Guild Wars 2

TheGuy.3568:

The only time i think DD isn’t good in a dungeon is when you are forced to stack and cant position yourself behind the boss. As far as trash goes S/P is better but SB its even better then that. Honestly just bring what you need. In most cases DD is fine, and truly if you get the perfect storm of might and vulnerability with a zerk build you will be near the top of the boards.

How do you effectivly build up might as a thief? I mean is there a combo-field or are you stacking by traits?

So how do I do .jpg screenshots again? I keep on doing those useless .jps screenshots and it doesn’t help much to rename every single one and cutting it in half (which doesn’t look that good either).
There surely must be a function, no!? O_o

drunkmoron.7069:

Is it me or do too much thieves look alike (similar amour or colour). Anyways, this is what mine looks like.

LOVE it haha

Are you serious? As if Arenanet had programmed such a mechanic xD
It’s a not-intended mechanic they obviously can’t fix – just like the one that gives Warriors best hp, best armor, more or lest best dps

Thanks you from me as well Especially about the idea with the food

Here’s the problem with thief from what I think is the main reason for all those cries for a nerf:
Thiefs kill fast.
No, they don’t just need to kill fast, they HAVE to kill fast. Warriors or Mesmers (for example) are used to live to tons of s’hit without giving a kitten . If now a thief comes and manages to get under their hood that sure leaves some pretty bad impression on our class although which thief would be possibly dumb enough to go 1 on 1 with a warrior without playing him out?! ;/
The way the class works seems op while it totally isn’t bc thiefs are natural damage dealers and trade in everything else for damage to end things quickly.

Hmm I’m new to thief so here’s my experience while trying s/d:
It wasn’t worth my time – and I mean really. From what I’ve seen I’d use NO dagger offhand ever if the first hand weapon hasn’t some awesome hudini-coming-back-attack like backstab or at least that pistol unloading :/

“Evading endlessly” isn’t even possible since (3) drains your ini for no good reason whatsoever.
As long as he doesn’t attack normaly while shooting (the attack itself isn’t strong) everything is fine.

Ok, 2 things -

1) D/D is what thiefs get into their hands on every wallpaper with a reason: It looks awesome and is what thiefs are supposed to love. I totally agree that d/d isn’t made for any situation and in dungeons I get why s/p is better but I’ll try to go d/d to trash some mobs notheless with them.

2) Why in all of gods name are you so worried for some stupid reputation? It’s a game for christ’s sake and if someone doesn’t want you in his/her party bc. you play a certain class or are just new to the game, you don’t wanna be in that kitten h ole’s party anyways. Thanks to LFG system there is no way you won’t find a more “aged” party in which players respect each other and play for fun rather than for some stupid videogame-reputation
Do you know what all this “OMG POINTS GRIND!”-b.kitten has brought us? Go to this winter snowball contest, be on the loosing side after 1 round and have a long hard look on how many idiots are quitting the game before it has even begun. That’s what I call a problem: People taking a v.game too hard for their own good. It ruins the fun for everyone.

Chers

Ok that’s what I call some good advice

I’ll take it all into consideration and I’m happy to hear that what I’ve seen by myself at first glance (when I read through all the traits to create the first layout of my build) isn’t all that bad – it’s somehow a relief to start with something you found on your own even if you got much help and many traits were changed over the course of the planning

And god am I happy to learn that Shadow’s Rejuvenation will help me a little by filling up my health bar over time and is worth the investment! The only thing I disliked about thief so far is that if he’s nearly out of health he’s most likely dead or must flee from the battle. If I can heal me up a little from time to time by sneaking around the battlefield I really will fall in love with this class once I reach 30 on that trait-line

Good topic I’ll come to that problem later on as well

Impact.2780:

How does that translate to “do not use them”?

UPPPS O_O
My bad, I’m sorry – it’s late where I live, I really misread your sentence, sorry ^^"

Edited my build
MOre advice please!

Impact.2780:

Where exactly was I sarcastic and not offering exactly what you asked?

->

As for weapons, when you start running dungeons you’ll end up using all of those =P.

