Guild Wars 2

I am rooting for TC to take second place this week and possibly 3rd overall. Can’t dislike the blasted RP’ing dolyaks.

Azure Prower.8701:

lollasaurus.1457:

Stupendous Man.4920:

Can we please not get into these conspiracy theories again?

Every server will act in a manner that benefits them the most. In week one it was in the best interest of BG and SoR to send JQ to 3rd place.

With regards to [Agg]’s action yesterday, have you watched the conversation between The Joker and Two -Face in The Dark Knight? [Agg] looks for fights. I very much doubt they concern themselves with PPT or who wins. This is the mentality of majority of GvG focused guilds.

I’m pretty sure Agg just wants to violate all the PPT’rs game mode because it gets them riled up.

When they’re taking up queue spaces to do their own thing and leaving SoS defenders starved for man power in that particular map. It kind of validates it.

This is incorrect. I was watching the stream and SoS had sub 100 PPT before [Agg] started hitting BG targets. However, at one point they were ticking higher than JQ and BG because of what [Agg] did.

When changing maps, [Agg] did not face any queues so they could not possibly have been keeping others out of the map they were on.

You have to keep in mind that not all fights are open field and without much gain for the server [unless you have bloodlust and stomp downed players].

The misgivings of BG stems from the fact that [Agg] specifically targeted them.

Can we please not get into these conspiracy theories again?

Every server will act in a manner that benefits them the most. In week one it was in the best interest of BG and SoR to send JQ to 3rd place.

With regards to [Agg]’s action yesterday, have you watched the conversation between The Joker and Two -Face in The Dark Knight? [Agg] looks for fights. I very much doubt they concern themselves with PPT or who wins. This is the mentality of majority of GvG focused guilds.

Keiel.7489:

93 on my warrior. I’ll probably cry later and make a post about how guard stacks destroys the game.

It’s unfair in the same sense that exotic gear is superior to rares, for example. You can work for it and obtain it and no one can take it away from you [except by killing you]. I think its a good reward for those who earn it.

On topic: I’m 100-something on my ele and 70-something on thief.

Thank you for the fights SoS on your BL. You guys are not afraid of a fight and fight well.

You are asking for luxury. I would love a less kittening kittened queue system. I have been in the kittening queue for 4 hours while some kitten gets in after 5 minutes of queue.

SoR wins: that’s right we won 1vs3; some of our guilds were training and count as one server against us.
SoR loses: kitten you and your 3v1 (training guilds again).

BG wins: that’s right kittenes, we would’ve crushed your 2v1 even if we had not bought these spare guilds.
BG loses: hell they quit two days after reset. The excuses could be anything.

TC Garri: your commander fell off the wall trying to get a good look at JQ zerg. RIP

Boryzz.6352:

Just a small note for ppl out there – sometimes stuff like lag or even pc choking a bit can cause heart seeker not to fire, and then it registers all the button spamming + changes the target (or ignores it) and you see yourself heartseeking 3 times into a wall or a pet. It looks super lame, but believe me, experiencing it on the Thief side is even more annoying when done unintentionally. One of the reasons I prefer pistol.

This is the story of my life as a thief playing from Australia with 350ms ping or more. I feel like an idiot afterwards and wonder if my opponent is just shaking his head at how terrible I am.

Either give people the link to the build calculator here or in your video description. Why bother watching 22 minutes of videos when you can see the whole deal at a glance?

Too long; didn’t watch.

Xzygy.1452:

…

Doing Path 3 of AC tonight, the group just stacked up and LoS pulled the spider and did the same later on the lizards. I couldn’t even see what was going on much less dodge anything. Is this just a case where everyone who pugs is in full out tank spec? I mean I never got a chance to do much of anything other than die on these two pulls.
…

S/P.

15 characters.

I would love to see unarmed combat. Some kick kitten martial arts moves. I would replace my human thief with an Asura one in a heartbeat if it ever occurs.

TL; DR dodge, choose the right weapon set, have balanced party composition.

GEARS

I carry two armour sets with me:

1. Berserker with divinity runes
2. PVT with Wurm runes

My trinkets, back piece, and weapons all have berserker stats.

