Guild Wars 2

You’ve linked a solid D/P build, which is probably the most popular WvW choice for thieves now. See the many threads and references to ‘permastealth’ (It’s not actually permanent, and it takes a fair bit of fiddling, but it’s popular because it’s effective).

It’ll work. Again, D/D and D/P are both good thief builds, but they play very differently. You should play one until you get comfortable with it, then play the other.

As for the gear, pure ‘zerker gear is obviously top-tier DPS, and it’s also the most popular choice. Valkyrie is very close, though, due to all the +crit damage it sports. Personally, I need the extra vitality to give me room for errors. I make too many of them

BlazingBeast.3104:

@Clumpsy
Actually i dont want the same build for WvW and PvE!
The trait options are looking pretty intresting and i most likely check them out!
@Oghier
Thanks for the tips!I would like to know though what should i pay more attention gear wise too!I mean,when i go power/ precision/ crit thief do what stats should i aim expcept power?Should i mix some vitality there too?
For WvW, is P/D better than D/D or even D/P?

P/D is condition damage, so that is not a good fit with PvE. I recommend D/* or S/*, picking whatever offhand provides the playstyle you want. Pistol offhand and Dagger offhand play fairly differently, and there’s no reason not to try both. Your switch weapon should be shortbow.

For gear, I like power/precision/ vitality armor (with zerker/ ruby weapons and trinkets). That armor, the valkyrie set, provides a plenty of DPS for a crit build, and it also offers enough vitality that you’re not a completely glass cannon.

Using the same build everywhere is not optimal, but it’s certainly possible for a DPS class. You may switch some traits in and out, but you needn’t hit the trainer and reallocate.

There are a few keys to making a build that works everywhere, OP:

1) Be a power/ precision/ crit build, not condition. There are too many PvE situations where condition damage is a very poor choice. This rules out any build that uses mainhand pistol

2) You need a way to handle condition damage, and know how to switch up traits to add more condition cleansers when needed. There are a lot of ways to handle this.

3) You’ll need to be in damage-oriented gear, which means zerker/ valkyrie or some other mix. In WvW, survival-oriented attrition builds (usually condition damage based) work well. In PvE, you usually want to burst things down. Consider valkyrie armor and zerker weapons/ accessories as a pretty reasonable compromise.

4) You generally want capabilities for single-target DPS and for AoE tagging stuff. For the latter, use a shortbow in your offhand. It’s so good at so many things, you’ll learn to love it if you don’t already

5) For single-target DPS, dagger-dagger is probably best, but you can make sword-dagger work, too. Just have a plan

And that last is the real key: Have a plan for all the situations you’re going to encounter:

- I need to kill one target (whether it’s a player or a boss)
- I need AoE damage
- I need to clear conditions frequently
- I need to get out of the way (dodging, teleports, etc)

And remember, the only expensive decision you make is gear. Retraiting is cheap. Buying a second set of exotics (much less ascended) is pricey. Happily, that is a compromise which DPS classes find easier — we’re pretty much always DPS.

Below is the build I use everywhere. Two caveats — I am not the foremost expert on thieves, and I am aiming to be good everywhere, but not fussed about being the absolute apex at anything.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsYVlYmiO3eS4E+5Ex2jeuTeyzwoOt/AXB-j0BBYLCikFQpPFRjtMsIas6aYqSER1eDER1CBsaCA-w

If I am going strait up single-target, I switch to dagger/ dagger (and the final Criticals trait switches to Hidden Killer). If I do not expect a lot of incoming conditions, I switch the second Shadow Arts trait to blind or something else.

Having recently returned from a long absence, I wanted to try something more interesting than my old warrior. This guide inspired me to try a mesmer, and it’s a lot of fun up through level 32.

This guide is fantastic. It doesn’t just cover how to play a mesmer, but also tells you why they’re cool in the first place. Great work, and thanks

Does P/D work as a power/ precision build? Sneak Attack (AA when stealthed) is a pretty beefy chunk of direct damage, as well as the bleeds.