Not using sb is like the only thing I know is bullkitten.

The only thing I plan on keeping is using sb and d/d from time to time bc. those are the weapons I play thief for.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Swimfan.8014:

I looked it up and most ppl are saying that it just adds 1000 HP if even that?! That doesn’t sound much :O

It can make a world of difference on a thief.

Hmmmm valid point.
Ok I guess quickness isn’t such a good idea afterall, I get that.
Thanks for that

Yea I know that’s why I already use s/p – but I wanna use d/d bc I really love them … maybe I can’t use them all the time but when I said “backstab” I didn’t meant to plan my whole tactic on it

@Impact
Sorry I was incorrect, sarcastic comments really are not helpful.

If you advice me to not use something, please tell me what to use instead or it’s no real help at all :/

@Chicago
So the basic 0/30/30/0/10 looks ok?! I just need to rearrange my traits?!

V exchange seems legit to me but what about that practiced?! I looked it up and most ppl are saying that it just adds 1000 HP if even that?! That doesn’t sound much :O

Hey there! =)
Currently I’m planning my build – I want it ready when I spend 2g for the final manual so I’d really appreciate any advice!

My build is mostly for PVE and I’m using d/d or s/p and sb (sb is for escaping and large grp control)

Also I’m planning getting high prec, good power and maybe some def or vitality options?!

My build idea so far:

0/30/30/10/0

Critical Strike ->
VI bc. health
I bc. as someone here told me goes with XI
XI bc. AWESOME … 20% more dmg when the enemy is below 50%? Sounds insane to me!

Shadow Arts ->
IV bc. must-have condi remover imo or am I missing something?!
VI bc. blinding foes :P OR V for extra ini – not so sure yet
XI bc. I need that healing! (Please don’t tell me it’s not worth it or I start to cry :/

Acrobatics:
III or VI: III bc some Vigor is really needed and if I heal I’m in a tough spot so why not take some stamina regen as well? To switch to VI provides me with some running tool for escapes OR in WvW to get to whatever target I want really fast.

Ok please feel free to shred my dream to pieces ^^
No seriously, any advice is welcome! I’m really excited to see what you may come up with Loving thief so much right now bc. so many awesome-looking traits!

I tried P/D now and I really love the torment damage (3) is doing. Switched to D/P to try it the other way around but the killing was waaaay slower.
I also noticed how awesome P/D is if you’re fighting veterans and bigger creatures since they never come close to you if you don’t let them.

I totally agree.
Because of PVP-balancing the PVE balance looks like crap atm.

Holland.9351:

Obviously any attack should kick the thief out of stealth and give him the revealed debuff. It shouldn’t matter whether it gets blocked or evaded. You attack, so you reveal yourself.

Obviously you never played a thief. Without stealth a thief has NOTHING to defend himself. We’re not warriors with high HP pools and good armor and in PVE what we can take before going down is downright pathetic.

reikken.4961:

it has to be super weak because of Venomous Aura
which is really stupid. If venoms have to be underpowered because of that trait, the trait should be removed.

Yup, that’s exactly the point and I totally agree with your suggestion.
What we truly need is some good way to defend ourselves – like a trait which boosts def while using venoms or something.

Dahkeus.8243:

Venoms arent as much bad as they are ill-suited to the game content. (…)

And I ask myself why. Venoms COULD be such a good alternative way to play a thief (and a really cool one as well) but just like anything else the guys who’re responsible for balancing the game had no clue whatsoever about how the game works later on. I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be less suited venoms out there but EVERY SINGLE venom is not worth my time – including the elite skill!
Look at ele – his conjured weapons are what I call a good implemented variety.

Dahkeus.8243:

Also, while you’re leveling, if you get bored or want to try out a different weapon set, give P/D a try. Outside of leveling, it’s a rather niche weaponset, but while leveling or while solo, it’s pretty strong since you can attack from range, then Cloak and Dagger as soon as a mob gets to you, get some distance, then use the stealth attack. This can be a good tactic for soloing champions or high health veterans.

Good idea! I’ll give that one a go as well, thanks!

