Guild Wars 2

If by kill you mean bring WvW back to life for months now, sure. I am sure some players like yourself don’t like it but seems you are in the relatively small minority. If the poll is even remotely accurate, linked servers are leading by a landslide.

We don’t know how difficult the linking process is nor do we know what analytics they are tracking. It could take several more weeks to gather the information they need or for them to free up however much time it takes to put servers together.

I am certainly for relinking more frequently but without knowing the goals of the ANet devs in this Beta cycle blanket statements on when or how they should link are based around ignorance (not meaning that in a derogatory way).

joneirikb.7506:

The issue is more that people find it boring to fight against, rather than it being dangerous.

No more or less boring than heavy bunker builds which currently dominate WvW and sPvP.

Offair.2563:

How about anet stops throwing so much stealth into this game, is easier then a mastery like.

They have been actively nerfing stealth for months. PU, got a pretty big nerf. Thieves… most of the better builds don’t even use stealth. Trapper Runes, basically gutted. Backstab, got torched a while ago. Even the new trait line for the thief has nothing to do with stealth nor anything that synergizes with it outside of the Staff trip.

The HoT scrapper gyro on the Engineer has seen some pretty serious nerfs. HoT even added two new anti-stealth abilities in the game that are on by default for the Herald and Scrapper.

Caedmon.6798:

You see someone treb for a long time so you assume he’s botting ? Righto.

I see treb fire coming from 3rd floor SM that doesn’t turn off even after the tower is flipped to their side. I am sure somebody is actively firing that treb for hours even though they hold the tower… righto.

Difficult to see how this is a net bad idea. I would like to see the teams mixed up a bit especially more focus on balancing the time zones but otherwise it has been a good thing at least for most of us.

trooper.2650:

@steepled
I do not agree on Illusions to be mandatory. Also, the nerf to persistance of memory makes the tree less attractive, unless your are going condi for torment. For power builds, domination is so much better, while dueling synergize very well because of the mantra trait and inspiration

Mandatory no, but for a condi build it is really difficult not to go down this line with its confusion, condi buffs, torment, shatter time reductions and AoE Diversion.

Simonoly.4352:

In WvW it has gone from “oh a condi Mes, I remember that!” to “Guys, when was the last time you saw another Mesmer of any build type in WvW?” Played a nice 7 hour session with my guild group Friday evening and we saw like two Mesmers attempting to run boon share builds and that was it. One of them switched to Reaper after we mowed them down a few times.

Condi builds have access to dire and Perplexity in WvW. With it they can have similar or higher DPS to their power counterparts while remaining durable. Power got the shaft when it needed 3 stat routing through toughness vs condi needing one or two.

If dire or perplex were in sPvP, we would see a ton of condi mesmers.

Jayne.9251:

I thought it was against ToS to use automating macros in WvW?

It is but they don’t enforce it often. Trebs are particularly easy since any keyboard or mouse with basic macro capability can treb spam with no need for external software.

A change that varies the timing would help. It doesn’t need to be sophisticated to fix 99% of this admittedly minor problem.

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

Thats not even fun to play against. Mostly because theres nothing to “play” against.

For two classes stealth spam isn’t so much of an issue (Herald and Scrapper). For all other classes there is stealth trap which in this case killed the thief. If none of those are an option, players can actually walk away. Seriously, this build relies on players basically standing still and having light condi removal.

“How is this still a thing”… well frankly it really isn’t. Outside of DH, I see trapper builds hardly ever and far fewer running Trapper runes.

Josh XT.6053:

The thief KDR is probably not great because they spend more time running away than killing anything unless they’re jumping in on a 1v1 or something like that, which I see a lot lol.

The KDR isn’t great because the game has changed to strong bunker, heavy AoE and prolific CC of which the thief has access to virtually none of. The entire class has been neutered out of almost every facet of the game.

Complaining about a class that is effective in one narrow portion of the game and virtually non-existent effectively in others just doesn’t make sense to me. As it currently sits, the Dare Devil is marginal at best. Those who play it very well are indeed dangerous but those same players are just as lethal if not more so in other classes.

