Guild Wars 2

Technically, Cluster Bomb has a range of 1200.

1) I’m not entirely sure, it should.

2) It’s random

3) No cooldown, it lasts 3 seconds (That plus Shortbow’s poison field = mass weakness)

4) It scales with healing power, at level 80 the equation is 69 + (0.035 x Healing Power) per initiative used it can be useful to take if you’re using a lot of initiative (For example a D/D Death Blossom build)

5) I’m not entirely sure… It should remove the boons and grant them to yourself and allies like other similarly worded abilities. If it’s not it’s possible it is bugged against those ogres or something.

It would be nice if there was an option to have a more visible display of Boons and Conditions effecting your character.

I was thinking something along the lines of variable options allowing for them to be displayed larger and closer to the middle of the screen since it can be quite important to keep track of what you’re currently affected by and the small icon near the bottom of the screen is a bit away from most action (Also due to it’s small size can cause eye strain due to constant monitoring of multiple boons and their durations)

It could have several settings, determining different things such as:

Size of icon
Visual timer of duration (Similar to the setting to show the timer of ability cooldowns)
Positioning (Current location, near current target portrait, middle of screen (Either side of where your character is with the default camera angle))

Devildoc.6721:

Ele can’t swap weapons.

Attunement swapping counts as a weapon swap when accounting for Sigils that proc on weapon swap.

On Topic:

I don’t get the idea of nerfing AoE because “It’s almost comparable to single target damage”

If you want people to stop using AoE’s on single targets then you’d have to give people the option of using single target abilities… This would mean in most cases lowering or removing the cooldown on them since people often use AoE’s on single targets because their 1 single target ability is on cooldown and the AoE’s do more damage than just spamming #1

Daecollo.9578:

Um… Are you joking? Death Blossom is a condition damage attack, having it do 5% more damage and 5% more critical chance doesn’t matter.

5% more damage is crap for it, yes. 5% crit? That generates more Opportunist procs thus granting more Initiative allowing more Death Blossom to be used allowing more bleeds to be stacked up allowing more condition damage.

Daecollo.9578:

The only attacks that matter for power in dual skills are Flanking Strike and Pistol Whip, which both would benefit from the sword Traits.

Note: I didn’t mention anything about the 5% damage on dual skills trait. Not only because I don’t have much experience in builds that utilise that much investment in Deadly Arts but because I do also believe that particular trait is pretty bad (There are no dual skills that really get anything from it except from Pistol Whip and Unload builds though I can’t remember if they use Deadly Arts).

That said, the 7% crit chance from behind/side and the 5% damage on dual skills aren’t even in the same trait line… Therefore the argument “Who’d take 5% damage on dual skills when you can take 7% crit” falls short.

Daecollo.9578:

Unload? Nobody uses P/P, it needs atleast a 30% base damage increase before anyone uses it.

I’ve seen a few builds that utilize P/P and they use it effectively especially since the pistol damage trait became 10% instead of 5%.

If I recall correctly there’s at least 1 dungeon boss that people tend to use P/P on due to not wanting the AoE from SB and melee being dangerous.

Daecollo.9578:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo_Critical_Chance

Delete this useless trait, nobody is going to use it when it has a 7% critical chance trait right next to it, and no other trait in the game helps “one attack.”

5% crit on dual skills trait and 7% crit from behind traits are not mutually exclusive (I’ve seen a few builds pick both) and serve different purposes.

5% crit on dual skills helps builds that use #3 as their main source of damage (Death Blossom, Unload some Pistol Whip builds) while 7% crit chance from behind/side is not always in effect especially for builds that don’t rely on mostly stealth attacks (So opponents are often facing them)

They are also in different areas, 7% crit from behind is an Adept trait while the 5% crit of dual skills is Master thus they do not compete for a slot (Especially with how many Critical Strike line traits seem to be situational)

On Topic:

It’d be nice to have a trait that helps Sword damage out a bit, though I can’t think off-hand what would be an adequet solution (Quickness proc would be great due to how much damage comes from auto-attacks, but as there’s already a Quickness proc trait…)

So, I wanted to try a Might stacking build that focuses around dodging and such but I’m torn between 2 different builds as I don’t know which one would be the most effective.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYMQNAoYVlYmqvXey9E+5EymiKMn8UQWfV3jryq4KA;T0AZVSqUTpkiqLjXCvs546Smz6jRGTCA

0
20 VI, IX
0
30 II, IX, III
20 V, III

D/D (Sigil of Strength/Sigil of Accuracy) and SB (Sigil of Energy)
2x Monk
2x Water
2x Strength

Bowl of Orrian truffle and meat stew + Tuning Crystal as consumables

Mixture of Rabid and Rampager gear and gems, focusing on using Condition Damage from Caltrops, Death Blossom and Call Owl.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYMQNAsYVlYmaOHdy9E+5Ex2jeqTe6VgsdPuKXlPA;T0A5TSnUPpciqLjXCvs546Smz6jxITCA

0
30 I, X, XI
0
30 II, III, VIII
10 V

S/D (Sigil of Rage/Sigil of Accuracy) and SB (Sigil of Energy)
2x Water
2x Monk
2x Strength

Bowl of Orrian truffle and meat stew + Sharpening Stone as consumables

Mixture of Berserker and Knight gear and gems, focusing on high power/crit/crit damage and leveraging auto attacks (Quickness procs, high mobility and fury uptime)

I’m not sure which one would be best, I’d assume Might favours Condition builds (Due to buffing both Condition Damage and the initial hit when applying the conditions) but Condition Builds tend to suffer from cleansing in PvP/WvW and Bleed caps in PvE (I can easily hit 25 bleeds on my own using Call Owl or a stolen Coral Shard)

But on the flip side, as a condition build, using Death Blossom a lot I will be evading a large portion of attack against me (Death Blossom evades and Dodge evades).

