Guild Wars 2

Lol someone’s mad!

So my short story is Im a pretty casual player who is almost done with his journey towards his first legendary weapon, and all that remains is the badges of honor.

So I started playing in the EB and got hooked on the wvw gaming style. I think the sieges, keep defense, supply system etc is all very fun.

However, Im tired of going in solo and I want to join an active guild that does WvW on the Fort Aspenwood server which has been my home for awhile now.

Ideally, I would be able to log on any time of day and join an organized guild group somewhere in the battlefield. I usually play during the night(after midnight pacific time), but also log on early day(9am to 3pm pacific).

I mainly play a thief, but lately I have been getting familiar with the necro and I am liking that playstyle much better for wvw.

Feel free to reply here, or send me a message in-game.

Im sick and tired of these stupid Thieves are OP threads.

I play both a thief and a necromancer in wvw and spvp. The only thing that needs to be changed is the culling issue in wvw, which has nothing to do with the thief profession.

When Im on my necro, thieves dont scare me one bit. You know what does? Guardians that have tons of burning, knockdowns, immunity cooldowns, and HP that never seems to budge no matter how much damage i pump into them. D/D eles that seem to never die, even when i strip them of all their boons and they shoot away on a bolt of kittening lightning.

What it comes down to is that bad players die easily to thieves. Isnt it funny how in tpvp thieves are balanced, and not even in the upper tier of profs to bring on your team? Probably because those players who run paid tourneys know how to build and play their characters.

Im not saying thieves are balanced well. The profession overall has some major issues. But it has nothing to do with being too powerful compared to other professions, especially in a team based environment like wvw.

Im sorry that Anet cant seem to fix the culling issue in wvw, but dont take it out on thieves, get mad at Anet. And if you think thieves are too powerful in spvp, and stealth is too strong, L2P, because thieves have stealth for a reason, thier HP, armor, and mitigation is complete kitten.

I should also add that I think its funny that most people complain about zerker backstab thieves, which are by far the easiest to counter. Pistol condition thieves are by far more powerful and noob friendly.

I usually play during the night hours, until the early morning.

I almost never get a chance to farm air elementals, because no one wants to go take the temple of Dwayna that late at night. Theres barely enough people in the cursed shore for the bigger events.

I find this very frustrating. It would be okay if there was a place to always farm air elementals, and controlling the temple spawned another location of mobs or something. But the way it is now, A-net is basically saying, “Sorry, you dont play during peak hours so you are not allowed to farm for the Lodestones you need”.

Its really annoying, especially since the Fractals patch that took all the players out of Orr.

Hi, Im Stx.

Im looking for a guild that has lots of members online during the night hours/early morning hours. My ideal playtime would be 1am Pacific all through the night, and ending around 3pm pacific.

In previous games I played on Oceanic servers so I could find groups etc. I am not at all opposed to playing with guilds from other regions around the world.

I am mostly interested in being able to log on, and having dungeon runs being formed in guild chat. I like my solo time(farming Ori, spvp) but mostly I enjoy running fast explorables or fractals with guildies. I also enjoy wvw a lot, but its not my focus right now.

Ive been working on the sword Bolt for a few months now, and im still about 300k karma and 300g away from finishing.

I main a thief, which I normally play sword/pistol, but I also have a Necro who is decked out in rares/exotics. In dungeons I run mostly berserker gear for best damage output, but I do wear some pieces with vitality to avoid some of the really big attacks. I also drop blinding fields on everything, stealth/rez downed teammates etc.

I am a semi-casual player. What I mean by that is I like to have fun, I dont take everything in the game too seriously. However, what this also means is I dont like to waste time. I am hoping to find a group of players who can play the game well, but have fun doing it. No Hitlers.

Please help me find people to enjoy this great game with! Thank you for your consideration.

So if my server never has Temple of Dwayna, I cant farm Charged Lodestones anywhere?

I play on a ‘Full’ server, yet almost every temple in Orr(especially Straits/Malchors) is contested when Im online.

I saved up 600k karma before balthazar’s temple was taken, and I checked the map a lot during that grind.

So yeah… I see lots of people saying Charged Lodestones have a ‘reliable’ farming location, yet they never mention that you have to control the temple, which just doesnt happen on my ‘full’ server ever.

