Guild Wars 2

I can’t really counter a GOOD D/D ele, but I can survive long enough for my team to get there and back me up usually. It’s kind of a staring contest with them so only suggestion I have is outlive them or if you are fighting in the middle of nowhere, flee to a capture point. and let them waste time looking for you.

Still says bad link, lol. Idk, maybe IE is just the new age garbage that windows held onto.

Wooyadeen.6491:

daydream.2938:

Deathmatch basically =a team fight.

Stealth is core to the thief, it has counters like dodging backstab, or aoe into it.

Dodge roll is counter to stealth???

ROFL, go troll somewhere else. There is no counter for Stealth (you cant dodge stealth, and you cant aoe someone who you cant see). Maybe AOE can help there but only if you know where thief is.

But truth is:
Nothing counter stealth in this game.

You cant counter something if you cant see it.

See someone go stealth, plant traps, get mobility to get far away, put up some cripple/wall in between you and them. If you see someone go stealth, don’t stand there like an idiot. And he meant AoE’s for shadow refuge. If you noticed, if anyone leaves shadow refuge b4 it ends it reveals them and puts the stealth debuff on them. Since they are limited to that circle, place a ton of Aoe’s and or use some Aoe Knockback. You need to stop trolling and learn stealth mechanics b4 you claim they can’t be countered…

In response to titele, Just develop, test, mark that checklist off, release content with no bugs already.. hmmm sounds smart. I’d rather wait for a well developed Deathmatch mode than have it backfire 10 fold and ruin the taste buds of my pvp experience.

In response to adding deathmatch, yes please. But I think they have other priorities atm for pvp such as custom matches, leaderboards, profession tweaks, etc.

Well I do know that ele don’t have to fully spec healing power and their healing skills do generally well. I think (now this is just going off the knowledge of ele I know from friends/wiki/etc) a D/D or S/D ele if they constantly spammed skills could do well, however that also raises the question, do the skills have to hit something or just be used? Even though the skill is intended towards offensive builds, it kind of forces the ele to constantly have to switch attunements just to keep the heals coming when they may want to stick with water for a bit to support allies or stick with fire for the bonus dmg traits/runes but idk. Maybe some ele can utilize it well while others see no point to it, its the same for Signet of Malice.
That warrior signet does sound fairly weak but how well does it scale off healing power? Maybe all it needs is higher scaling for those who are willing to put a lil healing power on (sounds silly, but thats all I can suggest for them as idk warrior healing enough).

Vgman.4019:

Durzlla.6295:

After looking at the healing signets it looks like the active is meant for when you ABSOLUTELY NEED that burst of healing, IE you’re being focused and just can not get the healing you need to stay in the fight without popping it sort of thing.

Theres a problem with that to though.

Most of the time when you are forced to use your healing trinket the damage that you heal for is dealt to you during the time your spending to activate it meaning it only really buys you maybe 1-2 seconds of life? (and thats even when in bunker spec). I agree that healing signets in general could use some looking at just remember to be careful with em, because as it stands they are actually pretty good for a passive ability you don’t need to monitor.

How are the warriors/elementalists healing signets? Just curious. And I agree, they are great not having to monitor them, but still the way malice is atm might as well disable the ability to active it since it just authorizes the death and a respawn timer in pvp.

I play a mean cond thief, but since your offering advice, what would be your ideal Condition thief (excluding venoms, as I don’t really consider their use with a cond build).

BTW, the build links don’t work :/ Says bad link when I tried opening them. Maybe I’m not opening correctly but that just sounds silly.

I dont mind the small burst heal, although I hardly find it reasonable to use that burst heal and remain in combat as the passive is much stronger. What I mind is, well what I basically just stated, the passive is much stronger. I don’t want a nerf, some builds do aweful with them, others can utilize them really well and I hardly see any spvp players use them anyways (must not be their cup of tea). Maybe the warrior and Elementalists of pvp/pve would like an improvement on their healing signets as well but for thief, I can firmly state the active is next to useless.
Simply increasing the heal to match other healing skills, would be completely unfair and unbalanced. But there should be more to this active than a 3-4k heal and then you must wait 15 seconds before you can safely enter combat once more. Not to mention its a weak heal + cast time. It is likely to get you killed for using that active than it is to throw down caltrips/poison aoe/ dagger storm.

