Guild Wars 2

Here’s how I imagine wvw SHOULD be like

One or two large armies. This will be your main army. They will be comprised mainly of support and heavy AOE classes. They cannot respond to every threat however, and that’s where scouting groups come in.

Scouting groups are your havoc squads, they contain mainly high mobility classes that can do small number of targets damage well. These groups will roam around capping supply camps, sentries, tapping enemy towers and keeps to contest them and baffle the enemy zerg, and in general causing havoc in coordination with allied zerg(s) and scouting the enemy zergs. At no point in time would it be feasible for them to fight these zergs as they would be horribly crushed, but they have their hypermobility to make up for this. They would work to have stragglers leave and pick them off, which thins the zerg’s numbers. Additionally, they will be the “delay” response team. If a zerg attacks a structure, they will be the first to defend and report, buying time and waiting for their allies to arrive.

For the most part, coordinated guild play is like this, so yes, I’m fine with how wvw is at the moment. I don’t welcome hard nerfs to large congregations of players.

I think you overestimate the capability of mesmers and unfairly label them as overpowered.

The gimmicky mind wrack builds suffer from hard cap on critical damage in spvp, confusion has takekitten0% nerf, and retaliation clone mesmers don’t really work any more.

Btw, not a mesmer, I’m a guardian. I get destroyed by mesmers in 1v1 all the time in wvw where they are MUCH more powerful but I don’t blame balance issues. At this point in time I’m willing to say no class is blatantly overpowered and some minor fixes are all that are needed.

Alex Caputo.7863:

It puts classes at a hugeeeee disadvantages. especially rangers since we tend to be super squishy.

The ranger has kinda been forced into only two viable builds for pvp situations. However, trap rangers are reasonably good counters against thieves. If you trait for them, they are pretty large and on very low cooldowns (12, 16, an 20s for the flame/poison/immobilize+bleeding traps), which recharge about as fast as a normal thief’s entire initiative bar (cloak and dagger costs half the initiative bar). Bunker/conditions with sword main hand do quite well against thieves. Extra power if you land an entangle (I don’t remember very clearly but it might proc even if he’s in stealth).

0/10/30/30/0

Traits are

Radiance Line: Signets recharge 20% faster
Valor Line: Remove condition every 10 seconds, 5% of toughness = precision, Altruistic Healing
Honor Line: Symbols are larger OR shouts recharge faster, two handed weapon skills recharge faster, and battle presence

Attack: 2950’ish
Crit chance: 40%
Crit damage: 53%
Armor: 3170
HP: 16405
Healing Power: 300
Condition damage: 100

Weapons

Staff/Gsword

Utilities

Signet of resolve (healing)

Stand your ground (stunbreak)
Wall of reflection (projectile counter)
Shield of Avenger (more projectile counter)

Tome of Wrath (Um…it’s useful!!! Plus I don’t like Tome of Courage)

Mainly what I do is I am heavy heavy offensive support (coupled with some defensive support). The group that I usually run with is either a small camp havoc squad or a zerg busting squad. When I am running with a small squad I will begin the battle with swiftness and empower on all allies, and if there isn’t a zerg killing us I’ll pop tome of wrath almost immediately to do heavy heavy burst damage along with heavy support (trust me, giving that might, quickness, and fury to your neighborhood friendly thief is AMAZING because they do not have to rely on haste, giving up their survivability). I’ll usually then open in the center of the battle with judgment and my buddies will take them down while I spam 2 1 1 from the Tome till it’s up (I pop the quickness again at the end if I can). Staff for healing and more might, swiftness for healing and…swiftness, orb for healing, and then I will either spam staff autoattack everywhere or I will go greatsword for more damage (if I’m running with a small group and we have thieves I will let binding blade tick instead of pulling).

With zergs, it’s a big different. When we stack for might I instead pop my empower 3 seconds before we leave, then I put a symbol of swiftness in front of our zerg. Right before we are about to hit them I pop stand your ground to give stability so we don’t get borked on entry, and then I follow up with all my greatsword skills. Usually 5 2 4. I switch back to staff and empower again, heal with staff 2, and spam the autoattack everywhere. If we are regrouping I put down either one of my projectile counter utilities. If the enemy is running away I put down a line of warding to stop them from escaping and regrouping. (I use it to hold chokes as well, and occasionally if we’re regrouping and they’re hot on us I’ll use it to stall them)

So? Rate this build please!

I was actually considering putting 10 points in virtues instead of radiance so I could trait consecrations. Let me know if this is a good idea or not.

Slender, if you’re trying to argue that stealth ISN’T overpowered maybe you shouldn’t start by saying “Hey I just won a 1v7 but it’s because I played smart”.

Wouldn’t it be more constructive to start by saying “Oh I was fighting this warrior the other day and he was able to kill me by taking advantage of his many crowd control options.”

I’m not entirely sure what the point of saying you won a 1v7 and detailing exactly how it happened helps your point. Instead maybe eat a humble pie and detail how you LOST an Xv1 not how you won this fantastic 1vX.

For example, to someone complaining about my Guardian’s Tome of Wrath in duels.

“OMG he does so much unavoidable damage. How do you avoid ground target abilities, plus all that burning, cripple, and he can pop stability before hand so you can’t interrupt him either. OH AND THAT BOOK GIVES HIM RETALIATION THE ENTIRE TIME + 50% MORE HP SO IF I ATTACK HIM I LOSE HALF MY HP JUST FROM RETALIATION!”

