Guild Wars 2

Behellagh.1468:

I’m marveled by all the ways people will complain about this game.

1) I lost my progress – Okay that’s legitimate but it’s very early in the month.

2) Some people will get 20 laurels instead of just 10 – Dead whoop, fortune favors those who played over the US holiday.

3) I will have to do it again – Why? You got your reward right, it wasn’t taken away right? It’s just that green monthly reminder will be on screen. Does it gnaw at your soul or something, whispering “do me”? Or is it because you didn’t get the new monthly loot.

Reminds me of a quote in someone’s sig at my old MMO. “If the game gave out free $20 bill people would complain they weren’t sequentially numbered. If they became sequentially numbered people would start complaining they weren’t random enough.”

Its really not hard to understand… I need laurels really bad right now, and I’m kitten ed that some players are being given 20 instead of 10 due to luck. I am also kitten ed that my 3/4 monthly with 1 daily to go got wiped to 1/4, but that’s not as big of an issue.

The bottom line is it is wrong to WITHOUT WARNING reset the monthly, basically screwing part of the playerbase out of 10 laurels. How hard would it have been to include in the patch notes: Hey we are resetting the monthly. Tell me, how hard?

Zenith.6403:

This is a korean MMO and korean MMOs are all about big numbers and grind, you know that. If you want to play a game that respects the player and offer challenging and interesting content, there’s plenty to go around.

I’m being serious here… can you tell me some of these ‘plenty to go around’ games so I can at least check them out.

I don’t honestly know whats out there.

If they did this so that the ‘early birds’ wouldn’t miss out on the new crafting mats… then.

Wow.

Simply mail the players who finished their monthly in like 2 days the crafting mats, don’t screw over everyone else and let those lucky enough to have finished it get double rewards!

I am so mad right now about this. Why the hell wouldn’t you say in the patch notes that the monthly will be reset?

I was 3/4 on my monthly and all I needed was a few more dailies to complete it. Now I am at 1/4!!? Not only that, but players who finished it already will be able to get 20 laurels this month instead of 10? How is that fair? Laurels accumulate so slowly that it really ticks me off that I got screwed like that.

Seriously how hard is it to freaken put in the patch notes: HEY WERE RESETTING THE MONTHLY!!!

I really appreciate a dev taking the time to type this up and express his feelings to us.

But what matters in the end is the state of the game. And the state simply is that many classes are imbalanced, and it makes the game not fun.

You can have all the good intentions in the world, but if you don’t deliver on the product it goes to waste.

I thought Blizzard was bad at balancing their classes in pvp, and now this game makes them look like masters at it.

I enjoy the game, and I hope ANet puts more time and thought into balancing pvp.

Again thank you for the posts, it does mean a lot.

Uh, power builds deal way higher damage than condition builds. There are some bursty condition specs right now, but even that burst is nothing compared to power burst.

I haven’t played all the classes in pvp, but I think Mesmer is the only one that really struggles to remove conditions. I know that on my thief or my necro I die to power builds 90% of the time, because conditions are so easy to remove.

I think passive healing is a much bigger concern compared to condition damage. Some classes cough ranger warrior cough can achieve incredibly high passive healing and defense, while still outputting decent damage.

No amount of ‘managing’ will keep your minions alive vs a good player who knows to just AE them down.

Even using staff AE regen, DS AE heal, they wont survive long in a group battle.

MM is a great spec for killing noobs though!

I mostly have problems with good warriors/thieves. Even though spirit rangers are good right now, I still can out damage then and outlast them on my power necro. I just try to cleanse their conditions every so often with heal or well of power, soak damage with death shroud, and rotate cc on them when their stability is off… fear, daze, fear, root, etc.

I play a tanky well type build so maybe I just counter them.

I think the build people complain about being OP is the Terror Condition build. 30 in Spite for cond. duration and Duumfire which gives us burning, 20 in Curses for Terror(damage on fear), and 20 in Soul Reaping for 50% fear duration increase(to get an extra tick of damage in on fear).

The build is definitely more strong than any necro build when you left the game, but compared to spirit rangers, s/d thieves, a number of warrior builds… its not overpowered.

When I play my thief, a condition necro is a tasty treat. Survive the two fears, and cleanse the conditions with sword or stealth, and I can burst through a terrormancer’s pathetic 18k HP quickly.