Again, the passive is fine imo and I don’t feel like it needs any change whatsoever, its the active that bothers me

I don’t see an issue with the “clutter” you speak of. Narrow your search results to master/rare/exotic if you must but you can’t get upset because something that you clicked to search for appears. You can also narrow by level or weapon/armor type to further this. Aside from narrowing light/medium/heavy armor they already have most filters that are needed to solve your problem.

Daecollo.9578:

Objects can now be affected by conditions.

Corrosion = Poison, it does the same thing as poison, but has a different picture.

Burning = Overheat, does the same thing as fire, just has a different picture.

Bleeding = Rust, it does the same thing as bleeding, has a different picture.

As much as those would help, I’m not sure its a suitable fix. I still feel like power builds would out damage us even against structures. ArenaNet said they were working on condition dmg versus structures awhile back so hard to tell what is being done at this moment. Hopefully the fix comes soon however, along with various other cond dmg fixes >.>

Jonny.9370:

I think the signet passive is for longer fights(dungeons) where the constant healing would be better than the single instant heal from withdraw/HiS. The signet use is probably meant to be an “oh kitten” button for instances in which you took a little too much damage and need some sort of quick hp boost to gtfo.(withdraw is better at this anyway though).

I personally haven’t used the signet since like september when I first unlocked it and wanted to try it out, so I’m probably wrong about it lol.

The thing is to use Signet of Malice you must understand what counts as a “hit”. For example, I bet most don’t know every enemy hit by the SB 4 skill counts as a “hit” therefor if you have 3 enemies in that circle, you get 3 ticks of heal 3 times (poison field ticks 3 times). Same for caltrops, and LOL at dagger storm with it.. Point is, the passive is amazing, for the offensive builds. But the active needs to be redone. Same for warrior apparently (i dont use warrrior really so can’t comment on that signet) and possibly same for elementalists.

You could always, you know.. not do dailys? If they annoy you to the point where you must scream for the repetitive old ways then don’t strain yourself and do other content. Monthlies only change once a month and if its laurels you want well they give 10… I love the new dailys, its different and still easy as toast (who can’t make toast? I can’t make cake… dont get that saying)

Before I start, I have NOTHING against the healing on hit it offers. Many builds can utilize this greatly and it is an awesome passive. But that active on the other hand….

Signets all work the same way. Use the active and until the cd is over the passive is on break. Now Signet of malice passive soo greatly outweighs the use of the active that we might as well get an option to “never use” skill with Alt+right click or something. The heal is too dang low, and thats all it offers. Now just upping the heal isn’t fair to other healing skills since they are supposed to be the higher heals, however there are ways to be crafty with it. BTW I’m aware elementalists have a healing skill on spell use, however I’m not a common ele player in any way so maybe they need that skill reworked as well, but idk..

Some options, not all at once need to be added but simply ideas:

-Maybe just increase how it scales off healing power. Not the best fix but its an option.

-Make it grant a boon such as regeneration for X seconds afterwards. That way you know you’re still getting healing even if its much smaller than the passive. Doesn’t have to last the entire cd, but 5 6 maybe 7 seconds of regeneration to keep a little healing going.

-Lower cd, again not pretty but it’s an option. By the time we use the active, if at all, those 15 seconds of agony pull us down and we are usually forced to retreat or stealth away. Strange that an active on a heal makes you need to back away…

-Instant heal (no cast time)+ smoke cloud for 2 seconds at your casting location. Gives you the edge for an instant blind and smoke cloud allows you to stealth away. Heal amount would stay the way it is, but removing that pesky cast time and an alternative to cloaking away/protecting yourself for 2 seconds with blind would be more than enough (maybe too much tbh, but again an option.)

-Make it break stun. Thieves have a ton of these already but again, this signet active needs something. And its only an option.

-instead of a small burst heal, next strike heals you for a good amount. It would work like a venom, you miss, you lose the effect. Since it is risky to use now more than before, the heal could get a base increase without getting out of wack. If it behaved like a venom would probably be best if it was instant cast too but thats not the main idea for this option, so not necessary.

I’m sure others have had their suggestions for this in the past but this active is weak sauce compared to the passive. The one and only time I have used or even considered using the active is if I won a fight against a condition build and need that short heal so that I don’t get downed while running away. Otherwise, it just is left alone. Maybe many believe the active is fine the way it is, thieves don’t need to be more OP.. Well that’s your opinion then, we are all entitled to it.

