Guild Wars 2

I farmed Orr for a total of 3 hours today spread out over the day.

I started off with my full Magic Find set + Omnomberry Bar.

I found 1 rare items within my first 90 minutes.

Then I salvaged my entire Magic Find set.

I farmed later on with my normal gear + Omnomberry Bar.

I didn’t find a single rare item.

I do not regret my decision.

Magic Find is either not working or the loot system is severely bugged.

I’d feel very naked.

Stealth is our defensive (although it tends to be very offensive too at times) utility that sets us apart from all other professions.

Removing it would be like stripping Boons from a Guardian or Pets from a Ranger.

Stealth generally performs better and tends to be more useful in PvP than PvE.

I concur that the lack of animation or ability to see a Thief coming is a big part of why Backstab receives a lot of QQ and why 100 Blades for example…is considered acceptable by most players.

People don’t really differentiate all that much between Stealth, Shadowstep and Burst. Most complainers tend to mush it all together and focus on a single aspect (like a 5-digit Backstab crit) instead of analyzing the situation as a whole (which is a lot to ask from your average poster).

Brave of you to post such a video but it’s cool to see some failure too. Most other videos are about posing or showing off, but this one shows just how bad things can go without coordination or organization.

I feel bad for the guy who payed for the party.

I was really hoping the new Island might add a real alternative to farming Orr.

But alas, it’s a very barren place with only a handful for Dynamic Events and very few “mass spawn” events.

A missed opportunity really…

Heavy Armor…..bare legs?

Reminds me of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTGh0EMmMC8

I believe the ideal HP / Armor ratio was 10:1.

So if you have 2000 armor, you want to aim for 20.000 HP before getting more.

After a certain point at level 80 Karma loses it’s purpose as there really isn’t much worth purchasing with it once you are geared in full exotic gear.

I think it would be good if we were given means to turn this Karma into something more usable, T6 Mats for example. This would probably do the economy some good as well as encourage people to keep doing DE when they can.

Something like 1000 Karma per T6 Material seems reasonable.

I don’t know how much Food has gone to waste because of this but it’s really annoying.

Any food buff you might have will constantly disappear when inside the FotM. Not just upon death but sometimes just like that.

It seems to happen a lot more often in some fractals compared to others but it’s still annoying as hell to use expensive food only to have it disappear 2 minutes later.

It boggles my mind how relatively small bugs like this even make it into the game, given how they are totally disconnected from content or anything.

Yes, this is so annoying.

I ranted about this very same issue yesterday. It still boggles my mind how ANet didn’t see this coming. It’s like they don’t think their concepts through to the end.

It just seems so terrible that I can’t progress unless I play that very specific level I’m currently at.

And all that while the actual fractal levels have negligible differences in difficulty.

Ok I admit I’m angry and I need to vent,

but seriously, these Fractals levels are the dummest and most poorly conceived MMO progression system I’ve ever seen in an MMO.

It pisses everyone off (I’ve spoken to).

Lion’s Arch is a constant spam of LFG Fractals level 1 anywhere up to 20.

More Casual Guild Members are annoyed because more advanced Guild Members don’t feel like running lower levels after having done the Dungeon a bazillion times over the past two weeks.

Especially not if they want to do both the daily and progress at the same time.

Then you have me, an ex progressive guild member who happened to be away over the weekend to find that everyone else of has jumped 5 levels. None of them understandably feels like running the same levels again and again so I’m left to pugging them until I catch up.

And then we’re back to spaming LFG, LFG, LFG competing with everyone for players of different levels. Hoping that, out of a random fluke you might actually find 4 fellow players who want to do exactly the same level as you.

But after spaming for an hour….you just give up and do something else. But in the back of your head you know that you’re just falling further and further behind….

Even ignoring the Ascended Gear issues…this is by far the most infuriating and frustrating MMO progression system I’ve seen.

The biggest joke though is that there’s hardly a noticeable difference between the various levels inside a Tier so all the segregation really doesn’t serve a purpose.