I think no one playing a diffrent class (like me) coming to this forum is trying to rip warriors from their fun of facerolling (well not many), most of us are just frustrated because in a MMO the balance of one class effects every other class as well. As I said: If this was a single player experience we would be all happy and chatting how difficult to play one class is and such but this is a MMORPG in which Warriors sadly have more or less every single advantage the system can offer which is bullkitten.
The reason you guys need people from diffrent professions to come over and “whine” is because no human being would call for a disadvantage of anything he’s working at (like playing a Warrior). I would never play a Warrior because – imo – he’s downright boring BUT that’s everyone’s own choice. What DOES anger me is how Arenanet apparently has no clue about the balance of their own game – we’re players, of course we play and defend an op class mechanic, we would be stupid not to.

Fact is: In a group full of Warriors going into a dungeon ANY other class would more or less just slow them down – wtf. They don’t need anything from anyone and that’s what I don’t get. I play thief f.e. and I trade in my defense for high dps but if some other class with more defense and way more health can do the same damage I’m just kittened … easy to understand, isn’t it?!

Question is: Why is Anet so blind?! :P

Dahkeus.8243:

With optimal traits, S/P is about 5% lower dps than D/D. This is why the general advice for PvE is to use S/P on trash in dungeons and D/D for single target.

True – I still love my daggers tho.
I’d say that I’ll wait until I drop some decent sword and pistol and then I’ll give that a go as well.
5% – are you sure? That would be pretty bad since d/d has only stealth-defense skills?! Would show (again) that Arenanet has no idea whatsover about their own balance …

Dahkeus.8243:

For roaming around in open world, D/D is a solid choice since you have a lot of 1 v 1 fights. The toughest aspect is just handling mobs that turn to face you immediately, which makes getting to their back for a backstab a pain. =P

Yes it’s a pain but somehow doable without you doing anything really – you just pass right through the enemy and that’s that. In other situations it doesn’t seem to work all that way which is quite frustrating.

…

Ok I played thief some more and I’m kinda upset with how less possibilities we got to defend ourselves beside old-fashioned Alakazam-trick :/ I knew before (thanks to the interent) but thief sure is some good challenge to play proberly ….

Ah yea and wtf are venoms so bad?! O_o Does anyone seriously use them? Don’t get me wrong, I’m trying to grasp the mechanic behind the game but their cd compared to the fact that you only have 5 stabs and not some active-time-window seems to be downright pathetic to me?!

Yesterday I met a really good thief with top-notch geari and stuff and he proudly told me that his damage is on par with a good warrior – and he still lacks armor and HP.

The only way you possibly could defend a warrior is if you play the class itself … which I totally don’t get bc from what I’ve seen facerolling everything to death must be pretty darn boring :/ No challenge?!
Arenanet has somehhow managed to create a class balance that acts as a difficulty setting. If you put the game on EASY, you’re playing a Warrior, if you wanna play on HARD you play Ele, Ingi or Thief (new to thief that’s why I still would call him “hard” – dunno about later on). That’s really good if this game was a Singleplayer experience but as an MMo the balance is just broken period.

Tachii.3506:

S/P is by far more optimal than D/D. When you’re facing trash mobs you’re forced to go for sb cluster bomb spam which isn’t as helpful as S/P #5 or just spamming pistol whip. Trash mobs are not supposed to be fun, period. It has nothing to do with how OP or boring S/P is in PvE.

Uhm what’s a trashmob for you?
I get what you’re trying to say but d/d seem to do tons of damage later on and nothing stands in your way for very long – especially “trash mobs”.
That doesn’t mean I will never use s/p. As I said before: I already knew how brilliant it works but i wouldn’t wanna use it all the time so in PVe I’ll most likely switch between diffrent weapon sets (even p/p) to have some mixed fun.

Tachii.3506:

As I tl;dr’s in another thread, I find 10/30/30/0/0 the friendly build for newcomers. 30 in Shadow Arts gives you longer stealth, heals/regen for intiative/removing conditions on stealth, or venom share for the party. The last 10 points can be put in anything really.

