Guild Wars 2

Pure Soldier’s is one of the worse sets for guardians. You’re not going to do much with that extra 8k HP so shaving a little and allowing yourself more healing power does wonders for a sustain battle, which is the nature of most fights, even amongst glassy to glass cannon folks.

For guardian, make sure to pick up the minor trait selfless daring in the honor line. The heals scale 1 to 1 with healing power, it’s per dodge roll, you can have very high to near perma uptime on vigor…

Jayne.9251:

kerona.3465:

No.

Not your thread.

Fair enough. Good luck to all

don’t listen to kerona.

Kerona, stop being rude. I never knew you were given some divine right to enforce who posted in what thread on the PUBLIC forums.

Jayne.9251:

Teamkiller.4315:

Jayne.9251:

I’ll just leave these here:

Hey you’re TC! What are you doing in these parts?

Oh right, i forgot to say we miss you and FA.

That’s only because you used to be on FA. You’re totally biased. /nod

cough no i absolutely was not in FA for four months after leaving IoJ cough no i’ve been on DB my entire life. Or at least since the game came out. cough cough cough

kerona.3465:

Please leave.

That is the only time I will use the word please.

What words will you use next? Oh the mystery…

Jayne.9251:

I’ll just leave these here:

Hey you’re TC! What are you doing in these parts?

Oh right, i forgot to say we miss you and FA.

Coloxeus.3480:

so this guild is exclusive for thief players only? whats the Guild tag?

I imagine it would be [NRTO] (Naruto with the vowels removed)

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Xirin.8593:

Gellor.6497:

Tricare.2946:

Rhoto.8791:

20v20 is a GvG these days!! yikes. I’ve never been in a guild with 20 peeps online at once.

Anything less and they’re afraid they might actually have to have a little bit more skills at playing their professions.

Smart to talk kitten to [Agg]… Have fun with that

Does [Agg] even lift?

no no no, you’re doing it wrong. The correct way to say it is DOST THOU EVEN HOIST?

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

So for cleric build , I can use either than hounds or tome of courage , the tome can save my life via full heal.

I wouldn’t use hounds…

Also the tome can save your life sure, but…the cast time for the heal is 4 seconds =/

Laii.2780:

Teamkiller.4315:

Also, I’ll be roaming a lot so if you see an [Agg] Guardian in full T3 armor solo or with a few people during the daytime be sure to give me a wave! I’ve been trying to find small scale fights and dueling opportunities but it’s quite a bit harder when A-net engineers T2 vs T3 vs T4 server matchups -_-.

=/

I found one in last week in cultural armor(?), buuht wasn’t much of a fight 1v1 ; ~ ;

That’s not me

Here’s what I look like (I haven’t worn T2 Pauldrons in 3 months!)

Oh and this is a pic of me doing literally 1337 damage on a guard. lululul.

I…what? Any Thief knows that the easiest people to counter are those who do just that. If you swing your sword around I just run through you, and spamming AoE is kind of a waste unless I’m immobilized (I can dodge out of it, then you will just be wasting those AoEs on nothing).

Uh…ok, have you ever tried to land a backstab on someone who was turning spamming autoattack?

You are liable to eat damage in stealth, which is supposed to help you avoid damage, and you have 3-4 seconds to pull off the backstab. Your opponent is turning every which way spamming a cleaving autoattack, which is kinda aoe’ish so it’s kinda difficult to land a clean backstab. So if you attack randomly, you could get frontstabbed. I do this all the time against thieves and they get frontstabs quite often, which means like he said you’re winning. Oh and he’s likely to eat some autoattack damage or waste dodge rolls while trying to pull off the backstab.

Standing in Black Powder is an even worse idea

I do agree that standing in black powder is a bad idea. You need a ranged interrupt.

Those aren’t actual ways to counter stealth! Maybe if the Thief is completely terrible they might work, but against better players they lose most of their effectiveness.

There are…several ways. The more effective ones are more specific. Stealth trap obviously counters stealth really hard. There are also class specific counters, such as rapid fire (longbow rangers are awful vs thieves, admittedly) and volley which follows thieves into stealth (rifle warriors vs thieves also isn’t very…great). A mesmer that summons phantasms for instance and isn’t bad enough to get one shotted would have all his phantasms automatically jump and if lucky instakill the thief at once when he exited stealth, and illusionary duelist would channel his attacks into the enemy thief’s stealth just like volley and rapid fire. Oh I should also mention P/P thief unload does the same thing. Binding blade follows a thief into stealth even if you channel after he stealths. Shield of absorption and updraft can knock a thief out of shadow refuge and give him the much hated revealed debuff. I’m sure there are more, but those are just some I know off the top of my head.

