Guild Wars 2

It looks to me like you’re setting up the build to deliver a Might-infused bird to your opponent’s face.

Personally, I’m not a fan of Might off Ranger signets because all but SotH have fairly long recharge times.

It’d be helpful to know what prefix you plan on running on your gear. Runes and Sigils too. I imagine something with precision at least as a secondary given your use of Pet Might on-crit.

I’m not see much benefit to spending a major trait on reducing your Eagle’s F2 by 1.25s. It is already a very short cooldown. I’d probably only invest in that if I was trying to make a perma-cripple build with my Eagle and/or Hawk where I also took the new Intimidation Training since it now affects all pets, not just Canines and Spiders. If you’re looking for a place to move those 10 points then putting them into Nature Magic will net your pet an additional +5% damage (and you) whenever you have a boon. Since the Eagle will have Might (and Swiftness) in spades with this build, that is a reliable damage increase. Same for you when using Axe.

Pet might on crit might be overkill between Might from Axe w/ Fortifying Bond and Might from MH Sword #1 chain. Then again, it could synergize quite well with #4 on the Horn.

As far as pet effectiveness, I think you have picked 2 of the best MH weapons and OH weapons for helping your pet stay on target since MH Sword can perma-cripple, Dagger can cripple at range and Axe can Chill at range.

Aside from Healing Spring once every 30 seconds (for 10 seconds), you’re going to be eaten by a dedicated condition build if they can land their applications on you.

Additionally, you will need to be wary of a smart opponent. If I realize you’re running Sword+Dagger / Axe+Horn, then when I see you weapon swap to Axe+Horn I know it is time to put the pressure on you as you are suddenly much less mobile and down 2 evades … just something to be aware of though, personally, it’s a bit of an issue to me given that I don’t see much vigor in your build.

Missed another source of Quickness:

Superior Runes of Balthazar (4): When you’re struck below 20%, gain quickness for 5s (90s cooldown)

You can get around the pet speed issue with Agility Training.

No “Martial Mastery”?

Before I stopped playing over a year ago, I last played quite a bit as Greatsword / Sword + X using various gear sets, traits, etc. depending on my mood and the situation. I loved the heck out of it as there are some inherit advantages to focusing on melee and definitely quite a bit of mobility with the two sword.

My quest is … is anyone else running Greatsword / Sword + X these days?
If so … how are you running it? any recent videos?

… I’m aware the Greatsword is being buffed tomorrow.

They’d get a “thank you” when they made it so that each ability in the game has some animation before & during so that there is room for counterplay.

They set up GW2 for supporting this type of combat, but they missed by having so many hard-hitting abilities that have practically zero room for counterplay.

Also … as the Mesmer forums will tell you … saying something is done is not the same as it actually being done. Ask about ability fixes that have been reported fixed in several patches … but still aren’t.

That’s a pity to hear about the Celestial since it gives more total stats overall than the others.

I figured Warrior was well-suited for using Celestial well given that:
… Healing Signet and Adrenal Health benefit from the +Healing
… +Toughness & +Vitality increase the already high base amounts Warrior has,
… the Sword makes good use of Power, Precision, Ferocity, and Condition Damage since it has solid Direct Damage coupled with good Condition application

Aye, Manuelito, I’ve looked over those changes a few times. I still can’t believe they are finally putting a condition on Mesmer’s scepter’s auto-attack … though Torment seems a bit nuts to have on an auto-attack … especially with clones able to leverage it from theirs as well.

If you don’t want your pet to aggro, there is a nice button you can click that puts it on passive. Then it won’t attack anything unless you explicitly tell it to. Just, if you do that, don’t complain when it just sits there during a fight because you forgot to tell it to attack.

I just recently returned to GW2 and am looking for some build advice for a Warrior.

Back in the day, I used to play mainly as a Mesmer and Ranger as I could severely punish players that just spam buttons (especially as Mesmer) which allowed me to win 2v1 and 3v1s if it wasn’t skilled opponents (I hate losing due to numbers when there was obviously a lack of skill in the pack that rolled me over).

