really make up for it.

For example, if your group is new to the fight, you’ll probably wipe due to merged adds causing mayhem, but once your group can get through the encounter without an add merging, you’ll likely clear it with ease. The only exception is just if everyone is doing really well, but the person playing pong/hockey/whatever you call it with the orb during that phase is struggling, you may need the extra DPS.

However, I think that for your common raider, it’s not worth overriding your regular sigil just for this one fight.

zzBlurryzz.7492:

Zintrothen.1056:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Daredevil_-_Dagger/Pistol But learn it well before playing ranked. It’s not as easy you think. It’s not a build that can walk in and start attacking on a point. You can’t take much AoE damage before needing to run out and recharge.

A lot of thieves will sit back and use shortbow attacks or time Headshot for interrupts and get damage that way. When you’re target is low and can be finished off, jump in, kill and get out ASAP. Be ready to use stunbreaks and dodges.

Don’t spam attacks, as tempting it might be. Use shortbow and dodges to get around the map quickly for decaps and +1ing.

This build is weak to condis, so avoid places where condis are being spammed. Shadowstep is best used for mobility and escape. Its condi cleansing comes when you teleport back. But that spot might be still be under attack.

Play cheap and you’ll do well lol.

I know the playstyle of the set rather well from WvW roaming and such. Just adjusting to the skill changes and where I should be on the map is what I gotta learn. Thanks for the tips man!

Just be aware that the biggest difference between sPvP and WvW is how you rotate between points and knowing where to go and when will make a bigger difference with a meta D/P thief than actually being really pro in the fights themselves.

For a rough overview of how to rotate, follow these priorities:
1) Is the far point unguarded? If yes, then go decap it (don’t fully cap it, just stand long enough to where it’s fully greyed out.
2) Is there a 1 v 1 or 2 v 2 happening at a point? If so, go to this fight and help your teammate win this fight quickly with some burst. Leave as soon as the enemy is downed or will certainly be downed.
3) If there’s a good opportunity, engage in secondary mechanics of a map (steal beast kill, break door down for a later lord rush, kill enemy treb, etc.)
4) If none of the above are happening, play carefully with any large team fight. Plink away with short bow until a target gets low and then burst.
5) Never, ever engage in an outnumbered fight.

Oh, and don’t be afraid to use your heal or signet of agi to refill your endurance bar during map travel.

CJTheKilla.1054:

Dahkeus.8243:

So…in other words, you’re upset because you think that you’re so special and that you deserve more than everyone else and it’s just not fair.
Look, queue times for upper ranks need to be addressed, but the rest is just pathetic, entitled whining.

You are the one that played to get to the number one spot, so if you don’t like the lack of tangible reward, then maybe you should have just done something else with your life instead of wasting so much time playing a game you obviously don’t enjoy to achieve something you don’t care about.

I mean, I would be impressed at your PvP prowess if not for how obviously foolish you are to waste your life and for how much of an entitled prick you are by the way you’re acting here.

Seriously, uninstall the game, take a vacation, and get some perspective on what you’re doing with the limited time you have on this earth. Life is too short.

What is the point in progressing through their “league” if you don’t get any incentive from it. What is even the point in having the league in the first place? I’m afk in hotm more than I’m ever actually playing this game because it seems to take 45m just to match me against the same people, with the same people on my team, with the same match outcome.
Anet wants this game to become an ‘E-Sport’ but from the looks of it, theyre trying to get rid of their players. There is no gain from pvp’ing in the slightest, so why waste time in pvp at all. You might as well remove pvp. Then if you’re not going to take suggestions to make your PvP better for all, then why even have pvp devs.
I’m trying to address issues that people who still want to play the game have so that maybe a dev will actually take time to address them. But ya know, ill just afk in hotm havning the time of my life until that happens

It’s a kittening video game. The point is to have fun and to push yourself to perform as best as you can. If you don’t think that’s enough, then does some other generic desk in of your avatar or some new word/phrase that appears under your character’s name suddenly make all those hours of your life somehow justifiably spent?

