Guild Wars 2

I’m all for a split. Different types of combat needs different styles and having the same skills for both is just bad design. PvE has got “stupid” enemies with large health pools while pvp has got more intelligent enemies but with lesser health.

Another fine example of changes to pvp that mess up pve. I wish anet would realize they need to split the skills between pvp and pve or they will just keep running into problems like this.

Would the same thing be possible to achieve with two mesmers and of them using Feedback and traited focus skills? :p

Can’t help you with servers since I’ in EU but as for the second part, it’s free to transfer at the moment (will start costing at some point in the future but no ETa has been given) but you can only do it every 7 days. All your characters are transferred since it’s your account that moves.

If you want to move to a very high population server it can be full a lot of the time so it’s often best to try at non-peak hours (or even at odd hours, such as in the middle of the night)

stof.9341:

Doesn’t Arcane Thievery steal all 25 stacks of might at once? Why would this trait work in such a weird way?

It’s the difference of using up two utility skills for it or taking a 20pt trait that boosts an already very powerful skill/mechanic. The mechanic itself isn’t OP but only needing a single 20pt trait and not giving up any skills would be it. Bountiful theft is still a very good trait to have just for the boon removal since it can make e.g. higher level fractals way easier.

1) Yes, kind of. Lion’s Arch is the de fact central hub where most people tend to hang around.
2) sPvP you can start doing as soon as you’ve completed the starting tutorial. There is an icon for it in the top left corner. If you mean WvW then you can in theory head there as soon as you’re done with the starting tutorial since you get buffed to lvl80. You will still be weaker than “true lvl80s” since you won’t have your traits and skills and the higher lvl armors have more stats on them. To queue to WvW just click ‘B’ (or the icon in the top left corner) and select the ‘Go to something-I-can’t-remember’ button at the top. You can also get to WvW from Lion’s Arch through some portals in the south at the fort.

3) you can’t view other people’s true level or gear.

stof.9341:

It does remove the 25 stacks of might, but you and your party around only gets 1 stack from that. It honestly looks like a bug I’d say.

I don’t think it’s a bug since if it gave the full stack then it would be very OP for a trait.

While this isn’t an issue that has affected me much, I must say I am very thankful for the level of response and transparency given! Hopefully this is a sign of things to come in 2013 as a response to the community’s comments about lack of communication in 2012

Shadow refuge is pretty much the only thing a thief can bring that no one else can. It doesn’t mean thieves are useless, they just don’t have anything else unique and useful. Smoke fields are great for non boss mobs (they help with bosses as well but defience means blind isn’t as useful) and only thieves and engineers can apply them (IIRC).

A condition thief has some of the best bleed stacking so if there are no other condition builds in th group then it works wonder. I would recommend not going as a BS build though, it’s a build that relies on high bursts and then downtime so it’s not generally much use in dungeons since most enemies (that count) have so much health. Short bows are nice for blast finishers and poison fields.

Has there been any word from Anet if the call target marker remaining on mesmers when clones are summoned is intended or not? On one hand that it hasn’t been fixed in 4 months indicate that it might be intended but on the other hand it kinda defeats part of the purpose with clones in pvp and wvw. (Of course, there are a ton of problems with clones being different: food buffs, sigils, no off hand, etc)

Chances are high that any list you get here will be wrong since there is no true “best” class, only what’s best for you. Even when not taking into consideration the IMO most important thing -what you enjoy the most- there are individual things like if you’ve got good reflexes and can benefit from a more twitchy build or if you’re good at keeping an overview over your group and can play a support class very effectively.

I have a lvl80 of 7 professions (ranger is still at lvl37) and I’ve enjoyed playing them all. Certain ones get less use because I feel that they are less suited for my play style (e.g. grenade engineer, it does good aoe damage even after the nerf (although I still think the nerf was way over the top) and can stack vulnerability at an incredibly fast and sustained rate. I don’t like the amount of clicking though so it’s mostly on stand by for some WvW these days). All of them have various aspects though and don’t be fooled by what their counterparts in “traditional MMOs” are, an elementalist can be a very effective tank/bunker and a warrior can be good support.

