Guild Wars 2

Zoridium JackL.7463:

here’s the thing, the sylvari don’t reproduce through sex, so their culture hasn’t got this built up precedent of male-female relationships that humans do, they have relationships for purely non-reproductive reasons. so while humans have a heterosexually driven urge to mate the sylvari don’t have that urge at all, instead they choose to form a close bond to better their lives in all ways.

here’s a question for you, would you rather have purely non-sexual relationships with a person of your own gender or the opposite gender? think of it less like marriage and more like being best friends (like, THE BEST FRIENDS EVER FOREVER) because that’s probably closer to how the sylvari view it.

If it comes to purely platonic friends.. I don’t have a preference for male or female, I have friends of both genders. Again the issue was not the homosexuality itself, but how it was presented.

What I said about appeasing.. well, okay, again, Arenanet is not Bioware, but Bioware and EA just showed how far a dev will go to appease that vocal community. In SW:TOR, there were no homosexual romances. This sparked a community movement to push for SGRA’s (same gender romance arcs). Honestly, I was okay with having the arcs, because all the romance arcs in the game were player initiated rather than thrown at the player, okay, why not, equal representation, but let’s get the more important bugs fixed first okay? Not for this community. Bioware promised them after launch, and every time major gamebreaking bugs are fixed, this community steps in and complains about the SGRA’s. Like they’d rather have those than have the game being fixed. Of course now that the game is in dire straits and going F2P, that might not happen since a lot of the dev team was laid off.

But anyway. I was wrong about there ONLY being homosexual Sylvari which is what I was asking about anyway. Since there are both homosexual and heterosexual Sylvari apparently in pretty equal numbers, I was wrong and we can just drop the subject.

Yes, I probably would have, I don’t like romances thrown in my face, I prefer something more subtle, or something that has to be worked at and is not the normal course of the game. Knights of the Old Republic it was okay, you have to really push for it to make it happen, future Bioware games, it was as simple as saying hi and you were suddenly locked in a relationship. Didn’t like that.

It was especially bad in the last few games Bioware made, where when it came to the gay romance options it was like walking a minefield to avoid it, it was just thrown at you. It was hard to just tell this guy “look you’re a good shipmate and a friend and I respect you, but I’m not interested.”

Not saying the same case is here, but that whole experience leaves me kind of wary when it comes to how far a developer will go to appease 1 vocal community.

AuldWolf.7598:

Dinky is a little marvel. He’s definitely one of the most memorable characters in the game, and deserves to return. I don’t know what it is, but between Tybalt and Dinky, I think we charr have been spoiled a bit with (what is hands-down) the horse’s share of the best character writing in the game.

I’ve tried out the other races and I almost feel sorry for them by comparison. Even if solely because they don’t get Dinky (or Maverick, or Reeva). They don’t know what they’re missing out on.

Not to mention Braugit. That’s another brilliant, memorable character. I mixed up what I took on my main character this time so I haven’t done the loyal soldier father yet, so this is from beta but it’s solid gold.

“This warband is different, outsiders are okay, as long as they’re one of us”

- Dinky

Tinni.4351:

Firstly, Lord Faren is not gay or there is nothing to indicate he’s gay. Indeed, if you play through the human storyline you find that he’s romancing two women at the same time.

As for the Sylvari, as the others have said – most Sylvari couples you encounter involve a man and a woman. I suspect that you have been caught by a stereotype and because of the Sylvari accent and the register in which they speak, you think they might be homosexual – just like Lord Faren, when they are not.

actually it’s because I first played Sylvari in BWE3 and took green huntsman, very first thing is a homosexual couple thrown in your face, and I didn’t play a Sylvari at launch but did Twilight Arbor and it’s Caithe and Faolain and I can’t remember her name lesbian love triangle. Then just hearing about it from others it seems to be pointed and a bit forced as well.

Amante.8109:

Devildoc.6721:

Well I still don’t see how shortbow is supposed to be such great damage on a single target. I’m doing about 3000 damage on cluster bomb explosions compared to 5500 on unload. Both can stack bleed with sigil of earth and pistol auto attacks, and I can poison with steal just the same as using choking gas, just on a single target. In the end I’m doing 50% more damage with pistols. Things just die a lot faster with pistols. I can circle strafe and things die. Shortbow requires a lot more finesse but the payout for that finesse is just lacking.

What you’re proposing is a false dilemma. The ubiquity of Shortbow in the loadouts of talented thieves has nothing to do with single target damage, so why bother comparing it between Shortbow and Dual Pistols? Between the very good AOE damage and the CLASS DEFINING mobility of Infiltrator’s Arrow, passing on Shortbow is not an option for the competitive Thief, period.

This means that, when intelligently discussing potential Thief weapon choices, there’s an underlying assumption that the weapons in question would be run ALONGSIDE the Shortbow. This also means that you preferably want your non-Shortbow weapons to provide something unique, ranging from utility to strong single target damage.

And what, really, do Dual Pistols bring to the table? In terms of damage, it’s ALL single target, and not even that high compared to other options. The set lacks a single snare, root, or meaningful escape skill, Unload is slow and easy to dodge in PvP, and to cap it off, the skills don’t even synergize well amongst themselves. Vital Shot and Sneak Attack favor Condition Damage, Unload favors Power, Crit, and On Hit effects, and Body Shot costs resources you’ll never have to spare, due to how Initiative hungry Unload is.

Headshot and Black Powder are very useful, granted, but you could just run D/P or S/P and get the same skills attached to a better package instead. Frankly spoken: P/P needs work.

Because people swear up and down it’s more damage on a single target, which it’s not. It’s pathetic damage honestly, it’s just good utility and it’s aoe., but the aoe damage is mediocre at best.