As such, I’ve been curious what are good Warrior builds for sPvP / WvW that can compete 1v1 but abuse opponents who just “push buttons as soon as their off cooldown” (or heartseeker spam for an example of a horrible button spammer, lol).

One thought I had was simply stacking CC and keeping them stunned/KD’d with Hammer, Mace, Bull Charge, etc.

Another thought was to rotate through blocks and CC, particularly looking at MH Mace and OH Sword’s blocks since they punish an opponent … just not sure about that window between when you block & when you retaliate after blocking.

Also, I was curious what builds people have been running when using MH Sword. I’ve always been attracted to the Warrior’s Sword and was noticing that it now cripples not only on the #2 leap but on the 3rd attack of the chain. This seems to have good synergy with Leg Specialist (Immobilize when Cripple) and Opportunist (Fury when Immobilize) which then synergizes well with Bleeding on-crit (and on-crit Sigils, if any) as well as Vuln on-crit.

I’ve always thought that Celestial was the way to go with Warrior MH Sword since it is a bit of a hybrid between Power (auto-attacks are similar DD to other classes’ and #3 is DD) and Condition (bleeds for days).

Thanks in advance!

Do you know which ones you don’t have? I may have some duplicates from when I tried to up my Hall of Monuments points back before GW2 was released. I’ll take a look.

If anyone would be willing to help me on this front as well, just take a look at BgrRanger on the Hall of Monuments.

Drakes are wonderful for Cleave … plus they can be relied on to use their blast finisher when you swap to them. So if you are in melee and use Healing Spring + Drake, swap to your [other] Drake while standing in healing spring and reap the extra heal

Canines are wonderful for keeping your opponent on their butt. I’m the biggest fan of Wolf + Drakehound, but I like both the Fern and Hyena sometimes.

Cats are for PvE straight single-target DPS. Period.

With the upcoming trait change …
Signet of the Beastmaster: Removing this trait and it is being replaced by Predator’s Onslaught.

Predator’s Onslaught: Deal 10% additional damage (5% for pet) to foes that are affected by movement-impeding conditions (cripple, chill, immobilize).

… the sword’s cripple could be phenomenal for builds using the new Predator’s Onslaught grandmaster trait.

I stopped playing GW2 over a year ago and am curious what the current state of things is now… particularly for my Ranger and Mesmer for PvE (dungeons, fractals, etc.)

I logged in this past weekend and talked to a few and it seems like high level fractal groups still just want Warriors/Guardians, speed runs want Warriors, and generally one Mesmer can make it into either.

I see that there is an upcoming patch soon that will nerf Warrior GSword, Buff Mesmer Scepter, and Buff Ranger Axe & LBow.

I’m curious because I was able to successfully run high level fractals and various dungeon speed runs on both my Mesmer and Ranger back in the day … but I had a guild then that was happy with me because they knew me as a player. Even back then, without them I would’ve had a much worse time because of the PvE meta apparently disliking Rangers and only ever wanting 1 Mesmer (at most) per group.

So what are your perceptions of the current state of these classes?

Thanks ahead of time.

Excellent video. I had to skip forward as I’m about to head out, but I love the close score 500 to 499 Thieves win.

Nicely done. I’d have honestly expected Thieves to have some trouble given that Guardians are excellent at holding ground.

At the comment by Travlane that “most people use auto-targeting so heartseeker isn’t good mobility”…

… most “bad” players use it. Good players long ago understood that by turning it off, they could better leverage their skills the way they want. If someone wants to turn on something that restricts them, that is their choice, but it doesn’t diminish the viability of the skill.

Thieves who think they can’t do well without stealth have no clue how good Sword’s Infiltrator Strike + Shadow Return are.

A class that can always have a pocket teleport out + stunbreak + condition removal all on their weapon without any cooldown and at a low initiative cost. It’s amazingly good and why I have no clue why more thieves don’t use it … other than ignorance or personal taste.