I would start by saying

“Well, you could wear me down with conditions instead of direct damage; this does not proc his retaliation. Additionally the book does not contain any cleanses so I am either forced to eat the conditions or drop it to cleanse. Recently a necromancer turned my retaliation into confusion and put a kittenload of marks on my feet while I was channeling a rooted judgment. He stalemated my elite skill with just his normal weapon skills and eventually wore me down since I had blown a long cooldown for the stability and my 180s cooldown elite.”

or

“High damage low number hit skills counter retaliation, and guardian cannot really use any other utilities on the fly while using his book. Additionally if you can outdamage me in while I have the book active, which really is not too difficult to do, you can engage me. To illustrate this point, a warrior I dueled last Friday simply out damaged me, hitting a 6k eviscerate will only proc a 350 damage retaliation, and and his stun + hundred blades only procs 3k damage in retaliation while dealing 14k easily to me. Most of my health was gone and I cannot heal so I needed to drop the book. All in all I took a devastating 80% of my health in damage while I only dealt about 40% of his health in return. From there I was fighting an uphill battle that I eventually lost”

not

“I use killed two thieves with Tome of Wrath by myself today, but it’s not OP, it’s just situational. They needed to do [x] not [y] to beat me”

Your suggestions could use without the self promotion.

For the record I don’t think stealth is overpowered as it is now. It could use some tweaking but overall it’s OK. I believe thieves SHOULD have the advantage in open 1v1’s given their nature of building to escape, and wvw being open grants them that advantage. sPvP not so much

If the game had been managed by a company who didn’t despise pvp then nobody would have left.

clearly their derision for spvp is reflected in the fact that they spent months and months creating both world vs world and spvp world. yes, indeed. Those meshes, textures, maps, custom ai, and spvp/wvw exclusive structures and maps were created not because they wished for gw2 to have a very prolific player vs player option but because they had a distate for it.

Absolutely, I agree.

What happened in gw1 was systematic dumbing down and neglect which happened to a game which was otherwise an accidental masterpiece.

all I’m hearing is the laments of someone who didn’t get what he wanted.

There’s 5 or 6 years worth of examples I could give, but I don’t need to preach to the proverbial choir or try to explain the beauty of the game to a nerf herder like you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

not interested buddy.

slender.1482:

=
In the end I think it frustrates people when a stealther runs away and the player is left angry with no victory stomp. I think that stealthers are able to crush new and lowbie players ONLY in WvW because of culling (notice how sPvP stealth is much noticeably differant) and really people just need to l2P when it comes to countering stealth. It is a very demanding and punishing ability when used correctly, and unorganized chaos of WvW allows it to greatly excel.

I don’t believe it is just culling. In sPvP things differ in two other ways:

1) Confined space. It’s hard for a thief to run away period because the sPvP maps are more or less pretty small and restrictive, much less running away without running into other enemies. In WvW a thief can keep running…and running…and running…and you won’t catch him unless you’re another thief or a DD ele.

2) sPvP crit damage is capped at about 50% lower than wvw, and there are no food buffs. Additionally it’s impossible to pre-stack bloodlust and difficult to stack a lot of might. Since burst is lower, players have an easier time reacting and learning than if they started out in WvW.

SquirtyMagoo.8321:

Although the RET guy calling out PiNK on their numbers almost made me choke on my coffee… pot calling kettle black etc etc

Think you need to read more carefully friend. I never ever complained about being outnumbered, rather; I was informing people that they often believe they are heavily outnumbered when in fact they are NOT and numbers are more or less even. This goes for all servers.

Nice comeback!

I admit it was really frustrating watching all those enemy rallies at first :P

mbh.8301:

Teamkiller.4315:

Guild wars 2 is definitely better. Don’t let nostalgia glasses cloud your judgment. Hey, I wonder why it is most people who played Gw1 moved to Gw2 when it came out?

Anyways, I agree. sPVP is very fun for me. It’s an excellent place to have fun with friends and to try out new class builds.

8/10 I almost wrote a reply which thought you were being serious about gw2 being better than gw1 in any regard other than potential graphics quality and jumping.

I’m serious.

You think Gw1 is better? Then go and play it with the, oh, maybe 50 out of 50 thousand people still online in Gw1 who feel the same way.

sorrow.2364:

aydenunited.5729:

Defektive.7283:

Ryan.9387:

sPvP is awesome in GW2. The depth of combat and the wide variety of effective strategies is just mind boggling. Anet did an excellent job managing to add such a high skill cap to gw2. I only want the fiery dragon sword to be fixed in the next patch. Apart from that gw2 is the best game I have ever played from a PvP perspective.

Said no one ever.

It honestly is one of the better PvP options for any MMO, and most likely the best from a non-subscription game.

Guild Wars 1. Enough said.
Compared to that game, Guild Wars 2 PvP is a pile of trash. Funny thing is that it is from the same software house.

Guild wars 2 is definitely better. Don’t let nostalgia glasses cloud your judgment. Hey, I wonder why it is most people who played Gw1 moved to Gw2 when it came out?

Anyways, I agree. sPVP is very fun for me. It’s an excellent place to have fun with friends and to try out new class builds.