Zenith.7301:

The best idea would be to trade the crit damage for vitality, mimicking the spvp jewel. The crit damage cap in PvE should go to 60%.

I use Valkyrie Armor, eagle runes, and berserker trinkets. I still crit for about 55% of the time and have atm 104% crit dmg, and I hardly call what I do to mobs “melting”. Trash mobs maybe, but with soo much investment to dmg I should get the little kick I paid/worked for. I don’t think nerfing stats is the solution, as much as reworking these boss encounters. 1 shot mechanics, do not promote a support build, if you’re going to die if you don’t dodge why not just go full dmg you know?

Firstly they should do what they can to remove these 1 shot mechanics and add more group oriented mechanics like shared dmg or staying away from each other due to targetd AoE’s or pulsing fire (they have some of these already, and they are quite unique but they are few and far between).

Additionally, they need more stat combinations to better build support and condition builds. I could go on about the builds they “need” but I’ll leave that in the hands of developer’s who can put together the missing pieces if any are found.

Turial.1293:

NinjaEd.3946:

If your party gets downed that often, you should wiki the dungeon or ask people for hints. Dungeon’s are teamwork, you don’t have that expect to die a lot. Rez rushing was removed for multiple reasons: these dungeon encounter’s weren’t teamwork based as much as throwing your body into a pit of death, they didn’t promote healthy gameplay (you have to die to progress?) and it wasn’t intended. You can still spawn at wp, AFTER your team exits combat. IF they want to go ahead and kill the boss without you then get angry with the teamates, but the removal of rez rushing was great (plus they adjusted several dungeons so there wouldn’t be a need for rez rushing.) You will on occasion come across a stray kitten who seems lost the entire time. That is life (in an MMO), but I highly doubt you come across a full party of them on a regular basis. I run with randoms constantly and rarely come across these kittens.

I agree with the first half of your post about teamwork and die to progress but you seriously can’t believe it is in the best interests of the players to stop killing a boss at 5% and let it reset just to res a single player so that they can get loot. If the loot did not suck enormously I would understand it but the effort of killing the boss far outweighs a crappy blue item and some silver. If someone drops in the last 30 secs of a boss from a bad dodge or whatever and they did not drop at all during the fight then is it really fair for them to miss out on their loot? It is definitely a bug.

I should of clairfied my stance on the loot part, yes I think that is an issue. If you die, you should still get loot when you are back up. I’m shocked this is a problem though, since I have done world events like the Dragons before. After participating for a long time, and even after I D/C right before the dragon died, I logged back in and collected my chest.

Maybe chests are different than loot but in any case the two should behave the same when someone dies/disconnects.

Basically, I have a ranger. Since I main thief I never really liked the thought of ranger in spvp but I have played thief plenty enough and want to try something different, preferable something that doesnt get kitten on all the time for being “op”.

Please, to anyone who uses ranger in spvp or tpvp, post your build including traits, runes, sigils, weapon types, pet selection, etc etc. I don’t intend to exactly copy the build but I’d like a foundation to build off of. I will more than likely adjust a thing or two from them but I’m always open to see how others play this profession in pvp.

In response to title, Fantasy. They have no real structure or main city. For a personal story, unless they run with a group of skritt you will just laugh at their poor grammer and think “who am I kidding, this is a waste of programmer time”. Maybe a transformation part or dungeon or event to become a skritt outfit but not playable entirely.

produde.8092:

Create new characters, I have 3 Necros and 4 Mesmers each for a different purpose. Problem solved don`t thank me.
No but seriously, as I see it it would take away precious programer time to make this thing happen, and there are things in this PvP that are way more important than something.

I’m not only doing pvp, so wasting a character slot so that I can swap my build doesn’t seem reasonable. And I never said this should be a priority, so don’t say things like “precious programmer time”. There are more important things in pvp, I agree. But this should still be addressed if not already being worked on.

I think the idea of laurels was to not force people into a dungeon for higher stat pieces. Not to mention I’m sure you’re not the only player with numerous pristine relics so if they made it an option a ton of people would already be walking around with them. The point of ascneded items/infusions is to take time to get.

It’d be like asking to buy future ascended armor with karma. The people who have thousands of it wouldn’t really have an issue fully upgrading and they finish this hunt for ascended in few hours instead of the weeks/months it would/should take.

No one is required to do a monthly. Please understand that and move on already.