Hmmm yea sounds really nice (especially higher stealth and regen) and I needa figure out my build some times later on but for starters all those Trickery-pros (2 Ini/Buffs per stealing and 3 extra ini) look waaaay more starter-friendly to me.
But I’ll see

Dahkeus.8243:

Awesome! The class is a ton of fun. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have, but it sounds like you will. =)

I’m level 11 again and I’m really fascinated how much 15 points in Trickery is worth (is there anyone who doesn’t want 2 Ini per theft, all those buffs and 3 extra ini all the time?!).
I also think that as long as I keep experimenting, I’ll do some decent damage for my group later on. Until now (11 – which isn’t very far I know) the class looks pretty good balanced. You smash opponents rather quickly compared to other classes I’ve played but you also get some spanking back if you aren’t careful and play way to sloppy Really nice!

About Sword/pistol →
I figured out how op this combination is in PVE against melee mobs rather quickly but seriously?! It’s fcing boring If I’d want to play a faceroll-class I’d play Fighter plus by using the same trick over and over you’ll never learn how to play a class properly.

Omg, thanks for all the comments and suggestions so far, I’ll read through them one by one later today
Started my thief anew (didn’t like his appearance and he was just level 22 anyways).

I met a professional thief yesterday who assured me that d/d is possible even in dungeons (that’s what I was most afraid of: That I would be way to bad to do d/d there) and that he/she runs full berserk – nice. He uses shortbow more or less just to retreat really fast which is bascically the way I wanted to play all along.
Wonder how thief will work out. I get why many people didn’t like their thief-run (ini is so diffrent from normal cd) but imo he suits me perfectly fine. He needs combos and skill like ele but unlike ele he’s not a 100-buttons-class (not needing to change my attunment every 2 seconds really helps).

Really excited to try thief now – see you ingame!

Yes it did.

I wonder how squishy he actually is. I played Ele first and I found him unpleasent for mostly the wrong reasons: Way too complicated controls with soo many buttons, good damage only if might stacking and really low survivability.

So thief on the other hand actually hits hard and has same HP pool but better armor plus more skills to retreat.

Is my fear to die often in dungeons reasonable? I’d love to go d/d and just range battle is senseless imo since that is what Ranger is for.

Hey there!
So I started a thief a while ago … actually before the “nerf”-patch and since I thought him quite squishy (but fun!) I decided to try the Guardian to see if I’d have more fun in the front row playing a tank – and maaaaan was I bored! :O

So it’s quite obvious chaing back to thief and try to live with what I’ve got. I think the thief to be a really acrobatic and mysterious class and I like the way he hides in shadows but that doesn’t mean he’s pure joy to play.

So are there some general tips you guys can give a level 22 thief who is really confused regarding the fact that since the patch changed some important mechanics, some builds you can find on the internat surely don’t exist anymore.
I play mainly D/D (that’s what imo a thief has to use) and I really enjoy the bow – the rest I used from time to time to have some variety but mainly it’s d/d and sb

I already figured out that stealing in combination with a certain trait gives me ini but what else is really important for a PvE-thief?

Oh and if you would help me – which I would really appreciate – please don’t use all those short cuts without explaining what they mean since I wouldn’t know most of them anyways

Uhm doesn’t that just mean the effect lasts for 3 × 2 = 6 seconds?! :O

I laughed so hard ^^ Made my day, OP, hilarious idea.

Yesterday I was in Ascalon with a pure Warrior-Guardian party (with my “kitten-my-ele-let’s-try-a-tank” Guardian) and lol, we rocked so hard and so fast, it was insane. I’ve just played my Ele for the last month if I have played and I couldn’t understand why some people complain that Ele (mainly adressing people who can’t play that fcing difficult to master class) slows everyone down … now I do. I think when I was into my Ele and played him with care I was mediocre or maybe a little better but FCing kitten is ranged combat in this game underwhelming! If you never did: Roll a close-combat-character for a try and do a run solo with close-combat-people! You wanna slap Arenanet in their faces!
“We wanna eliminate classic MMO roles” … nah actually you people made the role dilemma worse xD What you did was just eliminating the usefulness of some professions in favor of a few which are insnaly OP now.

