Guild Wars 2

It’s funny how much easyer it is against Fort Ranik when they don’t have a second FR server backing them up. Anyways, as a Gandarian player, it’s time to finally beat you.

Yesterday was mad fun. During the day we had a golem party, capturing everything in FR borderlands. Then in the evening, Semper Dius launched a big golem party aswell. Some fun fights!

Despite the fact that the game would launch when it “it’s done,” the PvP side of the game was not even close to being ready. It still lacks most things to actually become an Esport. Not only that, but the sPvP playerbase is shrinking with the day. Do you guys feel this pressure and the need to hurry or are we really whining too much?

Playing Hotjoin =/= Skill.
Playing Tpvp =/= Skill.

So? Most skilled players do Tpvp. This “teamwork” you talk about is not a given. It adds another layer of depth to the game that you need to master. With teamwork comes more complex tactics etc.. It brings the play to a whole new level that hotjoin or pug players will never achieve.

Sure WvW players might know some tactics (entirely different tactics tho) but they mostly lack the raw skill of a good PvP player so i don’t wanna talk about that.

Thanks for the laugh TS!

Can I transmute an ascended capacitor with an ascended quiver backpiece?

So i want to get a backpiece with berserker stats. Probably even on two charakters but that’s not really doable at the moment (money wise). Because i really want the quiver skin!

So i have decided to get it for my main charakter first. The idea is to grind the fractals for the tokens and get the Capacitor (berserker stats). This will be very cheap. After that i would craft the cheapest quiver backpiece (ancient bones i think). And then i would transmute the quiver with the capacitor stats!

It’s still costly (fractal tokens + gold) but it’s A LOT cheaper than crafting the quiver with berserker stats. My question is of course… Is this doable? Can i transmute these two items? They are both unique items i think so i’m not sure.

I would like to know beforehand before i spend loads of gold and tokens on it.

Thanks in advance!

Trevos.6473:

Stop qqing about HB newbs, qq about the kitten thiefs. The ridiculous bs and even worse bleed spammer thiefs! this is the problem here not the warrior who spend his all utility bar to land 1 ability.

Yeah coz a backstab thief doesn’t have to blow cooldowns to do the combo. >.> Atleast a warrior still has its Elite and profession skill available.

I have only done two paid tournies so far (my team is rank 22-32 and we do not consider ourselves “pro”). Both times we faced r40+ teams and lost. Having that said, we didn’t do bad the last time but the experience/skill level was just too big. Playing tournies really is a pain without a ladder. Because in free tournies we are actually winning a lot. So our team is kinda inbetween atm.. It’s weird and annoying.

They also made it a lot easyer to get tickets now so most teams can do atleast 1/2 paids a week if they want (7 dailies + 3 free tournie wins). I’m expecting that as my team progresses, we do a bit more paids and get some wins eventually awell. It’s just that the “progress” has a gap between decent and hardcore players. Like i said, a ladder would fix this!!!

The only thing i haven’t noticed in those two paid tournies was a long queue. We had one pop up in 10 mins and the other in 2 minutes. This was during prime time ofc.

It also dissapears when you use a “steal” items (as a thief). I have seen a few other bugs on this map aswell. It doesn’t spoil the fun tho!

Yep, i got a ring on my main charakter but i didn’t want the stats so i put it on the bank for my alt. I hope i get a nice ring with agony and the right stats today tho! Because while agony is still pretty easy to deal with atm, i will need it eventually.

And even if i don’t want to keep doing the dungeon, i simply want to get my better gear some day… haha!

I don’t like this RNG stuff. Especially because it’s limited to one chance a day!

felivear.1536:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Ya….when we designed this, we were thinking that it’s very important to keep “tabs” on the opposing team when you go for an NPC kill on Forest. You want to have 1 “killer” on your team who finishes the NPC while the other people on your team stun/knockback/daze/blind/immobilize/chill/knockdown opponents to keep them from getting the last hit and winning the buff.

I think the idea in theory is great, the only problem is that a thief can go undetected and then stealth/steal/heartseaker in without any knowledge of his whereabouts. So, all of those strategies, imo, are moot for it.