Jrunyon.3012:

So why is this in the thief forum again?

I’m guessing since Thieves will be affected the most by the change to culling that seems to be coming (Less classes complaining about Perma-stealth thieves, possibility for weak aspects of thieves to get attention due to the sea of “Nerf thief” threads dissapearing)

Maybe also due to OP wanting to know what thieves are looking for in the patch…

It shouldn’t.

Since Cripple and Chill affect Movement speed, i.e. how quickly you travel across a distance.

Turning shouldn’t be affected by this (If it is then it’ll also be affected by the 25% movespeed signet and Swiftness which should be easy to test)

Oglaf.1074:

Y’know, standard anti-zombie procedure.

Rule #11: Double Tap.

On topic: I do believe that it would be very annoying to have to burn risen… Though in some cases a 60 second “Respawn” time would actually be about 60 times longer than their actual respawn time…

I’m pretty sure at least one of these topics has been done before, but hopefully a condensed thread consolidating 2 similar topics (I originally intended to only talk about one and realised the second one would be very similar)

Okay the suggestions:

An additional action bar that can contain weapon sets and dye sets that allows them to be swapped easily while out of combat without the hassle of going through the character sheet.

For example:

A Warrior whom uses a Greatsword and a Sword/Shield combo can save a Gun or Longbow as a weapon set and when out of combat can replace their Sword/Shield with a Gun in their weapon set up.

An Elementalist who’s been going around with Dagger/Dagger can easily and quickly swap to a Staff weapon set or a Scepter/Focus that they saved previously.

A Thief is running around using Dagger/Dagger and Shortbow and can quickly and easily swap their D/D setup for a Pistol/Pistol set up.

A nice, quick, one button press to swap their currently equipped weapon set for one they have saved recently. No need to stand around searching for the weapon(s) they want to switch to (Which if doing so in the open world can invite random NPC’s to enter combat and prevent weapon switching)

Also allow the extra action bar (Maybe a second one?) to also allow saving of dye schemes, allowing people with various dyes and such to be able to easily swap between 2+ colour schemes easily without having to take the time to go through every colour panel manually changing it.

frans.8092:

You can not have semi-stealth, it just doesn’t work because being visible, even slightly, is simply being visible.

I think the idea is to essentially copy WoW’s stealth via making a stealthed thief visible to a player that they are close to (Probably also having it also only work if the thief is in front of the target)

The stealthed player is still in stealth and can use stealth skills on targets that can see them, it’ll just make it so that thieves that run up in the face of someone (Also anyone who stealths mid-combat…) will be spotted in stealth.

To be honest, I’ve been playing as if this is the case anyway (Too much time playing stealth classes in other games that use similar mechanics)

Also: This won’t fix anything. Culling will still be a problem as it is now. All it would do is remove Thieves escape tool thus removing some of the reason to have stealth as a defence mechanism…

Tiger Ashante.1792:

I’m ok with buying them and then paying for them to be repaired, just don’t want bags full of them to cover every map i go to because each one uses different set and leaves me little room for anything else.

You do realise that each gathering equipment works on EVERY lower tier stuff as well as the tier it states? Meaning that you only need to carry around the top stuff to be able to gather everything regardless of zone.

Hospis.4607:

In that other game, rogues move slower in stealth and have to spec to move normal speed!

Which other game is that then?

Warhammer, stealth doesn’t affect movement speed.

WoW, Stealth doesn’t affect movement speed for Rogues and they actually gain extra movement speed while stealthed (They move about 10-25% faster than most other classes while stealthed) and for Druids they can Glyph to remove the stealth movement penalty and move 30-55% faster than other classes while stealthed, even when not Glyphed the movement penalty from their Prowl is countered by their movement speed boosts.

As it is, there is an increasing number of games that are giving stealth classes boosts to movement speed while stealthed.

I thought the first guy took ages to beat… Then I read what the abilities did and then the rest dropped like flies.

Skill 1 – Take a drink, dealing damage to yourself.
Skill 2 – Fake a drink, taking no damage.
Skill 3 – Drink some water, healing some health to yourself and the opponent
Skill 4 – Completely pointless
Skill 5 – Deal damage to the enemy, dealing more the less health you have.

So as long as you keep using skill 2 on cooldown and skill 5 as often as possible they go down quite fast (I favoured leaving skill 3 alone until I was low health and was belched at so skill 5 did more damage)

My only concerns is with the lack of “Drunkeness” since sure, you slur a few words in the cutscenes but other than that there’s no real feeling of being drunk (Though as I did it as a Norn, I played it off as being a heavyweight when it comes to drinking)

Theif…Can be tricky to start up but once you get used to it then it becomes decent to solo with.