Karma: from daily jugs and events all over pve

MYstic coin: Daily, they take no time unless your not willing to put in that 2% effort it requires. Or you can actually buy them off the TP.

Exclusive gem store items: Again, daily can offer these. Or you can support ArenaNEt and buy some gems from them.

Laurels: Daily… nuff said.

Monthlies are for those who got the time and want that extra bonus. If everything in this game took 2 hours to complete it would have a minimal player base. Some things NEED to take time to accomplish, or we’re left starring at a wall of trophies asking ourselves “Now what?”

ONSLAUGHT.5491:

Well put yourself in this situation , you join a party with random people ( like most do)
and all those people dont know what the hell is going on, and they are getting down a lot . Then what? team work? how if your team is dead and it takes forever to revive them when you and the boss are fighting each other.

If your party gets downed that often, you should wiki the dungeon or ask people for hints. Dungeon’s are teamwork, you don’t have that expect to die a lot. Rez rushing was removed for multiple reasons: these dungeon encounter’s weren’t teamwork based as much as throwing your body into a pit of death, they didn’t promote healthy gameplay (you have to die to progress?) and it wasn’t intended. You can still spawn at wp, AFTER your team exits combat. IF they want to go ahead and kill the boss without you then get angry with the teamates, but the removal of rez rushing was great (plus they adjusted several dungeons so there wouldn’t be a need for rez rushing.) You will on occasion come across a stray kitten who seems lost the entire time. That is life (in an MMO), but I highly doubt you come across a full party of them on a regular basis. I run with randoms constantly and rarely come across these kittens.

I had a feeling it has been requested since day 1. Just didn’t see a post on the first like 4 pages so didn’t know if the thought died off or moderators shutting them down.

It has been posted b4, a moderator posted they are working on damage versus structures from non-power based builds. Just be patient and stay tuned.

Brutalistik.6473:

Well just be prepared for February because we was told from other threads and got hints from the game of state video that this is the month for lots of changes for professions. I know warriors going to get some ups here and there.

I hope not, and I really hope thief doesn’t get nerfed down to primordus (where ever he is staying atm).

Title says it all. I’m positive it has been posted before (how could it not?) but I looked 4 pages in, typed various keywords relating to this and all I find is either “Why warrior’s suck” or “blatenly op thieves” or w/e.

Memory does most of this but it’d be nice to just click a button, when out of a pvp match, and swap your build. Additionally, similar to how town clothes functions, you will have a seperate set of armor/weapons/trinkets in the hero panel to swap to (again, only when not in a pvp match). Takes away wasted inventory space, and makes loading up a profile much quicker. For example:

Profile[Gear]: armor, weapons, trinket with runes/sigils and the skins from the last profile you wore. Next to town clothes option, will be your other profile option for the other set of pvp gear complete with your runes, sigils, weapons, armor, trinkets and the skins associated with that profile.

Profile[traits]: In case the player wants to try gear X with trait Y, they can do so. So above or next to “refund traits” will be profile 1 and 2.

Suggestions/comments?

I fail to see your problem OP, even after ranting on about a few skills.
I tried Tpvp, for the monthly. Tried paid first as the rewards seemed quite nice, however after 3 matchs I simply quit. Why? Because every single one of those matches had either a warrior, or 2 warriors. If it was 1 warrior, they were [Bulls Charge + Frenzy + Hundred blade] spamming, and would eat any of my teamates alive. I managed to surive this once with stun break however then they whirlwinded me, and had a teamate hitting during this entire encounter… you can see where that went.

Warrior’s don’t need to build glass cannon, and they can put out insane damage, remove CC like its dust, and still “Tank” very well.
I was in fotm (keep in mind, pve, where you can get even better stats) and I managed to crit for ~9.5k. Felt proud, consisteny I crit for like 8.5k-9k so I told my party this (small bragging). Warrior in my party said he had crit for 13k b4. I asked “With what, hundred blades?”. He said yeah, turns out he only had 30% crit dmg too. Tell me, how is it that someone who has a significant health pool/defences, can build tanky, and still put out 13k dmg? While I have to fully invest into damage and sacrafise hugely on defences to come close?

