Guild Wars 2

The guy who necro’d this must be laughing his kitten off.

Dodge queue fixed,
Shadow Return now extremely buggy.

Yeah… not worth.

I’d bring the bird. It actually can one-shot a GC Thief, unlike Warriors who are at a disadvantage vs thieves.

evilapprentice.6379:

Jumper.9482:

Egorum.9506:

even easier, just make body shot a reverse heartseeker with a lower damage coefficient due to it being ranged. deals more damage if the opponent has more health, and less as the opponent’s health decreases. then make it a backwards leap. bp->body shot->sneak attack with unloads as a tactical ini sink if you can afford it.

this way both power builds and condition builds can use the set.

I like this.

The immediate issue that comes to mind is P/P – D/X. Use Body shot for great DPI on healthy targets, switch to D/P when they’re low to take advantage of HS’s great DPI on low health targets.

Anything that doesn’t include shortbow is a step forward.
(Actually, this set has absolutely 0 mobility so probably wouldn’t be as popular as you think…)

Egorum.9506:

even easier, just make body shot a reverse heartseeker with a lower damage coefficient due to it being ranged. deals more damage if the opponent has more health, and less as the opponent’s health decreases. then make it a backwards leap. bp->body shot->sneak attack with unloads as a tactical ini sink if you can afford it.

this way both power builds and condition builds can use the set.

I like this.

I would like to see that trait happen.
Critical strikes have a x% chance to remove 1 boon from your target.

I like the idea of a condition that doesn’t do anything unless it gets cleansed, then it procs for the intended damage.
It punishes cleanse spam and adds the protection the necros’ bleeds need.

I’d like to see a reverse diminishing DOT.
Damage keeps building up as it ticks up to a cap.

More points per kill.
Or 1pt/3sec rather than 1pt/2sec.
Or both.

My role as sustained S/D is basically a duelist and zoner.
I try to zone someone on the edge of the teamfight and pressure him to the point he can’t retaliate. Extremely effective vs necro/hgh engies.
I feel a burst/dps S/D role would be playing more on the defensive side and punishing any ele that over extends and tries to have a go at your hgh/necro/etc.

The roles are far too different to be comparable.

Khenzy.9348:

Jumper plays a full initiative regen Flanking Strike spam build, a very ‘forgivable’ build with high initiative, evasion uptime and lots of stun breaks. I almost never see him time any dodges, his FS spam just does it for him; if stunned, infil. strike back; if low HP, withdraw and disengage; screwed up therefore low initiative? just weapon swap or roll for initiative…

While I do agree that my build involves a bit less reactionary play than d/p for damage mitigation, it’s more of a rhythmic thing. The reasoning for FS>LS+Dodge is to try to minimize the amount of time I’m vulnerable while keeping as much pressure as I can. Ofcourse, to avoid a big hit I have the option to (and I like to think I usually do when necessary) break my rhythm if needed.

For example, when training an Engie or Necro, I generally try to time start my rotation (FS+LSDodge) as soon as a Mark or Grenade comes out so I evade it. Ofcourse, this doesn’t line up perfectly and there’s also the factor of good players will try to wait out the evade frames and aim for when you are vulnerable (during the damage portion). At this point it pretty much becomes a mind game of how well I can stagger my strikes, or rather how predictably I play.

I don’t claim to be amazing at it or anything, this build has only been around for about two weeks. When I first started playing it Caed would beat me like 9/10 duels. Now we have extremely close outcomes which usually end up being a 1 blind or 1 daze difference (see my youtube).

But yeah. They did a good job. I’ve played a full thief team with PZ and they got wiped 1v4 by a Guardian on the far node. JUST SAYIN.

Arganthium.5638:

/sigh I don’t think that the rest of the team got half the credit they deserved that game. Jumper MVP? Probably, but he wasn’t alone either.

I was pretty much 1v2 most of the game which wasn’t caught on cam. Almost won one too, but I barely didn’t get the stomp in time. (Disregarding the 1 treb hit on the Guard I wasn’t focusing)

The reason basi is the elite is because he used lyssa runes in this build. It wouldn’t work without it.