Pistols = Burst down a single target, spam blind, spam interrupt
Shortbow = Kite and outlast multiple opponents

Key word, outlast. You’re not killing things fast.

This skill is absolutely amazing in WvW and dungeons (separating mob packs). It ends up forcing defenders on the wall to play more cautiously which gives your guys on the rams more time to beat at the gate. Those who continue to rain aoe from the walls find themselves running back from the nearest waypoint wondering how they suddenly imploded on the ground in the middle of red names.

I’d unslot the panic strike trait for this. Much more strategically valuable. A person you immobilize for 4s and kill on the wall will be ressed, a person you drag down into your group on the ground will not.

Panic strike is a 90s cooldown and conditional, scorpion wire is a 30s cooldown and works as long as you get it on the right target at the right time.

jalikar.1385:

I’m struggling a bit to contribute to larger battles in WvW except when I use my shortbow, and even then the range is limited. Theoretically I could focus on targets of opportunity (with low health) and finish them off, but typically the amount of AoE used in large battles restrict this option. Is it better for thieves not to participate in large battles at all and just focus on supply/roaming?

1. Cluster bomb people on the walls to make them stop attacking your rams. Combined with ele AOE you can bring wall defenders down in fact. If you’re a defender, you can poison and bleed people attacking your doors with minimal risk (only have to risk for poison, cluster bomb arcs)

2. Yank people off the walls into your group with Scorpion Wire. It’s an almost guaranteed kill that results in that person having to run back because they can’t be ressed,

3. Stop straggling reinforcements/ressers running back. Utilize things like infiltrator’s strike, 3 on shortbow, dancing dagger etc to hinder reinforcements from reaching keeps and kill them early.

4. SCOUT. Seriously you as a thief make the best scout/recon in the entire game. You are highly mobile with a permanent 25% speed increase and shadow steps, and you can make yourself temporarily invisible when behind enemy lines, shadow refuge is absolutely invaluable for this, as is the trait that makes you stealth when taking falling damage. A trick is that if you take falling damage multiple times when sliding down a hill, the stealth duration will stack and you can get a good 10+s of stealth to escape if you happen to get spotted.

I just never saw any that were straight but had encountered several that were homosexual and it struck me as odd. Thanks for pointing out that there is balance perhaps afterall I just hadn’t encountered it.

Tinni.4351:

Devildoc.6721:

He’s an expert on Orr, but is not a military leader. I’m a Centurion in the Charr High Legions, I’m in the Ash Legion (Charr Intelligence), and a member of the Order of Whispers, I should be well connected to lead a campaign, Trahearne can be my advisor on Orr. What is wrong with one of the order’s and races taking some precedence in a personal story? It would make the player feel more central to their personal story with their choices mattering, and it would make each playthrough with different races and different choices feel different. Homogenizing them and making Trahearne central strips away all semblence of “personal” from the “personal story”.

You are a spy. You are not a general and I can maybe see Charr + Vigil combination is a bit more general-like but most of the other race + order combination does not yield a result more logical then Trahearne. Indeed, the only person I can think of who would have made logical sense as the leader of the pact is Almorra Soulkeeper as the leader of the militaristic Vigil.

However, Almorra Soulkeeper being in-charge means that Vigil is in charge and that might not go down well with the other orders. That’s also why Trahearne makes sense and you do not. You are a member of order X. You being in-charge means order X is in charge. You do not have friends in the other orders. Only people you know in the other orders are the people who you got to meet when choosing your order and you snubbed them! Trahearne on the other hand is well respected by all three orders and he is neutral. He makes the most sense diplomatically and he has enough military people around him who could advice him on military matters should he need it.

I really don’t see how it makes you a sidekick. You are not his subordinate. He’s not your boss. My boss is Gixx and yours is whoever the Master of Whispers is these days. You are Trahearne’s ally, as Trahearne is yours. Neither of you can do this thing without the other. That’s the way I choose to see this anyway. But then again, I liked Oblivion.

Defend a terrible decision all you want but at the end of the day, you’re the sidekick in the story (he overtly names you as second in command), and even worse, it makes you the sidekick in EVERY story no matter what you pick, meaning every character is almost exactly the same from level 50 on, which is awful.

If your order took precedence in the pact, it would change things, that means if you have 1 order of whispers character, 1 vigil character, and 1 priory character, each one of those characters will experience a different story. Instead making Trahearne the central character and all orders on equal footing, makes the story homogenized and generic.

The Order of Whispers would tackle the task of assaulting Orr differently than the Vigil would, which would tackle the task differently than the Priory. If all resources are funneled under 1 order’s lead, it results in a different experience each playthrough. When all orders are equal, it results in the same experience.

What Arenanet has accomplished is killed replay value of the personal story past level 50. People will do it, for rewards, but the story won’t be enjoyable if it’s always the same.

Great Charr Warband member or Greatest Charr Warband member? Share with us your favorite quotes and Dinky moments.

I miss him in my story, good thing I have 2 more Charr with him as their sparring partner to go!

Is there a way we can set it to where only our contacts and guild members can send us mail? This is absolutely obnoxious getting gold spam mail every 10 minutes from random character names. You can block them and report them all you want but they keep coming back with new stolen accounts.

If such a filter is not in place.. get on it Arenanet.

Shadowstep needs to be able to traverse terrain like it used to be able to back in beta 1, or guardian/warrior/ranger/engineer leaps need to NOT traverse terrain. The imbalance is out there. It used to be balanced. Every class had a way to traverse gaps via a skill, whether it was leaping like warrior/guardian/ranger, rifle jumping with engineer, shadow stepping with thief, lightning flash/blink/ride the lightning with elementalist/mesmer, or necrotic transversal with necromancer. In BWE 2 they disabled any teleport effects from being able to do it, but left the jumping skills.