What
A
Joke

/rant

Alex Kelley.2748:

I just have a simple question: If a player can finish somebody while stealthed, why are thieves immune to being finished after they’ve used their smoke bomb to vanish? I fail to see why a thief should be any more difficult to finish than any other downed player of a different profession.

You can’t finish stealthed players. It is consistent as you can use Shadow Refuge to save other players from a stomp.

A successful execute requires a target and Stealth denies that.

Yes, this is intended but it only applies to sPvP.

WvW follows the PvE rule set which is why the special PvP rules don’t apply there.

This was done I assume because reaching full stacks of any Sigil would be almost impossible in sPvP otherwise.

It certainly used to be helpful when farming Orr.

But since the patch, things seem to have changed. Rare drops have become exceedingly rare and Magic Find gear seems to make little difference, even @ 150%.

There is still very little objective data on Magic Find since the patch but based on the price of Ectos and anecdotal reports by players and threads here on the forums it currently seems as if Magic Find gear is largely ineffectual.

It may be a bug so don’t start deleting it just yet…but at the moment it doesn’t seem to be worth it.

The Champion Karka guarding the Rich Orchicalum in the Lost Shores respawns in 45 seconds.

Needless to say that this is completely ridiculous.

Yeah, the speed at which people can rezz a fellow downed player is way too fast.

I find it borderline game-breaking in PvP.

…is what I find myself shouting at my screen when my character refuses to pick up an important interactive item.

Especially those crystals during the Jade Maw encounter.

There seems to be numerous issues with picking up interactive items.

1. There seems to be an inherent delay when picking things up…close to a second. I’m not sure what it is…maybe animations or something. Whatever it is…it should be reduced/removed. GW2 needs to be responsive above all. And this is the opposite of responsive.

2. Picking up items while moving. This too is frequently unresponsive when you try to pick up an item while moving in a direction. What’s worse is that the game will sometimes “lock” you into walking making you unable to respond properly, sometimes walking off cliffs in the process.

3. And then there are times when my character will simply refuse to pick up the crystal, despite standing still right next to it. It seems like auto-shot (in the case of a Shortbow) seems to override the “pick up” animation. This really needs to be improved.

In general, action priorities should be something like this: Dodge > Interact > Combat Abilities > Auto-Attack

They made precursors much more readily available and thus more affordable.

Unfortunately the rise in T6 Mats really countered any savings you might have had. I’d like to say that at least they’re farmable….but somehow they’re not.

No, but Quickness is.

And it’s not like we haven’t being saying this for months now.

Only playing PvP and not having 1st hand experience on a Thief is what disqualifies your opinion.

I really wouldn’t mind the nerfs (past and future) if they actually fixed fundamental problems with the profession instead of addressing superficial number imbalances.

ANet needs to learn to address causes, not symptoms.

I want to take a moment to discuss some of the underlying mechanics that result in Thieves feeling overpowered to many players in PvP environments.

Fixing numbers alone can only go so far as there are some fundamental flaws in the design of the profession.

1. - Initiative

Unlike cooldowns, Initiative allows us Thieves to dump a lot of damage into a target in very little time. Spaming a single ability for maximum effect was a popular strategy during the early days of the game and the effects are still felt today. There is also little to no punishment for using a lot of Initiative very quickly as our defensive abilities don’t require any. I believe the design of Initiative is really the core issue of thief design.

In order to fix this, you need to discourage “dumping” Initiative while still making it an option. If someone wants to chain 4 Heartseekers, he/she should. But it should be less effective than someone who spaces out his/her Heartseekers over more time.

That’s why I suggest lowering Initiative regeneration the less you have and increasing the regeneration rate at high Initiative levels.

Example: Standard Initiative regeneration is 1 point every 1.67 seconds.
When you have less than 5 Initiative it is lowered to 1 point every 2 seconds.
When you have more than 7 Initiative it is increased to 1 point every 1.2 seconds.