Yes, many people like to affirm their self worth through boasting on the forums. As in the words of one of my server-mates, “LESS QQ MORE PEW PEW!”

That having been said, good fights today from RISE MEOW and especially WM. Your A-team is really scary, even when we have the good fortune to ambush you and burst down a significant number of your guys you manage to maintain discipline to fall back, regroup, and destroy in just a few seconds.

(I’m talking about your eventually successful siege at Langor’s a few hours ago for those wondering :P)

I think it’s fine.

I think ZD should actually “block” projectiles instead of just absorbing them, but other than that it’s not bad and it succeeds at what it does.

Flashing blade is on a VERY low cooldown, it doesn’t need 900-1200 range (that would be overpowered). And on top of that it applies area blind. Our other utility teleport, judge’s intervention, is on a 40 second cooldown (5 times more), just to put it in perspective.

Sword autoattack is pretty high dps as well, jus sayin.

TheBlueI.3486:

Failcakes.9208:

Not quite health per second but I’m fairly certain that strength in numbers also triggers altruistuc healing.

Strength in Numbers does not give a boon, does it? How often is it applied?

Once every five seconds?

I don’t believe it counts. I know for a fact that battle presence doesn’t. (that triggers once every 3 seconds).

Applying a boon to yourself counts however

I am on the FA server currently and I played against them when I was still in SoR (in January), and I just wanted to say that I have seen them improve a lot and would really vouch for them as a server. It would indeed make T2 much more competitive (it already is between FA and TC but neither of us really can hold a candle to Kain atm).

I disagree

Length of 15

Can we stop chest thumping?

I’ll be honest, defending is far far FAR easier than attacking. Yesterday our RET group tried to take Hills from TC 3-4 times and failed, we were wiped each time by a mix of TC Pugs. Today Tarnished Coast tried to take their Garrison back. We wiped them 3-4 times. Noticing a pattern here? Getting your head big from wiping others like that isn’t exactly healthy.

I notice a lot of people like to say “we were outnumbered 3 or 4 to 1”. It’s actually even rare to see you outnumbered 2 to 1. The only time where you know for certain that you are outnumbered that badly is if you see the outmanned buff and there are no swords on the rest of the map. (people RARELY ever win those). Most times people don’t realize how close the numbers are because the red line “Tarnished Coast Invader [PINK]” is about twice as long as the generic “OP Mesmer [DB]” and people will inflate numbers to make for good stories. I believe most of the good battles I fought where people later remarked “we were outnumbered” on the forums were rather pitched and numbers were not any more than 1.5x the other.

Vargs.6234:

First off, does the sword’s autoattack beat pistol whip for DPS? The windup on that thing is killer.

Secondly, does unload spam with a berserker setup significantly outpace the shortbow in damage against single targets? Logic dictates it should, but I always feel incredibly underwhelmed when I bring out the dual pistols.

Yes, I believe the sword’s autoattack beats pistol whip after the nerf. The utility of the pistol whip of course, is that it has a stun/daze.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unload

That’s 808 damage in 1 3/4 of a second, compared to

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trick_Shot

which will hit around 2 times in the time it takes for you to channel unload. Theoretically Unload should do over twice the dps of the shortbow’s autoattack but remember that trick shot bounces the arrow between foes, so you could get 2 hits on a single target with one trick shot in the right situations (such as bounce arrow between ranger and pet). This would make the dps between the two very close.

Yes, I was suggesting you had an air of illusory superiority. I was just typing what I am observing.

And like I already said, the first few hours of reset are where all maps are queued and more or less all four servers have even numbers everywhere. Population starts tapering off later.

So why was the score relatively EVEN for the first few hours of reset where the numbers are also EVEN, why did SoR pull ahead LATER?

You don’t think it’s more likely SoR started to outnumber their opponents a few hours after reset? Instead you come up with an explanation that contradicts the first four to five hours of scores during the reset that also sounds very arrogant.

Man, I’ve started to notice that people on outmanned servers like to presume they’re more skilled than their opponents when in all likelihood they’re even and just suffering from illusory superiority.

Edit: grammar

kuora.5402:

Teamkiller.4315:

This was OP.

Now, I will be honest and say I see no possible way to do this, unless I switch between worlds. My best bet at this point is waiting for WvW to reset, and getting a different borderland map for my realm. Does this even happen?

This was the response to him

Your answer is simple *(regarding the topic and the usual complaint), and has been said before.
WvW is part of the GW2 world. There are also points of interest in the Heart of The Mists lobby zone. *Either you play the entire game, or you don’t complete the entire game.

Answer doesn’t match question.

Yeah no.

Q: How do I get map completion in WvW

A: Just play the entire game, including WvW.

This is ridiculous

Q: How do you multiply two numbers?

A: Multiplication

Is what you’re suggesting.

Edit: I fell for it! -_-

You got me!

This was OP.

Now, I will be honest and say I see no possible way to do this, unless I switch between worlds. My best bet at this point is waiting for WvW to reset, and getting a different borderland map for my realm. Does this even happen?

This was the response to him

Your answer is simple *(regarding the topic and the usual complaint), and has been said before.
WvW is part of the GW2 world. There are also points of interest in the Heart of The Mists lobby zone. *Either you play the entire game, or you don’t complete the entire game.