The treb is too easy to automate firing. Unlike other siege it can be placed in areas that are difficult to counter or disrupt allowing some players to sit on said treb and fire indefinitely with an automation script.

I am not saying we should “fix” trebs or those spots, but I would like too see something a little less easy to automate. It would not need to be sophisticated but at least make those fellows in SM earn knocking that wall down rather than loading an alt on a second computer and pressing a button.

I will say SicEm should work similarly to the Scrapper’s Detection Pulse or Herald’s Gaze of Darkness. The pet should seek out a stealthed player and apply the reveal.

That said the disruption trap did its job. Course I think those should only use 5 supply and have a much faster deploy time.

Josh XT.6053:

See, I disagree. There are just so many bad thief players that rely heavily on 2 shotting people and if that doesn’t work, they rely on their their mobility and stealth to get away. I’m not going to act like I’m any kind of expert thief player, but I’ve met some good ones and they don’t need to heavily rely on mobility or stealth to win fights.

Two shotting a decent player just doesn’t happen much any more. Most thieves that rely on hit/run are only good at killing other glassy thieves, +1 a fight or culling zerglings headed to the herd. Contrast this to the actually powerful meta classes in the game that drop massive AoE, CC or bunker/buff everything around them.

I don’t disagree that mobility is powerful. However it is no less so than dropping 20 stacks of might, regen, protection and near constant condi clears on 5 players. Being able to block, invuln, block, invuln, stealth constantly in a fight.

At the end of the day what is the typical thief KDR… probably a lot less than guardians, warriors, heralds, necros, mesmers, etc.

Boon Duration is crazy powerful in WvW in many cases.

Condi Duration is a big depends. Against some builds, it will annihilate them. On others it is a completely wasted stat. Condi applicaiton particularly varied types of condi is the most important. If you can bump condi duration without adversely effecting that, it is worth investing in.

apharma.3741:

Yeah, yeah, he’s totally staying permanently stealthed off that 2s stealth from traps….nothing to do with being able to stack infinite stealth with DP and SA.

He only gets perma stealth because of those Trapper Runes. Getting 3s of stealth (because we know he is in SA) every time he uses a trap and drops a trap on heal is effectively 50% of this builds stealth.

At the end of the day griping about a build that can only kill you if you let it is well … ridiculous. Of all the OP broken stuff in WvW… of all the dangerous builds/classes in WvW this one doesn’t even rank above Bear Bow Ranger.

Caedmon.6798:

How can you compare a bunker to something that is in stealth 95% of the time not getting revealed while throwing condis around.This entire thread goes Whoosh doesn’kitten

What you are mostly complaining about here are Trapper Runes which have already seen a few nerfs and to a lessor degree Dire armor. We hardly ever see builds running this rune in the game any longer as Trapper Rune builds are generally weak.

As for bunker v stealth. Well built bunkers can effectively 1v1 indefinitely against any build. Good ones can 2+v1. From my perspective the heavy bunkers are more difficult to kill and bunker builds tend to substantially elevate players around unlike Trapper builds. Which is “worse”… the more difficult to kill play style gets my vote for “how is this still a thing” and that lands squarely on the bunker builds.

Josh XT.6053:

Thief isn’t hard to beat, but they just run away and they’re impossible to catch. Shortbow 5 should cost a lot more initiative and range shorter so that it can’t just be spammed to get away though.

The thief mostly sucks at large group play, sPvP, dueling, PvE and GvG. It is marginal in skirmish. So the plan would be to gut its scouting and roaming capability? Basically remove its ability to decap in sPvP?

Thieves are so far down the totem pole now any changes to their mobility would effectively eliminate the class from play. Even more so gutting the SB teleport would turn an already pathetic weapon into a complete piece of trash much like they have already done to D/D, S/D and P/P.

Caedmon.6798:

You miss the point,it’;s about being in stealth 95% of the time while throwing condis around not getting revealed.

Who the hell likes fighting something that ? Imagine if we all run around like this..Whooptie…

There is a similar issue with heavy bunker builds. Course a heavy bunker next to a DPS build is crazy deadly and every bit as hard to kill. This thing augments no other class so it sucks outside of trolling stationary targets willing to engage.

