Guild Wars 2

Anyone who thinks Thieves are overpowered are either extremely bad, or braindead.

Lets consider this:
pve – potentially the worst class in the game
pvp – very little play and good at ganking people who are glass cannon-ish or bad
wvw – pretty much roamers and scouts. This is the majority of my gameplay as a thief, I also have an 80 warrior, ele, guardian, and mesmer.

Guardian – super tanky and can achieve decent dps with amazing survivability, blast finishers, and group support. Also can roflstomp a thief in 1v1 1 handed while sipping a kittentail and chatting with your mother on the phone depending on their weapon selection (traits don’t even matter if you know what you’re doing).
Mesmer – the only class in the game that has probably seen the nerf bat as bad if not worse than the thief. at least they have good group utility with time warp portal null field and feedback. Still feel bad for my mesmer friends
Warrior – extremely vanilla but can still stomp a thief like nobodies business, especially if your pvt.
Ele – D/D got nerfed but rightfully so, do-it-all builds that are THAT strong need a nerf. Staff ele still has amazing group support via combo fields, heals, siege situations, and general gameplay, just kinda boring imo.

Thieves are forced to be either 1 of 2 things in wvw – a super scout with massive survivability and mobility where you get no bags and feel like some 8 yearold birthday party clown, and/or pistol dagger sleepfest, or you go massive burst, sacrifice EVERYTHING to do so, and fail 1/2 the time at what you’ve worked so hard to get, and get CRUSHED in zerg fights

Enough of this bs crying about stealth. Thieves are slippery? It ran away? Great. your still alive and just mildly frustrated. Deal with it. roll a necro and be the flavor of the month op wvw class like everybody else or gtfo. Thief was DESIGNED by their trait line to obtain massive dps through raw crit chance and overall damage buffs, and were nerfed according to people who play these classes so badly that if a thief were to play say pvt gear or knights or any survivable set, they would be doing far less dps than other classes that don’t have the lowest health pool and medium armor AND still have no group synergy. Class is bad as it stands. Play one before you kitten, learn their weaknesses and youll never have a problem with them in wvw.

TL:DR – If you think thieves are OP you don’t play one or you’re bad at the game. Thanks.

Worst offhand for guards IMO. You have plenty of sources of burning from trait lines, not to mention Virtue of justice. All you really get is 1 condition curer. Focus in my opinion is strongest followed by shield.

The build you choose highly situational and depends on how you feel like playing. Personally, I play 0/30/30/10 Monk Focus build and sometimes swap out Stand Your Ground with Smite Condition for added healing/condition removal. AH Build still is very strong if you chose to run with the zerg as will get the healing from your group, but in smaller roaming groups I feel you will gain more out of the MF build. Another nice point is that you get a blind with Virtue of Justice in the radiance tree so time your ViJ well as an added defence tool.

Radiance tree:
Slot 1: use II or VI, depending if you want a faster heal or added vulnerability for more offensive power. I personally use VI for the aggression.
Slot 2: use IV, adds fury on fire (your opener), for more aggression.
Slot 3: XI right handed strength to buff up your sword attacks in the chain.

Valor Tree:
Slot 1: I use I, Meditation mastery to get get more JI, more Smite Condition, and more Heals for you
Slot 2: Its a toss up between purity and retributive armor. I personally use VI for more precision (im pretty offensive if you havent noticed :P).
Slot 3: XII Monks Focus, no competition

Honor Tree:
Slot 1: Use I or VI depending if you want added heal on or retaliation on aegis break. I choose retaliation.

A general note: I find that “support built” guardians are extremely weakened in a wvw setting now as your big heals only affect up to 5 people. Support comes in the form of wall of reflection, sanctuary (for hallways and sieges), staff empower, etc and can be done even if you are speced in an offensive manner by switch when the time is right. But yea you get tons of survivability pre-built in as a guardian so i really like playing aggressively. Just my personal preference

Hey Guys, thought id open this thread to share some of our favourite attack sequences/strategies in a PvP and WvW setting. I currently wear full knights gear/soldier runes and serker trinkets. Main weapon is hammer with sword/focus offhand. I absolutely love this attack chain! If you get it off successfully, a glass cannon thief will be dead half way through and most other medium to tankier (depending on what class, this works great vs. an off guard ele.) classes will be down to about 1/2 life or so depending.

