Guild Wars 2

GADefence.5634:

“Compare total stats of your character with full exotics, then replace the backpack and 2 rings with ascended and check your total stats. The difference is 3%”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mad_Memoires:_Complete_Edition
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endless_Quiver

I’m sorry, but have you even SEEN the top tiered new items? Items tend to add more stats your characther then you think – it’s why with your base 900 precision, you have ~2% crit chance, while that with 1’900 you have 60+~% crit chance.

If you want to compare it to something, you should compare it to guild backpack with a jewel, not mad memories.

Oh, and I’m an E.

Kabooky.8071:

This is what I got hit with earlier today. OP have a cup O kittens.
I aint whinging, rerolled a thief alt.

5,754 steal, 2,826 cloak and dagger, 11,267 backstab

And you’re a fully geared, non-glass cannon lvl 80?

ASP.8093:

Power/Precision/CritDamage. They multiply together, they don’t conflict with other players, and MOAR DAMAGE is always relevant.

I don’t take the Power trait line, though, because I think the actual abilities in it aren’t really worthwhile.

This, but with 10 in Deadly arts for mug in WvW. 3 pieces of jewelry are Valkyrie for some extra HP.

Radeonkid.2843:

Power/Precision/Cond. Should i go for critical too? Seems like majority likes crit.

Depends if you want to play a direct damage build or a condition damage build.

Agreed, I want to be the one who decides when I play and when I don’t.

Charr male .

Most people didn’t get any precursors at al, so you should be happy with the 7g.

I hope they fix the culling issues and the CnD+Steal combo, that should make our burst easy enough to avoid.

They’ll probably just nerf backstab damage itself into uselessness instead.

EDIT: They better not touch clusterbomb, if people can’t dodge red circles, they shouldn’t pvp.

Exotics are too easy to acquire, so I don’t mind better gear that’s harder to obtain.

As a thief, I can say tealth capping or protecting should be removed asap.

Great fights so far, really enjoying this matchup. I hope Underworld can make a comback before their morale is down too much.

I would use valkyrie or berserker over knight’s. Your best defence is dodging/running/stealthing when in trouble. Signet of malice also helps a lot on large mobs (use the aoe poison of shortbow, or daggerstorm).

I’m not a big fan of the deadly arts tree. Currently running 10/30/0/20/10. This is for dungeons, pve and WvW.
I couldn’t live without the 3rd dodge from feline grace and I feel like the regen from pain response helps a lot (could be swapped out for 3 extra init from trickery)
D/D + SB build with Berserker/Valkyrie mix of armor.

All exotic items, but my pants are still lvl 78.

I don’t think you’ll notice much of the nerfs in pve lvling. It’s probably gonna hurt spvp and wvw thieves more.

We’ll get a boost in pistol/dagger QQing.

Why don’t you just run with a zerg? You’d be a huge help with venom share.

Pick whatever you like, small human would be the choice that “makes most sense”. Asura can give you a small advantage, cause enemies might give you less attention, however, I tend to go after Asura enemies in WvW because there’s a good chance they’re glass canon thieves.

I picked a charr thief myself.

If we get 10 extra base initiative and extra regeneration outside stealth, maybe.

Great vid, you’re pro as hell.
Question: what do you think about the CnD+steal combo?

I don’t like the “damage breaks stealth” idea.
I’d rather have “get hit 50% harder in stealth”.
Maybe they could add a blood trail or something when we take damage, so others can aoe us, without thieves losing their sneak attacks.

How to fix basilisk venom:
Use devourer venom and gain a free Elite slot!

Yea, BV is terribly underpowered as it is now.

“Nerf dual pistols”

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Jefzor.7145:

Do the lower tier skins also glow at night or only the lvl 80 exotic ones?

The lower tier skins aren’t the same skin as the lvl80 exotics ones, so they do not glow.

Thanks for the answer.

Do the lower tier skins also glow at night or only the lvl 80 exotic ones?

Azzan.1650:

There is no way to counter this stupid spec as melee class.

That’s why you shouldn’t roam solo without bringing a ranged weapon.

It’s a very different type of combat, but sPvP experience will help you a lot. Best to stick with zergs untill you’re lvl 80.
Look into joining a WvW guild (most servers have several of them, most of those guilds accept any level, as long as you can obey orders).
As said, having a ranged option is a must.
You can play pretty much any build you want, but some will be more efficient than others, depending on what you do in wvw.
Just out of curiosity, what class do you play?

Stealth bug seems to be the problem here. He’s supposed to be visible for 3 seconds when he attacks from stealth. If you can CC him, he’s done for.

Were you guys lvl 80s in exotics? If not, take in account that he probably had a huge stat advantage.

And he wasn’t backstabbing because he played a condition build, his backstab would probably hit for about 2-3k.

Wouldn’t this basically be a buff? Since burst thieves would only use F2 and condition thieves would only use F3.

Would make more sense to split it between stealth/mobility and Damage (not that I want that).

Dietere.3476:

Elmuerto.9840:

Mostly the comments are about PvP and WvW my friend. PvE can be pretty easy so tactics there aren’t really discussed much. In PvP and WvW players get killed by thieves and get emotional about it hence all the threads of thief OP! I’m sure if mobs could post they’d be calling you OP

Good point. Ok I will stop feeling bad about my PvE ways.

So my new question, then, is this: how does a PvE player transition into the WvW/sPvP world? What kinds of changes do I need to make to be effective?

Relying on blindness spam won’t work anymore (enemy players aren’t polite enough to stand still all the time), so you’ll probably want to use a different weapon set.

A lot of direct damage thieves (including myself) use SB+D/D for WvW. (shortbow for group fights, daggers for bursting down single target)
You could also go for condition damage, but then you’ll have to change you armor and traits around.