I don’t know what you’re looking for, but I’m pretty sure you aren’t either. If you can’t find anything from all your time spent to be of any worth, the. You seriously need to learn how to plan ahead with how you spend your time much better.

It’s nothing ANet can do anything about. PvP is a toxic community. There’s a lot of kittens out there like this and they tend to kitten off people to the point of making them into kittens too. The best you can do is shrug it off, and just focus on what you can control.

Depends what you’re running, but if it’s the terrible condo evade build, just kite and use auto attacks. Fast, low dmg attacks are much better than big,long cd attacks that don’t land.

So…in other words, you’re upset because you think that you’re so special and that you deserve more than everyone else and it’s just not fair.
Look, queue times for upper ranks need to be addressed, but the rest is just pathetic, entitled whining.

You are the one that played to get to the number one spot, so if you don’t like the lack of tangible reward, then maybe you should have just done something else with your life instead of wasting so much time playing a game you obviously don’t enjoy to achieve something you don’t care about.

I mean, I would be impressed at your PvP prowess if not for how obviously foolish you are to waste your life and for how much of an entitled prick you are by the way you’re acting here.

Seriously, uninstall the game, take a vacation, and get some perspective on what you’re doing with the limited time you have on this earth. Life is too short.

Positioning is probably the problem if you’re running the meta build. If you’re like me when I started playing necro, you probably anticipated on being tankier than you actually are and ran straight in to mid on team fights. However, you want to hang out towards the back of your teammates unless you have shroud fully charged.

For example, if you start a game going to mid, hang back and let your teammates run in first. Generate life force while in staff and when you’re full, swap to warhorn, run in, go into shroud, and whale away on a target. Just make sure you have a plan to disengage before you run out of shroud if you need to.

This strat will vary depending on what’s going on, of course, but it’s a good general rule of thumb.

That’s an excellent question…

And I can’t think of a single reason for why it acts like it does now. It’s a really well designed skill from a theoretical perspective and if you could actually rely on it working as it should, it would probably be a viable option.

insanemaniac.2456:

Dinosaurs.8674:

insanemaniac.2456:

Dinosaurs.8674:

Dahkeus.8243:

The only downside is that this fight seems to encourage stacking of a single class (eles) even more than other raid wings, but that’s more of a balance issue than a raid encounter issue.

This is really just a function of the elementalist class, which is why eles are used in almost every fight. They deal the most damage, provide some utility with fire/water fields, have an amazing heal skill, deal their damage in an aoe, and deal their damage from range. Against large hitboxes they deal 25% more damage than the next highest build…which is the other elementalist build lol. Unless the class itself is changed, it’s going to take one of a few specific types of boss fights to make ele stacking not the best way to down a boss.

the utility provided by fire fields is erased by the multitude of other field spam from whoever isnt an ele and the fact that everyone prefers to use professions that can stack might passively instead of blasting fire actively.

same goes for water. everyone just takes a healer instead of bothering to blast water.

Fire fields are going to be up most of the time if you have 3+ eles spamming lava font. Also, they are one of the three fields that provide a DPS increase for whirl and projectile finishers, so having one up constantly is useful even if you aren’t blasting.

And yeah blasting water is probably not happening, but ele also just has decent healing skills, regardless of fields. Overload water means that your DPS class can also become an emergency healer, and there are a few other healing skills as well depending on weapon set.

The point is that ele provides top tier DPS and has so much else going for it that it’s extremely difficult to make fights where stacking eles is not a good strategy. Currently the only fights where taking 3+ eles isn’t good are Matthias and VG. Against Matthias fresh air ele stacking would be the meta if necros didn’t completely destroy him with condi manipulation, and against VG you need condi damage for the split phase. Even so, two eles on those fights isn’t uncommon at all. Every other fight you could take 4 eles and it would be a good comp.