This would encourage people to manage Initiative as a real resource and punish people who “dump” Initiative very quickly. Other recent MMOs have used similar mechanics for various professions and it works quite well.

1. - Abundance of Shadowsteps

Next to Stealth, the ability to Shadowstep is probably what defines the Thief profession. This is problematic however, especially in the case of Steal is it makes it very hard for other players to see a Thief coming and react appropriately. This means Thieves often get to “jump” targets catching players off guard, which can feel unfair at times. Limiting the abundance of offensive Shadowsteps would probably go a long way in making the Thief feel “fairer” against his opponents.

While I personally would like to see a rework of the Steal profession mechanic a 600 range limit on Steal would probably go a long way. See details below.

1. - Stealth as an offensive tool

Typically the ability to Stealth is regarded as a defensive tool on the Rogue archetype to make up for his lack of real defences. In Guild Wars 2 however Stealth is as much an offensive tool as it is a defensive one. Builds like Pistol/Dagger really on Stealth opener attacks to do any decent damage. For them Stealth is more than just an escape tool, it’s a major source of damage.

While it’s good to have Stealth openers deal various unikittenfects I don’t think they should be the core to maximizing DPS. Stealth should be used at the expensive of DPS, not to boost it.

Emphasizing Stealth’s nature as a defensive tool rather than a damage booster is important.

1. - Near useless traps and poisons

The fact that traps and poisons are either vastly underpowered or often redundant leads to many Thief pigeon-holing themselves into very specific, either burst or condition-centric builds. Increasing the viability of the Thief’s tool-set would go a long way towards increasing Thief diversity and reducing their reliance on burst or other “cheap” tactics.

Reworking Steal and Stealth

I wanted to propose a concept which would address many of the current issues with the Thief: Instead of having Steal as our profession ability we’d have Stealth instead. However unlike current Stealth the new Stealth would drain Initiative. This would address multiple issues.

1. No more base-line Shadowstep from 900 range
2. Emphasis on Stealth as a primarily defensive tool
3. No longer able to “dump” massive damage into a target coming out of Stealth.
4. Stealth use at the cost of DPS, not to it’s benefit.

I think the goal should be between 30 minutes and 60 minutes.

I do think Dungeons should be some sort of commitment and 15 minute Dungeon sprints reminds me too much of WoW.

I think it’s ok for one or two Dungeons to be more epic and require up to 2 hours per path, but Arah is pushing it a bit far.

I too really wish they’d stop requiring the same mats for every bloody crafting recipe in this game.

And it’s always 250 too..

The fact that there’s barely a noticeable difference between 1 and 10, and probably 10 and 20 as well just makes the whole shebang feel very repetitive and grindy.

I mean this leveling doesn’t achieve anything aside from massive segmentation of the player base.

Well Initiative is always one of these very subjective things. It is a resource and thus is meant to limit our ability use in some form or another.

With a Backstab build you’ll be getting most of your DPS from Cloak and Dagger + Backstab mixed with auto-attack, all while training to stay above 6 Initiative.

The Revealed debuff already limits how much you can spam C&D so once you add in a little movement into the encounter you really shouldn’t be starved for Initiative. It only really becomes an issue below 50% HP, when you could start spaming Heartseeker. But then you just use it less frequently and try to stay above 6 Initiative.

My point being, while having 3 extra Initiative is definitely nice, it’s not worth 15 point into a tree that otherwise offers little in return. Especially in PvE where you can’t just dump all your Imitative into a target and call it a day, 12 Imitative really isn’t that much of a limit.

You have experience playing the game, do you not?

How successful do you imagine a melee character with medium armor and 10.500 HP is going to be in Dungeons? Don’t you think you might be having some problems with…..you know…being one-shot….by pretty much everything.

Let alone when you add a few mobs in PvE or get pulled into 2+ Orrians. Even Last Refuge won’t save you then.

My recommendation is that at least half your gear should be either Valkyrie or Soldier. The rest can then be mixed and matched according to preference.

