Guild Wars 2

bladex.9502:

Probably trying to play staff ele/anything condi based that uses firefields in SW with 10000 rangers knocking things out of your AoE’s, that kitten is hard yo

That!

Playing with any melee class and doing the equivalent of 10 marathons while running after the mobs the same rangers push away works as well.

Well, in PvE I think you can forget about P/P as your main weapon. It does decent ranged single target damage, but you want AoE (or at least multiple targets damage) and you want to finish your foes as fast as possible. Staff is my personal favourite in PvE, but daggers or sword do ok too – P/P doesn’t even come close.

In WvW however, I’ve been quite happy with my P/P, but as a secondary weapon only. In zerg fights, Unload spam can quickly finish targets too far to be killed by regular means or wound a player so your team mates can finish him. But P/P really shines when used as a crowd control weapon: immobilize a target or turn it to stone with bas venom, daze it, and of course, call the target so your team mates can finish it (or switch to your main weapon set). If your team is coordinated and can follow a target call, a good gunslinger can make the difference.

In 1v1 fights, it’s another story though. You won’t kill anyone with a simple Unload spam, except full glass canons unaware of their surroundings. It’s still good though when engaging, with bas venom, or in fight for stealth (with Bound) or cc. Just keep in mind you will have to switch back to your main weapon set if you’re actually trying to kill the dude.

Also, since P/P should be your secondary set IMHO, not your primary one, using it means no Shortbow, and therefore a loss of mobility. I got used to it, but most thieves wouldn’t.

EDIT – Also, welcome to GW!

Well, many people start calling names when you don’t use a SB, including in PvE. Screw them. I’ve switched to P/P and I don’t regret it at all. Sure, sure Infiltrator Arrow is cool, but heck, P/P #5 + Bound is kinda cool too.

But to answer the OP’s question… I’m assuming he’s made a new toon and he’s currently leveling it the old way, in which case… I would suggest a sword, and a staff when he becomes a Daredevil, simply because those trash mobs should get the AoE they deserve.

Seriously, I’m sick and tired of these topics about players pretending something is mandatory to max his masteries when 1) it’s clearly not, 2) they’re still mastery “rookies” or they would know that.

I have spent 166 Mastery points, and I have none of those achievements. And just in case, I’m also missing several Fractals and LS2 achievement points.

EDIT – Oh, the thread was necroed – as if we don’t have enough similar threads already. ><

Apparently, Mayatl’s missing from this list (and eventually from the Achievement panel).

And yeah, seriously, getting enough mastery points isn’t too hard. Some adventures are so easy getting a gold medal is a joke (like the motorcycle thing in the SCAR encampment or the salvage pit).

Actually, I would even say thank you to Anet for forcing me to play some content I wouldn’t have played otherwise. I wouldn’t do adventures every day, but trying to beat them all at least once was really fun.

It would be a major QoL, like templates saving.

Indeed, most of them only need to be refreshed every 30 mins, but it’s not the point. I don’t know about you, but whenever I open the Hero panel, I lag. Sometimes badly. Whenever I open my inventory, it’s better, but it hides 1/3 of my screen and I have to scroll down to find that one food I need among 60 other items that stay permanently in my bags. I lose a couple of seconds, which is a real pita when paying high end content.

Is it so bad it ruins my gameplay? No. Would a cons bar make my life much easier? Yes. Simple as that. :P

EDIT – Regarding the title of this thread, a skill bar is… for skills. If you want a bar for items, call it an item bar, not an “item skillbar”.

It was more a general comment than a comment about Zerk vs Marauder when I was talking about burst vs consistency. For instance, a Sigil of Accuracy increases your DPS more than a Sigil of Air (*), but the later has potential burst the former doesn’t have. For PvE, I chose Sigil of Accuracy – against other players, I would pick a Sigil of Air.

(*) Around 5% damage depending on your Crit Chance – a bit less at very high level (past 90% with buffs).

