Guild Wars 2

epandrsn.5126:

I think there are some imbalances, but I’ve really been enjoying my conditions thief. Using P/D or D/D and relying heavily on Death Blossom and dodgetrops. I only really struggle with a few specific builds, but I’ve been finding that I can 1v1 most classes without too much problem. Just use a mix of carrion/apoth. gear and bleed duration runes. Stacking 15-20 bleeds can be done faster than any other class that I’ve seen.

I played necro for about 8 months, but have just grown a bit tired of it. I used to absolutely hate mesmers, but now they are pretty simple to take down.

My biggest issue was stun lock type situations, but if you use roll for initiative, shadow step or something along those lines, you can often break it and turn around and whittle the warrior down now that he’s blown his CD’s and you can counter him.

I played it for ages when I started because everyone was running d/d and I wanted to do something different. P/D was already decent back then and both D/D and P/D condi builds are a lot better now. Thing is though, it’s way too safe and steady. You can engage or disengage at your own leisure and never really have to commit if you don’t want to. More of a low risk average reward kind of builds, which is why I grew tired of it rather fast.

Vile.5678:

I think S/P is highly under appreciated right now as it can destroy squishies with ease.

Any thief build can destroy squishies with ease. If WvW was filled with squishy players we would reign supreme because of our unsuspected burst potential. I do agree with you that S/P is rather underrated though, it can yield great rewards but it’s very high risk and pulling something off in a lot of situations requires great skill and some luck.

I guess S/D is so “overrated” (which I essentially agree with) because it functions as a counter to some classes in sPvP.

Iove.3902:

After a month’s break I came back and noticed that warriors were stronger, good. They really needed this boost to their stopping power because they were a joke before. And, I still have no problem with any class in a 1v1 as a thief. Everything seems to be okay how it is, and I’m not complaining.

Speaking of those 1v1s, Engi is still the hardest to counter, but it’s doable.

—

As for WvW, we’ve never really had a purpose in most pug zergs. We have blasts, and before the nerf to the 15pt minor trait in DA, we had perma weakness on enemy zergs. We do need some buffs to our zerg skills. I’m no zerger as I find it boring and skilless, but it’d be nice for people who like it to see some changes.

—

Yes, we’ve been nerfed, but we’re still powerful and part of the meta. We were quite overpowered for a bit of time, and this compilation of nerfs changed that. We’re still in a good spot, and can perform well and outperform most classes.

I’ve found that as a thief I’m really great in WvW when I’m fighting in small skirmishes with atleast a few teammates by my side. This way I can punish opponents for being too caught up in fighting my teammates.

But 1v1 is less optimal because most people have learned how to play against thieves and are very cautious unless they know they can take you with ease. So mostly the people I can “catch” are those that can tank or avoid my damage while slowely killing me. I don’t play S/D most of the time, so I found most bunker builds to be nothing short of immortal. Only if I can surprise interrupt their heal and/or stun them after with basilisk venom (depending on the boons) I might kill them.

I’ve been killed by bad engineers or bad necros (even the occasional warrior). They didn’t even have to try while I had to give it my all. That’s basically my major gripe with where thieves are at. You claim we are in a good spot, I found that I can get killed by bad players while I have to play on my toes because one misstep WILL get me killed.

At this point in time both in WvW and PvP the game promotes and rewards passive and defensive play/builds. I love my thief, but I don’t really enjoy sPvP or even WvW that much at the moment.

Going in aggressive is just playing into the hand of the average build atm and since I can’t stay in a prolonged fight like other classes, a lot of my fights end in a stalemate where I just run off. I can still burst some people when I surprise them, but those are becoming increasingly rare.

I can still kill glasscannon characters rather well, but those are becoming increasingly rare. If I go aggressive against anything else (even “smart” aggressive), I get punished a lot simply for trying to commit to a fight. Not saying thief is totally useless, your still a useful tool in any team (picking off stray runners or out of position players, playing mindgames, etc) but dueling or attacking a point by yourself is pointless. You only have a somewhat fair chance as S/D I guess.

A lot, if not most, of the people I encounter can not be killed fastThief is a lot worse than other classes in prolonged fights

A lot of parts are indeed easier. More checkpoints and less frustrating parts. I’m not sure how I feel about this. Part of me doesn’t mind because I hated those parts and they were a true trial of patience, part of me hates that I cursed my way through them for hours and now they are a lot easier to do, which takes away part of the pride I had that I finished them where others had not.

However, I think a lot of the “better” players underestimate how many people have problems performing multiple pixel perfect jumps. Maybe there are a few people more who can now do this content without killing themselves out of frustration, but it’s still only a smaller portion of the community who have the time and “skill” to make it. Mind you, I don’t think “skill” makes one player worth more than the other, it’s just an attribute.

So that also answers some other replies I’ve read here. You don’t just need patience for these zones, there is some skill involved. Maybe to you this seems like a matter of time before you can learn how to beat content, but you have to realize that does isn’t the case for everyone.