Personally, I feel tanky power builds are much stronger for my necro, and thats what I play in Spvp mostly. Its probably just because I am not experienced enough, but I cannot survive in pugs as condition spec. As a PTV power spec with wells and spectral skills I can survive easily and put out decent damage.

Their stats don’t scale with yours(which is a real shame). The only way to increase their power is through specific traits, like the tier two spite trait that increases their damage by 30% or the tier two death trait that boosts their HP by 50%.

There will always be builds that are more tanky, and builds that are more evasive.

People often correlate tanky with “brainless”, because they rely on passive defense, protection, and things like that.

But there are brainless ways to play any profession. Thieves are very squishy, but you can still do well with certain builds that rely on dodge spam, evasion spam, auto attacks, and stealth.

I noticed you play a warrior. I would argue that warrior is one of the most brainless and OP classes in this game. I think what you are saying is true in a way, especially with spirit rangers, but its also just a case of class bias.

I also use dagger/pistol and shortbow for weapons. You can keep weakness on a boss permanently as long as you are auto attacking, or with shortbow, you can keep weakness and poison on whole trash packs. SB is great AE damage, and dagger is great single target damage.

Full berserker gear is the best, but you have to be really skilled to survive in high level fractals with 13000HP and no armor. I consider myself an above average player, and I still die sometimes.

I would recommend running 15/30/0/25/0 for a little extra HP and not much power loss, this also gets you better initiative regen which is always good. Personally, I mix in Valkyrie armor with my zerkers, just enough to boost my HP up to like 16k… and making sure to keep 50% crit.

Well, I would go one of two ways with your build.. Either you can try to make it a little more DS oriented, focusing on gaining lifeforce quickly and having a beefy deathshroud to help keep you alive… or you can just be a tank, in which case I would change a few traits in order to maximize your efficiency.

30 in Blood can work and there are some good traits there, but I would recommend only going 25 deep, that way you can go 25 into Death for the awesome minor trait that converts toughness into power(you have a lot of toughness). The last 20 points I would put into Spite, since you are focusing on power but have low crit chance. You can boost Axe damage there, or focus cooldowns.

You wont do a lot of damage, but between dagger auto attack, and well timed wells… you can kill zerker dps pretty fast, and outlast others.

So I finally got enough Laurels for my first Ascended, and I spent some time looking at the stat options available to me.

One that caught my eye (because it is unavailable anywhere else) was the T/V/Cond. Dmg piece.

For a tanky PvP condition Necro, I was thinking those would be the ultimate stat trio.. but then I started thinking… is the extra HP worth the loss in crit to proc bleeds?

When I play PvP I like to outlast and I value longevity. I usually play conditions without going 30 into spite or putting points in reaping.. because I just like the blood and death traits too much for defense.

So my question is, would a gain in health pool be worth losing some crit chance? It seems when I break it down per ascended piece, I would be losing about 3% crit and gaining about 800 health.

I am a big fan of 20+ Blood builds, so yours looks pretty fun to me.

I actually dislike the staff for power builds, and I usually only use it for keep battles in WvW. Instead, I use axe with the 20 spite trait that increases its damage. Axe #2 is great burst after you stack vulnerability, and the channel procs your siphons like crazy!

My build is 20 in spite for the axe damage, 15 in curses for fury on DS, 20 in Blood for vamp prec. and bloodthirst, and 15 in soul reaping for the last gasp trait which provides great survival.

My stats with only food are 3100 atk, 56% crit, 45% crit damage, 2700 armor, 22000 hp, and 360ish healing.

One thing that I like about your build that may convince me to change mine is the warhorn 4 second daze… I havent used that trait before.

I just started playing again, been away 8 months… but I made a build today that worked pretty well in WvW.

It may be weird.. but bear with me. 20/15/0/20/15. I was tempted to go 30 into spite for close to death, or 30 into reaping for the crit chance in DS… but I stuck with this build mainly for the combination of stats I get from it and also the siphon talents from Blood.

Many players disregard the Blood tree but I am very fond of it. I find that all the little siphons really do add up, and I am very hard to kill.

