A Sword mainhand is definitely your best choice for leveling.
Couple it with an off-hand Dagger if you like Cloak and Dagger for Stealth every few seconds.
Couple it with a Pistol off-hand if you like Pistolwhip and Black Powder (Blind Field).
As for traits….there’s not really that much choice while leveling. Can’t go wrong with Critical Strikes or even Shadow Arts if you stealth a lot (using Cloak and Dagger) .
I can’t really think of a “must have” trait during leveling that makes everything significantly easier.
Do take note however that your auto-attack will change to a new ability while in stealth. That’s where the Backstabs and Tactical Strikes come from. Every mainhand weapon has a unique Stealth attack that is often their signature move.
I’m just telling you this because I didn’t notice my unique Stealth abilities until about level 50 when I was leveling my Thief.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
With the lack of serious balance changes last patch I compiled a list of tweaks and changes to the Thief class that seemed appropriate to me.
Trait and ability changes
-Heartseeker cost increased to 4 Initiative (up from 3)
-Dancing Dagger cost reduced to 3 Initiative (down from 4)
-Mug damage reduced by approximately 50%. Mug now also applies 4 Bleeds for 4 seconds.
-Infiltrator’s Singet now also steals a boon from the target when used.
-Body Shot now also applies 4 seconds of Weakness to the target.
-Flanking Strike range increased to 200 (up from 130) and pathing improved.
-Clusterbomb projectile speed increased by 50%.
-Choking Gas range increased to be more consistent with Clusterbomb.
Fixes
-Disabling Shot should no longer have positioning and latency issues.
-Fixed an issue that allowed channeled abilities to continue hitting a target in stealth.
-Fixed pathing errors affecting Scorpion Wire and other projectiles.
-Fixed pathing errors effecting Shadowsteps on uneven surfaces.
-Fixed character rendering issues when using Shadowsteps while invisble.
-Fixed an issue that caused the Hidden Killer trait not to work when attacking from Stealth.
-Thieves now have the highest rendering priority when coming out of Stealth in WvW.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
Infiltrator Strike’s return will let you go anywhere after IS’s initial step and return you to the mark, if the returning shadowstep doesn’t glitch and put you below the surface.
No, it too has a range limit.
It does seem a little excessive.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the WvW titles are still relics from early development days. They probably never got around to updating them to an achievable level.
Even cutting those numbers by 10 would still mean somebody would need an extreme amount of dedication and time to achieve them.
I expect they’ll be updated eventually.
I do thing ANet really needs a more cohesive plan regarding their “endgame” content.
FotM and WvW simply aren’t going to cut it.
FotM is too repetitive and WvW simply isn’t for everyone and has numerous other issues.
The only reason I’m currently still playing is because I keep obsessing about new builds that then take weeks to fine-tune and because I keep chasing the next “carrot on a stick” (Ascended Amulet in this case).
Thieves only really instant-gib unsuspecting players and other glass-cannons.
In fact for almost all but a few classes a purely offensive builds is a terrible choice in PvP.
If you insist on making one yourself follow the above instructions.
Don’t expect to win every fight though. A single stun, Aegis or knockback can crew you over.
I don’t think Warriors are all that bad overall. They’re just pigeonholed and pale a little in comparison to others.
Assuming Elementalists, Guardians and Mesmer are turned down a little then the Warrior would fair much better in comparison without any significant buff.
In PvP a nerf to one class is also always a buff to all others (relatively speaking).
While I don’t share your strong sentiments I agree that Magic Find as a gear-stat is counterproductive.
I’d prefer if it was a game-play stat, something you could get from banners, food and even boosters. Just not from gear.
And interesting idea might be if Magic Find was a buff you that would stack after being alive for a certain period of time or something you get from killing particular mobs or Veterans.
You could do much more interesting things with Magic Find (like getting a boost after finishing a juming puzzle) than have it as a gear stat.
We all know you can Blind those attacks….but how do you use Infiltrator’s Arrow during a stomp?
It doesn’t make sense unless I’m missing something.
You use it before stomp on the downed player and activate stomp. So they will be blind when stomp is activated. Its not as reliable as say putting black powder down but it can help if you can’t switch to another weapon set at the time.