Ayrilana.1396:

Running W2Z1 again for my daily and the rapid part with the geysers has completely been changed. There are no more geysers except for one at the end to go through the waterfall. It now takes zero effort to go through except for one part that has a jumping stone. Nothing a single dodge roll won’t fix.

The next change is when you get to the hillbilly part, also by the entrance to the maze, I noticed a balloon checkpoint as you drop down from the cliff. Once you proceed further, you’ll see the cloud directly in front of the cave entrance.

EDIT: There is now a column that goes up the waterfall in the middle. It reaches about half way. The geyser to the hidden shop also stays up permanently.

EDIT2: There’s also a cloud at the top of the cliff as you’re about to hop across the descending logs to the final check point. The new platform has spikes in TM. The balloon for that cloud checkpoint is in a nook to the right from the checkpoint to to that area.

You’re now forced to proceed across the waterfall when both platforms are coming down at the same time. Otherwise you’ll never make it over the platform with the spikes. It kind of takes away the guesswork of when to jump now.

To be fair, if you could do normal mode w2z1 before the patch, you could also do that one on TM. The other two zones are something entirely different and much less has changed there. It’s true however that the last part was probably by far the most annoying part in that zone (doing the entire jump again everytime you got hit by a piranna or failed a jump), so guess it takes away some of the difficulty. But I doubt anyone who made it to that point would actually quit saying “this is too hard” when they are that close to the end.

So overall, I’m not sure if this all diminishes the value of our yellow skins. Maybe just a tiny bit, but I’m not too sure if people who were struggling with z2 and z3 before the patch are now suddenly rushing through it and gettign yellow skins left and right.

Dodge jump on and/or off them (press dodge and jump at the exact same time). I would love to have a single button for this because it’s a really limited timeframe and it sucks to just evade straight into the lava

Well I can see w2z1 TM being a lot easier now, but that’s not that big of a change in my opinion. I found w2z1 to be rather easy compared to the other two. In the other zones it seems like a lot of the difficulty remains. Just the occasional frog pull or frozen gank less. And 2 or 3 extra checkpoints won’t remove the difficulty of the entire zone.

So yeah arguably it seems like even w2z2 and w2z3 became somewhat easier, but it’s not it doesn’t look like it became a walk in the park now from what I’m seeing.

bookman.9260:

For the people who say the infinite coin is for convenience, honestly 50 lives will last you a good amount of time, and if you really don’t like being in Moto’s continue room for that twenty extra seconds then you don’t have the patience for Tribulation mode.

Have you tried it before a guide was out? Honestly 50 lives didn’t last you even one checkpoint mostly. Maximum two. But even then, I went for convenience. I’d rather f"arm" 30g while playing the game then go purposly farm baubbles. To each his own.

What did they change then? World 2 zone 1 wasn’t that hard anyway though, just the last part can be a real kitten because you have to climb all the way up if you fail.

What did they nerf then? I haven’t read anything they did to make it that much easier apart from one or two checkpoints? I agree that if it’s a lot easier now, you have a right to dissapointed. It took me a good amount of time and patience to get it the first time around and it wouldn’t be fair if it’s really easy now.

But I haven’t tried it myself yet, so I’m not so sure how much they changed?

Josh Foreman.8250:

Congrats. I’ll keep that in mind when I put together TM for the next world.

Josh, it was very hard and long, but not impossible. A lot of it was a learning process where you had to learn the way you had to go and do spot on jumps. However, there were a few things that bothered me in TM :

- the sometimes seemingly arbitrary knockdowns while in midair (e.g you jumped off a water geiser and if it goes down while you are in midair, it knocks you out of the air)

-some ground/wall spikes are triggered way too easily (especially since there is no way to tell where they are)

-world 2 zone 2 and 3 are very tricky because they are so long. Meaning that if you lagout or crash (which is increasingly likely the further you progress), you have to start from scratch.

-this is probably an engine problem, but I’ll mention it anyway: some jumps are really difficult to do with lower fps. I’m about recommended specs with my PC but some (e.g lava) areas gave me really low fps and for some reason on a lot of occassions you jump less far or less high because of it.

You can disregard my opinion if you like, I just thought I’d share! Great content, I enjoyed it while raging!

One more thing. Save yourself a major headache and a burn out; get the infinite coin. I bought it with ingame gold and I don’t think I would have had the heart to farm all those lives I lost in TM. Especially w2z2 and w2z3 are brutal and I wouldn’t want to do them without the coin.

I also just finished it, but sayin that it was too easy is just being a kitten towards those who are struggling. It’s not too easy, it’s rather difficult and w2 takes a lot of time to complete. Especially on your first run (with or without a video guide).