And you pick either Critical Damage or Condition Damage. They don’t synergize at all so trying to have both is suboptimal.

Some or your trait choices aren’t great either.

Sundering Strikes is pretty useless. Mug is much better.

Singets of Power only makes sense if you actually use 2+ Singets and even then it’s better in PvP than PvE.

Master of Deception for 12 seconds off Shadow Refuge. Why? It’s a situational ability….you don’t even know if you’ll need it every 60 seconds. Why reduce the cooldown?

fadeaway.2807:

Cool story bro.

Rarely appropriate but in this case…..it is.

Yes, target tracking through invisibility is annoying but given how kitten Rangers are I’m not too worried about them having this unintended edge.

I honestly don’t see why we have to have that star at all. It just seems entirely unnecessary.

A lot of stationary objects like the Siege Weapons in the FotM encounter, Orrian Catapults in Orr and even doors (FotM) are virtually unhitable by melee attacks.

You will constantly “miss” the target despite standing right in/next to it. There are occasionally certain angles at which it works…but often no longer than a second or two before we’re back to “miss”, “miss”, “miss”.

Now imagine being a melee + condition damage build. Killing an object might take longer than a Bossfight.

Yeah, I’m not sold on Scholar for PvE. I can understand it’s draw for PvP Backstab bursting but that’s about as far as I’d take it. You just don’t have max. HP all that much.

As for Divinity….well they’re obviously very expensive and even then I’m not sure they’re the best choice.

I mean they provide +60 to all stats and +12% Crit-Damage, that’s great. But of those stats, we only really benefit from Power, Precision and Vitality. Toughness is a very slight buff and Healing and Condition Damage don’t do much for us.

I also firmly believe that certain unikittenfects can prove to be more valuable than simple stats, even if they’re hard to express in DPS/EHP or whatever.

I can see why they’d be a good choice, but given the current price…I’ll have to pass.

I’m currently enticed by the Runes of Vampirism however. Bonus Power + regular 900 Heals via life-leeching. The 6 piece bonus can save you from Death too, every minute. The Problem seems to be however that it’s still bugged…even after 2 months.

I was really considering this set of Runes for my Thief. Is it still really broken?

Hey guys, I was wondering what the best choices might be for PvE overall.

I say “overall” because DPS isn’t my only concern (although it matters of course) and because I do all kinds of content, from FotM to solo play.

Obviously this discussion needs to separate between Condition Builds and Direct Damage builds.

In my current Direct Damage build I’m using Superior Runes of Lyssa for the added Precision and the fact that having all Boon up during a Daggerstorm can make quite a difference. The random Boon during a heal can be nice too, especially when it’s Protection but it’s not really a big bonus considering how often it’s redundant.

So I think there is room for improvement.

What are your thoughts on the best Superior Rune choices for PvE and why?

Well normally I’d agree with the OP on the fact that Singets are rarely a good choice in Dungeons.

However given how many Thief abilities just aren’t that great (Poisons, Traps) while others are very situational sometimes Singets really are the best choice.

They should be picked for their “on use” effects however, not for their passive bonuses.

However since changing abilities is a matter of 3 seconds I criticize anyone who doesn’t alter his abilities every so often.

I just wanted to give a shout-out to the team/person who worked on the Asura animations.

They are just brilliant.

So much love and attention to detail was invested into these little creatures it’s amazing.

The way their head bobs to the side when they strafe, how their whole body reacts when they jerk to a halt, how they do a loopdy-loop whenever they dodge. It’s just very, very well done.

You really get the sense that Asura are tiny people filled with too much Energy.

I just wanted to let the developer know that his attention to detail hasn’t gone unappreciated.

seldomseenkid.2850:

Human female.

I could say it’s because if I’m going to spend 100+ hours looking at an avatar, it might as well be a hot chick, but the truth is it’s because I want to be a girl.

+1 for an unexpected LOL

Male Asura here because the Asura animations are just so great.

I concur,

it’s frustrating and tedious and adds nothing of value.