I use dagger/axe/focus. I could use another offhand but my focus cooldowns are only 15 seconds and I use it a lot. My armor is Knights gear with zerker orbs. same with accessories and weapons. For sigils I use 5% crit chance and blood sigil. What this setup gives me is a nice balance between defense and damage. I have 3100 attack rating plus 53% crit chance and 45% crit damage, and my 2700 armor and 22000HP keep me alive a very long time when combined with all my siphons.

Normal hits heal me for 50ish, crits heal me for 58ish, sigil heals for 260ish, dagger #2 if allowed to fully channel feels like a second heal button sometimes. I also use omnom ghosts which heal a lot as well on crits. I also have spectral armor proc at 50% health.

I swap a lot between axe and dagger to use axe #2 for burst, dagger auto attack for dps. well of suffering for AE or burst, locust signet for mobility and an extra heal, and spectral armor for a stunbreak/protection. Sometimes I change the signet for spectral walk for another stunbreak.

P/D thieves are one of the, if not the best 1v1 spec in the game, dont feel too bad for losing to one.

I havent spent much time dueling on my necro, but I do play as power, and I am usually able to burst p/d thieves down, or at the very least, force them to run away(winning imo). Most of them do not run stunbreakers, they rely on spam dodging and stealth heals to survive, so if you dodge their cloak and daggers, and catch them in one cc you can tear through their low armor pretty quick.

My favorite combo is dagger 3 > warhorn 4 > well of suffering > back to back bone minion explosions > dagger auto. You wont always hit him with everything, but if you do, he is done, and even if you dont, he is very low.

I dont think your build has enough survivability to pvp with, and for PvE the stats arent really ideal for dealing damage.

Im not sure this is what youre looking for, but Ill summarize my build that I use for PvP, it is a tanky hybrid build.

25curses, 25death, 20 blood. Knights gear, Undead runes, PVT weapons, Rampager Jewels. D/D, Staff. Sigil of accuracy/earth, and whatever you want on staff, I use earth but you could use corruption or bloodlust.

Basically, in the end I have 3k attack, 3k armor, 23k HP, 50% crit chance, 700 cond damage. The weakness is no crit damage, but the strengths of this build include a high mix of power, armor, crit, and condition damage, and also a high amount of life siphons through blood traits and food, making you very hard to kill. Condition control is easy with dagger offhand, staff 4, and heal.

For utilities, I switch them almost constantly, but I mostly use Blood Is Power(this build makes it shine), epidemic, well of suffering, locust signet, and corrupt boon. Traits, I go with hemo and enfeebling shroud, greater marks and shrouded removal, bloodthirst and vampiric precision.

I actually have tried 30spite10curse30reaping, and its not really my style. Even with traits supporting it, axe damage doesnt match dagger damage.

Recently I have found a build/gear combination that lets me play a hybrid in wvw pvp.
25 curses 25 death 20 blood.

2900 atk rating, 45% crit, 700 condition dmg, 2900 armor, 22000HP.

Its a really flexible playstyle that can go toe to toe with anything in melee, and spread conditions like a scepter user.

I switch out weapons and utilities all the time, I really havent found anything I cant take down. Even d/d eles melt pretty fast when I switch to d/focus+scepter/d, add corrupt boon, gives me plenty of control/stripping and condition manipulation to fend them off. cant always catch them, but i usually go by the logic that if you force someone to retreat, youve won the fight.

I will agree that Necro needs a big re-evaluation of its traits and some skill cooldowns reduced/tweaked.

However Im going to have to disagree that the profession as a whole is weak and/or underperforming.

Necro survivability is really insane. The fact that I can have 20k HP with 0 vitality on my gear, and max out toughness with plenty of stat points left for damage is awesome. Not only that, but the same trait line that increases crit damage also increases our secondary HP pool!

Yes I curse at my moniter sometimes when a zerg catches me in wvw because I have 0 burst mobility or other escapes, or I own some thief/ele and they just teleport away. But I believe that to add instant mobility via teleport or leap would make this already durable class a little too powerful. Perhaps if Dark path didnt require a target, that would be fine since you dont really teleport all that far.

I also do not agree that Necro dps is low. My dagger auto attack chains in dps gear match those of my thief in dps gear… almost, but then, thats to be expected. The main difference is we lack burst like backstab or 100 blades. But from a raw damage viewpoint, I notice similar loss in dps on both of my 80’s when changing from dps gear to toughness gear, I dont believe Necros are somehow gimped. Axe does suck and needs a boost.

