Guild Wars 2

Jhughes.8341:

I keep finding myself going back to lyssa

Same here.

Tried various runes. Runes of the Mesmer, Runes of the Vampire, Runes of Strength etc.

All they do though is add varying degree of damage. None except for Lyssa give you any way of dealing with conditions or add any amount of survivability.

With 80% of builds now basically being some form of condition bunker I can’t seem to make do without Lyssa Runes.

But honestly I really hate this condition spam meta. It’s so ridiculous and idiotic. The antithesis of what GW2 was originally going to be about. Instead of active combat, we now have passive combat.

Being by far the best at certain roles is hardly a good indication of a balanced class.

80% of “support” in this game is distilled into the Guardian class. Stack enough of them in WvW and you make any zerg immortal.

The fact that they have been the ONLY viable midbunkers in sPvP since launch shows how ridiculous the class is. It’s just that we become so complacant with Guardians being nigh immortal and adding more support than the 4 other classes in the group that we think this is OK.

It’s not. Guardians may be ok in a 1v1 basis but when you add in group dynamics it’s clear this class is entirely broken. It has WAY too much support and innate tankiness, way more than any other class in the game. And it has not been good for the game.

You could also argue that these items save you a bag slot, which in itself is worth 400 Gems.

Also if you purchased these items sooner, for less Gold, they pay off more quickly.

It’s worth it for the convenience, if you focus on playing 1 main character.

If you switch a lot between alts, then less so.

Still, I’d argue the salvomatic bot is still more valuable.

kitten , this merchant really needs to show up, even if it is just to trade for lame things.

My guess would be Elementalists.

Class popularity depends a lot on strong archetypes and the Warrior/Paladin archetype is very heavily embedded in western fantasy/RPGs.

The little I know about Eastern culture is that they have an uncanny obsession with scantly clad young ladies. And Elementalists suit that appeal very well.

That’s a very fair assessment of your motivation and probably applies to a lot of hardcore players, myself included.

But honestly I don’t see anything happening within the next few weeks/months. sPvP has only just gotten a new progression system and it will take a while for ANet to revisit the issue.

sPvP has always been the weakest aspect of the game and the one that retains the fewest players and adds the least amount of monetization. I don’t imagine it getting much revision anytime soon.

If you want a real long-term goal, try chasing some of those WvW achievements. Now that’s a long-term goal.

The first points should always go into Supply Mastery. The chance to recover supplies is probably the single most important trait.

They are also fairly cheap so it the trade-off isn’t huge.

After that I’d recommend a few points into both supply and build mastery, just to make those more efficient. But that too only costs a few points.

Only after that would I encourage Defense against Guards. It costs 115 points and it’s not something you can just casually pick up. It also takes a long time to pay off since all the preliminary upgrades are pretty useless.

And frankly, I don’t think it makes that much of a difference if you’re running with the zerg.

“end game” is a very loose term in GW2 since there essentially isn’t any.

Pistol / Pistol is probably the Thief weapon-set that is least appealing, simply because it doesn’t have much of a niche. Anything P/P does reasonably well, other weapons do better.

Single target, ranged damage is really the only thing P/P is good at. Combined with Riccochet it has some nice AoE too, but is still beating out by just about every other weapon set in terms of damage and utility.

The whole weapon-set just doesn’t really have anything going for it. No good synergy, and no compelling play-style unless you love Unload spam.

ANet designed Thieves in a way that makes them inherently frustrating to fight.

People complain for a reason. Not always for legitimate reasons but they still make an effort to voice they distaste. And that says a lot.

ANet screwed up their class-design with Thieves and it’s not something easily remedied.

Having more than 2 of the following classes is detrimental:
1. Thief
2. Mesmer
3. Elementalist

It’s basically because then Thief, and to a lesser extent Mesmer, only really fill one role in sPvP. And that’s the roamer. And you really only want 1-2 of those in any given team.

Jerus.4350:

I can understand where they are coming from. As someone relatively new myself, having people tell you how things goes is nice and all, but you really miss out on a lot of learning. And then if you ignore them or if they don’t speak up, chances are the experienced player will get annoyed and then you have that to deal with.

It’s not that I don’t/didn’t appreciate the help when I was new. I really did. but to this day there are things I just haven’t done because it’s not the right way to do things… and /shrug I kinda want to know how it goes doing everything wrong… but I’m a masochist when it comes to content sometimes so /shrug. And one of the most fun things is dissecting a fight and figuring out it’s mechanics and how to deal with them. When you come into a game late, where people typically speed run stuff… you kinda miss out on that whole experience, you just learn how to do it right and don’t even know why necessarily. And while I’ve learned most of the mechanics at this point, it’s much harder to learn mechanics when you’re being successful than when you’re failing =).

