Guild Wars 2

Probably a curious question, but can I make Aether by buying the Shortbow Staves or do I need to craft them my self? I’m curious cause I’m a Thief with Cooking and Weaponsmith, but I want Aether

Lofat.2406:

Looks like a solid build. I often switch out SR for blinding powder. I find that the instant invis and blind offered more in solo play than did SR. I think most people are on to SR and how to counter it.

Yea, maybe I’ll try that since I solo everything I do, I mainly chose Refuge over Blinding Powder so I have a safety net if I’m in a lot of trouble and need to completely run and hide, or if I want to get a long stealth and take someone by complete surprise.

P.S I test drove this build and I love it, does a lot of damage and doesn’t rely heavy on stealth attacks like a backstab, I got a few 1 hit kills on glass canons =]

Suralin.3947:

Is this for WvW or PvE?

sPvP and maybe WvW when I hit level 80, not had a chance to test builds for WvW until I’m level 80, I’ll probably use it for PvE too since PvE doesn’t matter

I’m no master thief but I just finished my build and I’m kinda pleased with the outcome, so I thought I’d share it for people to use, or perhaps give me tips on how I may get a better outcome

My Build: Thief

Weapons:
D/D with fire sigil for extra damage +AoE (Second sigil is what ever you want it to be)
Shortbow with fire sigil also for extra damage and more AoE
(I feel this weapon setup is great since it gives me lots of AoE on both weapon sets.)

Heal:
This can be what ever you prefur, I often switch between Hide In Shadows and Withdraw

Utilities:
Shadowstep, I use this mostly just as a break stun.
Shadow Refuge, used in emergency when I need to reset the fight, or if I feel like being annoying, use it to res/finish
Signet of Shadows, as I feel the 25% increase speed is a must for any build, this is my preference though

Elite:
Dagger Storm, the elite can be what ever is your favorite really, I just love Dagger Storm as theres nothing more satisfying to me than running into a huge zerg and popping my Dagger Storm and just seeing tons of red numbers and tons of AoE explosions from the fire sigil, and just tons of damage everywhere

Traits:
25 Deadly Arts – Mostly for the extra power and the 3 minor traits, as they work so well together, but mug is also nice for starting a fight
30 Critical Strikes – No crit build would be a crit build without 30 into critical strikes kitten
15 Acrobatics – This 15 into Acrobatics is more personal preference, I like the return of endurance on dodge as I like to dodge a lot, if you’re move stealth and more backstab you might want to go 15 into Shadow Arts instead, but as I previously said, I’m too lazy to stealth a lot

Armor:
Armor runes are really preference, I went for Divinity just to get a little bit more diversity back, since I didn’t feel safe being a 100% glass canon.

Accessory:
Same applies for the Amulet and jewel, what ever you like best, I went with Berserker because why not I might change this to Knight to get a bit more survivability through, let me know what you think I should do with Accessory

EndlessDreamer.6780:

It’s a bug. They happen.

Why does every unfortunate event in this game translate to ArenaNet being a group of devils whose only love in life is making people’s lives miserable?

Because they do

Aww, poor rat =[

I also dislike guilds and I play alone as well but I’m not complaining. Because it is MY choice to play alone… If you feel you’re missing out then join a guild, you’re choosing to play alone like I am so we can’t complain. If you want the missions then join a guild. If you don’t want to join a guild then don’t. Just don’t complain on the forums because it’s all down to the players choice weather to be apart of the content or not…

Blaming the game for not being fully up to YOUR taste is rather harsh and disrespectful. I play as solo as you can possibly play, I’ve got my Ranger to level 80 and I’m currently re-starting as a Thief currently at level 21, I play solo, I don’t have a Guild, I don’t play on getting a guild. If I go WvW I play alone and just tag a long with randomers if need be. The only time I ever socialize with the other human beings is if I need to do a dungeon or fractals, I’ll join a group.

And I can’t say I feel the same as you, I enjoy it just as much as I’d enjoy it in any other MMO.