Well, if you’re looking for burst damage, yeah, of course, full zerk will bring more: 4% DPS, as said above, and probably a bit more potential burst since Marauder has more Precision and less Ferocity (and Power).

More precision means your damage will be more constant, more Ferocity means you can reach higher numbers, but it’s more random. Burst damage is really important in PvP / WvW, but it shouldn’t be your sole focus. To me, it’s more important to find a balance between high burst and damage consistency.

But since we’re talking about zerk vs marauder, the bottom line is… Zerk doesn’t bring more to the table than a single offensive trait. It can be a pretty good boost or a negligible one, depending on your point of view, and your game play. I wouldn’t trade my marauder armor for a zerk armour (at least not every piece), but I understand some people do.

:D

I’m cheating though, I have a spreadsheet for that – I simply had to check the Power / Precision / Ferocity values for vanilla Zerk and Marauder on gw2skills.

Well, I can do the math for you.

With 2488 Power, 2057 Precision, and 1097 Ferocity (aka full Marauder armor and weapon and zerk trinkets), it hits for 4613 on average on Medium Armor targets (before all passive buffs, traits, sigils, etc).

Now with 2587 Power, 1960 Precision, and 1256 Ferocity (full zerk), it hits for 4799 on average on Medium Armor targets. That’s 4.03% more damage.

NB: Stat values taken from gw2skills.net. And again, that’s just the base damage, not the final damage with the buffs etc. It’s not a big deal though since what matters is the differential ratio: 4%.

I would love a Desperado elite spec indeed – no need for a riffle actually: just gimme some traits to buff Pistols.

That being said, there 3 things that make thieves unique (besides the Initiative mechanics): speed, spammable dodges, and stealth. SB + dash make them pretty much the fastest class. Physical Supremacy, Staff Master, and Signet of Agility make them the one class that can really spam dodges (up to 5 times in a row!). But there’s one thing that was left aside by HoT: stealth.

Not sure I like it or not, but I have the feeling the next elite spec will be all about stealth.

Don’t get me started on metabattle.

Yeah, indeed, if you’re using a staff, you have only 3 real attack skills – AA, #2, and #5 – and the last 2 are not affected by quickness. But the video about Gorseval speaks for itself: check the combat log – indeed, the guy is not mindlessly spamming #2 and #5 till he runs out of initiative, but it’s not a Fire Elemental fight where you spam 1 either:

- You have to micromanage your endurance bar to never keep it full (and heck, it refills fast when you use initiative) and yet save it when needed.
- You have to pay attention to your buffs to see what rotation you must use depending on whether you have quickness or not, and carefully chose between a Charge and Vault.

It’s a lot about the UI in a game that pretends not to be about the UI, on top of the real fight.

I mean… Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s the most difficult job, but when you add to the mix the combat mechanics and the paper armor, that’s a lot of things to pay attention to, and I’m not convinced at all thieves are the easiest profession and there’s almost no difference between a bad thief and a good thief. And for that matter, I don’t think the bad reputation thieves have comes from nowhere – yeah, there are a lot of bad thieves out there (and just to be clear, I’m not sure I consider myself a good thief).

Wait – what?

Do not take offence, but maybe you wanna check your skill tooltips (you don’t even need to do the math) before assuming AA is the thief’s highest damage output and base all your reasoning on that. ><

No, AA doesn’t have the highest DPS. And yes, the difference between a good thief and a bad one is abyssal, in therms of survivability, or, apparently, in therms of DPS.

gw2efficiency is often wrong. It doesn’t count bound stuff for instance, even though it’s crafted with stuff you can actually sell, and that is worth a lot of money. My account value dropped to newb level for instance when I crafted Nevermore, simply because there’s no price tag for it on the TP. Yet the account value would have remained the same if I had crafted Eternity instead (or even increased as the selling price is higher than the crafting cost).

Also, I suspect the skin section to be calculated based on the current TP price for the skins, so it’s not so surprising if the guy has unlocked a bunch of old BL skins that now sell for 100s of gold.

