Guild Wars 2

Substance E.4852:

Lord Kuru.3685:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Elite specializations are just another build option. They’re not necessarily better than the existing builds, they just present different play style and build opportunities.
If you’re running a good build you should still be able to counter most things that people can throw at you. Understanding the elite specs would be a smart place to understand, but the only disadvantage you’re at is that you can’t use an elite spec (which is only a disadvantage if you wanted to use one).

Totally false. Elite specializations were advertised as “just another build option” but the reality is that having them makes you significantly stronger.

In sPvP? Yes, undoubtedly. Anet was shameless in their intentional power creep to get the pvp crowd to purchase the xpac.

In WvW things aren’t so black and white. Some builds are better but some still rely heavily on base skills and traits to the point that not having the elites won’t make a huge impact.

You’re still going to be using a staff on Ele for example.

And that staff ele is much stronger with tempest traits and utilities. Doesn’t have to be full HoT build, for example staff ele now with HoT heal and reflect on utility has better survival than vanilla ele, add excellent dmg in melee with overloads, heals/condi cleanse and stab with overloads. While there are few builds that need vanilla traits for certain situations, big majority are better off with HoT elites.

I always considered AR as an experience based entry barrier for higher lvl fractals. New player doesn’t have AR so he will die in higher lvl fractals where he would be a problem for rest of the group anyway.

onevstheworld.2419:

Farm SW for chests and bags, then open them on a level 50-55 alt. That’ll net items that can be salvaged for linen and the equivalent leather, wood and metal too.

OP, this is all you need to do.

Kokomi.7183:

I see it all the time and for me those are the groups to ignore because they are usually composed of people that are either passive aggressive or straight up hostile. This is a video game and games are meant to have fun, sure fractals aren’t really that fun anymore when you have done it for the millionth time, but those attitudes doesn’t make it any better either.

Nobody talks about those all welcome cookies love everywhere lfg’s with new players, which tend to turn hostile as well the moment things don’t go right. Or how fast newbies kick anyone that joined their “pls halp” party while they don’t even know why they are kicking.

There is a lot of aggression and hostility in pugs but for whatever reason people mention only the 5k+ ap parties.

gavyne.6847:

I’ve always wondered why they don’t give you an option to select for hacking. We’re told to pick “botting” for literally everything. Someone wasting supplies & building troll siege? Select botting. Someone using warp hacks? Select botting. Someone exploiting a broken mechanic ingame, report as botting.

Doesn’t really instill confidence anything would be done when you can’t even report people properly.

Perhaps because 90% of reports are from people who have no clue of what is legit in the game and what requires 3rd party program.

Now give those people actual report option for hacking … plague in anet HQ’s.

They could scrap dungeons as they are atm and make them new fract maps.

Vinceman.4572:

Start to pug path 3. It is the easiest path till the end. Colossus Rumblus (the last boss) could be a little annoying for newer players but when Grast (one of the npcs) is with you, you can faceroll kill the boss in a corner. With proper groups you will later on just run to him and kill him on the spot.
Path 1 is the second easiest path, again only one hurdle: A burrow event during the middle of the run. New players don’t get the exact spots and the order of appearing burrows so it could be a bit frustrating. After finishing this event, the rest is faceroll again, even the last boss.
Path 2 is a bit harder and I won’t recommend to pug it with newer players if you are also not experienced. There are people in this game who are too stupid to understand some mechanics in this path and then it will become a mess in there.

Not everyone is stupid, some just don’t speak english.

Rather amusing that this discussion still crops up. With the lower dungeon population caused by dungeon gold nerf, it’s the elitist at the mercy of the casual crowd. Nobody joins the party for ages so even the most toxic dirty elitists out there are tempted to lower their requirements.

Then the low ap’s join and drive the much hated elitist zerker to insanity. You want me to stand on geysir to spawn tar? Ha! First hold my hand while I attack every single ooze on the way. You talking to me? Sry, I can’t use keyboard, well, unless I need to turn. After you escort me to safety, I shall explore surrounding areas and if I am lucky, I get back to the ooze infested spot to see the exact place you died 17 times while trying to rez me.

