Guild Wars 2

Oh nose! We might not handle 1v5’s as easily as before now!

I’ve grown really sick of choir based stuff ever since the epicness of these tracks got douchified by the people using them everywhere.

^
Because of memories, and tons of situations which were related to these games, with all the funny kitten my friend and I did I can’t think of WvW without thinking of one of these tracks now.

This isn’t the only thing to balance if you start comparing the skills between classes.

Anet’s philosophy bothers me. The OP actually got it right. We won’t get this or that buff because we MIGHT RISK being very efficient here or there, being tanks here, or DPS there. The problem is that their vision of ‘versatility’ doesn’t reward us at all, at least in dungeons.

That’s pretty much one of the few changes I’d have requested. Stealth has always been hard to tamper with.

Sebrent.3625:

The fact that a large part of my success in fighting a good thief is dependent on the luck of my guesses and the ease by which a thief can reset a fight makes me quite annoyed. I can’t always guess correctly … lucky eventually bites you.

Culling still being an issue just exacerbates this.

There, someone who gets it. I don’t understand why it is to hard for everyone to even see this, I mean, we’re not even complaining, we state that and it’s directly “L2 kitten ue, classified, moved on”.

Razor.6392:

L2p_issue. Once you learn to deal with thieves, they aren’t that scary anymore.

Wanna talk unforgiving, nigh unpredictable 100-0 bursting? 100nades engineer.

L2p_issue. Once you learn to deal with engineers, they aren’t that scary anymore.

Funny, isn’t it? Don’t tell me that you can’t see when an Engineer is using the Magnet on you, he’s holding a huge chunk of metal and there is a line drawn between literally telling you to press V.

SilverWF.4789:

Ha-ha, so like you:
Thieves using Assasin’s Signet? > Prepare a defensive move.
Thieves using (Any) Venom? > Prepare a defensive move.
Thieves rising their right arm? > Prepare a defensive move.

Yeah, it’s easy – easy like your cases, really ^^

Noone’s dumb enough to use Assassin’s Signet, and you have 30s to apply the Basilisk Venom giving you plenty of room to check for an engage. And… Tell me how you’re actually seeing a Steal coming like all the other cases I mentioned, this one coming from a decent Thief is only predictable… 50% of the time? Due to its instant cast nature? Don’t tell me I’m actually teaching you how to play one, baddie.

Besides it’s not even a complaint but a comment, I suppose that I get off really easy since I main an Engineer overprepared to greet the cheese with open arms. The results of these mechanics can be seen on most of the playerbase, and leads to why there are complaints, why the WvW grounds are infested by that, and why there are 850 sup3r0wn4g3 Thief PvP Fragm0v1es featuring 1v5+ everyday, something that you can do blindfolded with both hands bound when facing cattle due to the nature of the mechanisms. I don’t know if the hypocrisy or the refusal for most of Thieves to make efforts is considered laughable or disgusting.

With all the combos said above, there is one difference between all of them and the Thief burst: Predictability.

Clones running to you? > Prepare a defensive move.
Bull Rush / Charge of any kind? > Prepare a defensive move.
Rangers using Quickness? > Prepare a defensive move.
Necro installing wells? > Well…. just don’t stand in there, you don’t even need to ‘dodge’ or ‘block’ that.
Necro attempting to immobilize you? > They raise their arms begging you to dodge their attack > Dodge.
Engi using magnet / throwing net on you? > Dodge. (The Rifle burst is probably the closest thing to the unpredictability of a Thief burst)

You have a fair amount of time to react to most of things.

When a decent Thief looks to burst you down he’ll check if you have eventual counter moves such as Block, since you must set it up before an engage as Steal-Mug-BVenom is pretty much instant (Then CnD and Backstab if no escape at all). Superior mind-games will get through this, sometimes requiring you to engage with something that has 1200 range for the sake of safety. Not all the Thieves are killhungry to the point of being braindead, many of them are aware of all that.