I am constantly amazed at how people gripe about builds/mechanics that are at best an annoyance and rarely pose any actual problem in the game itself. Want to talk about how OP perplexity is… I am listening.

This build is a complete troll build only works if you actually stay around and let it kill you. This build is about as dangerous as a wet fart.

Swagger.1459:

Of course they do damage… and can kill opponents.

If a player stays around and cannot clear condis. One stealth trap or scrapper pulse will send it running fast. It also struggles against AoE and CC spam. I usually put a knockdown trap on my bar and blow them up when they trip it.

apharma.3741:

It’s ok, because thief is like the 3rd best class at stealth in the game – GW2 forums 23/05/2015

You realize that most of the stealth from this build is from Trapper Runes and not the thief right? There is a Ranger variant of this that IMO is more dangerous.

apharma.3741:

Clearly we are not comparing in all aspects. If running the SA line you get 4s per application and can regen an extra 1 ini per 3s in stealth so generally it’s not that costly.

Black Powder costs 6 and HS costs 3. That is 9 init for 4s of stealth. If a player is really good they can stack about 8s or 9s of stealth for all their init. A high cost to deliver maybe one shot that deals slightly more damage than the AA on a dagger and must hit from a flanking position.

apharma.3741:

Additionally a thief on their own can keep a group stealthed for much greater periods while leaving much less signs. That’s without mentioning the cool down trait that few people use.
…
Mesmer…group stealth is pathetic, 7.5s if trained PU on a 72s CD, double with CS but still not a hair on thief for stealthing groups…

The Mesmer has Veil arguably the best group stealth in the game as it can cloak an entire zerg. Add in PU and TE and the skill gets really good. Mass Invis comes with a whopping 1200 range and hits 10 targets.

Outside of a blast finisher the thief has ONE group stealth ability on a 60s timer that as stated is an AoE bomb spot and only effects 5 players.

apharma.3741:

When I think of stealth I don’t just think of in combat jumping in and out, I also think of passing by zergs, hiding in structures and actually trying to be completely unnoticed.

I am not sure of the point you are making here. Avoiding a zerg requires zero stealth for a thief as their mobility is cheaper and easier. What is the point of staying in a structure for a thief? With new lord HP powering one down takes a long time. A mesmer can portal but doesn’t need full stealth up time just needs to be slippery for 3 minutes which is pretty easy.

apharma.3741:

Yes, I agree a lot have dropped SA (thankfully) so we see much less stealth uptime in most builds however thief has and always will be the master of stealth if they want to be.

To be the “master” I consider that to be how effective a build is with stealth. Mesmers are highly potent in their stealth builds and far scarier and more slippery than all but the best stealth thieves.

Scrappers equip stealth almost as a byproduct and that gyro often comes with an AoE daze, lightning field, super speed and Detection Pulse. Even their Elixir S AoE group stealth is superior to Shadow Refuge as it has no cast time, 50s timer (usually 40s), can be done from range, gets a lot of trait buffs and is tied to a stun break/3s invuln.

I spend a considerable amount of time on a thief, mesmer and some time on a scapper. I can say both fighting as one and fighting against one, I would rather fight a stealth thief than a non-stealth thief, stealth mesmer, scrapper or a partial stealth druid. In fact stealth thieves are about the easiest class to blow up right now.

apharma.3741:

Surely someone hired you for sarcasm?

Mesmers have far more more stealth up-time and certainly the best group stealth abilities in the game. It can also focus around stealth and be just as deadly.

Bunker scrapper builds are far more of a handful than all but the most skilled stealth thieves. Their Elite is impressive even after the nerfs with an uptime of 30s every 40s. Even better is that their gyro is an AoE group stealth. Add in the elixir and they easily have stealth running for most of a fight.

Even the Druid now has access to a decent amount of stealth with Hunters Shot, Celestial Shadow and Smokescale. It isn’t as good as the thieves stealth but it sits on one of the most bunker small scale classes in the game.

The thief… outside of Hidden Thief or a stolen ability has to pay a fairly high cost to stealth. D/P has to burn nearly half their init to get a few seconds. Refuge is on a 60s timer and the thief has to stay in that AoE bomb spot for 4s. Cloak and Dagger… hardly anyone runs that due to the cost of misses. Blinding Powder… yeah that is 40s.