Nah, i played a lot with my thief and i noticed that against better teams, it became a lot harder to get the steal. Some drop marks (fear), some will check for enemies in advance and will try to snare me etc. But of course, long stealth with the Heartseeker + steal combo will mostly get me the kill. Any class with good burst can do it tho.

I like it. It adds more depth to the map.

That said, we don’t really send a stealer anymore at the start of a battle. Our current strat is to sent 4 to their point and basically own it. Then we take their boss out without any enemies nearby. So in a way, we still steal it but not in a sneaky way haha.

Correct.

On my thief i always take that shortcut with Infiltrators Arrow. There are much more crazy tricks like that tho. teleporting through walls on Kyhlo or Forest of Nifhlel for example.

I like a lot of things of this map tbh. It just needs some tweaking!

The gates can be annoying indeed but not having something like that would make it too easy tho. Right now we have found about 4 gates that can be jumped over with a little bit of practice and using a mesmer to drop a portal in the middle of the map makes it extremely easy.

Mesmers are pretty amazing in the swamp fractal! ;p Drop a portal in the middle of the map and voila! Ez mode.

God this again? I’m sorry but learn to play! I’m a backstab thief and even today i faced an enemy with the same build on the other team. He was even a higher rank than me! Yet, i killed him 9 out of 10 times! Here are some tips that might help:

1) STUNBREAKERS. Bascally a free win if you have it off cooldown.
(As a thief, i shadowstep(utility) away, heal up and enter stealth, shadowstep back and backstab him if possible)

2) Surprise him and have battlefield awereness! All he tries to do is surprise you. You need battlefield awereness to beat him. Know where he is at all times and when you expect him, you dodge or be prepared to use your stunbreaker. You have absolutely nothing to save you? RUN and come back later to surprise him!

3) Know your enemy! Play a thief and you will see how they play, how they attack, how they survive etc. This can be very handy because you will learn to predict their next steps and act accordingly.

4) And last but not least, one of my favourite tricks (as a thief) and it works every time. But it is risky because you sacrifice a stunbreaker! When you look him the eyes from a big distance, you know he waits for you to come close so he can unleash on you. What i sometimes do is shadowstep to bridge the gap and then do the backstab(steal) combo! 2000+ distance closed in an instant and they never expect it!

There are many more tips out there but here are just a few out of my head. In tournament PvP, nobody complains about backstab thieves. They are glass cannons and only have one viable build really. There are plenty of counters against them so please don’t judge them based on hotjoin. Especially because you are fairly new to PvP!

Tried to delete the thread and help Arenanet but it doesn’t work. Only my main post was deleted. Apologies everyone. I assume they have read it tho. So they will probably adress the issue.

Another problem is that the few teams that play, are getting stomped by the pro teams because there is no rated matchmaking or anything. There is no middleground! You either farm glory in hotjoin, which is boring and easy or you need to practice daily with a team to win tournies constantly.

Whenever i play with my team, i barely face teams like us. It’s either a pug that we stomp or a higher ranked team that beats us (not always but mostly). It’s demotivating! We want to fight people of equal skill! I have team members that almost want to quit the game now…

I want to remind everyone that it’s not a thief-only problem. Anyone with a teleport (guardians, mesmers and eles) can basically do this.

Also, the clocktower trick is pretty old (to get inside from the ground) and is definitely not as gamebreaking as this one imo. That said, i remember devs using shadowsteps in the beta to get on the roof, from inside the tower. So like i said, it’s allowed to a certain extent.

I don’t even think the gate bypassing is a super huge deal (4 classes can do it). It’s up to them to allow it or not. But currently, only one base has this weakness, and that’s definitely a problem.

Ah so they only managed to fix the Waterfall gate i guess? I only discovered this yesterday. I hope they adress this soon. It’s gamebreaking and there are teams that use this!

Imagine how long they have been using it already!

I currently feel pretty strong as a backstab thief and i’m not even using Shadow Refuge. Blinding Powder ftw man! <3

I’m rank 21. I had a total of 4 crystals and 4 slivers if i’m not mistaken. All those were from rank 20+ chests so i assume that it depends on the item rarity that you salvage. Not sure tho!