Armour set 1 is my main which I wear almost always in PvE. Set 2 is my WvW roaming armour but I do use it in some high level fractals from time to time to avoid getting one-shotted (mainly fractal 38, and recently 48 since I decided to stop being lazy) .

In dungeons that I run (AC, CoF, SE, CoE, and TA) I use armour set 1 always.

BUILDS
There are two builds that I run regularly and one build that I used to run. Builds that I do run are:

1. 25/30/0/15/0 (more defensive)
2. 25/30/0/0/15 (more offensive)

My favourite build, and the one I run most often, is build 1 since I do dodge quite a lot and the build helps with that. I run build 2 when I am in an organised group or we have lots of defense but not much DPS in party (5% damage or fury on steal).

The build that I used to run (in fractals mainly) and no longer do is:

• 0/30/10/15/15 (utility and defense)

With the 10 in Shadow Arts I could go for condition removal on stealth or initiative on stealth (long stealths for trash runs). This build is much easier to play but doesn’t do as much damage.

SURVIVAL

My survival comes from two sources:

1. dodge
2. weapon choice
3. party composition

The first is obvious and most people know about it: dodge whenever necessary.

The second, a lot of thieves do not know. They find a favourite weapon set and stick with it regardless what they are fighting. Doing this will not only make you an ineffective party member, it will probably get you killed often and make you a burden. I kitten the suitability of my weapon set for each fight. It doesn’t take long to swap weapons. The weapon sets I use:

• D/D I use this for single target fights, i.e. bosses mainly. Your highest DPS weapon set up. Use CnD for DPS or when the enemy targets you. Your survival comes from dodging and stealthing at the right moments to transfer aggro.
• X/P Black Powder (pistol 5) is an AMAZING ability when fighting non-champion mobs. If they are blind, they cannot hit you or your party members. In the groups that I am in, I insist on using loss of line of sight to bunch enemies around a corner. You cast pistol 5 and then spank them with impunity. The set-ups can be
  S/P: cleave, lock-down (e.g. grawl fractal), dodge;
  D/P: hard-hitting, non-champion, single targets (e.g. silver mobs);
  P/P: when staying at range is the sensible thing to do (e.g. final boss of dredge fractal)

• S/D I use this primarily in dredge fractal as they are immune to blind and I want to have the cleave, dodge and boon steal. The boon steal is handy in other places as well (e.g. CoE).

• SB I love shortbow. While P/P gives higher DPS vs single targets, SB is amazing vs groups. The readily available and spammable blast finisher is also great. I have SB almost always equipped.

• P/D I never use it.

A third survival factor is party composition. If you go into dungeons without the necessary kits (reflects, cc, damage, condi removal, boon steal, etc), you’ll have a very hard time or won’t succeed at all. My favourite composition for high level fractals is 2xGuardians + 3xDPS.

Final comment everyone dies from time to time.

P.S. Your utility skills should be changing for each fight if needed.

I started my thief with the largest character model Norn. I got sick of that ‘thud’ when dodging. I deleted it around level 20.

I had made a graph of average bonus damage (in addition to your base damage) gained as a function of critical chance vs critical damage (attached). The contours show the average bonus damage (as a percentage of the base).

Power affects the base damage through the following formula (from wiki):
Damage done = (Weapon Strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor).

I know this does not answer your question directly but hope it helps. I may have a look at numbers later.

sephiroth.4217:

Killed a CD thief about 4 times and moved on, he kills me once and spams /sit…. Good job on that 52522222

I’m a CD thief, however, you get a /bow or a /salute from me if you fought honourably and lost. If I snipe you while you are trailing a zerg, well in that case I’ll be running off silently. I understand this is bad manners but one cannot help fear of being trampled.

Fuzzion.2504:

Based on

nPr = n! / (n – r)!
6P3 = 6! / (6 – 3)! = 6! / 3! = (6)(5)(4) = 120

There are a total of 120 possible permutations in the gold league.

But then again my maths is horrible. Can someone confirm if this true?

