Guild Wars 2

I’d like to see Shadow Strike changed slightly, so P/D can be used in a hybrid or a damage build that has some survivability built into it as follows:

You’d still get “Stab your foe, then shadowstep away and shoot them”, but if you use it while you’re not in melee range, it would instead fire the shot (without the shadowstep or stab) and apply 2 bleeds@4 seconds or another DoT, perhaps poison. I’d like to see the base damage of Shadow strike boosted a small amount as well, but I suspect that wouldn’t happen.

Shadow strike does decent damage in a direct damage build, around 3-3.5K with around 3100 power. Allowing the thief this bridge to a hybrid setup could help expand build variations.

For awhile, I was running Fractals 2-3 times a day, levels 18, 28 and 30 (mostly for a chance at fractal weapon skins). That nets you 3 pristine fractal relics a day, plus 3 chances at an ascended ring and weapon skin (plus the money isn’t bad). In 7 days, you’ll have enough for the pair of rings.

For the amulet, it’s a matter of grinding out the 20 dailies, and the monthly for the laurels.

If you’re guild-less, then your only option is grinding out the 80 laurels needed, plus the 100 ectos. Until they add alternate ways of gaining ascended gear in WvW, I’m afraid that’s about the only way to get the gear.

p.s. You’ll burn out on doing fractals in a short amount of time probably, especially if it’s for weapon skins. After countless runs, I got 1 skin I could use and maybe 4 that I couldn’t use on any alts.

This is the ascended condition WvW build I run. All the trinkets are/will be ascended (I missing the two accessories, but I’m about to get one of them. You will need to add 250 condition damage from the Sigil of Corruption, as it isn’t reflected in the stats.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|a.1m.h9.8.1m.h1j|a.1m.h1j.8.1m.h9|1h.7r.1h.7r.1h.7r.1h.7r.1h.7r.1h.7r|2x.0.2x.0.3x.0.2x.0.3x.0.2w.0|0.0.u36b.k26.k23|15.d|0.0.0.0.0|e

The benefits of this build/setup (I run either P/D and P/D or P/D and SB, depending on where I am etc.):

Pros:

- Sigils of energy on both weapons means a lot of extra dodges.
- Higher Toughness and extra vitality in equal amounts
- Melandru runes and Lemongrass soup – conditions slide off you, almost removing the need for condition removal. Fears, snares, roots and DoTs are negligible (-65% duration), and stuns last 25% less.
- Cloaked in Shadow and Instinctual response breaks up the typical CnD →Steal → backstab chain, as you stealth on mug-steal and blind your attacker, causing their CnD to miss, and hence their backstab. When you dodge away, you leave caltrops from uncatchable as well.

Cons:

- Low condition duration, 30%. Enough for an extra tic, allowing for 6 stacks to stay up from auto-attack.
- Lower condition damage (1500-1650, depending how much time is spent stealthing). It still tics for 125-130, but you can get a lot more if you focus on it.

Not to sidetrack the war effort, but I recall when GW2 launched, Jade Quarry was one of several servers picked for DAoC veterans, as well as Rall.

I know Vigilance has a lot of ex-Guinevere server folk on Rall, but is there anyone else on Jade Quarry that went there instead of Rall? Just curious, as I see from time to time some guild tags I recognize from Guinevere.

Run melandru runes and lemongrass poultry food. Blind lasts like 1 sec or less.

Get a nice balance of toughness and vitality, and throw in a full set of Melandru Runes and Lemongrass Poultry Soup.

Does this mean Anet might be taking WvW seriously for a change now?

Tested this this morning while completing the daily. Every single time I used steal, I would get the revealed debuff, and whatever I stole, but didn’t stay in stealth. This happened with both auto-attack on and off.

Makes me wonder if Anet does any sort of testing at all.

Edit: If you open with steal, it works sometimes , but if you’re in any combat, the above happens.

At least the Sigil of Air. I’ve had to swap in another weapon, then re-equip my original weapon to get the Superior Sigil of Air to proc. I only noticed it a bit ago, when i realized I wasn’t seeing any lightning effects from the proc, nor the accompanying noise.