You need the infinite coin though, I did a lot of it without a guide but even with a guide you WILL die a lot of times from unexpected traps or even from failed jumps.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Ivonbeton.6814:

Well I’ve tried the digspots that people farmed (I checked some videos from the previous event), but if they had any baubles they were just single ones. I’m playing by myself, not sure if that’s affecting anything. I’ll try to find a party tomorrow.

Are you playing on Infantile? Digs were removed from Infantile.

Ah ok, that explains it all. I first played normal, but when I got a shovel I decided to backtrack in infantile to see what I missed.

KaptK.9608:

Ok have to go Zzzz, the rapids got me today but tomorrow i will have revenge. I see from other posts i just have to look harder for the baubles so will do that tomorrow.

I understand the reason for making chest rewards per account due to skin farming but i don’t really understand dig locations per account to stop bauble farming especially since those skins are account based.

In the last SAB, i spend a lot of time in there farming and came out with a lot of BBs. It meant if i wanted to i could kit up my chars happily with all the weapons i wanted.

At the moment, i don’t see how any new player to SAB can easily grab a few weapons skins from Moto with BBs and have continue coins left over to try hard mode a lot of times.

250 Baubles for 1 BB x 50 = 12500 Baubles (50 BBs) per weapon skin.

How many baubles are spread out within the 2 worlds at the moment? 1000? so we are looking at being able to afford a weapon skin every 12 days and that’s not including buying continue coins.

I’m just pointing this out as if we start finding it too hard to get skins/continue coins while playing SAB then it won’t be too good for anyone really. Plus the 1000 guesstimate of baubles would still also take ages to hunt down so time vs reward might start playing a factor too.

Just thought i’d share my worries

I haven’t played the last one, but it seems to me -like you pointed out- that farming the bubbles is a lot harder than before. So I guess I’m not the only one who was having problems getting enough bubbles. Was a bit dissapointing to get to a stage where I couldn’t continue because I couldn’t afford the candle. Good news is that when I went back there to check if I missed anything, I got there without losing that many lives. Still lost like 1 or 2, but that was a lot better compared to my first run.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Ivonbeton.6814:

I’ve been doing that, so far only got single baubles though. I’ll try to find some more spots tomorrow, thanks for the help.

Most of the dig spots are in hard to reach apparent dead ends.

Allright, as I suspected then. I was digging in harder to reach places and dead ends because I figured those were the best spots, but I didn’t get anything so I gave up. I’ll keep at it then

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Ivonbeton.6814:

So how do I afford things like the candle (which appearantly you need to progress)? I’m using a lot of my bubbles on coins. What’s the best way to get some extra?

We speed-ran world 1 today (remembering some of the dig spots and lucrative chests) and made 500 baubles, then used those to afford the torch and flute in world 2 zone 3. Don’t know if that helps.

If you’re still working on world 1: there’s guide out there (dulfy…) that show you lots of secret spots with hidden baubles.

Well I’ve tried the digspots that people farmed (I checked some videos from the previous event), but if they had any baubles they were just single ones. I’m playing by myself, not sure if that’s affecting anything. I’ll try to find a party tomorrow.

Think I found one chest so far for which I had to use a key.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Ivonbeton.6814:

So how do I afford things like the candle (which appearantly you need to progress)? I’m using a lot of my bubbles on coins. What’s the best way to get some extra?

Protip: First save up for a shovel. Then look for dig spots. There are hundreds of buried baubles in each zone.

I’ve been doing that, so far only got single baubles though. I’ll try to find some more spots tomorrow, thanks for the help.

EDIT: So far I didn’t find it too hard at all, just frustrating to collect bubbles because I have to spend a fair amount on coins to go again.

So how do I afford things like the candle (which appearantly you need to progress)? I’m using a lot of my bubbles on coins. What’s the best way to get some extra?

Vince Ste Marie.2081:

Ivonbeton.6814:

Vince Ste Marie.2081:

Ivonbeton.6814:

It’s not THAT bad, atleast the part where I am at. I seem to be “stuck” though. I never played the first time it came out and so I don’t have that many baubles. Right after fending off the assassins, there is a sign with fire and a forest. I assumed you need a bomb or torch? However I don’t have enough bubbles for those, I lost 2 coins alone trying to find a way there without buying something.

Any advice?

Candles have fire…

You don’t have to be sarcastic about it. I have to buy the candles right?

By no means am I being sarcastic. I can’t give you a definitive guide on what to do here, but I’m trying to give hints. My apologies if I came off in any other way.

If that wasn’t sarcastic (the … made me think so) then I should be apologizing. Anyways, I’ll work my way back then. I thought I was stuck seeing as I didn’t have any upgrades.

Vince Ste Marie.2081:

Ivonbeton.6814:

It’s not THAT bad, atleast the part where I am at. I seem to be “stuck” though. I never played the first time it came out and so I don’t have that many baubles. Right after fending off the assassins, there is a sign with fire and a forest. I assumed you need a bomb or torch? However I don’t have enough bubbles for those, I lost 2 coins alone trying to find a way there without buying something.