Where can I farm for these?

At the very least, thieves should have some kind of boost to how much coin we loot from mobs.

I mean why do they call us thieves anyway? because of our F1? We dont even pickpocket, pick locks, actually steal any loot, nothing.

Thieves will continue to have “too much burst” until they cant kill anything at all. Meanwhile, warriors and guardians are literally walking gods, and players will still complain about thieves because they can stealth.

Thieves provide more support through stealthing team members and reviving them safely(dropping aggro).

20 crit 20 acro 30 trickery.

signets of power, signet use. vigorous healing, quick recovery. thrill of the crime, trickery, hastened replenishment.

Utilities are signet of malice, signet of shadows, caltrops, roll for initiative.

With that setup, you will literally never run out of initiative if you use all your abilties that give it back to you. Signet of malice has a 12 second cd, and it restores SIX initiative, roll for initiative has a 48 sec cd, restoring 6, steal 35 sec cd restoring 3, shadows restores 2. You can spam death blossom all day long and never take damage, that plus caltrops is enough to kill any number of opponents, ive never hit a limit.

Human male… its easier for me to immerse myself in RPGs if I play a “me” character.

It depends on what kind of PvE. For solo, dynamic events, and casual dungeons, condition specs can do fine.

For higher level fractal dungeons, or any exploration path your group is struggling on, then you will be better off running a crit damage spec.

Basically, bleeds/poison can do decent damage, but you just do so much more damage with crit damage, that you cant really compete. A caltrops/death blossom thief may be able to stack bleeds up to 20 on something, but that stack will still only tick for like 140 max even with food, cond damage gear etc. Compare that to one pistol whip attack from sword/pistol, which can deal 15k+ damage in 5 seconds.

AoE damage? I guarantee cluster bomb will beat death blossom every time.

And then theres the dreaded 25 stack bleed limit, and 1 poison limit.

Personally, I enjoy playing condition specs, and I still play them when Im farming or playing wvw, but the way things are right now, youre just providing less damage for your team by speccing that way.

Even “support” or “control” condition specs are just an illusion. Crit damage specs incorportate those qualities into themselves, like sword/pistol pure damage spec being able to keep Ae blind up, and still drop blinding power/refuge for downed teammates.

Spec is standard p/d bleed bunker. Like most thief wvw videos, it was pretty evident that a lot of your opponents couldnt see you even after you were out of stealth(bug), which takes a lot of the excitement away from the movie.

However, your sound edits and killstreaks are impressive, as is your ability to lead people on a wild goose chase. And most importantly, it was entertaining! Maybe a few tweaks in the choice of background music ;p 007 fit very well, the first one didnt seem to though imo.

I would say its a good video.

p/d is pretty mindlessly easy, but then again, if you actually fight people who know what theyre doing, you probably wont get a kill. As opposed to glass cannon thieves who can drop someone in a few seconds in some cases.

pistol/dagger, shortbow.

or pistol/dagger, dagger/dagger for AE death blossom bleeds.

Generally you want to stick to your pistol spamming auto shot for bleeds, then whenever you can, use dagger #5 to stealth, and hit your stealth sneak attack for the pistol to rapidly stack bleeds up. Do this while constantly dodging, dropping caltrops, stealth stomping, and you will have joined the ranks of the skilled elite p/d thieves.

Between the shadow arts trait that removes a condition every 3 seconds(so thats two conditions if i stay in stealth 3 seconds), infiltrators strike, Hide in shadows, and pained response, I can pretty much cure whatever I want. My spec is pretty defensive though, normally I wouldnt have pained response, which isnt really a big deal.

D/D bleed build was my favorite for leveling. Once you start getting enough traits to go 20 into trickery and acro, you will own huge groups of enemies.

Just spam death blossom, steal for initiative, more db, roll for initiative, more db, all the while caltrops is basically dropping enemies by itself, and signet of malice and DB evade are easily keeping you alive.