It isn’t a problem with the design of the raids, it’s a result of the fact that the classes weren’t designed with raids in mind. Skills like lava font and epidemic are ridiculously hard to design around when it comes to making every class desirable in a raid. The flexibility provided by eles having 4 skill sets with vastly different themes can’t help either.

my point is that bringing an ele because of its field types isnt a good justification any more. it used to be a good justification. but HoT made it not matter and fields have been marginalized and people dont care.

its not bad to use combos, but its not necessary in any raiding experience. because they either give nominal dps increases or an effect you dont care about or someone else can (passively) do it faster and or with less effort than anyone trying to use a combo.

Yea, in the meta with PS wars, fire fields really don’t matter, but they’re a nice perk. Even if eles dropped light fields, they’d still be the best PvE class in the game due to clear top tier DPS with ranged and AoE capabilities.

Yea, I think the KC fight is also pretty accessible, even if it may not seem that way to people right now. It is a bit of a DPS check like Gorseval, but once you learn the mechanics, it’s actually a pretty easy fight.

The only downside is that this fight seems to encourage stacking of a single class (eles) even more than other raid wings, but that’s more of a balance issue than a raid encounter issue.

MilkCarton.4087:

Razor.9872:

Play reaper to counter berzerker. Play daredevil to counter reaper. Play herald to counter daredevil. Play berzerker to counter herald.

Play chronomancer/scrapper to offensively support countering teammates.

Play tempest/druid to defensively support countering teammates.

Play dragonhunter for lolz.

How the hell does daredevil counter reaper. Necros in general have a lot of aoe and create a no go zone for thiefs. Not to mention they are impossible to burst down thanks to their health sponge.

Because thieves don’t need to stand in the AoE. They jump in, stun lock and burst, then port out during shroud. Even if a reaper can does well against a thief in a 1 v 1, the stun burst against reapers is devastating in team fights.

And if the thief brings Impact St Ike, there are few better targets for a full down than a block-less necro.

It’s never too late to raid, but I’d definitely recommend going with a guild since the pug experience can be pretty hit or miss. Check out the Looking For section of the forums if you haven’t yet.

I’ll admit to being biased, but I love the guild I’m in and we are still recruiting for our entry level raid team. This group has a mix of new and experienced players so that we can help teach/guide new players to fights they haven’t encountered or haven’t played much. If you’re interested, check out the direct recruitment below, but even if not, check out that section of the forums for sure. I think the posts there are generally your best bet for finding active guild recruitment with enough info to get a feel for what type of environment they are.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/lookingfor/NA-NPC-Raid-Guild-Ready-to-Teach

P.s. Considering your account name, I would have thought your main would have been a mesmer, lol.

Just saw a post on reddit with a video. Looks like Impact and Tempest Defense do work:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ok82y/psa_impact_sigil_and_tempest_defense_work_on_keep/

Ok, so we need to touch on a very old topic: Ranged damage and relative DPS.

Back when this game was first built, the devs said that ranged damage should always be lower DPS than melee since there was less risk associated with it.

Fast forward to 2016 and the highest DPS in the game is primarily ranged, making eles desired so much, raid groups are often taking upwards of 4 of them.

If the devs think this is fine or even think that a staff ele should be the 2nd or 3rd highest dps build, then we need some consistency, because there’s no reason why thief pistols, ranger longbows, warrior rifles, etc. all deal such paltry DPS in comparison.

Yea, necro is awesome for VG. It keeps up high ranged condi dps, making it ideal for green circle duty and red guard on split. It’s also tanky as hell, making it a very reliable class for this fight.

The only flaw with necros is that they don’t have a push/pull to deal with seekers, but you don’t need everyone in your green group to be able to do this and they can at least survive a seeker on a green circle if needed by sitting in shroud.