I can’t fault the latter, but the former is abound.

I’m definitely interested in seeing that.

If you find you don’t like traps in sPvP/WvW … a non-stealth build that I’ve yet to beat the person who showed to me is:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAsY8YlYm6OncS4E/5Ex2jdKUe6V4rdP4qVrKA-TwAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFNsYZx+j5HA

It is more difficult to use it the way she does, but she is darn effective. The best I could do is get her to 20% in which case she simply evaded until back up to full (or near it).

Excellent idea, Zacc. We had one thief in [PURG] that used to do this before he got bored of GW2 and quit. It caused several laughs and was very effective.

If you’ve ever played DotA, think of combining techie mines with Pudge’s hook.

Problem with traps … you have to get your opponent on them. Scorpion wire pulls them to you.

Play with it and make it your own. I imagine if you play with it enough we will see some good videos/posts from you in the future … maybe even some people QQing how it is OP … to which I will reply to them “bring some stunbreakers/condition removal and/or don’t be glass and get wired”

Similarly, we do still have a Necro that uses his staff to set a stack of marks then uses Spectral Grasp to pull someone to a very bad fate. It doesn’t have quite the range as Scorpion Wire (900 instead of your 1,200), but he is still quite successful. I love it during sieges as people pulled off walls are especially dead meat.

Also … when you’re playing with traps, a suggestion … when thinking of the traits you want to use, see if you can setup the trait points so that you have both a “trap build” and “non-trap build” that use the same trait point allocations but different traits. This allows you to better adapt to different situations in WvW. I do this quite a bit myself with my Mesmer … yet to find the allocation for Ranger that allows me to do this and be happy with it though.

And those classes can beat melee rangers too. What’s your point?

While GW2 isn’t as far enough away from being “build wars” as I’d like, most good builds have very few instances where there is a paper/scissor/rock scenario.

evilapprentice.6379:

There is of course the difference of Protection on Dodge roll, 2 slottable immune skills, 3 separate evade skills in Ranger S/D (one of which is amazing for escapes when used with some skill), roughly 4k better base HP, access to better regen uptime, and stronger heals, utility independent CC in pets…

Not saying it can’t be done, or that the thief doesn’t have separate advantages, but lets not trivialize the differences. Rangers have loads more survivability options, slightly more CC (thanks to pets) and mobility and evasion options that are only slightly worse than a thief, while a thief’s main advantage is Damage and IS/SS.

Signet immunity requires 30 points in a traitline most Rangers hate.
Protect Me immunity requires the pet to stay alive … best with bear who is otherwise useless.
Neither immunity stops conditions.
Having both consumes 2 utility slots.

As far as 3 evasion skills for S&D: you have evasion on sword, dagger, shortbow … and no cooldown so you only have to manage evasion … not be stuck with a specific weapon set and watch 3 separate cooldowns. Ranger also has no way to reset cooldowns. Thief has ways to instantly gain initiative via skills/traits.

If you want to complain about “loads more CC” with pets … go fix pet AI. I love my pet, when he works. Picking pets also comes with checks and balances itself. The dogs don’t do as much damage as the birds/cats, but they bring more CC. The dogs aren’t that great with Protect Me because they don’t have the HP to soak up much damage (unlike bears and others).

Stronger heals? You have one that rolls you backwards, evades, and heals you and is on a 15 second cooldown. You can even get several seconds of Vigor from it … achieving much closer to 100% vigor up-time than a Ranger due to the fact that your heal is on a much shorter cooldown.

Then let’s not even start with the fact that that same traitline let’s you dodge much more with just normal dodge rolls. Yeah, it requires trait points, but so do the signets and Ranger protection on dodge.

I’d rather dodge more, taking 0% damage from more attacks than dodge less and take 33% less damage from attacks for 2s.