The mug/steal is probably the factor that would be best to change IMO in order to nerf BS builds a bit without (too much) affecting other builds. There are several ways it could be done as seen in this thread and others:
-Reducing the damage from mug (or outright (re)moving mug as a trait, it’s incredibly powerful for a 10pt trait).
-Making steal interrupt a skill (this is actually what I think would be best, a BS build could still teleport up to an enemy using Shadowstep but the burst would be a bit slower, giving the enemy a bit bigger window to react)
-Remove the teleport from steal (seen this one a few times and it’s got some merits, it wouldn’t reduce the burst but it would make it easier for an enemy to see it coming, something that is perhaps a bigger issue when comparing bursts to other professions than the damage itself)

They are on average ok, IMO. Some builds are better suited than others and it also of course depend to some degree on what other group members are using. For d/d, builds focusing on conditions works very well if there aren’t any other bleed stackers but BS builds often do quite poorly (the idea of a big burst and then waiting a bit before doing it again isn’t so good for mobs with huge health pools and since stealth doesn’t stop AoE attacks they’re extremely squishy as well). Short bow is a very nice weapon which brings both a useful field and a blast finisher although the bounce on AA can be a boon (e.g. for flowers in TA) or a curse (if it pulls more mobs than you wanted). I haven’t used swords and pistols that much but I would guess that Black Powder from OH pistol could be very handy for non-bosses (especially those with big damage attacks like Graveling scavengers) for the blind.

In theory I don’t mind bringing my thief to dungeons but in practice I almost never do since I feel that most other classes can do the same things and better. Shadow Refuge is perhaps the only thing I would say thieves have that no other class has anything similar at an equal or better level. Keep in mind though that the most important thing is that you enjoy what you’re playing, most dungeons are so easy that you don’t need the “top performer”-professions for the various roles so just go with what you want and learn how to perform well with it.

@eXs: Mobs quite often goes for the player with the highest toughness (or armor, not certain) so that might be a reason why your warrior gets targeted more often.

Negated.4105:

Hope this helps, I found mesmers real hard till as of late, they either got nerfed (never checked the patches and or I have just gotten adequately better at taking them down.

Mesmers got nerfed very hard a couple of patches back (Lost Shores IIRC) which made things like blind and evade much more effective against them. I generally find that the AoE from Death Blossom (as a condition d/d thief) is extremely useful since clones most often have so low health that you can destroy them with one or two attacks (and unless I’m not mistaken the evade part of DB should protect you from any traits the mesmer has which applies conditions if the clones are killed). In general though, it seems like mesmer is about the only other profession (or at least the one who’s got it easiest) that can go GC and take out thieves without very fast reflexes.

I like the pve (and don’t see how dungeon focus is meant to increase cash shop revenues?) but if Anet still wants the pvp to become an esport then it will need a serious improvement. At the moment it feels like the pvp scene is all but dead and I suspect it will take more than just a few patch changes to fix it.

Red5 (Firefall devs) are indeed excellent in their communication and I’ve mentioned them before in similar discussions as this. It is not however really contributing much to the discussion by pointing out some studios that are comunicatung more (Firefall is also still in beta and as mentioned before, Anet were also quite active in commnications during their beta).

Is there a lack of communication? Yes and no. Support seems to be quite active but very few questions regarding the game itself are answered by designers. Hopefully it will improve once the holidays are over.

IIRC: Go to the hero screen (hotkey ‘H’) and put you mouse cursor over ‘Attack’.

Nope (although the boon ’ Might’ does)

Legendaries don’t have any better stats, just a unique skin and some visual effects. They’re meant to be the ultimate goal though, something that might very well take a year or so to get.