Utility Skills:
-Judges intervention
-Save Yourself
-Stand your Ground

Step 1: While walking towards your target, you start with the #4 skill on the hammer. You don’t even need to be next to the player and it comes as more of a surprise if you’re not. Midway through casting Banish you cast Judges Intervention. Its instant so it wont break the channel of the banish. Starts off with a nice little CC and some burnt toast (i know a lot of you already use this and know about it).

Step 2: If you connect with the Banish, cast Save Yourself and and hit #2 on your hammer (Mighty Blast). This will close the gap previously created by the opener.

Step 3: Hit #3 on the hammer, this is the next CC of the chain. You should be able to get this off JUST as they come around from the banish.

Step 4: Switch to Sword/Focus, hit #3 and get the entire duration of that sword attack with no worries of dodging. Most of the time the GC thief is dead by this point.

Step 5: Hit F1 and give yourself some fire power (and might as traited) and start swinging your sword like a mad man. If your aegis isn’t popped yet, let them hit you first to absorb the first shot. Next is #5 on the Focus (Note that if you hit #5 first when aegis is still up, BOTH aegis and a tick of your shield get absorbed). Chances are if they survived this chain they’re going to be dodging away from you ASAP so the shield’s up button is always nice, and if they don’t turn and fire the shield does some pretty decent damage.

Step 6: As mentioned above, the first thing most classes will do in a panic is blow their dodges to get the hell away from you. Let them, and pop #2 on sword to gap close and blind. Take a couple more swings as you feel fit.

Step 7: The moment your getting the target close to death or need a gap closer, switch to hammer for another mighty blast.

I feel that the transition of this attack cycle is really smooth and well timed with each other. Against someone who doesn’t see the first 2 CC’s coming you can deal a ton of damage in little time which swings the fight in your favour quite heavily. In WvW camp sites/small group fights, and PvP nodes, its sometimes nice to be able to banish a player further from his team mates to isolate him down. You can also really utilize some “on swap” sigils in your focus while retaining the ability to put something a little more useful on your sword (sigil of air works nicely).

Give it a try, tons of fun!

Shrack.8013:

Use Ruby orbs in your armor slots instead of runes. And have an offhand dagger you can toss on to build up 25 stacks of precision, then move your main dagger back over. And if you really don’t want to use Omnomberry Ghosts, you can use plate of truffle steak dinners for +200 power and +10% crit dmg more to make it 114% crit damage bonus. Though omnomberry ghosts give you a lot more sustain when AOEing so you don’t die to random splash damage.I could have even more base crit, but I use vitality instead of precision on a couple of my accessory pieces.

You really think the damage output from having ruby orbs is better than having a full stack of divinity runes? Is the difference that noticable? Just curious. You’re obviously doing a kitten ton of damage, not sure if its vs bad geared, or lowbies havent looked at the video in detail just spot watched it. Would love to know if you’ve tried the divinity runes in comparison before i go buy a new set of gear for ruby’s for a test drive. Couldn’t you run divinity with a full set of zerker’s jewelry instead?

Yea i also thought orb of light == scepter at first but oh well. Still, i was expecting a pretty huge nerf bat considering how rediculous of PVE machines we are… Looking forward to playing around with MI now and see if its viable. Thank god they fixed the mace bug, i wont feel paranoid of “HES CHEATING” while playing it anymore :/ kinda ruins the fun. Not much changed really though.

“Scorpion Wire: This skill’s range has been increased to 1200.”
-do you have any idea how many little kittens im going to snag off the walls and zerg-face-stomp in WvW???? >:D
“Blinding Powder: This skill’s recharge has been reduced from 60 seconds to 40 seconds”
-:O!!!!
that is all