Guild Wars 2

I messed around with pretty much the same build except I took dwayna runes and a life steal sigil and also the trait that makes you immune to conditions over the vigor on swiftness one. I also took elixir R instead of B. It was extremely tanky but susceptible to heavy condition burst (not sure there are many “tank” builds that aren’t). You put out almost no pressure at all but you can sit there and take a beating from three people for quite a while before being overwhelmed. It’s pretty funny the comments people /say and when they just give up and leave.

EDIT: Giving credit where credit is due – the build is based off the bunker build that OstrichEggs posted in his “My tPvP builds” thread.

Ostricheggs.3742:

There’s lots of ways to play engis now in tourneys.

Most of the time it’s 30 up explosives, 15 up tools with the extra 25 points going up either alchemy or firearms, mainly 15 fire 10 alchemy. I would personally recommend bomb kit and grenades with incendiary powder up explosives. I’ve seen tool kit/nades, tool kit/e-gun (not 30 up explosives), bomb kit/FT, nade kit/FT, nade kit/tool kit, e-gun/nades and any other combination work for condis. Each have their own strengths and weaknesses, but they’re all at least somewhat viable (some moreso than others) in tourneys for condi damage. For weapons you can do p/p or p/s. For sigils you can do geomancy/battle/earth/doom. For runes you can do undead or nightmare (nightmare + earth = extra 2 seconds on the bleed, nightmare + smoldering on the mainhand = 6 seconds on incendiary powder)

For power, sadly, HGH nades seems to be the best and will probably remain so until something changes.

This advice is mainly for tourneys since I dont really do condis in WvW :P

In a recent stream of yours I heard you saying that you didn’t think Toolkit was a good option in the build you were running and switched to bomb kit? I think the build you were running is very similar to the one Teldo runs actually – the main difference being you take grenades instead of FT and also he takes backpack regen trait instead of some of the more offensive traits you take. Both builds seem like they take quite a bit of skill to play effectively – I think the only condi clears those builds have are via healing turret? I guess survivability comes mainly through the alchemy vigor trait?

I would like to take Golraeder’s Spartan build and tweak it to be viable for tpvp (assuming it’s not really or outshined by GSbuilds):

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQRAnZ8ejcOBvxQ2QMRCA8BsMFK68gqkaSfwOA;TwAg0CnoKyUkoIbRuikFtoYMyGiZBA

Would like to swap shield for warhorn and also pick up Leg Specialist (and then maybe Opportunist?).

This build which someone posted a while back is like a hybrid of the old hundred nades and SD build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUl0pqdHxSyF17IyoHdGpJagKkXfewWpFEC

Left the runes out but I usually do berserker full damage type stuff. With rifle and toolkit you have some good defensive options and can also do quite decent burst with grenade barrage + analyze while barrage is queueing followed by throw wrench. I can’t say how viable it is at higher level tourneys but it’s quite fun to play imo.

Those guys are good but I don’t see them play bunker very much. Teldo is another really good engineer who plays a somewhat tanky condition damage build : http://www.twitch.tv/teldoo

I see him answering questions that people ask in his chat when he’s live streaming so he might be a good option.

AlBundy.7851:

lol at people using killshot as an excuse you have to build super glass with no useful utilities on your bars for that kind of damage. The cast is so obvious and slow. If you die to killshot then you must really struggle against every other class in the game or have very bad eyesight.

To be fair though, dying to a kill shot isn’t all that different than dying to a burst thief’s combo right? You may be an excellent player but those guys can still catch you by surprise (from a distance where you don’t happen to see them lining up the burst)? Maybe really high level players are always 100% aware of their surroundings and can never be caught off guard like that but I imagine that even the best of players might get taken unawares at times? If you see it coming, after a minimal amount of practice/experience, you should probably not get hit by it.

MithranArkanere.8957:

If a a team is missing players, the match should go into a 30s waiting period while it requests players that have joined solo to fill empty slots.
If no players are found, it should ask players if they want to keep waiting, and as long as the majority votes yes, it should keep going into 30s periods until the match is 5vs5.

If someone leaves during the match, a solo player should get a message asking them if they want to join a match in progress.
They’ll get bonus glory for volunteering.

Exactly this – common sense and kind of ridiculous that it didn’t work that way to begin with imo.

Mostly just another uninformed thief hate thread – however, one point I will agree with is that being able to do things like use sword #2 to go through the floor of clocktower on Khylo to get to the enemy and then back down is a bit ridiculous and should be looked at – it feels like an exploit of a design flaw in the ability but maybe it is intentional I’m not sure… just seems a kitteneap to me.

