Guild Wars 2

Viable build good damage. Good HP pool. Might stacking with a bleed build. Ideal to keep up your white damage as well as help to improve your bleed damage.

The problem I have with this style of build is shown in your first video where you attack 3 idiots taking a camp. And I call them idiots because with 3 of them there none of them notice you until you drop one of them and once you drop the 2nd the guardian rather than bubbling you off of your obvious stealth stomp he tries to res. (no offense but when I see a refuge go down next to a body I know what that thief is doing. As should most good players by now) But anyway back to the problem, a staff guardian almost kills you because of 1 skill on his bar. Cleansing Flames. You had a hard time keeping your conditions up on him and as such he was able to almost kill you with a very weak guardian weapon. This will be your downfall in fights anyone who is able to remove conditions will give you trouble. A mes using Null Field would be even worse as he would not only strip the bleeds you apply but the might you stack as well.

I would also like to point out that when fighting P/D thieves the majority of problems I have with them is the rendering issue they take advantage of. Because they don’t render for 2-3 seconds after their stealth expires they have a lot of extra time to build up free bleed stacks and then if they are good by the time they are rendering in they are going in for a CnD strike to hide for a little bit. So really rendering plays a very real role in this build because your stealth protects you for longer than it should. It is hard to kill something you cant target. (unless you have a crap ton of AoE skills) Once (if?) they fix the rendering issue I will be interested in finding out how well this build works.

As for my opinion I think this is just as effective a glass cannon. Both are effective in different ways. A glass cannon is designed to burn down 1 target very fast and move on. Your build is designed to take on 1-3 targets and kill them slowly and keep them busy. Both have a role to play but neither could do the others role.

But honestly you should not be asking us our opinion on your playing style. If you prefer this playing style over daggers or what ever then that is how you should play. Don’t play a style because everyone tells you that you should. Play a style because you love playing that way.

Lets face it downstate shouldn’t even be in pvp. As for contesting points wile stealth i agree this should be fixed. perm stealth due to rendering is a game problem not a thief problem.

This only works on supply camps, tower points are too closed in it would never work up there. And I am sure that this stealth contest will be fixed soon there is a lot of complaining about it.

I prefer Legionnaire daggers

Ok I don’t have any good ideas as most of my good ideas wile realistic would just be too OP for a games balance. So I give you my joke idea instead.

A giant wooden dolyak. Yep… thats right Because they always let dolyaks in.

You are not going to remove zergs from the game. Just aint going to happen. First off removing swords will simply make zergs stronger. Siege already has an extremely high if not uncapped limit as to numbers of players it can hit. And as for players doing less damage to doors…. Do you honestly think this will stop people from zerging? People do not zerg to break down doors. They zerg to flood in and overwhelm you once they are inside.

Zergs can be countered by heavy siege and good tactics.

all i have to say is… Bored much?

Swords are not an issue a smart zerg/server will have scouts at towers/keeps to prevent any attack on those structures including stealth attacks which do not put up swords. (yes there are ways to prevent swords from coming up wile you siege down walls and gates)

What really gets you is people who depend on swords to see the enemy team. If you have a good zerg thats all on a voice program and they know not to put up swords you can sneak a 40 man zerg into a tower or keep unnoticed. The swords are fine.

First I would like to point out if we go stealth we don’t instantly drop combat and start reg. Second, if we were to move slowly in stealth it would pretty much make stealth useless as stealth is how we do surprise attacks and we cant do that if we cant catch the people we are trying to hit.

Stealth is not broken. Rendering is. Once they fix the rendering thieves will be fine. We might actually need a buff to be honest, at the very least glass cannon builds will be very hard to run without them being suicide builds.

Right now the rendering problem is adding an extra 2-3 seconds onto our stealth which gives us an unfair advantage of being able to get people down to 75 or even 50% without them even being able to see us. I was walking around on my engineer the other day in wvw and a thief ganked me from behind he got me to about 33% of my hp before I saw him. But once I saw him I destroyed him. Fix the rendering and you fix the QQing.

I would also like to point out to everyone who isn’t a thief that thieves are very limited as to what they can do. I don’t mean by builds I mean by playing style. We have to focus one person down and we have to do it quickly and quietly. Our only AoE is from the shortbow and that is very limited. Fighting 1 on 1 is what we are made for and being able to escape is how we avoid getting sucked into fights we will never win.

Stealth is not god-mode. We still take damage, we are still subject to AoE pulls and roots. Use your brain and you can stop thieves.

You know I was on TS3 the other night and I swear all I heard was “who has a portal” “portal timer?” “portal inc in 5” “Enemy portal behind us”. Hehe Portal Wars. Too bad I don’t get cake….

I am happy to have another good battle this week. And not a blowout like last week. I think if we (SoR) had a fuller night crew this battle would be neck in neck right now and that’s something we will need to work on if we want to continue to climb higher. I however am not going to give up. I think these battles we have been having have been epic (I am speaking of the 2 hour battle last night at garrison as an example) I also think that that is what WvW should feel like and its nice to have that feeling going on. But last time SoR and SoS fought it out it was a good battle to the end and I hope/expect this to be the same. Ill see you in there gents. SALUTE

Killyox.3950:

@OP, sorry but “running solo was not an option” is utter BS to say it simple.

