Guild Wars 2

OIIIIIO.7825:

I can only suggest P/P for one part of the entire game.

Fractals of the Mist – Dredge Fractal – Boss Fight.

This will be vs an Ice Golem or a Dredge Suit (it varies)

The fight consists of kiting the boss into danger zones that circle the map. So all you do is run in a circle while doing ranged damage.

Shortbow is probably still better unless you have someone else who will be activating the molten container drops. You can teleport to all but one of the platforms from the ground by using Infiltrator’s Arrow on the bottom of the platform.

That’s the other problem with P/P. It doesn’t really offer utility like Shortbow does.

Many thanks for the tips.

Am I missing something about this attack of hers? It hits me while I’m dodging. The only way I’ve been able to not take damage from it is to have Aegis up when the projectile hits so she doesn’t teleport at all.

Are you just not meant to be able to mitigate this attack without Aegis or invulnerability (or possibly reflect, I haven’t tried that yet)?

Pistol/Pistol is the worst thief weapon set, so I don’t recommend you use it.

That said, your Critical Strikes traits are fine considering what you’re trying to do.

For Acrobatics, you don’t really need the swiftness on killing a foe considering you get it on dodge and you can also equip a signet for permanent +25% movespeed. Consider taking II or III.

Your Trickery traits are also fine for what you’re trying to do.

For the second build, I highly recommend you don’t put 30 in Deadly Arts. The two Grandmasters are both bad for what you’re trying to do. Try 25/30/0/15/0 or 25/30/0/0/15.

All that said, Pistol/Pistol is still pretty bad. I recommend focusing on different weapon sets. Dagger/Dagger is your best single target damage, Sword/Dagger is great for enemies that generate a lot of boons, and Sword/Pistol destroys PvE mobs with permanent blinds. Dagger/Pistol can also work depending on the situation but tends to be better for PvP.

Shortbow is your best ranged weapon because it offers OK damage, a spammable blast finisher to stack buffs on your party, an evade attack, and mobility through shadowstepping. With 15 in Deadly Arts you can also permanently stack Weakness on anything with the 4 skill on it. Pistol/Pistol, in comparison, offers Unload spam, and that’s about it.

Personally I use Sword/Pistol for general PvE mobs, Sword/Dagger for boon-spamming enemies and bosses (think Dredge), and Dagger/Dagger for raw DPS. Shortbow is almost always my other weapon to swap to if I need to back off to range or to get somewhere else fast.

That would be a city of the Tengu. It’s likely their home city should they ever become a playable race, because they’re conveniently situated next to a 1-15 zone.

No, you’re pretty much doing it the best way.

Consider also running some other easy dungeon paths. HotW path 1 is pretty easy to do and is pretty fast, and I believe Sorrow’s Embrace has an easy path (can’t remember which one it is, though).

Josh Foreman.8250:

It’s probably the speed buff we have to apply to you after combat or taking damage. That’s how we work around the ‘combat mode’ that is part of the GW2 system. Notice that you don’t slow down in SAB when you attack monsters? That’s because we’re giving you a speed buff of just the right amount to compensate for the combat slow down. But the system isn’t perfect because we can’t call a script to the exact moment the slow down occurs, so there can be split-second overlaps where you still have our SAB speed boost but you’re also exiting the combat slow down, resulting in a momentary surge. You would be shocked at the amount of crazy work-arounds we had to pull off to get SAB as platform-like as we did.

Have you considered having the player always be in combat inside SAB and just having the speed boost be permanent?

He needs to not have Unshakable. Then you might actually be able to fight him the way it’s intended.

My friend, Olaf Bearpuncher, greatest of the Norn.

See this video.

I can confirm that this also happens with Risen Thralls and Brutes from a recent venture into Claw Island to help a friend with his personal story. It probably happens on several more mobs, but it’s most noticeable VS Risen.

Note that not all of their attacks are immune to evasive abilities (specifically the pirate ranged attacks), and that normal dodges work all the time.

My only problem with the monsters is that half of them get Retaliation with 75% uptime and it’s ridiculous.

It’s totally FUN to only be able to lay down poison fields with shortbow (as a Power-focused build) because otherwise I’m going to be killing myself, right guys?

I’d love it if there were some way to remove it from them without being one of two classes, but I haven’t been able to figure out anything (and even if there IS a way, it’s a rather large burden-of-knowledge point).

(This post refers mostly to Veteran and Champion Karka; young Karka are annoying but you can deal with them)