Are there pictures of this gear online anywhere? The PVP Gear wiki doesn’t seem to mention this set.

style.6173:

It is easy to counter

Someone care to share how you can counter it? I more or less agree with OP and MIrra that it seems a bit too much… it can be spammed almost constantly with init regen traits and it does a ton of damage.

Psybunny.8906:

You’re hitting steal too fast. :P
The correct way to combo: 5->2 (wait till you start going up in the air)->Steal->(2 finishes and lands on target)->(you’re in stealth and have around 2 secs to hit backstab)->Backstab pew pew. Practice it more calmly and slower don’t mash your buttons randomly at the same time.

Combat log will show:
Black powder
Steal (Mug)
Heartseeker
Backstab

Actually I’m pretty sure now there is an issue with distance – it shows you in range (no read under steal button) but when you are just on the edge of being in range it bugs out and acts like you are out of range. If you take a step or two forward then it works.

The main reason i wakittenting steal so quickly after HS was because if you don’t it looks like you do not get stealth… however, archive on here showed me that you actually do get stealth it just doesn’t show you as stealthed – it does show the buff. That was throwing me off so I thought I had to hit it quickly for it to work right. Also, this would probably have solved the problem above anyways because the HS would take me the extra couple feet I need.

There does seem to be a bug with being out of range when it shows you in range – it may be specific to this condo and related to the HS before steal. dunno…

I think it actually might be due to range issue – I’m doing it right within steal range but it is acting like I’m out of range (i.e. if I back up a couple steps the red bar appears under steal). It seems like the red bar under steal may be inaccurate relative to the caclulation when I execute the combo – if I move in a few steps it works pretty much every time.

I’m sure it’s something stupid… I recorded a video of it happening against training dummy:

Can’t tell what I did different the last time where it worked properly.

archive.9073:

Leadfoot.9071:

Noob question about D/P – figured I’d ask here instead of starting a new thread:

For the 5/2/F1 combo sometimes it seems like the steal gets interrupted. Basically hit 5 and then hit 2-F1 in rapid succession (i.e. F1 immediately after 2) – sometimes it works but often it does not and I end up sitting in the same place with low initiative… Steal goes on a short 5 second cooldown as if it got interrupted. I’m sure I’m doing something wrong here – am I hitting F1 too quickly?

You are out of range of steal.

Nope, was practicing against dummies and regularly reproducing it in range for steal out of range for HS, it works occassionally but not usually – so I’m not sure what it is that’s making it not work.

Noob question about D/P – figured I’d ask here instead of starting a new thread:

For the 5/2/F1 combo sometimes it seems like the steal gets interrupted. Basically hit 5 and then hit 2-F1 in rapid succession (i.e. F1 immediately after 2) – sometimes it works but often it does not and I end up sitting in the same place with low initiative… Steal goes on a short 5 second cooldown as if it got interrupted. I’m sure I’m doing something wrong here – am I hitting F1 too quickly?

Authority.6145:

Travlane.5948:

@authority Why not for tpvp? …im notsaying its wierd i have my own thoughts but id like to hear more details.

It is the same thing when going from D/D to D/P and going back to D/D. You realize how much team-utility you miss; including blind and safe/effective stomping. Boon Stripping, Boon Acquiring (through i.e runes of Lysa), daze, evading and dodging as well as having a spamable shadow step are all parts that make the sum stronger.

S/D right now is far superior to D/P for TPvP. Your team can duo with you and contest any points with bunkers. The only negative thing about S/D is that you do not have the easy of stomping as you did with D/P.

With S/D, you also realize the same thing from going from D/D to D/P; more chances to survive, less risk involved, more smart play.

Can’t it just be summed up as Swrd/D good for team fighting while D/P better for roaming/1v1? Also, don’t forget headshot in D/P which is awesome. Maybe it’s just my playstyle but I have been having better lukc with GC D/P lately…

Lediath.7593:

I’ve been getting it really badly in sPVP of late, espeically when playing against/with engineers and on Kyhlo during the treb shots.

Exactly the same here … it also happens for me in Spirit Watch if I’m in the area when someone caps the orb and that big frosty explosion thing happens. Like I’ve said before… I never had much of an issue with this before and all I do is spvp so I’m constantly in these scenarios – it seems that it only started happening for me in the last few months.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Engineers are the biggest cause of video lag – those smoke effects are badly optimized.