It looks like your team mate has discovered the existence of the forum too.

You could have switched to the combat log tab and / or unticked the chat from the tab menu.

It’s + 60 defence rating compared to heavy exotic armors (+4.95%), + 54 DR for medium armors, and + 47 DR for light armors.

As for the stats, it’s +47 points compared to exotic 3 bonuses armors, and +60 points compared to exotic 4 bonuses armors. And you can add another 30 points from infusions.

I do believe as well you can complete high end content in exotic gear, but it’s starting to add up. If I take my thief’s ascended Marauder armor for instance, it gives me an extra 410 hp (and that’s just a secondary stat), which is HUGE when you only have 11,645 base HP.

Getting ascended equipment is fairly easy already. Once you have maxed your crafting disciplines, a player with enough free time can craft an ascended piece in 2 days (possibly even one day) by simply farming SW. A more casual player can easily craft one in 8 or 9 days (by simply farming the mats to craft deldrimor ingots / spiritwood / etc, which doesn’t take too long every day).

Sure, you have between 7 and 10 pieces of equipment (not counting the trinkets), so it adds up. But really, there are not many games out there where you can get the best possible piece of equipment in 2 days. Most of the time, it involves days and days of farming in some silly dungeon and relying on the RNG.

To me, ascended equipment have achieved the balance between having a reasonably obtainable item and giving a semi long term goal to players. They do bring something beyond the stats: they give something to do to the players, and even though it’s a paradox, especially to the players who don’t care about dungeons / raids and therefore don’t have lots to do in PvE.

Can I add something to the list? Let us hide the different elements of the UI manually (starting with the mini-map and the achievements / events list).

I love minimalistic interfaces. Call me crazy, but sometimes I even press CTRL+SHIFT+H and play with the interface hidden – it’s a whole new experience. Of course, it’s also really hard, and even though I know my main well enough to know the recharge time of skills or my initiative left without looking, it’s much harder with my HP and endurance. Having a trimmed out interface (and as suggested in this topic, a smaller skill bar) would be a nice compromise when I feel like playing more immersively.

Are you referring to HoT PvE sigils? You can buy them for 200 tokens if I remember correctly from Itzel / Auric / etc vendors once you have unlocked some masteries (xxx Acceptance / Language).

Paulytnz.7619:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The ones that have the ability to return, moves you from PvE to outside PvE (WvW, PvP, instances). They return you to your previous PvE spot once you’ve gone outside PvE and you go back. If you move from PvE to another spot on the PvE map, it doesn’t have the ability to remember your previous PvE location and waypoint you back.

You can also add the Guild Hall to this list. You can “Leave Hall” via the guild menu to return back to your previous location.

So if you have a repair anvil and the scribing station unlocked that’s easy repairs, banking and a basic merchant.

You can also add Home Portal Stones to the list.

That being said, I don’t understand the need for Airship Passes: there’s everything you need in you home Borderland, except the Mystic Forge, it’s free, and you do return to your previous location when you leave the map.

Just make sure you don’t stay too long there not to mess with the outnumbered buff (one player won’t change anything, but if many do that…).

@ Jana: rock / paper / scissor mechanics doesn’t mean you can’t beat any class with superior gameplay, it simply means you have natural prey and natural predators. From a dev perspective, it makes balancing much easier since all classes don’t have to be equal but simply need to be kept in check. It’s often a little bit more complex, but think about it this way: we have 3 groups of classes: A, B and C. A is 10-25% stronger than B and 10-25% weaker than C. Rock / paper / scissor. That adds diversity to the table (you want to have the 3 groups in your team), and it’s 100 times easier to balance since it doesn’t really matter if A is only 10% stronger than B, or 25%. And that doesn’t mean either that a good B player can’t beat a weaker A player.

Any attempt to make every class equal is doomed to fail. There will always be a few stronger classes, until they get nerfed and new stronger classes arise. I’m quoting you:

Thief is pretty much dead right now – you can take away more from it and no one really would care anymore anyway as we already resigned.