30 shadow 20 acro 20 trickery is a standard high survival condition build. Traits are up to you, there are lots to choose from including AE blind whenever you stealth, removing conditions in stealth, shorter cooldowns on shadow refuge/blind powder/shadowstep etc, or regen boon whenever you stealth, but i would highly recommend getting shadows rejuvination for your 30 pt trait, its a passive pulsing heal on you in stealth and it heals for a lot.

Ive also seen a 20 venom 30 shadow 20 acro build, but Ive never played that one and I see no reason why it would outperform the trickery version.

Its not just fractals, Warriors, Guardians, Mesmers, and Eles are just very strong professions.

I dont know anything about sigil of water, but I would be willing to bet the heal it gives is extremely small.

As far as being a support thief, our profession unfortunately just isnt very good at healing others. Our best support is putting our team into stealth, thus removing aggro from them, this is great for ressing people. I spend a lot of time ressing my teammates, so if you are focused on making a healing/support set of armor, I would use runes of Mercy, which give boosts to reviving people. Another solid rune option for healing is Monk, or you can just use orbs for stats of your choice.

Seems odd to buff Blinding Powder, Scorpion Wire, and Smoke Screen, some of the good utilities already. Yet leave many of the crappy utilities untouched. Cool change to shadow trap though.

I like the change to Leeching Venoms, Im anxious to see how much we will heal for since most builds have lots of power.

Initiative exists because thief abilities have no cooldowns. If you want to add cooldowns, might as well scrap initiative altogether, and you would also have to rework every thief weapon skill. I dont see that happening lol.

I dont want to log in to test it, but try this:

Walnut for the 3rd chest color, 2nd boot color, and 2nd leg color / Taupe for the 2nd chest color, 2nd shoulder color, 2nd glove color, and first leg color / Olive for the 1st boot color, 1st chest color, 1st shoulder color, and 1st glove color

Stealth classes always recieve the highest amount of QQ in almost any MMO. People dont understand how they work, they dont understand how to counter them, then they cry their eyes out calling for nerfs/raging.

That video that was posted is actually a good example of why the problem is just being bad with most players who lose to thieves. That thief had 13k HP, and most likely less than 1k toughness, yet out of all those players, no one could even pop off a few ranged attacks to down him? When he used dagger storm in the middle of all those players, no one simply walked/rolled up to him and took him out with a few melee attacks. When he and the other thief would pop shadow refuge, not a single player used any AE damage on the obvious circle stealth animation area they stood in.

Thief damage may be too much in some areas, but for christs sake, take care of the real problems first. The bug that keeps a thief stealthed for 3 seconds or whatever even after he leaves stealth is a huge reason why a lot of players call thieves OP. Its not intended at all and is not a part of the thief profession.

Not bad.

Im guessing 30 crits, 20 acro, 20 trickery, or something similar. A mix of valkyrie with either knights or berserker gear.

I use P/P for single target in dungeons, usually on bosses. Unload is sweet, but it sucks you have to spec for initiative regen or else p/p loses a lot of potency.

How I long to join The Thieves Guild, sadly I cant leave Fort Aspenwood, and I wouldnt join unless it was called the Thieves Guild :p

Sounds like a ton of fun though! =(

If you are specced a certain way, you can gain an extra 2 ini per 10 secs, and also if you are hitting stuff with your attacks, gain ini on crits.

Most thieves in pvp arent specced for that though, meaning you cant sit in evade mode forever.

The thief underwater arsenal is sooooooooo incredibly terrible, that I dont think the #5 skills utility in holding the ruins is really a problem.

“my warrior on the other hand only has one option. keep fighting..”

Lying isnt going to help your argument. Warriors are extremely mobile in PvP if they want to be, they have a number of leaps and charges they can use to escape a battle and gain swiftness as well.

Through the use of stunbreakers, kiting, knowing when to dodge, and not giving them my back.

People love to complain about getting bursted down by glass cannon thieves, but they dont usually mention how fast that same thief splats on the floor once hes out in the open.

It is so easy to avoid being backstabbed in combat, its hilarious. And even if you do get caught by suprise, if you dont have a stunbreaker on your bar to get out of basilisk/devour venom, thats your fault.

Backstab zerker thieves spend 2 out of three utility skills, sometimes an elite skill, blow their steal cooldown, and also use half their initiative on that opening burst. You cant really nerf the damage on that investment too much or else no one will play the spec at all, because if it fails to kill their target, often times they will die.