The last stomp wouldn’t have happened without Lyssa.
I had teleported back to prep the shadow stomp but noticed I still had ~4 seconds left on Infil Sig. I noticed the scoreboard and decided I didn’t have time so I went for the Basi(Lyssa) Stability Stomp. If the other guardian had gotten the ring of warding off (nice Tacti Strike interrupt by the other thief), the Shadow stomp wouldn’t have gone through anyways.

Drazhar.3801:

Well they could add a brief cooldown before being able to use a stolen skill again. That would eliminate the possibility of the 8 second daze you were talking about.

There already is a 10 second cooldown on using same-type steals.

Unranked = hotjoin.
They plan on improving on the “PLAY NOW” button.
Hopefully, I imagine something like this:

Check-mark desirable maps
Choose: 5v5 or 8v8
(etc?)

Pairings are matched firstly by Rank.

For comparison,
Pretty sure winning your first 10 placements in League will put you in Platinum at most.
Not Diamond. Not Challenger.
I went 7-3 and had to work my way up over 100 games to get to Diamond 1 from Silver…

Noctis Assassin.4035:

easiest way to beat a sword thief, watch for his inflitrator’s strike buff and remember where he ported from because he is bound to that spot for 15 seconds. If you are a necro, drop marks on his bound spot, punish him for porting back. Most thieves wouldn’t think to teleport back while dodging so its a free hit xD.

Most of the time SR will be used for stunbreaking. Can’t dodge while stunned.

Your reward for dodging is a confirmation on his position.
Turn around and kill him.

Bursting 1v2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq1sGqeMN4I
Full match:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9TBEKwbLyU
Sorry for quality.

The main use for Shadow Sig was when everyone was running D/D before dancing dagger dps got destroyed.
The active was really useful for stomps.
But with the utility from D/P it’s not necessary.

Scoobaniec.9561:

War boon hate should ignoring protection boon. Now that would make it much more useful, as it is now that completely waste of traits.

Cut the % per down by 1 or 2% and give Warrior protection pierce when traited.
Or just make burst skills unaffected by prot
+1

1 1/2 second every 4~5 seconds actually (CnD+tacti takes ~1sec cast). Mesmer runes and Para sigils are currently broken.
That’s of course if you don’t dodge either hit.
Unless you mean that imbalanced zerg fest you call WvW.

If you think i made this strictly for 1v1, lol.
I said it at the start of the vid— I go 30 in crit and zerkers to put out enough dps to down an hgh/necro in about 10-15 seconds of training. Obviously if I wanted to 1v1 I would just run soldiers and be (fairly) useless in a teamfight.

PS: Condi thief is a joke and not taken seriously in high end tpvp. Usually only 2 condi’s, EASILY cleansable by agility or shadow return.

JohnnyZero.5619:

Your set up can definitely stay in a fight longer than mine, therefore stripping more boons and doing more damage, but mine offers more team utility. Do you think it’s necessary for an S/D thief to be all-in init regen and no shortbow to be effective at high level tPvP?

Probably. You won’t last long enough to be applying enough pressure otherwise. The high endurance is necessary to survive. Any good team will just burn you down in stealth if you try running a 30 shadow art spec.

There really is no need for shortbow at all. I can disengage safely with sword2 99% of the time. Plus the energy and init regen from constant weapon swapping is somewhat necessary for sustain imo. The only thing you’re really losing from shortbow is the poison and ranged aoe for downed enemy/allies. This is probably the biggest weakness in high-end play.

sorrow.2364:

4. Shadow Refuge is a sure escape most the cases, unless you are that unlucky to meet someone with an AoE knockback/fear, essentialy only staff Necro and GS/Staff mesmer.

Just gotta correct this.
Guardian Shield 5
Guardian Hammer 4
Warrior Hammer 4
Warrior “Fear Me!”
Engie Flamethrower 3
Elementalist /D Air 5

Singletarget or low area of affect: (Skillshot it where you think he is)
Warrior Rifle 5
Ranger LB 5

There are more but I thought I’d just share the more commonly played ones.