When your blood pressure is through the roof and you contemplate unstalling gw2, I, the poor, hurt and innocent player low ap player still have enough energy to write on forums about you and your cruel lfg

You don’t want to play with me sir, you earned my deepest hate.

Swagger.1459:

All this for beating scripted AI.

High to moderately populated wvw server provides sufficient number of player AIs to farm for ascended as well. Press 1 for success.

Iris Ng.9845:

I have to disagree about the “hard gated” thing. My casual guild only killed VG two weeks ago. We used two druids on every kills then as a safety pad. We always phased at 6:50 to 7:05 minutes on the timer. Since last week, we had to pug for Gors because we cannot get everyone during the week days. Nailed it. The catch? I keep doing gear check, skill check, role check, faq check every single member, every single time. It’s not about being hardcore or casual. My guild succeeded by bringing the right mindset.

There are also those super casual guilds, like mine, that grew up on dire, stealth and carry from others.

I tried, really tried with my guild, got them builds, explained the fight over and over. Then on VG everyone runs around like a chicken. TS doesn’t help, explaining stuff again doesn’t help, everything check doesn’t help.

For people like my guildies, raids are not “hard gated”, it’s more like an impenetrable wall.

Quetzalcoatl.7498:

My problem with the door is there is absolutely no reason for it anymore, and I would say there never was one. I hate being in a group that gets stuck on something (high lvl cliffside for example) and 3 people in the party get to decide for me that I’m done trying and I should lose all of my progress.

If you are done trying, then leave party, so that those who want to keep trying can get new people and continue without losing all of their progress that they worked for.

Remove the door please!!!

Was in some parties where people accidentally clicked on the door and whole party ported back without reward. Stuff like this happens. But what you mentioned bugs me more because the guy that clicks on the door kittens up whole party even of nobody else agrees to return to lab. People are fighting or doing something and this msg keeps popping up in middle of the screen. I am always near smashing the monitor when we are killing kraits and the last kitten lord that joined the party decides that he is either too afraid of water or realises that underwater weapons actually exist in the game.

Sourde Noire.5286:

Well, maybe because RTL has a 40s CD if you use it to travel along the map. And maybe because a discussion about ‘which weapon should I use in X’ usually revolves around, you know, applying those weapons to things to kill them, so I don’t see some mobility out of combat as a selling point.

And what out of combat benefit does scepter hold, I wonder, save for pre-combat Might stacking?

Since when pre-combat might stacking is not enough to keep a scepter in the inventory? The blasts are awesome even for other fields ele + thief are amazing for skips and the blasts are available without leaving fire att as well, which is super nice in places like AC p3.

OP asked about general pve that for me is more than dpsing a mob. There are always plenty of people that fail even to get to that mob because they are either not aware of their class options or are too lazy to use them.

Sourde Noire.5286:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Ele is the class that to me feels like a master of all weapons, not just one. OP, if you are on a budget, get staff first but if you can afford to buy more, one of each – staff, scepter, focus, warhorn and 2 daggers.

Imo, the really nice thing about staff is that you have awesome range with it but it’s good in melee too.

Right. Scepter is pretty garbage though. So are the Dagger offhand skills because of the redunculous CDs.
I mean, I also have all weapons in my inventory because you never know. But in PvE all you really need is a Staff and Dagger/Warhorn if you want to go for Fresh Air. Focus has some nice defense if you really need it but eh.

Even if dagger offhand has long cd’s, why shouldn’t I use the ones I want (ie RTL) when it’s not on cd? Same with scepter etc.

In combat, I play 95% staff, outside of combat, I just use what I need. Even average thief knows bow is great for moving around the map. Ele has offhand dagger, doesn’t mean the ele has to use offhand dagger on mobs too.

Not everyone has been playing wvw for years, the newer players usually care about points.

Due to high popularity, gem shop will have a personal version of cloaking fountain for mere 10k gems.

Lawrencii.1356:

Well you have to be foken bored to go kill PvE players at the OS JP. Maybe next time have some PvE guilds to test any future JP’s in there.

My guild leader loves OS, he goes there every few days just to feel sorry about good old times.