It’s not balanced.

Aside from that, I think Thief’s capability for swiftness is meager. We have a permanent 25%, but Elementalists and Engineers can have permanent uptime on swiftness to cancel that out.

Our only ways of getting swiftness are:

traiting acrobatics for 2s on dodge rolls
traiting trickery for 10s on steal (42s cooldown when traited 10 deep)
getting an ectoplasm on steal (which would put us in combat and slow us down anyway)

The result is we’re more mobile than average but might be less mobile than an engineer or elementalist with 100% swiftness uptime and utilization of rifle jump/ride the lightning.

Now first off, I don’t have a problem with homosexual people or even characters in the game being homosexual. I have a suspicion that Lord Faren in the Human storyline is gay, I’ve never seen it confirmed, but the gaydar is off the charts. You know what I think of that? I think he’s fabulous and that’s okay. Heterosexual couples in the game in general are mostly hinted at, Logan having unrequited feelings for his Queen, 2 Asura pact members hint that they like each other but it takes awhile for it to be openly stated, etc. They’re not thrown at you.

Meanwhile in Sylvari story I can’t point out a single heterosexual couple I’ve encountered among Sylvari, but they sure do make sure that the first romantic couple you encounter in your personal story is gay, and your destiny’s edge member is a lesbian, and another lesbian Nightmare Court member is vying for Faolain’s attention and there was at least 1 other homosexual couple I remember encountering in the Grove. It wasn’t hinted at, it was overtly thrown at you. This makes it seem forced to me. It particularly stands out as I haven’t encountered any openly gay characters in any other race, only Lord Faren MIGHT be gay but is unconfirmed (he’s just fabulous), and no straight sylvari that I know of.

It’d just be better if they weren’t so blatant about it, made it come into things more naturally, and if there were a proportional amount of subtle heterosexual sylvari as well.

Key word is subtle, all these sexual orientation things need to be subtle.

Tinni.4351:

I don’t really get the criticism that Trahearne has somehow taken over your story. You are still the protagonist but for this chapter, the protagonist has to help the guy who spent a life time studying Orr, who was born with a quest to cleanse Orr and who spent more time in Orr then anyone else, complete his quest.

The story is still about you! Had your and Trahearn’s path never crossed, he wouldn’t really enter the story. But just because it is your story, doesn’t mean you have to be the most important person in every single instance. It doesn’t even make sense! I mean, okay, great! My guardian is a Magister of the Priory. But she’s been a Magister for how long? A few months maybe. What does she know about Orr? Trahearne on the other hand knows Orr as well as he knows The Grove. Probably better! It only makes sense he takes the lead. No one leads a 100% of the time.

However, Trahearne couldn’t have done it without you. Your order wouldn’t be game for this without you. You are still the vital cog in this system and the story is still focused on you and how you helped Trahearne achieve his wyld hunt. I might point out, it’s not just you who will be doing things not in keeping with the characteristics of your order but the rest of your order has to be a bit less like themselves for this part of the story as well. But you know, once the dust settles, you’ll move on and your story will continue as you tackle the other dragons and perhaps figure out any ultimate mystery behind the dragons etc. Trahearne would have exited the story because his story starts and ends with Orr. That’s really the point here.

Orr and Zaitan is one or two chapters in your story. But it is pretty much the whole of Trahearne’s story. So if it looks like it is more important to him then you, it is because it is. For Trahearne, this is his life’s work. For you, it’s just another stone in the monument of your legend.

I don’t play fantasy RPG’s to be a sidekick. I hated it in Oblivion, and I hate it here. I accept rising through the ranks early on, but I was expecting my personal story to be about me, not some Mary Sue terrible character. I wasnt expecting all the stories to merge together into one homogenous genericfest that they end up being from claw island on. There were a few individual quests that were still decent the less they had to do with Trahearne the better. The relationship between you and Trahearne feels forced as well.

Dinky it feels genuine, Rytlock it feels genuine, Tybalt it feels genuine. I mean, Dinky grew up in the fahrar with you, and he’s a member of your warband, it makes sense. Rytlock is higher ranked in Charr military hierarchy than you regardless of your legion, he can take over and have you report to him with your legion’s Tribune giving him permission for a mission. Tybalt is an assigned contact for you for the order of whispers, he is then assigned as your partner, again, orders are orders, it makes sense, and you kind of become friends with him along the way, and he’s a well enough written character that you can just go with it, he’s not a Mary Sue, he’s an inexperienced agent when it comes to field work and he just makes it up as he goes along, fumbling along the way.

… Then you have Trahearne and at first it’s okay, “Hi I’m Tybalt’s friend, I’m going to help out on this mission, I agree there’s danger coming from Orr and I’ll help you out” .. okay.. that’s great.

Then he becomes the central figure in the story. you’re revealed prophetic stuff that makes him the all mighty Mary Sue “chosen one” hero, who was destined before he was even born to save the world. Please.

I’m not a fan of a destined “chosen one” type hero.

He’s an expert on Orr, but is not a military leader. I’m a Centurion in the Charr High Legions, I’m in the Ash Legion (Charr Intelligence), and a member of the Order of Whispers, I should be well connected to lead a campaign, Trahearne can be my advisor on Orr. What is wrong with one of the order’s and races taking some precedence in a personal story? It would make the player feel more central to their personal story with their choices mattering, and it would make each playthrough with different races and different choices feel different. Homogenizing them and making Trahearne central strips away all semblence of “personal” from the “personal story”.