I also checked the combat logs, and it didn’t appear anywhere for a very long time. After doing the re-equip, it started proccing once more. I don’t know if this is just this particular sigil or others are affected.

It just seems like they’re throwing random changes, hoping it will do the job.

Yet another let down. Thank god there is no monthly fee. I rarely log in now. PvE is boring, pointless, and repetitive, and now that it’s apparent that there’s nothing worthwhile on the WvW scene, I can safely say it may be time to take GW2 off the hard drive and wait for something else, anything else.

I understand things take time to get right, but the devs have led us on about what to expect. The WvW patch was pushed back to march for this? I really get the amateur game developer vibe from all of this.

DAoC did it (and does it) better in nearly every aspect, and it’s at least 10 years old.

Consider using another provider, and change all your passwords. Yahoo servers have been hacked repeatedly since early January of this year (well, they’ve been hacked before as well) and Yahoo isn’t doing much about it.

The “fixes” they put in place haven’t worked and they have been very silent about the whole situation.

The issues aren’t a user-related issue. Their servers are very vulnerable to XSS hacks, as reported in this link:

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/03/06/despite-its-efforts-to-fix-vulnerabilities-yahoos-mail-users-continue-reporting-hacking-incidents/

I used a yahoo account for humdrum uses, like Craigslist and just chatting with friends, but for those of you that use it for everything, I’d change it asap.

If the proposed changes are to be made, then traits and utilities regarding stealth need to be re-looked at.

These are my opinions of course.

Hide in shadows – This should not be bound to any revealed debuff. It’s one of our main heals and a signature of what a thief is, plus other profession’s heals aren’t penalized due to innate mechanics.

Last refuge, Instinctual Response – In order for these to be worthwhile, they shouldn’t be bound to any revealed debuff either, for them to work as advertised (and we do not have a choice whether we use it or not if we put points into Shadow Arts in Last Refuge’s case. It’s almost a detriment in many situations)

Hard to Catch – This can stay as-is, if they make a change that if you have the revealed debuff while it’s triggered, you still get the movement portion of it and get a stun break, Aegis or Protection perhaps. It has a 60 second CD, so it should be worth something, especially since it’s a grandmaster trait.

Then there are the indirect little nerfs that will affect us, such as might on stealth. This means less stacks in the long run, as the longer we can’t stealth, the less often we can re-apply those stacks. Maybe add a couple seconds duration to each stack to compensate so there isn’t a change in overall duration.

The same could be said for our regen upon entering stealth, and other benefits in the shadow arts line.

Anet really needs to take a look at how this change will affect thieves on the micro scale, and not just make a sweeping change and hope for the best. Even if they don’t give any buffs like they commented on, making adjustments is almost mandatory imo, to try to keep things balanced.

While I agree some changes need to be made, I don’t have a lot of faith that Anet can get it right.

Don’t mind Columba.9730. I used to be in the same guild, and he hates thieves with a passion. :P

Once the culling is removed, I think things will improve overall.

At some point during the animation, (I cannot remember if it was the shot or the stab) you were rooted momentarily when it went off. At least that’s what I seem to recall regarding it.

It’s too bad they don’t have someone that can test patches, or a public beta server. But those things cost money, and cuts into the bottom line.

I use S/D if I need to remove conditions. I generally roam with S/D, and use either P/D, or SB as my offset.

I focused on the direct damage. The condition damage is just a bonus, and does add up.

This is my exact build and gearing. The only thing the site doesn’t list is utilities. I run Hide in Shadows, Shadow Refuge, Signet of Shadows, and either Blinding Powder or Infiltrator’s Signet, depending on what’s going on.

It also doesn’t have an accurate spot for Sigil of Bloodlust. That’s an extra 250 power that isn’t reflected on the sheet.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7|c.1g.h14.8.1g.h1|a.1g.h14.8.1g.h1|1c.a7.1c.a7.1c.a7.1c.a7.1c.a7.1c.a7|2v.d14.2v.d14.3v.d1e.1n.67.1n.67.2s.d1e|0.u56b.u35b.a6.0|55.7|e

I’ve been playing around with a power P/D build, with S/D as my other set. Vital shot does hit for ~1K, but you can usually add in the 4 stacks or more of bleeds per second, so that 1K vital shot is more like 1.2K – 1.3K.

