Guild Wars 2

Men. I run P/P (worst thief weapon combination) purest glass cannon build that focuses solely on pinning down and destroying kittens. Once every 60 seconds I can do near impossible to get out of RANGED 20k damage in little over 1 second on fatties. My build has far less requirements, does not rely on stealth, has higher survivability due to range, has built-in interrupt and blind.
I don’t even need to move. Only thing I need to time is when to press immobile venom.
My build is so far superior and easier than backstab one that most of them mug to me already downed for a quick stomp with my quickness still on.
Yet, for some reason noone is crying NERF DEM PISTOLS. Actually, 90% of people are sure that P/P is weak and needs buffs.
Now tell me again, why are you all so discriminate?
Answer: because it is easier to post here than to learn

Guys please. Why are you being so discriminate? So if ranger hits you from 1500 range, combat has started for you? Right? The fact that thief cant hit you from 1500 range does not mean you can ignore him until he is already on your back!
Thief cannon be stealthed permanently from over 3k view range to 900 of his steal. So if you are hit by mug > cnd > backstab that means that either 1) very bad culling issues and you should go to another forum 2) you completely ignore your surroundings and deserve to die with a most swift and exemplary to others death.
Do you know what dodge is for? Congratulations, you are one of 99% of people that do. Sadly, only 5-10% of those who actually know what dodge is for use it for exactly that purpose. You don’t dodge when you take damage. You dodge to NOT take damage. Dodge is not a gap closer, gap maker, interrupt. 90% of people start dodging when they already done for. I switch targets already, and they just start dodging. I shoot cluster bombs from 900 range just because it makes half of people waste half of the endurance bar instantly.
Seriously. Thief that dies from random things must overcome 2k+ range in open field to get a CHANCE to attack you. And you start to care only when he is already in melee.

Because it was always like that. Good people play the game, bad people cry at rogues on forums. Never been other way in any mmo with official forums.
Edit: ill have to correct myself before anyone rages out at me. I don’t mind and actually am very happy with constructive report about overpowered things as well as broken ones. But seriously for most of complaints here, I can’t take anything seriously when those reports start with things that make me laugh. It makes me a bit uneasy and angry if some of fixes would be based on some of those.

sadly, just like other 95% of armor and weapons skins, i stopped caring about this one after i got first look on it
Godskull kris is best dagger skin hands down followed by aureate dirk. And even those could use some work :P

a-net hopefully cares more about actual players, not their forum community.
Roll a thief. And show us how op they are. You’ll get a cookie. Yes, in certain situations thieves are easier to play for people who are not capable of anything else. But you will be amazed how thieves are thrown around where it actually matters.
Even before signet rebalancing thief wasn’t much.
Now, before any stupid examples are posted, please follow this pattern for reporting thief’s op-ness:
PvP type – PvP type goal(s) – Purpose(s) of particular thief build considering these goal(s) – how effective is thief at pursuing these goals
If people could understand at very least two first parts of this, they would be ashamed to continue

you need defensive stats only if you are lazy and want to just autoattack everything to death in orr. Otherwise pure damage/condition damage.
Both S/P and D/D are nice in pve.
For dungeons id say few defensive traits (lose condition or regen or stealth, dodges) and everything else is pure damage and your awareness in fights

You listed 3 weapon sets, only two of which cant be at same time and both of them share same initiative pool. And shadowstep is an utility skill on a long cooldown.
I am full exotic zerk P/P thief with single defensive thing i have is my hide in shadows heal for quite some time now. And there was not even a single time I was one shot by anything or suffered instakill from a sole person. Where are you people coming from?

I prefer to rate my builds in accordance to situations in pvp where opponents are at same skill level.
This brings few things in into building:
Against organized bunch of players relying on staying in melee is before all a suicide even in stealth, and even if thief can survive in that position no adequate player will allow free melee move on himself except the ones thief can force on him – shadowstep/attack combos, immobile/basilisk venom. At best, thief in melee range can make 2-3 key attacks to land if he is not countered properly right away.
This tells us few things: in that short amount of time thief can be viable in melee to be useful he must be able to make significant amount of damage thus burst OR to be able to do damage after retreating thus conditions (if they are not removed). Anything less and thief’s effort is insignificant. The other way around is ranged attacks. While P/P does not have that much of a burst, it is a range option with a lot of sustained dps that benefits much more from being in a group than many melee options.
In my opinion, any kind of thief build that is not focused solely on damage must have a pistol offhand. On demand interrupt and an aoe blind makes it superior to any other option potential benefit and utility-wise.
Dagger offhand offers incredible spike and medium cripple in some of situations, but cloak and dagger being slow and melee range stealth ability requires a lot of investment just to be able to land it few guaranteed times.
Edit: D/P has incredible potential of having rather costly, but requirement-free gap-closing re-usable stealth.