9/10, freaky but very cool looking

This is my Thief

The fact is everyone will always have a complaint about other professions, I hate Mesmers Clones in every way and I hate the Mesmer for that, but I don’t sit around and QQ saying they should be removed cause their part of the mechanic. The fact is everyone will have atleast one complain about the other professions because their sore losers… They lose a duel, they QQ, they complain… Instead they should work around it and try to counter the thing they don’t like. Stealth can be countered to some degree if a player is smart enough

Any profession can really play any role in a battle and all are suitable for solo play. If you’re after something that requires more skill and thinking you may want to give Thief a try, as Thief needs the most attention and thinking when playing. Thief can also play the supportive role though you may not think it will. Ranger is also pretty good for solo play, but is lackluster in supportive ability and can get boring very quickly.

All in all every profession is suitable for any role, so choosing really depends on the one you feel most conferrable with, but if you’re after something that keeps you on edge and active instead of button mashing then I’d say Thief would be perfect for you, as with Thief you really can’t afford to mess up.

It’s 9.5 seconds of stealth. And it’s the only stealth we have that’s viable for complete stealth. The rest are 3 seconds or 4 seconds with traits. Also Shadow Refuge is on a LONG cooldown, no thief will use it for revives and if they do their not a good thief. Shadow Refuge is generally used as a reset. When things don’t go their way they can Stealth out and get out. And before you say it’s OP that we can get out of any situation any time, that’s the whole point of Thief.

People who say remove Shadow Refuge, and remove stealth make me angry. Cause that’s equal to saying Remove pets from Ranger, remove Clones from Mesmer, remove Turrets from Engineers… It’s the exact same.

I feel the thief has too LITTLE stealth as apposed to too much. I’d like more long stealth so I could truly sneak up on people and attack them when they don’t expect it. With these stealth I can’t really do that as I need to use my stealth while I’m in their sight, so they see it coming before I attack.

I recently changed from Ranger to Thief, and my biggest loss is the loss of the awesome Longbow’s so I was wondering what Shortbow skins look really good? At the moment I’m using the Slingshot from Wintersday, but I do Archery in real life so I have a love for nice bows. So what bows your favorite Feel free to share pics too as I’m looking for a bow I’ll like

Because crit and condition builds are seperate by trait, if condition’s could crit then people who make condition builds would be forced to also go into crit stats and traits which would kill the point of builds being unique. Crit would be essential to condition builds if conditions critted.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Gele.2048:

i need 20 min max to do daily 100% all its EPICly easy

It’s not so simple as “is it easy” as “I feel I need to log in daily”. For some, it’s a big thing, and it feels like a leash. That’s clear in abundance. Others don’t notice because they’re already in the game daily, and can spare the time to do them.

I agree, I’m one of those people. But it’s our own fault for being on that “leash”. If you want something badly enough then you’ll do it. There’s nothing forcing you to do the daily and get your laurels. It all depends if you want the gear or not

I have a routine for my dailies and I have no problem with them. Even though I don’t play GW2 much. If I know the following day I won’t play GW2 much, ie I have college or I want to play something else then I do my daily at 00:00. It usually takes me 30-45 minutes to do my daily. I go to sleep when I done my daily. Or if I get unlucky with my Events and I don’t manage to do my daily I do as much as I can. So that the little time I play I can finish them off.

I’m somewhat addicted to dailies so even if I don’t feel like playing GW2 I still come on to do my daily like a zombie

Last night I deleted my Ranger, as I lost patience with the pets system this game has and I’m tired of relying on a crappy AI to do my damage for me, but when I switch to thief my problem is how easy it dies. So tips on how I can make my thief less stressful and less squishy early in the game would be appreciated. I alright know some tips, like the concept of having Vitality and Toughness. But if there’s any trick to the thief I’m missing I’d like to know.

Also if this is just early game, and later on in the game the thief becomes more viable then that will be a relief.