Any advice?

Candles have fire…

You don’t have to be sarcastic about it. I have to buy the candles right?

It’s not THAT bad, atleast the part where I am at. I seem to be “stuck” though. I never played the first time it came out and so I don’t have that many baubles. Right after fending off the assassins, there is a sign with fire and a forest. I assumed you need a bomb or torch? However I don’t have enough bubbles for those, I lost 2 coins alone trying to find a way there without buying something.

Any advice?

EDIT: also what’s this about hidden treasure and once a day? Where do you find those?

I’ve been getting frequent crashes since the latest patch. Even the occasional bluescreen. Sometimes I can’t even start GW2, I get a black screen which sort of flickers and I have to either CTRL+ALT+DELETE and kill the process or I have to reboot.

The bluescreen crashes where related to nvidea I recon, but I only get them with GW2 and they started after the patch. This is some relevant information in the bluescreen :

-nv4_mini.sys
-nv4_disp.dll
-PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

PopeUrban.2578:

What you need to know:

D/D lolbackstab is dead. You can still run burst, but due to changes to several traits you can’t faceplant full HP people. If you’re going to run glass burst DD you’ll need a soft target.

Shadow trap is now amazing.

Trickery builds, thanks to the GM trait rework, are now viable. Trickery builds will have a 20 sec steal CD, which functions as an interrupt, and can still proc whatever other steal traits you like. Personally I run a tanky D/D evasive brawler with Signet of Malice to passively heal while I evade. Wheras before this build was fun, it’s now completely viable when put next to dagger/pistol or sword/x as a solid 1v1 or 1vx

Also, take a moment to play with S/D and check out the boon stealing awesome in that set now, as well as looking over changes to mug and some other traits that have opened up our build options.

What you’re not going to be as a thief any more is a 1shot wonder, however, you’ve been given a lot more tools to evade, tank, and heal to run a more balanced build and survive fights, or function as an extreme boon ripper or unstealthed point holder in team settings.

Stealth is now optional rather than mandatory, basically, so you’ve got several build options depending on what you’re up to.

D/D is still very doable. It dies faster and has less safe stealthing compared to D/P, but it has greater burst and can shutdown even tankier players IF you manage to catch them off-guard. You just can’t stay in a fight, which is pretty bad in sPvP but it works great in WvW/PvE.

Depending on the situation, I only use it when it’s obvious that it’s my best option and I still use it about 60% of the time (if not more). In PvE zergs, it’s your best friend. When you are low, it’s your best friend. In WvW , it’s your best friend (the mobility aside, shooting from stealth immobilizes your target and it’s my favourite tool to catch a runner in WvW).

Only in small skirmishes, duels or Boss fights do I use my melee set. I would use it less if I would run S/P or S/D though, because those sets can do some crazy AoE damage in smaller fights aswell.

I’m not sure if I still want to play sPvP with my thief eventhough I just started. I’m not the best player, but definitely not the worst player either. Every game I enter the majority of the teams are necro/engineers and rangers (necro seems especially prominent).

On many occassions it’s impossible to make any sense of the giant red blob with gazillion minions. And even if I tried to go aggressive, I get punished by people backpeddling and spamming AoE conditions. Is there actually any point in attacking lol? At first I just went in, no matter what the odds were. Now I just steer clear from the people with an army or baiting you with sturdy AoE condition builds and try to find an ele, mesmer, warrior or other thief to duel with. Could take me a few games to actually find one, but allright.

Great video! Knew most of them, but I learned a few new tricks
I’m having a lot of difficulty chosing between S/D, D/P and D/D for WvW and or sPvP. What’s your take on the weaponsets?

I’m getting a bit sick of the AoE condition spam builds so I figured S/D to get in and out, but it feels a bit weaker unless you go S/D + S/D (and I love my SB)

Ferik.3127:

“it is very hard to play perfectly, but very easy to play mindlessly”

there is no difference between top teams and hotjoin games. Every single player can appear “skillful” in this game because in fact, every class has an insanely OP side (including the eles) but the moment they meet their “counter-play” class they are dead

There is absolutely no way to “actively counterplay your active opponent”
the only thing you can do is to actively counterplay their passive traits
except, the way traits are balanced are so narrowed and cannot be put into 1 big picture that it’s just a RNG about “which class you run into”

mesmer is UP, yes, but they can still melt ANYONE excpet S/D thief in like 3 seconds if unchecked. The fact is that there is currently no way to spot what your opponents are going to do and prepare a strategy. There is no way to nail down counter-play or execute them

This is, to some extent, true for a lot of MMO’s though. But when an MMO is atleast sort of balance, you will be able to win from a worse player even if he is your counter. This is not so much the case in GW2 though, some passive mechanics are so strong and easy that it’s near pointless and suicidal to go anything else.

It seems to me that AoE conditions (or conditions in general), massive mobility/evades and minions are some of the major issues that break the gameplay.