This is incorrect as nPr (permutations) does take into account the order of things. For example, JQ/SoR/BG is different to JQ/BG/SoR, but as far as match-ups are concerned they are the same. What you need is nCr (combinations):

6C3 = 6!/(3!3!) = 20.

There are a total of 20 distinct match-ups.

Representing the six servers by letters: A, B, C, D, E, and F we have the follow possible match-ups:
A/B/C
A/B/D
A/B/E
A/B/F
A/C/D
A/C/E
A/C/F
A/D/E
A/D/F
A/E/F
B/C/D
B/C/E
B/C/F
B/D/E
B/D/F
B/E/F
C/D/E
C/D/F
C/E/F
D/E/F

Since there are two sets of 3 servers matched against each other, we have the following possible pairings (match-up 1 | match-up 2):
A/B/C | D/E/F
A/B/D | C/E/F
A/B/E | C/D/F
A/B/F | C/D/E
A/C/D | B/E/F
A/C/E | B/D/F
A/C/F | B/D/E
A/D/E | B/C/F
A/D/F | B/C/E
A/E/F | B/C/D

Quam.7218:

I have all wepons, they really depend on the fight.

Mainly GS/Staff for my build. But on some bosses I change them along with some traits.

CoE Alpha Mace+Shield/Staff
Fire Elemental Shaman Scepter+Focus/GS
Dredge Ice Elemental Scepter+Torch/Focus
Lupicus Scepter+Focus/GS
Dredge Armor Suit Scepter+Torch/Shield
etc.

So it really depends on the fight I have all weapons in my bage just in case I never know what could be usefull.

This is the correct attitude towards weapon set-up with every class. I use every weapon combination with my guardian as well. However, my most used weapon set up is:
– scepter + X & GS/Staff (where X is shield, focus or torch)
– GS & Staff
Hammer and mace do not fit well with my mobile play style, so they are my least used weapons; however, I still do use them.

Yes, those kittening thieves and one of their main means of survivability. Screw them for not having enough armour, health, blocks, kitten load of healing and condition removal. Let’s appease the morons who think everyone must stand still and man it up in fights.

Dagger off-hand stealthes for 3s on hit at the cost of 6 initiative. With Shadow Arts V the cost is reduced to 4 initiatives. With further traiting in Shadow Arts, you can increase initiative regen while stealthed. So it is easy to maintain perma stealth if timed right.

As for fighting 1 v 5 that requires skill. Here’s a sample video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QtQ1sotHo

I play a 0/30/10/0/30 thief in dungeons/fractals in full berserket armour + trinkets and divinity runes. (Changed from 25/30/0/15/0).

I use D/P + SB or S/P + SB most of the time. The reason for this is very simple: Black Powder. It not only mitigates damage to you, but also your party. At the same time it give you the option of goign into stealth in sticky situations when using D/P. In dungeons, condition is probably your worst nightmare, but use of sword allows you to remove conditions when needed.

You can also use sword to go in, DPS, then get out if you get aggro, then repeat. The same can be done with D/P.

Weapon choice, however, is entirely dependent on play style and the situation at hand. I do use D/D and S/D as well from time to time.

Learning to play thief smartly is much harder than choosing the right traits/items. Even if you go full PVT gear everywhere, you will not be able to tank as a thief. You need to learn to make full use of your skills and utilities. I swap my utilities pretty much for every fight; although I do not use venom and traps.

I met a thief in FotM 48 who told me people hate thieves in fractals. As we went along, I realised why he made that statement. He was playing his thief like he would a warrior/guardian. He made no use of thieves abilities to their full potential. He was a burden. Perhaps my utter loath for rangers in fractals is for the same reason.

There is a guide here which makes use of discoveries. However, I found it too tedious. I do not know how much cheaper, if indeed cheaper, that guide will be.

Great guide. Most of the ingredients required, I had and did not know what to do with.

Chef is one of the cheapest crafting skills. However, some of the popular guides out there do not make it so. This price hike could be simply due to their popularity: lots of people follow it and the ingredient prices go up.

After leveling two characters using these popular guides, I realised that I have lots of gathered ingredients that I make no use of. I decided to make my own crafting guide and use up ingredients that I have in my stash already.