My thief did the personal story at ~1-2 levels below the recommended level without trouble and for the 20-30 arc ended up finishing the entire thing at level 25 (4 levels below recommended)

Some things I noticed:

At low levels, Signets are amazing (The power one gives like 20ish Power at level 20, which is more than an entire set of Power gear at that level) I ran with 3 Signets until I got Shadow Refuge (Still run 2 Signets + Shadow Refuge (The Movespeed and the Initiative gain ones))

Kiting is your friend, most tricky enemies I dealt with via Death Blossom (D/D #3) to evade their attacks and apply bleed and then kited them around while waiting for initiative to regen.

Later once you have access to some initative regen traits (Critical Strikes 15, Shadow Arts 10, Acrobatics 20) then you can go for a safer way of dealing with things via Cloak and Dagger (Off-hand dagger #5) into Backstab (Dagger main-hand for Power build) or Sneak Attack (Pistol main-hand for Condition build)

Of course you can cheese it with Sword/Pistol using auto-attack and Black Powder which is effective (Except against Dredge) but incredibly boring.

Columba.9730:

Other games seem to do just fine with stealth breaking on damage or on them doing damage.

That’s because they get either:

Insane burst damage to insta-kill anyone and therefore don’t have to worry about people trying to hit them. Which if implemented into this game would cause massive QQ.

Various cooldowns that enable them to take significantly reduced damage for short durations (For example WoW: 50% dodge chance for 20 seconds, up to 50% damage reduction for 20 seconds, immunity to spells for 5 seconds, an ability to regenerate 3% of your maximum health every 3 seconds) which if implemented into this game would probably also cause massive QQ (Since thieves would be harder to kill as they’d be reducing damage dealt to them rather than just not being visible)

Large amounts of crowd control, in order to survive outside of stealth a lot of games make it so the stealth class can keep someone controlled for long periods of time through stuns and various ways of incapacitating which leads to frustrating play of being permanently stunned for the duration of your life. If implemented into this game would cause massive QQ (It’s bad enough when people are getting killed “Without chance to react” because thieves are constantly invisible… Let alone no chance to react due to constant control)

Other games also tend to favour having stealth purely for the opening attack, either not allowing or severely limiting the ability to stealth in combat which often impacts the entire “Trait”-like system by causing the line focused around stealth to become overpowered (If it only affects the first hit then it can cause the first hit to be way to strong) or severely underpowered (Because it only affects the first hit and so there’s no point taking it)

As it stands now, the main reason people are complaining about stealth is not because of stealth (Since it’s easy to counter, just use one of many ways to avoid the attack that causes it or carry on hitting the guy after he stealthed) but because of culling preventing people from being able to see the attack that causes stealth.

If any of the skills should be changed I’d go for #3.

Skills #2 and #4 are about keeping a distance (Though it can be said #2 can be used to prevent distance being created) yet #3 and to a lesser extent #5 prefer close range (#5 does PBAoE damage and Vulnerability on BOTH the jump and the landing, use in close range does it’s damage and effects twice)

1. does seem a bit lacking both in damage and range (Warrior rifle: 1200 range, Ranger Shortbow: 1200 range, Ranger Longbow: 1200 range, Engineer Rifle: 1000 range unless traited…)

I think if they introduced ways of dealing conditions (Not as many as P/P but maybe a bleed on #1, more reliable distance to get the 4 from #3 etc) then damage would increase (Especially if Condition Damage became more effective as a result instead of conditions mostly coming from traits)

I try not to use shortbow due to not particularly liking it but I do use it for WvWvW for the increased mobility (Infiltrator’s Arrow) and the ability to hit on top of walls (Choking Gas for players, Cluster Bomb for inanimate objects)

For dungeons, I guess it would be quite necessary (I’ve not really got to doing them on my Thief…) if only in higher fractals when going into melee would be dangerous, since the only other AoE a Thief has access to is Death Blossom spam (Which can be an okay build, but pretty much relies on DB for most of it’s damage) or S/X using Auto-Attack

As far as maxing out damage with Shortbow, the trick is to get close and spam Cluster Bomb, which at a short range has very little travel time (Can also be detonated mid air for up to 3 stacks of bleed over the area and less travel time) I’m not sure if there needs to be a specific build for it though (I play as DD/PD occasionally swapping to SD/PP)

But if you can stand in melee range then it’s possible to go something like S/P + P/P (Using P/P for bosses that it’s dangerous to be in melee with) and completely ignore Shortbows for PvE.

WvWvW, it may be necessary to use a SB when attacking/defending things, unless it’s possible to get around and picking off some stragglers (Which Thieves tend to do better at with their limited range/AoE and decent burst)

Binary Rain.4869:

9Thief
Only reflection via Dagger Storm. And acess to stealth. Other than that, there is nothing else that thieves can do to mitigate damage in some way.

Technically there’s still Death Blossom, Disabling Shot, Withdraw and Roll for Initiative allowing extra evades that they can use to mitigate damage.

I find that about 90% of elite skills in the game are pretty bad.