Agreed.

While it does seem odd, having a completely untainted experiences of your first dungeon is a unique opportunity. Having some Veteran level 80 who tells you about stacking, skipping and how to exploit most effectively kind of ruins the experience.

Sure the situation could have been handled better but nonetheless I consider it a viable stance.

I really have a hard time imaging anything a Ranger would bring to a zerg, be it a role or a skill, that other classes couldn’t do better.

I know Rangers can be really good in sPvP and deal really good DPS in PvE. But none of that prowess translates into WvW where support and a strong niche or core-skill is more important than other factors.

I don’t imagine this will ever change due to the inherent nature of the class.

Obviously ANet is concerned about inflation. To be fair in has skyrocketed since the Queen’s Jubilee patch.

What bugs me about this change though is that it essentially removes income from people partaking in the core activity this game has to offer rather than taking it from activities you might want to discourage.

If you’re aiming for perfection, yes, but if you know GW2 PvE you should know that’s rarely required.

All I’d say is that you should be aware of your tool-kit and be flexible in its use. Always carry all weapon-sets with you and be willing to switch quickly when the situation calls for it.

Be aware what weapons suit which situation and what utilities are appropriate.

For example while Dagger / Dagger is generally best against bosses, if your group is stacking or pushing the boss into a corner you won’t get much damage out of it. In that case it can be better to stick with Sword / Pistol.

Adaptability, not DPS is what makes a good player.

With the introduction of Ferocity Critical Damage was significantly reduced. That’s why it may seem like your class was nerfed. But it’s a global change and thus affects all classes.

For anything more specific you best head to the dedicated class forums.

Currently GW2 still has a number of restrictions in place that were probably originally intended to protect the economy but now seem terribly out of place.

What I mean by this is:

1. Runes tied to dungeons (like Runes of the Forge) should be freely tradable and no longer soulbound on purchase.

2. 4 Superior Runes should be able to combine to another random rune, just like other items.

3. Gear purchased for Karma should be salvageable. It would finally provide an effective karma drain and help balance out the economy (Linen anyone?)

4. Remove the 2 crafting skills/character limit or just make crafting skills account-bound, rather than character bound.

There were a few others I thought of but can’t remember.

ANet nerfed the only real counter.runes to condition spam…while adding many more condition spam options.

So basically the exact opposite of what this game needed.

The problem with conditions is just how abundant they are. They are everywhere, being applied constantly, by pets, by minions, by illusions, by auto-attacks by AoE fields. And not just single conditions. Lots of them, always, constantly.

They don’t have proper attack animations, they are impossible to avoid and even if you do, the next attack will simply apply them. You don’t outplay condition spam, you endure it and hope your class-mechanics are good enough to keep up. If not, you die.

Conditions are also damage and crowd-control tucked nicely into a single mechanic. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Yeah I don’t see the deal with Strength Runes either.

They add a decent amount of DPS, but that’s it. We’ve had Scholar Runes since launch and no one had complained about them. They don’t really add anything else except DPS and that’s hardly game-breaking.

They were way overnerfed. And that’s quite an achievement considering how few “anti condition” runes there are.

Lyssa Runes were powerful before, but they were also tied to a strict conditional. And that was they triggered on Elite use. That meant that without a short CD elite, the Rune set wasn’t viable to begin with. It was really only common on Thieves, who barely have any condition-removal options, and Warriors.

They were also considered good in an environment where most other rune-sets were really lackluster.

Since then though….

1. All runes-sets have been buffed.

2. Lyssa Runes have been nerfed.

In a way this is a double nerf. People may well have opted for different runes after they were all buffed. Lyssa might not have needed a nerf to be less attractive because the trade-off increased.

Thieves resorted to these runes to address a very class-specific weakness to conditions. Thieves simply don’t have good condition removal options outside of Lyssa Runes. That’s why they were popular and that’s why the nerf seems unjustified. With conditions becoming more prominent the game needs viable counters, and they don’t exist.

There are dozens of runes that add conditions, but none that remove them. It’s poor design really.

Lyssa Runes really need to be buffed again.

1. The 5- condition limit needs to go. It’s completely unjustified and makes it impossible to recover from a Signet of Spite style dump.

2. It needs to be made more responsive. By the time the effect triggers a glass-cannon is almost dead.

3. If they dislke the synergy with Basilisk Venom they should just replace the skill. It’s a boring ability anyway and only really attractive because of the short cooldown.

The Thief isn’t a very forgiving class, unlike some others. So you will be made to pay for your mistakes. That’s why average Thieves have a rather poor reputation in PvE despite dealing more than competitive DPS.