Thanks to Dare Devil mobility, most of the truly dangerous thief builds have moved away from stealth as the Shadow trait line is an unnecessary DPS drop. Most that have clung to the D/P stealth builds are easily dispatched by decently skilled players or they run with numbers.

Puck.9612:

Play what? I haven’t seen a Friday night fight night in about a year, the only thing that happens on Friday before reset is karma trains while people wait for reset.

I actually find more roaming fights just before reset than most other days. Lots of players waiting for reset and not a lot of zergs roaming around.

The thief has very little AoE, all of one decent sustain skill, is not the best stealth class in the game (arguably 3rd) and isn’t even a big hitter these days.

Wow… my post got moderated… I am sure this will too.

I couldn’t get it to work either in the combat log or the effects to proc in WvW.

Excellent. Keep them coming. While I don’t command or play large scale much any more, I do enjoy watching breakdowns like these.

Given this is a beta, the next iteration may be several servers with no mergers and other servers with more than two. My guess is they will try another arrangement next time to see how it works in comparison to this one.

This falls into the best kind of gaming videos. Vanity videos of players editing out their losses and laying a music track are incredibly boring.

Oh and I am calling every downed I run into candy from now on.

Gunflame got nerfed hard or rather fixed. It used to clock for upwards of 20k or more even on above average armor.

If a player has 3k power, 225 crit magnitude and 50% crit chance (as in glassy) on average Backstab will hit for less than 4k on average. That does mean nearly a 6k hit on crit not counting modifiers such as vulnerability. However a thief running those numbers will die to any decent attack, has to cut through invulns/blocks/evades, hit from behind and use another skill to stealth.

Gunflame is similar with a 3.5k average not counting the burning damage. It also has to be primed and only lasts a few seconds plus the skill sits on the relatively under performing rifle weapon set.

Just for an FYI, Eviscerate hits WAY harder than either of those. Also some channeled skills such as Rapid Fire clock for an astonishing average of 6k and it is on a 10s timer as well as being able to hit from the longest range.

Condi thief is a solid pick or possibly a stealth based chronomancer. Anything else is going to get constantly caught.

I like getting enemy whispers… means I am doing something right. I often reply back talking about an unrelated annoying subject.

From 8pm EST to 10pm EST on Friday my guild plays without a bunch of map queues which is preferable to us.

For power builds, D/D is never going to be as versatile or as powerful as D/P but if you want to perfect your timing and get REALLY good play D/D for a prolonged period of time. I find D/P players tend to spam Shadow Shot and the AA but never really advance their timing skills. You can almost always tell when someone has mastered D/D as they become extremely deadly an almost unnerving to fight as they CnD off of the envionment and pets.

If you want to double down, pair D/D with P/P. It lacks escape but P/P can cover a lot of the weaknesses in thief melee. Dragon Hunters, Reapers, etc all becoming easy kite wins. This pairing is particularly solid in PvE where CnD becomes laughably easy to land.

babazhook.6805:

Trapper runes do not impact your apply to apply conditions in a negative fashion. You only really need to trait one trap though you will very often take two as the trap laid from your heal will also stealth you. (trappers respite)

Trapper runes compared to say Krait does indeed reduce the total condi DPS. Krait can apply some solid condi every 30s and make bleeds last a VERY long time. If a player did go P/P with a trap I would suggest BV with Krait over Trapper.

Sir Mad.1092:

But keep in mind WvW is not only about DPS, it’s also about burst damage, which is where zerk shines.

I think it is the opposite. Zerk performs relatively poorly on the thief in WvW because of the bigger power and condi spikes from relative bunker builds. For example, jump on a dire condi build and zerk isn’t going to do significantly more damage while the lack of a vitality buffer will get a thief killed quick.

In sPvP, zerk is far more friendly because spike damage is significantly less.

KCmilam.3476:

Way below, under 30%, mainly from attacking with all the confusion.

Your health must be above 75% not below. If you have a lot of stacks of Confusion this trait is near useless. When you activate the skill, Confusion procs, damages you, then a check to see you hit happens and if you hit then and only then does it check to see if the condi should be removed.