The fact that you think a Thief’s main advantage is damage shows me what level of play we’re talking about. Thief’s advantage is their ability to control a fight via their mobility and capability to adapt to a number of different builds using only a few different weapon skills. Stealth, when able to use it, is just icing on the cake that make it trivial for good thieves.

Grab a sword for one of your weapon sets and learn the power of Infiltrator’s Strike + Shadow Return … the only weapon skill in the game that is a real stunbreaker and condition removal as well as a 1,200 range teleport (it actually works farther than that).

Thief community has far too many players that want to gripe more than simply learn to play [better].

offence.4726:

So we are supposed to try HARDER patch after patch just to stay alive now ? Faulty logic is FAULTY. Thank you come again.

My post was about being able to dive in. If you are diving in first and there is a trap, yeah … so sorry you can’t just stealth in/out griefing noobs if they put down a trap.

Otherwise, you can continue suckling on the stealth teet.

I’m a fan of people having multiple options and not being rewarded for stagnating in the lowest skill mode of their class.

Cute post though.

Go talk to Mesmers about the multiple 50% nerfs they’ve eaten and kept on being viable … that don’t even require people to spend tokens, karma, and supply, them to run over a specific area, etc. … just always applicable.

Some people gripe. Others adapt. The latter are and will always be the better players. Especially when the griping happens before there’s been any time to even experience the changes.

Volrath.1473:

do we have traps?!

• Nope thief definitely has 0 traps utilities.
• You don’t have any mobility either.
• You also die if someone looks at you when you’re not stealthed.
• You also have no AOE.
• You can’t contribute to group fights either
  </sarcasm>

Play, discuss, practice, innovate. That’s how you get better.

Griping just keeps you stagnant. Stagnant water is bad. So are stagnant players.

I can’t help but notice the same people as usual griping about the current state of the Thief … being unhappy with it.

Go look at other class forums … Ranger recently. Plenty of people like you about their own class … then magically, those who have skill and knowledge impart it on the community and it suddenly stops.

You can sit around griping about the state of your class or you can get off your butts and:

• practice
• discuss
• try new things
  • weapon sets
  • stat combinations
  • heals/utilities/elites
  • traits

What is sitting around griping about your thief class getting you? Nothing.
What has it ever gotten you? Nothing.

I wonder which option makes you do better as a thief.

frans.8092:

Sebrent.3625:

Mind answering (1) so I can better reply to you?

Your translation from cooldown time to initiative via initiative regeneration. You’ve been using that in a number of posts, but if you follow the quote-link you’ll go back to a lengthy post of yours on the previous page

I believe the comparison of initiative to cooldowns was later elaborated on by me

While I admire your dedication and respect the work involved, mixing math with very specific play use-cases is always prone to … mistakes. I doubt this specific use-case sees much use in actual gameplay.

Oh okay. Thanks.

I agree that you can’t just use math.

My methodology when it comes to games is:
(1) Get idea
(2) Work out math for idea
(3) Test idea
(4) If test results in it feeling like the play and math match, success … else tweak/reset.

However, since my rig lags up on me when I’m merely testing something on a dummy with fraps running, I can’t go beyond that on here, so I can only show you guys the math part.

… my fault for investing more in my wife and sons than in my computer ;-)

Kajiri.8215:

Coloxeus.3480:

LOL. this is so over power . how about thieve’s Guild Elite? summon 5 thief? one does unload, the other one backstab, s/d flanking, shortbow, and another thief does Heartseeker spam?

Nah, all 5 should heartseeker spam.

That would make them act like a majority of thieves ;-)

Brassnautilus.2941:

on a more serious note, we are the best class to place these traps. We can build it in their faces without them knowing.
we can go all out and stealth place traps whenever possible, make this backfire on them. it should also end thief-mesmer duels faster. If I had hit a trap, I’m running anyway.

As opposed to the Mesmer who is forced to fight you … lol.

Excellent example. Thanks for this.

Grimwolf.7163:

Or;
Shadow Trap
Lasts an hour, and applies 30 seconds of Revealed to any enemies in a 1200 radius.