SeedsOfYggdrasil.6315:

I’m only at around level 65ish in my personal story and I’ve already decided I hate it.

Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to take the HUGE variety of story quests and then make them all converge onto the same stupid plot line? There choices you made in the past DON’T matter at all. They don’t change dialogue, or plot, or anything.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

This became SERIOUSLY apparent when The Pale Tree didn’t say “Order of Whispers” when I finished the vision quest, but instead she said “Your Order” which stood out as “Oh, whichever order you choose before this point does not matter now either, so lets use a generic qualifier to save time” and that REALLY bums me out.

My brother was Asuran, and he had a personal story which included Gorr the Asura (I think his name is) and he was very happy to see him again in the Order of Whispers quest line… up until the point where I saw him too. And he treated me just like my brother, with the same dialogue. He was really depressed about that. It ruined the experience for him, revealing that his choices did not matter at all.

Of course, this is all falling upon deaf ears, because there’s NO WAY Anet intends to remake new personal story paths after release, but still. It’s just disappointing.

The worst part is that every character will have pretty much the same story past level 50. I was very excited prior to getting the game that the game would have so much variety to the story.

Now that I’ve done the story on one character.. I might as well just skip through all the stuff on subsequent characters once I meat Trahearne.

Mr Mango.3504:

Aoper.9824:

I assume they are all dead, or left. Actually, a loose piece of lore exists for them in the game. Outside the Black Citadel in Ashford, by the lake with all the tar elementals, there is a heart. That heart vendor will sell you an accessory called ‘Gargoyle Fossil’. Haha :P

Good to know. So it’s like dinosaurs.

I was just wondering what DID happen to all the dinosaurs in tarnished coast and sparkfly. I mean we do have raptors still but no Tyrannosaurs or Ceratadons. Did the Dragons coming make them all go extinct?

Urban Monkey.1580:

Hyde.6189:

The word you’re looking for is “burst”, but if you prefer to say “spamming” that’s up to you.

I think “burst” was the intended mechanic of the class with “spamming” being the actual result.

I think the people who designed the “burst” thief though fights will be played out something like this:
Jump in/ Steal
Skill A
Quickly followed by skill B
Quickly followed by skill C
Quickly followed by skill D
Thief out of initiative – either the target is dead or you get the hell out of there.

That’s a “burst” class.

Now it all sounds good in theory, but in reality my experience was 99% something like this:
Jump in/ Steal
Skill A
Quickly followed by skill A
Quickly followed by skill A
Quickly followed by skill A
Thief out of initiative – either the target is dead or you get the hell out of there.

As someone already pointed out before in this thread, if skill A is the best skill in a given situation, it will most likely still be the best skill 0.5 seconds later.

No, it was intended that thieves will use the same skill back to back. That is why all the skills on the bar have more utility use rather than just raw damage. They give us out of our 4 non autoattack skills.. 1-2 raw damage skills, and 2-3 situational utility skills.

Dagger/Dagger you get heartseeker and death blossom is your damage skills, heartseeker for single target, death blossom for multiple targets, dancing dagger’s damage did seriously get buffed, I’ll admit but originally it was intended to be used primarily for snaring, not as a ranged attack, used to nail a fleeing target, and cloak and dagger was used to set up a backstab. Arenanet was well aware that most the time a dagger/dagger thief was going to be using heartseeker or death blossom depending on how many targets there were, with situational use of the other 2 skills.

Sword/pistol you have 1 damage skill (pistol whip), and 3 situational skills with low damage. There’s no way they designed it to be used any other way than for you to rely mostly on pistol whip.

Otherwise headshot would have far higher damage (which it should anyway.. it’s the lowest damage skill you have… you’re shooting them in the head for pitiful damage for a third of your initiative, even body shot and auto attack with a pistol do more)

aRTy.8951:

Devildoc.6721:

Similarly to how Trahearne, a necromancer, acquires a legendary sword, and now he uses guardian and mesmer greatsword skills.

NPCs are stated to be not bound to character classes and such. I think even saying “he is a necromancer” is kind of wrong.

Devildoc.6721:

Of couse when designing the skillsets, you’d need to take thief dual skills into account. I would have to wonder what arenanet could come up with for a thief wielding 2 different legendary daggers vs 2 of the same legendary daggers.

Pardon? There is only one legendary dagger. Or are you talking about different attributes?

Apart from that, I don’t think that it would fit the idea and in fact would turn out to be better or worse than the regular skill set, thus being not only cosmetic.
Weapon skills are not balanced in general, they are balanced as a set.

Who’s to say they won’t make different legendary daggers in the future. I just think it’d be kind of a crazy mechanic where your legendary weapons can give you different skills.

It would make it more worth the grind if it was something like that, rather than just a skin, without imbalancing things. It would also spice up the endgame. You’ve spent the last 80 levels using the same skills because your skills with weapons stay the same the entire game. Now you get legendary weapons and have new skills to learn.

Dee Jay.2460:

Yeah, I agree that the Initiative System is kind of flawed in that regard.

The fact that so many taints improve Initiative in some way or another just further encourages the spamming. Heartseeker ist obviously the prime offender in this regard.

I believe it’s a fundamental flaw in the way the class is designed.

I’d much rather have “Stealth” as a resource and manage cooldowns like most other classes.

If cooldown management is what you want then may I suggest one of the 7 other classes in the game. Maybe a dagger elementalist, or maybe a mesmer, they can even stealth.

I prefer being able to shadow step multiple times in a row, or permablind enemies, or interrupt my enemy’s entire skillbar. The whole point is to be able to use the same skill back to back, and sometimes, the situation calls for just that.