Hey, I am not a wiki with builds. I merely stated my opinions. I tried all of those with a sole exception I could not try all of those on every gear stat combination.
I would personally never consider any condition build great due to their limitations, but DB is simply too good by itself.

S/D dazes by themselves do not bring enough utility to be a separate viable build really.
Venom share build includes mass stealth things.
Stealth bunkers should really disappear. Acrobatics/trickery and dodges are part of db build.
And I only listed general directions of builds for spvp and wvw. PvE is much more demanding to hard effects than raw skill of player so it is pointless to try to discuss. For any given pve situation there will be exactly one build most suited for it no matter the skill level.

Damage:
Great builds:
D/D death blossom condition build
D/D backstab build
Good builds:
P/D condition thief
Viable builds:
P/P unload spam
Utility:
Great:
None
Good:
S/P with venom sharing
Viable:
S/D with venom sharing
D/P with venom sharing
Support:
None
General:
Anything with shortbow

once again, i am here to remind that the only thing this kind of thief can do is to kill a single person if not countered properly. This is not something anyone should ever care about in game with mass pvp and near instant no-downside ress.

And be sure to make patch notes full and provide a reasonable explanation for every fix. Like it is done in Guild Wars.

simply planting bomb/trap/field under yourself or even just letting him know you are aware of his presence will keep glass cannons away. Bs thieves will die from just a round of mines.
Mass blind is deadly and any kind of movement impairing effects with at least a minimum of movement will render most thieves unable to reach you while also leaving them wide open for damage.
Edit: also, as an engineer you have access to extensive amounts of swiftness that thief can only outperform with initiative use while also forcing him in the open

there is no 1v1 pvp in this game. If you do, it is a limitation you call on yourself. That is the only thing those thieves abuse.

i just ran around a bit and came to thinking – what about making body shot give a second of stealth if shot in melee range, poison at mid range and cripple at high range? This will allow synergy will both 1st slot by giving needed high-risk stealth, while being also more useful for 3slot by providing catcher against running away, and just plain poison when you tried either 1st or 3rd option but failed.
And unload again, anything that will add more damage will make it too strong in some conditions like when limiting opponent’s dodge by immobile or lack of endurance. Instead, for using a skill at that right time something like a utility boon of a duration based on number of hits. Like vigor of careful duration for the endurance-hungry p/p

edit: bit another section, poster above reminded: could cooldowns of the effects of things like “when using elite”, some of the “when using healing skill” be a bit more friendlier to variety of cooldowns on those skills? 6 piece set bonus should not be “oh and by the way you can get this at some times”. I an not suggesting a rework to make those effects more powerful, but it would be really nice to know if this particular basilisk venom that just finished his 36 sec cooldown will give me and my party an aegis i need or do i need to wait 10 more seconds

p/p does not have any movement. Any kind of movement. Intead of 2 for example.
unload is fine damage wise but is hard to land whole one. how about an awesome reward for being able to land it whole?
Head Shot is epic as it is.
Body shot… 5% damage will never make up for 4 ini. Better to rework to either movement ability or movement impairing attack (for example, as reward for being in melee range)
D/P – 3 – rooting off please
S/P – 3 – please make it viable more than evade for ini / spam with quickness
S/D – 3 – needs redesign or serious fix
The way venoms are applied, used up and shared (aoe thing)
needle/tripwire traps
Trait lines need complete rework. Or at least fixed bugged ones and change in positions of those with senseless antisynergies.

depends on what you do. magic find for farming, pure damage/cond damage with accordance to your build for easy dungeons, lifestealing/condition food for harder ones.
With high enough crit rate stealing health with food is very reliable with fast dagger attacks.

we all should really know that everything will be fine. It is just A-net unwillingly made a mistake of letting both sides of the conflicts know that one or more of their actions were clearly (and how many people saw – mostly) based on the action taken by one of the sides. And that action resulted to be too worthless to one side and too threatening to another.
Careful fix of assasin’s signet is an almost exemplary balancing work. But it will be hard to forget sensless things before it and hidden things that came with it. And for as long as those will remembered by appearance of new ones, flames and wars will go on.

