Hi there OP welcome to guild wars 2. If you want to share venoms you can totally do so without fully speccing into venoms or completely selling your utility or mobility. Here’s how:
Only take two venoms. 1. Basilisk venom 2. Devourer or Ice Drake.
This way you have 2 open utility slots, say for shadow refuge and a stun break.
Reasoning behind venom choices: condi thieves are garbage in pvp Its a sad fact but you’re better off accepting that now than dealing with the frustration of trying to make one happen. Maybe this will get changed in the future but for now just stay away from speccing into condi. The venom heal is actually pretty good as far as numbers go but it lacks utility. Withdraw and hide in shadows allow you to disengage and re-position which is vital to the survival of squishy thieves.
For your build I suggest starting with the meta build and swapping the 2 traits and one utility skill.
I hope this helped. Happy thieving.
Idk, I’m not sold. That’s a really initiative heavy build.
No more than yours. It regenerates initiative in stealth. Not sure if you caught that.
You’ll be able to land a lot of Pulmonary Impact, sure, but I don’t think you’ll land much damage from Pistol Whip.
1. There’s an additional 2k damage on pistol whip if you interrupt. I really don’t follow how I’ll be doing less.
2. Regardless this build doesn’t rely on pistol whip for damage.
I don’t think that this is the new meta or anything. It just makes s/p viable in the current meta.
Dahkeus, I don’t see how the DD trait line defines your build at all. I don’t think a couple of extra dodges for some more initiative so you can use more clunky pistol whips will bring s/p into the limelight.
What makes DD so appealing for s/p is impacting disruption. If gw2 skills calculator is right, thats 2k damage on every interrupt (hilt bash, headshot, pistol whip, steal, distracting daggers, bandits defence, basi venom).
^^^^^ Thats a ton of potential interrupts at 2k damage per interrupt!
The hype behind s/p largely comes from pulmonary impact, the alternative to pistol whip being too slow. S/p has a ridiculous amount of interrupts. So the playstyle behind the hype isnt there yet.
Welcome back. One thing I wish someone had told me – stock up on minor sigils of bloodlust. After 25 kills they will give you +125 power, which is crazy OP at lower levels.
I don’t know who geralt is, but warriors are fast, deadly, and sought after in group play for their damage increasing buffs.
I wouldn’t stress out too much about picking a class. If you stick with guild wars 2, pretty soon you’ll have more level 80s than you know what to do with.
Hai guys we here the complaint but we are so so busy on our journey to the heart of thorn, so for now we say no 4 ele. We jus dont have time to figure out how2 make just one burn on circle of burns, or just one might on can trips for now no 4 ele. kthxbye
One thing that I think is worth mentioning, that I’ve yet to see brought up in this manner, is the fact that impairing lotus has a near identical animation to death blossom. D/D #3 now has a new use – faking people out. You could potentially bait some dodges by mixing up impairing lotus with death blossom. DB is also good for applying that devourer venom with its multi-hits.
I plan to stack as much torment as I can, cover it up with usual stuff. Will it be viable? Maybe. Too bad bleeds dont do diddly squat. At least poison reduces heal effectiveness while sucking at dealing damage.
Yes! With traited tricks, traited stealth, and infiltrators strike (what I’m currently running), condis aren’t much of a threat.
Edit: Oh wait you were talking about d/p. With more stealth the same should apply, but is DD even worth taking on d/p? The 10% damage modifier has some synergy with backstabs, though it’d be difficult to make use of unless you run dash. I feel like every other weapon set benefits more from DD but I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
I like it the way it is. It would be more effective if it was like the warrior trait, 5% damage increase when endurance is not full, but thats boring and passive. The way it is now is active and spikey = fun.
Oh and anything higher than 10% would likely break backstabs.
Shadow Arts!
1. I love being a resbot.
2. Make the most out of limited stealth on staff.
3. Added sustain. I enjoy the play-style of offensive gear and defensive traits.
T.T I’m gonna miss you mug!
DA, SA, and CS are all fantastic lines. Can’t go wrong really.
Thieves had to get more sustain from somewhere so it was either evades or stealth. If they had mesmer-like stealth you’d all whine just as hard. Such babies.
@Lordrosicky evades are a defining trait of gw2, how are they the least fun thing?
I still have hope. We’ve been getting 100% crit chance without signet of precision for a long time (not including downscaled dungeons of course). I’m not really sure how the extra ferocity compares to the 5% vs bleeding foes, but berserker gets attack speed buffs as well – only when berserk but for all weapons. So maybe, just maybe with new weapon rotations to include rapid fire primal burts, berserker damage could come out on top.
It seems to me like the issue is bleeds. Pre-berserker warriors had the same problem when trying to go full condi. The bleeds take to long to dish out decent damage and end up getting cleansed long before they cause any pain.
I think that the new spec line adds enough sustain to warrant a full condi build, but is held back by near-useless bleeds. Hopefully the increased torment will make it viable.
@DarkSyze what does any of that have to do with this thread?