IMO take Pain Response (a MUCH better trait) and the slot Hard to Catch which is also a better trait.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

It’s not a variant, rather an alternative condi build using Trapper Runes. The OP emphasizes on perma-stealth yet have chosen to take Dagger Storm so I made the suggestion assuming that perma-stealth was not the main focus.

After the nerf to the trapper runes unless running multiple traps the runes are going to seriously under perform compared to other condi runes.

Adding torment doesn’t make condi-cleanse easier since the build already applies bleed, poison, weakness, vuln, immob, cripple, and blind — that’s a lot of conditions to remove already. However, the choice here is between applying Torment or denying buff and the choice is clear.

Every condi type is a big deal when dealing with bunkers. If I could get burning in there I would cram that as well. The first d/w ele or chronomancer running condi removal will necessitate a variety of condi to get anything to stick. I actually find variety more important than duration in most fights since most condi removal is by stack.

EDIT: Besides, how are you going to apply Torment if the goal is to remain in stealth?

As for proc’ing torment. The knockdown trap can do that and firing Headshot during a player trying to heal is worth dropping out of stealth. Headshot can also be a strong applicator when a player is trying to run.

I guess, but I rather boost all condition damage with Busting.

Bursting and Geo is a strong combo on this build as Geo doesn’t proc Reveal.

Yes, but it’s redundant since the build already has Black Powder. The only time this trait is useful is when using Steal with Hidden Thief. VA grants the build more access to conditions by lowering the CD of Venom.

Black Powder is expensive. I believe the trait also procs even when using a stealth skill while already stealthed. It is also a surprisingly effect escape tool allowing a thief to barrel off a long drop.

Caltrops is a good skill to force your target to waste dodges or teleports. You can’t get that kind of advantage using Signet of Agility. Besides, if the OP’s build is to remain in stealth, he should not have to worry about cleansing conditions — Shadow’s Embrace will take care of that.

SoA gives one more dodge which in turn procs the Caltrops trait. The dodge Caltrop is not as good as the Caltrops utility but SoA also comes with the condi removal. As for Embrace, it cannot clear condi fast enough from a spike applicator like a ChronoCondi build that Shatters right on top of a thief especially if the thief is already in stealth.

Mistfire is an expensive Elite skill, expensive meaning, you need to buy it with real money if you want it and if you don’t have the upgraded version of the game.

True but if a player has access to the skill it is a better choice. These days almost any elite on the thief is better than Dagger Storm which has been completely neutered. Some of the racial elites would even be potential options such as Sylvan Hound, Snow Leopard, Wolf, Reaper, Balthazar. BV is a better choice as well but requires a reveal to apply.

sPvP… still under performs compared to the meta builds. Good news is the strongest builds saw minor nerfs allowing the thief to finally return in a minor way.

GvG… the Venom Share builds are acceptable but no other build IMO is worth even considering.

WvW Roaming/Scouting… probably the best class in the game. Dare Devil is IMO clearly the best class elite for this role. The best by a very large margin… again IMO.

WvW Dueling… against the heavy AoE, CC and bunker builds few thief builds stand up against equally skilled opponents.

WvW Small Scale… OK but doesn’t really elevate other builds outside of Venom Share.

WvW Large Scale… Mostly useless. Again we have venom share but without good squad organization mostly goes to waste

I am confused by the P/P variant as its stealth capability is severely limited.