As a thief that succesfully steals 75%+ of the NPC’s at the start of a match (free tournies), i would like to keep doing this <3. It’s a lot of fun and it makes the start of the match interesting! Also, good teams check their back and place those wells that fear or use other tricks to hinder me. If you could do just most damage, it would be a race :/ Also, you forget that u can also deal burst damage when the target is almost down. This is actually very effective because i always try to keep a certain distance and hide behind a rock or something. Based on how fast the NPC’s health go down, i decide to jump in or not. I mostly go in with Cloak & Dagger, Steal and then prepare for the final backstab (loads of damage so i can jump in pretty early). But if the enemy suddenly uses burst skills there is a big chance that i’m too late or barely get into range to use a quick “Steal.”

I love it. Using a couple runes to get +30% BOON DURATION. Together with 10 points in tactics, i get all those rage boons for 42 seonds. Which means i’m without them for only 6s. I can live with that haha.

Our elite skill is a simple stun currently. It’s truly amazing how they could have done this.

I hope they a crossbow some day or something. An almost similar set but just to give us some variety.

Do you really expect me to throw my expensive exotic swords away and switch builds because of nerf? 15% is a lot and I don’t think it was needed because decent players had a fair chance against the build. It requires one dodge to render most p/w thieves useless.

But yeah, thieves will always be hated. It seems that Anet listens to the majority. I’m wondering how far they will go. Because if they keep doing this, they just show that initiative is a flawed system that cannot be balanced.

Backstab is next, believe me.

I’m on a medium server and when it ain’t prime time there are no queues or queues that take 5 minutes. During prime time it can take 30 minutes with EB taking longer of course.

Still, it’s very easy to get in.0

3-5-3-5-3-5-3-5-3-5-3-5

We are really strong underwater and the second speargun skill, when you spam bullets.. is lethal with haste in pvp.

CoF gear + Whispers Hood. I’m loving it!

Mostly 2-3k per player. So i can easily hit 10k+ if i hit a group of enemies, which happens a lot in WvW. When i crit, it’s like 4-5k per player, which can easily add up to 15k+ total.

We also have activity problems when it ain’t prime time. This morning i had no queue’s on any of the maps. Let me tell you, this is different on the big servers! They have 24/7 coverage.

During prime time, we manage to hold and the battle seems very balanced and fun. But during the off-hours, they simply win with numbers.

This is really messed up because i had a name reserved via a bro’s account for my Engineer. I really want that name so i waited a few days after release and kept trying to make the charakter. Last week i sent a support ticket and apparently, it’s still reserved for that account only.

He even deleted that charakter but it didn’t matter. The name is in the database and i can’t do anything about it. Luckily i’m enjoying my main enough but i hope they release the names soon because it takes way too long.

Shortbow because it’s the most used thief weapon.

Even normal auto-attacks hit really hard so yeah. Pistol Whip totally owns in WvW.

It’s cool that you want that but please try to think about the pvp’ers aswell. I hate most of the skills that place me somewhere. I mean, i know what they do so i can take certain steps to land where i want but it’s stupid and requires less skill. I hope they remove this skill. I love the idea of s/d. I love all of the skills eccept Flanking Strike. I really hope they replace it and make it a viable weaponset.

Oh man.. I have played the thief in every beta oppertunity and clocked 250+ hours so far. I have done loads of PvE, sPvP and lately, a lot of WvW aswell.

First of all, stealth is exactly how i expected it to be. It’s not too unfair for enemies and it’s very helpful for you. It’s amazing for escaping because you can quickly go the other way and it gives trait benefits and the ability to stealth-stomp someone (extremely good!). I’m sorry that you don’t like this type of play but really, it’s not badly designed.

Secondly, initiative encourages spamming certain skills at the right moments. This is true but it doesn’t make it a EZ class. You need to keep your recource (initiative) in check. Heartseeker was overpowered because of the damage and fact that people didn’t use it as a finisher. They changed that and it can still be spammed, but it’s just less effective now than only using it on low-health targets. The thief is all about using certain skills at the right time. It’s not gimmicky.