By default these builds are sensitive to ranged controls. Besides, I hardly see why you don’t have the edge against them, D/P provides an independant source of stealth, they need to CnD something in order to get on par with your stealth which often means that you’re at advantage.

Get a Tool Kit in there, a pull is all you need in order to complete your set of knocks, and the Gear Shield gives invaluable protection. The Crate will take care of the Net Turret.

I’d gladly trade the 100nades for the Basilisk Venom + Mug-Steal + CnD + Backstab.

There is one of those two combos you don’t really get to predict to the perfection.

It’s funny. It looks like we’re NOT allowed to deal damage because we aren’t a class defining a barbarian or an altair clone.

A rocket launcher.

Problem will be samples. Trying to do the same right now, at least WvW wise but as said in another thread this can prove to be exhausting to have the best situation suited to one’s potential.

timidobserver.7925:

Hmmmm okay just tried the build. It works pretty good, but if there is a condition cleaner, particularly a guardian, anywhere nearby then you become useless.

Oh, of course. The slight difference might be that we are condition spam based rather than condition nuking. Reapplying them over and over proves to be a major pain even for those shrugging them off, especially if it’s poison and burning. Also, a random Pry Bar in the middle of a Guardian or an Ele’s attack cycle does tremendous and rarely noticeable confusion damage.

Great, another thread begging for sniping skill on Thieves. The closest you’ll ever have will be Warrior, and it won’t go any further. Besides, you’re requesting to add a concentration/focus/stabilized skills on a class that is 100% based about thrill, action, and quick decision.

PS: Engies say hello on the ‘Fewest weapon combinations’ and they’ll gladly shoot you down if you ever mention kits.

I’ve pretty much stopped reading at the OP’d first sentence, not only because it stinks arrogance, from someone whose ‘devastaging builds’ show very little experience, but because we aren’t ‘poor engies’, we are fine.

The complains you see are because of what Anet wants us to be: Versatile, something that isn’t quite rewarded in Dungeons and all.

If you ever cared to actually look at the threads you could see that there are tons of posted builds with alot of different strengths and weaknesses that do work and that are different from eachother by miles. We aren’t quite pigeonholed.

Not only you failed at acting like the Messiah, but we absolutely don’t need one either. That was miserable, go back to your Warrior.

Lebannen.8325:

yeah, one AE can wipe out the turrets and what can you do in a 2 sec stun? Sorry. I doubt the supply crate. Ill keep sticking to my Elixir X and smashing people in the face or throwing people around in tower defenses.

In very large battles the Elixir X can outshine the Crate, but the Crate is much more handy in solo or a small group fights. Not alot of people are crazy enough to fight an Engineer inside the Crate’s radius, the net turret in there is much more of a pain in the kitten than you can think, especially for classes like Thief, it is also a very reliable way to interrupt any important action including fleeing within 1200 range, you also have regeneration and some supplies when adopting a defensive posture.

google.3709:

throw in an flame turret and you can wipe out an entire zerg

And then a Supply Crate and the Stonemist Castle is directly yours.

At least you should be happy that you don’t get pigeonholed into ONE scheme like most of builds. I really don’t see what’s your problem.

HAHA! It was barely credible through the whole paragraph, I fell of my chair laughing at the end. Good one, 8/10!

PS: You’d want to go back to Assassin’s Creed if you’re looking to assassinate helpless people. This game is multiplayer, the people you drool at when attempting to “assassinate” with your stale fashion are players, with classes, maybe different from yours, and for the sake of balance there must at least be a slight bit of defense.

Maskaganda.2043:

I know I can record better fights, it is just tough to get them to happen sometimes.. “oh here’s a nice 1v3, BAM 20 allies show out of nowhere”.

Or 20 ennemies.

Deified.7520:

I don’t like to berserker this because, well there really is no point. Most of your damage comes from the Rifle, which still isn’t a lot. Plus in WvW if you get caught, your chances of being toast go up significantly.