I got the same error, EU but as Vaupell says it’s the launcher login which is failing, not server join =[

No cap other than what’s possible from traits and buff’s. I’ve got a thief to 117% Crit Chance, but anything over 100% is pointless ;P

This belongs in the Ranger section, but that aside my favorite pets are Jaguar/Bear for land and Jaguar/Armor fish for water. I like to always have a DPS and a Tank pet so I can switch on the fly depending what I’m up against

Odd question, but if all Sylvari are related, and we have Male and Female gender, which would indicate Sylvari’s have some sort of intimacy. Does that make us all inbred? =S

How do you nerf a sound? And wha-? I just don’t know… This causes you to delete a character?… As the first reply says you’re creepy. Sorry to be offensive but anyone who enjoyed the “Pain sound a female” needs some help…

Killyox.3950:

SynfulChaot.3169:

Like alfista.6094 said, I’d not go with either as neither has a dedicated graphics card. You want a computer with a dedicated graphics card by nVidia or ATI.

I have to disagree with Oreimo.8435 on discouraging you from Windows 8. It is a good operating system and is better optimized for power usage than Windows 7. I’ve been running GW2 on Windows 8 since the release preview with zero issue.

I’ll also note that, while 7200 RPM drives are preferred, they are more difficult (and more expensive) to find in laptops. A 5400 RPM drive (2.5" drive standard speed) should be sufficient.

Searching Newegg provided two decent results. A Lenovo and an Acer. While the Acer does have an Intel processor instead of an AMD, I’d lean towards the Lenovo as it has a superior video card with twice the video RAM. That and Lenovo is known for better build quality than Acer.

Windows 8 is terrible. Period. Game developers agree with it, Steam owners agree with it (Gabe Newell)and pretty much everyone i know who has W8 agrees with it.

Even MS knows W8 is a flop.

Unless you have and try Windows 8 you can’t make that statement. I got Windows 8 and I can tell you it’s better than Windows 7 for gaming. With Windows 7 I got an average of 60-80fps on BF3 High settings. With no other changes except upgrading to Windows 8 I get an average of 85-100fps. And from looking at the resource usage Windows 8 uses about 200mb less RAM than Windows 7 does…

The only thing bad about Windows 8 is the Metro (Windows 8 Interface). But with a simple tweak and modification you can remove that and have the default Windows 7 desktop and interface, and start button.

I have a Dell Inspiron 15R SE which I use to run GW2. It has Intel HD 4000 + AMD HD 7970M Graphics, and I can tell you Intel HD 4000 is not enough to run GW2. I know this cause with Intel you have the option to chose which processor to use, and if I choose Intel HD 4000 I get around 10fps. So I’d have to say none of these.

I can how ever suggest the Dell Inspiron laptops which come with dedicated graphics, doesn’t have the be the SE as that’s more on the pricey side of $1000+ But the Inspiron15R normal edition with dedicated graphics will be able to handle GW2 on high settings.

In-case you’re curious my Inspiron specs are;

Windows 8 (windows 8 works fine with all the games I play, it’s less resource hungry than windows 7)
3rd Generation i5 processor (Forgot which model)
AMD HD 7970M 2GB Video Memory
8GB DDR3 RAM

P.S It can handle GW2 fully maxed out and never drop below 80fps even through it’s a notebook. It also handles all other modern games I play decently

The Ranger is great if you’re after a fun relaxing class to play. But for Roaming WvW, PvP and 1v1 Thief would be the better choice for you. I’ve been in the same situation as you and kind of still am in the same position the thing keeping me as Ranger is it’s survivability compared to a Thief. As a Ranger you’re able to live PvE a lot more than a Thief can, you can solo Champions a lot easier than a Thief can if it agros your pet not you. And you can generally relax a lot more when playing. As a Thief, though strong and fun can be stressful when you’re dying a lot of the time, especially early on in the game

It’s best to go with what feels right and what you enjoy most. From what I see most Rangers are Norn. I’m Sylvari mainly because it’s a nature class so to me it fits well, also I’ll eventually want the Kudzo Longbow which also seems to fit with the Sylvari since it’s a flower bow. But I’ve never made an Asura so I can’t really comment on if PI is that big of a deal but I doubt it makes a huge difference

My question is would it be effective and sensible to level from 1-80 using only WvW. I’m wondering this because I’ve restarted my character a lot, switching between professions and trying to find my fit. And this is making me kind of bored of questing and such. So I’m wondering, since I enjoy WvW from what I’ve tried would I be able to just get all the way to 80 in WvW and then do all the boring exploration later, or would I be useless to my server going into WvW at such a low level? And better yet would I be able to actually kill players even though I’m lacking the end game gear?