As to your gear and weapon choices, it depends on how comfortable you feel with the game in general and the class specifically. If you’re an experienced dungeon runner and the Thief is just another class you’re leveling, feel free to go balls to the wall.

I.e. Berserker with Scholar Runes and the 6/6/X/X/X build. That way you will progress the fastest and skip all the intermediate levels of learning and adapting your build.

But if you’re not quite that comfortable yet then feel free to be a little more conservative. Rather than using Soldier’s gear I’d simply recommend sticking to range combat for starters. The Shortbow is a very proficient weapon and Clusterbomb deals good DPS (even single target) while being an constant Explosive Finisher. That alone adds a great deal of group support.

When fighting trash, Sword + Pistol is your best friend. Black Powder practically makes you immune to all melee trash mobs (except champions). It makes a HUGE difference to your group, especially if they stack up on you. Just make sure to maintain Black Powder and don’t spam too much Pistol Whip (except on bosses).

TL;DR – glass-cannon + melee is the end goal for a Thief, but you might not want to go that route right away, depending on your skill and experience.

One word on utilities: They can be exchanged for a reason. Use it! A Bad Thief is someone who doesn’t use his kitten nal. That said, Smoke Field, Shadow Refuge and the Signets will see most frequent use.

I gave some pretty detailed feedback on traits here.

Most of it is still relevant as the patch really didn’t change much about our issues.

Most pertinent imo is fixing Last Refuge, adding Condition Removal alternatives other than Shadow’s Embrace and reworking some of the dull +X% damage traits that are far too prominent, especially in the Deadly Arts tree.

I wouldn’t go with Perplexity Runes when running P/D. The weapon-set just doesn’t mesh all that well with the rune set. Bewildering Ambush should give you a comparable amount of Confusion for much less investment.

Runes of Balthazar should be much better. If meshes well with Withdraw and gives you reliable access to Burn, an incredibly powerful condition that P/D Thieves otherwise lack.

It’s also a very cheap rune-set.

In general the dungeon running portion of the player base has had an uncanny obsession with Warriors.

For a long time they were considered the highest DPS, which coupled with their high base-line survivability, made Warrior-heavy runs fast and safe. So I guess it caught on and never changed, even though other classes can easily match the Warrior#s DPS.

But I guess Thieves are too squishy and have a bad reputation for dying a lot and Eles, well Eles have to be built for group support, which isn’t always the case.

TL,DR: Warriors are seen as a safe choice both in terms of DPS and survivability.

It hits a medium target golem for about 1100-1400 in the mists when wearing a Berserker amulet. I’m not sure it scales with anything, but it doesn’t crit.

It’s a good choice if you want to add burst to your build, but in PvE it is generally outperformed by other Sigils that give a static DPS increase.

Adding 1400 damage to a 100-Blades attack is less compelling when that 100-Blades already hits for 20000, A 5% damage increase on ALL your attacks will yield better results.

I have noticed this a lot since the patch as well.

It seems like champions have a 50 person tag-cap. People tagging them too late get nothing. That’s not fun.

In general I don’t find zerging every megaevent with a 200 man zerg to be especially compelling. I’d much rather ANet created more separate instances with less players rather than having 200+ megazergs.

How much Ferocity and Crit-Damage does it end up adding then assuming Valkyrie main set and Hybrid Accessories?

Why would you bump a 2 months old thread?

Divinity Runes have been notoriously overrated for years. But they were a decent choice (albeit expensive) before the patch where they gave a rather generous amount of crit-damage.

Now they give half as much Crit-Damage and the other stats were never hugely interesting. You’d get more DPS out of most other Power-based Runes.

Especially since Traveler Runes, Divinity Runes have been a subpar choice.

I use it in my standard PvE build.

Considering the alternatives I think it’s the best option. It’s also independent of your current weapon so you don’t have to constantly change it around.

FGS and Frost Bows are used often enough for the trait to make sense and the reset is a nice icing on the cake, even if it has very little practical impact.

It’s certainly 50% out of combat. I can overtake people with Swiftness while stealthed. But in combat it may well be capped at Swiftness speed.

But then again, is that Swiftness speed in or out of combat?

Either way, the way I see it is that even with lot of teleports you’ll want some sort of speed modifier. The basic rune-speed in itself is too slow for reliable positioning. This can eother come from Traveler Runes, Fleet of Foot or Signet of Shadows.

All three versions have their price and all are viable choices. Fleet of Foot just strikes me as the most “affordable”.

Did you read it from the combat log? Because I spent a good 10 minutes beating up stuff with a 70% crit-chance and never saw it procc once.