So I have played an HGH engineer and tried to reproduce the problem by myself in the mists by throwing grenades and zooming in – I didn’t have great success with reproducing it that way. Also, I used to never have any problems at all – it was super smooth – so it seems to me that something changed not so long ago that made things worse?? I think there are threads in the bugs forum about this as well….

I have recently started experiencing video lag in certain scenarios – probably different than you are describing. Best examples I can give are in Khylo if a treb hits near me or in Spirit Watch if someone captures the orb near me (the big frosty splash animation). I think it is probably likely due to some sort of particle or shadow effect but I’m not sure. It only started happening over the last 2-3 months. May be different than the problem you are describing.

25/30/0/0/15 trait distribution still puts out very good burst in my opinion. Yes the mug nerf hurt quite a bit but this is still very powerful – I think warriors have the potential to put out more burst but obviously they have their own issues. The S/D changes allow thieves to build to counter HGH engineers and bunkers (without as much stealth usage) which is an improvement because a new build may have become viable enough to tweak the meta a bit. Just my 2 cents fwiw.

He shows the build at the end of the video – pretty standard 10/30/30/0/0 stealth regen type of deal… agree video was fun to watch – good use of terrain

Nettle.9025:

It’s only powerful in the hands of a good thief. I’ve seen many a bad thief attempt it and do poorly. That said, a competent thief is dangerous with the right S/D build.

TBH you’re gonna have a hard time if you run lots of boons and expect to 1v1 it. The build naturally counters that, and works very well against HGH engis and ele/guard bunkers.

Honestly I’d suggest getting help from a teammate. This thief, like every other, is susceptible in team fights where they are focused by multiple people or where aoe is flying around everywhere.

See the edit in my original post – if you trait for it you can basically sit there and spam #3 nearly constantly which can put out some serious damage and steal boons – that doesn’t seem to require much skill to me. How do you counter that as a bunker that relies on boons who often is sitting at a point alone and needs to try to hold out for as long as possible against assaulters until help arrives?

I did some playing around with an S/D build and was delighted every time I found an HGH engineer on the other team – I felt bad for them though because they literally could do nothing – probably a different story if the player was very skilled but I’m not sure I know how they could counter it without help.

Is it just me or is S/D builds with init regen and near constant evades just ridiculously powerful? It seems to me it completely counters HGH engineers and bunker builds based on boons. How is it possible to counter an S/D thief that is constantly evading and stealing boons like this? With traits like Infusion of Shadow, Quick Recovery, Quick Pockets, and Preparedness you can pretty much just constantly spam #3 right? I’m not complaining here, I’m honestly curious about how experienced players are handling these guys!

Psybunny.8906:

Just by watching your video. Might differ by few points, but I think it’s something like this.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAR5ejgOBvNPKPMRCE8Bs4UQJ0Hsj0DxYATDA-TkAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFNsA

You have like 3k more HP than him and I didn’t see him lose conditions at the beginning of the first video so he must not have that auto shrug it off trait? Definitely leg specialist though and if you only take 10 points in tactics it’s still about 1K more health than he has in the video.

EDIT: looks like he does have the shout heal trait though

I like the idea but it does seem that it would take a great amount of skill to stay alive using this build as you will go down super fast if you get focused right?

I have become a big fan of sword/warhorn – horn #4 removes movement impairing conditions and grants swiftness – combined with savage leap you have excellent escape potential. I find this more advantageous than the shield stun and block – I notice a lot of you guys are taking shield though so I was just wondering about the rationale behind it vs. warhorn. I can see they can both be pretty good and it may come strictly down to preference.

Yamsandjams.3267:

SkyChef.5432:

MiLkZz.4789:

I disabled auto-target and if you are like really quick, you sometimes still jump backwards to a previous selected enemy. Even if you quickly select an enemy infront of you and press leap you sometimes go to the previous one.

So yea it needs a bug fix, think I reported it 10+ times already.

It happens to me several times during skipping. Make me look like an idiot. So yeah, wait a bit before hitting #2.

Yeah, also make sure you specifically detarget your enemy before trying to escape… not sure there’s a “detarget” button other than Esc, although that will cancel your action, so you shouldn’t do that. I usually just click to an empty space on the screen.

I’ve accidentally not cleared my target before… then there’s that awkward moment where you use your leap skill in the wrong direction towards the zerg…

I click an empty area of the screen to detarget and am absolutely positive that if you savage leap right after you clear your target sometimes you will still leap towards your previous target – as the last poster said I’m sure it’s a client/server lag issue.