Either their effects are just “Meh” at best (Norn Racials or Engineer elites for example) or their cooldowns are so long that it really doesn’t feel like it has much impact at all.

That said, there are some elites that are pretty strong such as Time Warp or Dagger Storm which are quite powerful.

It’d be nice if there was an actual choice between elite skills rather than 1 that sucks slightly less than the others and 1 that happens to be the only one usable underwater…

This could be good.

But they’d have to be optional (For to be able to keep equipment sets looking nice and not being ruined by a glow that happens to be the best for the slot)

Also, would Transmuting allow for selection of particle effects? So for example you transmute something that has Sigil of Earth in with something with Sigil of Fire in and you can pick the stat you want (Bleed/AoE Fire proc) and also what particle effect you want (Fiery glow/rocky effects)

Don’t increase re-spawn times!!

Instead, make it so re-spawning enemies are suppressed in X radius of human players.

Thus not affecting trying to do renown hearts but at the same time preventing the frustrating “Spawn on your face” problem in ALL areas of the game.

Okay I have a few points to make after playing my Thief somewhat (Mostly PvE with some WvW) and reading what other people are mentioning.

Mobility vs Stealth for survivability.

Thieves had good mobility, higher than some classes? Yeah. Higher than all other classes? In bursts yes, over time though not that much (Unless you spend all your initiative not on attacking but on teleporting via IA)

Their mobility comes from:
25% movement speed signet (Same as Elementalist, Ranger and Necromancer with Warrior having a Trait for extra speed and possibility for 100% uptime of Swiftness and Engineers having a trait allowing 100% uptime of Swiftness)

1 Shadowstep on a 50 second cooldown that goes to a ground targeted location as a utility, 2 Shadowsteps to target enemy on 30 second cooldowns that use utility slots and if using Sword they have another Shadowstep to target enemy that costs 3 initiative (Also becomes unusable for a while unless you port back to starting location again) also Steal provides a to target Shadow

1 Utility that allows for rolling away (Evasion and snare removal)

1 Heal that allows for rolling away

1 Ability on Shortbow that allows for an evasive step back (4 initiative cost) and one that allows teleportation (6 initiative cost)

So unless thieves have 5 Utility slots they only have access to up to 3 of the mobility moves that don’t impact their damage (The ones that use initative or don’t provide damaging abilities that are random in what they do and when they should be used) or 4 if you use Sword (Since most of Sword/X damage is from auto-attack)

This is while other classes either have similar or something else instead on weapon skills (Which since they work on cooldowns don’t impact other skills as much if at all)

Whilst stealth is used often (From what I’ve seen, the majority (Technically all Thieves I have seen in WvW and in videos of WvW and sPvP) run with Shadow Refuge as a defensive skill) to not only set up damage (A lot of damage comes from stealth abilities) but to also survive either through disorientation of an enemy or an ability to escape (If doing something like Shadow Refuge > Infiltrator Arrow spam to get away)

Now onto issues I’ve noticed:

P/P being in dire need of an overhaul:

1. auto-attack and stealth ability suggest a Condition build which is contradictory to other skills in the set and due to recast/inability to stealth with the set causes them to be very lackluster
2. is not very effective as the damage is not that great and the duration of the Vulnerability is poor
3. is very initiative hungry as it needs to be spammed to deal damage with the set due to #1 not synergizing with it and the damage not being high enough to warrant not being constantly spammed. Due to this need of spending all initiative on it, other abilities cannot be afforded.
4. is okay, but the fact that #3 uses all available initiative it cannot be used much
5. is problematic due it favouring close range (While the set is or at least should be used as ranged damage) and the lack of any kind of stealthing capabilities from leap/blast finishers and also the limitations of blind on many things in PvE make this skill poor as P/P than kitten P or D/P (Or x/P swapping to D/D or S/D)

Stealing is a core mechanic that provides (In PvE) random skills, which often are not very useful (Such as Stealth when it’s very easy for a lot of sets to stealth up, or Conditions that are only really useful for Condition builds) it also is a one-way trip to a target thus being counter-productive to ranged weapon sets… I often look at my Steal skill being off cooldown but think “What’s the point in me using this?” since unless it’s Traited (Either for Damage or Boons/Initiative) it isn’t very useful the majority of the time.

I’m not a huge fan of the fact that a majority of damage is based off Stealth skills (D/D Direct damage, P/P Condition builds), Auto-attacking (Most S/X builds, D/D direct damage builds in between CnD restealths) or spamming #3 skills (D/D AoE damage, D/D condition builds, P/P direct damage builds)
Which is a shame, since the Initiative mechanic does allow for different skills to be used on the fly depending on initiative remaining, or the status of the target(s) instead it’s just used for the fact that a single skill can be used endlessly (Or because an ability can be used endlessly the its usefulness is reduced)

It almost feels as if the ability to have a choice between 2-3 skills for each slot per weapon would be beneficial (1 for direct damage builds, one for condition builds, one for supportive builds (Some CC, some more Boons/debuffs, maybe more fields?)) though it would cause other classes to complain and would take a lot of work…

Just my 2c…

I could never understand why weapons weren’t dyeable in the first place…

Would be very nice to be able to, since weapons do often have very good designs but rendered unusable with armour sets due to their colour not matching dyes used OR the alternative being having to use dyes on armour to match weapon colours…

At the moment all “Leap” abilities are affected by movement speed and thus are rendered nigh useless when crippled or chilled (I.E. One of the main times having a set distance leap would be wanted)

I can’t quite remember if this was intentional or not (I seem to recall it not being intentional) though if it’s not intentional then it’s a known bug.