Reynfall.1547:

Amigo.5023:

Am I wrong or does this skill provides the only stun that cannot be broken by any means?

Even if that’s true, it doesn’t last long enough to make a difference, it interrupts you before interrupting your enemy, and the cast time is longer than the amount of time they’re turned to stone

You’re meant to use it preemptively rather than as an interrupt. But yes, it is the only stun in the game that can’t be removed.

Basilisk venom is great if you build for it, but terrible if you don’t build for it. The only really bad part about it is that it’s the ONLY elite skill we can use underwater. It doesn’t seem to work with speargun attacks either.

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

Devildoc.6721:

Well I still don’t see how shortbow is supposed to be such great damage on a single target. I’m doing about 3000 damage on cluster bomb explosions compared to 5500 on unload. Both can stack bleed with sigil of earth and pistol auto attacks, and I can poison with steal just the same as using choking gas, just on a single target. In the end I’m doing 50% more damage with pistols. Things just die a lot faster with pistols. I can circle strafe and things die. Shortbow requires a lot more finesse but the payout for that finesse is just lacking.

Short Bow is an AoE weapon. I can kill 6 PvE enemies at the same time, while you kill 1 or 2 with Pistol/Pistol.

If we’re talking PVE trash I can kill that number even faster with pistol whip and black powder. Only times I find myself needing to be ranged is against single powerful targets that can’t be blinded like champions, or in pvp.

Well I still don’t see how shortbow is supposed to be such great damage on a single target. I’m doing about 3000 damage on cluster bomb explosions compared to 5500 on unload. Both can stack bleed with sigil of earth and pistol auto attacks, and I can poison with steal just the same as using choking gas, just on a single target. In the end I’m doing 50% more damage with pistols. Things just die a lot faster with pistols. I can circle strafe and things die. Shortbow requires a lot more finesse but the payout for that finesse is just lacking.

I don’t mind it, I mean you’re given the option to use any of your skills obviously you’re going to use the skill that is best for the situation at the time. It just so happens the bulk of the time it’s 1 particular skill.

I’d still rather mash pistol whip and then have a clutch head shot on a caster too far away or black powder before a big wind-up knockdown hit by a veteran, or using infiltrator’s strike to remove a condition or immobilize (and then pistol whip) a target than using pistol whip on a cooldown, then just mashing autoattack instead until it’s off cooldown.

Having those clutch abilities like black powder, headshot, dancing dagger, cloak and dagger, infiltrator’s arrow, or cluster bomb on demand is much more enjoyable to me than just cycling through cooldowns and autoattacking.

So, I enjoyed my ash legion charr thief, and order of whispers quests a lot, I liked the story and characters (Tybalt, Dinky, etc).. but after Claw Island, the story merges and is no longer based on choices you make it seems. I no longer felt like a thief or secret agent in my story (the parts I liked) I felt like some generic “hero” who as a further slap in the face, was just a sidekick to the NPC who was the real hero of the story.

I picked options I thought might be kind of thiefy in the story but for the most part, I was part of the “rear guard” while I sent ahead scouting parties of NPC’s…. shouldn’t I be on the scouting party? My skills are more suited for it.

I also just don’t like it that earlier choices just don’t seem to matter, such as having Dinky in my Warband.

The story was pretty good up until that point but once the storylines are no longer branched but merged… it just falls apart and becomes overwhelmingly generic. Trahearne is just a king of mary sue characters, and it just seems like my choices from earlier in the game no longer matter.

Crica.1503:

what would be the point of the trading post if you could efficiently farm everything you need?

try “trading” for what you need instead of farming it all?

Considering how hard it is to reliably make money, what with crafters selling their crafted items below cost on the TP you kind of have to farm if you want to make any profit.

Forget the trading post when leveling crafting especially, at 400 you can make SOME money with exotics, provided you farm your own orichalcum, but you usually end up having to buy ectoplasm.

RaptorRed.4029:

Yuki was a bit tired of explore mode in CM…

wouldn’t be Yuki Tamei by any chance would you?

as much as I’m glad that legendaries aren’t more powerful than exotics by stats, I think that people have a point when they say the grind seems rather extreme for a cosmetic.

One Idea I had regarding legendaries is that each legendary item should have its own skillset. Similarly to how Trahearne, a necromancer, acquires a legendary sword, and now he uses guardian and mesmer greatsword skills. You can only assume that Caladbolg has its own set of skills that didn’t depend on class. I think that’d be neat, and would make legendaries worth the time to acquire. It’d require classes learning new strategies to effectively use the weapons, and of course, they’d play no role in sPVP.

Of couse when designing the skillsets, you’d need to take thief dual skills into account. I would have to wonder what arenanet could come up with for a thief wielding 2 different legendary daggers vs 2 of the same legendary daggers.

Tolmos.8395:

Cempa.3645:

Pistol shots Pierce by default -pierce meaning they go through the target

Oh man ALL thief pistol shots pierce by default? That is NICE. Engineers have to take a 30pt trait to get that.

EDIT: I went out to the mists and tested this on some golem target dummies… didn’t have any luck getting the bullets to pierce

He’s wrong, there’s a trait to give pistol shots a 5% chance to riccocet to another target (not even worth it), but no piercing. Piercing would be a nice trait to have in the critical strikes line.

Amiray.1845:

So I have played my thief for a couple hundred hours (not nearly as much as some of you I know) and one of the bigger issues I have with the profession is the fact that sometimes infiltrator’s arrow simply doesn’t work.