Add in Sigil of Air, and that’s another 1K-2K every 5 seconds or so, which is another effective 200 damage per second, if you break it down that way.

Throw in Omnomberry Pie for additional healing (sadly it doesn’t actually steal health, i.e. do damage), and it’s not as horrible as it might seem. (I see typically at least 3 heals from Sneak Attack from the pie, and couple it with healing in the Shadow Arts tree, and healing is pretty good)

It’s still not optimal if all you’re after is damage, but it is a fun build.

I bought the game for the 3-way WvW. Culling makes it nearly impossible to enjoy. If I could get a refund, I would in a heartbeat and never look back.

If a thief doesn’t attack out of stealth, he doesn’t get the revealed debuff. If timed right, an offhand dagger thief could CnD just as stealth was wearing off and stay hidden, and do damage from the CnD (and if he’s glass cannon, that can be a lot of damage).

Edit: Going 20 in Shadow Arts, with Patience and Infusion of shadow would allow this pretty easily.

nahj.2870:

Fade.7658:

With traits and offhand crit sigil, crit chance is 57%. As soon as I get my ascended amulet, I’ll gain 1% more crit damage and 36 more toughness.

What gear and runes/orbs are you using?

Gear:

Armor: Pow/Tou/Vit armor
Runes: 6 Ruby Orbs
Weapons: Berserker weapons, mainhand sigil of rage (trying sigil of air atm), offhand superior accuracy

Jewelry:

Back: Prototype berserker fractal (pow/pre/crit dam)
Earrings: Cavalier Orr Ring + Emerald Orich
Amulet: Will be using Gwen’s Necklace (ascended), but currently using Cavalier amulet
Rings: Adelbern’s Royal Signet + Rurik’s Royal Signet (both ascended)

Food:

Master Maintenance Oil
Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash

Running a 0/30/30/10/0 spec.

It’s 1846 toughness, but I’m still missing the ascended amulet, as I don’t have the laurels for it yet. That should add another ~36 toughness. I still need to get another Cavalier Orr earring to do some testing with, but finding a server with an open Temple of Balthazar is proving difficult.

With traits and offhand crit sigil, crit chance is 57%. As soon as I get my ascended amulet, I’ll gain 1% more crit damage and 36 more toughness.

Try this, it’s what I’m running atm, and it is doing the job I wanted it to (I’m using the new Orr exotic amulet for the time being)

The build: (cut and paste it)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsYVlUmaPHdy5E+5Ey2jKcn4JuHMlT1UdFwKA;TMArPGjMJA

With this setup, every time you stealth, you move at 50% increased speed, you gain 2 stacks of might, a 5 second regen good for around ~2k of healing, one condition removed, and a healing pulse every 3 seconds for ~425. S/D is excellent at control, and the main damage comes from the auto-attack chain.

Gear:

Armor: Pow/Tou/Vit armor
Runes: 6 Ruby Orbs
Weapons: Berserker weapons, mainhand sigil of rage, offhand superior accuracy

Jewelry:

Back: Prototype berserker fractal (pow/pre/crit dam)
Earrings: Cavalier Orr Ring + Emerald Orich (Exquisite ruby orbs)
Amulet: Gwen’s Necklace (ascended)
Rings: Adelbern’s Royal Signet + Rurik’s Royal Signet (both ascended)

Food:

Master Maintenance Oil
Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash

The stats:

Attack: ~3185 (add 2 stacks of might every time you stealth for 10 seconds, avg. is 4 stacks) 3325 effective attack (you would gain 25 stacks of power from sigil of bloodlust and swap out to your other weapon)
Crit chance: 49% (56% with traits)
Crit damage: 101%
Armor: 2959
Health: ~15-16K
Healing power: 300

I wouldn’t swap just for that. 5% of 250 is 12.5. so you’d see an extra 120 health.