I Am Dansker.7105:

I think the link changes if the link is applied to the tank, once the tank regains aggro, the link changes

If that’s the case, I’d rather them keep the link on the tank. As long as both aren’t linked to the tank, this doesn’t cause any problems.

I still love thief in PvP. D/P is a fast, versatile build with a relatively unique role.

In PvE…we’re so close to good. In speed runs, we’re awesome. In Fractals, we’re good, but a stacking MM necros with a chrono or PS war is better.

In Raids, we’re good enough for one spot…usually…on most fights. However, eles tend to overshadow us since they generally do more DPS and can do it all from range. Personally, this frustrates me since the whole message at the release of this game was that ranged dps was supposed to be lower to balance the advantage of being able to stand far away, but since eles bring top notch DPS with tons of AoE cleave and the ability to drop it at range anywhere they need, it’s often hard to argue for bringing a thief.

But at least groups will want us for stealth on the escort event of the new raid wing, lol.

Just wanted to chime in with my thoughts on the new raid wing. For perspective’s sake, it’s worth mentioning that while I’ve seen videos on all the content, I haven’t downed the second boss yet.

I won’t touch on the lore here, but since I am mentioning some of the fight mechanics, this may be considered a spoiler for those who haven’t been here yet.

The Good
I love the start of this raid wing. As WoodenPotatoes pointed out in a recent vid, this is a great way to open up accessibility to a raid. It’s a relatively easy encounter that still gives a solid feeling of progression, even when you wipe due to how much you move through the area. I also like how encounters like this and the Bandit Trio allow us to explore more space within the raid area itself. I think the best raids have a mix of relatively easy and relatively difficult encounters and this balances that out well.

I also like the mix of mechanics in the second boss fight. Adding in aspects of the previous boss encounters allows this fight to be relatively complex and involved without being too overwhelming.

The 3rd fight looks like it will be really fun. It has a big, epic feel, similar to the Dragon’s Stand event and appears to be a satisfying conclusion.

The Bad
There’s still quite a few bugs. From last night, my group found that while we regularly got notifications from the very obvious expanding circles where everyone needs to spread out, there was no notification sound for the fixate and the pop up at the top of the screen was very inconsistent. With all the visual noise in this fight, it’s really too hard to see when this happens to your character.

The fixate also seemed to randomly switch to other players with no rhyme or reason. I understand this should happen if the fixated person gets downed, but this happened frequently to players who were still on their feet and healthy.

The construct core golf-like mechanic also was not very enjoyable. Maybe more practice with this will help, but the sense of control on this thing feels very hit or miss. The thing just seems to be very erratic in how much or where it moves, even with someone chasing it using basic auto attacks.

This is not entirely related to the raid wing itself, but I’d also like to see some better class balancing so that groups were incentivized to take a wider variety of professions instead of just stacking more eles.

Finally, while I like the depth that ley line gliding gives some of these encounters, it’s frustrating to have masteries as a hard barrier to people in the group. Requiring basic gliding and even up drafts wasn’t a big deal because of how easy it is to reach those masteries, but to get something as high up as ley line gliding, it requires some serious time invested into HoT open world maps, which isn’t appealing to a lot of raiders, especially since the number of mastery points becomes a bigger hurdle than the amount of HoT experience you’ve gained for this mastery. This degree of gating is starting to feel like the gating in other games with attunements/gear grinding, which is worrisome.

Anyways, overall it’s a really solid raid wing and if any devs read this, I hope the raid team gets big kudos for their work on this. As the bugs get fixed, this area will only get better and if we could get any work-around for the mastery gating (maybe unlock it for everyone just in this wing or make the grind less?), I think we’d all be even happier.

NikeEU.7690:

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

Does the Rev actually have better PvE heals? I’ve not bothered with the Rev much at all, so I honestly don’t know.

~EW

Yep. Rev has an instance cast Defiant Stance that lasts a second longer and has a 10 second shorter cool down. And then another heal on swap if that isn’t enough.