Silvercyclone.1462:

All gear should be salvagable.

This, and it needs to happen sooner rather than later.

It would also serve as a means for people to invest their Karma into something.

Karma is the most abundant currency of GW2 and yet there is practically nothing to spend it on.

Being able to salvage Karma gear would deflate Karma and balance out some of the gross economic imbalances. Silk and other mid-level goods that are otherwise hard to come buy would finally see a bump in supply, as would many other mid and low tier commodities.

guanlongwucaii.3162:

Brando.3891:

Dahkeus.8243:

Sadly, so many people get so caught up in getting the perfect group composition for a fast run, they fail to realize that they wasted a ton of time just getting exactly who they want.

Because of this, I’ve seen plenty of mixed build/prof groups clear through dungeons faster than perfectionist speed run group leaders.

it’s not all about the speed, mostly about it, but i personally enjoy speedruns so i prefer wait 5 min to enjoy the successive 5 instead to do an 8 min run that i do not enjoy.
Sorry if in my kittened english this doesn’t make any sense xD

this, I would rather wait longer for good players and have a good run than take the first pug I get and have a slower run, even if the good run + wait takes longer overall. I prefer seeing dungeons go smoothly (as smooth as a pug can get).

I understand that. I understand that for dungeons paths that take 20+ minutes.

A bad group can add a lot of stress at times you don’t want it and a smooth run is much more enjoyable, no doubt.

But CoF in particular and AC are farmed so routinely, by so many people, it’s all about speed and efficiency. CoF path 1 run kills 5 mobs, the rest is time-gated, AC skips most. The “perfect” composition barely makes a difference when you’re running past most mobs or the waves respawn on a fixed timer.

This is pretty much the build I’ve been playing for the past 4 months.

I came across Runes of Strength a while pack as a cheap alternative to Scholar Runes and have run with them ever since. Shadow Arts ensures constant Might and so the build can benefit from the 7% damage bonus all the time.

I’d say it’s solid. It worked well enough for me with both D/D and D/P.

I did however opt for Fleet of Foot over Power of Inertia since the basic run-speed isn’t sufficient and extra Might stacks not all that important. And it’s not like the build has excessive dodges either.

I wouldn’t expect anything exception from this setup. Damage will still be lower than prior to the patch and heavy condition bombs are still going to screw you over. But it works well enough.

It has a very niche appeal. I’ve used it when soloing bosses or other tedious content that requires sustain rather than DPS.

The healing itself is nigh useless but add it to Signet of Malice and Omnomberry Pie and you should have quite a bit of passive healing.

I remember facing the same issue when I was working on that achievement. Yeah it is a bit dumb that they haven’t made it a little more intuitive.

I run CoF every day with PuGs. I know that a flawless run with solid DPS takes about 8 minutes to complete, depending on when exactly you start counting.

And despite my previously bad experiences with similar groups I decided to join a set and ready “4 Warriors, 1 Mesmer, Zerker only group”.

Now I can almost understand the desire for Zerkers. Solid DPS does speed up the run significantly. In CoF however you only really kill 5 mobs where DPS actually matters so the difference between Zerker or not is negligible.

I always assumed this “Zerker only” mentality was rooted in an obsession for smooth and fast runs.

Anyway, so we start off, first boss goes down quickly as you’d probably expect. Some Warrior asks another about his build, but he doesn’t respond. By the time we’ve killed the summoners the inquisitive Warrior decides that one Warrior isn’t in fact a Zerker and thus initiates a kick which promptly goes through.

Mind you this Warrior they kicked was the only one using buff-food and Slaying Potions.

So I port them through the tunnel but with 4 players they are now stuck at the brazers. I asked them why they kicked the guy and tell them it made no sense. So after about 2 minutes a Guardian joins the group, only to be instantly kicked again for not being a Warrior.

WTF!?

At that point I told them they were all idiots because what’s the point of running 4 Warriors + Mesmer if you’re going to waste so much time due to your inflated ego.

So I leave, form a new group and 8 minutes later complete the run.

Meanwhile the Warriors were still stuck in CoF….

The reward system is nice. And the new interface/gear management.

But that’s about the only good thing I can say about sPvP since the patch.

It’s not even the balance that’s the major issue here (although the lack of anti-condition runes is really crippling). It’s the quality of play that has seriously deteriorated.

Hotjoin is unplayable because all servers are either full to the brim or some sort of “rank farming” ruleset.

SoloQ is unplayable because of Skyhammer.

TeamQ is where everyone has turned to and that suffers from bad match-making and premades farming PuGs 90% of the time. It’s also infested with people who clearly belong in hotjoin but can’t play there because of the aforementioned reasons. As a result the quality of play has really dropped.