It really depends how much you want the skin, if you want a technical advantage then no it’s a waste of time since the stats are almost identical to Exotics. I have a friend who has two Incinerator Daggers, and The Dreamer bow. And all 3 of them took him around 1000 hours game play. That kind turned me of since although I’m patient I’m not that patient. I will probably slowly aim towards getting mine, and not really care too much

Thief is better. Ranger should be better but sadly the pet screwed that up most of the time. The pet will constantly die, trigger traps and agro mobs. I have Thief and Ranger and Thief is better at pretty much anything because of pets… Only thing Ranger has is being good at PvE.

Karolis.4261:

W – forward
S – backward
Q and E unbind.
A- strafe left
D – strafe right.
All the turning and looking around done with mouse and wasd combination. U rly shouldnt push A and D to turn your character around

This is what I did first thing. Every game I get in I always remap controls from the start, they never suit my picky needs

I use healing spring mostly for the remove condition, if I need a heal I use the standard Heal As One for it’s short cool down, or Troll Unguent for if I’m taking consistent damage.

RummyTheMad.7290:

Nice! It wasn’t necessarily a concern of mine, but more knowledge certainly never hurts. Thanks for sharing Dancin.

No problem, also on a side note this is with no healing power stat additions, I’m not sure if healing power alters it, but with 0 bonus to healing it’s 1%

A lot of people ask me how I know how much HP my pets have, and a lot think I’m making it up but there’s a simple way, use Signet Of Wild which gives regen, then what how much HP the regen heals your pet for and multiply that number by 100, because the regen is 1% per second.

For example, at level 30 my Jaguar gets 73 regen from the signet, so he has 7300 HP

Hope this helped those who are curious how to find out

I like the root, it allows you to stick onto an enemy no matter what situation, cause you’re leaping on them, it’s great for a fleeing enemy especially combined with the cripple it does.

(Tip: Disable the auto attack and it’s not as bad when you need to dodge or heal)

I’m by no means an expert of sPvP nor the Ranger for that matter, and looking for a PvP build that I can use with Longbow (Don’t tell me to use Shortbow cause I like the Longbow :P) I’ve come up with this build which I think is pretty good but I’d like to know what the more experienced people think.

Link to the build

My general strategy with this build is to start out with Sword and Horn, use number 5 then number 4, then switch to Longbow and use Number 2, this usually get’s them to either heal or waste all their endurance, or both. From there I will just fight as usual until I die or win.

So far it’s worked out rather well when it keeps Range, which is one thing I focus on so the lack of survivability doesn’t bother me too much as I’m the kind of Ranger to stay off at the side doing as much Range damage as I can. And so far all Range v Range fights I’ve won, it’s only been Melee ones I lost.

So I’d like to know what you think of this build, what you’d do to make it better. Or if it’s fine as it is etc

Arsenic Touch.7960:

Doesn’t scale at all, it’s a set value. Plus switching or entering water or dying resets the counter. Just one of many examples of how lackluster our talents are.

The first 5 points promote pet switching, yet one of the first traits promotes keeping your pet the same, makes no sense. Then again it makes no sense to put trap traits in the skirmishing line either.