@Hawkmoon: their communication is lackin, no doubt about it. The example with the dev tracker is a bit faulty though considering that those 3 pages might have posts only by a few people but it’s 3 pages of posts made during the last 5 days which is the holidays. In other words, these people deserve kudos for posting as much as they do (Gaile even mentiond that she came to work on Christmas day on her own time to answer people’s questions)

IIRC Chris Whiteside said in the reddit AMA that he agrees on there being too little communication and he’d try to improve on it after the holidays. Hopefully he/they will follow up on this and have a more open communication with their players. I can understand not wanting to say too much about future changes due to how it can blow up in their faces if they change their mind but things like adressing where they stand on issues that are often brought up (stealth&culling, drop rates, etc) would be good both for them and for the player base’s trust in them.

The only thing I dislike about thieves in WvW (besides the stealth-culling issue) is how easy they can run away from mesmers. I’ve only died on my mesmer to a thief in a 1v1 once in WvW but there have been countless times when they have managed to escape so I couldn’t kill them. If there were more d/d condition thieves we might have a bit more problem (Death blossom both evades and kills clones) but luckily most seem to be the fotm BS build

You need 100% world completion anyway if you’re going for a legendary so it’s not that bad

Another reason people suggest fractals is that you can also buy the mat you need from the fractal vendor instead of having to spend karma (or more likely, to fill out what you didn’t have karma for). You can also buy skill points with the fractal tokens but that’s a waste of tokens IMO.

You get a skill point every time you fill the bar. Skill points are also currency for some crafting mats, e.g. legendary weapons need 200 skill points.

applekwisp.2139:

click the second button on the vendors, every dungeon sells level 80 exotic armor

That’s not what he’s talking about. If you do e.g. CoF path 1&2 you will get a bit over 130 tokens on average. You can then buy the rare armors from the vendor and salvage it for ectos. The cheapest pieces are 25 tokens so those 130 tokens will net you 5 rares which you can salvage. For the lower level dungoens, which are sometimes more difficult/time consuming, you can only buy rares of the dungeon level so they won’t give ectos when you salvage them.

Human: Warrior, Elementalist, Mesmer, Engineer.
Sylvari: Necromancer, Guardian.
Norn: Ranger.
Asura: Thief.
Charr: bank/mule character (aka Beast of burden).

I’d guess Decoy is for the stealth so the thief won’t do a dodge or evade. The leap/swap with sword2 after blink should also work if the thief hasn’t got something to remove the immobilize (and you will be summoning the mirror images point blank for an instant burst with MW preferrably while you’re using Blurred Frenzy)

Moving and dodging is really key to survival. Lots of enemies have heavy hitting attacks that quite often have some CC (knock down, daze, etc) and avoiding these can mean the difference between taking almost no damage and getting killed. Look for signs of a big attack incoming, often e.g. glowing rays around the mob, and you will soon learn when to dodge. Circle strafing around an enemy can often be the most effective method, especially if the mob has some form of AoE cone damage since they will often do a quick pause before using it and stop turning to face you.

SolarNova.1052:

Remember this is still a tab target game.. so even if u see a projectile coming and u run of move away , it will change its course and hit u unless u use the dodge mechanic.

Actually, that’s not true. Projectiles don’t lock on (I guess some rare ones might but I can’t recall any) to you but rather predict where the target will be. This is easiest seen by alternately quickly tapping strafe right and left and is very useful for soloing some champions that only use ranged attacks. Keep in mind that if the projectile speed is too fast it will almost always hit you unless you’re really far away (and in some cases this is longer than the attack range and some attacks like the stones thrown by the frost worms have an AoE component that can still hit you)

I actually don’t know if Arcane thievery can be evaded. I’d guess so if it’s used mid DB or dodge but can’t say I’ve checked.