It’s especially annoying considering how many of these events bug out on a regular basis. I recall Arah being inaccessible for weeks on my server only a months or so back.

I think in many ways Arah explorable is on par or even more challenging than the Fractals. Yet it’s not nearly as rewarding and typically takes much longer as well.

Arah expl. was always a Dungeon for the more committed player, those that are now grinding out the fractals…again and again and again and again. Lupius is still less forgiving than most Fractal bosses too.

I mean I just went there yesterday so I’m not sure it’s really dying. I still see frequent LFG requests too. But I agree that the time/risk/reward factor is off in Arah, when compared to Fractals.

I get a weird tingling feeling in my balls when I fall off some high place.

That’s all I can really contribute.

Quarantine.3702:

So I’ve been playing a thief in PvE since launch and I’ve been having a hard time trying to figure out what kind of stats I should be going after for my gear. I know that power, precision and condition damage are great for dps, but I want to find stats that will help my play style.

My Build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcmaPXcS4E+JFxmidqT/DkVTBNxZ/hrC

The build is focused on using might to buff my dps and I’m able to doge much more often. I really like being able to dodge multiple times if I need to, while still being able to dodge again soon after and has kept me from dying several times. On the other hand, I get killed really fast when I do get hit, because my toughness is pretty low.

I tend to sit in the back and use my shortbow more because of this and it isn’t the best dps in the game (despite it being a versatile weapon). I know there’s probably something I can do to improve this, but I don’t know what. It would be good to have gear that would go with the d/d set so I could go into melee to adapt to the situation. Right now I feel like I’m stuck at range, pew pewing my bow when it might be better to go melee.

Right now I’m sitting at 13, 155 health, pretty low for a thief I know. Other stats:
Power 2092
Precision 1814
Toughness 944
Vitality 1152

I know if I want to go purely into one role I should go for all dps or all defense, but which would be better to go for?

Hello,

let me start off by critiquing your build.

Your current build seems to lack focus and you have points spread out all over the place. I assume you’re playing a Crit-focused build. Yet you haven’t gotten the top tier traits which are actually pretty good (next to the passive stat-boost).

Instead you have points in Trickery which increase your Initiative. That’s fine and all except that Bleed builds (Death Blossom spam) tend to be Initiative intensive, not so much Crit builds. Especially not if you’re using the Shortbow a lot of the time.

Thrill of the Crime while a good trait in solo play, is often redundant in group situations. You already get Swiftness and Might on Evades and Fury can be gained via a trait. Overall I think the Trickery tree doesn’t really add much to a Critical Strikes build.

The Sundering Strikes trait in the Deadly Arts tree is also a lackluster trait since it doesn’t really do much for your DPS. Vulnerability in general is a pretty crappy Condition and only “nice to have”. Nothing you should ever spec for though.

As for Survivability, after you’re 15 points into the Acrobatics tree most extra survivability will comes from your gear choices. Now some people here like to preach DPS > all and that you’re best off running full Berserker gear with 10.500 HP etc. but I can’t echo that sentiment. Especially not if you intend to delve deeper into the Fractals of the Mist.

Valkyrie items are a good way of improving both your DPS and your Vitality. Mix that with a few Soldier (Power, Toughness, Vitality) and/or Berserker items until your reach a comfortable level of squishiness.

As a rough guidelines I’d recommend at least 16.000 HP for doing most explorable dungeons. More if you’re not confident or tend to take a lot of damage, less if you’re very confident.

Personally I’ve been running with a 15/30/0/25/0 build for months now and am very capable of dealing damage and staying alive. Gear is mostly Soldiers on my main set while I exchange my Accessories between Valkyrie and Berserker depending on content.

While I don’t really have a problem with 100 Blades (I don’t really see it used that often) I agree with the OP that balance shouldn’t come down to such binary elements.

Only because you can dodge and mitigate 100% of 100 Blades doesn’t make it ok to virtually one-shot people. The same reasoning applies to the Backstab combo. Only because you can dodge it, doesn’t mean it’s ok to deal 14k damage in 2 seconds.