No, warrior is ridiculous, they do not need more. Just about all professions are obnoxious in their own ways (I personally hate warrior and mesmer the most but I digress) so just accept defeat and move on. Dieing to the fool who spams heartseeker over and over shouldn’t force you to bend over and slam your head on the keyboard. Neither should the necro who camps on the top of “Battle Of Kyhlo” and fears anyone off the ledge if they come close. And this isn’t GW1, regardless of how similar they may seem. They did a ton of things differently here, so learn to love/hate it how you please but don’t call out other professions for being OP when you are among them.

No one is standing over your shoulder saying “do that monthly, NOW!”. If you want to get a little bonus, then be glad and cherish the easy requests they have. IF you don’t like those requests, dont punch yourself into doing them.

Maybe not a fractal, But I’m sure ArenaNEt has plans for it. From the GW1 article, I can see still nothing was known about it other than that some want control over it (however they plan to accomplish that). With no evidence yet in GW2, they must be waiting for the right moment to release something really spectacular.

I kinda like the .5-1 second evade on stealth as it makes sense (I hate how people can channel onto us when we enter stealth and continue hitting us accuratly), but I think 2 things should go along with that so stealth doesnt become even more powerful than some people claim it to be.

1. Increase stealth durations by 1 second, excluding trait. With trait, it should increase stealth duration by another 1 second.
2. Increase the time between stealthing from the ~3 seconds to about 6 seconds.

I have nothing against thieves power, I actually main one in pvp/pve. I do however have an issue that stealth seems too much like a basic attack. If you’re glass cannon, you must spam it constantly to throw your target off unless you get the minor trait in acrobatics to regain some endurance on dodge but again that is too limiting. They have many great traits related to stealth but with how short stealth usually lasts it hardly seems worth it to use up a major trait slot with them.
For example, 20% dmg Vs target with 50% or less health, or 100% crit chance in stealth. Option 2 is definitly nice but 20% dmg is very significant and with berserker or even rampager’s set, crits happen very often. There really needs to be some work on the traits related to stelath as well as give us options to how it behaves (i.e. short lasting constantly, or longer lasting with long debuff inbetween and possibly other downfalls like -10% movement speed or something.)

I played stealth thief for a long time, I really really enjoy the stealth exclusive skills each weapon has. I do not like the feel of spamming stealth however. Even if a few seconds here, another few seconds there were added as an optional trait build I’d be fine (I’m not for perma stealth). Some ideas to improve these things could be

Hiddin Killer- Every second you remain in stealth, increase your crit dmg by 1%. Caps at lets say 10%. Crit dmg lost after first attack from stealth.

Shadow’s Embrace- Same except an added bonus. If you let stealth run out you come out with X seconds of protection. (As in you do not attack while stealthed, and the time expires). Part 2 could have a cooldown to prevent perma-protection.

Cloaked in Shadow- Leave behind a smoke cloud when you stealth, blinding foes in it. Cloud lasts 2 seconds. Shorten radius of effect. Dash/whirlwind/leap skills will disperse the smoke cloud.

Just some ideas, don’t have to be taken seriously.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Give us Laurels for Daily PvP and Monthly PvP as well.

Why not?

It would not hurt right?

Might probably encourage more people to try out sPvP.

“You want more Laurels? Go play sPvP gahahahah!”

Laurels benefit pvp in absolutely no way. It’d be like asking for Badges of Honor from tournament matches at taht point or karma. Unless the currency is relevent to the event/activity it serves no reasonable purpose being there. Not to mention the prices on ascended items/mini pets/boxes were already decided, so that it would take time to get those things. Making the process take half the time just makes what little progression there is obsolete.

I don’t know too much about sylvari elite skills but definitly agree on norn. The whole “racial elite’s should be weaker than profession elites” I agree on but it comes down to numbers at that point. Racial elite skills don’t have to offer high damage, but they should have some sort of use. For example, Norn can be sort of tanky with the high health pool and be allowed to attack on the move. Human can either be conditions or support(grenth and balathazar being cond, melandru being support, not w/e it is now :/). Asuran makes a good ally that distracts but I’m sure they would like small changes to the power suit.

All in all, racial elites in general should not be this downgraded. They shouldn’t replace the damage or support of any profession elite’s but they should be considered in various situations.

I think the OP has good intentions, however bots do not. Even a 3 day free trial, bot companies would just remake trial accounts constnatly to get their gold, without having to hack an account or buy the game (they would still hack accounts but still).