OP, don’t forget about distracting daggers and the block skill as well! Daredevil is really breathing life into s/p. With damage on interrupt s/p will no longer be a one trick pony press three to win (Thaddeus) and will reward skillful play (T raw).
I can’t wait to try this build. But new meta? Unlikely.
Being able to swap what kind of dodge we have on the fly would be broken.
^ This is also true, but can easily be balanced. Since all of the dodges are multifaceted, simply take away a property or two for baseline f3-f5. Add cooldown after leaving a dodge type. For GM trait, you still spec into a dodge to bring out its potential, and remove the cooldown on swapping into it.
Anything higher than a one second immob would be over the top. A short cripple would work as well.
From the vid it looks like you’d have to stay <500 range away from target to hit with the full burst.
Today. Just 20 minutes ago with an earth 4, 5, lava font combo. (staff)
Alekt, you were just talking about how hard it is to land flame leap! Are you playing devil’s advocate or do you honestly think that flame axe is in a good place right now?
Also, it would be really cool if instead of one big aoe for flame axe 2, it threw a spread of axes that had overlapping aoe in the middle of the spread, so that if you got someone right in the middle it would hit really hard. It would promote skillful play.
How would a berserker power build “not cut it?” The attack speed and ferocity bonuses should be enough to make it viable. It could very well become the new meta, but we wont know until the optimal skill rotations are discovered and tested for berserker builds.
The problem now lies on how they decided to implement the new burning on the weapon. The Ring of Fire gives 1 stack, and the Fiery Leap gives another 1 stack, but a very long one. For the Fiery leap, it would make more sense to have a short buring with a decent amount of stacks for the difficulty to land (3 stacks over 4 seconds).
I agree. Ring of fire needs more burning. A burst burn on fiery leap would be good. Or it could have its ranged buffed a bit so its easier to land.
Also, you might be commiting the mistake to think that a conjured weapon will make everything good. It needs to be used smartly. If you are staff, the flame axe offers the best auto-attack in range you can hope for when it comes to chasing a low enemy down. If you want, you can combine it with Pyromancer’s Puissance (which now works with Conjures!) and stack the might like no tomorrow.
I just want this conjure to do something good, not everything. Its not good at chasing someone down at all. It has worse range than staff, no gap closer, no cc. Anyone could just blink or leap away.
I have no hope with fast hands being baseline. Even if it was the other traits in it are almost to good to give up. I just hope Dead or Alive and the condi cleanse on beserk provide enough sustainability to drop defense for tactics or strength, even arms for a condi build.
But yea, fast hands is a problem. While its a tough choice between all the other trait lines, without discipline you face a HUGE dps loss because you’re stuck auto-attacking.
@Alekt If you’re going to hijack this thread you could at least mention the flame axe in your list of conjure things you want changed. That’s what the thread is supposed to be about… Have you ever used the flame axe? It needs the most love from devs yet all you pointed out was cast times.
As for the conjurer trait, the aura is nice with the flame axe. It provides might and protection when traited which are both awesome.
The flame axe has 2 fire fields, a blast and leap finisher. You’d think you’d be able to camp in it until it exhausted its charges but you cant. It doesn’t have a high damage ability or cc, so it ends up being absolutely useless in its current state.
Ice Bow is king in pve and really good in wvw. Lightning hammer and earth shield have their place in dungeons. If flame axe doesn’t get any help it will remain useless across al game modes.
The flame axe has the ability to provide might, fury, protection, and high aura up time (traited). However its damage is so bad that no one in the game runs it. In terms of burning and raw damage, heck even projectile velocity, its just plain bad.
I realize that the dream of running my flame axe build will likely remain just that: a dream. But WHAT IF it was viable? What would GW2 be like? That GW2 is just a small numbers tweak away…. yet so far away.
damage on selected golem was done in 1 hit, and if there were more golems the skill would have hit them too with rifle penetration. That skill has no limit, even if they add a 5 targets limit it will still hit up to 125 targets, with multiple hits on many of them
At 19:29 you can see the damage against full health golems. The splash damage isn’t as crazy as you’re making it out to be. At 19:34 you can see that the entire mob of golems are near death and NOT at full health as Kidel would like you to believe.
Please stop spreading misinformation.
That being said they obviously have to tweak it. You could in theory take most if not all of a 30 man zerg by landing a couple of these in a stack. 1 mesmer 2 bezerker killshot war – new zerg busting meta.
The stack meta you speak of only applies to dungeons. WvW stacking is to hide numbers, share boons and heal. The sword never made it into dungeons anyway.
Also, I suspect that HoT will attempt to disrupt the stack meta with their challanging new group content, but this is way off topic.
Its a sad fact but you’re better off accepting that now than dealing with the frustration of trying to make one happen. Maybe this will get changed in the future but for now just stay away from speccing into condi. The venom heal is actually pretty good as far as numbers go but it lacks utility. Withdraw and hide in shadows allow you to disengage and re-position which is vital to the survival of squishy thieves. 