Even though I don’t share your point of view, this is the direct consequence of that kind of impossible balancing.

Sorry if I’m a bit off topic.

@ Asrat: I love the idea of conditional damage. Buffing AA was a bad move IMHO, at least in PvE. It makes you lazy. When you’re going melee against a boss with AoE needed to be dodged (think the gerent and his nuggets of doom for instance), using skills like staff #2 can be tricky (or even Vault, to a lower extant), but you had to do it to keep your DPS high. Now, you can very well play with AA only.

@ OP: Well I think the one thing that needs to be fixed for thieves is the “No line of sight” non-sense with skills like SB #5, Steal, or Scorpion Wire. Everybody hate that, and it’s often bugged (no line of sight on semi-flat grounds, or steal that seems to work completely randomly and sometimes let you jump to a target on top of a hill while it doesn’t 90% of the time…).

And while we’re talking about Scorpion Wire… Please, remove the CD when it fails – prevent us from using the skill instead if the target is too far or invalid.

First off, I don’t think class balancing is possible, if that means every class has an equal chance to beat any other class: it should be a rock / paper / scissor game (the fact GW2 fails at that is irrelevant), so to me the complaints like “I can’t beat x class, nerf it / buff us” are not valid.

That being said, there are a lot of core issues that screw thieves, but buffing the class won’t change that (WvW is completely messed up for instance).

Now concerning thief weapons:

- Staff: my favourite PvE weapon, ok in WvW (I don’t PvP) if you’re willing to sacrifice mobility and stealth. Staff #4 is pretty useless though.

- Daggers: nothing to change, really.

- Sword: S/P #3 is a failure, and that ruins the combo IMHO. As a former W:AR Witch Hunter, I would love to use S/P, but Pistol Whip’s rooting effect makes it completely ineffective, even in PvE: you won’t hit more than 3 times generally, and being forced to be static is so against everything thieves are… The rooting needs to be removed (or the stun duration needs to be increased).

- Pistols: there’s a recent thread about them, lots of good ideas, I let you check it: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Can-we-get-a-new-Pistol-auto-attack/first#post6022397

- Shortbow: great for mobility and spamming blast finishers, useless for fighting. Now the problem is we can only have 2 weapons (unlike GW1 where we could have 4): as a result, unless you’re willing to sacrifice a lot of mobility (which I do – and not surprisingly PUG often mock me for that), you are forced to use that weapon, which means you have only one weapon set to fight with. So much for gameplay diversity.

The game modes now:

- PvE: even before the last buff to the class, thieves were pretty strong, and I was often complimented for my DPS when I was duoing with a random. Really, there’s not much to change from this point of view IMHO. Thieves are even now welcome in raid PUGs…

- PvP: I’m a noob.

- WvW: Well, they can do the soloable dailies really fast and cap camps / shrines in a matter of seconds, they’re ok to good in 1v1 fights depending on your build, they are really helpful against lords due to their DPS, but they’re also pretty useless in zerg versus zerg.

I was talking about W:AR Witch Hunters earlier, and I really miss their gameplay. In zerg versus zergs, I would stealth , run to the enemy’s backline, backstab to death a soft target (healer or mage), and run for my life back towards my own zerg. Rince and repeat. That was really fun, that implied taking a lot of risks, but that was also really rewarding.

But in GW2… First soft targets are generally not so soft. Reaching them is also a challenge often next to impossible with all the AoE spam, and even if you do, evades and auto-targeting means everybody will be on you before you down him (unless he’s a real glass canon), and the down mechanics make all your efforts useless anyways: you will die or run before you can finish him anyways. Pretty depressing if you ask me, but that’s how WvW works…

Traits feedback is for another day.