• D/P offers more stealth. Players also lose Shadow Shot which is great for staying on fleeing enemies. With D/P they do lose the AA that bleeds and the immobilize which can be powerful in this build but I think this build is meant to be high stealth.
• I don’t think traps proc venoms besides that is a lot of traits and utility for one venom that applies poison which this build already applies heavily
• Removing Pressure Striking eliminates Torment from the build which makes condi-cleanse easier by removing another condition type. It also synergizes well with head shot.
• Geomancy is a pretty powerful sigil on this build
• Hidden Thief while not a must have is definitely a great escape mechanism and the mobility is excellent for a near perma stealth build
• Cloaked in Shadow is a suprising effective trait on a stealth build. It allows players to more easily drop traps on top of attacking opponents. Going stealth from terrain is also surprisingly easy.
• Bewildering Ambush is 5 stacks on Confusion. On this build that is some serious damage.
• Signet of Agility can be a solid option over Caltrops. The extra dodge applies a lighter Caltrops but you pick up a condi clear and more defense. Shadow Step is what I would put here mainly for the extra condi-removal, escape and closing capability. The build already has plenty of condi applicaiton.
• While the cooldown sucks, Mistfire Wolf is actually a pretty decent option for this build. The pet applies chill and burning on foes in an AoE. The pet also doesn’t proc a reveal and uses the players condi stats. If Dagger Storm hit like it used to, it would be an obvious pick but these days it just makes the thief an easy target.

Something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoaVnsMBlOhtNBmNBEIiDZiyvFH6Hq3zpIA45QL8CA-TlyCABHfCA8U9nJeAAJqEEQ9Bhv/AFHSgsU+BwRC4FNEBAQAmZZWmzMwQH6QH6QHazcmDdozcmlCYRpRA-w

I use it in WvW to troll glassy builds when I get bored. Place it on sentries and it can be a free kill of sorts. Makes for a decent scouting tool as well. You would think it would have similar applications in sPvP but my guess is terrain height changes F it up.

The coefficient is much better with Backstab. The average damage with 2500 power, 50 percent crit chance, 200% crit magnitude against 2000 armor:

Lotus Strike = 2k-ish

Back Stab = 4.2k-ish

Backstab will clock more than twice as hard as Lotus Strike. That is solid damage for a skill that uses no initiative and requires minimal setup. Keep in mind this is average. On a crit Back Stab will hit for over 6k.

Confession… I am new and still pretty poor at playing the chronomancer. The class/build has a lot of combos that I am still trying to become proficient with. My main issue is keeping D/P power based thieves and similar combat mobility melee classes. I am currently working with a fairly typical chrono-condi build just to dip my toes into the Mesmer waters. I don’t seem to have the same problem in sPvP but thieves don’t clock nearly as hard there.

I think I am hamstrung by my old habits running a thief for so long relying too much on combat evasiveness. On a thief I rarely have problems blowing up Mesmers so it may be an inherent problem but it may simply be a L2P. If it is L2P, help me L2P. How do you manage stealthy power based thieves?

Thanks for any help.

Here is the build but I do swap stuff out as I am learning:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAreWnknBlphNqBeoBEgilnj6sACgEDdxynDoeQP0FF-TVzCABT/AA0TPgDKBp4ACUgJIFOBAAckAuU9nJOEAZp8DQNBpohY59HCAgAsz6sMnZgje0je0je0m5Rn5RnZSB8oyK-w

Aeolus.3615:

Straegen.2938, you should defenitly try the 64bit client, i noticed i very good boost, but still having alot of skill lag, and fps drops when blob passes nearby, but ic it has an alert tool lol.

I run the 64 bit client… what I have not done is any analysis of what it is doing on the assembler level. I suspect it is doing the exact same thing as the 32 bit but with a larger memory pool and more registers. Floating point calculations are also faster in 64 bit which may account for some performance.

FPS-wise I am seeing relatively the same performance. The 64 bit client mostly resolved a crashing issue for me which was likely a register or memory pool issue. I think a lot of people think 30 FPS is “fine” while others that run games at 4k, with high detail settings in 60+ FPS can really appreciate just how poorly 30 FPS looks and plays.

May not be the update. Sometimes certain maps in a match become unstable for one or more sides. Course it could be the update…

Balthazzarr.1349:

My machine must be super bad xxxx then since I don’t have the problems described here at any time even when 3 blobs are in the same spot fighting. As I said above, I’m seriously not boasting anything… just stating that in my own personal experience it does make a difference when you have ALL things running well: Good CPU, separate high performing graphics card with own memory, very high speed internet and so on. I run the highest settings on everything in GW2. .. and I’m on a laptop… Maybe I’m just lucky?

GW2 in big fights (as in 3 way SM map q’d fights) runs poorly with a lot of skipped frames and poor FPS no matter the environment that I have tested.