What you need to know:
1. The level requirement for Chef recipes jump in steps of 25 levels. You can check them here.
2. Suppose you are Chef level 1. You need to cook 25 items with recipe level requirement of 1 in order to get to level 25 [i.e. get access to level 25 recipes]. Of course, criticals can reduce this number by a few. Then, cooking 25 items with level 25 recipe will get you to level 50, and so on.
3. The outcome of some recipes may be used as ingredients in other recipes of the same level or higher. For example Bottle of Simple Dressing is used in 11 recipes that range from level 25 to level 375. We can use this fact to reduce ingredient cost by reusing what we have already crafted.

How to create your own guide:
1. Start at level 375 recipes so that you can level from 375 to 400 using it. Decide which one you can make the cheapest based on the ingredients you have and the ingredient costs on Trading Post. In my sample guide below, I decided to make 25 Bowl of Peach Pie Filling to level from 375 to 400.
2. Then move to level 350 recipes. In the sample guide, I decided to make Raspberry Peach Bar because the ingredients used in making it allowed me to level from 75 to 100 and also from 325 to 350.
3. Next move to 325, followed by 300, 275, and so on.

This process is a bit time consuming compared to simply following one of the guides. However, if you are pressed for coins, then this way you can save yourself some.

Example Guide:

Ingredients:

From Master Chef (karma/coin):
Almond – 25
Bag of Flour – 75
Bag of Starch – 25
Bag of Sugar – 125
Basil Leaf – 50
Cheese Wedge – 25
Ginger Root – 25
Glass of Buttermilk – 25
Jar of Vinegar – 25
Jar of Vegetable Oil – 50
Jug of Water – 25
Riceball – 25
Tomato – 25

From merchant:
Recipe: Griffon Egg Omelet

From renown heart vendor (karma):
Cherry – 50
Peach – 100
Pear – 25
Pinenut – 25
Recipe: Trail Mix

From Trading Post (coin) or gather:
Blueberry – 25
Bowl of Baker’s Dry Ingredients – 25
Egg – 75
Green Onion – 25
Head of Garlic – 25
Onion – 25
Oregano Leaf – 25
Parsley Leaf – 25
Pile of Salt and Pepper – 25
Raspberry – 25
Stick of Butter – 125
Thyme Leaf – 25
Vanilla Bean – 25
Walnut – 25
Zucchini – 25

Chef level
1-25: 25 Ball of Dough (used later)
25-50: 25 Bottle of Simple Dressing (used later)
50-75: 25 Ball of Cookie Dough (used later)
75-100: 25 Bowl of Baker’s Wet Ingredients (used later)
100-125: 25 Pile of Ascalonian Herb (used later)
125-150: 25 Bottle of Ascalonian Dressing
150-175: 25 Stuffed Zucchini (Discover from: Rice Ball, Tomato, Onion, Zucchini)
175-200: 25 Handful of Trail Mix
200-225: 25 Bowl of Cherry Pie Filling
225-250: 25 Griffon Egg Omelet
250-275: 25 Ginger Pear Tart
275-300: 25 Bowl of Pesto
300-325: 25 Peach Cookie
325-350: 25 Raspberry Peach Compote (used later)
350-375: 25 Raspberry Peach Bar
375-400: 25 Bowl of Peach Pie Filling

Credit:
I used the following guides as aid:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/Skye-Marin-s-Cooking-Guide-Oct-22

http://www.gw2wiz.com/index.php/cg1400menu/chef1400

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/guides/basics/guild-wars-2-chefcooking-leveling-guide-0-400

Happy cooking.

While exploring and running around to gather resources I come across quite a few botters; especially on map less populated by players. However, I am unable to report them as it takes me longer for me to report than it does for them to clear the node and teleport away.

While I have to run though or kill hordes of karkas, for example, to get to nodes, these people teleport in, gather the resource extremely quickly and teleport away. This is a known issue and not a great deal has been done about it, or at least in terms of tangible solutions.

Make reporting easier: either create a one-button/click reporting possible or keep the name of the player that has been targeted as selected for a few seconds even if they jump to another map.