Does Onyxia deep breathe more?
Are my J-Boots slower?
Ectos nerfed?

Eternal questions, all!

skotie.2614:

@John Smith.

So gold sellers hurt the game industry, yet you sell gold to your own customers! So your nerf to all drop rates and banning bots for gold selling websites are in no way linked to the fact your just trying to get rid of competition for your players money then?

You missed his point, and by quite a wide margin. The issue with gold sellers is not what they do with the gold, but how they obtain it. Hacking, credit card fraud and the like are the problem.

If you’re trying to twist this into, “Yeah, but Anet wants us to buy gold from Anet!!!”, then welcome to how the game is monetized. They have bills to pay, too.

Crafting is the exchange of gold for exp.

I’ve seen it opened fairly often on Ehmry Bay. ‘Fairly often,’ here, means twice in the last four days

Is it possible to give someone a (digital) copy of GW2 as a gift? I know I could run down to a store, buy a copy and ship it, but I’d prefer to give some copies out the new-fashioned way, via emailing them a serial code

Amazon has gifting disabled for the digital editions. I can’t find any such option on the shop page here.

In addition to the in-game events, Christmas is coming to the real world soon, too!

Everybody wants a guardian (or two) in the party for a dungeon run. They’re a fantastic combination of survivability and group support.

Warriors are popular largely because of one ability, Hundred Blades, which is why you see most using greatswords. It’s easy to use, does tremendous damage to AI critters (or inattentive players) and has a short cooldown. Along with a thief heartseeker build, it’s probably the easiest build in the game to be competent with.

My (male) Norn’s constant joy at everything makes me laugh. There is one saying I have not been able to puzzle out, though. When he gets a nice piece of gear (such as a map completion award), he says something like, “It’s better than moon loot!” What does that mean?

So far, Ascended gear is limited to rings and backslots. The latter do have graphics. Dulfy has pretty much everything you need to know (or see) about them on her site:

http://dulfy.net/2012/11/17/gw2-ascended-gear-and-infusion-recipes/

keadlaw.6350:

Greatsword has the best mobility of warrior weapons by a long shot with a 1200 range charge, a 450 range whirlwind attack and then a 900 ranged cripple.

I think Sword is at least equal to GS with respect to mobility, because you can pair it with a warhorn. In the right spec, that means permanent swiftness and extra condition-clears to get rid of snares.

But, yes, GS is terrific for moving around.

I love Orr. It’s thematically consistent, scary and difficult. You can get great loot there, but you have to be on your toes at all times. Of course, there are times when it is frustrating, but that’s part of the charm.

Once Anet adds an overland path to Ascended gear into the game, I suspect Orr will be popular again. Of course, if you simply prefer a less difficult zone, you can still get good loot in, say, Frostgorge Sound.

I find it incredibly annoying that the best way to get badges is a kittening jumping puzzle. Between that and the culling + stealth combination, WvW is hard to like.

I find it fascinating that Anet takes the economics of their marketplace so seriously. It adds a really interesting dimension to the game.

Of course, I’m more the “kill things, take their stuff then sell it” sort. But I love the fact that some people are essentially playing financiers, rather than adventurers.

My build is based around the sword’s burst skill, at least the offensive bits. I’m specced 0/30/0/30/10, basically the Yojack warhorn spec, but with talents for extra adrenaline from crits and from shouts. Flurry is an excellent skill. My switch weapon is either rifle or longbow, both of which also have excellent bursts.

With a sword, plan b is basically autoattack until it dies. That’s not exciting

Interesting findings. Thanks for doing the work, Philkingz!

I think that 2 gold a day is pretty reasonable, too, for an average player with responsibilities that eat most of their time (work, family, school, whatever separates you from those who can play 10 hours a day).

Of course, at that rate, it will take about a year to earn a Legendary.

Anet has specifically and repeatedly said that Ascended gear will be obtainable from outside Fractal dungeons. Presumably, that means overland PvE, WvW and other dungeons — the same range of activities used to collect every other type of gear (whites through legendaries).