Two rank 50+ Thieves:
Caed Aeterna (April State of the Game)- http://www.twitch.tv/narcarsis
Jumper X- http://www.twitch.tv/loljumper

Pretty well balanced IMO. Versing enemy thieves was one of the biggest fears I had when planning around S/D but as I grow more experienced with the set I feel it to be (possibly) in a good spot for competitive play.
Currently in the process of making a video guide going over pros/cons, playstyle, possible build variants,analyzing viability, bugs and fixes for the set.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-cF3F3FGWw-1-K5wOFd0;9;5T-T9;127A;128B4;0Ucl6P;1KJG4KJG46RD

Needless to say, decent build but brings little utility and dps to the table.
With the buff to FS, it’ll have better sustain gaining access to prot/regen and may open room for more offensive options in sigil/amulet

Zenith.7301:

Arganthium.5638:

ensoriki.5789:

Arganthium.5638:

@OP: If you think Necros don’t have stability/stunbreakers, roll at thief. ’Nuff said.

While we lack stability.
I switched from my Sword thief to a warrior for a change of pace.
It was like night and day.
Hell even when rolling daggers it doesn’t feel the same since Shadowste kitten o good.
Thieves if anything aren’t lacking stunbreakers (except for Hard to catch not being 1 wtf).

That’s only if you run a sword build. You might as well say that necros have plenty of stability via SR XI.

If you’re going to bring up traits, you can go acrobatics and get a free shadow step out of cc, or you can slot in shadow step as a utility (if you think it’s so bad, I’ll trade you spectral walk or armor for it — at least shadowstep gets you out of the burst zone).

Necro is far more susceptible to being trained than thief is. Thief mobility cannot be compared to necro, and quite frankly meatshields with crap recovery options don’t work in this game. Playing a warrior should tell you that much that higher hp is always inferior to avoidance skills, especially in a game where the classes with said high HP have the worst healing capacity.

Because the tradeoff is that Necros do about 2x more dps than Thieves and bring more utility. Oh did I mention they have about 2x more hp as well?

Either that or chat commands like Smite.
Oh, and release solo queue.

The funny part is that I don’t see a single headshot, shadow shot, or black powder anywhere in there.
A thief not correctly utilizing pistol offhand is at a severe disadvantage against a necro.

Assuming he initiated from refuge with backstab steal (which is what it looks like):
Staff 5, (start strafing away) 3,4(weakness combo),2
Swap
Scepter 2, Dagger 5, F1-3 when he tries to heal.
GG.
That simple rotation will stomp 99% of these thieves that have no clue what they’re doing.

By not splitting queues, (or at least ladders), they’ve ironically created the effect they were looking to avoid.
Less people solo queueing now = less ppl playing tournaments.
Less teams queueing now because it’ll just be a roflstomp 9/10 games vs solo queuers where’s the fun in that?

Ketharius.9018:

I did buy a video game, right?

esport*
Or at least that’s what I was told when I bought the game.
Maybe if I didn’t buy into that lie I’d be playing in the LCS right now. :/
(Maybe not, but at least taking home a couple ESL victories)

Vayra.3290:

If you truly are skilled you should be happy that it matches you against people that should be challenging to fight instead of someone you stand no chance of beating or will just faceroll. PvP is not about rewards, it’s about fun and challenging yourself against equal/better opposition.

This.

“Whack-a-Mole” is a pretty accurate statement of what they’ve been doing thus-far.
At least from Thief PoV.
In order:
Unload, VShare, Pistolwhip, TacticalStrike(Daze/CC build) + Dagger Offhand, Pistolwhip and Unload again (via quickness)+ Condi+ Another dagger offhand nerf via 4sec reveal.
Mind you, most of these have been 33-50% nerfs, rendering the builds unviable especially in a competitive setting.

At this point either you play D/P burst because it’s the only thing untouched or you reroll ele.

Archer Henchman.2534:

Not a single decent thief NA ran haste besides for critical haste, and even then the trait was unreliable and too short to capitalize on in the majority of cases. Big whoop.