I soloed every map. Every map i did i completed 100% of it including all Orr maps and did so rather easily.

Soloing is very very possible and quite easy at that too.

Clearly you didn’t read my post. When I said running solo was not an option i was refering to sPvP. And I also said with the builds I was using.

Some good advice here guys thanks a lot. I see a lot of people recommend using more than one kit which I never really thought about. I guess I am so use to just having 2 weapon sets I never thought of using grenades at range bombs up close and swapping back to rifle/pistol for some more control. Some good build ideas as well I am eager to give them a shot. Thanks for the help.

OK, little back story. (feel free to skip it if you just don’t care) My first 80 was a guardian. I leveled with my brother who was on a warrior. I really enjoyed this class; it was powerful yet stout enough to take on packs. The damage felt good and I felt like I could take on things 2-3 levels higher than me no problem. After that I leveled a thief solo to 80. This was a big change over the guardian. A much more squishy class but still able to take on multiple enemies in their own way and if I pulled more than I could hand I had good escape ability.

Now, I am leveling an Engineer. From the get-go I noticed something about the class. I couldn’t really put my finger on it but I just felt…. Well weak. I did some public sPvP to kind of get a feel for what a lvl 80 engineer was like before I started one and I thought that it was an alright class. I knew that being more condition based that it wasn’t going to be a fast killer. And I also learned quick (at least with the builds I was using) running solo was not really an option.

So now I have pushed through and hit level 55. And honestly I am not feeling it. I still feel like I’m weak and that I am having trouble fighting things one on one at my level. I do more running on my engineer than I ever did on my thief or guardian. I have not really enjoyed this class from the start. But I pushed through because how a class feels normally gets better as you level and unlock more.. I don’t have a naga or similar mouse so running a grenade build has felt very uncomfortable and turret builds just don’t work very well. Their long cool downs mean I am fighting without them just as much as with them and in dungeons they are dead in seconds because they get targeted quickly.

So… I am asking for some advice on builds. I am looking for something that works pretty well in solo play (preferable something that I would feel comfortable pulling 2-3 guys at my level with) And if possible something that is useful for dungeons. I don’t mind paying to re-spec for dungeons if I have to though.

Wile a rifle/longbow would add more options for people other than just using a shortbow. I honestly am in the boat that not everyone should be able to do the same thing. We are one of the deadliest, if not the deadliest classes up close and personal. Giving us the tools to also be very deadly at range makes me wonder what we would have to give up in order to get that.

I take it like this. Play to your strengths if you don’t like using a short bow that’s fine don’t and if you don’t have the range to defend a keep from the tower then there are other ways to go about doing it. Build an arrow cart, get on a cannon, And lets not forget we are one of the fastest classes in the game with our lovely signet of shadows constant 25%. Run supplies to repair the door/walls. WvW isn’t just about the killing someone has to do the grunt work.

However, we can dream cant we? If we were to get a rifle I think the only way for it to be fair is if it was like a real sniper rifle, long cast times on shots and you are not able to fire on the move.

I don’t recall the quest you are talking about but here is my Exp questing.

I had a lot more trouble with my thief in quests than I did with my guardian. My advice would be to find a good friend or guildmate to help you out. Just to have someone else there taking some of the blows. If you cant do that try to use skills like shadow refuge in your build this will allow you to escape combat much more effectively if it becomes too much. Points in shadow arts to get Last Refuge can also be a life saver.

Underwater and hard hitting casters are what did me in most of the time. I didn’t try this at the time but a Sword/Pistol build using pistol whip might help vs casters.

The quest you are talking about here sounds like you are underwater. You might try using stealth to your advantage, then try to pull them either one at a time or in small packs to deal with them. If you have NPCs helping out try to use them effectively let them hold wile you kill.

A thief is a class played with your mind not your fingers. You might say anyone can run in and press 2 buttons and win. I dare them to try that. Sure you might be able to take a few people 1 on 1. That is until they run into people who know how to deal with thieves 1 on 1. We are a spam class most of the time I can’t deny that. If you are condition based you jump around with LDB and if your crit based you spam HS. As all classes you fill dead space with 1 auto attack. But our other skills are situational skills, a cripple and a stealth inducing attack which IMO doesn’t work correctly all of the time and if it misses that’s a lot of initiative wasted.

“To power their attacks, thieves rely on a resource called initiative, which regenerates over time. Weapon skills cost initiative points, but they have no recharge time, so thieves can use them back-to-back. This allows thieves to stay flexible and responsive in combat and unleash a rapid flurry of powerful attacks. "

Taken right from the website under Initiative. We are a bust class by design, one who uses surprise and chaos (random stealth moves, blinds, and shadowsteps) to our advantage. There is no dueling in this game for a reason. Not every class is balanced so every other class can still kill it 1 on 1. Thieves are good at 1v1, but its not like we could ever take on a elementalist at nuking down an area. Or a mesmer’s ability to hide in plain sight with their illusions. Every class has its strenghts and to expect everyone to be able to counter those strengths would make having those strengths pointless in the first place.