I seriously doubt the new way is going to be a jumping puzzle in a fractal.

Most of my exotic gear is transmuted to look like rares. I simply like the look better — exotic heavy is generally over-the-top goofy and impractical-looking, at least to my taste.

I would say there’s about a 90% chance that’s what the OP encountered. There are a LOT of skins out there, and tastes vary. For anyone with the drive to get a Legendary, odds are they also picked up some orange armor and trinkets. The difference in degree of difficulty is staggering

Joote.4081:

It really is different to all other MMO,s and a casual players dream. Do what you want, when you want, and I don’t think I have ever been grouped with other players so much in any other MMO.

Anet has done a brilliant job of spreading rewards through all aspects of the game — exotic gear can be obtained through virtually any playstyle. They’ve also set up mechanics that encourage cooperation — you don’t compete for resource nodes, monster drops or exp from kills. They’ve advanced the genre in good ways.

There are problems, and some areas where they appear to have varied from their core principles (FoTM and Ascended gear). They’re saying all the right things about fixing these issues, however. So far, they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt.

It’s a clever dungeon. It’s more than a hole in the ground where you kill things, then take their stuff. I, too, am curious about the backstory.

I suspect you should give a long, lingering look at the GS Sonic Boon build. It combines excellent damage, some survivability (shout heals) and tremendous stacking of Might for the group:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/74697-sonic-boon-shout-greatsword/

It’s an excellent build.

I hope Anet continues to eliminate single-area, simple grinds for gold. I don’t want to mindlessly kill the same boss, or repeat the same event over and over to earn piles of coin. Moreover, I don’t want to compete in an economy where others do this. Many of them will be bots, and a fair portion of the rest are just nuts

Coin should be earned by doing things that are, themselves, enjoyable. Don’t sign up for punching a clock in Tyria. There’s plenty of that on Earth already.

My top 3:

1) Culling in WvW. It ruins the experience for me. It’s particularly ugly when combined with stealth

2) Some Grinds Are Goofy. Legendaries should be a ludicrous grind, but requiring large amounts of T6 mats anything else should be reviewed (and I believe Anet is going to do so)

3) LFG System. There are several models of excellent LFG systems in other MMO’s. Just copy one. The appetite for this tool is tremendous

Overall, I really like this game and the underlying design principles. I expect (more) great things from Anet. They’ve set the bar high

As others have said, pick your race based on style, not elites. None of the racial elites are as good as the warrior elites. The one possible exception is the Norn “Becoming the Leopard,” as there are (rare) occasions when access to a bit of stealth can help.

If you’re serious about PvP, consider the shortest possible Asura. Small races always have advantages in being harder to see.

Mayam.8976:

I’ve always taken the term TANKING to primarily mean occupying the top spot on the mobs threat list and there by keeping it’s agro exclusively on you as opposed to on any of the squishies.

This is the key point. Tanking is not being hard to kill. Tanking means reducing the overall damage taken and making the target predictable, so direct healers know who will need them. Tanking presupposes mitigation abilities (where guardians are better) and threat generation (where, near as I can tell, nobody is better).

If a guardian, or anybody else, is simply eating AoE’s or PBAoE’s without losing much health, that makes life easier for the player (less dodging needed), but it doesn’t really help the group. Unless the critter is attacking you instead of the thief and elementalist, it’s just not a big deal.

If anybody does figure out a way to reliably manipulate threat on bosses, I hope they post about it. It appears to me that GW2 uses multiple threat models, all with a significant RNG element. In that context, “tanking” only happens by accident, anyway.

Vorpal.4683:

This is due primarily to him randomly aggroing the non attacking guy on the switches…

Thanks for the explanation. I’ve just hit Fracs 11, and haven’t seen him yet. Sounds… fun One question, though – is the guy on the switches doing DPS? It might be worth it to have the pourer only tag the critter once, and only near the end, to reduce the odds of this kind of disruption.