Jana.6831:

reikken.4961:

Jana.6831:

reikken.4961:

How do you get your crits if you’re running gear with no precision? I had figured you were using sigil of intelligence, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Critical strikes – Hidden Killer and Side Strike. I also guess he runs similar gear like me: Armor valk, rest zerker (weapons, trinkets) – that’s usually enough (depending on the rune and food) to have a ~50% critchance.

Hidden killer seems like a nice reliable crit source, but you need No Quarter to have maximum damage.

but I guess I forgot that valkyrie trinkets don’t exist, and full valkyrie would grant more than 18k hp anyway, so there is some precision in there.

What? “How do you have critical hits with valk?” “But you need no quarter!” There are valk trinkets - I have a thief who’s 80% valk. ETA: You’re right with that – She’s has got valk weapons, her trinkets are marauder/zerker.
Deceiver’s goal is to one shot people – for that you need max power, not really max crit (if you’re running CS).

Do you have any maths to prove your point? Cause I did some back in the days when I was looking what stat I should take for my infusions, and the bottom line was indeed Power is the best stat, but by a very, very small margin, before Precision and Crit Damage (and Crit Damage becomes even better than Precision past 85% or so – don’t quote me on the exact number – crit chance).

But my point is… If you hit for 4767 on average (I don’t remember which skill I’ve used to do the maths, but it’s irrelevant anyways) before trait modifiers, you gonna hit for 4457 if you lower your crit chance by 10% (210 precision), aka almost 7%. Sure, t’s not as good as Power, (that would be 4387 damage after dropping 210 power), but it’s still kitten good, and there’s no way I could be satisfied with 50% crit chance.

If you want to hit hard, yes, get as much Power as possible. But that’s not enough. You also need as much Precision and Ferocity as possible, generally in that order, because they count almost as much as Power.

And don’t get me wrong either: I have nothing against armours with some more defence thank zerk (I myself run Marauder), but you can’t imply than crit chance is secondary once you’ve reached 50% (with food!).

You can click the chest before using F anyways, but things generally go super fast in CF and at least I press the key as soon as I see I can interact with something, only to realize one second too late the text was “Use” instead of “Unlock”. Even if the chest had the priority, that would still be an issue since they often pop the box before someone digs up the chest.

PS: Yes, I know we can click the box a second time to remove the effect – it’s just it gets really old really fast.

Aviator’s troll boxes are an issue in CF sometimes too (the guys pop them on top of chests).

2 easy fixes:

- Add a cooldown (or increase it if there’s already one) to using a box.
- Attach the owner’s name to the box: surprisingly, most trolls IG cherish their anonymity, and I’m sure we would see fewer of those boxes if they couldn’t hide behind it.

Most of Teq maps fill up, so yeah, you can simply show up 15 mins before, and you should be fine.

Option 2: go to the map, press Y, join a party advertising for the worldboss you’re after, right-click the portrait of your first teammate, and select ’join in <map name>". Easy as that.

EDIT – It’s a shame the game doesn’t save your spots for a few minutes after a crash though, but I guess making the difference between a crash and a player logging out can be tricky, from a dev perspective.

Well I guess that’s where the dual weapons system shows its limit (aka first 2 and last 2 skills always remain the same). It makes perfectly sense with melee weapons (you use one, then the other), but IRL, if you have 2 guns, you’re gonna fire them at the same time: there’s no reason to keep firing the first one only. Skill 1 for dual pistols should reflect that, and change just like skill #3.

2 options IMHO: either you make it a chain attack, as you suggested (right pistol, left pistol, then both pistols for a mini unload), or you directly change #1 to a mini unload and maybe turn 3 into something else (for instance a “desperado” skill where you would shoot in every direction around you).

laokoko.7403:

nothing is expensive in this game. If you are missing 2 piece just farm 1 hour a day and you’ll be done in 2 weeks.

What’s expensive is there are so many things you could “possibly” get. If you just give up everything else and focus on 1 set of ascended armor it is pretty cheap.