Answer doesn’t match question.

Anvil Pants.3426:

Your answer is simple (regarding the topic and the usual complaint), and has been said before.

WvW is part of the GW2 world. There are also points of interest in the Heart of The Mists lobby zone. Either you play the entire game, or you don’t complete the entire game.

I get the feeling you didn’t read the OP. He was asking for how to get map completion, not complaining about PvE’ers having to wvw.

Ross Biddle.2367:

crewthief.8649:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Soseman.2851:

I am a player on the Black Gate server. I am curious if there is any truth to the alliance of Jade Quarry and Sanctum of Rall. If there is and anet ppl are on Jade Quarry then what kind of game are we playing where the ppl involved in game creation are cheating it. Maybe i am wrong and none of this is going on but it would be nice to have a formal explanation.

I’ll clear up your false perception.

An alliance assumes some sort of gathering and official deceleration whereby both parties agree to go to war against some other party.

This cannot be farther from the truth.

Instead JQ is fighting everybody. SoR have a coverage issue, and thus cannot hope to win the week (despite rolling JQ and BG in their fully manned hours). Thus, SoR are what’s known as King Makers. SoR players and guilds (on a per player/guild basis) can decide who they hate more on any given week, pick out which server/guilds have been talking themselves up the most, and then ignore one server while focusing down the other to show them who’s really in charge.

No, there’s no alliance between JQ and SoR. But SoR will destroy you if and when it feels like.

~Fin.

(P.S, If you’re feeling outgunned I’m sure you can hire out some mercenaries from an enemy server. With enough gold you can direct anyone anywhere.)

Out of curiosity, does SoR have fully manned hours during the weekend? Because they aren’t rolling anybody. I find the claim of their NA superiority to be completely overstated.

To the OP…no, there isn’t an alliance, lol.

No they don’t. I live in NZ. I went to bed at 1:30am last night. SoR had pulled to the lead by thousands of points over the course of the day, but by the time I went to bed JQ had caught up, and we were outmanned everywhere but EB. BG were still trailing behind by a few thousand.

Think what you will of their NA superiority. Doesn’t bother me one bit.

member of a t2 server here.

What in the world are you talking about?

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/41/

The highest ppt SoR ever got was 310. During most of the beginning of reset the score was in the 230’s for each server. These are the fully manned times were everyone has a queue on every map. In essence, All three tier one servers performed around equally (You did pull ahead 4-5 hours after reset)

I think you overexaggerate your rolling of other servers. Here’s a helpful link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

“The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.”

Nichole.6192:

Okay, so my server is Sea of Sorrows. We’re currently winning. Do we have to start losing, or does it change when we’re matched against different servers?

If you’re SoS you should be fine.

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/37/

I’m looking at SoS’s potential points and it looks like at several points in the afternoon (website server time) they were floating around 500-600 potential points (to put this in perspective the maximum potential points is 695). That’s easily most of all four maps.

Just log on during that time and it should be easy.

Yes, however it isn’t random.

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups#NA

You should be able to find your server here. The general rules are, first in the tier is green, second is blue, and third is red. This website is also really useful for determining what the projected positions are given the current score. So you could use that to see when you could log on to complete your map.

Alternatively, you could just organize a whole host of PvE players who also need map completion and run around taking keeps and towers. A word of warning: Keeps are very difficult to take it they are defended, SMC is nearly impossible to take with just pugs if the enemy has organized defense (even if you have both gates down). A land assault on Garrison keep is perhaps the hardest in the game. (Actually, an enemy’s EB keep might be more difficult.) In those cases you may want to find your neighborhood friendly organized guild and join forces with them.

-Sincerely, a WvWer

Make a “revealed” debuff occur on someone as they leave stealth through an attack. While revealed said player will be unable to stealth

Oh wait…

In all seriousness culling is the problem, not stealth. If you have ever been in sPVP where there is no culling you’d know what I mean.

Also for a class that is built to escape/hit and run thieves naturally have an advantage in the open field. I see no problem with this.

zidia.3675:

CHIPS.6018:

I do notice an improvement in our EU and NA time. I am not sure if its due to transfers or our crews putting in overtime and skills improvement. If its from our crew, please don’t burnt yourselves out. The fight ahead is long. If its from transfers, allow me to welcome you. I look forward to fighting beside you. ^^

FA pushed real hard over the weekend during those times. We haven’t really gained anyone, just there are less FA out at that time now.

No we did, we got two guilds from SoS.

After my midterms, I was thinking of rolling an Ele. Anyone wanna help me out? Thanks

KensaiZen.3740:

Funnily enough warriors are like scalpals. You can choose soft targets to kill quickly and move onto another. This weakens the enemy team by reducing numbers but leave the rest of the group unscathed.

I think you’re getting thieves and warriors mixed up there brah.

Yes, Guardians are very effective at line breaking a zerg but here’s the thing: they can’t do it alone. We simply dont have the DPS and the AOE that the warrior has at the same time.

I think Rifle is the warrior’s only viable single target weapon, and yet people who use it aren’t gonna be likely to be on the frontline. When we talk about frontline warriors we’re talking about guys with hammers, greatswords, axes, etc.

Earthshaker train is the most common (and deadly effective) zerg breaker I’ve seen so far.