Make no mistake – Thieves are still very, very good at large fights, just not in the ‘I make giant red circles of damage everywhere’ way.

They’re almost pigeonholed into using shortbow and daggerstorm however, for on par effectiveness with other classes. And even then all they do is skirt around the zergs doing aoe, which a staff elementalist can do more damage with (meteor shower melts zergs) and support at the same time.

Honestly the thieves’ greatest asset to zergs i feel is cluster bomb.

Also, I’ll be roaming a lot so if you see an [Agg] Guardian in full T3 armor solo or with a few people during the daytime be sure to give me a wave! I’ve been trying to find small scale fights and dueling opportunities but it’s quite a bit harder when A-net engineers T2 vs T3 vs T4 server matchups -_-.

=/

Also thanks for fighting us at Garrison today Maguuma. We were worried there wouldn’t be enough people on the other side to make it much more than pvdoor but you gave us quite the tussle earlier tonight around garrison in Mag BL. Shoutout to the SBI in EBG earlier today as well!

Slomoshun.6317:

Agg is like the Energizer Bunny, they just keep going and going and going. Glad they’re on my side…

We’re glad to be here too. after all, DB is the best named server. Dragonbrand sounds waaaaaaaay cooler than say, for example, piken square. :P

tl;dr. But i did catch some things like

Thief

(simply cloak + stability and use stomp).

first of all…stability does not ensure a stomp against an elementalist at all. Your down skill 2 is MIST FORM. holy crap. And second, thieves don’t have a source of stability other than daggerstorm, which they cannot stomp you while they’re using. Finally, the ele doesn’t have any CC in downed state, so idk what your point with stability is.

Call it ad hominem, but I don’t see much point in reading the rest of the exposition due to my rather negative perception of the author.

I would recommend 0/0/30/30/10

Honestly high critical chance doesn’t function well without high critical damage, and the 30 critical damage in valor is a fantastic addition to buff up your dps. You can still run good critical chance without any points in radiance. And remember, dead guardians do zero dps (or support for that matter)

Boons are not nerfed in WvW, you get full duration of SY (10 seconds base) and full dodge roll heals (1 to 1 scaling with healing power)

Divinity runes are versatile but expensive as HAAAAAILLL. Soldiers would definitely provide more support, and much needed condition removal. Conditions are far more prevalent coming from players than they are coming from the pve mobs and bosses.

the second build looks like you are trying to do something similar to the healway build. You can try to look up one of the older versions or ask someone who ran it prior to its removal. Chris (the maker) doesn’t share his build any more and obviously doesn’t update it because of that.

I run something pretty similar to what you are trying to accomplish with the first build when I’m roaming.

Norseman.4280:

Thanks guys. Yep the combat log showed exactly 10 pistol whip hits for around 1800 damage per hit. I appreciate the input.

I think there are those situational things with thieves that are just near impossible to counter.

What in the world?

1800 damage per hit requires a very very special set of circumstances. Specifically, this includes but is not limited to both you and thief must have been glassy as my friend’s window I accidentally broke with my wrist one night sophomore year in high school. Oh yes, I like meeting those kinds of thieves, because i can two shot them with even tanky builds.

Against regular builds each pistol whip hit should only be doing around several hundred damage…not even high hundreds (even if you yourself are fully glass). Not to pry but were you running an uplevel?

Also the counter is to bring a stunbreaker then dodge. PW roots the thief and is mediocre damage that is done in a short range small area frontal cone, not to mention to pull it off against any nongodawful opponent the thief has to use haste, and even then they have a very high chance to fail. There’s a good reason why the build is considered unviable. Pistol whip is arguably worse than many autoattacks.

Wrath is for increasing your team’s DPS. You won’t see much dps increase yourself. Although it does boost your base stats by quite an insane amount. Like 1500+ power increase and 40% increase in crit chance.

Courage is for healing and defense

Renewed focus is another “Oh ****” button.

Manually end your tome.

Arganthium.5638:

Indeed, we all particularly loved your suggestions.

Daecollo.9578:

- Increases Pistol Range to 1200.
- Makes Vital Shot a 100% Projectile Finisher.
- Increases Pistol Damage by 10%.
- Makes Vital Shot Fire Faster.
- Lowers all Pistol Skills by 1 initiative.
- Adds 5 seconds of burning to Body Shot.
- Makes Headshot give 10 seconds of 1 stack of confusion.
- Black Powder additionally creates a “Combo Field: Fire.”