Ele is the class that to me feels like a master of all weapons, not just one. OP, if you are on a budget, get staff first but if you can afford to buy more, one of each – staff, scepter, focus, warhorn and 2 daggers.

Imo, the really nice thing about staff is that you have awesome range with it but it’s good in melee too.

Exciton.8942:

I am thinking about getting into WvW with ele and want to play frontline.
Obviously the idea of going shout/aura share/soldier rune is quite nice.

But I am also interested in the possibility of going cleansing water/durability rune. Would that also work out? Because in addition to zerging, I also want to roam with 1-2 friends. It would be great if I can accomplish both with one set of runes.

I’ve recently put soldier runes on my cele set and it’s very nice in roaming/small party as a D/D ele. I wouldn’t play cele with any runes for a zerg frontline anywhere higher than T8. Cele ele with those runes has about the same HP as a zerker warrior so anytime enemies chain cc your group, ele can die very easily. No you won’t outheal the dmg, once your stab is gone you can’t even overload due to cc.

Between d/f and d/w, d/f is generally better but if the group (talking small party roaming) has no water fields and has 2 or more ele, one should go d/w. One water field is like a magic.

Shout build is very nice in small fights but turns into a ping pong ball in zerg vs zerg.

Roxanne.6140:

I went play DS one day and sees in my Lane no chrono at all. We hit mobs look okay but meh. Then another day I went again same Lane but I sees purple chrono skills. I stand in purple things and then mobs die faster I think so is still good and happy

Edited for expression

lmao

Well, what would people do if there was no grind in the game?

Leap on bound is the main reason I use it for my s/p staff thief, while 6k crits on dodge are a nice icing on the cake, with no leap, I wouldn’t slot the trait over dash.

Zodryn.4216:

I’d gladly take a small DPS hit for more range on Vault. But just because it does a lot of damage, that doesn’t mean it should have poor range. There’s a good reason D/P is still preferred over Staff. It’s harder to stick to your target, and Vault is extremely telegraphed.

Gun Flame Has insane damage, and is a long range attack, but it is not complained about that much because of how telegraphed it is. 800 range Vault isn’t going to break anything.

gun flame https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Gunflame-needs-adjusting/first#post5987021

I’d rather increase distance on staff 3 then range on vault. Vault itself is already a hard hitting aoe skill with evade, it does not need more reasons to be used over other staff skills.

Lower dps on vault would affect thief in pve, which might not be of interest for you but other thieves do play pve as well.

garland.5193:

All those new armours require a massive PvE grind, which isn’t going to happen from me.

Focus vs warhorn… There was a big argument about that last night in chat. You think Focus is a better option?

auramancer works well with a mix of cleric and soldier, you need to get your HP bit higher than the basic or you’d melt in one burst.

WH or focus, I’d go with WH if the group lacks water fields but with focus you have some nice utility skills and invul which is incredible when kitten happens.

Alex Shatter.7956:

Ummm the auras look better now imo. I like the subtle, glassy texture. The other ones were gaudy. Fireball is still dumb but the new aura is great.

I like the new auras too.

My necro and ele, the armour on necro isn’t really gentle looking but I don’t have the time to change that. If you want gentle looking character, avoid very dark or light colours, such as black hair or vampire pale skin.

Why was the other leader kicked out?

I like the idea.

Make a toon of each light class, go pvp and try them. Anything works in open world pve so it’s better to go with a class you enjoy most. I used to main thief for 2yrs and friends told me I’d love mesmers. Instead necros bore me to death and mesmer gameplay is a pure torment for me but you might enjoy the instant threesome that comes with mesmer :P

Oxidia.8103:

I have a feeling that even before your downed state skill bar appears you press 2 in frenzy. That results in mist form. When you press mist form, combat log says you heal yourself to full health because you tehnicaly are not downed, but after 3sec of mist form you get to down state again reciving full dmg (the amount of health you have). Like danikat wrote.

This is very annoying when the player presses weapon skill 2 just before getting downed and as a result unintentionally wastes mistform cd.