GC thieves die so fast in battle from simple AE damage, random conditions, and ranged attacks, there has to be a payoff for speccing that way. The payoff is huge burst.

Personally, I prefer not to play that way. I mix toughness/vitality in with my power/prec/crit damage, and I can survive being opened on by the dreaded steal/cnd/backstab combo just fine through use of my stunbreakers, kiting, and dodging.

Plenty of ‘bandit’ mobs in the game are snipers, assassin types as well. It probably wont happen until a later expansion, but I see no reason why we couldnt use rifles.

It sucks in WvW and in world bosses having no 1200 attack.

I agree with other posters that Black Powder should be a stealth field. P/P cant really use sneak attack outside of a 1minute cd utility skill.

Im sure it would have to be tweaked in some way, like instead of actually being a field, it would function more like blinding powder.

I would like to see Cluster Bomb hit the target faster. Currently if you fire it at 1200 range, it soars up in the sky, pierces the asteroid belt orbiting saturn, falls back down through the atmosphere, THEN hits the ground. Its like a full rainbow!

Body Shot is also pretty horrible. Should do more damage, and either give 10% vulnerability or have the 5% last longer. I would like it to be more like Hunters Arrow, a way to boost the damage from our Unloads. I feel this would help get P/P to where it needs to be.

Also, the trait ricochet could use some improvement. No one in their right mind would take this if they wanted AE damage from pistols. 5% chance is nothing! 50% chance is more realistic. However a more reliable alternative for the trait would be “your pistol attacks bounce to nearby enemies dealing half their normal damage”.

I forgot to mention steal, i did use that on cooldown for the initiative boost.

I never liked caltrops, its not my style, but a ton of thieves love it and it seems like it would work perfect with a death blossom spam build!

Sigil of strength did not work very well even with 50% crit, could barely maintain a 5 stack with it. Battle when switching on cooldown could maintain at least 10, but then again, its not always an option to weapon swap in combat. I guess you could just change weapon setups per fight, but im too lazy for that lol.

In conclusion I think ill tweak my venomshare build to stack might up to about 15-18 with venoms, weapon swapping, dodging, and stealthing. Was fun!

So after some brief testing, I can keep 25 stacks up with the above build just between venoms and swapping weapons. Dodge might and stealthing might are just icing on the cake.

I am using condition damage for this build, with carrion gear. pistol/dagger with shortbow off.

Its pretty fun so far, the only crappy part is you rely on swapping weapons for might, and if you need to AE or stay our of melee, pistol/dagger kind of sucks.

Maybe now Ill try non condition damage with a sword/dagger or dagger/dagger.

Or perhaps ill try stacking precision with sigil of strength and see if i can maintain a 25 stack as easily.

Assuming you were using two venom utilities, and traited for 20$ faster recharge, you could also get 2 stacks of might that last 36 seconds every 20 seconds or so, even more if you use basalisk venom.

I think now i want to try a venom share build that stacks might lol. 25/0/30/15/0!

If you were to use 3 different +20% might bonuses, and 20% from acrobatics, is that additive? Would each might last 80% longer?

If so, I think 3 stacks for 36 seconds every 9 seconds would be the better route, but that seems too good to be true, so Im guessing those bonuses are multiplicative.

Its a fun build to play, and it can do great against average players, but its only damage source can be completely mitigated by condition removal.

On my thief I can remove two conditions everytime I stealth, I can also remove burn/bleed/poison when I heal, and also when I take damage under 75% hp. If for some reason I need more, I can swap shadowstep in.

I like trying new and innovative builds. Sometimes they fail, sometimes they are efficient, but most importantly, its fun!

I saw someone the other night talking about stacking three different 2 sets from armor runes, all of them boosting the duration of Might, and got to thinking that maybe such a build for the thief would be cool.

How about a deadly arts/shadow arts/acrobatics build? Might x2 whenever you apply venoms, might whenever you stealth, and might whenever you dodge. Critical strikes also has some strong might buffing, but those only last 5 seconds so im not sure it would be efficient to use signets over venoms at this point.