I will not talk about sPvP because thief’s opness does not exist there. There are viable competetive builds but there is no instagib op thieves in arenas. Maybe there is just not enough bad people to be dominated by them.
In WvW, before writing any complaint at all directed at a certain class mechanic and not the technical issue, one should make a definite list of by what situation can be objectively judged.
Before anything, question of how many of you and your allies were fighting how many enemies and in what kind of situation.
Without knowing wether you were alone for some reason or with reliable/unreliable allies, whether you occupied yourself with anything, were actively observing situation or bluntly running forward without looking around. Were you pushing your opponents or were ambushed at a camp? Without this kind of information absolutely nothing can be analyzed. Before anything, in mmo, surroundings always have the most impact on your success/failure no matter who you are. Secondly, your relation to the situation you are in must be questioned. And LASTLY and least impotantly, your personal characteristics (stats and skills) can be taken in account.
I am a thief with a sufficiently high success rate in countering solo roaming builds even when I am wearing zero defensive gear. Though my main purpose is in party I cannot allways be surrounded by allies to protect me so I had to learn how to deal with those who come to WvW with only option of being able to kill lone player. I do not rely on stealth even a single bit and my selection of defensive traits is serverly limited even if I am given enough time out of combat to switch few traits. Some may laugh at this, but I play for the fun and for the looks and never considered myself any good. Being P/P I love so much now and shortbow I am coming to forums willing to share my knowledge and experience and aquire new only to be forced to try and beat some trivial things in people heads, sometimes so trivial that moderators consider my posts uninformative and delete them.
I am willing to help anyone, just provide me with enough things to work with and leave all kinds of complaints for a-net to figure out. They made awesomest Guild Wars pvp without having to read masses of complaints.
Do not make A-net regret having this kind of forum for their new game more than they already do.
Thats is what I want people to know. It is not about wvw or pvp concepts. It is about a concept of a Valuable contribution to this game’s future balance.

thiefs already are hard to get into dungeons and all the usse of thief in wvw are only in their mobility and cluster bomb.
Thief cannot tank, heal, buff, protect anyone. So they are left for damage. And outside shortbow there is nothing to chose from.
Non-burst thief is not viable. That alone justifies thieves superior SINGLE TARGET burst in a game with hundreds of players. Point me at some other class that can only do damage reliably.

Ashanor. Steal as it is now alone packs great deal of mobility of what should be most mobile class. Lowering damage of backstab by itself is not an option because not only glass cannon bs builds use backstab.
Moving Mug is not that awesome because whoever is going to use mug will spec heavily in that tree anyway and secondly there is not much other options to pick from whole tree. A doubt a-net will be willing to reform traits so early when technical issues are still present.
I defend thieves because I am one. I never played backstab build, i never relied on and abused stealth rendering, but all the things people want to be nerfed will hit me more than they will hit the mentioned glass cannon bs build.
Somehow it seems people believe in power of QQ since when pistol whip was nerfed in a most wrong way.

A-net should just ask to spvp teams and good wvw guilds how much they think thief is op.
Everyone should realize that people that post on this forum are almost insignificant in terms of size part of the gw2 player base.

toughness reduces damage. if you are taking enough damage to justify the use of toughness then you are probably playing it wrong.
Tiny investment in vit with tiny investment into defensive traits outperforms even 1k additional toughness. That is what I learned the hard way.