Cobrakon.3108:

I can’t count the number of times I popped a SR over someones head to save them and save the team from death, or been the last survivor that takes out the boss etc. Thief has a good amount of utility but lacks some of the group buffs other classes have. I think with speed runs, thief is at a bit of a disadvantage. In Speed Runs, people in theory need to be rescued less because the content has been mastered. So then IT becomes more about classes that can sustain High DPS while take trash damage, or providing some sort of protection or buff to maximize damage.

But lets be honest the Dungeons become far too easy. Even Fractals becomes trivial.
I believe a great deal of thief’s usefulness depends on the level of difficulty for the group. So for speed runs, don’t expect to be meta per se, unless there is a part that remains difficult or a part that you can help a group skip with SR etc.

Also note that a good thief can deal out good sustain damage but has to work at it a bit harder. I know some people think Damage meters would be detrimental, but it would be fun to see some of the faces that frowned having a thief in their party, then seeing the numbers.

Knowing a class does high dmg doesn’t always help. Why? Before HoT, the thieves in parties we either 1. noobs that just got the game 2. exp thieves that were useful to the parties. Yeah sure you got that high ap noob from time to time too but most thieves knew what to do, blinds on trash, smokescreen, skips. Now in dungeons the first category still exists, but the 2nd transformed into vault only class. No blinds, no smokescreen, no mob pathing. I can see the guys know the dungeon but they simply don’t bother with party support.

Sansarah.3076:

I do understand quite well that I am speaking to deaf ears atm. Again GW2 is for casual players which should have access to all the content as a non-casual, it’s the same in wvw, spvp, pve, fractals, why not raids as well.

You are the one who seems not to listen to others. It might be hard for you to believe but even those without super organised guilds can be non-casual, some of these lone players are better than vast majority of the community, they put time into getting gear and improving their skills. Why do you think these people should be lock out of raids for the one reason that they are currently not part of community that can squeeze out 10 players anytime they want to raid?

If you are consider yourself non-casual because you are in a guild that has sufficient numbers for raids, then what is the difference between such guildies and pugs from lfg? Just bodies to fill the party.

The precision thief combat offers, you can really pull of some good tricks with the class.

You can learn to predict but high ping is still a big handicap with thief. I used to have alt account in NA and the difference in gameplay was massive vs my EU account which has 40ping. I just eventually gave up on thiefing in NA.

If you consider only npc killing time, zerker staff ele is fastest but tends to blow up big time if anyone comes around to defend the camp.

And keep tagging during rez to cause sufficient damage to down the rezzer.

2-in1 :P

onevstheworld.2419:

There are 2 types of slots:

This is what causes most confusion.

healer tempest is easier to use than druid

HighGuy.2794:

Leablo.2651:

You really want us to make 16 extra clicks?

…Really? It’s clicking a mouse, not hefting a couch up a flight of stairs.

That said, if you move the vendor window down and line the envelope up with the “Accept” button it’s really not an issue.

My wrist disagrees.

Some of the black lion skins they’ve added recently are pretty good.

Rasimir.6239:

There are also several rare crafted weapon sets below level 80 that have unique skins, like the dredge weapons and the ogre weapons , als well as exclusive skins found on karma merchants like the jotun greatsword , the wooden sword , or the charr meatoberfest chalice (which shares skins with a rare exotic named focus).

I use dredge staff skin on one of my ele’s staffs, jotun gs for my warr/guard. It’s quite amusing how many people think that the best = the flashiest looking skin. Once a guy insisted on me pinging my staff in a regular SE p3 cos he didn’t believe someone would put dredge skin on asc weapon.

reapex.8546:

BloodyNine.7504:

The funny thing is I would much prefer the opposite. I would much rather someone admit they don’t know and encounter or event and ask for help. Rather than them say nothing and screw it up out of ignorance. Anyone that gives you crap because you ask for help, or more information, or general tips. They are an kitten.

I agree, I wouldn’t join any group that looked down on people asking for help.

From what OP wrote, it seems to me like he did something wrong while trying to be invisible man in party.

Cynz.9437:

Most moaning comes from mesmers anyway, i don’t understand why even. Yeah, thief had slight advantage over mes for a while but it was never as bad as guards hardcountering thieves for years.

Funny enough, if mes complains about thief, it is justified. If thief complains about guards or scrappers, it is st*u l2p.