Maybe if you want to pop in, do some minor damage, then pop out but Sword on thief itself is kinda pathetic imo. Doesnt really fit any role other than to be annoying (pistol whip primarily)

Lofat.2406:

Bleeds.4029:

I have six 80’s, one of which is a thief that I am learning to dearly love (thanks Lofat for the p/p build!!). In the interests of keeping it real. My guardian with 3200 (and some change) armor has been backstabbed in excess of 8k. Maybe it’s rare and random, but it can happen. Combine that with 5-6k steal, and 6-7k CnD and things get out of hand quickly. Does it happen every time to my guardian? No. But it can happen. It makes armor feel utterly useless. Then again, all my 80’s have run into the bull rush/100 blades attack and without a stun break immediately (if at all) it is ridiculous and not survivable. This combo is far easier to mitigate on my guardian than any other of my chars by a long shot. Even my bunker ele gets eaten by 100 blades if I’m not paying attention.

Bottom line, there are some thieves out there that either have some kind of macro running that can get attacks off in such precise ways or they are truely god-like players because normal mortals die before they can react. On the other hand, a warrior can win in two button pushes if they catch you, usually from behind ~and~ if they are built that way ~and~ they have all the health and armor that comes for free with that class. Both are pretty OP, but none are game breaking…yet.

Rangers and Engineers can completely melt people also given the right circumstances, gear and build. Heck, you can even build a guardian glass cannon and melt people 1v1.

My problem is becoming more and more warrior focused as I learn the thief and their tricks. To beat a thief, survive the burst. To beat a warrior….well, I like seeing the full signet warriors because they are usually a free meal otherwise I try to just avoid them. Oh, and yes, one of my 80’s is a warrior….everyone’s favorite; a glass cannon rifle/greatsword warrior. Woot. I feel somewhat OP on the warrior, but again, not game breaking. My warrior is dirt napping as often as face melting.

Glad you’re enjoying the P/P build. It’s fun and powerful. Even more fun when you burst someone down with the pistols and then get up in their face with the S/D to finish them off.

I normally don’t have any issues fighting thieves on any of my toons. I can usually spot them before they have a chance to stealth, mug, cnd, backstab and leave me taking a dirt nap.

But if you’re expecting a thief to say “look over here, here I am” before you engage, it’s not likely to happen with a good thief. If I see a thief within 1500 yards and they stealth, guess what, they aren’t going to appear in front of me and ask me to dance… Chances are they are already planning and getting ready for the backstab.

Be aware of them, prepare, and assume he’s trying to position for a backstab. Remember, stealth only lasts 3-4 seconds. So dodge it, run from it, wait for him to show then stun/daze and destroy.

Could you share with me this P/P S/D build? And is it for PVE or pvp? (assuming pvp). I enjoy my current build a ton, have done consecutive games with 11-13 kills 0 deaths 200+ capture points; problem is I don’t like hiding into one build for eternity.

I dont understand OP, you want even better loot? I did 1 short event lasting maybe 5 or 6 minutes. Got 3 moldy bags and various blues with a green here and there. Did the next event in the chain and got a rare and tons of blues/greens with T5/6 mats. Not to mention you can use karma to buy orr chests from the npc’s in Orr for tier 6 mats and other items.

The drop rate has been increased significantly, no need to hand out the key’s to the Tyrian Bank vault and make everyone a millionair.

It’s actually better to salvage whites than to sell them. At 80, the loot you get usually can be salvaged for mithril, elder wood, or if you’re lucky orichalcum and ancient wood. You make wayy more money salvaging whites but greens and blues is better to just npc, tossing them into the forge is likely to lose you a ton of coin unless Zomorros is yourr buddy on Facebook or somethin..

Maybe add a weekly, but not replace daily with it. Daily’s are easy and take no time, something someone with a tight schedule can do. Monthlies arn’t too bad either but still very time consuming.

Salavage all can lead to some problems that people may not think about at the time. If you run into inventory issues, the cog symbol in your inventory allows you to deposit all collectibles on you to your storage. Helps me in dungeons and orr a lot.

Depends on what the fight is. In wvW, when downed you pretty much stay downed. Hardly find people raising one another until a few straggelers behind the zerg notice them. In spvp or tpvp, you usually get enough time to activate that vengence and start your reign of terror.