Yeah but that would require them to not be throwing rocks at you for some reason….which like never happens.
I mean I can see what you’re saying…but I just don’t see it ever working in practice.
I think the rate at which they can spawn illusions is what’s really broken.
I mean they seem to spawn them every 2-3 seconds so that killing them achieves nothing.
Killing an illusion should provide at least a little breathing room and be a viable tactic. Increasing the time between illusions spawns would help a lot.
This game is lacking QA…
This game is lacking balance…
This game is lacking workable game mechanics…
This game certainly isn’t lacking bugs…
Etc. …
Designing the social aspects of a game correctly isn’t about man power, it’s about understanding MMOs and MMO players and building around that.
And that’s where I think things went wrong as in that ANet designers didn’t truly understand the implications of their concepts. They may have sounded good on paper but didn’t translate well into the game.
We all know you can Blind those attacks….but how do you use Infiltrator’s Arrow during a stomp?
It doesn’t make sense unless I’m missing something.
After playing quite a bit of tournaments over the past months I’ve come to realize the importance of the “downed battle” in tPvP.
With downed-battle I mean the choices that are made in group fights about when to go for a stomp, who to revive and who can Rally.
In fact I’ve come to conclude that a winning the “downed battle” is arguably the most decisive part in GW2 combat. I’d even go so far as to say that is almost doesn’t matter how well or skilled you play as a team while “alive” if you cannot successfully win the “downed battle”.
The fact that a single stomp at the right time can rally your allies/opponents and completely turn the tide of a fight is a huge factor in team fights.
And honestly I’m thinking it’s too decisive.
GW2’s entire combat concept is designed around how you play while alive. The downed-state is only a small part of GW2’s overall combat design. And yet it plays such an incredibly crucial role in combat success.
I really believe that how you play while alive should dictate the outcome of most battles and not how well you can delay or secure a stomp. ANet needs to shift focus from downed-state back to “active combat” because that is certainly the focal point of the game (and the funnest part).
For starters it would help if only one person could rally for every successful defeat. It would still make the “downed battle” and important part of the game without making it so incredibly decisive.
Downed State impacts the different areas of PvP in a different fashion. Only because it works in sPvP or PvE doesn’t mean it’s ok for WvW, at least not without changes.
Downed-State/Revives in my opinion:
PvE: A good mechanism to compensate for the lack of healers. Arguably a bit easy to revive and resurrecting makes a lot of fights almost fail-proof.
With fairer mechanics like bosses not targeting downed-players you could easily get by without allowing resurrections in combat.
tPvP: Downed-state battles are often decisive moments in the outcome of a battle. In fact in many cases if and how you finish someone/revive someone matters more than who killed what, when and where. Rallying places too much importance on the “downed battle” as it can completely tip what was a decisive win.
sPvP: Somewhat of a nuisance especially when dealing with some professions. It just takes tediously long to finish off some classes.
WvW: A big reason why zerg fights drag on forever because nobody ever truly dies. With people constantly reviving and resurrecting it’s nigh impossible to effectively counter zergs without communication.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
No thank you. Getting off a 3 second channeled cast in melee range of a downed enemy who is often in the middle of a clusterkitten does not need to be made any more difficult.
Yep, Ectoplasms just keep rising and rising in price. Allowing us to get 5 Ectos from an Ascended ring seems more than fair.
Let’s not kid ourselves.
90% of the Legendary grind came down to money anyway and could be bypassed if you could afford it.
So while it does diminish their value to have them sold for gold, I can understand why.
It’s a weird thing with guilds in GW2.
Although I’ve dedicated myself to a single guild for a while now it forming a tightly knit social community was difficult considering how easy it was to found and form guilds. The fact that people could join multiple guilds played into that as well as people were constantly joining and leaving in search of a “home”.
I must say in retrospect allowing people to join multiple guilds was a bad idea. There may be some situational perks to such a system but in general it doesn’t foster the community well. A guild needs to be at least somewhat of a commitment and not something you switch around like character builds.