They also don’t have to worry about losing dps by not using their heal as part of their DPS rotation.

For PvE leveling: Blind fields are your friend and pistol offhand will make your life easier.

For PvP: Start getting used to resetting fights or using escape abilities to find to pick fights in your favor.

FrownyClown.8402:

A better idea could be amulet stacking. Only 2 amulets with condi damage in it is allowed on the team. Only 2 amulets with power and ferocity is allowed on the team. Only 1 amulet with healing power is allowed on the team.

No, that’s kittening dumb.

Because there wasn’t enough holding back reaper GS. =P

So, matchmaking has drastically improved since the start of the new league system, but there’s one issue that really takes the enjoyment out of matches:

Class stacking

I mean, I get it. There need to be some sacrifices to keep queue teams low, but when I see 3 thieves, no necros on one team and 3 necros, no thieves on the other team, there’s just no good reason for this.

Please, at the very least, keep there from ever being more than 2 of the same class on any team. I’d gladly wait an extra few minutes if this is what it took to pull it off.

TzuCon.5368:

It sounds like the Necro/Reaper have some problems contributing directly to team-situations, but are still viable when compared directly with other individual classes?

Necros used to have this problem. This isn’t really the case at all in the post-HoT game. Ryouzanpaku pointed out a lot of this, but there’s also projectile defense and the best cleave in the game for raids, thanks to Epidemic.

They’re also one of the few classes that can perform strong dps from ranged, which is a unique advantage that can help in something like the VG fight.

Yea, they do this and then the forums get flooded with people complaining about how long queue times are for core-only PvP and/or how imbalanced the games are, which both result from a lower player base.

Even if you did get enough players who own HoT to participate, this would still cause tons of other issues.

Honestly, I think this is a very short-sighted idea that would cause more problems than it would solve.

The general consensus tends to point to Thorns for raids, but your mileage may vary in other areas. Berserker still seems to be a safe choice if you’ve already geared around them to get your condi capped.

Necro is amazingly good for a lot of raid content, which is why I’ve decided to seriously roll one for once (I’ve rolled necros in the past, but always ended up deleting). Necros are great in a lot of raid fights for epidemic, which is great for melting adds, handling condis, and for working well in ranged condi situations.

Reisinger.4203:

EDIT: I also just tried dueling 1v1 today, I definitely lost more duels than I won, but big problem I noticed was ppl running really strange thief builds… ones that are great for 1v1 but kind of gimmicky and not really seen in actual ranked play. should I keep dueling these guys?

Yea, that’s the tough thing about going to dueling servers. So many people are either testing weird builds or are running builds specifically designed to win duels. Unfortunately, this generally isn’t very helpful since you’ll want to practice dueling against builds you encounter in actual PvP games, so you may need to ask around to find people running a specific build you want to practice against.

Ross Biddle.2367:

• Right mechanical setup (good keybinds, razer naga mouse, etc)
• Sound class knowledge
• Sound build knowledge (have to know how to build properly)
• Role knowledge
• Rotation knowledge

• Working with others

• And at the top of it all, playing on comms, with people you know, working it all in togeather.

So simple as that really

((This is why we need a more simplified PvP game mode XD ))

Generally when someone tells someone else to “get gud” or that they suck or whatever, it’s usually based on either seeing a player play a bad game or make a single mistake of some sort, so this sort of criticism really should be taken as a grain of salt.

That being said, Ross Biddle touched on the most important points.