Critical haste is/was bad. To get it you give up 7& additive crit chance from behind/side. This ends up being +18.5%.
Way too good to pass up.
Not to mention unfavorable situations like hasted heartseeker for half distance or hasted evasive shot for half evasion duration.

roflmfao sotg3 XD

Well, you see, the problem is that the people who are in charge have no clue what they’re doing balance-wise.
On 11/15 they completely destroyed what may have been the only viable alternative to the pubstomp spec at higher tier play by bashing Sword’s daze duration and destroying the dagger offhand.
Before you start chiming in Cruuk/Deeja/Caltrops builds… No. Just. No. Those are extremely niche builds that will 99% of the time be inferior and never work against teams who know what they’re doing.

Oh, and can you believe shortly after that they changed Mesmers’ shattered strength from 1 to 3 stacks per clone?! (and then back to 1)

Nope just his hair.

Lol, trying to find excuses for this terrible design of a matchmaking system.

Teldo.1473:

You also have to give some time for the ratings to stabilize. I mean people who won their first 5 games are obviously very high rating-wise and will get premades more likely.

So give it a few days and it might be quite good, who knows.

See, that’s what I thought at first but
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/I-tested-the-Join-solo-and-recorded-results
After seeing that it only takes you to be only slightly better than the rest of the solo queue population to be matched against a full premade, even if it is this early, it probably won’t end up being very balanced. This game is heavily focused on coordination, rotation, downstate management, and team decisions rather than individual skill. Comparing the two in the same queue is absurd.

Sorry, Phanta, but when they promise to try to bring more builds into par, then destroy (unsuccessfully) one of Engies only 2 viable builds, Buff Thieves’ one viable build(and nerfing a semi-viable bruiser alternative build in November), hurt dps eles as much as bunkers (maybe moreso? idk I don’t play ele),
the future doesn’t look too bright.

Every decision they’ve made so far has been the wrong one and they keep having to backtrack over and over. Pretty soon they will realize that Hotjoin was a bad idea and we were right when we said we need a Solo Queue. But “soon” in ANET terms means 6 months from now, probably.

Tl;dr: Two steps backward, one step forward.

So they say the pop is too small to have at least two two-team matches popping (one solo, one premade).
Then they have one two-team mixed queue and ANOTHER mixed queue for 8 teams?

What?

felivear.1536:

Soyboy.3548:

I’d be happy if yall quit. The game has been out for 6 months. Get a life. I don’t like being stomped by people who have time to form powerhouse teams. Go back to WoW with your demands. The people this game is marketed to is people like me who aren’t hardcore. You knew that upfront so stop griping.

Yep, that’s exactly what they advertised to me. They said “we are striving for an e-sport where the best can shine based on skill and not gear. They will be rewarded accordingly and will be able to display their skill in ways for all to see”.

Clearly made for the carebears like yourself.

My friends (casual gamers) knew I played League at a top 400ish level. They sold me on this game pitching it as the next new esport. Two days after release they all quit and here I am 6 months later. Well tell ya what I’m tired of waiting for the competition I was promised. I’ll be going for Challenger on League so cya in a few months ANET.

You come to the realization that the best thing about this patch was the fixing of Warrior+Necro-not giving glory/rallies bug that they broke last patch.

I’m sure there’s probably some new gamebreaking bug in there somewhere we have yet to find, though. Personally I know of a few uncommon exploits that have been around since the Nov patch.

“We don’t want to split up our community through too many queues.”
Let’s not put in a 2-team Solo and a 2-team Premade queue.
Let’s put in a mixed Free queue with a 2nd Free queue that requires 40 players to start.

……LOL?

Yep. Big WvW and PvP patches in Jan & Feb.

I really like how they brought up all these builds into viability.
The thief S/D and P/P buffs look good.

It was originally like this.

Nord.5360:

While I agree with the general ‘need for solo queue’ sentiment, GW2’s current population can’t handle separated queues between hot-join, free tournaments, paid 5s, and solo queue.

I definitely think it’s something that should be revisited in the future, but I hate to break it to you – having solo queue implemented ASAP isn’t going to save the game.

Simple things like incentivizing PvP for the majority of the playerbase (ie exp from sPvP, laurels from PvP dailies, etc) to revamping the hot-join and free tournament systems into something a bit more cohesive seems much more important.

Just my 2c.

Doesn’t have to be solo queue. Just seperate the ladder rankings for when you solo vs when you premade.