However now that things have settled in that regard we come across another issue.
Outside of the occasional WvW raiding there really isn’t much content out there for guilds to do. There is no core activity that would require a large number of people to turn up at the same time. There’s no content that would allow me to meet many of my fellow guild-mates or force us to socialize.
Essentially my guild channel feels more like a glorified LFG channel than anything else and I think that’s a shame, because a guild should be more than that.
Despite being designed as a social MMO I feel a lot more anti-social playing GW2 than I did playing any other game. We don’t even communicate for crafting purposes because everyone can do everything already and there’s no reason to craft anyway.
More game modes are going to be absolutely crucial for this game’s longevity.
The current focus on 5v5 – 3 node conquest is really limiting the appeal of tPvP and ANet is aware of this.
But I’m sure new game-modes are already in the works and this has been a common complaint from the get go. However it will probably take a few more months at least until we see a new game-mode introduced.
CTF is a given and by far the most commonly requested game mode.
But even 4 point domination, objective based PvP (aka. Assault) or a larger Conquest style map would be conceivable. Hell you could even have an MMO version of DotA going on.
The only problem I see is that the focus on 5 man teams will limit the potential of future game modes.
I’m not questioning that there are overpowered builds in PvP (I’m looking at you Eles, Mesmers and Guardians).
However it seems to be that there doesn’t really seem to be any “weak” or “underpowered” professions anymore. Only certain builds.
Rangers and Engineers have repeatedly been referred to as undesirable or underpowered PvP professions but this has changed in the past weeks/months.
In fact I have heard Rangers being referred to as the best 1v1 profession, which came as quite a surprise considering their past reputation.
Engineers too seem to have come into their own and are able to gib people as fast as any glass-cannon or bunker like a boss. While they might not be able to do so to the same extent as their dedicated counterparts they at least have the added flexibility.
So that begs the question, is there still a drastically underpowered profession left or do we just need to reel in the overpowered ones?
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
I can understand that there are situations where this change can be frustrating but it was a necessary change to give GW2 PvE any semblance of challenge.
With the old mechanic GW2 PvE was essentially in a state where you could not fail. But for game-play to be engaging and challenging, failure must be an option.
Don’t underestimate Soldier’s items since Power is the best DPS stat in game.
The only thing you will lack is real burst, since that requires you to crit.
Imo you can’t go wrong with a Soldier’s main set. Accessories can then always be mixed and matched according to your preference.
While they are without doubt a very potent class I find their design to be too defensive to the point that they are boring to play and ruin sPvP due to their tankiness.
Yeah, there certainly needs to be some “glue” for guilds. Currently they serve no purpose aside from being an extra LFG channel.
Doing Fractals over and over and over and over again isn’t fun either especially since all that changes is Agony and mob damage.
Boring.
Yes rebind A and D to Strafe left/right.
forget about keyboard turning.
Looks like they skimped out of Carrion gear.
The temple of Dwayna has a “Rabid” back piece which is Condition Damage, Toughness, Precision. Not ideal but currently your best choice if I am not mistaken.
Currently I’m using 6 Ruby Orbs to augment my gear.
6 Ruby Orbs come down to:
120 Power
4% Critical Strike Chance
12% Critical Strike Damage
How does this compare to other popular damage runes like Scholar or Divinity?
Superior Runes of Divinity add:
60 Power
3% Critical Strike Chance
12% Critical Strike damage
60 Condition Damage/Toughness/Vitality/Healing
Ergo considering how much more valuable Power is as a DPS stat I really don’t see how Divinity runes will ever offer more DPS compared to Orbs. The only case in which Divinity runes may be viable is if you somehow value all the other stats you get.
But what about Scholar Runes?
165 Power
8% Critical Damage
10% extra damage while above 90% HP.
This should be a bit more interesting as the 45 extra Power should roughly compensate for the 4% less Critical Strike Damage. That means we have to chose between 4% Critical Strike Chance and 10% more damage while above 90% HP.
I’d say Scholar is better if you run the “Hidden Killer” Backstab build while Ruby Orbs will come out ahead in most PvE situations.
So how do Runes of the Wurm compare to Beryl Orbs?