I’m running an I5-2500K and a 460 GTX 1 gig system, 8 gigs ram, and see 40-45 fps no problem. The only place I see a drop is LA (23 fps) and the swamp in fractals (not sure how many fps, haven’t looked).

Go into msconfig, and make sure nothing else you need is running at start up. You can also see what’s running in Windows task manager.

Try poking around in dxdiag as well. See if everything under video is running as it should. Make sure your drivers are up to date, i.e. video, sound etc.

Bear in mind, this runeset is still bugged. The 4th piece, which is supposed to bestow 50 power, does not.

Reported for a moderator to remove it. There is a thread for thief gameplay.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/The-thief-and-its-gameplay-Your-feedback

Maybe put a 1/4 second root on flanking strike, the first hit, just long enough to allow the second hit to go off. It would go well with the overall style of S/D or S/P.

All they really need to do is to fix Flanking Strike so it hits more reliably, faster animation maybe (stealing the boon would be awesome too but maybe too much), and un-nerfing a little, the nerf to dancing dagger.

Gotta love someone from TC or SBi wasting supply in SMC on a ton of rams.

edit: Also, love the 2 from the TC guild Memento Mori, sitting dead inside Anzalias Pass, but regaining health while dead, and popping up with no one there to rez them. It’s not a revive orb, as it doesn’t work in WvW.

Apparently, they do it often, as several people mentioned they do it whenever they can.

Instead of stealth on dodge, simply have it so the attacker loses their target on you (and would have to re-target). Alone in small fights, it makes little to no difference, but in a fracas with a lot of enemies around, they might target someone else (especially if they tab target).

It all depends on their gear setup too. I can’t speak for other P/D thieves, but I run a 3100 toughness build. I’m still working on picking up the ascended rings I need and I should end up at around 3180 or so toughness at the end. It’s fairly easy as a P/D to boost your defenses to such levels.

I’m currently testing the very high toughness, after testing high vitality. After I conclude this round of testing, I’m going to try a balanced approach and see how that works out.

For a particular armor type, you can also get good use from Apothecary armor. It has the following stats:

+Healing Power
+Toughness
+Condition Damage

I’m using the prec/tough/cond armor atm. I do have a full set of Apothecary gear, but I don’t have the cash atm, for the runes I use. I have 558 Healing power with what I’m using, and swapping over to Apothecary would get me to ~800 Healing power or so, which I think is more valuable than Precision.

My opinion on WvW, in any tier really, is that it severely lacks that certain something DAoC had.

I think it’s mostly the fact that there is no true loyalty to one’s team, what with the ease of changing sides, the lack of any true “goal”, i.e. relic raids, any sort or wvw “progression” like realm points, and the social adhesion that each server and team had in DAoC.

That Hib, Alb or Mid pride that drove the core of RvR isn’t present here. GW2 is a nice diversion, but someone really needs to make a DAoC 2. The market is ripe for it, given the rise in popularity in a 3 way competition.

covenn.7165:

Fade.7658:

@covenn.7165: Is this the same Covenn the nightshade from Hibernia Guinevere, from DAoC?

Maybe. Is this the same Fade the ranger from Hib Guin ?

It is indeed. I’ve been running with Vigilance on SoR. So many stinky albs there :P

@covenn.7165: Is this the same Covenn the nightshade from Hibernia Guinevere, from DAoC?

WvW is still a joke with all the issues such as culling, stealth abuse and a host of other issues.

Don’t expect any worthwhile changes. Look how they “fixed” the backstab issues, and other adjustments. Whatever you may expect, it will fall far short of any expectations.

Edit: but to throw my hat into the ring, change the bleed from Vital Shot and Sneak attack into burning damage (call it powder burn or something)

I’m sitting in Lion’s Arch for around 15 minutes, and decide to try to find a fractals group. So I type “LFG Fractals level 4” and get the above “Your message was suppressed due to excessive messaging”.

