Guild Wars 2

Best bet is to just give it a try, for the first 9 levels you don’t have to worry about AR at all so you use those to learn the dungeons and tweak your build.

Once you hit level 10 you start earning pristine fractals for every daily maw run which can be use to buy rings or if your lucky get rings drop, at first all your AR will come from the +5 versatile infusion which can be slotted in all ascended items rather than the upgraded items (which is whats meant with the amulets getting infusions eventually)

too many people don’t realize game economies don’t equal real life economies.

problem is were making money out of nothing already, the reason we are “taxed” constantly is to keep the amount of money in game from just going up non stop.

If you then make the money made from no where go up constantly all your going to do is increase the need for money sinks or watch everyone sit on mountains of gold with nothing to do with it.

So no, no interest please, I’ve seen what happens when games have too much money income and not enough money sinks to counter it and it results in even the most common items costing ridiculous amounts to buy which only prohibits new players or poor players more than anything.

If anything there needs to be more things to spend gold on other than the trading post for those that are already getting ridiculously rich.

or could turn all legendaries into usable “skins” then when you apply it to a weapon of the correct type it “promotes” that weapon to the legendary, taking its stats but increasing them to legendary level.

but the forge might actually be the better way to do it (less trouble with the stat promotion and all)

Suralin.3947:

Crit Thieves tend to be very glassy and their survivability is laughable. A tanky thief, even in Dungeons (whether they’re Condition or not), is more acceptable.

In WvW, if you’re not a solo roamer, the Condition Thieve is incredibly good at stacking the conditions. Cluster Bombs, Caltrops, Dagger Storm, Poison AoE, Death Blossom, you’ve got plenty in your arsenal. Make it better by increasing your Condition Durations and adding some additional Conditions. Don’t let Bleeds be your Thief’s one-trick: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_Damage

Its just a shame we have no reliable access to burn or confuse Wheres my burning venom or fire traps

you can attempt to transfer karma using orrian jewelry boxes, you on average will gain just a bit less karma than you put in in bankable form.

depends on pvp or pve

in pve mobs attack so slow that you’d really need duration to get more than maybe 2 hits from it off, pvp you want damage to maximize the burst damage before they get removed.

they can be infused as in putting an infusion into the infusion slot but they cannot be upgraded to “infused” versions with base AR so far.

I suspect you’ll need an entirely new capacitor to upgrade as well, moving the skin wouldn’t separate it from the capacitor it would destroy it, plus its suspected that you can’t upgrade a capacitor that isn’t normal (though can’t confirm that)

do you all stop playing the moment the daily resets or something? you come home start doing your daily then at 7pm it resets and you stop?

If it resets at 7pm and you know you can’t get it all done by time you get before 7pm then do it AFTER 7pm, then your done for the daily and then tommorow at 7pm it resets and you get your new daily for after 7pm etc etc etc.

The only issues come down to when you only have an extremely limited time (say 1 hour a day at best) to play and the reset happens in the middle, but regardless of what you do your going to miss out on things in game with that limit.

you can upgrade rings to have an inherent +5 AR on them BEFORE the infusion slot for a total of 10 per ring, same with back items.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flame_Legion_Battles

leading into the incendio templum

I believe that fits what you experienced

yeah was the order of whispers one I was thinking about that often gets missed in some way

theres one that often needs redoing, was it the hall of monuments one?

Silver.4798:

And oh look, you’re a condi thief… what are you going to do to me, DB? Caltrops? Noted… let me just go avoid those skills and lets see what else can you do. Uh oh…

Switch to SB cluster and poison them while backing off, CnD and escape/reposition into fresh set of conditions (condition removal tends to have a cooldown), do everything else a non condition thief can do (albeit weaker hits with em) people got to stop thinking a specific build is a 1 trick pony.

I found if you can escort 2 of em into hostile mobs you can keep rezzing them as they get killed in turn.

While one is being killed rez the other etc.

not without build information we can’t

you buy the basic capacitor with those stats

Strayhand.8216:

Dasorine.1964:

Condition damage:

Pros:
Can deal damage while on the move, freeing you up to avoid more of those nasty attacks without loosing much damage

I keep reading this in topics about condition damage, but I don’t get it. I did about 5K damage with one death blossom (14 sec with runes and sigil) with my condition DD build. Now imagine how fast you do 5K damage with dagger or sword crits. It doesn’t take 14 seconds (nor can it be removed at halftime). It takes 2-3 seconds, then you can dodge for 10 seconds as well if you want to compare it this way… Sure, with a crit build you stay close and are more vulnerable to melee attacks, but you keep continuing doing damage as well – or you swap to your bow and pop 4K+ cluster bombs along with 1,5K autoattacks from range… I love my bow, I like that I can change to ranged as a thief. That said, condition DD is fun to play, but I just find crit better for the bow. I keep changing between dagger and sword in melee however because of sword daze (but dagger is still better if you need fast focus damage on something).