Beryl Orbs offer
120 Power
84 Vitality
12% Critical Strike Damage
Superior Runes of the Wurm offer
165 Vitality
6% Critical Strike Damage
3% overall Damge
I’d estimate the 120 Power more than make up for the 3% damage while the Critical Damage pushes the DPS output over the top. Wurm’s only real benefit is if you really need the extra HP.
Adding one more set of Superior Runes of the Ogre
165 Power
3% Critical Damage
4% overall Damage
5% Chance to summon a rockdog on hit
This is a tricky one as I’d estimate the overall damage is close to that of a Ruby or Scholar set. However the 5% chance to summon a rockdog is interesting, especially how it compares to other such procs. It could easily we more valuable in PvP than the 10% extra Scholar damage but then again Thieves don’t tend to get hit very often.
Overall my conclusion is that Orbs will almost always outperform Superior Rune sets while costing a fraction of their price.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
Looks like a very workable build.
However I’m not sure if going full Berserker gear is really the best choice. Sure, it does a lot of damage but you will still be low on HP. However your traits in Shadow Arts and Acrobatics do bolster your survivability quite a bit so you may be able to get by without having a lot of Vitality gear.
I’d still recommend you aim for at least 15.000 HP while trying to get as much Power > Crit-Damage (from Jewels) > Precision > Crit-Damage (from other places).
We had a similar situation to the one the OP describes in our dungeon running group early in game.
We had this one dude, an ex GW2 player who also played a lot, who was consistently getting much better loot than everyone else.
He hated Magic Find and never wore any but was constantly getting rares and exotics all over the place. He would typically leave a FotM run with half a dozen rares where other may have had one or two.
No he doesn’t do much PvE anymore but considering his superior loot luck held on for months, it does make you wonder.
If this were an isolated case or a short string of good luck then sure, but consistently getting much better loot than everyone else is something you notice.
Then again, it might have been a case of conformation bias.
People are feeding you BS, I’m in the 30’s and I see thieves and ele’s in groups all the time, I’ve never seen someone get kicked for being one or the other. Have enough AR and play good and pay attention and no one will care.
This has been my experience too.
Yes, Guardians are by far the most effective professions to have for running Fractals but it doesn’t mean the other professions somehow hold you back.
There is no reasons why a Thief or Elementalist should not be running FotM at any level.
One thing you have to understand is that aside from a very subtle damage increase on the mobs and higher Agony damage, nothing fundamentally changes in the FotM.
So if you can’t see a reason which would prohibit you from progressing now, then there won’t be one in the future either.
Yes, the odd thing is this excessive culling is happening in PvE too.
I’ve had players suddenly appear 10 feet from my character even in moments when there wasn’t much going on.
I don’t understand how ANet can keep kittening up with culling.
It would be great to see an option to turn off downed state.
Thus far I see it as a horrible mechanic in PvP. It increases the time you cannot contribute, it makes revives incredibly easy, it favors the larger group, downed abilities are extremely imbalanced, it’s humiliating to the defeated player and encourages zerging in WvW.
PvP in GW2 would be 100% better without the downed-state and I for one would like to experience it in that way.
So that the zerg may never die.
No thank you. Constant revives and resurrections are already ruining PvP and WvW. We don’t need to make it even easier to rezz people.
I agree,
considering the number of bugged events that have plagued this game from the get go I was surprised so see the rate of patches slow down dramatically since November…..as if there wasn’t important stuff to fix.
Patching new content is good and all but I too would rather not have to wait 2 months for something as crucial as the fractal disconnect bug or major imbalances.
While I agree that an 80% difference in base HP is problematic for the game’s balance I can’t follow your line of reasoning.
Especially the fact that your are using a Guardian, arguably the most durable profession in game, as a point of comparison.
Yes, please do something about this annoying pop-up.
Just have the Overflow writing on the mini-map flash up or something.
I know Overflows weren’t supposed to be a common occurance but they are in LA.
@ Wednesday: Yes that would obviously work too but it wouldn’t have the added benefit of completely customizable gear.