It is a game that doesn’t seem to run any better on a 980ti than a 770 at least with a 1080p resolution. It also doesn’t seem to be effected by cores as our Xeon E5 rigs or our overclocked i7 doesn’t significantly improve performance over a stock i5.

Drive performance also doesn’t seem to matter past a stock SSD. A RAID0 SSD setup didn’t run it any faster nor did a pure RAM drive. Throwing a ridiculous amount of RAM at it had the predicable effect of doing nothing.

I haven’t dug into the 64 bit client but the fact that the system performs better when running it in big fights seems to imply some local memory pressure that Win32 limits. The game seems to run the same in 2 cores as it does in 4 or 8 implies it is driven mostly by a main thread.

I won’t go into what I have or haven’t done looking under the hood but I am programmer with years of professional assembler development/debugging on mainframes and PC environments (yep I am old-er).

Einlanzer.1627:

Marauder is best IMO. The offensive loss is very, very marginal while the defensive gain is pretty huge.

Marauders is actually a damage gain IMO. Being able to stay in the fight for one or two more big shots is typically more damage than surging then having to fall back quickly. The only exception to this is the thief that plans to hit/run only.

If this is for WvW condi removal may be an issue. Shadow Step is solid as is SoA but that still leaves condi on you for a long time if those are on cool down. I am also surprised you are not taking Executioner which synergizes extremely well with crit builds.

Exuberance may be a better rune set. You lose a tiny bit of power, drop about 250 armor overall, pick up a ton more crit chance and get 2000 more HP.

Josh XT.6053:

I would rather have the extra 250 power than energy and hydro. Draining also has no internal cooldown, so its an extra 1140 damage + 1023 heal every time it procs, if I interrupt 5 people, thats an extra 5700 damage on the field and 5115 heal to myself. That happens very frequently when I use air 3, air 4, air over load or water 4.

Based on our testing in WvW, Sigil of Draining is not working at all. It doesn’t put anything in the combat log of the attacker or the defender. It also stopped healing the attacker on interrupt. Hard to verify if it is damaging but best we can tell it is effectively doing nothing at the moment.

We tested it on 2 handed weapons and on single handed weapons in both hands. Just could not get it to proc no matter how many interrupts we tried.

Back in the GvG days, skill groups like this were all over the place. Now it just seems to be packs of roamers mostly. I do enjoy seeing a half dozen from the same guild roaming around though. That always seems to offer a better fight.

Waffle.3748:

You can mail me in game if you want and we can set up some 5’s or match numbers up to about 7 or 8. Or just look around for [tRex] on the bl’s.

We ran with or rather around tRex a lot until we transferred servers. Having seen first hand a gaggle of them barreling into a full zerg, blowing up a bunch of enemies and exiting relatively unscathed more than once I can attest to their ferocity.

Hopefully while our guild is back playing 4+ man rather than a couple roamers we will run across you fellows and experience the tRex effect for ourselves.

Shame it is against the ToS to macro an emote using Auto Hotkey. It would be a crappy work around but it would work. It wouldn’t even be that difficult to write.

Unfortunately nobody can advocate a temporary (well long term now) fix like this.

mulzi.8273:

Well didnt YB have that same covered for months while they were winning by 100k points each week? Where did they go? They are still there, only now when YB/TC/etc zone away to try to back cap something without contention, its no longer easy, as everything is in contention.

…

All these WvW changes did was reenforce the mentality of certain servers: which like to fight and which like to ktrain .

YB lost a few decently sized guilds just before the merger to TC. BG’s core population tends to sit dormant until a change wakes them up (BG falling into T2, new WvW patch, etc). BG also got the far more active T8 server even if it was only a slight bump.

Then the servers got locked. Not many are interested in transferring to a T8 server especially when they are temporarily mated with larger populations with one exception ET. Only ANet knows for sure but ET has almost certainly seen several bandwagon transfers to their server. This happens every time there is a dominant server with new rewards in the mix.

Add it up and we have this situation… an old school T1 sized population against the modern smaller size populations. YB is still the #2 or #3 server at least with the current scoring system. It is difficult to know for sure since YB is a weekday server that performs worse on the weekends.