Ok this is getting a little obnoxious.

It’s hard enough to find a open hotjoin game where you can start playing right away instead of being forced into observer mode.

But then you realize that all of the remaining servers have some sort of “special ruleset” mostly based on some sort of “rank farming”. Join them and start fighting, only to suffer verbal abuse of some kind.

It’s pretty stupid and I can’t remember the last time I had a “normal” hotjoin game.

I guess that’s just anther reason why all the noobs moved to teamQ. Can’t really fault them for that.

But that isn’t much fun either. I had SoloQed my way up to about rank 500 in teamQ prior to the patch and since then have about an 80% loss rate. It’s really frustrating.

Apparently they want Mesmer 1-shotting Thieves according to screenshots in the sPvP forums.

Someone told me it has a 30 second cooldown.

So if you build something, recover supplies, wait 30 seconds….you could recover supplies again.

And while I have watched for this I can’t personally confirm or deny it.

Why would you need to “make up for the damage loss”? Are you aiming for a certain DPS number? It just strikes me as an odd line of reasoning.

Anyway, Ferocity was never going to change anything about gear choices.

The Zerker-meta was always (and still is) a PvE design issue and has nothing to do with stats or game balance. ANet is struggling to facilitate other stats aside from damage in their PvE encounters.

And admittedly it’s a trick issue. On one hand you want to avoid poorly telegrpahed instant-gib mechanics that are so prominent in this game. On the other hand if you make all damage avoidable people just stick with Zerker.

And all this is partially due to the whole “no trinity” combat concept. I know they intended for “Control, Support and Damage” to replace the standard model but failed in implementing it.

“Control” is practically non-existent in PvE since mobs can’t be reliably positioned due to opaque aggro mechanics. CC against mobs is limited too because of the limited CC itself as well as Definant.

“Support” does exist and is quite relevant. But for some reason ANet opted to give 80% of the support abilities to a single class, rendering all others fairly useless in this role. Yes, basically Guardians fill this role out entirely. And since Support and DPS aren’t mutually exclusive, Guardians can bring both.

That leaves us with DPS and that’s really all we got.

Too much of PvE performance assessment is based theorycrafting, ideal group compositions and Lupicus.

When it comes to debating PvE, that’s all that seems to matter.

And yet, afaik, 90% of grouping is still done by PuGs where a lot of these factors don’t matter. And Lupicus is hardly the only relevant PvE encounter.

So once you liberate yourself from the idea that you will always be stacking Might, have permanent Fury provided and won’t be fighting Lupicus then suddenly a lot more options become viable.

Look at Runes of the Pack for example. Identical Power, 6% Critical Strike Chance and Fury, Might and Swiftness for the entire group. In my opinion these runes will perform equally well or better for most casual groupers.

People latch on to Rune of Strength because some theorycrafter crunched the numbers and said they are best. And that may be true under the aforementioned assumptions. But if you don’t run exclusively with premades feel free to look elsewhere.

There are still too many bugs around to fairly kitten balance. Many Sigils don’t work, Mesmer damage is crazy high and that’s just what I got from a few games.

Something is clearly off about Mesmer damage in PvP.

I’ve noticed that too. Can’t say for sure what it is but compared to glass-cannon Shatter Mesmers before the patch they currently seem to be dealing double the regular damage. It’s crazy.

Don’t let the Thief haters undermine the issue. They complain about 6k Backstabs in sPvP, you get to complain about 12k and 7k hits by frikkin Phantasms.

Probably all have time off because EASTER!

SPvP has been rough for me too. I’ve stuck to the good old Pistol Whip build but the nerf to Lyssa Runes has really hurt.

Berserker Mesmers are pretty insane too. Not sure what’s wrong but their damage is through the roof.

I might go back to S/D evade-spam but I’d really miss some of the burst the other builds provided.

I’ve been comparing the Sigil of Blood to other Sigils but can’t seem to get it to procc.

I’ve tried on target golems in the mists as well as standard mobs in PvE. I can’t seem to get it to trigger in any case.

Here’s the only solution that works:

Design PvE encounters in a way that rewards other aspects aside from DPS.

WvW has a lot of build diversity. They just need to translate some of that into PvE.

I’ve encountered this bug twice now since the patch. Both times in CoF path 1 and once during an open world event.

It’s simply that I cannot loot the reward chests from dungeon bosses, you know the ones that typically flood you with blues. I can loot the actual bosses without problems, get the XP and the dungeon completion reward but I still can’t loot the actual chests.

The chests are visible on the mini-map but aren’t visible in game.

I attached an example below.