I dont really care about not having Vigor on my Necro, and my thief has 0 ways to generate protection for himself. I would take prot any day over vigor.

I dont think we need more avoidance, whether its from evades or immunities. I do think Spectral armor would be 1minute, and grant a short stability.

Necro has a lot of control/utility that I dont think is being considered for its worth. Corrupt Boon/spinal shivers is amazing against ele’s/guardians, and useful against any prof. Wells are extremely useful, however I personally think they deserve a shorter cooldown. Transferring our conditions to a foe on such a short cooldown as dagger4 and staff4 is also amazing imo.

The main issue I have with Necro’s in GW2 is that sooooo many of our skills dont work properly and/or are bugged. Also, many of our traits are incredibly underpowered compared to other professions, and should be buffed. I mean, compare the spite grandmaster minor trait to like, any other professions grandmaster traits(the thief and warrior ones are crazy good in comparison).

To summarize my thoughts: I think that once our traits are balanced, and our skills work properly(mostly projectile pathing and minion AI), the Necro should be in a good place. I also think one of the reasons people think Necro’s suck is simply because currently Eelementalists are a little too powerful/flexible, and in pve, Ele’s/Warriors/Guardians are lightyears ahead of the other professions power wise, which also needs to be fixed.

I dont believe siphon builds can work currently in spvp/tpvp due to the amulets not giving you the stats you need to support it, and you have no access to omnomberry ghosts either.

I usually run vamp builds in wvw/pve because I also like the playstyle, and even though the traits are pretty crummy, it can work if you have 20 in blood with ll and V, high toughness, and omnomberry ghosts for extra siphons.

The ideal stats for survival with vamp is knights(toughness/power/prec), but in spvp for some reason that amulet doesnt exist, so yeah… no bueno.

Im not sure man, before I logged out today I was farming in Orr and I dagger chained a zombie for 990-1050-1500. It was something very close to that. My 3rd auto usually hits for 900-1000 non crit.

So for a long time now I have been searching for a build that suits me just right for WvW and/or world PvE and casual dungeons.

I have tried conditionmancer, juggermancer, 30spite/30reaping power, and a vampire build. And I have taken my favorite aspects of all those builds and incorporated them into mine.

The Build: 0/25/25/20/0

Curses Traits: I usually run Hemo for longer bleeds, and I swap between the trait that reduces corruption skills recharge and the trait that auto casts enfeebling blood upon entering DS.

Death Traits: Pretty straight forward, I go with Greater Marks and usually Staff mastery, but sometimes I will use Dark Armor for Dagger#2 and DS4 channels.

Blood Traits: I use Bloodthirst, which really boosts your lifegain, and Vampiric Precision.

The gear for this build is easy to get. I run Knights Armor with 6/6 runes of the Undead. PVT Dagger/Dagger with PVT Staff on swap, using Sigil of Earth/Accuracy on daggers and Bloodlust on Staff. I use a PVT backpiece, and all other Accessories are Knights. All accessories have Rampager jewels.

For food buffs I use Omnomberry Ghosts, which are a big part of the survivability for this build, and the Oil that gives power.

Im actually not able to log in right now, however I will list my stats very close to what they are in game. Not going to include sigil stacks.

Attack Rating: 2900
Condition Damage: 625
Crit Chance: 53%
HP: 23000
Armor 3000
Crit Damage: 0%

So basically when I was making this build I was focusing on combining my favorite weapons(dual daggers) with my favorite utilities(epidemic, blood is power), with my favorite style of dealing damage(hybrid). I then added what is in my opinion the strongest method of survival to this build: Having very high toughness and a stream of constant healing.

Usually when I play this build, I try to keep Blood is Power up, transferring those bleeds to my target, hitting them with weakness from dagger5 and more bleeds, spreading them all with Epidemic, meanwhile dealing nice dagger1 damage. I swap between daggers and staff a lot, making the most of my mark cooldowns for poison/chill, bleeds, and fear for when im in trouble.

I can deal nice crits and at the same time deal solid bleed ticks with this build. My dagger auto attack chains usually crit for 3700ish, and bleeds tick for about 90. I can usually maintain a 5-6 stack of bleeds when attacking.