For d/d bunker eles (have a lvl80 of them too :p): As you said, they usually do so little damage that the can be ignored. As a condition build your direct damage will kost likely be too low to outdamage their healing and they have condition removals coming out the nose (all utility skills remove conditions with the most common bunker build and they remove conds by switching to water 9s CD and have 1 or 2 additional removals while in water). If you really want to kill one I’d probably recommend using some low priority conditions and focusing on having enough to force him into water. As soon as he leaves water you’ve got 9 second to try to take him down as much as possible before he’s got access to his more annoying heals again, remember that bleeds will still tick even if he turns into mist but you will need more than one type on him since turning into mist removes one condition stack. Generally though, I’d recommend not fighting them alone using conditions since a bunker ele that knows what he’s doing will almost always keep some condition removal available.

@Snoxx: As I posted earlier, from playing both a mesmer and a (condition) thief at lvl 80 I’d say that a d/d cond. thief might very well be the most difficult class for a mesmer to fight. They’re not that great against some classes (e.g. eles or necros) but can put some serious hurt on mesmers. If you’ve got arcane thievery though, you can be nice and return that bleed (and poison quite often) stack to the thief and perhaps pick up a vigor from him Having Null field is also useful both for keeping bleeds of you and for keeping vigor (which lets cond thieves dodge to avoid damage as well as apply caltrops on dodge with a trait) off thieves.

DB can’t really be spammed that often though after the first chain. Normally I’d say a thief might open with either Infiltrator arrow to get close or a poison field from the longbow (if already close enough). Next is two Death Blossoms, followed by steal (often with mug) and a third DB. At this point the thief will most likely be out of initiative (alrhough be careful if he uses Roll for initiative (a backwards roll) since that means he gets a bit of init back).

Karma vendor in Fireheart Rise

Artifice is the only one besides cooking that you can level almost entirely without any blue mats except dust.

There are 3 things wrong in the OP:
1) Mesmers don’t burst for higher than thieves normally. Right now there is a bug/exploit which causes MW to do more damage than it should but even then the damage is about the same as a mug->BS->CnD combo (possibly quicker, that depends on the reflexes (or if there is a macro involved)).
2) Mass invisibility only affects 5 people, not a zerg.
3) There have been a ton of calls for mesmer nerfs but after a dev posted that they will be nerfed (hopefully just the exploit) it’s calmed down a bit.

I have both a thief and a mesmer at lvl80, I’d say the thief has an easier time over all to fight people in WvW but mesmers bring more to the team. As a mesmer I find thieves quite easy to fight as long as I’m not caught unaware with the wrong skills slotted, as a thief I generally don’t go for mesmers in a power build since attacking a clone with e.g. CnD means wasted 6 initiative (cond builds are easier since Death Blossom takes out clones and gives bleeding to the real msmer)

I leveled using d/d conditions and sped it up by fighting groups of enemies at once since the build relies mostly on AoE attacks.

This is quoted from a post I made several months ago on guru:
You can of course select a number of styles although if you’re interested in a condition build then I’d say that d/d is your friend. Conditions aren’t as useful in dungeons (the max stack of 25 isn’t that difficult to achieve so if you’ve got two bleed stackers in the group the damage will be considerably less) though but they are great for taking on mobs of higher level than you in normal PvE since, unless I’m mistaken, the glancing hits that are so common when fighting much higher level enemies don’t seem to affect condition damage.

I leveled my thief using a build similar to this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYQQNAoYVlYmCO3dy8E95Eh/hvqzgmts7BXtqWB
and while leveling I went for trickery and acrobatics first, then filled out with deadly arts

The point of the build is to constantly keep moving and dodging through enemies so you drop caltrops on top of them in order to bleed and cripple. It’s made in order to take on groups of enemies so start of by using the short bow to pull some if they aren’t already near each other. I usually then start of with Choking gas to create a posion field and then about two Death Blossoms to apply both bleeds and prolong the duration of the poison. Follow up by a steal (once you’ve gotten the 5 point trait from trickery), using the skill Caltrops and another Death blossom. Depending on how much health the enemy have left you can often more or less just use dodges to avoid attacks and stack some more bleeding, if the mobs have lots of health left use Roll for initiative and use Death blossom a bit more.