I only just started playing sPvP because I found the game to be unbalanced at the start and I noticed it’s a lot worse now than it was back then. I’ve encountered pretty much everything he said. Stupid AoE condition spam, too much mobility and passive gameplay.

I agree with everything he said. It would be a start to return to the power meta. And encourage active play instead of passive and random play.

I’ve only recently started playing some sPvP. Two things I noticed :

1) The downed state takes away from the action and makes an uneven fight even more uneven

2) A lot of condition builds are just silly and promote lazy play.

In GW1 conditions felt more balanced then they do in this game. I haven’t played that much, but so far every game I played consisted mainly of necromancers and engineers who spammed conditions. The necro builds are especially moronic. What’s fun about spamming AoE conditions? I just stopped attacking necros with my thief, because there passive condition play gives them an edge when you go in aggressive. There really is no strategy or skill involved and I would rather see direct damage making a comeback. The need to constantly attack makes it a more action oriented and skilled way of play.

The current meta feels a bit like the sl/sl locks in WoW. Apply dots and leech leech leech.

I’ve posted this in another thread, but because this is the exact same logical fallacy, I’ll post it here aswell :

The definition of “casual players” and “hardcore players” is rather problematic because only a minority has all the characteristics usually associated with one of the two groups.

I’ll demonstrate this by using my own case as an example. Like someone already mentioned, there are a lot of aging “mmo veterans” who are now prioritizing work or relations more than they used to. I’m one of them.

1) Casual usually also implies that a person is bad at the game. This is not the case for many of the older players, like me, who have a lot of experience in high level play (both in fps and mmo’s) and can easily adapt because of this experience.

2) Casual usually implies that a player has limited time and will only do what he really considers to be fun. To some extent this is true for me. As an older player who has seen it all before, I’m less easily persuaded to persue online goals that take a lot of time and effort. However, having less time doesn’t mean you don’t set goals and that you don’t achieve them in an equally efficient way as those who have more time to play. You just have to be more selective about the goals and have more patience. So if the same goals are achieved in a timely manner, is there any real difference? Where do you draw the line between casual and hardcore then?

3) Hardcore implies total dedication. Yet there are people who play the game often enough to not classify as casuals -according to the first two characteristics- but are not completly dedicated to the game.

As you can see, there are a lot of players that fall between the cracks when you define casual and hardcore. This dichotomy is really not durable. You might argue that the amount of time spent defines a hardcore player because this way he accumulates more experience than someone who plays a lot less. But as my example has shown, this disregards a lot of other aspects that also contribute to a player his accumulation of knowledge/experience: prior mmo experience, efficiency of the time played and perhaps also the intelligence of the individual.

tl:dr :Too many variables to talk about “casual” and “hardcore” as two seperate player groups.

Meglobob.8620:

Most Fun

Thief
Mesmer
Engineer
Ele
Guardian
Warrior
Necro
Ranger (the pet thing and constant nerfs is just sad)

Least fun

100% my list aswell

To be fair, I have played thief the most and I lack high level experience with some classes. The thing with thief however is that it can appear very stale at the start to some. It’s only when I got to a higher level and started discovering how versatile the traits are, that I started really enjoying my thief.

Haha Risen Thrall, you animal.

Knote.2904:

Believe items are coming out that allow you to swap stats and stuff so this shouldn’t be an issue.

I hope so. I’ve lost atleast 500 gold on runes and transmutions alone. I hope atleast cultural armor gets more than one use. Not that much to ask considering it’s price.

The definition of “casual players” and “hardcore players” is rather problematic because only a minority has all the characteristics usually associated with one of the two groups.

I’ll demonstrate this by using my own case as an example. Like someone already mentioned, there are a lot of aging “mmo veterans” who are now prioritizing work or relations more than they used to. I’m one of them.

1) Casual usually also implies that a person is bad at the game. This is not the case for many of the older players, like me, who have a lot of experience in high level play (both in fps and mmo’s) and can easily adapt because of this experience.

2) Casual usually implies that a player has limited time and will only do what he really considers to be fun. To some extent this is true for me. As an older player who has seen it all before, I’m less easily persuaded to persue online goals that take a lot of time and effort. However, having less time doesn’t mean you don’t set goals and that you don’t achieve them in an equally efficient way as those who have more time to play. You just have to be more selective about the goals and have more patience. So if the same goals are achieved in a timely manner, is there any real difference? Where do you draw the line between casual and hardcore then?

3) Hardcore implies total dedication. Yet there are people who play the game often enough to not classify as casuals -according to the first two characteristics- but are not completly dedicated to the game.

As you can see, there are a lot of players that fall between the cracks when you define casual and hardcore. This dichotomy is really not durable. You might argue that the amount of time spent defines a hardcore player because this way he accumulates more experience than someone who plays a lot less. But as my example has shown, this disregards a lot of other aspects that also contribute to a player his accumulation of knowledge/experience: prior mmo experience, efficiency of the time played and perhaps also the intelligence of the individual.

tl:dr :Too many variables to talk about “casual” and “hardcore” as two seperate player groups.