1) Steal was intended to be used in middle of other attacks. It is really something special. And thanks a-net for that.
2) Ill trade my thief’s quickness endurance drawback to both frenzy and ranger one at same time. Just give me my endurance and I won’t care if I take double damage and can’t heal.
3) In arenas I am still yet to see superiority of thief. And that is where balances come from. As for wvw – strength or weakness of a single zergling unit is something noone cares about.

this is not game-breaking, yes. But it is second most frustrating after the rendering issue.
Sometimes I can’t even stealth downed guy to save him from stomp, I won’t even be talking about venom share going to dolyaks and siege equipment

I could not find enough topics here for this case, so I decided to make a dedicated thread for all that visual prettiness Gw2 lacks in some aspects.
This is only for suggestions/issues that do not involve combat balance (like aoe rings) or terrain (like invisible walls, that is something that will always be there).
I am not sure I would want to be responsible for updates (topic) here but I will if it will be needed and if enough material will be provided we can do some division by types (like clipping/effects/animations/skins separately)

Armor Skins
General: anything that has long enough “free” parts (long coats, long sleeves) is animated poorly – most coats only bend in like 3 places below belt instead of smooth animation, making even the most awesome looking armors look bad upon and during any kind of movement.
Selection of armor skins: Unlike Gw, GW2 has really few outstanding unique armor skins (that can be recognized without too much effort) – too many small details (that vary depending on armor) that are hard to catch with eyes without losing the focus on surroundings. This is worsened by the fact professions directly share armor types.
Light armors: too many long skirts (?), minimal selection of pants, short skirts and footwear
Medium armors: almost every single one of them looks themed after one or another ranger armor from gw1. Small selection of plain assasin-like suits and pocket-filled jackets/shorts for engineers
Heavy armors: Again, too many small details on most armors. Very few really platy ones and no counterparts for what would be the most awesome armors from gw1.
Having both helmet and shoulders with show/hide option, some attention might be turned on how armors actually look without some of the most spiky and big ones.
I will also merge this to armor skins: sheathed weapons always are positioned in accordance to body, not armor. For example, a for an armorless char (or, example, thief with duelist chest and almost any leggings) weapons will float in air, sometimes too noticably away from character.

Animations:
All of one handed weapon animations when drawn during character movement. 2-handed sword are maintained in balance during movement, while as all one-handed weapons are being abruptly swung around. This is before all case for sylvari with their strange running (even more with a speed boost) resulting what look like a really heave oversized sword being swung around like its a toothpick. By just running. Looks okay with small daggers. But not with desert eagle sized guns and swords with maces that could easily go for two-handed ones.
Added to that: there are pistols that are positioned with handheld part backwards (like they always should) but they are drawn with an opposite hand. Same with daggers – characters hold daggers upside down but somehow draw them from opposite side.
I could suggest switching daggers/pistols to the sides they are actually drawn by, and move big 1h weapons to back ( this will also cure senseless clipping of weapons being attached to side of long coats)

to be continued… (trying to get into one event dungeon with my guildies..)

Combat should be fast. Intuitive. So that every attack missed counts. Every attack dodged count. Not stupid dps vs heal pewpew dancing for minutes.
This is NOT anywhere near single person pvp game.
And to make to make the first post little bit more constructive answer following questions:
1) What kind of pvp were you in?
2) How many of your allies were near you?
3) How many allies thief had?
4) What were you doing at the moment of attack and around 10 seconds before that?
5) What were the skills on your skill bar and how many of them did you manage to use?
6) How many dodges you performed?

problem is with autotargeting and and whole targeting thing – even if spell has cast time, at the end of which projectile is released, projectile will home onto a target even if target stealthed before skill was cast.
If someone AT LEAST pressed skill button (skill itself has not been cast yet) while targeting someone, skill will ignore any vision impairment afterwards. What is most annoying, this applies also to already queued attacks (ones that are yet even to be started casting).

men. ds is there (on most thieves bars) BECAUSE
1) its largest aoe skill
2) it provides some protection during channel
3) it is one of very few aoes that are not limitied by 5 target rule.
4) given MOST players are dumb, a thief is ALWAYS more likely to encounter someone who will try to shoot him in DS = usefulness of skill increases
edit: there are people that are not only getting captured by vines, but also those that cant kill them?

80% people are still blowing their ranged cooldowns onto a spinning thief.
And do mind that it is an elite with 90 seconds cooldown. And unless you are actually shooting one, its damage is far from warrior’s or guardian’s spin. And what is cooldown on those?