well with my build I hit 25 bleed stacks in a few deathblossoms with caltrops, which comes out at around 3.2k damage per second for 15 seconds from the stacks alone (plus a few thousand damage per deathblossom for hits), and throw in poisons for another 200 damage a second and you get a decent amount of damage per second that ignores armour while your not actually hugging the boss, yes a crit build will do more damage per hit and be able to hit more damage in a single burst, but you are more vulnerable by staying nearer the boss and you still loose a lot of that damage when you dodge away or run out of initiative, so in general it will equal out some.

as for rampager gear, it was a lot better before they nerfed on crit food, before I could hit 100% crit rate with a 180% damage modifier on crits plus constant health drain on an area of mobs, which was not only decent damage but a massive boost to survivability, with the nerf however I agree its much less useful but still usable, rampagers comes with hefty power which works well with the critical damage (again easy to get 100% rate of crits so thats a permenant 80% damage boost with just the critical strikes line damage boost).

Fhaeris.9237:

Also, by going the condition way, you’ll also increase tough/vit, making you a bit more tankish. But imo, I’ve found direct damage much more effective overall, you just need to be extra careful.

that really depends on the gear you take, rampager gear for instance is prec/pow/cond

a blackjack, throwing knives, staffs (non magical hitty staffs that game designers always forget exist), clubs, chains, stevedore hooks.

Thiefy weapons! Sort of saddens me that most the other posts want “ninja” stuff what happened to good old fashioned western medieval thievery!

well some quick pro’s and cons for PvE:

Condition damage:

Pros:
Can deal damage while on the move, freeing you up to avoid more of those nasty attacks without loosing much damage
Damage ignores armour of enemies
Often comes with other effects that debilitate the enemy in useful ways.

Cons:
Effectiveness reduces for every other condition heavy user in the team
Damage tends to be more DPS less Burst reducing your effectiveness on trash.
Limited in the types of conditions possible (no reliable burn or confuse for instance)
Doesn’t work on “objects”

Critical damage:

Pros:
Potentially some of the biggest numbers in the game
Other critical damage users don’t lower your effectiveness (and some times increase it)
High burst allowing for quick removal of trash

Cons:
Evading attacks often costs you damage
Once you’ve burnt your initiative your damage plummets until it recharges
“Objects” can’t be critted
Effected by armour and other defensive skills (block, protection etc)

darkace.8925:

Dasorine.1964:

I’ve never understood peoples dislike of the trinity system, it works and it is fun being able to say “yes I fulfill this role and I do it well”

As a FFXI vet, I can tell you why I don’t like the “roles”. Certainly roles will always be more valuable than others (tanks, healers, refreshers (FFXI exclusive?)). These guys never have trouble finding a group with whom they can play. DPSers, of whom there are generally many more than the “in-demand” roles, often wind up sitting around hoping to find someone with whom they can play. This problem is often compounded when players of certain roles take on an air of snobbery. They think they can dictate the terms to which everyone else in a party much adhere.

And for the record, I played a paladin and never had trouble finding a group. But I saw more than a few of that game’s many DPSers spamming chat looking…hoping to find someone who would let them play.

That usually comes down to the game demanding those roles rather than the fact the roles exist which is where the game designers always fall down, they think you either need to make roles mandatory or not have them distinct at all.

Currently GW2 has no distinct roles, you can roll into specific role types but they never feel truly distinct or as rewarding for the effort, but at the same time roles aren’t demanded, you CAN do a dungeon with nothing but glass cannons.

But there is the thing, whats stopping them making some more distinct roles that don’t end up just merging with the general do greyness of current, you’d still be able to do content without needing specific roles but those that wish to take up a specific role can do so while feeling more than just a survivability/support slanted shade of the average build.

Distinct roles with role dependant content can be bad, distinct roles without a role dependent content is more choice, more enjoyable and personalized gameplay.

Catisa.6507:

and how would this be fair to people who don’t like dungeons? A solution should benefit all equally or none.

It would be as fair as (if not fairer than) the dungeon specific runes, armour and weapons (granted armour and weapons are mostly just skins)

Though I’d say cores at best, lodestones would probably have to be in the 300 mark region or higher really.

I believe the earliest Masterwork item a weaponsmith can make is at 25 skill, irradiated sword from Chaos Krewe Leader Pachoo in Metricia province.