Strengths:
-Maximizes stat gains from gear via runes/traits/utilities.
-High toughness combined with lots of passive healing and condition removal makes you very hard to kill.
-Can deal strong direct damage and also pretty good condition damage(especially with Blood is Power)
-You can use almost any weapon set you want with this build. Scepter, dagger, staff, even Axe.

Weaknesses:
-Due to high toughness/cond damage/crit chance,.. this build lacks crit damage and condition duration.
-Due to not having pts in spite and using knights gear, this build lacks power(I make up for this with bloodlust sigil on my staff and gaining power from 25 death).

Thats all for now, I will probably refine this summary when I have more time, this was just to keep me from falling asleep at work.

Why not use focus/warhorn offhand?

Well I prefer the dagger for this build not only for the AE bleed stacks, but also I find it literally impossible to live without such a low cooldown condition transfer, its a big part of how I keep my HP high.

Why 20 Blood over 20 Soul Reaping/Spite?

This is something I might get hate for, as most people do not appriciate the Blood tree’s healing potential. But personally, I believe that when you combine Vamipric, with Vampiric precision, with bloodthirst, and you have a fast hitting weapon like dagger with a nice #2 ability to leech health, the healing you can put out is much better than a necro with 0 in Blood. Since I have such high toughness, this healing really shines too.

I almost consider 15 in Soul reaping to be a better build than 20 blood, as the auto spectral armor is very nice in pvp, but again, I prefer the constant blood heals.

@Sylph very pale, but elegant. 8/10

I am just now realizing how overused my hairstyle is… but what can I say, the other options are horrible.

There really is no reason to nerf thieves right now. Once culling is fixed, I will feel extremely weak on my thief in wvw. My necro already feels like a beast, so I guess if they nerf thief burst without buffing our HP or sustained dps, Ill really have no reason to log on.

This has to be sarcasm right? Am I feeding a troll?

Necros are literally free kills for thieves when you get them on the ground. They cannot cast fear on you if youre stealthed, so 90% of the time its just a free stomp.

If for some reason they do cast fear at you, just dodge it, and stomp. GG.

I dont think I have ever been feared by a downed necro, not once. On the other hand, I dont think I have ever landed a fear on good thieves when playing my necro.

The reason this seems like a troll post is because literally every other profession has a better downstate for fighting a thief…

Thanks for the laugh though =)

I dont mind helping a newer player in a dungeon, but I do get kitten when they dawdle. If you’re new, dont argue with experienced players.

If you’re just slow, then find a group of 5 players who dont mind clearing all the trash, etc. Most dungeoneers want a smooth and quick run to get thier tokens, hence why most trash is skipped, and certain events are exploited(like taking Magg across the lava, it should really only be done by 1 person, dont even need the gun).

Either way, the players who kicked you were in the wrong, and I hope justice finds them.

No, your ‘big’ point was that Cloak and Dagger did too many things for one ability.

Which is silly, because you can choose to trait/gear your character to enhance any number of single abilities to great effect. My wells necro says hi, as do grenade engineers.

All you really want nerfed is stealth, to which I would tell you: Dodge the cloak and dagger. The thief will have just wasted half his resources, and be left in the open with his paper thin hp/armor. Other than culling making thieves appear later than they should when leaving stealth, they are fine. A point which is proven by glancing at Tpvp numbers.

For your style of play I would recommend 0/25/30/15/0. Losing Mug is a kick in the balls but other than that its awesome, you can survive for days with tons of endurance regen plus HP regen from stealthing.

Starter hood combined with duelist chestpiece with a dash of human cultural(t2). =)

Lets look at a thief using signet of malice with 20 crits 30 trickery and centaur runes.

Signet of Malice has:
-12 second cooldown
-restores 6 initiative
-grants 5 stacks of might
-grants swiftness
-can be combined with choking gas, caltrops, and death blossom for crazy passive healing or used for big heal on short cd.

So, because it does ALL that, nerf it???

When Im playing my necro, I eat thieves for breakfast. Is it because I play one too? Why?

I feel much more powerful on my necro, and i can take a beating compared to my paper thin thief.

The only thing thieves excel at is escaping, and burst mobility. Thier burst damage isnt even as high as a warrior or mesmer.