Dailys don’t require a group. Revive works on npcs too, which you don’t need a group to find. Dodger comes naturally. Crafting is just easy enough especially if you do the harvesting daily or have done it numerous times before, use the mats you get from those towards crafting. Veteran slayer well, go to a starter zone and soloing a veteran is cake. Dungeon daily is a bit pushy, not all people like or have the time for one but my advice is AC or CoF exp mode. Both are quick, take less than 20 minutes, and you get loot.

Shame on ArenaNet for asking people to use that dodge button. Really, ever do grenth or balthazar lately? No one knows how to dodge. Truthfully, the dodge daily should come naturally and you shouldn’t have to think about it. Find those 5 veterans and finish up the dodge daily during it. And there are hundreds of ways to find veterans, ask in map chat if you can’t find them. New dailies rock, you just gata let it soak in a bit

I’d take vengence over the crappy teleport thieves get when downed. Atleast during vengence/vapor form you can move/jump and get around. Teleport gets blocked by the smallest of steps/obstacles.

To start off, this is not directed towards the difficulty or scaling of this fractal. Some may have an issue with it at higher fractal levels, it has yet to hurt me as such.

Now, not all fractals have various paths built into them, but some of them are soo short and predictable that you never really feel like the game is different everytime you move forward. Here are some suggestions for this fractal to allow a little bit of variety as you repeat it.

Passively: While the blizzard is still active by the elemental, your mini map is blurred out.

Part 1: Climbing down the mountain side to the giant fire. Now for hte most part, people just jump down various spots and land safely to continue moving forward (even I do sometimes). 2 things for this should be done, 1 being increase the height of the climb down, to prevent people dropping off. Secondly at higher level fractals, various sections of these platforms will break once a player steps on them (platform breaks .5-1 second later as to be avoidable). The entire platform section will not break, only parts of them. However, if a player drops from a height (lets say, just at falling damage height) onto a platform, the entire section is at risk of collapsing making progress down the mountain side trickier.

Part 2: The fire pit. Really nothing should be changed here, it is fine as is IMHO.

Part 3: The elemental. Not too much to change here, however I believe at higher fractal levels, the elemental should teleport people further away from it, making it much harder to find their way back.

Part 4: Navigating the dark forest. The main part I wish really had variety. As it stands, hug the right wall and you get there. Pretty boring, and out of the possible hundred or so times I’ve done this fractal, only 1 group of mine actually wanted to kill the svanir in the forest. This forest should have a few changes.
– Larger, to allow more navigation. More paths, more hills/underpases. Some holes in the ground with svanir ambushes in them if you fall, just make navigating more threatening at higher levels. This isn’t aimed to lengthen the travel, but for the next part to be more suitable.
– The cave where the Boss resides, will be in various places. Hugging the right wall will not always lead you to the right cave.
-Empty caves that don’t have the boss will have veteran svanir inside. They won’t aggro you if you walk around the entrance to the cave but if you walk in thinking it’s the “right” cave, they will likely aggro. Approaching the entrance of the cave (being close by) will reveal if the boss is inside.
– While in the forest, your mini map has reduced size and a black smoke surrounds your location on the mini map. (Simply put, most of your mini map will be blackened out, a small radius around you and your party members’ location will still be visible.) This is to prevent people using the mini map to easily navigate the forest.

Part 5: Last but not least, the shaman. When people don’t use bugs, it can be a moderatle hard boss but for the most part it’s just same ol’ same ol’. He is slow, and predictable. To go along with various caves where you must find the right one with the boss inside, maybe different shamans. One could be the original.
-Another could be a ranger based shaman who uses veteran wolves as allies. Instead of teleporting up and releasing ice everywhere, once you kill the wolf(ves), he will appear on a ledge, and mimik the Frost Bow #⁴ Skill in a target area for a slightly longer duration. Simply put, it will hurt. After he channels that, he will summon an additional wolf and drop from the ledge. Each time this cycle goes by, it will summon another veteran wolf so in essence, you will need to kite the wolves and avoid killing them. To compensate, this cave will much bigger and have little to no walls blocking your path.
-Third and lastly, will be an Ice elemental. It will summon various ice explosions at times, smash the ground releasing a damaging chilling attack to any hit, and at specific points in its max health it will turn to snow and vanish. During this time, multiple mini ice elementals will come out of the walls and explode when reaching allies. Survive this short lasting attack and the elemental will appear once more.

Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy the Snowblind Fractal. But I think it could use more paths, and not necessarily my suggestions but there is room to add some exciting encounters in it rather than the straight shot through.