Hm nah seriously, every second random guy running by being Warrior sure means something, right?! :P Even the Arenanet Staff often run around as Warriors …

@Medens
Sure, dmg is fine and HP as well but what bugs me the most is the ability to dish out so freaking well with a range weapon such as the longbow … that’s insane.
For example: Guardian (who is doing fine as well) has to sacrifice range combat for his advantages (scepter can hardly be called “effective”) – Warriors have NO shortcomings. Like mentioned above: Good health, good dmg, good range, good armor …. no downside?! See that’s why some refer to them as op and unbalanced Nothing else.

joffmonk.1285:

if guardian was balanced then we would be as strong as warrior, and we aren’t anywhere close….
but that why i love my guardian, i feel like an underdog in every situation and when i win (which isnt that often ) it feels much better than steamrolling someone with my warrior that is just so easy.

Ehm watcha’ talking about bro? Seriously? Underdog? Look at Engi, that’s what an underdog looks like.
Warriors are only massivly overpowered, that’s all. Guardian is doing excellent. Of course I wouldn’t mind some minor fixes and a second sharp look on already discussed problems but for all I have seen Guardians can pull of some nice work (compared to any other close-to-well-balanced-class).

I have to say ….. I totally agree

Played an Ele befor but found myself in the unhappy position that although I love the skills an Ele got, the lack of PVP-power (in my position as a non-profesional player) and the squishyness which will let you dying in many dungeons regardless of your efforts, I couldn’t warm up with him. If he gets some PVE buffs, I’ll try once more (sooo many keyboard buttons u needa know -__-) but for now I tried to give the next “magic” class a try which I never used: The Guardian (played Mesmer before Ele).

So Guardian feels … “right”. You can kill lots of stuff without being waaay to OP and you’ll die if you don’t pay attention but overall this is a class which really went some thoughts into. I love the “Shouts” and all this blue fire around me

Hey guys (and ele experts)!

I’m a no PVP-Player. If I do PVP, I do WvW in a group since I tend to be really bad at PVP mash-ups (dunno why, doesn’t matter since Ele isn’t the best PVp choice anyway).

So I wonder: How exactly will my 0/0/10/30/30 Staff Ele do in Dungeons and PVE in general after the patch? Yes, I use D/D but only on my own while exploring the world-map and my far bigger concern is about dungeons and instances :O
Any calculations thus far?

Ok so here’s the deal: I played the game since launch and although I have great fun with it I never actually made it to 80 with one particulare character. The graphics are great, characters work well and I even enjoy all the classes I tried and their skills but I miss something: Real excitment. Dungeons are one way to feel a little excited but most of the time I just get killed and fun drops (but that’s not my real complain since most of the time I lack the skill to prevail ;P).
The moments I’m most excited are the times I find some dungeon-like jumping-puzzles or little underground-castle-rooms in which elite-mobs defend some random treasure. …. And that’s the problem:

a) The game lacks sections with underground-hallsways and castle-like-environments to explore. Most of the time you are outdoors in some repeating forest or icy-desert. Don’t get me wrong: It’s more realistic that way and somehow even with those large sections GW2 manages to look unic most of the time but there really is no reason not to create some more exciting indoor-dungeon-like-set-ups … the graphics are already there and do excist and some already excisting sections like the fire-temple etc. show that you already gave some thought in those directions but the November update delivers another coast-map … really?! :-P
How about some smaller maps which play inside buildings just like dungeons but more open-world-like?

b) I’d love to see another system to reward exploring. With the problem mentioned in a) comes another unic aspect: The feeling of getting rewarded. Chests are okay but random stuff isn’t (just doesn’t feel as if looking behind every rock paid off) and although GW2 has many currencies already I’d love to see some unic “exploration-badges” or something which feel more like a unique “treasure” worth finding yourself.

Guild Wars 2 is a great game! Keep up that kitten awesome work of yours guys!)

PS: That secret jumping-puzzle stuff in WvW with the vault needing 2 keys is one of the steps in the best directions I have seen in any MMO to-date! That’s the way to go!!