It’s expensive for your first character since you have to level several crafting disciplines, and it takes a little bit of time to learn where the most profitable places to farm are, especially as you’re probably discovering the rest of the game as well and have plenty of other things to do (living story, leveling your spec, dungeons, fractals, etc, etc). Yet I don’t think it’s an issue. Getting max equipment in GW2 is a bit grindy, but it’s nothing compared to most of the other MMO. And if you want everything as soon as you hit the max level, there’s still GW1 for you.

Now once you know the game, getting ascended gear becomes really easy. An ascended sword or pistol for instance costs 70 to 100g to craft, depending on whether you craft the deldrimor ingots / spiritwood or not. Some farm this amount of money in one day in SW… And even for more casual players, you’re right, it shouldn’t take more than one week per piece.

Well yeah, it’s basically long coat or underboob.

I kinda like the daredevil scarf and used it for a while to have a “desert warrior” look but I got tired of it and switched to a basic mask.

Deathly Avian Shoulderpads, T3 Hummie armor, Vigil pants, Ley-Line boots, and Wind Catcher (the wind effect doesn’t show on the pictures but it’s kinda cool).

Ah, thanks for the clarification.

Shylock.4653:

Sourde Noire.5286:

But the last point is really meh until they add a functionality that saves the Sigils in the stat slot. Because it’s true, you can swap the stats but why would you when going for another build usually requires you to use different Sigils as well. Being able to save (or at least ‘unlock’ a Sigil on the item by consuming it) Sigils (and then Runes for Legendary armor) I could see them having a much bigger incentive for players.

Legendary Sigils and Runes with swappable stats would be really cool. With that Anet could also raise Jewelcrafting to 500 to craft them.

They actually could add one more weapon category so we would have:

- Ascended weapons
- Ascended + weapons (find another name): all the expensive MF weapons like Aether – stats can be changed at will, just like the current legendaries
- Legendary weapons: stats + sigils can be changed at will

Call me stupid but… How do you get more than 18k HP as the screenshots show if you have the max possible damage?

Assuming you use Furious Maintenance Oil, that’s +1k HP, and +10% max from WvW bonuses – that’s still a long way to 18k. I must be missing something.

You must get a lot of love from your opponents!

That’s one of the funniest troll build I’ve seen. I love it!

Yo should go to the closest bank / crafting station and play with the wardrobe.

Pretty good advices from Doggie. I can’t stress enough how both changing his dodge hotkey (mine is the space bar – I use CTRL + space to jump) and increasing the camera rotation speed is important (especially with bounding dodgers: you’re gonna spend your time bounding above your enemy, you must then turn your camera around as fast as possible).

However, could you elaborate on this one?

-Melee Attack Assist is evil, turn it off if it isn’t.

I would also add a few things:

- Unlike most other classes, don’t try to go full zerk if you don’t feel comfortable with it (aka if you’re too often down). Thieves have the lowest hp pool, and a pretty bad armor. Using Marauder pieces is perfectly fine.

- Stay away from metabattle, or from people who pretend knowing everything about the class and give you builds, only to explain to you thieves suck a few minutes later.

- Try every weapon set, not just the FOTM. They’re all different, they all have their pros and cons, make up your own mind.

TheMSR.7120:

How about a rework of infusions? You can’t put any infusions into exotic gear, wich gives you a reason to get asc, but since usefull infusions for armor are extremely pricy nobody cares for them at all.

Call me Nobody.

If you don’t care about them, it means you don’t care either (or don’t need) the AR from PvE infusions. Why don’t you use WvW infusions then? It takes 2 days by simply doing your dailies to get enough badges to craft one. As for the laurels… That’s 30 for the whole armor set, aka 23 days of login rewards. That sounds perfectly fine to me… I got them because I do play WvW and don’t give a d*mn about Fractals, but even for general PvE, they’re a pretty good value.

To the OP: I think you missed a few lines under your weapon damage: you know, that set of 3 or 4 attributes that actually get increased. Or the fact you actually have to hit your enemy to inflict a condition, most of the time.