I completely got thrown off by the title, thought OP wanted to remove breather masks lol. But I have noticed it too, unfortunatly at level 1 you are equipped with a breathing aparatus so can’t really see a reason to take it off :/

Traps in general need fixing. They just arn’t that exciting. Tripwire above all needs to be reworked but the others are fairly uselss as well.

@ Kasma, I don’t think you’re fully understanding. Thieves, in order to do the “OP dmg” they do, sacrafise a ton of defensive stats and with such low health pool and only access to medium armor (not complaining about that) it balances out. Warrior on the other hand, can go full power/vit/toughness, have minimal crit dmg and still plow through people. They’re brutes in both defence and damage nothing to sacrafise for them so they hardly even need mobility with how much damage they can take. I’ve messed around on a bunker build warrior with a hammer in spvp a couple times. I lived, with 3 or so players attacking me for almost a minute. Was hardly fighting back, I just would dodge, stun break, or knock down/back a couple times. I also managed to down a player but he got back up since I was unable to finish them off. Point being, even a complete idiot at warrior (me) they can perform greatly. Thief takes knowledge to get the skill you’re describing, which not many have (talking to you, HS spamming thieves out there).

Toothy.8640:

Comfort zones? Interaction? All of these dailies can be done in no time at all, by yourself. I’d be delighted to hear which one you are having difficulty with!

So far it seems like dodger, reviving, and crafting people “cant do”, “I don’t have the time/money for that”.

@ Lane, you sound very selfish if you don’t want to group up with people for MMO content. Or your server is full of rude kittens and you should look on developing a large friends list or find a guild to do these things with them. You may not want to play in a group, but in an MMO be expected to interact with players from time to time. And again, your not forced to do any dailies not to mention they can still easily be soloed (veteran slayer just go to a low level zone and soloing them is fairly easy, dodger should just be done passively without thinking about it too hard, crafting should be done by everyone as it is extremely quick and well done in this game, healing is just kindness even to an npc which you can find numerous dead npc’s in Orr, or any centuar zone).

Death Henk.7143:

So my goal with this post is to give people who struggle with stealth the tools to counter it. This is all information you need to know to predict and dodge stealth effectively.

- Activation time has a casting animation so you can see when a Thief is going to stealth.

Blinding Powder and Steal do not have any activation time, however steal will go on a ~3 second cooldown if you use it while your target is out of range. Just thought I’d point that out.

Kurow.6973:

One word: stability.

If this happened, I’d use stability a lot more often and kitten on thief even easier because they’d severely lack any kind of survivability. Without stealth, they’re nothing.

Depends on the build. In spvp, the only time I use stealth from either steal or shadow refuge is if I’m out numbered in a fight or want to switch to SB and immobilize them. Not all thieves spam stealth, its just the most common build unfortunatly.

Cirax.9231:

NinjaEd.3946:

You must have a 3rd eye, because apparently you can see the enemies behind you while you are trying to take out enemies. I have 2v1 ppl b4, I have survived a 3v1 situation b4, but as soon as a warrior gets involved out of nowhere with bulls charge at the right time + the combo, it isn’t avoidable unless you rely on pure luck. No, it’s not doing something wrong its warriors are too good at what they do, which is why it disgusts me to see thief nerf posts when this garbage is running around free.

Isn’t that exactly what backstab thieves do best, except there is a chance they jump in with their combo stealthed and unseen? O_o…

I think the culling issue in WvW enables thieves to land a lot more backstabs reliably, but otherwise the skill is balanced – it takes good positioning and set up to hit for big damage, which is a fair trade-off.

Thats my point, people don’t see a thief coming, get killed, and say its unfair (not saying OP said this). But how often do I see/hear the same being said for warriors? OR elementalists? It’s miniscule compared to thief. Landing consecutive backstabs really means your enemy isn’t planning ahead or utilizing dodge/escape skills.

As a thief who has fought rangers b4 (yes rangers), the hardest one’s to fight are the one’s who use all traps. They run around, some have LB and shoot me back, and they keep their pet and traps on me. Sometimes I have to retreat and come back simply because I cannot continue. Also Muddy terrain helps against a HS spamming thief, they just sit there leaping in place or a very short distance. For stealth thieves, even though I seldom use stealth, I’d still say traps are the best way to get around them. They cannot teleport forever.