Too OP?

Oh, and it’s ground targeted, so you can choose specifically where to place it to position it accurately inside bottlenecks and such.

Rangers already had this … we knew where you were when our spike trap sank into you.

If you want to add the 10 supply limit there, go ahead, make it so Thieves don’t have to buy it. I couldn’t care less … and it affects me Mesmer’s impact on WvW much more than it does Thieves as now people will question the viability of a stealthed zerg or attempting a portal bomb.

Calae.1738:

What I find interesting is that the Thief’s condition removal tool Shadow’s Embrace is now less effective when revealed by a trap. Not only they can’t stealth but, they can’t remove conditions either.

Well then … adapt and have another source of condition removal … or be more careful for those 30 seconds you are revealed … you have the mobility to dictate when you do/don’t fight … you’re a thief.

Brassnautilus.2941:

and they whinnied about us running

Only if you spent the last 10 minutes chasing us, caught us, got your butt handed to you and your lunch money stolen, then ran off

… only to chase us again.

It gets annoying. If you’re going to come at me, make sure one of us dies … if you can’t … go find someone you can kill. I have badges to reap from your allies.

Perhaps I’m old-school, but think Thunderdome had it right … “two men enter, one man leaves” … they didn’t mean “one man runs away after starting the fight … then comes back and starts it again only to run away again … and again”.

Thief traps can be used to great affect …. the thief community has just been rather stagnant when it comes to creativity … take some cues from Kylia, Osicat, Pyroatheist, SevenMirror, Fay, etc. in the Mesmer forums and “try new things”.

I know it might not be within your comfort zone, but you’ll learn quite a bit more about your class and maybe even pioneer the next “OP build” (LOL).

Zikory.6871:

Issues.5789:

Auesis.7301:

Issues.5789:

Big Tower.5423:

Both be 4 seconds?!?!?!?!?!?!
lol that will make us comletly broken again!

I put both options as the change didn’t affect me really.. As long as you are aware of when to restealth/counted number of attacks before; it wasn’t a major issue.

It WAS a major issue – DPS dropped like a brick for any stealth builds in PvE for no reason whatsoever.

The difference between the two isn’t that bad to get used to. A good player will be making a decent effort in disrupting your stealth->hit->combo->stealth routine anyway.

If it goes back up to 4 in PvE, I am done with the game.

I don’t really care for PvE. This thread is about WvW and Spvp. I’m not saying isn’t hard to to cope with. I’m just saying it’s a pain to constantly switch between 3 and 4 seconds.

For WvW, the 4s revealed broke D/D with 30 in shadow arts. That 1 second effected not only the dps but the healing from stealth and the defense of blind on stealth. Obviously this is one build as this effected only traits but still it killed the build.

Honestly they need to make revealed 3s all around and anet needs to sit down and figure out a way to restructure stealth. As a thief I’m bias, I think its fine, but its obvious others don’t feel the same so something needs to be done but messing with revealed is not the way to go about it.

Side note for WvW: new stealth trap will reveal you for 30s if you walk through it. Better stock up non thieves!

I agree with you that ArenaNet needs to figure out wtf to do with stealth with regard to sPvP. Between that clusterfrak and elementalists, it’s not surprising that Thieves are minimally seen at high levels of tPvP.

I disagree about the traps. I already don’t have trouble with thieves and would rather use my supply to create siege to take your tower/keep or defend mine since that is how you win WvW.

However, if you give me plenty of time, I will place a mega ton of siege at a choke point and then drop traps so I can see you coming and shoot you down with my collection of siege toys.

frans.8092:

Sebrent.3625:

(3) Using math isn’t a “trick”.

The math is not the trick, but the translation between two cost systems is. A trick is not a negative within a math context btw.

Mind answering (1) so I can better reply to you?

I believe the comparison of initiative to cooldowns was later elaborated on by me within the context of Necro Staff versus Thief Shortbow … highlighting what you said in your other post.