Beefcake.9032:

Sad but true: With AoE limited to 5 targets the Longbow/Shout Healer isn’t viable for WvW.

I think you overstate the problem. Certainly, the AoE Heal/ Buff limit makes a shouter less valuable in a zerg. We’re still solid in small group play, and there’s a fair bit of that in WvW, particularly if you stay away from minion necros I don’t see too many of them in WvW anyway. As for the Longbow’s fire field, that is still valuable as a frequent, long-lasting fire field for people to work combos, even in zergy keep defense situations.

It’s certainly a nerf, but I don’t think it takes the shouter down to “not viable.”

Warriors can’t tank many dungeon bosses in the traditional sense, but here are some things we can do:

- Provide massive DPS and might stacking, in a not-quite-glass damage spec (Sonic Boon GS Build)
- Clear conditions constantly with frequent heals, AoE weakness, AoE vigor and moderate DPS (Yojack */warhorn variants)
- Excellent single-target or AoE crowd control and interrupts (Mace/ Shield, Hammer)
- Plenty of straight up DPS specs (Axe/ Axe is nice, and you’re still in heavy armor)

Warriors have many options, and a good player can be very effective with them. If one class is better at one thing (not dying), that hardly obviates everything else.

Yojack.7082:

When I click your link oghier I just get a blank template so I cant comment but thanks for posting and I always appreciate good tweaks of the Yojack Build as I am sure others are too.

Internet oddness – it works for me!

The tweak is this:

1) Drop defense
2) Pick up Furious in Arms (crits add adrenaline)
3) Pick up Inspiring Shouts in Disc (shouts add adrenaline)

The result: Lots and lots of adrenaline

Speeding up a video may make it a better match for the music, but it prevents viewers from really seeing what is going on, much less learning anything from it.

*/ Warhorn, specialized in condition removal with some heals. Take a look at the Yojack build, the topic for which is pretty much always on the first or second page.

For the offhand, you need a ranged weapon for melee-unfriendly bosses.

This is a solid build for WvW, Dungeons and Farming. I have found it’s not the best at anything, but it’s good at everything. Also, it’s incredibly mobile. As someone who plays all aspects of the game (except SPvP), that is what I wanted. Thanks, Yojack!

Although the base build is excellent, I have found what I believe to be an effective tweak to get more offense. In short, I give up Adrenal Defense in exchange for having burst skills always available at full adrenaline on cooldown. I found the health regeneration from the defense tree to be underwhelming. Moreover, both sword and all of our ranged options have excellent burst skills, and I wanted to use them more often. Here is the build:

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/warrior#2|15|10|919|65|226|246|0|0|0|0|30|1525|1523|2413|0|0|0|0|30|1057|1507|1056|10|1104|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

This takes advantage of the Yojack’s naturally ludicrous crit rate. Your crits do a bit more damage due to the minor investment in Discipline. More important, Flurry alone will produce incredible adrenaline growth. A Flurry and a shout generally fill the bar up, so you can switch to your offhand for another burst.

This ends up being a pretty straightforward tradeoff of more offense for less defense, but I think the returns for giving up a bit of regen here are worthwhile in many cases.

Warriors have many good options at 60+ (except perhaps in SPvP). The issue isn’t weapon sets – it’s how you combine weapon sets with gear and spec. You have ample room to experiment while leveling, to see which mix suits your style. Here’s some general advice:

- Although we have many good spec options at higher levels, one spec absolutely blows all others out of the water until sometime in the 50’s. Load up on signets, grab the skill early in the arms tree that gives you +40 precision for each signet, and enjoy a ridiculous crit rate for a while. You can try all different weapon and gear combos with this and still survive

- The three mainhand weapons (sword, axe, mace) all have different strengths and playstyles. Axe is probably the most reliable for decent damage in all situations, but sword users are very, very hard to kite in WvW.

- For offhands, don’t assume that a shield is the best defense. Warhorns can be traited to convert conditions to boons and also offer an AoE weakness on a short cooldown. Shields do offer missile reflect and an interrupt, which can be situationally very useful. As for offhand weapons, I don’t think any of them offer as much as a warhorn or shield, but opinions vary!