Depends of where. If in the middle of a large battle, if you get caught you just raise your Gear Shield and run back to your group. Knowing that most of your encounters will be D/D Eles, Thieves and Mesmers, if you mess something up it’s not a bit of tankability that will save you as our escapes are pathetic, and the few things you can drop on the ground like Slick Shoes and the Box of Nails won’t be enough unless you have a keep close to your position. If it’s not Berserker, it will be Soldier, anything in between that isn’t condition based is pretty much a waste for us.

I suppose I can put my share of knowledge in there.

For the Engineer:

With all the combats I’ve seen, Engineer is probably amongst the best when dealing with Thieves due to a rather unpredictable CC spam and burst.

-All the weapon sets are viable when fighting one, but Rifle is a weapon of choice, especially if traited with range, and cooldown reduction, the Net on 7s cooldown and the Overcharged Shot not far behind are devastating interrupts.

-The Tool Kit is one of your best friends in there, an undodged Magnet hit will help you having the upper hand in fights, open up to more combos like Pry Bar or Overcharged shot, and catch the fleeing ones. But the most important part is the Gear Shield, if you’re not P/S, it will be essential, especially against the glass cannon ones. If the Thief is running straight to you, do the same and raise it; if you’re the one engaging, play offensive then directly raise the shield as the Thief will definately attack right after your first shots.

-The flamethrower comes next in helpfulness, often for conditioners because Thieves are very sensitive to oftenly reapplied conditions, especially burning, and Engies excel at applying burns. The push-back is on a rather short cooldown, and a smoke vent triggered at the right time will get your opponent to miss a CnD. On top of this, the Flame Jet itself can help you detecting a stealthed Thief if you check the damage logs in the same time, it can help you giving a direction on where to hit next.

-While I’ve never been a fan of bombs, they’re the second biggest bane the Engineer can offer to Thieves as they envelopp anything melee into a huge condition shaitstorm that includes movement conditions. The Smoke Bomb can grant a stealth if you make a Blast in it: Rocket Boots for a stealthed escape, Big Ol’ Bomb, and Supply Crate to make a homemade Thieves Guild as it grants you stealth while calling ‘reinforcements’.

Some really underrated gadgets can also make a difference:

-The Slick Shoes are a bane to any melee characters and Thieves are no exception when attacked or when attacking, with something like a Magnet as example, for maximum crowd control.

-The Rocket Boots, yes, I’m serious. If you’re pistol/shield, this gadget gives you one of the most brutal counter-attacks with its Rocket Kick after you block a hit and therefore stun your opponent.

As for the Elixirs:

-The Elixir S, of course. Your most reliable anti-gank solution, but its full potential is affected by RNG, as the Throw Elixir version is splitted in 50/50 between Stability and Stealth, if it’s the latter well, good job.

-And the Elixir R comes next, giving you a potential to dodge two more times and to rez yourself if carefully timed. If you have 15+ in tools, with even more careful timing you can rez yourself twice.

-The Supply Crate itself is very annoying for Thieves to deal with, most likely due to the Net Turret randomly crippling them and the Flame Turret next to it causing damage, a Thief would be mad to fight you within your materials. You’d want to keep this Elite in store though unless you fought poorly enough for the Thief to get the upper hand. Keep it why? Because it’s amongst the best interrupts. If a Thief looks to make a run for it and starts stealthing, drop the over his head, if too late, the stun will give you a bit of time to try to catch up, if early enough, the stealthing process will be interrupted and your Thief will be immobilized on top of it and served to you on a silver platter.

But for the most part, an Engineer is as unpredictable on what he’s going to pull off, and a Thief is unpredictable on WHEN he’s going to pull his tricks off, which turns the fight into a huge mind game that is directly decided at the start of the fight if both ennemies are glass cannon. Which is why I recommend to watch how the Thief is looking to engage the fight, if he runs toward you, drooling at you like if you were cattle (advantage to you) or if he’s cautious (advantage to him).

In what concerns P/D Thieves, even a glass cannon Engineer can potentially outlast them, as they often only apply bleeds, which are removable easily through the Med Kit’s antidote, and your huge amount of CC will disrupt their attempts to CnD you.