Ctrl+right click

Sword/pistol is pretty much the same, except you can hit 3 targets with auto attack.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

You do more damage when you detonate than not, and triple your bleeds. Not to mention more hits = more “on crit” effects.

Any time you’re not in a combo field, you’d have to be crazy not to detonate.

Bleed damage is almost nothing on my build and if one of the 3 small bombs miss, I’m getting less damage. Especially on walls, I feel like it’s better not to detonate.

I tried warrior (bored me)
Ranger (bored me even more, hide behind your pet and shoot)
Elementalist (nice effects, but not my playstyle)
Engineer (kinda liked that one, probably gonna level it next)

I just really enjoy the fast paced fps-like play style of thieves.

Both builds are good at different things.

You still seem to have a lot of blue and green stuff.
18k hp seems like a lot for a thief, your survivability should rely on stealth and mobility, not stats.
I don’t use P/P for pvp myself, but I hear the damage isn’t that good.
Consider a condition build if you want survivability for prolonged 1v1 fights.

I’m guessing the slowness is actually intended as a feature to make it easier to detonate it at the right moment. Since almost no one detonates, might as well make it fast and rename it to arrowbomb or something.

Don’t try to outlast a bunker spec in prolonged fights when playing a burst spec.
Burn all your initiative on a burst, run if it fails>repeat.
Or get a teammate to help you.
Or cap another point.
You have the luxury of being able to pick your fights, use that ability.

Gamblit.5041:

Jefzor.7145:

Gamblit.5041:

Piriel.5197:

Trickyg.8752:

ANet just needs to fix WvW capture points so that stealth doesn’t contest points…

That, yes ^

And then players will mass stealth other players to prevent them for getting rewards from capturing points or contesting the existing ones.
Great way to upset alote of players.

Then maybe stealth shouldn’t be allowed at all in capture zones, idk.

I would suggest, taking another approach.

Majority rules:
As long as attackers more then defenders then the slider moves towards attackers capture.

Then it won’t matter if there’s one thief sneaking around or 10 of them. The number of defenders present in the zone can reduce the speed of the slider but it won’t halt the progress.

That could work, sounds more logical than the current system. Not sure what other implications it’d have, tho.

Agreed, WvWvW is loads of fun, good job so far Anet, keep it up.
There’s some issues, but I’m sure those will be fixed in time.

gamefreak.5673:

We are all wrong, your words of wisdom has shown me i am just a horrible player and backstab perma stealth thieves are balanced.

Perma stealth backstab thieves don’t exist, so that would make them pretty balanced.

STRanger.5120:

Jefzor.7145:

It doesn’t need a casting time, but it does need to interrupt whatever skill you were previously using (and so should shadowstep, and so should all other instant teleport skills from other classes)

That would definitely solve some problems with this, but it will actually render some skills totally unusable (like the above mentioned Churning Earth, that spell will no longer be viable for PvP usage and very risky in PvE too…). So alteration of those skills would be needed too.

Well, I’m not sure about other classes, to be honest. That was just assuming they had similar abuses of the same game mechanic that could use a similar fix.

STRanger.5120:

DesertRose.2031:

STRanger.5120:

Jefzor.7145:

The CnD+Steal combo needs a fix. The backstab damage itself is fine imo.

Any suggestion how to fix it?

Give Steal a 1/4 cast time and don’t let it trigger Venom-type skills (cannot check if it already behaves so).
That way the time the target has to react to this combo goes up from virtually 0 to 0.5-0.75 seconds.

That would result in usage of Infiltrators signet instead of stealing and stealing usage just as a damaging gap closer.
Maybe it will be better if you actually do some research to the class before suggesting anything (not meant offensively guys).
Also if you give all those shadowsteps a casting time, it will kinda destroy the class I think Also as I said earlier, not only thieves are using this technique (skill + instant teleport to ensure hitting), so it would be kinda unfair, as I remember Anet stated that it is working as intended (not sure, but I think I´ve seen this statement somewhere).

Also there is problem with not-triggering venoms. This is still quite bugged (even signets trigger venoms if I remember correctly).
So I would like to see the class bugs fixed before any balance things are adressed (The same situation with Elementalist, where it is even much worse, but the class was greatly nerfed already…)

It doesn’t need a casting time, but it does need to interrupt whatever skill you were previously using (and so should shadowstep, and so should all other instant teleport skills from other classes)

Gamblit.5041:

Piriel.5197:

Trickyg.8752:

ANet just needs to fix WvW capture points so that stealth doesn’t contest points…

That, yes ^

And then players will mass stealth other players to prevent them for getting rewards from capturing points or contesting the existing ones.
Great way to upset alote of players.

Then maybe stealth shouldn’t be allowed at all in capture zones, idk.

Trickyg.8752:

The only thing that’s broken here is that thieves can contest capture points while invisible. They can’t do that in structured PvP for conquest.

So true. There’s no reason a single thief should be able to keep a zerg from capping a point for over a minute. Other that, I don’t see what’s wrong with permastealth.

So true, CnD+Steal is the real problem that makes our burst OP. Haste should be nerfed for all classes.

I run berserker weapons with mixed armor (2/3 zerker 1/3 valkyrie).
Full zerker is too squishy, full valkyrie doesn’t have enough precision.

Practiced tolerance and a couple of Valkyrie pieces should get you 15k hp.

I’ d rather go for a few valkyrie pieces instead (power/vit/crit dmg). Thief doesn’t need as much defence as other classes (stat-wise) to stay alive.

The CnD+Steal combo needs a fix. The backstab damage itself is fine imo.

Shortbow is better all around. P/P does slightly higher damage, but only on single targets.