The thief can survive very easily. In dungeons i manage to survive the longest and get people up with shadow refuge, in pvp i can escape a lot of nasty situations (stealth on falling damage trait rocks in WvW) and pve is a joke. I can run in Orr from mob to mob, using signet of shadows and cloak and dagger (which is easy to use if you practice and understand the hitbox area) to simply bypass all of them. Thief is about being evasive and picking the right time to go in. If you are in the middle of a big group fight and want to kill people in WvW, you can die pretty fast if you don’t watch out. It’s simple. Walk next to the big groups, gank the enemies that are over-extending from their group. It’s easy and a lot of fun imo.

Venoms (poisons) are extremely good and venom oriented support builds are very strong. I played a condition spec up til lvl 80 (d/d + shortbow) and also rocked a Venom build in tourny play and while condition damage is imo less fun to play than burst builds like pistol whip, it’s very effective for your team. In all formats even.

The way i see it, thieves can spec either condition damage or burst. Both ways have a lot of good options. Condition builds work with plenty of weapon choices and burst builds aswell (backstab, pistol whip, d/p etc.). Just remember that if you don’t like the shortbow, don’t play a thief. It’s a must for any build! I hope i helped a bit.

In the end, it’s you who decides and not me. It’s a very subjective topic so.

It’s obvious that they failed at designing dungeons because besides the nice aesthetics (that team nailed the entire game) it’s still a lot of tank n’ spank. Something that surprised me a lot. Instead of adding more content by having fun combat and puzzles etc. it’s all about extremely long and boring fights. Take Honor of the Waves for example. There is a path in which an icebrood oakheart thingie crashes down the gate and starts attacking you. We didn’t drag it that far but i actually resetted TWO times.. With the amount of HP that these bosses have (to make the content longer >.>) this was really frustrating. Also, it was very easy and honestly, not fun at all. After we finally killed it, we walked to the deck of the ship and guess what? Another one of those waited for us! The same cursed boss with the same abilities and extreme high HP. To make it even worse, the endboss was underwater… Blargh!

Something else that i want to adress is the imbalance between paths. It took me literally three days of farming CoF path 2 to get most of my CoF gear (don’t need shoulders and legs because you don’t see them that well anyways and crafting them was easyer). I tried path 1 and 3 aswell with a few people but like people have already said, the boss with the crystals is just stupid. Even if you figure out how to deal with it and do your best, it feels impossible. Also, Sorrow’s Embrace has a path in which you can avoid the patrols, so the enemies won’t search for you and only the bosses are left to kill. Path takes like 17 minutes to do and probably needs attention aswell.

Something else that makes no sense is that even with the tools at hand, it’s sometimes impossible to stay alive. Ok, thanks for giving me the ability to dodge. I’m using “Bountiful Thef” and get vigor, even more dodges available! I can dodge whatever this boss throws at me.. And then the boss starts to throw fiery bolts around in rapid succession, making the dodge ability useless and the fight extremely frustrating because you can barely prevent dying.

Well, enough QQ-ing from my part. The game is amazing but dungeons are easily the worst part of the entire game, I only covered what popped up in my mind while writing this post so take in mind that these problems are just the tip of the iceberg. Dungeons will need a serious overhaul and i’m baffled that you guys failed at creating more fun battles with the combat system that exists in this game. The game is still young so i hope that you guys will figure it out. Show us what you can do!

Just one more thing: While CoF path 2 is easy to farm, it’s quite a lot of fun imo. I like the variety and aesthetics.

There are not a lot of organised groups in Gandara but it didn’t get such a high rank (top 5 AFAIK) by being mindless zerglings. I know that certain people recently got the CC so maybe that works to control all the randoms a bit. We are doing “ok” at the moment in W3. Very balanced pie chart but Gunnar’s Hold was smart and went on a killing spree when the weekly match started, getting a big advantage early on.

Also, why do you expect so much from randoms? Start a W3 guild or something and educate people. You can make a difference aswell.

Our guild banded together to get the 100G and we are kinda dissapointed that it’s in such a miserable state right now. I hope they fix it soon.

Not all combo’s are craftable. I think certain dungeon sets have unique statcombo’s.

Carrion for condition builds and Berserker for crit builds basically. I got the Carrion exotic set complete so i’m currently working on a Berserker set. Can’t wait to finally change builds again. With my Carrion set i can’t switch to crit builds because i don’t have the gear for it (yet).