I know this doesn’t seem like a huge deal but after dying due to thinking I could arrow somewhere while running away and then I see myself just appear in a cloud of smoke in the exact same spot and die from mobs. What’s even worse is that half the time I try to arrow somewhere and it fails my engineer friend just rocket jumps to the exact spot I’m trying to get to.

So is this intended?

Tl;dr- Infiltrator’s arrow won’t let you port to certain places and it’s pretty lame.

Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UrqPaTyE3U

This is the video showcasing exactly what the issue is. Sorry for the quality I think it will get better over time.

It USED to work like that. But for some reason Arenanet decided shadow step and teleports shouldn’t be allowed to cross gaps to easily traverse jumping puzzles and said warriors, guardians, rangers, and engineers are the only classes authorized by Arenanet to cheese jumping puzzles with skills aside from the spacebar.

Tingji.3214:

Would PP (sneak attack) combined with shadow refuge still do less damage than a short bow?

I like attacking from range so I tried p/d, short bow and pp. I’m not much of a min maxer so I just stick with pp because its fun. At the same time maybe i should revisit the short bow….

against a single target you’ll do more damage against a single target, by far. If you’re traited for steal to poison, and have spider venom, you can keep up poison pretty effectively (especially if your stolen items give conditions as well), you’ll be able to make better use of power/precision for direct damage, your autoattack will continue to stack bleeds (and if you have a sigil of earth you’ll stack even more).

Shortbow is for aoe and gimmicks, not single target damage.

Amulrei.4973:

I love the idea of P/P but it fails completely at its purpose (ranged direct damage).

The damage is lackluster. Unload does unimpressive damage and does it slowly to boot. In PvP it is painfully easy to dodge/block/reflect it. In PvE it still isn’t great because of my next point; control.

The set completely lacks control outside of a tiny daze and doesn’t even have a controlled cripple to its name. Your enemy will be in your face before the first Unload finishes and then you have to start dancing. That actually isn’t too wrong since that should be the Thief’s style but there lies the problem; P/P cannot do any significant damage unless channelling Unload which means you cannot do so while evading.

Perhaps the most annoying thorn in the side is that after all that, Shortbow will still out-damage P/P even on single target. Go figure.

Everyone makes this claim but I find shortbow to do absolutely pathetic damage to a single target. The autoattacks are about comparable, but the pistol adds bleed to it, cluster bomb does maybe 50% of the damage that unload does to a single target, and I hardly consider the poison field to be effective single target dps, not when you can use venom/steal to apply poison as well, not if you’re running with a condition specced necromancer who will override your poison and probably stack to 25 bleeds by himself.

Shortbow focuses on control but against a single target it is THE weakest weapon you can use.

I REALLY don’t see how people continue to make this claim that it does so much single target damage. I really don’t. If there are less than 3 mobs, I just can’t see shortbow being useful in PVE against a boss.

Not to mention to use cluster bomb effectively without it taking all day to do damage you need to be point blank range, which means you might as well melee.

bettadenu.5483:

Here’s my Human Thief, for personal story line I picked: Noble, Unknown Parents, Subtlety, Balthazar and Charm.

You gotta take Charm on a Thief, I think it’s just necessary.

My Charr Thief’s name…..

Charrlatan..

A Charlatan is a con-man, a swindler, using charm to convince people into giving him their money. Not to mention the Ash Legion and Order of Whispers storylines make your character out to be the Charr James Bond. All that’s missing is him trying to seduce the Master of Whispers to learn ALL the secrets.

Too bad the stories end up merging behind Mr. Mary Sue and then you don’t feel like a thief anymore.

“Wait why am I sending them on the scouting party and staying on the rear-guard myself? I should be the scout in this situation.”

AcidicVision.5498:

My build is similar to DevilDoc’s. 30/30/0/10/0. Im stacked for precision/condition damage on my armor with 4 major infiltration runes, one major vamp and one major balth. Power/prec on my accessories. Earth runes in my weapons to cause bleed on crit (since I aoe crit almost all the time) and major sigil of corruption on my offhand.

Im not sure that build would be viable at all with p/p, since you need to trait into ricochet and short-bow gets it for free. Or with d/d since your best way to aoe stack bleeds would be leaping death blossom and that’s unsafe without again re-allocating traits or wasting utility slots.

Nah, you use pistol pistol when fighting bosses that would 1 shot you, unload spam and using any stealth effects you have to stack some bleeds. Shadow Refuge is just about necessary if you use pistol/pistol and is a good skill for group support to boot. You lay it out, use your autoattack sneak shot, roll out, unload through a dark field for lifesteal, then go back in to restealth and put some more bleeds on.

If there’s any less than 3 mobs I wince if I accidentally have a shortbow equipped since its single target damage is pitiful.

The only issues I have with steal are:

1. The cooldown is JUST long enough that you tend to forget about it since you can’t use it every fight.

2. Anet’s determination of its effectiveness and value as a class skill is heavily based on what you can spec to make steal better. WE look at Steal as a 45s shadow step that gives us a random environmental weapon for 1 use. ARENANET looks at Steal as a 32s shadowstep that does 3000 damage, poisons your target for 10s, weakens them for 3s, and dazes them for 1s. It also stealths you, restores 5 initiative, and grants you (and nearby allies) might, fury, swiftness, and vigor while taking two boons off the target and giving them to you. … However nobody specs for all that (it’s not even possible to spec for ALL of that)

But even as it is, I use it, it puts on poison and weakness (since I’m 20 into deadly arts) and gives me an environmental weapon which usually puts on more conditions.

If you’re going to use pistol/pistol, consider using signet of malice as your heal. It has a lot of synergy with unload.

I use pistol/pistol as my offset, sword/pistol as my main.