I’m not with Sir Vincent III on this one. I’m a veteran thief. Allthough I took a break for a very long time, I’ve spent most of my time playing thief.

I’ve had discussions about this everywhere. On this forum, ingame (with skilled thief players) and on gw2guru. Most people will indeed always claim that zerker is the only way for thief. I still prefer having a lot of vitality and a small amount of extra toughness. I’ve played scholar runes and full zerk, but I went back to divinity with some valk items (jewellery full zerk though). The damage is less than when going full zerk, but it’s still good dps. Your autoattacks crit way less though, that’s the major downside. I can roam in WvW (different traits and utilities though) and go anywhere in PvE with the same builds.

For easy PvE or coordinated groups in harder content I would suggest d/d and full zerker. For a more versatile build (e.g WvW, PvE, solo, big events etc) I would advise some extra vitality and toughness atleast. You can get away with full zerker when you know what to expect, yet it’s not the expected but the unexpected that kills you and for that I prefer some passive mitigation.

Most versatile and useful weaponsets imo are D/P, S/D and S/P. Highest DPS is D/D though.

colesy.8490:

I bring in moa literally just for scumbag thieves who want to stealth then 2222222 and stealth and run when losing.

Any thief spamming heartseeker will probably lose even to an afk player tbh…

Six.8051:

Initially, I was excited for fractals, the idea behind them sounded so appealing. Finally! there was something in GW2 that felt somewhat challenging! I pounded through them religiously for the first few weeks to get to fractal 40 only to find myself with over 400+ fractals completed, 2 bank tabs filled with infused rings I didn’t need and eventually sold for the crappy 4s they are worth, and yet I still only saw 3 fractal weapons ever: 2 harpoons and 1 rifle… on a guardian -_- thanks Anet…

I gave up. RNG to that extent is not the proper way to implement a reward system for a dungeon that had so much potential to survive in the long run.

At this point, I’m not sure if praying to the Gods will help revamp the rewards system for fractals, but something needs to change before they add more maps into it. If not, I’ll run ‘em once for the new story content, and quickly leave them to rot again once I’m done.

Sincerely,
- A disappointed fractal farmer retiree

I’m in the same boat. When they came out I rushed them like crazy. At the start it was a lot of fun because it felt like a challenge and while most people were getting on lower levels, I collected a bunch of good and devoted players around me and we kept progressing. But after a week or two, they not only became very repetitive, there was no real incentive for me to keep progressing. The rewards were not really worth it, and what was first actual different kinds of difficulty (e.g different Boss fights and mechanics) soon became a matter of different degrees of difficulty.

At first it was a matter of innovating to make progress, but because nothing essential changed you could use the same “tricks” or builds at the next difficulty level to some extent. So there was no incentive to beat the content on an intellectual and skill level, nor was there any incentive when it came to rewards. I stopped at halfway to 40 and didn’t play for over 8 months after.

I recently came back and little has changed, the rewards are still mediocre at best and to top it off the skins (one of the reasons I would actually consider “grinding” fractals) are still so RNG that getting the right one is just a cause for frustration (or a cause for joy for the lucky few).

In short, I still love how fractals made me innovate my game when it first came out, but the lack of anything similar or the lack of rewards (perhaps to make up for the first flaw) make it a stale experience after a few weeks of doing fractals. I was happy with Liadri because it offered a similar challenge as the one I had when fractals first came out.

Arganthium.5638:

Ivonbeton.6814:

Arganthium.5638:

Hype.8032:

I think dancing dagger should move faster and cripple longer to make it worth using. As far as the other suggestions, I don’t use those skills/traits now and I still wouldn’t after those changes. When I look at suggestion threads I’m wanting to find things that will improve our weaker weapon sets.

5s is a pretty good amount of cripple for a skill that you can use over and over again with little cost. I remember using DD yesterday on some practice golems while waiting for a tourney, and I managed to throw a ton of them before initiative started becoming much of a problem.

I do agree with the speed change, or at least a change to the cast so it’s not some big windup skill.

Agreed. Allthough I think a lower initiative cost would also make it more worthwhile to use.

Eh. 3 initiative tends to be fairly cheap unless you’re pure GC. It’s really not all that much tbh.

It’s reasonable, but for only 5s of cripple, I wouldn’t call it cheap. I guess it wouldn’t be so much of an issue if it indeed was faster moving. Right now I sometimes press it twice by accident simply because the slow movement makes me think I didn’t go off yet.

Zepidel.5349:

Zergs.9715:

Zepidel.5349:

Stop reading after you werent using full zerker. What r u doin M8?

Sorry can’t imagine myself playing something that needlessly glassy.