Coloxeus.3480:

Yishi, Jumper, Caed, Wild Bill, Altair Frost and other great thieves out there are the reasons why our class got nerf!! like this anti stealth trap thing! being a very good thief isn’t that easy i wish arena net know what they’re doin

Darn them for being good at the game, lol.

If only they could suck like most other thieves, there wouldn’t be any need for nerfs as you’d just have bad players doing well instead of a few great players doing exceptionally well.

Geiir.7603:

I guess the purpose of this trap is to stop Zergs using veil to stealth around, but this will by far hit thieves hardest. No defense, burst or escapability if we’re lucky enough to trigger one (or if one of our friends trigger one and I’m within range).

ANet doing stuff without ever thinking about all the side effects, why am I not surprised….

If you honestly think thieves don’t have burst, escapability, etc. without stealth, then there is a serious learn to play issue here.

It seems to be the one that is rampant amongst the thief community and why it has been stagnant for so long as far as new ideas.

It costs thieves 4 initiative. 3 for for flanking strike and 1 for larcenous strike. They can do that 3 times with a full initiative bar (not counting initiative regen nor traits). That all of their initiative in exchange for stealing a max of 6 boons.

Honestly, I’m not quite sure why they should be allowed to steal them instead of simply destroy them, but ArenaNet presumably has a plan. We just have to be patient I guess while they implement while being very hush-hush.

frans.8092:

Sebrent.3625:

…

Lol, you can trash your math-trick now, you can’t compare cooldowns with initiative with this trick. Low cooldown skills can be spammed and chained in between long cooldown skills without the spam limiting the use of the long cooldown skills. A luxury you don’t have with the initiative system.

(1) I don’t know what post you’re quoting so the context here is a bit lost on me

(2) You are correct. Hence the tradeoffs of the two different systems.

(3) Using math isn’t a “trick”.

How many stacks of revealed do you have to get before your sex-tape is released?

I honestly find Basilisk Venom to be the most effective when good thieves are using it against me. I can often nullify the effects of Thieves Guild with most of my builds … or even use it to my advantage if I’m on my own thief.

Also … if thieves are still wanting to be able to dive into a zerg, kill someone, and get out without using stealth, take a lesson from Rangers.

• Withdraw
• Roll for initiative

Use both of these and see how much distance you get. It works even better with Sword:

• Infiltrator’s Strike
• Shadow Return

There’s also:

• Shadow Step
• Shadow Return

Tauril.8504:

Aveneo.2068:

Oh, come on! Some of you guys really think you’re the center of the universe… Newsflash: the world doesn’t revolve around the thief.

This new trap’s main purpose is to stop the Veil-zerg; nothing more.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Veil

If this is the only goal I think it would have been much more intelligent to simply limit the maximum number of affected players of this skill, just like they did for the Portal skill.

The issue with that is that Mesmer Veil is not limited. It appears to be the “tradeoff” in exchange for it not stacking stealth with anything.

This is an interesting question to ask. I look forward to seeing your results.

Grimwolf.7163:

Master of Timespace.2548:

I don’t know. He uses dagger storm… Other than that the video is good.

Except that you can easily cancel it, and doing so maintains the Stability Boon.

Daggerstorm, like all thief elites, is awesome when used intelligently.
Heck, watch that video by travlane where he’s running pistol dagger and uses his sneak attack 2+ times on a thief using daggerstorm, thereby shooting himself several times.

Yes, because people in WvW are only going to use their supply to setup a single trap that can be triggered/consumed by any enemy … including those who have no stealth.

StarNightz.8496:

Well im kinda new to this game and ive been trying all the classes….and thieves mobility makes it really fun for me…currently im using dag/p and pistol/dagger usinf number 3 skill (sry I do not know the skill name) to close the gap and heartseeker (?) Than switching to p/d to get out of range. Is this good weapon combo?

Dagger+Pistol and Pistol+Dagger are both quite viable in the current meta.