- If you like two-handers, then greatsword and hammers offer quite different playstyles. You just have to try them

Keep yourself outfitted in greens, spec for signets first and try all the weapon combos as you level. You’ll figure out what’s fun for your style.

Anet has done a good job of putting exo rewards at the end of most major gameplay types. Crafting, WvW, Dungeons, farming karma — all roads eventually lead to oranges. You don’t need to do anything grindy or painful to get them, unless you’re in a terrible rush.

I fooled with it when starting my norn warrior, and it was good for a few levels. Most warriors will abandon it quickly, however, when they realize how powerful an all-signets build is for leveling (at least until level 50-something, when it starts to fade).

At 60+, most people are running full-on burst builds or tank/ support specs, none of which really have a place for the wurm.

Just play and have fun. If you get caught up in the gear treadmill and feel a need to always have the best-in-slot everywhere, MMO’s will break your spirit.

You should get exotics. Currently, Ascended Gear is limited to back slot and rings. Also, it’s a huge grind to get even one piece. Exotics are much easier to get, and they represent a significant upgrade from rares.

Elementalists are tremendous fun if you like active gameplay and flashy moves. If you’re skilled and keep your focus, you can compete against any DPS or Support class.

However, Elementalists also tend to be squishy, and mistakes get punished. They’re a difficult class to play well. Worse, that difficulty is not rewarded in concrete terms. This is not a class with a high ceiling, but one with a low floor.

I dropped my 80 ele, all in exos, a while back. I’m having a lot more fun playing nearly anything else.

NaughtyProwler.8653:

It won’t be long until I’m 2-3 tiers behind just like I always was in WoW.

Let’s hope ANet does not continue to move in this direction. It will sweep out a lot of us.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Unfortunately, Robert, if you don’t put BIS gear into the “old” dungeons, they will continue to be under-utilized.

This is 100% correct. That’s just how MMO’s work. Max-level dungeons are either part of the path toward BIS gear, or most of the population ignores them.

It’s the mother of all grinds, in a game where you can shorten grinds through the cash shop.

Probably not a coincidence.

Dwok Immortalus.2763:

Yojack, are you seeing anything erratic with shouts/horn abilities since last patch? I’ve been noticing that our support abilities have been randomly ‘missing’ people. For example, I tend to run in a 5 man group in WvW, and we can have all 5 people stacked, hit horn #4 with no other players around, and only two people will get the buff. The shouts are harder to test, but they appear to be doing the same thing.

Do any of the players have pets? The five-person limit to AoE heals evidently applies to buffs, too, and pets probably count. Rangers and Necromancers will be even more popular, now!

I have been using the “Yojack Build” for PvE and WvW, and I’ve found it quite effective. It’s sword/ warhorn, with a nice combination of damage, utility and survivability. I recommend you have a look at it:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Yojack-s-Min-Max-home-of-the-Yojack-Build-2012-for-GW2

For the first 40 or 50 levels, though, it’s easier and faster to run a “signets build.” Load up on signets, put your first ten trait points in Arms for “Deep Strike,” and enjoy a 90%+ crit rate for a while. This build fades at higher levels, but it’s ez-mode while it lasts.

There’s also a builds thread stickied at the top of this forum. Warriors have a LOT of options.

AC is a very tough dungeon, relative to most others. It’s a real shock to most groups when they first pop in and die. And die. And die You need to learn the fights. I highly recommend Dulfy’s walkthrough. She does her usually excellent job of breaking it down:

http://dulfy.net/2012/06/27/ascalonian-catacombs-a-guide-to-the-first-dungeon-in-gw2-storymode/

This change requires smart targeting. Anet needs to ensure that my heals and buffs aren’t eaten by pets and such.

For the vast majority of people, the loot was comparable to two or three high-level zone completions. A lucky few got precursors. This is quite generous, but nothing to get loopy about.