I haven’t typed anything in any chat for at least 10-15 minutes but get that message immediately. Is there any aspect of this game that isn’t bugged?

Anet will give you the sob story that they are unable to compensate you for anything. Just warning you now.

The bleed tics start at around 115 or so, but ramp up fairly quickly as stacks of might build up. Average stacks of might is around 6-8. I typically see average tics of 126 or so during a fight.

As for healing power, I wasn’t actually aiming for it. I wanted the toughness that came with it. It is a nice perk though.

I’m running full Apothecary armor (Runes of the Soldier (5) and Rune of Ice (1), Chrysocola Earrings (with Apothecary upgrades), Shaman rings and a Shaman amulet, all with the apothecary upgrades.

I lose a little power, but I end up with 925 healing power, 2708 Armor and ~19.2K health, with ~1525 condition damage (+55% bleed duration), after food buffs, sigil of corruption and the constant might stacking from entering stealth, dodging, poison use etc.

I find that it makes for a pretty durable P/D build. Atm, I’m running 15/0/30/15/10 that seems to work pretty well.

Heals are pretty good from what I’ve seen, and I’ve tried two different healing approaches. Leeching Poison (500ish per poison)/Shadow Protector (261 per regen tic), or running Shadow Protector(261 per regen tic)/Shadow’s Rejuvenation (531ish), with Assassin’s Reward (409ish for CnD).

I haven’t tested the first one that much, but it looks promising with Lotus poison to reduce damage.

Not gonna even bother with the next event. I had soooo much fun in the lagtastic bugfest that Lost Isles has been and will continue to be.

I did the testing with full power, crit damage and crit, with sigil of bloodlust and the 100 power/70 prec food. Attack was ~3700 or so. Average damage was 2900 or so if the hits were mostly crits. 3900 is not impossible but I suspect pretty rare. I wonder if each bird has a chance of hitting another target after hitting one already.

I’ll try to do a little more testing later today, and try to get a screenie.

I tried the set out on karma condition gear, as I didn’t want to spend a lot of cash. I tested the runes out on level 80 Risen. Build was otherwise a power/crit build with 103 crit damage.

I saw per hit damage of 80, with it critting for 160 or so, with a total damage adding up to ~2300 or so roughly. (I did occasionally see totals of 3900 or so, making me think it’s affected by executioner) It affected at least 4 targets.

Total damage seemed lower per target, the moer targets there were.

I’ve been running P/P + SB in WvW, and it does work pretty well if you’re on top of your game.

I use SB a lot, using cluster bomb to support allies, and if an overzealous enemy gets too close, unload and with panic strike kicking in at >50% health, they can get stopped in their tracks and die if they aren’t careful.

It is a fragile build though, and you have to be aware at all times. It’s fairly fun, but it gets really fun in sieges with the shortbow – you’re a walking ballista if specced correctly.

For my condition build, I went with:

Armor/Accessories:

Orr Karma Exotic armors that offered pow or prec/tough/conditions, with Runes of the Dolyak. For accessories, I went with all Chrysocola exotics, with Crest of the Rabid (20 cond/14 prec/14 tough) on all of them, with Rampagers Spineguard of the Rabid for the backpack slot.

Weapons:

Dragonshot pistol mainhand (prec/tough/cond) and a dagger with the same stats (can’t recall the name, I transmuted it) and with sigils of agony and corruption. With 25 stacks of corruption, you’ll be at ~1425 (1495 with veggie pizza food) condition damage.

Health is at 17,904. Armor is 2,858. 23% crit chance.

Your choice of food, but I like Rare Veggie Pizza (+40% condition duration, +70 cond damage)

30 points into shadow arts, 20 into acrobatics, 20 into trickery.

Defensive traits, Shadow Refuge w/the other 2 traits dependent on what I’m doing at the time. Thieves guild as the elite.

Going this route, I’m tough to kill outright, mobile with condition removal on stealth (using CnD often, so conditions don’t stay long), high armor so I can stay in the fight far longer, with decent health. With the exception of a few bunker builds, there really isn’t anything you can’t kill or at worst, escape.