Red Falcon.8257:

Warrior all the way.
Their ability to escape any situation is fundamental, Guardian has no disengages.

This philosophy only applies mostly to roaming battles and not really to ZvZ.

The most successful zergs stick together and do not break at the first sign of danger. Think of it like this. If you have 30 against 30 and suddenly they down say five of your guys and half your guys rout, oh, well then you’re kinda kittened. See not only will those 10 remaining get steamrolled fast, but most people who are running away will also die. (seriously it’s not that difficult to kill a routing enemy in the field) If you all lacked a means of disengaging and instead stuck together; even though you are fighting uphill odds with 25v30 you are still in a much better position than “disengaging”. You will likely lose and die, but in this case you actually have increased your chances of victory by a huuuge amount. (Ignoring the fact that routing is considered losing) simply by not routing and staying disciplined as a group.

Sorry, I have a problem with certain cowards I see running from a fight. It’s very very disheartening to see 3-4 people go down and then the rest of the green dots around you scatter away and the rest of your group gets steamrolled.

Azaruil.3406:

They are an upgrade. You should give it a try.

Uh, I’m good.

Regarding soldier classes Stance + Hammer Warriors and Consecration/Shout + Staff/Hammer Guardians seem to be the norm for zerg breaking.

I know more about Guardians than warriors; in short we have a couple really powerful skills for controlling battle. Wall of reflection/Sanctuary/Line/Ring of Warding/Shield of absorption/Shield of the avenger are actually all things that affect an unlimited number of targets, hence why good Guardians are easily capable of changing the tide of a ZvZ battle.

Wall of reflection/Shield of absorption/Shield of the avenger stops (and in the case of the first, reflects) all projectile based attacks for 10-12s, 4s, and up to 20 seconds respectively. They all have respectable uptimes with the exception of shield of absorption.

Sanctuary/Line of Warding/Ring of Warding can stop a zerg DEAD in its tracks. Yes I know stability gets through it but stability is actually one of the lowest uptime boons in the game and chances are most of their zerg isn’t going to have it at first. Sanctuary has the unique function of both stopping melee AND stopping all projectile attacks. It’s almost a immunity bubble (you can still be hit by large enough aoe melee, non-projectiles like daggerstorm daggers and spatial surge, and ground targeted abilities like lava font and churning earth, but still these abilities are huge for control of a battle)

Guardians unfortunately lack a bit in the dps department and our ranged abilities generally are bad, but we do make a very very significant difference into our teammates, we are a force multiplier in essence on the frontlines.

While I don’t know much about Warriors, I do know that hammer warriors are the highest demanded class+build for many famous zerg breaking guilds. I imagine it has something to do with their hammer f1 being a massive aoe CC on low cooldown.

Azaruil.3406:

Engineer.

Oh is that a warrior/guardian mod? I wasn’t aware warriors or guardians could use pistols, medkits, or elixirs.

…ummm sorry if I’m being rude but if you don’t like to zerg get out of the top four tiers of servers.

While there still are zergs in the lower tiers, they’re not as common and you’re much more likely to find roaming fights.

personally I enjoy large and epic fights

I would say Guardians are better for a sustained offensive on the front line, while warriors are better at making pushes and burst offensives.

Hammer warriors are godly for zerg breaking.

Ideally though you will want both, warriors and guardians complement each others’ abilities well. (Guardian defensive abilities, healing, and support, Warrior higher dps/way higher burst/offensive support).

Add a mesmer and an ele and you have an even better winning frontline combo.

For a ranger

We’re actually kind of limited here:

Forget the longbow. You will die with that. Shortbow is very situational. I would go mostly with the optimal sword/dagger combination. You will have an unbelievable amount of evades and mobility, which is very important while fighting a thief. The sword’s autoattack is not only a short range gap closer but also inflicts cripple. You’ll have two sources of poison as well, which is always good for stopping the thief from healing back to full and resetting. Equip traps and entangle. Bait the thief to trigger your traps, and when he does, entangle him and dump all your condition inflicting weapon skills onto him. Most of the time unless he has Shadowstep and very fast reflexes, he is dead.

Spike trap is very important, as is flame trap. The flame trap will do most of your short term dps while the spike trap will inflict a temporary immobilize forcing the thief to stay inside your pulsing traps. All traps will inflict conditions, which are awesome. Entangle is optional, but it will increase the chances of you instagibbing the thief a lot more.

As for pets, I would generally pick a CC pet. For when the thief is out of stealth, immediately pop f2 and he will either have to stunbreak or eat some of your dps.

Traps when traited have a very low cooldown. For instance the CD on the flame trap is 12s while the CD on the spike trap is 20s (traited). Traiting them makes them all the more powerful, especially since you can ground target them. I however would stack all my traps on the same spot and stand in them just to bait the thief.

(I don’t have this build in wvw, but I have done this in sPVP and have generally been successful combatting thieves, which the exception of condition thieves.)

For Warriors

-Shield Stance isn’t on that long of a cooldown and it very very good at mitigating their instagib burst. Remember to bring a stunbreaker for basilisk venom.

-Thieves themselves don’t often equip a lot of stunbreakers themselves, so if you catch one out of stealth Frenzy + Bullrush + HB generally works to kill them off pretty fast.