Easy thing to do would be to add in an additional hit to Auto-attack for an additional hit that does the same damage as the main hand.

For auto-attacks that use a chain, have every other attack an off-hand attack (Purely visual, no additional damage/affects) possibly having finishers utilizing both weapons.

The only issue I see with this would be Thieves being able to attain both Melee and Ranged auto-attacks (Allowing full melee damage from Dagger or Sword Main-hand and ranged auto-attacks from pistols)

Other than that, it would vastly improve the appearance of dual wielding, thus fixing the only thing that makes me not play dual-wield specs (It does look really awkward to have an off-hand weapon that only gets used occasionally)

Cita.5903:

Instead of seeing the beautiful world in GW2, people are simply spending a couple of copper to teleport from point to point.

Oh… Would you mind telling me how to access Waypoints without having previously walked to them?

I’d love to know as it’d be nice to be able to teleport to waypoints I haven’t been to yet so I can start looking around for Points of Interest, Renown Hearts, Skill Challenges, Vistas and Dynamic Events without the annyoing “Walk through crap tons of mobs” parts of zones…

I’ll quote something I said while playing another game:

“Stop making me look at things darn it, I’ll look at them when I want to, not when you force me to!”

Thought I’d try and come up with some possible abilities of an off-hand sword based off what the reasons for wanting it seem to be:

Zealot’s Offence
Block melee attacks whilst throwing magical projectiles
Damage (10x)
Block duration: 3
Cooldown: 15

Similar to Sword 3, except it blocks melee (Handy for surviving, should “Block” in the same way as Zealot’s Defence to not make it mandatory for any build that picks up the “On block” traits) make the projectiles something like Spirit Swords (1 hand size, not greatswords) spinning horizontally outwards in a line or a cone these should also penetrate targets rather than being stopped by the first thing they hit.

Avenger’s Strike
Perform two powerful off-hand strikes against your foe, provides Might if both of the attacks hit.
Damage (2x)
Might: 3
Cooldown: 10

Something that should do significant damage and provide a damage boost whilst also being quick enough recharge that it can help maintain somewhat of a rotation without needing to resort to auto-attacking as much.

Symbol of Vitality
Pierce the ground with a mystic symbol that damages enemies and provides Vigor to allies.
Duration: 3
Cooldown: 10
Vigor: 1

For a build that focuses on Symbols, currently there are no off-hand weapons that provide a symbol. This would allow a Mace/Sword character have access to 2 short cooldown symbols. The Vigor also would allow for more saftey when in melee range as it would be possible to dodge more frequently.

Avenger’s Flurry
Strike foes infront of you with a flurry of blows.
Damage (15x)
Duration: 2
Range: 300
Cooldown: 15

A combination of Spear 2 and Sword 1 (Third combo) a flurry of attacks that fires off the penetrating swords that the third part of the Sword 1 combo fires off dealing decent damage in a short area infront.

Damage dealt and such would have to be adjusted to be balanced between other items but I’m starting to see a opening for a more selfish and offensive off-hand (Torch almost fills that role but the 5 does infact help allies a lot with the condition removal)

1) Allow Torches to remain drawn permanently (With a toggle or keybind to allow it to be sheathed)

Reasoning – As I’m playing a character that wields a torch, I’m roleplaying as an explorer/adventurer and as such I adore the light effect of having a torch drawn when running around at night and when going through caves and caverns but since the default is for characters to sheathe their weapons after a time of not attacking in order to keep my torch out I have to resort to randomly attacking every so often or keep manually unsheathing every so often.

Having the option to either keep weapons unsheathed or to keep the torch out even when sheathing the main hand weapon would improve immersion and help anyone who would like to roleplay with torches.

2) Asymmetrical item swap

Reasoning – There are many asymmetrical pieces of armour in the game and it would be nice if it was possible to “Flip” them around so if for example I have a single pauldron on my Right shoulder I could flip it around so it’s on my Left shoulder instead.

This would be a good way of enhancing personalisation and allowing various sets to be combined together better (For example: One of my characters is currently wearing a chest piece that is armoured down the left arm but not the right. All asymmetrical shoulder items I can find have the pauldron on the right which would place it on my unarmoured arm and also the arm that doesn’t face the enemy when in a combat stance)

I’m not sure about this…

Sure it looks awesome to be dual wielding swords, but is it necessary?

Focus provides Blind and Regen with it’s 4 (Coupled with the Blind Exposure trait it also provides Vulnerability) and a decent block with it’s 5 (Doesn’t need to be channeled) for support/defence.

Shield provides Protection with it’s 4 and projectile block and AoE heal with it’s 5 allowing for high defence.

Torch (Guardians are one of the three professions that can actually use Torches) provides a multi-target burn that can be thrown for high direct damage on a single target with it’s 4 (Also can be cast at any time, in the middle of other attacks or while stunned/knocked down) and a large cone attack that also removes conditions from allies with it’s 5.