Have you not be in the 1000’s of threads were its basically proven that active mitigation via dodging/invuln/stealth etc…. is a million times more valuable than passive mitigation via more HP / toughness?

You might be able to shave 3-5k off of that backstab/eviscerate/heart seeker with toughness and vit, but you can shave ALL of it off with 1 dodge. Meaning the better someone is the more the tend to higher dps gear with more active mitigation.

Don’t condemn yourself to mediocracy through vit/toughness gear, and instead learn how to get better at that game. This IS the side effect of no trinity.

I have had some discussions about it after which I switched to full glass cannon again. Though it is indeed preferable in an ideal situation where you can see everything coming and anticipate to avoid major damage, I have found that there are a lot of situations where a glass cannon is vastly inferior to something a bit more sturdy.

Some aoe or skills are just near impossible to dodge unless you can anticipate them, which can be very tricky in a situation which isn’t a 1v1. I think the case for a glass cannon build has been severely overstated. Sure packing passive mitigationis a safety net which you don’t need in a lot of situations, but I still found it can be extremly valuable in other situations.

It ofcourse depends on your build. Getting defensive stats is more pointless on more mobile and elusive builds, but can be very handy in others. I’ve even found that with some builds my DPS is better because I can take a punch and don’t have to run and evade 24/7.

Azerty keyboard

Main skills : F / E / M4 / M5 / M3
Utility : A / X / C / V
Elite : 1
Dodge : Shift

Arganthium.5638:

Hype.8032:

I think dancing dagger should move faster and cripple longer to make it worth using. As far as the other suggestions, I don’t use those skills/traits now and I still wouldn’t after those changes. When I look at suggestion threads I’m wanting to find things that will improve our weaker weapon sets.

5s is a pretty good amount of cripple for a skill that you can use over and over again with little cost. I remember using DD yesterday on some practice golems while waiting for a tourney, and I managed to throw a ton of them before initiative started becoming much of a problem.

I do agree with the speed change, or at least a change to the cast so it’s not some big windup skill.

Agreed. Allthough I think a lower initiative cost would also make it more worthwhile to use.

I’d say there were only two real difficulties for a thief once you mastered the general mechanics of the fight and both can be solved rather easily :

1) Sustain during the first phase can be annoying. The camera makes it hard to dodge Liadri’s attacks at some points. Solution : A lot of things work, I went with Shadow Rejuv trait and I tried c/d on things when I got low. Be careful though, stealth can mess up more than it does good.

2) Cripple during the second phase : Just take the trait which removes cripple on dodge

Anyways, guess it’s too late now :p

It’s not that hard to learn how to play a thief half decent, but it has one of the highest skill ceilings in the game. There is no clear cut way on how to play in different situations, unlike with some (if not most other classes).

Which is why I like this class so much, more possibilities.

I recently started playing again. So far I’ve loved most of the living world episodes. I’ve always been very busy, so I don’t have a grasp on how long these episodes typically last.

I will be busy till about the 30th of august so I can’t really spare the time to get the 13 invasion achievement untill then. So I was wondering, how long will this (or by estimation) living world episode last? I’ve never owned an infinite tonic in GW1, so I was looking forward to getting one here.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Funny thing, earlier today I actually made myself a valkyrie set since I changed the build to get fury.

Anyway, there is something that I don’t think anyone else mentioned, but I only skimmed so forgive me if I missed it:

Dead enemies deal no damage.

That is the main appeal of going with full zerker or full offense for any and every build. Though you can get more survivability with other gear, the fact is that the longer an enemy is alive, the more damage they do. So if you can choose between taking twice as many hits or killing an enemy twice as fast, killing an enemy twice as fast will give you roughly the same amount of survivability.

There are couple of fringe benefits, too. Killing things faster means you get more money and materials at a faster rate. You can also do more, since less of your time is occupied by hitting against a wall of HP. In contrast, when building for defense you aren’t accomplishing anything spectacular while doing so.

Probably the biggest advantage to zerker is that defensive stats aren’t needed for most content. I’ve been running a zerker thief for awhile in dungeons, and I can take on multiple silver mobs and champions alike. The better I get, the less defensive stats I need, and the more I can contribute because of it.

For most content I guess you could call defensive stats indeed just lazy, but I’ve never felt like my damage gets so much worse when I take 3 zerker + 3 valk and divinity runes compared to going full zerker with e.g ruby orbs. At the same time I did feel like my survivability improved. Ofcourse I’m not advocating going full defensive, but I can’t see how taking a few pieces of defensive gear will hurt you.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Just because players are level 80 doesn’t mean they are high level players. What I mean is, every level 80 Thief is at different levels. Those who just reach level 80 typically use ranged weapons and survivability because dying is no fun.