Just remember that there’s pretty much always going to be someone better than you and matchmaking is designed to put you against people of a similar skill to you, so even if you are great at the game, you’ll still be pitched against teams that will roflstomp you from time to time. =P

Furious.1283:

Mister Fluffkin.7358:

… now im disabling it all the time because its ugly as hell …

Yes it is! xD

Yea, I’ll still be showing mine off for a while since this is my first legendary (and I’ve played since launch), but I wish we would have gotten something a bit more…aggressive looking as a PvP-specific legendary. I mean, spikes and dark colors seem to be more appropriate for a competitive game mode than pastel easter colors on feathery stained glass. =P

Dariya.9380:

What is this 1000g item you speak of? I know Gift of Something costs a lot to make, but when I made my wings in Season 2 I only had ~800g on me and still had ~300g left after making it. As others have noted you can get considerable gold by just playing PvP, also a lot of the materials from PvP loot boxes required for making the Gift, and buy the rest from TP.

Yea, I just crafted mine and I don’t think if I’ve ever owned more than 200g at one time, but fortunately I had a lot of mats saved up.

Gems!

Seriously though, it only costs that much if you have no T6 mats saved up and no laurels available.

Just remember that you can get T6 from the laurel vendor from the bags and can also flush T5 mats into T6 mats at the mystic toilet.

It’s good, but not without fault. Class stacking still causes some games to just be total crap. There should never be a game with 3 of the same class on one team unless the queue time hits 10 minutes or something.

alchemyst.2165:

Honestly, dueling. Duel some good thieves and it really helps a lot just with reactions and creating tactics. It translates into team play. Also just helps with experience.

^ Good advice. I really need to do more of this myself.

Recording your own gameplay is also a really good idea if you can do this.

I’d also say to consider turning off map chat or taking breaks if you find yourself getting frustrated or just not playing as well as you should. Often just having the right frame of mind when going into games will have a big impact, particularly if you already know how to play well and have done so in the past. Sometimes it’s just tapping into your own already learned knowledge and established talent that’s needed to do well more than simply learning something else new.

It definitely sounds like you have the right attitude though.

A full cap on an open point is very, very rarely a good idea for a thief. There’s really 3 situations where it’s worth doing:

1) The enemy team has very, very limited mobility (i.e. no revs, thieves, or mesmers on their team) and is caught up in bunker-heavy fights on other points.

2) The enemy team is dominating on all other points and there’s nothing else you can do until your team respawns.

3) The enemy team is just terrible.

In situation 2 and 3, the game is often such a clear win/loss that it doesn’t really matter anyways.

And regarding bunk-heavy 3v3 and 4v4 fights, you have a few options. You can try to focus a target during a weak moment with a steal burst combo (this would be a low HP ele in fire/air attunement, a necro that has run out of shroud, a warrior that’s already procced their passive Endure Pain, etc.). You play conservatively, hanging near the outside and using your initiative for head shots to try and lock down a target for your allies to focus (make sure they’re targetted so your teammates know to assist). Finally, you can plink away with short bow. Short bow is really a last resort and often too weak to be very worthwhile.

As Alchemyst said also, poison on the bunkers is very helpful.

And just remember that during any time you get caught in a 3v3 or 4v4, you should be closely watching the far points and disengage asap to +1 any small fights that pop up or decap open points. Tunnel vision is your worst enemy.

Hey, welcome to thief. Here’s my advice regarding your questions:

1) Don’t rely on BP -> HS often. It’s a good opener and a good escape, but when you’re actually fighting someone, you’ll want to rely primarily on your auto-attacks for damage. If they start kiting, use Shadow Shot to stay on them with auto attacks. If they’re attacking hard, drop black powder and try to get them to stand in it so that they get blinded. Save your initiative for clutch head shots when they get low. Heartseeker when they’re under 33% hp.

2) Use Shadow Shot to land backstabs from stealth. Hit Shadow Shot and then immediately press 1, which will start the backstab animation.

3) Backstabs are nice and you’ll land more once you get more used to the class, but they’re not as important during mid fights. Just remember that it counts as a backstab even if you’re just flanking to the side and don’t try too hard to make every one land perfectly from behind. Most of your backstabs should come from your initial steal burst on an unsuspecting enemy when you jump into a fight.

Also, the more you play, the more you’ll get a feel for when you can expect to get blocked, blinded, etc.