If you find that the enemies die too slowly, which can happen if you’re up against higher level mobs, you can switch to short bow and kite them a bit.

Using this build I’ve easily been able to solo DEs more than 10 levels above my level. The conditions aren’t affected by the reduce damage and while you will probably die in one or two hits, the sheer amount of dodges and evades mean you won’t get hit very often. Keep an eye out for ranged mobs though and mobs that use PBAoE, you will need to learn their animations to know when to dodge. (New note: IIRC this has been changed a bit so enemies that are purple to you are now immune to your conditions most of the time. I recommend not going for enemies more than 10 levels above you)

Footnote: Withdraw can be changed for Signet of Malice if you want, the short CD is good for granting vigor and more dodges. Withdraw has the benefit of being an additional dodge while SoM gives you a bit of passive healing while in combat. I mostly only slot Hide in Shadows if I know I’m up against enemies that often apply conditions and Signet of Agility won’t be enough.
[/quote]

Rieselle.5079:

Hmm, iirc, if you have no money on your character you can still WP, but it takes money from your bank.
But what if all your money is safely stored on one of your alts? Does this mean free WPs?

No, it means “No WP for you” the only exception is if you die, then you are allowed to teleport to the closest WP for free.

Thieves as a whole aren’t OP but BS builds have such a low skill floor that they are ruining spvp games. True that in tpvp they’re not as effective but I’d say the problem (as in the topic of this thread) is that the abundance of thieves in 8v8, which has been up to 10 thieves in one match, puts casuals and new players off pvp and bleeds out the player base even more.

raahk.2786:

Also, when used with a combo field, unload and other similar skills will only apply a condition/regeneration/burning at the end of the channel, despite the words “confusion confusion confusion” appearing multiple times for say when you throw gunk at a target then use unload. Essentially, instead of providing multiple stacks of confusion, or regeneration, or blind, it will only apply those effects on the final hit of the channeled ability.

That’s most likely because Unload only has a 20% chance of proccing a finisher but for some reason the UI will show the text even for other the 80% of the attacks (it happens for every attack that has a % of proccing)

People who swear a lot kinda reminds me of this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/online_gaming

Not that I mind swearing (in general, insults is something completely different) in game but I do consider it to be a very immature form of communication.

Le Pecheur.2074:

fellyn.5083:

Le Pecheur.2074:

There are rules against harassment in game that you can report people for…

But if someone simply insults you and you report them, grow up. There is a block function in the game, and you know, you can just not associate with the kitten any more.

So you’re telling some one who is getting insulted that they need to grow up instead of the person who is doing the insulting. Wouldn’t the person who needs to do the most growing be the person who feels the need to insult people over a video game?

I guess I must have a backwards way of looking at things.

When did I say that? Now you’re just putting words in my mouth.

I’d say it was when you said “But if someone simply insults you and you report them, grow up”.

Since we’re already including some terminology from economics here, you can substitute ‘alternative loss’ with ‘opportunity cost (aka ’alternative cost’): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost.
It’s what you’re losing out on if you take MF gear.

I like WPs way more than e.g. Flight routes. Flight routes might be fun/interesting/immersive the first few times but after a while they’re just time when you alt-tab out, take a bio break or watch paint dry.

Karolis.4261:

Rainu.6871:

What I’d suggest in order to make the BS build less OP without nerfing the other builds:
-Remove the ability to precast with steal. It would mean that thieves can still backstab if they time their stealth right but it would require more skill to do it and increase the window for the victim to react a bit without being too long.
-Make HS not auto target the enemy but instead jump straight forward. Again, it would mean that HS would require a bit more skill to use and wouldn’t be as OP as it is now.
-Fix the stealth bug in WvW. Ok, this might hurt all stealth users but it is a bug and should be fixed.

As a d/d thief using conditions, created 25th of August, I sometimes worry that I’ll be taken for a fotm build.