Trait of vigor on steal will not be given on steal without target in range

Salvages and dyes are pretty much all that is left stable
For most other items even daily fluctuations won’t cover 15% cut

Before anything, possibilities of any class are too limited to be able to adapt to at least most situations.
In gw, it was always battle between meta builds and counters to specifically those builds. And almost any change coming to pvp there was obvious.
Here, with whole full-support role destroyed, it comes down to simply defense vs offense. By the game mechanic here, defense is always stronger, but only offense can really be pushed to extreme. In this game, build is reference to main stats and way of dealing/dealing with damage. There is no what could be called the trademark of first gw – hard counters. There is no shutdowns. No punishments. There is no individuality in any skill and trait set. Without a build-specific (not class one) rock-paper-scissors model (that should come with diversity and specializations of builds) this will all end up with silly op/nerf talk. There is no balance in being average in everything like current game promotes. It should be destroy one to be destroyed by another. That is what made Guild Wars so insanely competitive.

Nine out of ten pages of this topic exist solely because people think those 2 symbols in brackets before server name actually mean anything.
And they don’t.
Instead of Eu, Us or something else there could be QQ, GG, ZZ on any other letter combination. What would all these people write here then?

damage is not king here
Unload is too short to outlast almost any defensive ability, and too slow to be able to do enough damage before it can be countered. Applying devourer venom can counter obvious dodges but there is nothing you can do about mass of reflect/ignore projectile abilities. Basilisk venom may be an option for that, but you need to sacrifice immobile on 50% health on enemies trait to make it reliable.

I just thought that this will also apply to that air sigil proc during backstab

blocking warrior deals no damage. Guardian loses his single block with a simple sight thrown in that direction.
To remain with this name, flanking side should have some really solid get-behind thing.
I don’t if this would be op, but I would consider separating this into two chain skills.
Stab+remove boon and 3 seconds to decide when to use evade(or shadowstep?) to back + strike.

Transfers are really too much. Thousands of people transferring on everyday basis just because they can. This is not normal.
I do enjoy gameplay made by many rather small guilds, but there are just too many people that just tag around for rewards spoiling capture plans and mindlessly running after countless commander signes. Commanders should be like leaders of active wvw guilds when on wvw map, not those lonely “Hey lets destroy weather node” and “I just dropped my ballista here” guys.
I will not talk about today in termv of SFR vs Kodash vs Deso and nightcapping, I would like to just point out that Deso’s very low potetntial score during the day does not magically change into a bigger one when night falls. Before Ruin replaces primetime forces on the battlefield, those forces don’t just sit there doing nothing. They might not be getting as much points nightime shifts do, but they play very important part – they deplete supplies, take and reinforce key points.
And please, don’t make people laugh. Taking a keep during losing by 600 points at day is not same as taking a keep when scrores are even close to the night.
It just happened to be so. Eu daytime forces are there to stop your scoring. To challenge your standing. To defeat you at your prime. Nightshift is there to make us score. To destroy your remains of your standing. To defeat you at their prime.
Now, we all can only dream of the perfect wvw with all servers covering 24 hours and continious, never ending battle. Even if this will be hard, unfair, boring and unrewarding, Desolation is taking those first steps to that dream. And the only thing I regret is that there are too many prople with too many options to betray their home servers day after day, just to claim themselves to be on the winning side.
Desolation went through one collapse when week long matchups started. It will take more than just long queues to make us fall again. And if anything, it will always be the weakest leaving. First to run from queues will be those who don’t care about what is there after the wait. And there is nothing bad in that.

My thief, in one of those “fun” moments

I noticed yesterday, that at least basilisk venom stopped working at all with: shortbow1, shortbow2, pistol4, and stopped applying effect to all targets hit with: sword1, dagger4
There were no fixes noted to that, could it have become broken? Does anyone have same issues?
edit: other venoms still work as usual
edit 2: for shortbow1, basilisk will proc only if im close to target, and only for one target, as for pistol 4 it seems like daze applies from skill overwrites stun from basilisk