You may have a hard time catching a D/P Thief though, the mind game remains sensitively the same, except that in trade of the ability to nearly go perma-stealth while being independant, they can’t really afford to mess anything up due to the costs in initiative, anything interrupted will iterally break their scheme as these builds require careful timing.

PS: I’d like to post videos but I barely handle the game correctly in low graphics, I’m getting a full respec of my computer in 10ish days, if the thread still lives, I’ll eventually try to make explanations with videos.

Well, you can even glass cannon this, traited Tool Kit gives some underrated survivability, especially in WvW.

I’d use the battery ram instead of the net turret though.

Alot of efforts, almost got burnt out of these few days. But BG’s current state feels like something close to a premature e… xplosion.

Hope it’s not true though, massive and messy fights everywhere, no need to run far to find action.

Thiefz.3695:

I was thinking that with runes of undead and 10 in alchemy you could add 200 more condition damage. With more toughness you could add power.

You’d want to go Rabid if looking to equip the runes of the Undead, with sigils of Strength/Battle/Earth and at least 10 in Firearms you’ll have solid bases in terms of condition damage, the rest of the traits and whether you choose pistol/shield or pistol/pistol is up to you, everything is fairly flexible.

It’s surprising Engineer hasn’t been mentioned even once. The CC spam when caught could make someone literally scream.

oZii.2864:

I don’t know what build you play on your Engi but there is a Engi on Yaks Bend in Lame guild that 1v4 or 1v5 us all day its annoying but its good.

I have 4 builds, including the one you speak about, problem is that the solidity is traded with… well if anyone decides to flee he’ll eventually do it unless the Magnet isn’t dodged, on top of this the core isn’t particularily useful, but yes, ridiculously solid, even better now that the Pry Bar was buffed.

Besides, I really expected my comments to be slaughtered by anyone who’d see that. Well met.

oZii.2864:

That shouldn’t be hard to do. He is with a D/D ele the whole video. Picks off some underleveleds or people that strayed from what looks like a 6 man zerg(if you call that a zerg). I can’t see why you couldn’t the same kill count on another class in the scenario’s in this video.

Well, I pretty much spoke in general. I felt proud of the few moments of glory I had with the engi during hairy situations, having made a charr thief and handling such situations with such ease, I pretty much grew disgusted that alot of people would make tons of videos about it and act like it’s super-amazing.

I really don’t care about the damage output a Thief will do. Stealth is a feature that can trick everyone, not just your opponent; which already makes it one of the top features, the way it’s handled, it will grant you forgiveness even if you just chained 5 mistakes during a fight against 3 persons, just watch the 850 super-amazing, zerg destroying Thief videos being posted each day by people whose gameplay makes you cry of rage, a D/D Ele barely reaches that kind of prowess and requires you to play like if you were making a symphony on a piano.

I want to see some other classes doing the same.

Well. Alot of stuff with Tool Kit now actually does fit, the confusion remains useful even without raising condition damage and my zerker build does something about 7k damage on a Pry Bar hit.

Since I’ve never had the hang of these HGH*409 builds and religiously hold onto my Med Kit I just cooked that:

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.4.6.0.20.0.0.0.0.0.80.101.89.97.102.4.4.0.230.0.0.246.244.0.0.0.0.271.272.0.291.293.0.10.20.0.20.20

Something that is much more offensive, CC spam based, but rather sensitive to conditions still.

Of course, stealth isn’t really overpowered if you just idle in that shadow refuge and welcome the ennemy hits with open arms.

That was hilarious.

Aberrant.6749:

Another vid of a thief killing players who act like cattle chewing grass…

Yeah but well, it’s so kitten easy. I’d like to see a Guardian, a Ranger or a Necro performing this with that much ease. There are 800 Thief videos for a reason.

Ouzhyr.2175:

Big buff to Prybar. I predict we’ll be seeing a lot more tankcats in PvP soon.