Well any off hand dagger build uses precast CnD, not only Basilisk/CnD/Steal/backstab/HS bunnies. I Use P/D and i use that to fool my enemies for example.

Hmm, true. Although p/d isn’t as positioning dependent for the quick burst so while it would affect that build I wouldn’t say overly much and there is still shadowstep and infiltrator arrow. I agree that my idea isn’t perfect but I’ll stick with it being IMO the best one I’ve seen so far ;-)

While risen are annoying, it’s more about the lack of variety than them being difficult. At first they took some time getting used to but once you learn when to dodge their CCs and to be careful so you don’t pull additional mobs they aren’t that bad.

Now the dredge, them I hate with a passion and I consider them by far the most dangerous enemy type in the game.

Hellkaiser.6025:

Rainu.6871:

Hellkaiser.6025:

Both of those “wins” are wins for A-Net and not for us.

Let me put it another way, we don’t praise liquor stores for holding sales because alcoholics can buy cheaper booze as a “win for alcoholics”

both of those are wins for A-Net and nothing more, we gain nothing from it

He did also mention the benefit that comes from being able to buy gems with gold and thus getting things from the gem store without having to spend real cash.

Gearing up at lvl 80 isn’t that much of a grind, specially not if you do dungeons. It’s not exactly quick but I’d still say it’s quicker than most other MMOs.

and over time we’ve seen gem prices rise steadily in price as more and more people convert their gold to gems. Which in turn is making buying gems with real cash more of a tempting prospect to convert them to gold again.

So how is this really a “win” for us again?

It’s a win considering the other alternative would be to not be able to get gems via any other method than by using cash. It’s not a zero sum-situation, because some people benefit more doesn’t mean that other lose. If you’re convinced that gem prices will continue to rise (I’m not contradicting you there), then buy gems for gold now as an investment

What I’d suggest in order to make the BS build less OP without nerfing the other builds:
-Remove the ability to precast with steal. It would mean that thieves can still backstab if they time their stealth right but it would require more skill to do it and increase the window for the victim to react a bit without being too long.
-Make HS not auto target the enemy but instead jump straight forward. Again, it would mean that HS would require a bit more skill to use and wouldn’t be as OP as it is now.
-Fix the stealth bug in WvW. Ok, this might hurt all stealth users but it is a bug and should be fixed.

As a d/d thief using conditions, created 25th of August, I sometimes worry that I’ll be taken for a fotm build.

Which is why I included the “talking damage, not taking portal into consideration”-bit. Mesmrs have more utilities although I’d say the warrior group utilities (shouts and banners) stack better than mesmers so having multiple mesmers is less beneficial the more you’ve got of them compared to having multiple warriors. A good group has several different characters with various roles though

Hellkaiser.6025:

Both of those “wins” are wins for A-Net and not for us.

Let me put it another way, we don’t praise liquor stores for holding sales because alcoholics can buy cheaper booze as a “win for alcoholics”

both of those are wins for A-Net and nothing more, we gain nothing from it

He did also mention the benefit that comes from being able to buy gems with gold and thus getting things from the gem store without having to spend real cash.

Gearing up at lvl 80 isn’t that much of a grind, specially not if you do dungeons. It’s not exactly quick but I’d still say it’s quicker than most other MMOs.

Considering:
-Anet has said that they though people would take longer to accomplish what they have (e.g. getting full exotics).
-There has been +MF on holiday gear.
-The introduction of unique drops into dungeons that use +MF to determine if it drops or not.

Does anyone else feel like Anet wants to use MF gear to slow us down?

In what play style do you mean? Spvp, yes mesmers are better. WvW, hard to tell since both have strengths and weaknesses (talking damage, not taking portal into consideration). PvE warriors perform better.

And I’m pretty certain an iZerker can be killed during their attack, at least they can be killed between them being summoned and starting their whirl.

Jewelry and armor don’t always use the same types of upgrades. It might be that the item you’re trying to use to upgrade isn’t compatible with the ring.