This way would receive Anet with Aqua Breathers also a new gemstore thing if they work like glider skins that simply automatically appear the moment we go into water and dive…

Sorry about that, there’s enough negativity on this forum already, but this is the very reason it took me years to play GW2 even though I was a GW1 hardcore fan and couldn’t wait for the release of GW2 untill the cash shop leaks.

Enough with that already. Why do every suggestion on this forum has to be “do that so people will have to spend money on it”? Why do players keep encouraging the huge scam called “Back Lion Company”? We’ve paid for a game, and, for that matter, for a lack of content called an expansion. And now you’re begging for spending real money?

I know it’s off-topic, but it had to get out. And yes, I love GW2. Just as much as I hate your economical business plan. Not because of the plan itself, which would be… “ok” if it wasn’t for every kid who now comes and begs for being scammed.

Seriously. If you wanna ask for something, ask it. And let Anet decide whether it’s gonna be a gem store item or not.

Marge.4035:

Okay, but right after disable backpacks visibility/disable backpacks and weapons when lowest quality of models enabled or something like this opt goes up.

It shoudn’t be related to the model quality option. Just give us a drop-down menu:

- Show all backpacks
- Hide other players’ backpacks
- Hide all backpacks

(option 3 isn’t really necessary actually as we can already hide our backpack from the equipment window).

Wings hate gone.

Good to know. Indeed, we should be able to change the stats, especially since the 4 attributes sets are not available for breathers.

I’m glad to have decided switching from zerker to marauder as for the rest of my armour wasn’t worth it, I would have been disappointed too.

Day Trooper.3605:

On a related note, I haven’t yet unlocked legendary crafting – should I wait until I do before crafting these? (i.e. so they count towards achievements?) Or does simply having them in inventory count.

You can craft them now. I can only talk about Nevermore, but you need 250 ingots (aka 250 gemstones + fulgurites) for the Gift of Maguma, and one more gemstone at some point for the precursor.

You don’t have to get achievements. Or for that matter, you don’t have to play the game. If you don’t like something, just don’t do it. It’s a game: it should be about fun.

Achievements are just a nice way to track… what you have achieved. They wouldn’t make sense anymore if they would track something you haven’t done.

Everyone has its own answer…

I have bought HoT (obviously) – would I buy it again? Yes, definitely. I was really disappointed with the story, the mastery grind between every chapter, and overall, the lack of new maps and PvE content compared to the core game. Don’t expect to have a new campaign as in GW1 Factions or Nightfall. It’s a small (did I say small?) expansion quest/event/story/whatever-wise. It’s also pretty laggy due to the verticality of the maps and the number of objects, and if you have a low-end computer, expect to have to lower your video settings when you play on those maps.

However, I find the new mechanics introduced with HoT great, and that’s why I would buy it again. I love gliding. I love the autoloot. I love the new legendaries (as much as I hate most of the old ones – but if you’re a very casual player, it’s probably not for you anyways), and above all, I love the elite specs. As someone who mains a thief, the elite spec completely changed my gameplay, and fixed what had to be fixed. It introduced much needed mobility both in and out combat, and a new weapon that immediately became my new favourite in PvE.

Why do you think one of the legendaries is called “Nevermore”? :P

I don’t wanna sound rude, but… maybe you wanna buy a new keyboard instead? Or play the expansion before you start reviewing it? :P

WvW: This game mode makes me sick and always has but I gave it a fair shot about a year ago in Edge of the Mists to level my Engineer at the time. I had some fun for about an hour but proceeded to get bored quickly. It was soon after my Engineer earned 72 levels from EOTM that I decided it was simply a Zerg fest. A Zerg Fest! Running around with 30+ other players smacking gates all day is not a game it is a freaking grind with no end! I don’t care what people say there is very little strategy or skill involved with regular WvW and the existence of server “tiers” is pretty silly. More like a list of populations with active WvW players. I’m not familiar with the borderlands scene but I have heard from many that it is a huge downgrade. The fact the playstyle and design of WvW hasn’t changed since release is a bit underwhelming as well. Personally, I like to see my own contribution in a party and in WvW you just cannot get that feeling with 30+ other players to compete with for tiny numbers of DPS against a gate. The extent of feeling worthy in WvW is if you solo roam and kill small zergs but that is hit or miss and still underwhelming.