Or just Tool Kit. Since the buff to it my supposed ‘ultra offensive condition build’ had its Flamethrower to leave the room for Tool Kit. Glass cannon Engineers can still have fun with the 7k Pry bars.

Concerning Thieves, the TANKCAT build has its flaws, a good Thief won’t die to that, and is more of an anti-burster than anything. For D/D Eles, it tends to be a draw with the Ele having the advantage, but I found out that a dual pistols build with excessive and reappliable condition damage (Blowtorch in perfect timing with the Water attunement) actually does hurt an Elementalist beyond its bunker-abilities.

I would trade that trick for a PROPER jump shot without getting stuck mid air.

Engi has alot of ways to roam. And is amongst the best prepared classes when going into a fight. The problem is that once you’re in there are few chances that you may escape if you’re in trouble. Most likely because our ‘escapes’ aren’t blinks or dashes but work the other way around, with nails and slick shoes slowing ennemies down if they’re stupid enough to run through it. Knowing that most of your encounters will be Thieves, Mesmers and Elementalists, you better be sure of what you’re doing before going in.

Kits… acting like signets/attunements. Genius.

The OP understood alot of things, I’m pretty sure he might have played another class before going on Thief, where suddenly the gameplay becomes much easier, synergistic, with a Stealth feature that is way too forgiving.

As an Engineer switching between alot of different builds, it requires me some inhuman efforts in order to handle 1vs2+, and feel pretty epic when managing to triumph. I’ve dealt with my share of Thieves when solo roaming in WvW, something that I can’t really complain about because we’re unpredictable and amongst the most equipped to fighting one. Not all the classes got that privilege though.

Then you get to see Thieves handling 1vX blindfolded with the hands bound, there are 700 sup3r0wn4g3 WvW ninja-wannabe-assassin videos showing how Stealth is too forgiving. How can people be so blind about it? Or maybe it isn’t blindness…

There aren’t any builds. Every ability / traits / weapons you can put together can work, it’s up to the situation and to your liking.

The army of Rangers is watching you!

Very nice alternative. It’s really too bad that I’m not fond of bombs, and replacing that with a Flamethrower would just compromise an effective use of Confusion. It’s a cool build nonetheless.

Anyone would be out of his mind to believe that the current stealth mechanic doesn’t give too much forgiveness.

Don’t die! Dead men don’t buy anything!

Pistol / Shield, Rocket Boots, Tool Kit, Slick Shoes.

If melee opponent, get one of his hits to trigger the stun on your Static Shield, then chain with Rocket Kick, Pry Bar and spray your Poison Darts while activating your Slick Shoes.

If ranged, just engage with the Magnet instead of Static Shield.

A potential counter-attack combo resulting in massive condition damage.

Wanderer.5471:

As a ranger in 1v1s your pet is constantly dps-ing downed players so you are WRONG. You’d know this if you actually read the previous posts, instead of chiming in with OPINIONS that have already been proved wrong. Maybe learn what “literally” means?

Then your Engineer was rallied on some kill somewhere else.

/thread

There are like.. 50 threads with DD guides, along with videos because they infest the WvW grounds >.>

Holesale.2640:

Ive played many mmos over the years some with a lot of stealth, some with a more mild approach and this is the only one that didn’t give every class at least one way to combat combat it.

it seems so simple..

But IT IS, so simple. This stealth grants way too much forgiveness. No way to see through whatever the distance, no class related detection (even if I wouldn’t like the rock paper scissors fashion) and most importantly: No reveal asset, no reason to weaken ourselves throwing AOE’s everywhere.

Diversity isn’t rewarding enough in this game. And well, FT has only been useful on offensive conditiondamage builds with the Incendiary Ammo while giving a reasonable amount of CC.

Zinwrath.2049:

20 bucks says the engineer just rallied off of someone else dieng. Perhaps a turret he had somewhere else. lawl.

I think so too.

And all of this is if the Engineer uses the Elixir R. I’d like to remind people that it doesn’t have much pulses, a bit of damage will screw his ability to rez himself, getting him out of the circle will obviously work aswell.