-Alternatively you could use shield bash + axe attacks (Axe f1)

-Whirling attack is good for both as an evade from possible stealth attacks (you move a lot with it) so the thief has to catch you again to try a backstab, which wastes his time in stealth, and as something to catch a thief who has just gone into stealth. Whirling attack does a lot of damage, and is on a relatively short cooldown as well. Additionally, the area it covers is fantastic.

-Hammer f1 is amazing. It’s a mass CC. You can follow it up with whatever suits you. You could just use hammer to chain stun him to low health and finish him off with something else, if he’s not packing stunbreakers.

-Just as a precaution, you’ll want to bring endure pain. A lot of thieves won’t realize that you’re effectively immune to their burst for 5 seconds and will keep trying to heartseeker you at low health. Use that time to kill them!

-Also something to note: Rifle 3 follows the thief into stealth as a channeled ability. And yes, it actually has to potential to kill the thief in one go (if you’re both glassy enough, but that’s dangerous against thieves).

I can’t speak for some other classes but among the ones I have played I can offer some constructive advice on how to defeat thieves. Well, the gimmicky backstab ones. I haven’t fought enough condition thieves or sword thieves to offer any advice on how to beat them. (I have a level 80 Guardian and Ranger, and lv 2 Warrior and thief; however I have spent a substantial amount of time in sPVP with the Warrior and the thief)

For a Guardian

- Pop f3 as soon as you can (If you don’t already have aegis or another source of it). If you are quick enough you will block the thief’s Cloak and Dagger. If you are reasonably quick you should at the very least block the next backstab. (Passive aegis should take care of the first attack, which is often steal). Alternatives to f3 are shield of wrath, retreat, or protector’s strike. SoW forces the thief to either waste 3 attacks breaking the shield or risking a lot of damage in return; or it forces him to stay away from melee range for those 4 seconds. Protector’s strike will either block his attack or it will give you protection. Either way it’s good for you. (PS is on a rather short cooldown anyhow)

-Since we are tied with thieves at the lowest base health you will want to keep healing to stay at full health to keep him from getting heartseeker’s <25% health ability. (Heartseeker at <25% health hits as hard as a backstab. You definitely want to be at high health the entire time)

-Thieves don’t have many sources of stability (Daggerstorm) and their teleports either cost a lot of initiative and forces weapon swaps or blows a utility. Hammer 5 is fantastic for this and trapping them. Follow it up with a Hammer 2 for massive AOE damage. Greatsword 5 follows thieves into stealth.

-A note on hammer 5: Judge’s intervention can be activated while channeling another skill without interrupting the channel. You could do a remote ring of warding trap on him. Most people don’t realize what you are doing (most of the times I don’t, even though I use this tactic myself when I want to roll out my noob guardian build) and will dodge backwards once judge’s intervention finishes. They roll into the ring of warding and get knocked down for a second. It’s quite funny.

-Very often after a backstab, if you didn’t take enough damage thieves will spam their autoattack to prime you for their heartseekers. POP RETALIATION. It is easily the best choice against their autoattack. (multi hit comparatively low damage). Retaliation and protection in conjunction is very strong, so this would be a good time to activate both. (Greatsword 4, for instance. The symbol also damages the thief in melee range)

-Pay attention to the flames on the left of your utility bar. It will grow stronger with each attack until your passive f1 procs. If you see it growing stronger, that means you are hitting the thief (your autoattack beginning to chain also indicates you are hitting the thief in stealth). Staff 1 is possibly the best autoattack from the guardians’ weaponsets to spam against a thief in stealth.

- Shield 5 is great for knocking a thief out of shadow refuge.

- Bring a stunbreaker for basilisk venom.

-Tome of wrath is extremely good for killing thieves. Not only does it give you a condition inflicting spammable ground target AOE but it also has a cripple, applies permanent retaliation and gives you 1.5x your normal HP allowing you to facetank all but the most glassy and high damage thieves.

-Daggerstorm projectiles don’t reflect off of wall of reflection. Sorry, that’s the hard truth. Instead, if you’re in a group, pop retaliation. The thief will eat a lot of damage hitting all your allies so many times. Or go up to him and melee him. Don’t worry, daggerstorm doesn’t do much damage on its own, its main damage source through nubs who get their projectiles reflected by it.

Greetings from FA! We would like you back in t2 with us, so don’t get beaten up by DB and Maguuma please

Just kidding, I know you’re doing fine.

Other minor adjustments maybe, such as an increased 1s revealed debuff, or swap death blossom/heartseeker initiative requirements, but breaking stealth on damage would break the thief. (even these minor adjustments should warrant compensation elsewhere, such as an increase in low health damage of heartseeker or 1s longer revealed debuff = stronger sneak attack.)

If you however got rid of the revealed debuff maybe breaking stealth on damage could be viable.

slingblade.1437:

Raven Paradox.1860:

A big reason the temples in Orr are such popular events is because people use their karma to buy the armors and then throw them in the mystic forge to create better exotics… likely ones that have superior runes that can only be obtained via the mystic forge.

I’ve never used the forge, nor done any crafting of any sort. Can I just go buy four pieces of karma exotic armor and toss them in and have a decent chance of getting something that will sell for a decent prices on the TP?

Yes. If you have mystic forge stones from a daily or map completion or something, you can throw that in as well to save yourself 42k karma.