However at 50 skill you can not only make the other specific recipes (charr etc) but also the plain regular masterwork bronze stuff obtainable by discovery

char cultural tier 3 it looks like

well if you have full ascalon gear already you can do some more for dungeon weapons.

You can get:
healing power major, precision, vitality from AC, TA or HoTW
toughness major, power, precision from SE and Arah
power major, toughness, vitality from AC, SE or HoTW

Outside of those your best bet if crafting or TP, as others said 2g isnt THAT much, most rares sell around the 30s mark and there fairly easy to find and dungeons give reasonable money (if you don’t die constantly).

Unfortunately thats a problem for all condition based builds in the game and something I hope anet solves at some point, more than 1 condition build will generally lower the effectiveness of all of them.

Though I’d argue that thieves are possibly one of the faster bleed appliers, caltrops + db = 25 stacks in a matter of seconds, not seen any others really reach that in such a short time.

If you are in a team with another condition builder it means you can shift to a more support style, maintaining stacks of bleeds, keeping poison up (small damage but some times the heal decrease is well worth it) and helping with other things.

Thieves can be amazing supporters, even just shadow refuge allows you to both manage agro on the entire team (drop it down on a squishies that have unwanted agro or such) as well as being a great heal (heal ticks in it and life steal range procs), not to mention all the other impressive utilities we have you can switch between and you can do all that while still maintaining a large portion of your damage by reapplying conditions now and then (or just dropping caltrops)

Throw in that you can also switch to heartseeker to do some impressive burst damage when mobs get low there is still lots you can do, but enough about condition build and onto the rest.

Problem with going full valkyries is that you won’t have that much crit rate (if you have no precision beyond base you only have a 4% rate), which makes all that +crit damage less useful.

On the flip side the knights armour you’ll score plenty of crits which will still do decent damage because crits are still a boost (specially with 30% damage boost from crit trait), but they wont do as much as they could otherwise, but would probably be your best starting point.

Silver.4798:

Aberrant.6749:

Shortbow is how thieves get aoe… if you’re trying to get pistols to do aoe you’re just using the wrong tool for the job.

I’m aware that is how we currently get AoE’s, I have two problems with this. First of all why is this the ONLY weapon set we can get reliable ranged AoE from? Secondly the 2 and 4 skills have condition damage slotted in it, and given that I play condi thief I’m perfectly happy with that. For the burst thieves I dunno if they are getting max utility out of those skills.

4 of the 7 land weapon combinations have AoE (shortbow being primary one granted, but D/D has DB and all sword sets have aoe in there sword autoattacks at the very least)

But thieves were designed primarily as a single target burn profession.

Also cluster bombs bleeds are a bit lack luster and is more of an added effect rather than a form of damage. Base duration so short and you need to time the burst to optimize the 3 stacks and such, the initial strike is far more damage, hitting for 3-4k on a condition build if not bursted to widen it, I suspect non condi-thieves are getting much more than that.

And poison cloud really comes down to just reducing a large number of targets healing potential more than anything, not amazing for anyone really but usable.

well if your looking for burst damage you sort of want to be putting a good amount of +crit damage/chance stuff on plus a decent amount of power, you can find a sweat spot between pure glass cannon burst (full zerker for non condi) and pure defensive, but that all comes down to personal preference, where do YOU draw the line at whats good enough burst and whats good enough survival, it will basically come down to experimentation.

Shame your feeling your not contributing as much with a condi thief, I know I tend to do too much dps as condi in fractals and end up having to kite bosses around that are locked on to me permanently, I blame caltrops!

Softspoken.2410:

Dasorine.1964:

tbh I’d rather they introduce 4-5 skills for single wielded weapons (for everyone as well)

Silly how we get an “off-hand light” skill but no ones going to be using off-hand light due to lack of 2 skills and stats

The entire reason off-hand light skills exist is for about the first 5 levels of the game, so the thief isn’t stuck with just 2 skills if they don’t get an off-hand weapon from an early monster drop.

It would still be nice if everyone (not just thieves) could get a 4+5 weapon skill without needing an offhand weapon, would increase the amount of options without actually bringing in more weapon sets.

evilapprentice.6379:

- Get rid of DB already – CnD does poor damage (compared to its init cost) because it’s a utility, designed to get us into stealth. Dancing dagger is in the same boat. That leaves a D/D rogue with 1, and exactly 1 option to use for DPS when they can’t stealth, because you decided to put a conditions focused attack smack dab in the middle of a Power/crit direct damage set. Just change it already, its not good design. You might ask “But what about Condi thieves that like D/D?!”. My response would be “They need to learn how to play the game some time.” – that’s not meant to be rude, but taking an entire weaponset for 1 skill is very, very counterproductive. LDB rogues are 1 trick ponies – you always know exactly what they’re going to do, because they have exactly 1 option – there’s no skill or counterplay involved, and that’s the hallmark of a bad spec.