The zerg is not the issue. It’s how the game is designed. You can (and for that matter I have) play with dozens of other players and still feel you have a role to play. I even remember 100 vs 100 fights in W:AR where I could play actively and do some strategic stuff.

The problem in WvW is basically how the game is designed: Anet wanted every class to have access to everything. When it means “tank, heal, DPS”, it’s cool. But when it means: massive spammable AoE, stealth, invulnerabilities, every conditions and CC, and probably a few more things I’m forgetting, it sucks. Squishy characters can’t even approach the enemy zerg without instantly dying. The only thing that matters is how many red circles there are on the ground, and how often you can stun.

The other main issue is how hard it is sometimes to finish players when 2 zergs are simply skirmishing due to the downed state. It should simply be removed from WvW, or at least have its HP pool halved.

And finally, there are the maps. There are huge, and not straightforward. If you die, it takes ages to join the action again. Mounts would help. More WP would too, provided there’s some “death sickness” debuff for a couple of minutes after you die, to prevent guys you’ve just killed to immediately join the battle again.

Indeed, it doesn’t matter in PvE, but if you haven’t picked a server yet (it’s probably too late), I’d suggest you to pick a little be more wisely. You may very well discover you love WvW (the only thing servers matter for) in a few weeks or months and regret your choice.

Long story short, you can check the server population (again, it’s just the WvW population), and the servers WvW rankings, and pick accordingly. Keep in mind when Anet says “medium” for the population, it means “completely dead”, and “full” simply means there’s a queue to access some WvW maps (it generally doesn’t take too long (*), and you can still roam on other WvW maps while waiting).

Also, remember if you have purchased the game, you get one free transfer.

(*) At least on my server. Baruch Bay seems to be the most active European server at prime hours – you can ask them.

Same here with my main. He got DC’ed during the fight against Jormag and can no longer log in. Earlier today, I couldn’t pass the Bloodtide Coast portal without getting this error too. I’ve just tried with another char in Southsun Cove and it’s working fine.

It’s not one specific build: thieves have several ways to achieve that. However, indeed, going all offence (no passive heals, full zerk, static gameplay) won’t work in the harder fights. Just blame metabattle for pushing thieves into that direction (which inevitably ends up in the same people saying thieves suck).

I do agree with you when it comes to WvW though, yet they’re great at roaming. It’s indeed a shame they can hardly play a role in zergs, but I think the way the game is designed is more to blame than thieves themselves. But of course, that’s another debate.

WvW was the thing I was the most excited about when I joined the game, and I thought I could play a thief in WvW as I used to play my Witch Hunter in W:AR (high risks, high rewards: sneak behind the enemy lines, quickly assassinate a mage or a healer, and run back before someone with an heavier armor notices your presence) – that was a big disappointment.

FogLeg.9354:

Thief is always dead, no heals, no real condi cleaning. Does not matter how much their damage is boosted, if enemy is not dead after first second, thief will die.

Funny how my thief is generally the last player alive…

Hints:

- Use marauder armor, not berserker
- Learn to dodge
- In long fights against threatening enemies, use passive heals based on your damage (spec Critical Strikes for instance)

As for the condition removal, DD can cure movement impairing conditions in a blink of a eye, and Hide in Shadows can cure the top 3 damaging conditions (burning, bleeding, and poison). And if that’s not enough Signet of Agility can cure one more.

If you’re looking for monk-style healing, yes, thieves suck. But if we’re talking about survivability, they’re amazing. If you’re skilled enough to play them that is (don’t take that personally, I’m just saying it’s not a class for everybody).