Took less than 10mins after patch for my 2 mesmer guildies (both dire) to complain about thieves being op. The guild chat reminded me what thief forums used to look ages ago. They only quit qqing after I told them to log to their thieves and play that class.

Junkpile.7439:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

joneirikb.7506:

Saw someone suggest a middle ground, where each stack of stability when hit made you immune from further CC for 1-2 seconds. So 5 stacks of stability gave you at least 5 seconds of no CC. But don’t really know how it would work out, since I’ve never been part of organized fight stuff.

Imo, this suggestion is the best so far. Old stab made melee invaluable but with current stab they just get shredded to pieces instantly.

So warrior would push couple buttons and 15 no cc. Haha sounds balanced. Could work if they remove stability share from game and best stab skill would give only 5 stacks.

Sure with the current number of stacks that change would be too good. My idea of this is: reduce stab stacks through the game and reduce stab stacks gives to allies, for example the player gets 5 stacks, gives only 3 to allies. If they would cut stab share completely from the game, no need to take guardians into teams.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Laraley.7695:

Conncept.7638:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Conncept.7638:

Or, maybe, since we won’t be able to have all three defensive stats simultaneously anymore, they will finally give the ele the reasonable defensive baseline it has needed since launch to ever have more than one build.

Yes, but they’re not doing that. All we get is a Shatterstone buff and a bad diamond skin rework. Remember, 100% of the time when Anet “previewed” balance changes, those were 100% of the changes.

I’d rather suffer through an entire PvP season with nothing to do with my Ele than go through who knows how many more seasons with one single build. And in the end, that may just be what it takes to get the developers to finally admit their design mistakes concerning the ele and the attunement system.

And then what? They’ll probably just readd celestial. Do you think they’re actually capable of reworking the class? They know the issues now. If they wanted to fix them, they would do it already.

Ele was garbage, they buffed celestial, problem solved.

Yeah I can already predict how it’s gonna go down:

1. Ele is pure utter garbage for a whole season, people flame you for even playing it.
2. Anet reintroduces celstial amulet with 5% less stats, says it’s king of game design.
3. Elementalist is playable again but OP because of how the class works
4. People cry for ele nerfs
5. Anet removes celestial amulet
6. Ele is useless again for a whole season.
7. ANet reintroduces celestial amulet with a 10% stat nerf.
…

in 10yrs they might get the % right

Jana.6831:

Azukas.1426:

What you think and what reality is are 2 different things.

I’m pretty sure I know more about thief than you do being a mesmer main.

That’s likely, but you still know nothing about thief. So I don’t get your attitude in this thread. Either be constructive or leave.

So far that mesmer invader has made more sense than you, while your reaction to him is l2p/make thief or leave.

Reem.3578:

Yeah soloQing will be tough with all these rerolling new thieves. I’m afraid it’ll start the the whole cycle of crying “TEEF OP!11” in the forums>attention from the devs>nerfs, all over again. I once read an amazingly true and amusing sentence about thieves (i can’t remember who said it :/). It was like: “thieves are extremely effective against new/low skilled players” *I guess this is what mesmers are afraid of jk about mesmers, but i still dunno what they all are crying about. It’s not even patch day, they haven’t even tried playing it yet and they already cry that thief got OP and they’re UP. *
Btw one of the things i like in gw2 is that it has micro-communities and in-game politics in it like i’ve never seen in any mmo :P The mesmers-thieves relationship is a perfect example for that It makes the game much more serious and funny at the same time XD

It’s like an unwritten personality requirement to play a mesmer, they cry about being UP under any circumstances while blaming thief for completely countering mesmer class. Even if there is no thief around.

joneirikb.7506:

Saw someone suggest a middle ground, where each stack of stability when hit made you immune from further CC for 1-2 seconds. So 5 stacks of stability gave you at least 5 seconds of no CC. But don’t really know how it would work out, since I’ve never been part of organized fight stuff.

Imo, this suggestion is the best so far. Old stab made melee invaluable but with current stab they just get shredded to pieces instantly.

higher tiers kill my ping

With the amount of bs in the game, I don’t see why venom share is still not okay in gvg’s. Few chronos can wipe the other guild with just gravity wells.