Thief is amazing mobility. You have the power to pick and choose whatever target you want (within reason). As long as you aren’t super glassy and don’t make some fatal mistakes, you can escape from most situations as well.

Thief, like Mesmer, requires creativity to get the most out of. It has a high skill ceiling.

If you enjoy those weapon sets, I’d suggest sticking with them (unless you find you like something else better, of course) and whenever you run into a good thief using one or both of those, strike up a conversatoin with them. I do this all the time with players I’ve had discussions with on the forums, run into in WvW and private duel servers, etc..

Heck, Osii and I don’t agree on everything with Thieves on here in the forums (see my chat history from like 2-3+ months ago) but he just came out of the blue this week and started chatting me up about Mesmers (we both play them too and both run with [GF] in WvW from time to time … small world, lol).

Good luck to you.

So, if I want to stand still in my trap waiting for a thief who can’t run away (those exist?! lol), I can waste

• PvP Badgets
• Karma
• Supply
• Time waiting for a thief to jump me in the middle of nowhere
  • Note: if a non-stealther hits it, whoops

Yeah, this completely breaks the thief class, you might as well just never play thief and tell ArenaNet to remove it from the game

Honestly, I’m simply curious how good this makes Ranger pets. They could be great at triggering this before a zerg uses veil(s) to stealth in to the enemy’s defended position.

Osicat, do you have any footage of you dueling against good phantasm mesmers? both direct damage and condition damage spec’d?

To me, the phantasm build has a very low skill floor to be effective … and then we see what someone like SevenMirror can do with it to establish the high ceiling that is a staple of the Mesmer class.

Bailey.6892:

Sebrent.3625:

Bailey.6892:

Is their any info on these?

Clickable from inventory or do they take a slot skill? How large is the field, how long does it last etc? Any lingering debuff or can we step out side it and instant stealth?

Sadly, still zero information. We’ll find out soon enough.

Wouldn’t a test server be nice….

I 100% agree. It could even keep patch days from being:
“patch + patch + patch + patch + more patches tomorrow”

Superior Runes of Lyssa makes it quite nice both offensively and defensively.

It is more of a “I want another utility” type elite than a “long friggin cooldown” type of elite. This has inherent advantages and disadvantages.

Since you have no audio on that …
“Ooh eeh ooh aah aah, bing bang, whala whala bing bang”

You will get no arguments from me that guardian is faceroll easy in most content. My 7yr old does wonderful on his, lol.

Anyone that tells you pistol offhand isn’t viable in PvE, hasn’t given it much thought. Black Powder alone makes it ridiculously powerful in PvE.

If there are weapons you want to try or build ideas, I’d say go ahead and try them. I think the Thief community is currently in the funk that the Ranger community is just now getting out of … it’s been stagnant when it comes to trying and sharing new ideas.

As far as builds that are viable everyone, I always suggest that people take:

• 1 ranged weapon (900+ range)
• 1 non-projectile weapon (won’t be affected by projectile blocks/reflects
  • Doesn’t have to be melee (Mesmer Greatsword and Elementalist Scepter are good ranged examples that fit here)

I agree with stinkypants that anyone who thinks shortbow isn’t viable in WvW is off their rocker.

I’m going to have to side with the PvE Thieves here. It doesn’t matter that you don’t play a part of the game with your class. Others do.

If the world worked where “it doesn’t matter because I don’t do that”, then I’d vote to tax the heck out of all you single guys (more), not pay taxes that go towards welfare, medicare, social security, etc..

As far as the current state of Revealed …it makes no sense to me that it is longer in sPvP than in WvW and PvE. If I was going to label the thief as “weakest” in one of these three in comparison to the other two, I’d say they are in sPvP (more accurately, tPvP).

As far as “just relearning the timing”, this is pretty good advice. If you simply go to the mists and play around with your sword/dagger/pistol, you can tell how many auto-attacks you get in once revealed before revealed goes off. This is actually the first thing that I did when I started my own Thief.