I mean you can practically dodge every ability in GW2 so by that logic every ability is balanced because it is possible to avoid.

But balance is a little more complex than that.

I’m wondering if having a dedicated MF set is still worth it since the patch.

The MF set was only really useful for farming mass-spawn events in Orr like Pinx, Arah and all the camps with lots of other people.

But subjectively I feel there are a lot less rares dropping from regular mobs now than there were before the patch. I know Veterans are supposed to drop more, but I’m not noticing that.

In fact, the FotM and Dungeons seems to be a much better source of rares now, which is probably why you find less people farming Orr nowadays. And I won’t be using MF in Dungeons any time soon.

I was wondering if anyone had some more objective data regarding farming with MF since the patch. Maybe nothing really changed…but that’s something I find hard to believe. Btw. this is only about rares. I don’t care about blue or green drops.

But if a dedicated MF set means finding 2 rares and hour, rather than 1, I don’t think it’s worth it.

Well Dusk and Dawn to merge together to form Eternity so it’s not unfathomable that there may be other, similar recipes.

But it does seem very unlikely considering that Dusk and Dawn were both Greatswords.

It is ridiculous,

I have close to 700 hours played in this game. I do all kinds of content, farm, WvW, occasional PvP etc. I play the game the way it was meant to be played.

Since I have been saving up for my Legendary I have been hording all the T6 Materials I’ve collected over the past 3 months.

Until today I have an average of…about 70 per T6 Material. Bones and Dust being a lot more common, Blood and Fangs being rare.

That’s right, 3 months of frequent play….50% of which might have been dedicated to farming….and I’m only about 30% of the way there. That’s atrocious.

And this is just for one item. Forget about all the Ascended items you might want to craft.

You typically make about 2-3 gold an hour from just farming events. I think that is fairly acceptable.

The only problem I have with the current economy and ability to make money is the excessive demand for T6 crafting materials.

Why, why on earth does everything have to require 250 T6 Mats? Is that the only number ANet can think of?

I mean it would be almost acceptable if they had a decent drop-rate, but they don’t.

ANets needs to either stop making everything cost 250 T6 Mats, make them drop more frequently or give us alternative, reliable ways to farm them.

S so basically everything except damage and healing, yes?

Thank god not every opinion has to be respected.

TidusFTW.7354:

looking for uncontested eu balth

Temple currently uncontested on Abaddon’s Mouth [DE]

I know it’s late, but maybe it will work for you.

You clearly didn’t think this leveling concept through to the end.

Here I am, spamming LFG for almost an hour looking to find members to fill up the ranks of our guild group.

But nobody can be found because everyone is stuck at a different level and nobody feels like investing 1 hour or more just so a group can catch up to his level.

The big joke though is that the increase in difficulty between level 2 and level 6 is barely noticeable. It’s just further artificial segregation of an already segregated player base.

I mean the only way you are going to progress through this Dungeon is by having the exact same people on at the exact same time, with no room for deviation…at which point you might as well be raiding.

What a poorly conceived concept, really.

The least you could do to mitigate the effects is make the difference between different levels more noticeable while reducing the overall number of levels. At least that way the 200 or so level 80 players won’t be spread out across 20+ different levels.

Yes and No,

let me explain:

I think the highest tier of gear and thus the max item budget should be relatively easy to obtain.

Harder than current exotics but nothing like current Ascended Gear.

However customizing this gear for maximum efficiency should take time, commitment and effort. This should include cosmetic items as well.

Yeah I was really expecting it to draw people away from Orr with attractive Karma events, interesting mobs and different loot.

But it’s really not offering any of that.

The events are too few and too far between. You simply spend too much time looking for stuff to do compared to Cursed Shore where you have a dozen events all within a minutes walk.

And the lack of AoE spamwavesofmobstodeath type of events really doesn’t make the loot all that great either.

As far as I see it it’s just another place to pick up some Orchialicum and to complete your daily thanks to more mob variety.