Yea I was wondering the same thing about the switching xD. Ah well, I see this as kind of good news as I get 10 new traits to spend in something else :P

Currently I’m level 30 and I just got Masters Bond cause I always thought it sounded pretty good, as the build I’m going for is a bit of a hybrid between Power/Crit and Beastmaster and signets. And I just got my Beastmastery to level 10 and got Masters bond, did some testing to see how much effect it has on the pet stats and it increases a fixed 3 stats every kill, max stack of 25. So what I’m curious about is if it’s 3 stats every kill regardless of my level, or at a higher level will it be more than 3? If it’s always 3 it seems like my hopes are crushed cause it doesn’t seem all that great in that case =[

Sarcasmic.6741:

Absolute highest I was able to pull off in that particular fractal was a Rapid Fire for 176k damage, meaning a 17k Rapid Fire. I know Warriors who can, and do, Killshot for more than that. Hundred Blades can regularly hit for over 30k on a mob with decent vulnerability, which if pulled off on that boss would be over 300k damage.

So yeah, at least for the duration of HB vs RF, he most likely was doing double your damage output.

But this is not including pet? Don’t forget pet’s do just as much damage as the Ranger, some do more damage than the ranger, like felines and drakes.

I hope this is true, I’ll have to test this when I get home, I remember I have some test results I did on my desktop of the longbows damage output when I was comparing it to SB

Warrior has more instant damage, ie burst damage but Ranger puts out more or equal damage over time, even with power/crit builds because the damage isn’t high but it’s a consitant damage, not relying on adrenaline etc

Your build looks ok but as awe said you might want some more counter to conditions yourself, and Axe/Torch or Sword/Torch will be much better than the Dagger. The condition damage from torch is extremly high and effective skills

I use Greatsword as Ranger, it has an evade on auto attack so I get a lot of constant dodges, using weapons that have an evade will help

Luriyu.6873:

DancinPuppeh.8421:

So they buffed condition damage, great for those who are Power/Crit. So we get nothing unless we go conditions… Way to add diversity to builds ANet… Now I’m just going to wait for Elder Scrolls Online to come out… I’m already sure they’ll put more care into this kind of stuff as Bethesda loves us

…just so you know it’s zenimax using bethesda’s IP as a background. it’s not a true bethesda game. if it was the game would be released with multiple game breaking bugs, and poor character balance, but because this is a MMO there would be no mod support… just saying…

I don’t care, it couldn’t possibly disappoint me with the “Ranger” more than ArenaNet has. ArenaNet has been my worst experience as a Ranger in my whole MMORPG life and that’s big of me to say, cause I’m a soul lover of Archery and Bows. I was really hoping this patch would do more. Not to sound ungreatful I’m glad they made some effort, but this isn’t effort for balancing the Ranger and making it equal, cause ever profession has been given equal if not MORE care then the Ranger, so if anything it’s made us even weaker to the other professions… And to be frank it disappoints me greatly =[ I don’t even know what to do now >_>

So they buffed condition damage, great for those who are Power/Crit. So we get nothing unless we go conditions… Way to add diversity to builds ANet… Now I’m just going to wait for Elder Scrolls Online to come out… I’m already sure they’ll put more care into this kind of stuff as Bethesda loves us

I love the Ranger, despite the problems it has I love it’s style, look and everything about it. I’m hoping the patch will solve the problems so I can finally stop reading all these repeated rants over and over, but I’m not expecting them to fix it because I highly doubt they will and I don’t want to be disappointed come tomorrow. So I’m keeping my expectations low but even if there is no fix I’ll still love the Ranger, till death do us part!

Alright, thanks the responses :P I’ll stick with my Warhorn

Title kinda’ says it all. I really like the Sword with Ranger, and I usually use Sword/Horn but I love the look of having a Sword and Dagger, makes me feel almost like a Thief but with a pet and Longbow. My question is would the dagger be viable with a power/crit build, since it’s #4 does pretty much 95% condition damage

This kitten post tricked me again… Stop bringing this post back to life! >_>

Oh I never knew that, I’ll go with Otter than I guess, cause Ant’s are creapy xD

I have my characters names reprehensive of their profession like a lot of people do, and I go with a Dancin theme since my usename is always Dancin Puppeh, Dancin Puppeh is my Ranger cause it’s a pack leader, Dancin Dragon is my Ele cause it’s elements, and I tried to make a Dancin Beaver engineer because beavers build stuff. and apparently it’s inappropriate =[ It saddens me as I can’t think of another candidate for the builder animal =[