With these as the off-hand options for Guardians they fill in all the roles that are needed: Support, Defence, Single target damage (Can achieve permanent burn with Torch 4) and AoE damage.

What would the off-hand sword bring? More single target damage? More AoE damage? Are any of these necessary especially when the Torch provides them?

1) Perma-stealth is often countered by making the user incapable of surviving out of stealth (Otherwise they’d be ridiculously overpowered)

2) Perma-stealth is often used as a huge front-load of damage (If it’s less likely you’ll stealth up again in combat, how else will Stealth traits and abilities be used?)

3) Perma-stealth needs to have counters such as stealth detection buffs, auras and effects which often lead to the perma-stealth class being completely useless against competent players and removes any escape options available.

4) A combination of these things will change Theif PvP from “Grrr… He keeps stealthing all the time, if only I could randomly attack at him since my skills don’t need a target to be used” into “WTF I just got one shotted randomly be a thief… NERF!” OR “Oh look a Thief attacked me, yay! Free kill”

Just a few things to note about such a drastic change (More and more MMO’s are learning the lesson about perma-stealth and giving it durations allowing it to be more balanced)

Virtue of Determination
Virtue: Increases movement speed
Active: Grants Swiftness to nearby allies

Grants 15% movement speed (Same as the Speed Boosters you can get from Black Lion Chests)
Swiftness for 10 seconds
30 second cooldown

Reasoning – Tired of going so slowly all the time, yet realise having the 25% movement speed other classes can attain for free would be too strong (As they need to use a utility to gain that, except Mesmers whom don’t get a speed boost and Engineers whom with 10 points into Tools can achieve permanent swiftness)

Staff uses a Symbol that is ground targeted and thus can be used at range.

Sword and Greatsword both have gap closers that cause blind which can help to negate knockback (Also large enemies such as champions and bosses have Defiant which severely reduces the effect of crowd control such as knockbacks)

Also just because the trait line has minor traits that affect Symbols, doesn’t mean you have to pick the Spirit Weapon traits or that you have to use Symbols any more than necessary or that you even have to use the Hammer of Wisdom.

Raine Akrune.8416:

It’s part of the game mechanics that swords only offer main hand. I know at least for thief if we could dual wield swords we’d be the best multi-target melee class in game. Imagine hitting 3-6 targets with just your auto attack, yummy.

2 minor flaws here:

1) Both Warriors and Mesmers can Dual Wield Swords (Thus this thread talking about a specific weapon not being wield-able in the off-hand)

2) Auto-attacks are from the main hand weapon only. Off-hand weapons are only used for abilities 4 and 5. The exception is thieves whom have a Dual Wield skill for their 3 that utilizes both main-hand and off-hand weapons.

Also, the fact that swords (Both regular and Great) all cleave on their auto-attacks…

On Topic:
I was unaware that Bolt was main-hand only? It seems strange that it is as I can not think of any other Swords that are main-hand only and the animations from the legendary (That I’ve read on the wiki) suggest that there are no specific “Main hand only” qualities to it (Aside from the reference to the Lightning around your character only when the weapon is drawn and in the main hand)

Seems like a bit of an oversight if it indeed cannot be put in the offhand…

Rin.1046:

In fact, as it stands currently, stacking 25 bleeds and keeping that amount of stacks is not an easy task. Very few builds can achieve it and (as far as I am aware) none of them can maintain that level of stacks for long.

Theives, Engineers and Necro’s can get up to 25 Bleeds with little effort (Heck my Brother showed my his Thief the other day, within seconds he got 25 stacks of bleed on a target and maintained it throughout the fight, whilst my Necro can easily apply large amounts of Bleeds especially on multiple targets and my Engie causes a lot of bleeding through crits)

This is without using any % Bleed Duration/Condition Duration Runes and Sigils (Which are currently in the game) and often it’s done without putting any points into the Trait line that provides Condition Duration.

This means removing the cap, even without adding in new items/traits to add more possible stacks, would allow people to stack higher.

Rin.1046:

I’m still not sure why you would want to hard cap it anyway

From what I can tell by the math, hitting the 25 bleed cap as a condition build does similar damage to direct damage builds.

Maintaining the cap would mean that the introduction of new items wouldn’t or rather shouldn’t change discrepancies between the damage dealt as the cap will stop people from going over a certain amount of damage (If that certain amount of damage happens to be equal to the maximum damage a direct damage build can put out)

Then of course you have to consider: If 25 bleeds currently = A power build and that single players can easily reach and maintain 25 bleeds without building for bleed duration. Then not having a cap would mean that their damage output would skyrocket as they’d be able to build towards 30+ bleeds constantly on their targets (Which would make them the highest damage dealing specs in the game at that point)

NinjaEd.3946:

I imagine it would be extremely difficult to approach this even so, since enough people doing conditions would just facemelt the boss’s health away when combined with strong direct damage.

It would be no different that bringing along Direct Damage builds instead of condition builds.