Heck no!

As a condition D/D thief DB may be my core attack but thats not the only reason I went D/D, also what part of the D/D set makes you think its a power crit set up any more than it is a condition set up?

Auto attack gives poisons, if you’ve not got 100% crit rate the lower damage rapid strikes are actually against crit damage (granted who runs a crit based thief without near 100% crit rate)

Heartseeker works just as well regardless, even a rabid condi thief can get the big burst of damage out of it for finishers, as well as the gap closing ability that is handy at times, specially as a condi thief thats not tied to melee range to deal all damage.

Deathblossom, primarily condition damage but is still 3 AoE hits that a crit/power build could utilize in those times where they could do with it.

Dancing dagger is just as useful regardless of the build

CnD is also useful regardless of build, the backstab is less potent for a condition build but is still a decent hit with low power thats basically a small bonus if you used stealth as a defensive mechanism rather than a core offensive one.

Just because you don’t like DB doesnt mean it doesn’t fit nicely in the set for others.

The fact that you claim to have played every spec yet think a D/D condi thief is a 1 trick pony makes me think you’ve missed far more than you think you have.

The other moves you mention wouldn’t hurt to be tweaked but probably not in the ways you mention.

Body shot would be great if the vulnerability didn’t wear off by time you finished applying 25 of them, increasing the duration so you can apply the stacks and get some actual attacks off would make it great, though I assume they limited it so that a thief can’t just keep a stack of 25 up permanently while also attacking.

Flanking strike could do with a speed/reliability increase, the sword swing is far to slow behind and the evasive spin can often throw you off randomly, the concept is still fine it just needs tweaking to increase the usability.

Though can’t comment on pistol whip, having never really used it, I dare say it is again intended that the last few hits are against an unstunned target, though dodge rolling out of them is a bit annoying, having the strikes drain endurance might be a better effect than making it a spamable thing instead.

tbh I’d rather they introduce 4-5 skills for single wielded weapons (for everyone as well)

Silly how we get an “off-hand light” skill but no ones going to be using off-hand light due to lack of 2 skills and stats

TakaEagle.9486:

Having used both D/D and P/D condition builds for extended periods of time, i have learnt D/D is far more suitable for PvE whereas P/D is superior in PvP. Reasons for this is that death blossom has a very long bleed duration (with food it’s about 17 secs~), most classes will have some type of condition removal that will take effect easily within 17 secs, meaning the full potential damage of D/D is never fully executed. Whilst P/D has a duration of 7 secs~ which means more damage output in shorter periods of time.

The bleed duration doesn’t effect how much they tick for, your 7 second bleed will do the same damage a second as a DD’s 17 second bleed, with the DD’s potential being higher if their not removed, if they are removed if there not removed in under 7 seconds they still do more damage, if they are removed under 7 seconds then so would the P/D ones so in total they’d do same damage, the difference is purely down to how easy it is to stack each one.

Personally I love D/D, with caltrops and a few blossoms you can hit 25 stacks regularly doing some potent semi-bursty dps

I have to say as a condition thief I do like my throw gunk, the extra conditions you can apply are rather nice (only access thieves get to burn and confuse without combo’s I believe)

But as others have said it depends heavily on your spec and play style, chaos armour and bolts are pretty nifty but not ideal for some.

Personally my least favourites would be guardian or elementalist, sure their effects can be nice at times but their limited range often has em going to waste for me. Whirling blades would be there if it wasn’t quite reasonable damage in general.

Also gunk, unless its changes, applys a new condition every second or so for the duration for anything in the puddle.

GummiBear.2756:

Wouldn’t call it a floaty GS on mesmer, more like it is helm with some kind of energy between the mesmers hands. And it DEFINABLY don’t attack with melee as the OP was talking about

Granted mesmers use it as a ranged weapon but it definitely floats (with laser beams!)

I don’t really see any reason for elementalists to have a greatsword melee set up, they just don’t need it… so yeah… no, no matter how much you want that twilight on your ele :P

and don’t be shy about using your heal skill, I know some who have died with it up because they where saving it for some mythically important battle, they cooldown fast enough that you can generally get it off once a fight at least, maybe once every 2 fights if your using the longer cooldown ones.