As to Fyrebrand valid complaints I’d say:
1. Well I did say this would only be applicable to a new type of gear. Retrofitting something like this wouldn’t make much sense. Crafting could just be another source of skins. Maybe the discovery system would need to be adapted to cater to the new system since rare skins shouldn’t be available to anyone.
But honestly, I don’t see this as a huge issue. Most items of a certain kind already share almost identical recipes. I don’t see a problem if crafting was left with nothing but the skin for a “basic exotic weapon-type”.
Also, crafting is basically excluded from all current Ascended gear so there’s that.
2. I believe that my system is not only more intuitive but it also adds a lot more gear possibilities. Currently builds and play-styles are limited by the gear-stats distributions available to us. But what if you want a build built around Healing Power, Precision, Vitality? Or you want to build a build that takes you up to 40% Crit, but then stacks Condition Damage and Healing Power?
It opens up so many more options. And more options means a more engaging game and more longevity.
I made a clear point about this type of gear only being available as an “endgame” set as it clearly requires a bit more time and effort to put together. I wouldn’t recommend it for standard leveling gear, just for exotic or higher gear-levels.
3. This is a debatable point. I’ve seen many people ignore Ascended gear because it was only a very minor upgrade compared to exotic. And I don’t think people would get terribly obsessed with “perfect” stats…not until they’ve achieved everything else anyway.
Other games had similar systems and it always worked quite well. It simply meant that the “poor” level sockets were fairly cheap while the “perfect” ones were very expensive.
And again, if you give people the option to buy average quality sockets for Dungeons tokens etc. I really don’t think a such a minor stat difference would get people upset. It’s only something for the perfectionists to work at long-term without making the gear inaccessible.
4. I don’t see how you can reach that conclusion. In fact I’d argue that your average player who reaches level 80 will have a quicker time grasping my system then understanding the best ways to currently get exotic gear and what stats he might be wanting etc.
I would strongly consider adding raids.
No gear grind (although you may be able to attain Ascended gear), just epic boss fights for 10 man groups in instanced dungeons.
They can be tuned to be hard as long as there is some prestige to beating them.
Maybe have them drop unique skins …but otherwise just give guilds content that actually requires guilds (and that isn’t WvW).
I realize this is something of a “first world problem” but nonetheless I hope that ANet weeds out many of the passive damage increase traits over time.
With the trait system being at the heart of GW2’s RPG system it needs to add depth to combat. And very few passive damage increases do that. Instead they are often limited to a particular weapon set or particular abilities. Nonetheless they are bad from a game-design point of view as they rarely create interesting choices.
I know at times it can be hard to differentiate between what is an acceptable form of a passive damage increase and what is not.
+5% Damage to Dagger attacks or +10% Pistol damage for example are bad examples of passive damage increases.
+7% Critical Strike Chance when hitting a target from the back or sides is a borderline example. While it is essentially a passive damage increase it also has a situational component to it. It also has some interesting interactions/syngery with other traits.
Fury is a boon that also little more than a damage increase however as a boon is is susceptible to removal and extension, thus again making it a good trait.
Ideally all traits should add some sort of depth, no matter how little, to combat and passive damage increases rarely do that.
What boggles my mind is that people would willingly spend an additional 10 minutes looking for a group than doing it with a setup that will take 3 minutes longer to do the run.
I wanted to expand on an idea for a new loot concept that might be viable for the future of this game, possibly within a new expansion.
The goals are as follows:
1. To completely separate cosmetic and stat progression.
2. To allow much more customization regarding stats.
I’m going to base my examples off of current exotic gear since that is widely available.
First change:
The visual representation (aka. skin) of an item is now only the “base” for a future item. An exotic skin won’t have any stats in itself but rather the possibility to hold 3 sockets (+ a Rune of Sigil).
No more need for transmutation stones or anything artificial like that. Instead skins can be earned via all kinds of channels, as achievement-rewards, as rare unlocks or anything else conceivable. Impressive skins should obviously be rare, while vanilla skins can be more common.
2. Since the new exotic gear will be stat-less you need sockets to fill them with stats. Every skin allows for the placement of one “prime” socket and two “secondary” sockets.