Martin.9210:

I have played this game for 20 days now and I have a lvl 55 Warrior. Altough I don’t like pvping with him because all the enemies seems to dodge my attacks easy and I really lack of condition removers and escape skills.

So my question to you, what profession should I go for if I want to rock the Mists?

I agree with others that warrior is pretty weak in spvp – but they do have some escape and condition cleanse options. I like to run with signet of stamina, lyssa runes, signet of rage and the signet mastery signet – this gives you a good amount of condi cleanses. Also, thanks to defektive I have grown to really like sword warhorn for an offset – horn #4 removes movement impairing conditions and gives you swiftness and sword #2 allows you to leap away after detargeting – these are pretty good for escapes. Also, greatsword has some good mobility skills for escaping as well. And as a warrior, yeap, you will need to escape quite often

MiLkZz.4789:

I disabled auto-target and if you are like really quick, you sometimes still jump backwards to a previous selected enemy. Even if you quickly select an enemy infront of you and press leap you sometimes go to the previous one.

So yea it needs a bug fix, think I reported it 10+ times already.

Yes I’ve seen that too and would assume it’s a client/server lag issue that may be difficult for them to resolve. Best strategy is to just wait a fraction of a second after deselecting target before hitting #2.

Fighting annoying unicorn thief and signet of stamina failed to remove the conditions (poison and 10x bleed) – it went on cooldown but did not remove my conditions. Anybody else run into this?

shockwave.1764:

I guess I missed the reason why you are playing hot joins?

Solo join tourneys aren’t really all that different than hot joins imo – slightly better. And you have to not give a kitten about your rating at all if you are joining solo. Ideally, we would all have teams to play with but that’s not the case unfortunately.

I have also noticed that there are VERY few 5/5 matches going on in hot join – the majority of the available matches are 8v8 or duel servers.

Authority.6145:

Leadfoot.9071:

Critique my s/t pvp S/D build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsYVlUmaOHdS4E95Ex2je6Te6pgsjtTBXtKA-TsAg0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1MoY9xECA

It is hard to say but since you are going to be quite squishy from what I can see it is going to be hard to support your team to the max if your role is to give boons as well. I still need to play around with some runes as a support S/D thief just to see if I can increase my DPS and Crit without losing too much in the long run.

Though it does look interesting. I will probably check it on Monday and might provide another version similar to yours.

I was hoping to mitigate a lot of the squishiness with the acrobatic traits for more dodges and evades via weapon skills… I have not played it at all so you may be 100% correct. I really want to like S/D but standing toe-to-toe is typically bad news for a thief – I guess liberal use of sword#2 is the key here. Could also go into the SA tree instead of healing on stealth which is always nice…

Critique my s/t pvp S/D build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsYVlUmaOHdS4E95Ex2je6Te6pgsjtTBXtKA-TsAg0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1MoY9xECA

Grimwolf.7163:

No, it really needed a buff. The DPS was never that good.

I would argue that SB is not necessarily about damage to begin with – it’s a fantastic weapon because you get mobility, evades, poison and decent damage. I don’t think it needed a damage buff at all. Not sure about the nerf…

The build has Frenzy which got nerfed to near uselessness imo – do you still take it or replace with something else?

Navzar.2938:

Dasorine.1964:

Funny how its OP when its attached to a 45 second cooldown (granted with an instant cast) yet when its on a half second cast time move with a base cooldown of 8 seconds its fine…

And thats just thief access to such damage coefficients others have equivalent or better coefficient skills with less cooldown and aren’t limited in other area’s such as defense (as in they can achieve similiar damage levels and still be overall better than that zerker thief)

but yeah… totally OP…

Try it against non GC actual level 80’s and its a whole different story, specially if they saw you running to 900 range and I don’t know… did some counterplay?

I don’t really think it’s op because of the high recharge, but I think some of the complaints are because it’s hard to dodge, being 900 range instant cast, instant hit, shadowstep and usable during another skill is very different from melee range with a cast time and after cast delay. But honestly, that’s pretty fair for such a long cd on a class mechanic. It’s mostly because people love to complain about something.

and it’s a tier one trait.

What people are saying is that you cannot draw any conclusions from those screenshots simply because of the large number of variables that exist in wvw (gear, uplevelling, buffs, etc.).

They haven’t released the patch notes yet right? Does anybody know or have any idea when that will happen? Patch is supposed to be Tuesday (tomorrow) right?