Nemo.6295:

So what would be the optimal build (aside SoM) for Pistol/Sword (using pistol/pistol as the alternative weapons)?

Sword/pistol requires just raw power and precision. you’ll want to spec into the first 2 lines rather than the last 2, though speccing 20 points into acrobatics is still worthwhile for the trait that gives 2 initiative per 10s which really helps as S/P is probably the most expensive weapon set to use.

I go 20/30/0/20/0 for my spec at 80 with S/P. major traits to look into with it are dual skill 5% more damage, vulnerability on crits, quickness on crits, 20% more damage for targets under 50%, and 2 initiative per 10s

The benefits of sword/pistol?

1. Frontal arc aoe
2. Spammable 2 way shadowstep
3. This also doubles as a spammable condition removal
4. decent melee survivability provided the mob can be blinded, some survivability via pistol whip’s stun and evade, autoattack weakness.
5. spamming cripple on targets that are trying to flee, with your shadowstep also giving immobilize for more control.
6. Ranged and melee interupts
7. Smoke field that blinds (can be exploited for stealth by blast finishers or leap finishers)
8. Excellent synergy with Signet of Malice. Pistol Whip hits 9 times and can hit several targets at once, provided things aren’t 1-2 shotting you you can stay topped off just by hitting enemies.
9. Excellent synergy with any effect that causes quickness (haste, rage sigils, critical strikes 20 point trait, mesmer time warp), you can get off pistol whip in less than a second causing massive burst damage, you can get off 2 pistol whips in a haste for a good 16k+ damage.

the negatives are:

1. No damaging conditions, condition damage doesn’t help.
2. No secondary weapon set that benefits from an exlusively power/precision/crit damage build, all of them require condition damage for optimal performance with the exception of sword/dagger which leaves you with no ranged option.
3. Pistol whip has a very obvious animation and has a cast time before the stun, and will root you during the sword swings Using against skilled opponents in PVP will probably result in you getting stomped as they avoid the stun, get behind you and mop the floor with you while you’re rooted.
4. In normal PVE it can get boring as your bread and butter skill is to spam pistol whip.

For gear I use berserker’s sword and pistol, but use rampagers (power/precision/condition damage) for armor and jewellry, as my offset is pistol/pistol or shortbow (depending on whether it’s an aoe situation or single target) which require some condition damage to be effective. It does lower my burst damage some however it increases my crit chance some to compensate and if I am forced to use ranged weapons I end up doing better than i would in full berserker’s. Insignias your option for the sword would be either force, air, fire, or maybe nullification/purification could be good too. In the offhand pistol I like the rage sigil, it procs at least once a fight

if you’re good at timing, you can use pistol whip to interrupt attacks rather than dodging them, and you can evade subsequent attacks during the animation.

seems like the duelist stuff, thought it looked different

ah k, it is the duelist set, sorry have to cut in on your style there, but it’s one of the few armor sets that actually looks good on charr.

JayPham.9537:

this one is mine. pretty simple

Which armor set is that btw? I know the PVP version of it but what’s the PVE set?

Ohoni.6057:

I think it’s worth having as a passive alone, I mean, the Ranger equivalent only offers 10% speed buff, not 25, so we can count our blessings. That said, I only use this skill when traveling or playing casual, if I’m gearing up for a tough fight I swap it will Roll for Initiative, which is far more useful in a fight. For basic maneuverability the 2s Swiftness granted by dodging is plenty.

Roll for initiative is terrible. It used to be good when it got rid of all conditions and restored all initiative, but in its current state I can’t advise it.

I’d use it for any fight where I might find myself kiting adds as well, since without it, mobs are faster than you, and blowing all your endurance for 2s swiftness boosts means you have none to dodge with when the boss uses a 1 shotting ranged attack at you.

In pvp you only have so many options to shadowstep unless you’re sword/x, so having permanent 25% movement also helps.

Vargs.6234:

Shortbow does not do bad damage. Running in point blank and spamming cluster bomb is probably our best AoE option. Cluster bomb spam into friendly combo fields is also extremely effective, depending on the combo field. The utility on the #5 is also just fantastic, and while the single target dps may be lackluster you can kite for ages using the shortbow.

I don’t really like P/P. If I want single target damage I’ll typically go with a melee build like D/P or D/D which don’t have to sacrifice every ounce of initiative they have just to deal some single target damage, and can instead offer a little more utility without dropping their dps down to negligible amounts. P/P is also just incredibly boring.

In PVE, problem is champions tend to 1 shot you and in a mess that is most world group event bosses, it’s just not viable to try and dodge everything, especially with how much particle effects and melee range aoe there is. Pistol/Pistol at least lets you put on some damage in those events without getting 1 shot. Trying to use condition heavy builds like shortbow in those events is also a waste, because if someone has more condition damage than you and uses poison or stacks bleeding you’ll be overwritten and not get much credit for the event. Enjoy your bronze participation.

Dungeons are hit and miss for meleeing on bosses. Some it works, others you’ll get merced if you try. Melee is great for trash and anything that doesn’t have the buff where blindness is pretty much useless and CC only works 1/4 of the time. But when there’s that buff, I just don’t find 2-3 dodges to be sufficient.

Genesis Notch.1905:

Smexy Pitch black

No, just because it’s rare, all black does not look good.

Namica.2951:

I really hate the severe lack of armors that don’t have skirts or coats to them. I almost didn’t keep at my Thief because of it: Only three armors out of the -entire medium armor selection- lack a skirt or coat (Duelist, Human T3, Krytan gem shop).

I’m not a cowboy, I’m not a pirate, I’m a dang Thief. Coats are detrimental.

You think that’s bad, try finding a set that actually looks good on Charr.