The reason so many people cry is because of stealth. If you let a thief land back to back to back cloak and daggers then yes, they will not die and they will kill you. But guess what? CnD costs half thier resource pool. Culling in wvw is an issue yes, but dont blame thieves for that bug, it will be fixed eventually.

The fact is, in competative pvp where pretty much everyone on both teams knows how to play, thieves are not a top tier class, they are somewhere in the middle. On top of that, they are a lower tier dungeon class, dealing equal or slightly less damage than wars/guard yet having half the HP bar.

If you want stealth nerfed, then by all means increase our HP, armor, give us protection, stability, more regen/might uptime, whatever. But dont just come to the forums crying for nerfs, because thieves really arent “all that” atm.

I spend a lot of my time in MMO’s trying to collect armor sets ;p I guess thats my thing.

P.S. Check out my most recent creation!

For utility skills just run with signet of malice for healing, as each poison pulse from choking gas will proc its heal, as well as every arrow. Also bring shadow refuge for a nice support skill to save downed players/drop aggro on the group etc. I would also recommend signet of agility for condition removal/endurance regen on allies with nice passive precision, and smokescreen due to its synergy with clusterbomb.

Well Thieves are usually only brought to dungeons for damage, even though shortbow is a great support weapon due to cluster bomb being a spammable blast finisher. I would recommend using almost full crit gear because if you enjoy using shortbow you will usually be at range and out of danger.

You can just build for some fun traits because not too many traits effect shortbow, however I would recommend 15/30/0/25/0. That build will give your choking gas AE a weakness effect which really reduces the damage mobs do. It also has lots of damage from critical strikes line, and lots of nice trait options from acrobatics.

I use Ruby Orbs because they are cheap and provide lots of offense stats.

For Spvp I use Divinity 6/6, but lately Ive been trying Ogre runes because that pet summon seems decent for damage while im stealthed.

Okay i see, interesting build.

My take on it is that either way it would only get stronger by going deeper into crit.

Im guessing you only have points in trickery because you really like caltrops on dodge, which can be useful and fun but I would cut that out. The extra 3 pts to initiative isnt necessary for s/d at all, that trait really only compliments spammy builds like death blossom, d/d burst, unload p/p etc.

Also, in my opinion, going 10 pts into acro is a waste compared to 10 into deadly for Mug. I would either go 15 deep to pick up the amazing feline grace, or not go in at all.

I feel that you would be stronger by dropping trickery and going 30 into crits for a big damage boost. 10/30/20/0/0 is a s/d spec with burst capability while keeping good regen in stealth, and I personally use a spec centered around survival which is 0/25/30/15/0.

I personally cant play without feline grace, I think it is just too powerful.

I actually give up executioner for it, with a 0/25/30/15/0 build, and it makes you very hard to kill between constant dodging and tons of regen in stealth.

Not having Mug sucks, but like I said, feline grace is awesome.

As for gear, I use mostly berserker with a few valk pieces so my HP isnt terrible. I usually have about 15k HP, 50% crit chance, 101% crit damage, 3200attack.

Sorry I couldnt check out your build, bad link.

The coat is Ascalonian Armor from AC explorable, the shoulderpad is from CoE dungeon, the hood is the starter anonymity hood, the boots are Seeker boots, can get from TP. Pants I cant tell from that angle. Gloves are level 70-79 exotics you can buy on TP called ‘duelist’.

Strength sigil really isnt very good. Due to the cooldown it has, the uptime on your mights from it is pretty low.

+5% damage sigil is almost always a solid choice, Air is a very nice dps boost, bloodlust is nice for your shortbow to stack even more power, and Fire is also good if you want to focus more on AE.

As far as might stacking goes, sigil of battle is much better than strength.

Condition thieves are very viable compared to burst thieves in open world pve and in pvp.

For exploring/questing/farming I would recommend a death blossom spam spec like 0/20/0/20/30, and if you want to spvp/wvw, a bleed bunker spec like 0/0/30/20/20 is amazing at surving and fighting multiple players at once.

You wont kill anyone as fast as a burst thief, but you will be a lot harder to kill, and you will have solid constant damage.

I should add that condition specs are great for solo pve/exploring and farming, probably better than crit specs.

And I dont mean to offend anyone who prefers condition specs for dungeons. Everyone has their own ‘playstyle’.