Stof.9584:

Nord.5360:

Kitten, was I eating my mic?

The volume on your mic was a bit low, indeed.

this is true, low mic is low

Insanity: You briefly lose your mind (control of your character) and attack nearby allies.

FYI – I did a bunch of tourneys on that bunker build variation of Ostrichs I posted a few posts ago and was kitten near unkillable – the only enemy that gave me serious trouble was a phantasm mesmer – they put out so much damage I had to focus exclusively on defensive/healing abilities and I don’t think my teammates really knew that setup enough to know to focus on the phantasms instead of the mesmer…

Obviously, I’m not a high ranked player so these were mostly pugs I was facing and therefore you need to take my experience with a grain of salt – but lots of people were giving up and leaving the point alone.

One thing, I swapped out cloaking device for protective shield – I’m also thinking the automated response might be a waste as I almost never get that low on health from conditions – the regeneration and massive amount of healing seems to mitigate condi damage for the most part and I’m much more susceptible to burst or high amounts of sustained direct dmg (like that phant mes). Not sure what a better option might be though…

Phineas Poe.3018:

Cube.1758:

This here my friend, is an example of a noob engie who does not what the f—k he is talking about. go back to your cave troll.

Excuse me?

Ignore the angry elitist who cannot comprehend the fact that people want to help others and that some people play the game to gasp have fun!!! and do not care to spend their, potentially limited, amount of time in the game theory crafting and looking for something that works. Maybe it has some impact on balancing decisions, I would argue it’s an insignificant impact, but that’s the way it is and to get all angry about it is indicative of a greater problem with this game and the gaming community in general.

But I thought you couldn’t craft the armor you get from match win chests? I’m assuming here that the orrian set is one you get from those chests so I’m not sure why slivers would help you get it quicker… i’m sure i’m missing something stupid :P

Thanks dude – so the whole point of converting mats is to get dyes because you can make gold selling them?

What is the purpose of converting the mats?

Also, the drops you get from match reward chests – are they dependent on your glory rank? Or does everybody get the same chance at all gear?

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Precisely, it’s risky allowing a Phantasm to stay on the battlefield. Always kill them when they appear. They only take 1-3 hits, so it shouldn’t be difficult. If you do not kill them, they will slowly eat you alive.

Yep lesson learned for sure :P But the engi build i was playing does next to no damage so probably more like 10 hits from me I could barely survive until help arrived.

Hugs.1856:

It’s the part of the debate: what should be the focus of balance?

- low skilled players? high skilled players?
- solo players? team players?

If I were a dev, I would go for a mix of everything while having high level teams as the end goal:p

Doesn’t mean I’m discarding low levels solo’ers – that would be suicidal- but the end balance should be high level teamplay for any ambitious dev.

If they work on build diversity so that each profession has several viable options I think this will come naturally. Each profession will have solo and teamplay viable builds they can use depending on what they want to do. I’m sure it’s easier said tahn done but I would hope that would be the strategy as opposed to these big changes (KR nerf, haste nerf) that nuke whole build options without introducing any new options.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Phantasmal Mesmers have to wait on a 16+ second cooldown for each of their Phantasms. They are also very fragile.

Treat a Phantasmal Mesmer like a Minionmancer, kill the hard hitting Minions, THEN focus on the Mesmer. Granted the Phantasmal Duelist is a little bit on the strong side for being so hard to dodge, but there are ways around it. Most good players know the ways around it.

I was messing around with my engineer last night trying out a bunker build and ran into one of these guys – kitten do those phantasms put out a kittenload of damage!! It’s like thief burst but over and over until you kill the phantasm.

There are a lot of variations you can make here too – like taking staff and greater marks for the off set… you can use focus/warhorn/dagger for the off hand of the dagger set… you can put traits in SR instead of BM for more DS-centric survivability. I usually only take two wells (suffering + a utility well) and spectral walk for a stun break and access to swiftness. That’s what’s awesome about necro is there seem to be a lot of options for this class as opposed to a lot of others that are forced into just one or two viable setups. my 2 cents…

Power builds are usually with dagger main hand and focus/warhorn/dagger offhand. You want to go 30 points into spite for the power but then after that if you want survivability/tankiness you can either go into blood magic for life siphoning traits and use vampirism runes or you can go into soul reaping and focus on life force regen so you can use DS to tank a lot of damage. Not gonna be guardianesque tankiness but it’s not bad – of course you probably sacrifice some damage this way.