Beyond that we’d need more info about your skills and such (what weapons, what utils/heal skills your using etc)

danbuter.2314:

WvW is the end game. Sadly, it’s really boring. Lots of building castles and yak guarding. Occasional battles.

hah if only there was actual castle building, would be much better.

because lots of people like pvp, plus later on theres not much else to do.

its strange that they didn’t include it, if something raises a stat or effects our character in someway we sort of want to KNOW how much of such were getting and such.

In the same vein would be great if they could work rune/sigil boosts into effecting the stats as well.

Linguistically Inept.6583:

1. eles arent super weak up close
2. mesmers arent super weak up close (if thats what the third poster was implying)
3. guardian has a spirit weapon greatsword
4. it doesnt really fit with ele imo (conjures are wielded; they dont attack of their own accord)

- though i wouldnt mind seeing more visually impressive passive effects for ele

I was more talking about the profession that gets a to have a floaty greatsword.

ceg.2587:

i will be honest here, i feel that eles are super weak up close. the ele needs to have a greatsword that floats near him and attacks melee based on the attunment!
seriously, its a most have!

Pssst thats called mesmer.

because this isn’t an isometric arpg?

I’ve never seen this style of game with click to move… and it would be a pain more than anything (I couldn’t see doing jumping puzzles with click to move)

Orpheal.8263:

The possibilies for hard counters are there, so why hasn’t Anet used them is the real question!!

Because the moment you put hard counters against a profession in game you basically remove the use of that profession.

If they went hard counter route they’d have to put one in for everyone so that it basically comes down to “who can use their hard counter first” in pvp.

It won’t happen and tbh it really doesn’t need to happen, stealthing thieves aren’t that hard to go against and its no where near as over powered as people state, sure its annoying but then so is elementalists zipping around or rangers sniping from a distance and such.

if you have something like heal on damage signet on you see heal when you hit stealth.

And just watched that “why stealth needs a nerf” video… the person hardly stealthed at all… spent far longer unstealthed than stealthed, the fact that the enemies didn’t kill him is far from the fact that he stealthed now and then to re-position or escape…

Stooperdale.3560:

Dasorine.1964:

I’ve never understood peoples dislike of the trinity system, it works and it is fun being able to say “yes I fulfill this role and I do it well”

If you want to do something in Guild Wars, lets say a dungeon, you just need the players to turn up and play. You don’t need to wait around for a tank, or a support, or a healer. Players do not have to change classes because other people need them to play a class other than the one they want to play. It doesn’t matter if 50% of the players on a server all want to play a thief, they all can and they’re not competing over a limited number of spaces in each group for a medium armor role.

Question is why would you have to wait around for a tank/healer/support etc, you don’t need to FORCE the roles on people, you just have to make the roles usable in a way that makes it feel like your actually making a proper difference in the role you chose.

If you run a team with all thieves you all get to burn down things fast but suffer from fragility, if someone chooses to play a tank and joins they get to hold and control mobs while taking a beating allowing others to burn easier, healers come in and feel like they are actually keeping people alive.

Sure some people MAY demand a trinity team if they feel they need it, just like somes might not (opting for a harder but faster burn team) but the options would be there, at the moment there is some choice but it all feels weak and not really distinct, everyone basically comes out being very similar in combat.

Stooperdale.3560:

The difficulty with providing a solo/duo mode for dungeons is that players take that as the easiest option and groups for story dungeons will vanish entirely. This is what happened in other MMOs. Given that the personal story works as solo content, regardless of the story dungeons, I’d rather see a group finder tool solve all problems creating groups everywhere. I cannot believe that across a week, across all servers, there will not be enough people to run story mode dungeons. I’d rather see new dungeons developed rather than any tampering with the story modes, since the story modes are generally good dungeons.

Its not about how easy it is to get a story mode group its how jarring having a story mode group is to anyone actually trying to follow and feel immersed in their personal story.

Doing your missions your helping the destinys edge and you get a person email about the dungeon, you head there and get a group and the characters completely ignore you for who ever it chose to make the “leader” of the dungeon… kind of disappointing, with Arah story being THE most fundamental wtf moment that occurs from this.

weapon mastery quests would be fun, a series of quests to unlock new skill tree’s for weapons that then have to be mastered.

could even put a decay on weapon skills so slowly over time they fade back to locked and have to quest for them again if you don’t use em regularly (or something just to make it so its not a 5 minute and never done again unless alted system)

a few questions are, with changing something like this that is unrepeatable and been there from the start is what about all those that have already got 100% completion?

And also how do you stop people rolling new alts constantly to farm complete the easy ones?

unfortunately this is one of those things that would take a lot of work, they’d have to do a new model for every hat and helmet with every hairstyle (or go for a generic one which would basically be akin to the current making you bald)

Thats a lot of work that I doubt they would be willing to put in.