one thing that amuses me is that despite the fact that this game is much easier that the first one, so many more people are complaining that they cannot handle it.
This game is not even 2 months old and people are complaining about minor balance problems when devs are still working on countless technical issues. There’s thousands of thousands of players that enjoy the game even as it is.
And when I come to forums to share some experience or to find some, I must swim through senseless amount of senseless claims.
Gw1 was all about counters. You had to roll a healer with one heal, one condition and one hex removal with 5 defensive skills. You had to roll a damage with 2-3 actual skills and rest would have been counters and counters against counters.
Here – everyone has dodge. Everyone is obliged to have a heal. And everyone can have counters for anything. And where this game is easier – there is no counters against any of those counters. There are no skills that would render any of your skills (that you use to counter something) useless. At this current time, in this game, proper defense always wins against same level of offense. There is no situations in this game where you absolutely need to kill someone. But situations where you need to stay alive at all cost are everywhere.
I don’t know, but maybe all of these people can be cured by only leaving bug report and announcement section of official forums. So qqs won’t have a reason to believe they will be heard by someone from a-net on one of the gw community boards. Because that’s the sole reason for many people to come here.

pve is all about blinds, weakness and dodges. And interrupts is a nice add. = pistol offhand
Sword/pistol for extra movement, crazy auto aoe damage, built-in stun break in case you fail to dodge some
Dagger/pistol for single target weakness upkeep, and signle target blinding instant gap closer
Shortbow for aoe poison+weakness and luster bomb spam. Also extremely useful for evading for example after using haste (no endurance left to dodge) or if you used haste as stun breaker.
Sadly, as far as harder pve content goes, having just enough vit to surivive one-two hits in case you fail dodging is all you need from defensive stats and traits.

thieves are just overrated. because of:
1) few good ones that do the loving
2) and lots of really bad people getting killed bad bad ones
And it was mentioned somewhere here: You cannot make thief excel at anything but damage atm. Utility thief != support thief. I find myself speccing further and further from venom share because with all it’s potential its does not work any good with current mechanics. I stan in group of 10 people. Use basilisk. 5 get it (aoe limits). COOL. Now they charge / use buff / shatter clone. And noone noticed. 2 stacks of might? meh. Mass stealth? AoE limit. What I am now mostly as support is interrupts coupled with my own basilisk venom and ripping boons. Oh and a fast ress/impale on demand. Too bad zero of that is needed if you run with at least 10 people.
Today I ended being simply catch-that-guy thief. None of my traits or gear help me with that

how stupid of me was it to think that everyone will find a use for this
should I rename this topic to “i wasted 10 minutes trying not to come out of stealth and succeeded”?

sadly, only first hit of any multi-hit or aoe attacks will benefit from 100% crit in stealth

unmatched utility skills for his party? what might you be referring to except shadow refuge?

its not a useless build that can only do that -_- it’s my venom share build with deception skills instead of venoms. If you are patient enough you can stack enough stealth to wait out recharges, change skills and traits, and still move a considerable distance in it.
And an added bonus of sitting at 18-20 stacks of might while at it.

Houligan: i am not using any side resources and do everything myself so you will have to read to know:
30 in deadly arts and talents are: 2 might when using venom (Venomous strength), venom recharge (Quick Venoms), and 1 more use on every venom (Residual Venom).
This maximizes venom usage.
20 in critical strikes – i dont use any preci gear so this much gets me to crit rate needed for reliable use of crit procs – for first talent one I take either fury (Furious Retaliation) when I am alone with sword or Side Strike for shortbow and group situations. And shiny second talent – quickness on crit – Critical Haste – faster kills and more heals.
20 in shadow arts – cookie heals – sadly no first tier trait that benefits directly – second trait is Leeching Venoms, the key trait of the build.
I run full healing/tough/power gear (cleric’s). Depending on where you are and wether you need as much heals you can switch few items for damage ones. Currently I run full set of monk runes, because it is my support set for wvw. For purely pve purposes lyssa runes or any healing runes may do.
Sigils: fire blast for shortbow and either sword or pistol. Other weapon – stacking bonus you want – life for harder things, power for damage, luck for drops.
Skills – malice, spider venom – must have, most ticks = most heals and weakness from trait, scale venom – more damage, more weakness, haste – for those nasty times when extra heals or stun break is needed. Elite – basilisk venom (though you can have anything that suits your need there)
At around 1300 healing your malice heals around 160 per hit and each venom proc heals for 600+.
Never use poisons together, rather save them for healing.

huh. i thought prime time for eu players is starting at 8-9pm, when people get home from work. That is pretty much when I play wvw and am yet to see someone to be so much better than desolation at that time as many claim