You could also buy lost orrian jewelry boxes, although those have a bit of an unstable return rate. I’ve gotten a couple onyx lodestones tho, so that was nice.

Farsided.5248:

It’s not QQing. It’s a courtesy given by mature players to other mature players.

It’s whining.

I mean, it’s the JP in world vs world. If you don’t want to be attacked then do the jumping puzzles in PvE. There are plenty. Oh, you say you want badges of honor for your gift of battle? Then you better kill me to get those, cause I sure don’t like you PvE’ers who do the JP just for badges to get your Legendaries the easy way.

Why don’t you help your server instead of taking up queue spots. You’ll still get badges, you’ll be doing something new, and you’ll be helping get points. Everyone wins. Except, of course, it takes a little longer to do than the JP, I suppose.

But alas, why should there be any maturity on the internet?

We are telling you guys why we feel pvp should be allowed in a pvp zone, and you call us immature. Yes, absolutely.

Who cares if the jump puzzle awards siege and badges of honor. You are aware that even people who are not interested in PvP or WvW still need those badges for their legendary weapon right?

yes I do. That’s the exact reason i will occasionally camp the JP. You want badges of honor for your gift of battle? Then I’m making sure you actually have to battle to get them. Prepare your silver for repairs.

Basically those that sit and camp the jump puzzle for kills have no skill. None whatsoever. They wait for the opportune moment to jump somebody while the person is merely trying to mind their own business. There’s no other way for these poor people to farm their badges other then to form a small party and take out single players.

oh boy. Here we go again with the ad hominem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

While we’re at it I’ll link some other things fallacies you’ve just made

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization

Personally, I find that funny since Anet has gone to such great lengths to try to make it impossible to offend players in the game by disallowing all sorts of names and banning tons of players for language, yet they leave in little commands like /laugh and put jumping puzzles in WvW areas which the developers knew would do nothing but make players upset.

what an enigma

Copain.1926:

zortek.9607:

My main is not a mesmer (although I have an 80 Mez). I have no problem being the “victim” of Mesmer lurve.

But let’s be clear about one thing: While temporal Temporal Curtain is nice, it is neither the only nor the greatest (read best) “knocker downer” available to defend JP.

• Necros can be devastating in JP
• Warriors can make your life a living hell in JP
• Hunters and Thieves both have exceptional “keep Copain away from the chest” abilities.

And that’s just a sample.

Please, please… think, make friends, and don’t sweat the small stuff.

Except none of those can pull without out Line of Sight (meaning you’re not even safe in areas you should actually be safe in. SUCH AS THE VERY ENTRANCE THAT PUTS YOU HIGH UP WITH LOS), create clones of themselves to keep you in battle, allow their allies to do literally whatever they want to you because they can just port them back, and so on.

Anyone can make the jumping puzzle a pain. Nobody does it as well as the Mesmer. Your team can have ran the entire Jumping puzzle, but if one Mesmer gets to the end area, you literally lose any control of the chest you coulda had. Which isn’t hard considering the plethra of stealth moves they have.

You’re using literally wrong.

And both are false, even if you mean it figuratively. Mesmer portal lasts for a very short time, just CC around the portal so his allies can’t get into the portal before hand. Second, since obviously you dont need LOS to pull them down, bring a friggin mesmer of your own.

As for control of the chest once the mesmer gets to the top…uh…stop the mesmer? Like, you know, kill him or something.

jhuce.2489:

I dont even see it possible for a 5man to beat a 6man…EVER…skill doesnt even play a factor in this because of numbers….

Are you being sarcastic? I really couldn’t tell.

Anyways, your own guild posted a video of 4 guys steamrolling a ton of people, so this statement is patently false. Here’s a link to the video.

GG.

(Also 5 guys can easily beat 6, especially if you have extremely good support. For example they are all melee and mesmers timewarp the warriors inside while the enemies step into the rangers’ traps to engage the warrior, the elementalist healing and providing pbaoe and the guardian booning and providing extra healing, of course this is theorycrafting but you should test it and see for yourself. I suggest actually RUNNING with your guild, cause they do some pretty amazing kitten)

Bunzy.8674:

Teamkiller.4315:

Bunzy.8674:

Some fun I had today in the EB JP

Let me help you with that

First fight was 4v3 (four on our side). You downed our mes almost immediately By the way, in case you were wondering, I was the guardian ruining your day with tome of wrath. All of you got hit by judgment, which is in a word, kinda sad in such a small fight (it’s like getting hit by killshot in a duel)

I will admit, none of the other fights were close to even, we started getting around twice as many people as you, but we weren’t looking for competition really. We just wanted to farm OG before you guys brought in a zerg.

Then we all die and you take our places camping the JP with more people than you have defending maguuma overlook. Could be why you lost all four towers. Just maybe could be that.

I don’t think you were in this fight because we only had 2 people.

I was not, but I was in another fight.

Are you the sylvari DD ele with that mask over his mouth?

Bunzy.8674:

Some fun I had today in the EB JP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUE0txvV528

Let me help you with that

First fight was 4v3 (four on our side). You downed our mes almost immediately By the way, in case you were wondering, I was the guardian ruining your day with tome of wrath. All of you got hit by judgment, which is in a word, kinda sad in such a small fight (it’s like getting hit by killshot in a duel)

I will admit, none of the other fights were close to even, we started getting around twice as many people as you, but we weren’t looking for competition really. We just wanted to farm OG before you guys brought in a zerg.