But the fact is, thieves are brought for damage 90% of the time, and direct/crit damage builds out dps condition builds by a lot.

It makes me sad to see so many thieves recommending condition specs for dungeons.

If you dont want to deal much damage, and want to be lazy when it comes to dodging/positioning, then sure, run a condition build.

The bottem line is, thieves are brought for damage, period. You can try to play support, but guardian/ele/warrior support will be 10x better, every time. That means your best contribution to your dungeon team will be raw damage(and the occasional stealth rez, which any spec can do).

Not only does direct/crit damage spec out dps condition by a metric ton, but if there happens to be any other condition specs in the group, then your dps drops to abysmal levels, because the bulk of your condition damage will be negated by the 25 bleed cap, the 1 poison cap.

So here is your answer: You can run condition spec as long as there are some other strong dps in the group, your runs wont necessarily be slow because of you. But if you want to spec efficiently for dungeons, direct/crit damage is the way to go. P/P for ranged single target and bosses, shortbow for everything AE, and sword/P for trash is a solid setup.

I want to try it, but it seems like a lot of work to get those rings/back/earring/pendant

I dont have that much gold to spare, nor the time to grind so many fractals lol.

I will probably get hate for saying this, but I think thieves are just fine. The main issue is culling, which thieves do take advantage of, but I cant recommend nerfing a profession due to a bug like that.

On my necro, I dont think I have met a single thief that bursted me down, or even a p/d thief who could finish me.

When they open on me, I just insta fear them, chill them, wreck them. If they open with basalisk venom, just pop into DS(which gives me retaliation btw), or stunbreak with spectral walk/armor. Usually one dagger chain from me is enough to make them retreat, and when they are trying to stealth I hit my lifesteal channel attack, which hits them hard and points a line right to where they are in stealth, if theyre still not dead, Ill hit DS4, which hits hard, and usually finishes them.

But anyway, as far as the really hard hitting backstab thieves, I dont even run with high vitality, just a lot of armor(I use full knights currently), and I have never been downed by the steal/cloak and dagger/backstab combo.

I do play a thief, so maybe thats why theyre so easy for me, but I stand by my opinion that if you nerf thieves, they will be near useless. I feel twice as powerful in WvW on my necro than on my thief.

Thank you for all the work you have done sharing your build. I have played it in wvw and I have to say that even with 3500 attack, I feel like my damage is horrid. Never critting just doesnt take players down in bigger battles.

I have had some nice 1v2s with this build and easily lived(and it kills thieves like a champ which is always a good thing). But in larger battles when my enemy can retreat to the support of his team, I can usually never kill anything.

Not sure what the secret is, even fully traited for marks with sigil stacked (so probably higher than 3500 atk), my marks tickle people. I can do decent damage with dagger, but in larger battles that just doesnt cut it.

Any tips?

We noticed that CD took IOJ’s garrison lol, that made us laugh. Good fights last night, I was proud that FA had night groups, in the past it seems like all of our stuff is completely gone at night.

Aftr a long night of WvW, I have come to the conclusion that I will just be switching traits constantly inbetween battles.

I pretty much always use bloodthirst, but I switch the 2nd blood trait between -20% wells cd, vampiric precision, and 25% movement speed a lot.

The main reason I value the 25% movement trait is so I can free up my mobility utility for another good one like flesh wurm or another well, but youre right, the heal on crit reallyt does add up.

I did use the focus a lot, and the main reason I like the focus is for the damage boost boon removal. Its still hard for me to give up the condition removal from dagger though.

In WvW I use staff so much that it was hard for me to test this, but I think my favorite combo is Dual dagger + Axe/focus. I got into some skirmishes at supply camps where i would stack vuln with axe auto/focus then switch to dagger immobilize/well bomb.

Anyways, thanks for the build idea, very balanced/flexible.

I have been using a similar build for the last few days and Im liking it a lot.

I run 0/20/10/20/20, and I use dagger/dagger/staff. For wvw I use greater marks, but switch to dark armor for small skirmishes or duels.

I find that vampiric precision heals for very low amounts, so I switch it out for the 25% speed boost using dual daggers for wvw.

I also prefer dual daggers because I find the condition removal to be very valuable. I do use focus sometimes too though.