Since this build would use acrobatics, all of these might stacks would already last 20-30% longer, and when you add in 3 +20% set bonuses, you could stack your might pretty high, possibly maintaining a stack of 25 with the right rotation.

It may not be efficient damage wise compared to other builds, but it seemed like a cool idea.

So what are your thoughts on this? Has anyone tried something similar?

If you are having trouble questing/exploring, try either a sword/pistol build using critical strikes with either acrobatics or shadow arts. Such a build will allow you to cleave down multiple enemies with ease, while also keeping your HP high because black powder can keep groups of enemies blinded, and sword auto attack weakens.

If sword isnt your style, try a trickery build with either deadly arts, acrobatics, or critical strikes as your other tree. You can spec for very high initiative regen from signet usage, or on attacks, and with some condition damage gear, mow down 3-6 enemies with death blossom while evading all their damage. This is the spec I chose to level with.

Gather up 3-6 mobs, death blossom x3, roll for initiave, dodge in, death blossom x2, pop signets for initiative, death blossom x2, dead mobs. If they still breath, finish them with some kiting with the shortbow.

Its a cool build, and group venoms are powerful for sure.

Personally, I dont like healing power as a stat for the thief. Even with 1100 healing power, my hide in shadows, regeneration boons, and assassins reward heals barely seemed to heal me for more than what I normally get with only 250 healing power. I didnt notice a significant difference anyway. I also gear for toughness, but I prefer to stack power/prec and or cond damage instead of healing to boost my damage.

I use something similar to your 2nd option when AE MF farming.

20 crit for signets of power/opportunist/signet use. 20 acro for might on dodge/quick recovery(to fuel blossom spam). 30 trickery for condition damage/initiative regen on steal, and on heal. Trickery traits i use uncatchable, the one that reduces cd on tricks by 20%, and hastened replenishment.

Basically, I can death blossom three times, steal, signet of shadows, blossom twice more, roll for initiative, 2 more blossoms, heal signet, 2-3 more blossoms, and i still have my other signet i can pop if i need more initiative.

With these traits your signet of malice is on a 12 second cooldown and restores a whopping 6 initiative, roll for initiative is on a 48 second cooldown and restores 6, and you have 2 other signets on 24 second cooldowns that restore 2. Plus passive 2/10 from quick recovery.

I use MF daggers that have condition damage, that plus the damage from trickery is enough to make my bleeds do enough, and the constant evade from blossom is enough to keep me alive easily, I can always fall back on daggerstorm.

Shortbow does fine damage with this build too.

I would say Thief underwater skills need to be fixed before the #5 skill is nerfed for pvp.

Underwater missions in story were almost impossible on my thief, that #5 ability was the only thing keeping me alive.

A) The skill is working as intended, no exploiting whatsoever. Please learn what that word means.

B) Theives have garbage water combat skills, absolutely horrible. Stop whining.

C) If a thief traits for lots of initiative regen and can somehow stay evasive for 30 secs – 1min, he will be doing no damage at all to anyone, so who cares?

Alexnssilent.3690:

Have you used the in-game report system?

Many bots on my server have been reported by lots of players, and have been running around farming for weeks now. Anet clearly doesnt do much of anything about it.

I recently bought 6/6 superior runes of the pack for my gear.

The 4 set bonus, which is “5% chance on attack to grant might, fury, and swiftness to nearby allies (10 sec cooldown)” is not working at all.

When I see the animation for the set bonus proc go off, neither myself nor any nearby allies recieve might, fury, or swiftness.

I love duelist armor personally

I wont comment on your suggested attacks, but I do want a rifle for the thief, we need longer ranged attacks, and a sniper does kind of fit the assassin toolkit.

Okay I lied, I really just want rifles so I can use the Order of Whispers sniper rifle, /drool

Legendary weapons are all about vanity, I have no problem with them taking 6 months to a year to complete. It just makes it that much more rewarding when you do craft it, and also increases the ‘awe’ factor when you see a player who has one.

Its not like there is nothing else to do along the way. Getting these weapons is an adventure, and remember it is the journey itself that is important, not the destination.

If you find the required materials for these weapons to be too extreme, and think you will never be able to get them with your playtime, then dont go for them. You arent entitled to them, and again, they are just vanity.