Then we all die and you take our places camping the JP with more people than you have defending maguuma overlook. Could be why you lost all four towers. Just maybe could be that.

Mike.7320:

Teamkiller.4315:

I’m aware of the things roamers do for their team. I roam myself when I get tired of PvDoor (it gets old fast, trust me). Today about 3 people from my guild later joined by 1 or 2 pugs capped 2 supply camps and a tower and held it for a couple ticks. In addition we were able to ruin the days of around 10-15 people who tried to take their stuff back. (Not all at once, I’m definitely not good enouhg to win a 4v15 unless the 15 are all upleveled really hard).

Dretzina is implying that just because of your TAG and your “infamy” that you are encouraging players to chase you halfway across the map and seriously delay entire zergs from carrying out their plans. In reality this is not true. There will always be players that break off from the zerg to chase roamers, and you are not really different from those roamers.

If I get to close to your tower or keep I WILL break off whether you’re OG or not. If I’ve been chasing for too long I will break off (I usually don’t chase to begin with, since as a consecration guardian I kinda suck at chasing).

Also there was a DB commander from SYN who chased me into my spawn once. It was funny.

Actually, entire zergs chase one OG. RET guild strikes again lol.

This is really interesting, as I actually participated in this attack.

I can see myself from your point of view. Fascinating.

I’m aware of the things roamers do for their team. I roam myself when I get tired of PvDoor (it gets old fast, trust me). Today about 3 people from my guild later joined by 1 or 2 pugs capped 2 supply camps and a tower and held it for a couple ticks. In addition we were able to ruin the days of around 10-15 people who tried to take their stuff back. (Not all at once, I’m definitely not good enouhg to win a 4v15 unless the 15 are all upleveled really hard).

Dretzina is implying that just because of your TAG and your “infamy” that you are encouraging players to chase you halfway across the map and seriously delay entire zergs from carrying out their plans. In reality this is not true. There will always be players that break off from the zerg to chase roamers, and you are not really different from those roamers.

If I get to close to your tower or keep I WILL break off whether you’re OG or not. If I’ve been chasing for too long I will break off (I usually don’t chase to begin with, since as a consecration guardian I kinda suck at chasing).

Also there was a DB commander from SYN who chased me into my spawn once. It was funny.

dreztina.4820:

On a side note, every time I talk about how you other servers are so uncompetitive with equal numbers, people always try to bring up the score and how we aren’t doing anything for it and blah blah blah.

you really AREN’T doing much. Lol. The only thing I’ve seen OG do is roam, and roaming rarely caps towers, keeps, and SMC.

In reality, OG has become infamous to the point where our mere presence on a battlefield contributes to our server hugely. Even a single OG tag is enough to make an entire zerg stop what it is doing and chase in the opposite direction. Just by playing the way we play, we can make ourselves cancel out 5-6x our numbers easily. Also, we always kill more than we lose, even if it’s not as many as we’d like, meaning we’re taking more people out of the fight than our own number.

You overestimate the amount of times that we see OG tags. Yes, we do run after you, and you can be certain that there’ll be a few of us that break off the zerg to chase down one of you, but you also have to realize that we have multiple times your population as well, so in the end you’re not doing much.

And to be honest. I don’t typically see this from Dragonbrand, I typically only see it from FA. Furthermore, I’d like to point out that while you may be helping (you overestimate your contribution, but yes you do contribute) in the field, you are hurting your server by forum warrior’ing and provoking the wrath of the FA zerg.

Have you noticed that you’ve been focused down much more often by us than Dragonbrand has? Even though dragonbrand was outmanned and you weren’t?

So while none of us care about the score (except that we would greatly prefer to lose and drop to t4), you better believe we do more to help our server than a lot of you who actually do care.

You’re pretty arrogant.

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

etrigan.4213:

saiyr.3071:

etrigan.4213:

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

Then keep standing there on sw tower rock and get DS’d down. Or run into static fields. Or get meteor showered to all hell and back…. and a whole laundry list of other things…

And, no, hiding behind server advantages doesn’t impress anyone who realizes what the meta for wvw is all about.

FA has some fine blokes like BT on it who do try to mix up their games. But a lot of you guys are predictable.

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From what I have seen 1/10 FA people are actually up level’d… scoreboard and that excuse is particularly poor argumentation. And we have our own up levels in this match)))))

Lets make it happen bro. Get your ppl and we’ll get ours and we’ll have an open field party.

If you can actually get 10 of our guild into WvW at a time then they might be willing to do it… :P

I was referring to the troll above. But yah sorry bro, wish you guys could field some more people too.

How am I trolling? You guys fly off the handle if anyone is even slightly critical of your skill level. A little less ego pls. We all have stuff to learn, and if you never stop learning you turn into badge providers.

I believe what I said on your forums is I like FA but you guys need to coordinate your open-field strategy, and by the looks of it last night, also need to learn how to properly siege an opponent’s garrison.

If that is trolling I’ll be kitten

What you typed doesn’t sound like constructive criticism at all. I would assume that’s the source of the idea that you’re trolling,

Fights in EB have been fun with Maguuma. the problem is for them to field enough people to make it fun for us they need to pretty much abandon their borderlands.