4) Fair 1 v 1s don’t matter. If you play a D/P build, you win games by making smart rotations and making your teammates fair 1 v 1s and 2 v 2s unfair in your team’s advantage. Focus low health targets, CC-lock down bunkers, and break blocking enemies with basilisk. If a fight isn’t going to your team’s favor, disengage and live to help somewhere else.

I’d say you should only ever really 1 v 1 an enemy thief, a rev if they’re not ret (you can recognize ret revs by the taunt on CC trait), and enemy necros. If you do fight a necro, focus them hard until they use shroud, then kite until shroud is gone and resume burst.

And yea, not focusing on backstabs as you mentioned will definitely help. That was my biggest mistake when I started playing thief as well.

Also, just remember that unsuspected mediocre burst will always be more effective than a perfect heavy burst on a suspecting enemy.

Dash, hands down. Not many classes thieves are good at 1 v 1 unless you take bound or run some other yolo build intended to 1 v 1.

Matchmaking is really hit or miss this season. There’s just way too much class stacking in games, which I think is more prevalent than last season since we actually have all classes as strong choices.

However, I’d happily wait 3 minutes longer for each queue to pop if it meant that I wouldn’t end up with 3 of the same class on my team. I mean, it’s bad enough when you have something like 2 thieves, 2 eles, or 2 druids, but this has become a really common occurrence, which sucks the fun and competitiveness out of games.

ESKan.6782:

Incidentally, does it refill endurance for nearby allies too? I’ve always assumed it did, but now I’m uncertain.

yes

So, just to post an update. After using it for a while, I went ahead and dropped it to get Black Powder again. Shadow Trap was nice for some situations, but just wasn’t worthwhile often enough and with the cast time on the return, it doesn’t even work well to get you out of a tough situation very often.

And ultimately, Black Powder is just too useful and so much more versatile.

Any chance we could get an option to make ground target ignore UI elements? I mean, I wish I had a dollar for every time I missed a blink or AoE because I had my mouse over the chat box or an enemy’s health bar.

If not an option, could this be default?

It’s only supposed to cleanse 1 condition. I think you’re misunderstanding the wording of the skill. It also cleanses 1 condition on each nearby ally. It doesn’t cleanse a number of conditions on you equivalent to the number of nearby allies.

pelle ossa.9705:

Dahkeus.8243:

Because there’s a limit to how many restrictive rules you can put on matching oddly numbered premades before it starts coming at the cost of high queue times or big discrepancies in player experience/skill level.

And considering how many bad premades there are out there, you really can’t put that much stock in them inherently being better. There is only a very, very, very small niche of players who effectively utilize team communication to make a team perform above that of a solo Q team and most of those players are in the pro leagues.

GW2 has a very high yolosoloqueue culture in PvP, so even players that are very mechanically skilled often have little experience with team coordination, even if they did happen to hop on TeamSpeak with someone else.

the sistem is still unfair , in this game having even only a small communication can have an huge impact in a match even if the full premade have less skill than the other duoq+pugs team. the solution is really simple , bring back solo and teamq. the queue time was fine 2-3 years ago even with less players

Of course it’s unfair. However, the reality is, there’s limitations to how fair the system can be unless you start drastically start sacrificing your ability to provide decent queue times in effort to create a perfect match up.

As for 2-3 years ago, I think you’re wearing some very rosy colored glasses. Matchmaking was still problematic then and there were a hell of a lot of 4 vs 5s or worse due to the system not handling DCed players well.

TheDevice.2751:

Aeroxe.8140:

TheDevice.2751:

Dahkeus.8243:

TheDevice.2751:

Dahkeus.8243:

TheDevice.2751:

Am I missing something?

Pretty much everything else involved in those two professions as well as how other professions affect them.

Like saying Signet of

Those skills aren’t used in a vacuum.