Anet was lazy about modeling armor for every race but human. They just took the human versions and stretched them over the Charr frame. Clipping issues all over the place most notably the tail clips through almost every set.

zencow.3651:

Why I avoid going with PUGs altogether, I know the members of my warband won’t bail out midway. Even with PUGs though I try my hardest to communicate ideas and how to counter the boss mechanics so we don’t just keep running into the boss and wiping repeatedly for no reason.

Usually end up with a net PROFIT of ~10 silvers by the end of my explorable dungeon runs after paying the repair bills (1.5 wipes per boss before figuring out how to exploit mechanics to trivialise the encounter) since my philosophy is to bring as many defensive skills as possible since as long as you are dealing damage, you will wear out whatever and its much safer than to sacrifice survivability (trait+utility wise) for damage since boss fights lasts so long regardless of your damage output.

Yeah okay none of that changes the fact that 1 copper per chest is terribly unrewarding. Heck, 10s “profit” from completing an explorable is WOEFULLY unrewarding. You can make that same money doing much easier content elsewhere. Bigger risks, bigger challenge, should have bigger profit.

Sterling.6908:

I don’t think it’s too expensive, at least not at level 80. In fact, I find that the price is very much close to perfect, if not a little too cheap. I personally spend a lot of time farming and have found several good farming / gold earning locations, I’m currently sitting at around 25 gold, so these 5-10 silver trips mean rather little to me. You all just need to take better management of your gold, and make wiser decisions.

so we should have to stand around and farm gold instead of just playing the game to be able to travel?

Go watch the GW2 Manifesto sometime.

This is the kind of thing Arenanet claimed they wanted to avoid.

Personally I think even IF the word “high” can have a drug connotation it can also have totally innocent meanings and should be allowed, it’s like banning the word grape because of 4 letters after the g spell something bad (some MMO’s do this) when you are “WTB Grapes” and it comes out “WTB Gkittens” or something like that.

Even the word “weed” would be appropriate it’s not always a drug connotation.

Too bad we the players don’t get to decide on what’s okay or not and a vocal minority of over sensitive people get developers to determine THEIR decency and censorship standards to be imposed on everyone.

Vargs.6234:

The passive is so great that it makes up for the kind of middling but still okay active. If you want terrible signets, take a look at the ranger. Got more than enough for everyone.

No it’s a great skill all things considered I just think that there needs to be a compelling reason to use a signet instead of it just always being passive.

Like signet of malice works great with skills that hit multiple times so most of the time you want to leave it on passive because you will heal more in the long run, however it’s still a low cooldown self heal in an emergency, if you’re low you just use it to save yourself. Or Signet of agility, the passive is fairly weak all things considered, but the active is very strong if used tactically to get extra dodges or group condition removal.

I don’t know anything about the ranger signets though, I refuse to make a pet babysitter.

Shortbow is great for throwing up combos, and mobility, and some aoe from the walls in WvW. However it is by far the lowest damage weapon in the thief’s arsenal. It’s only effective for damage in a full condition damage build, and even then, a pistol pistol or pistol dagger setup will be able to stack bleeds better at least on a single target.

I consider Shortbow to be a gimmicky weapon, but a lot of people really like it.

Xaxxus.6719:

icbat.3019:

I don’t want to comment on most of this, as I largely don’t care about ‘nerfs and buffs’. But this point drives me bonkers:

Random isn’t fun

This is flat wrong. Random is very, very fun. It’s why slot machines exist, and in fact dominate most casinos. It’s why Roulette and Craps exist, despite eating money from the players.

Random is quite fun. Please don’t go on a witch-hunt to get fun taken out of the game because you don’t find it useful. As has been pointed out, there are plenty of other choices in that exact slot that you’d rather take, so please take them and let scrubs like me to take our “bad” but fun choices.

Its fun when random adds excitement or addiction. In many cases with this game, its frustrating.

For example, im in a fight with some destroyers, I am low on health, my heal is on cooldown and my dodges have been used up. There is only one destroyer left at this point. I cant steal from the destroyer because 9/10 times i just get a volcanic rock, which has no effect on them.

However, there is a nearby….. ettin (first thing that popped in my head).
They are slow, easily avoidable until my stuff is off cooldown, and they usually have those stun clubs when you steal from them. IF i manage to get a club from it, I can knock down the destroyer and finish it off before it sets me on fire (thus killing me).

So I steal from the ettin hoping for a club to delay the destroyer…. what do i get???? A Tooth.

Result:

I go down. And to top it all off, these mobs are commonly found in caves.
Guess what, downed camera SUCKS in confined spaces, and there is little room to use a downed teleport + stealth combo to get out of combat and heal up.

Random sucks. It works well for casinos because its part of the thrill. In a game, I like to know that one of the main highlights of my class is a useful, consistent tool.

Imagine what would happen if guardian F1 F2 or F3 abilities had a chance for alternate effects (for example, what if the guardian heal had a chance to give a damage buff instead of a heal?)

Let’s flip this around then.

I’m doing my story quest, so, I’m alone, with terrible NPC’s to help me, and I’m surrounded by risen in a closed in area,. I use my dagger storm, I dodge the incoming acid spits and get anked to a Risen that has a pull skill and another immobilizes me. I think I’m dead. I steal to get out of the immobilize at least and manage to steal a skull.

The skull gives me an aoe fear, just long enough for me to burn down the most dangerous mob (thanks to my random quickness on crit proccing) and let the NPC’s harass the others.

Now I’m excited because that random steal that could have given me a glob of gunk that would do very little to help me in that situation, got me something that bailed me out of a tight spot and helped me win. That’s pretty fun.