As it stands now, taking a condition build oftentimes lowers the damage dealt by a group of people by overwriting/being overwritten by other people conditions (Which are often a side effect of Power/Crit builds since so many classes get Bleed on Crit minor traits)

Having Condition builds do the same damage whether they’re in a group or solo would only make bosses get killed the same speed as if you’d replaced them with a Direct Damage build anyway (Who’s damage doesn’t reduce or get reduced by other players, and often gets increased due to higher uptime of boons)

I really think that caps should be per-player basis (1 stack of Poison/Burn and 25 Bleed each)

Since, as shown, Condition damage for a single person (With dramatically reduced initial damage due to lesser amounts of Power and a lot of Condition applying abilities have lower initial damages) doesn’t do huge amounts more than Direct Damage builds (Of course the math in this thread was constant upkeep of 25 stacks of bleed for 8 people vs 1/8 people spamming a single attack per 6 seconds, not accounting for additional attacks, bleeds falling off for split seconds etc)

This also would be a godsend for anyone who uses Burns as well, since it’s possible for a lot of classes to apply large amounts of burning, yet the way it stacks means it’s unreliable for personal damage in an encounter that has multiple people applying Burn.

Having unlimited stacks of bleed on a target and everyone sharing it would mean that those people who can get more than 25 stacks of bleed up would start doing a lot more damage than direct damage builds (Since people can already get 25 stacks without using %Bleed duration effects) so I do thing the individual stacks thing would work out well (Of course Vulnerability should be shared, otherwise a lot of support debuffing will go to waste)

So, just started leveling up a Guardian for no apparent reason…

Made literally several builds that looked okay, but think I’ve settled upon that looks promising (Also is fun using to level at the moment)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRAsf7dlYgqCnGSLEf4EilCAChwUQgw31DKCiYIA;T4A5TSnUPpciqGTNias14qRWzigBBbCmEA

My plan is to stack up high crit/crit damage and using Altruistic Healing (With Empowering Might) and Heal on Crit food to keep survivability up whilst dealing lots of hits with Sword (1 combo finisher hits with 3) and burning from Torch skills using Sceptre/Focus combo when melee range isn’t safe (Sceptre 1 hits fast, Sceptre 2 hits a lot on a short cooldown, Focus 4 will allow for Vulnerability stacks and Regen for allies and such)

Not sure what the healing/damage output will be like at higher levels though… (Lower levels, it feels as though I’m doing more damage than with GS)

An issue with Ranged Combat/Projectiles.

Happens with all projectile using ranged weapons.

It’s a known bug and they’re working on a fix.

Lonzrick.1587:

1: Tab Targeting. Please fix it to target the NEAREST HOSTILE mob, then cycle outward…and hostile from there. I am sure I’m not the only person to be in a mass fight, kill one mob, press Tab—thinking I’ll get the next closest hostile—and instead get a stag, moa, grub, etc., several mobs out that gets added to the fray.

If they decide to do this, I hope they do what other games do and have it so the keybindings has Tab targetting (Which tends to be “Target Next Enemy”) and “Target Next Nearest Enemy” as separate binds (If they don’t already) so as to not affect people who are used to Tab Targetting as it currently is (As awkward as it’s definition of “Next” is, after years of use I’ve grown accustomed of it)

Lonzrick.1587:

7: Preview in the Trading Post! With previews everywhere else, including the chat window, how could anyone there have thought it would be a “good thing” to not have Preview in the marketplace !?

As far as I’m aware the previewing in the Trading Post was accidentally disabled whilst trying to fix some other bugs with Previewing.

Also fixes to allow cross-class previewing (I.E. Previewing armour types that your class can’t wear) and TP previewing again are in the works.

I shelved my Necro due to the Scepter animations (Or lack thereof) which is unfortunate since the only Necro build I liked was a condition build that was relegated to Scepter/X

Ele I’m finding very fun and despite gearing like a glass cannon (So far, still leveling) survivability is very high, what with the ability to swap into Water Attunement for extra healing and high mobility/CC (As D/D or Staff/Scepter respectively)

I’d say go with whatever you find funnest to play, as you can build to make up weaknesses such as squishiness (Through Traits and gear)

I’m personally a big fan of my Female Norn Elementalist.

Animations look good, a balance of fluidity and the power of a Norn.

Vocals are great, including the entering specific attunements and my personal favourite gaining Might (“Might makes me right!”) which happens a lot as an Elementalist.

While it’s a primarily magic based class on a more “Ranger-y” themed race, the fact that it’s possible to wade into the midst of combat with dual daggers brings about the “Hands on” approach to fighting that Norn’s are all about.

Other combinations that would easily fit are:

Ranger
Warrior
Maybe Guardian

That said, having played all classes as Norn (I love Norns) all the voice acting and animations for combat are fine and you could pick what-ever your favourite class is to play (Heck, for some of the more unusual classes you could decide to make up your own Nornish lore about why your Norn defies the stereotypical preconceptions and has decided to train as a Necromancer/Mesmer/Thief/Engineer)

Daecollo.9578:

Why would that kill the point?

You don’t see how all races being able to wear all the racial specific cultural armours would kill the point of them?

I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t like the fact that the Arcana line is so powerful.