For example an exotic prime socket might contain 101 Power or 101 Precision or any other stat.
A secondary socket would contain 72 of any given stat in the case of a Chest-piece.
This would allow for a much more liberal gear customization without being tied to pre-defined stat distributions.
These sockets would be treated the same way current exotic loot is handled by dropping from mobs, chests and other sources. They may need to be made a little more common however.
Anyway, an added twist would be that these sockets could contain slight variance. So rather than all exotic prime sockets having 101 stat bonus, they could add anything from 100 to 105.
Secondary sockets might have a similar variance in granting 70 to 75 depending on the quality of the socket. This is in order to create a more dynamic market environment because those perfect prime sockets would obviously be very thought after without making exotic gear in general inaccessible. It would also give hardcore players a long-term goal in trying to get a “perfect” item set without putting anyone at a disadvantage.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
I’m not sure how many here actually know but Infiltrator’s Arrow has an AoE Blind component attached to it.
It was probably meant to be used as a gap-closer rather than a gap-creator, hence the name.
Yet I have never seen anyone use Infiltrator’s Arrow for the Blind component.
Is there any practical applications for this?
And if not, would it be impertinent to ask for the Blind component to be dropped in favor of a lower Initiative cost?
Small scale combat aside I think it is crucial that we get tools for breaking a larger Zerg.
The constant availability of resurrections and revives makes it nigh impossible for your average scrub defender team to do anything effective to stop your average scrub zerg from kicking in the gate.
If single players manage to pick off individuals from an enemy zerg then that should mean something and contribute towards the defense rather than delaying the inevitable by roughly 10 seconds.
We’ve had fairly close matchup for weeks now prior to the reset. I don’t mind a week or two of being steamrolled/steamrolling. It will just make us appreciated the closer matches again once we get there.
It’s also a big “screw you” to all the “winning server joiners” who have been switching servers excessively.
Things will be fairly close again in a week or two, relax.
No thank you.
Fast-food dungeons are what killed WoW for me and in GW2 they are the PvE endgame.
Dungeons should be something of a commitment and not something your rush through.
It’s perfectly fine for some dungeons to take significantly longer than others as long as they themselves are well-paced.
It was nice to have something else besides keeps to fight about but Orbs had two very glaring issues that didn’t make them good solutions.
1. Obvious exploitations.
2. Snowballing effect aka. making the winning team even stronger.
Both issues could have been fixed…and may well be at some point, but removing Orbs was definitely the best temporary fix.
I was taken by surprise yesterday too as we did him on level 33 and people were constantly dying to him.
We’d done him conventionally a number of times before and couldn’t exactly point out what was going wrong.
This would explain a lot.
Time to evaluate the Critical Strikes tree. For detailed descriptions visit: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-cM
Major traits
1. Furious Retaliation – 7/10 – the only source of Fury for Thieves means lots of extra damage under 50%.
2. Singets of Power 6/10 – Problematic design wise as it adds a lot of extra burst but otherwise fair.
3. Side Strike – 7/10 – Boring trait but quite potent passive damage increase.
4. Concealed Defeat – 1/10 – another downed-state booster nobody takes.
5. Pistol Mastery – 3/10 – Boring trait and for Pistols only.
6. Practiced Tolerance – 7/10 – a nice way to add some survivability on the fly.
7. Ankle Shots – 4/10 – good trait but again for Pistols only.
8. Singet Use – 3/10 – very meh since Singet use is situational and few builds stack them.
9. Combo Critical Strike – 3/10 – because few builds actually spam dual skills.
10. Critical Haste – 5/10 – good but the proc is too quick to react to.
11. Executioner – 8/10 – great synergy with Heartseeker and great damage boost. Pretty boring in itself however.
12. Hidden Killer – 8/10 – only really attractive for Dagger builds but opens up a lot of build-opportunities and interesting choices.
Minor traits
1. Keen Observer – 4/10 – More Crit…sometimes…why not.
2. Opportunist – 7/10 – More Crit = more Initiative….always appreciated
3. First Strikes – 8/10 – one of the few incentives to actively manage Initiative. Good.