You’re blatantly comparing apples to oranges and even if this was the source of an imbalance (it’s not), then you’d still be making a really cynical stretch to assume the intentions of the developers behind such balance in claiming “favoritism”.

How is it apples and oranges?

You’re just using that saying as if it applies just because. Its two aoe skills with ticks that do damage.

Comparing like signet of the locust with pob is comparing apples and oranges. Do you know what the saying “apples and oranges” means?

By your example, nothing is comparable. At all. Ever.

Because Guardians and Necros are very different classes, so adding a skill of one type is very strong for them, while adding the exact same skill to another class makes no improvement.

By my example, you don’t balance a game or define balance by comparing tool tips, but you can compare classes when you consider the factors that make a class strong or weak. You just don’t make drastic oversimplifications and then dramatic overarching conclusions from them. You think critically and consider as much as you can to make a smart decision.

Nope. I don;t get what you’re saying in this example. I get what you’re saying essentially and essentially its correct. You just don’t think I’ve thought that far.

Give necro a PoB skill. You think it wouln’t be better than WoS?

Thats ridiculous. Even reading up somebody asks, “who uses WoS, anyway.”

Exactly. Not even necro’s use it because its not good. It’s not that hard to think about. You’re making excuses just to make excuses.

PoB > WoS

A child could see which is better. A child.

And sure, take into account being traited. PoB is still better off.

I think a lot of people have said enough, and that if you can’t grasp what others have said here than you are way too close-minded and immature to understand that your opinion is not always equivalent to fact. Yes, PoB may be better in isolation compared to WoS, but you need to take the entire context (that is, the rest of the profession) into account. How you even suggest that this indicates favouritism is just simply baffling.

Here’s an analogy that you’ll maybe understand. If you don’t, then I’m just lost:

You (let’s say you’re Bob) and Johnny are going to school one day and it’s lunch time. You both open your lunchboxes, eagerly awaiting to eat the juicy grapes that both your mothers packed in today. Unfortunately, Johnny has more grapes than you, and they appear a more luscious purple! How undeserving! But wait! Your mother has packed in a delicious turkey sandwich where Johnny only has a leftover lunchable. In addition , you have the batman lunchbox whereas Johnny has a paperbag. It all evens out!

Okay fine. Good. All that is good stuff theoretically.

now, explain to me exactly how PoB is just as good as WoS.

In what ways are Necro’s benefiting from WoS as equally as Guards are benefiting from PoB?

You really don’t seem to get it and I think we’re all running out of ways to explain it to you.

It doesn’t kittening matter whether PoB or WoS are better than each other.

Keep asking bad questions and you’ll never find a good answer.

shion.2084:

I would say a good team knows when to un-target a target that didn’t play out and should now not be chased anymore.

Or a step further, you can also tell a good team by whether they keep attacking a rev who has their glint heal active or not. =P

TheDevice.2751:

Dahkeus.8243:

TheDevice.2751:

Am I missing something?

Pretty much everything else involved in those two professions as well as how other professions affect them.

Like saying Signet of

Those skills aren’t used in a vacuum.

You’re blatantly comparing apples to oranges and even if this was the source of an imbalance (it’s not), then you’d still be making a really cynical stretch to assume the intentions of the developers behind such balance in claiming “favoritism”.

How is it apples and oranges?

You’re just using that saying as if it applies just because. Its two aoe skills with ticks that do damage.

Comparing like signet of the locust with pob is comparing apples and oranges. Do you know what the saying “apples and oranges” means?

By your example, nothing is comparable. At all. Ever.

Because Guardians and Necros are very different classes, so adding a skill of one type is very strong for them, while adding the exact same skill to another class makes no improvement.

By my example, you don’t balance a game or define balance by comparing tool tips, but you can compare classes when you consider the factors that make a class strong or weak. You just don’t make drastic oversimplifications and then dramatic overarching conclusions from them. You think critically and consider as much as you can to make a smart decision.