…

About Berserker vs Valkyrie, I personally like Valkyrie since to me, Vitality is more valuable than Precision since I am using S/D and not D/x. My reasoning is simple, better staying power = better prolonged DPS. Berserker brings a lot of burst damage that often causes problem in a group because it generates a lot of hate, especially from a boss, which typically the Thief will go down as a result. Unless the Thief is an ascended thief, he’ll know how to drop hate and not die. The problem with too much damage is that you’ll get aggro too often that a lot of times you’ll find yourself dodging and healing than actually dealing damage, but of course the high level thieves will not have this problem. Since sword attacks already deals a high amount of damage, it would be absurd to push it even further by gearing Berserker. I personally rather maintain a stable DPS with occasional burst damage on demand rather than burst-dodge-burst-dosge-heal, because in the end, the DPS for the whole fight is almost the same if the Berserker thief don’t go down; but if they did, there goes their DPS and the DPS of the one who is rezzing them.

Don’t worry, I’ve read it all. I consider myself to be atleast a fairly good player., atleast at PvE When Fractals came out, I pretty much carried myself and a whole bunch of random players to level 30+. At one point I had over 50 people on my friends list and constantly whispers of people asking if I was starting a group. So I must be doing something right atleast.

The second point you made, is exactly one of the reasons why I value passive mitigation on a thief higher than (what seems to be) most people. I find that I can tank some more damage without needing to stop melee dps, heal up, or roll away. If this is the case, would my dps really be lower than with full zerker gear? At one point I was running signet of malice with a sigil of blood and even with my kitten precision I could heal up a lot of damage without the need to avoid it, thus increasing my dps. I’ve had many Boss fights where I felt a lot more useful because of this setup.

Perhaps there is no definite answer and different gear sets are better at different situations, but I think there are some real questions there about the current “zerker or go home” meta.

Anelyn.4593:

The thing is for a thief in order to achieve the stats to survive such a hit with 1-2k hp, you are giving up all of your offensive stats, which means pretty much you don’t justify your spot in the group.

There are very few fights where you need to outlast the content and wear it down.

For example let’s look at AC ghostbuster final boss. The difference between downing the boss with 3 or less traps and having to reload the traps several times is huge.

I also don’t recall (please correct me if I am wrong) any encounter where you must have a gear check regarding survival and ability to take that 1 hit which you can’t avoid (ie: scripted attacks which can’t be avoided, blocked, absorbed, interrupted etc).

I would love to have a viable build in pve with more survival as well as having more skill based encounters where different utilities matter and group synergy is more important than stacking X or Y and burning target down asap, but until this changes thief is pretty much limited to D/D for single target where backstab can be used reliable, P/P for ranged only fights, and S/P for any fights involving adds as part of encounter.

I think you are overstating it. With divinity runes and half or full valkyrie gear you give up roughly 100 power and 5-10% crit chance depending on the amount of valkyrie items. In return you get 2-3k health extra, 60 toughness and about 60+ healing. Especially with diminishing returns, isn’t this worth considering?

From what I’ve seen when I test it, the damage is close to the same.

Anelyn.4593:

No is not really. 16-17k hp even with 2.5k toughness means nothing when you take a hit from a boss or several trash mobs (because of pug bad position / spreading out the mobs / not using abilities / skills etc).

Your survival as a thief is all about timing, position, awareness and reaction. That’s why we have so many evades on weapon sets, as well as on whitdraw, roll for initiative, so many stun breakers (and teleports) etc. Not to mention many boss hits knock you down for several seconds, which means even if you can survive the hit, you will still have to use a different skill to teleport to a safe location to not get OHK from next attack – meaning is best always to not get hit at all.

Example: when am doing dungeons on my engi, 18k hp, 2.7k armor, I always avoid getting hit because I have no stunbreakers and no teleports, so even if I theoretically could get a hit without flopping, I better make sure I don’t xD

I’m not sure why, but I seem to have different experiences than you guys. I rarely ever go down in dungeons or fractals (if ever) unless my group whipes, but I can’t count the amount of times I got knocked to 1k or 2k health. Ofcourse dodging and stunbreaking is massively important, especially on a thief, but not every ability or attack is being telegraphed.

Anelyn.4593:

One of the reasons thieves die fast or often in dungeons PUG, is because the party has no teamwork / strategy.

How many times did you corner pull into blind field trash mobs just to have a guardian or mesmer knock them back as soon as they enter in it xD Or you drop SR to ress someone and the person attacked by boss runs straight into it to cancel the ress and get everyone cleaved etc.

I have no problem surviving in full zerker as long as the group is competent. On top of that you can’t make a solid defensive build with high toughness and HP, and good damage (like a condi engineer or necro for example) on a thief.

You make a good point. I guess zerker is better when playing with good players while some added survivability can be useful when playing with a bad PuG. Content automatically gets difficult when your team is bad.

I still feel like the trade-off with divinity runes and a few Valkyrie pieces can be very much worth it. You can get upwards of 16-17k health and somewhere around 2500 toughness in exchange for 10% crit chance and 100/200 power.