I just can’t plan out a build without having 30 points into it because even if I ignore all the traits in it the cooldown reduction on attunement swapping is such a big deal… Not having the reduction severely limits your access to skills (As you will be locked out of an attunement for a full 15 seconds rather than ~9 seconds, which makes a difference, especially as a class that is expected to swap attunements often to access multiple skills)

30 points into healing isn’t as mandatory (Can easily go less if you aren’t worried about conditions) so isn’t a problem.

D/D is also useful due to multiple factors: Mobility (Highest mobility weapon set for getting into and out of combat), Burst (High damage attacks), Speed (Abilities animate quickly and have short cooldowns) which makes it superior to other weapon choices for a lot of things.

My character screen… Is 5 Norn.

Tried making a human, but they look… Strange (Also most human females I see look to be plastered with make-up to a “Hookerish” degree)

Won’t touch no darn tree-elves.

Charr annoy me, both their looks (Which I guess are okay) but also their attitudes, what with being primarily military (I despise most military’s not only because they seem to be quite dim (For example: Most plans are lets kill things. Why? Because kill things that’s why) but being trained for both the Army and the Marines when I had little desire to join the military left me bitter about the whole thing)

I also don’t fancy playing Asura, too much time in WoW made me dislike the “Short” race in MMO’s (Ex-Gnome player…)

Which leaves me with the most awesome race to play, awesome personal stories, awesome questing areas (Aside from some very annoying enemies at low levels (Icebrood Wolves and Ice Balistae)) awesome lore and last but not least awesome looks.

Blueshield.6291:

1: Every other class already has out of combat weapon switching. Unlike in-combat weapon switching, out of combat (OOC) there is no cooldown on switching. The only classes who do not currently have any OOC weapon switching via a UI shortcut are Elementalists and Engineers.

Not true.

Currently no class has OOC weapon swapping (In the sense that is wanted in this thread)

Yes, all multi-weapon using classes get no cooldown on swapping their 2 equipped weapon sets around while out of combat but that is irrelevant to the argument about allowing ALL CLASSES to be able to swap CURRENTLY EQUIPPED weapon sets with a set that is currently in their BAGS.

No class can currently press a single button while out of combat to swap what weapons they currently have equipped.

Examples:

Elementalist has D/D equipped due to doing some solo stuff but wants to swap to their staff – Instead of opening up the character sheet and actively equipping the weapon they often swap to for certain circumstances a simple saved equipment set would allow a quick and easy 1-button-swap between these weapon sets.

Alternatively (If it was introduced for other classes as well (Which it should)):

My Warrior runs around with a Greatsword and Sword/Shield equipped that I can freely swap between outside of combat (No cooldown on weapon swapping) or swap between in combat with a cooldown. Now occasionally I like to change what I have equipped depending on what I’m fighting, maybe I want to have a Rifle and Longbow equipped? Maybe I want an Axe/Mace and Hammer equipped? Instead of opening up my character sheet and manually equipping these weapons it should be possible to save them as weapon sets and quickly and easily change them out with a single/2 button presses.

Perhaps now people can realise what’s being suggested and WHY someone is actually saying that all classes should get it (Me included, my Warrior would love a feature like this FAR more than my Elementalist would, yet my Elementalist would get a large quality of life improvement from it)

Engies and Eles should be able to use a single button to swap between weapon sets out of combat (As it’s along a similar vein as other classes lack of weapon swap cooldown when out of combat)

Also, other classes should also be able to swap weapon sets with a single button while out of combat (Would be very nice for my Warrior whom likes to carry around 4 sets of weapons depending on what needs killing, swapping out my 2 equipped sets nigh constantly)

In short – Bring in equipment sets that allow easy equipment swapping while out of combat.

Kraggy.4169:

I’m now kind of confused, if they don’t do damage why do they bother attacking?

2 reasons:

1) It’s thematic for illusions that look identical to you (Including your name) to be doing what you’re doing thus giving a slight chance that players get confused and can’t tell which one is real.

2) They attack using your 1 ability, which in the case of Sword and Staff can inflict conditions on the target (In the case of staff, they can inflict effects such as Burning and Bleeding which cause damage) – Also I believe there’s a trait that allows them to cause Bleeding if they do a critical hit.

Xavi.6591:

1. It takes forever to get 3 phantasms up

True, but with decreased cooldown on phantasm creation (12 CD for Duelist on this build) it takes a lot less time, weapon swapping can also bring out 2 offensive phantasms quickly and of course having a clone out while building phantasms doesn’t hurt (Especially with Sword MH allowing Vulnerability stacks to build quickly) should mitigate some of the issues with the delay of getting them out.

2. They can die to AoE and other aggro

Hopefully the increased health + range on the phantasms should help prevent AoE from hitting them (I’ve not noticed them getting aggro unless they’re the first ones to be hit or somthing spawns/patrols into them)

3. Only really viable on longer boss fights where the phantasms don’t die quickly

I’ve noticed the Berserker does decent damage in AoE situations even if not out for long (With Fury, Retaliation and 15% increased damage it should boost short term damage output)

This is of course taking into account that Phantasms won’t be the only damage output from such a build, I was contemplating gearing heavily for Power/Crit/Crit Damage to bolster the naturally high damage that comes from GS and MH S.

Which shouldn’t be too different from a Shatter build hopefully (Replacing Burst damage with higher sustained damage)