Give the guy a break man, he’s not making ridiculous suggestions this time. I agree, pistols do need to hurt. If I see a P/P thief I treat him like I do a glass cannon longbow ranger and warriors in spvp: fodder. They need to at the very least not be a joke of a spec.

Norseman.4280:

My question is, is it usually possible to pistol whip someone 10 times in a row within a second or two? I mean super rapid fire.

If we are talking about activating the skill 10 times in that time, it’s absolutely impossible.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pistol_Whip

It costs 5 initiative, the maximum a thief can get is 15 (it has to be traited), and there is no way he completely restored his initiative twice and then 1/3 of a time during a time frame of a second.

However, like the poster above me said, pistol whip hits multiple times (9x to be exact), and with haste it could very well hit 9x-18x in a second (depending on the amount of pistol whips used).

TRON.1085:

Within seconds they strip you of 6+ boons and give 6+ boons to themselves and there is no counter to it other than DO NOT USE BOONS.

You know, you could try…moving.

I still run triple guardian shout build in wvw against thieves when I roam/duel. Works fine for me. Beaten enough good S/D thieves with it too.

Let me just say we miss this tier.

DB Mag SBI…hopefully it will be over soon enough.

A number of us considered dropping mag below SBI for their QQ on the forums…

Bacon Please.8407:

guardians…on my warrior i destroy them.

WUT

15 character limit

sorrow.2364:

I’ve not said that. I’ve said that is stupid to remotely consider the hypothesis of anet balancing professions based on sympathy. It may happen that something is overnerfed or over buffed, but it rarely happens that something is nerfed when it didn’t need a nerf.

Like Spirit weapons…that change was baffling to say the least. Nerf the worst utility of a profession? -_-

Oh and to OP: I think a little note should be put next to the 4 second revealed “nerf” since that was reverted after all.

Nerf not needed. However…I will say this:

I noticed the only other 80 you have in your screen is ranger. You have a mesmer, a warrior and necro, and with the exception of mesmer, all other classes seem to be quite new to you.

Rangers are…in wvw…widely regarded as one of the worst classes for the game mode, they’re good for sPvP ONLY if you follow one of two general build guidelines: traps and/or beastmaster. So, having a thief, as opposed to having a ranger, and you seem to be the wvw type, might shed some light on why the thief feels “OP”.

SY has a number of uses but…you are correct, you shouldn’t use it in a zerg without additional condi clears.

1) It’s probably our strongest utility in duels (SyG is still probably the strongest overall), because you don’t take any conditions from your allies (yeah, duel!) and you gain all those boons. With something like +100% boon duration you can get prot, retal, fury, swiftness, vigor, regen, etc for 20 seconds off of ONE utility.

2) In zergs however, SY is used typically for instant mass condition clear…on allies. Yes, you will have to run things like lemongrass poultry soup and additional condition clears after taking on all your allies’ conditions.

The only thing you really have to watch out for with SY is taking on lots of bleed stacks, otherwise taking those conditions with LPS shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Yes. HOWEVER

There is an exception, and that is stealth skills that cause damage. If you damage someone while you are in stealth, you will be revealed.

I.e., you cannot double C&D on someone for 6-8s of stealth. You can only do it once, because the second hit will reveal you (damage)

Preventing dmg shouldn’t be an unlimited use tool!
If you make a mistake you should pay for it, no go stealth , rinse and repeat like d/p do…plus..spamming autoattacks?..At what should I spam auto-attack if I need a target to hit are you kidding me?

It’s not. He attacks from stealth, he pays with revealed, if you aren’t good enough to punish him for revealing himself to you, that’s on you.

Then l2notgethitetctetctetc? really?I can dodge only twice and then I need to wait 10s while the d/p thief can spam black powder and HS all day long

I said learn to not get hit in the back with backstab…because otherwise backstab does as much damage as my guardian’s third autoattack.

Arheundel.6451:

The ‘best’ answer given from thieves players so far: ’ just spam aoe in the last spot they were’….-_-, yeah the stealth mechanic in this game is completely broken and hopefully this new trap will give a fighting chance against the so many thieves out there who think to possess real skill..time to learn to dodge my dear thieves!

Well no kitten, Stealth is a defensive mechanic too did you know that? Stealth is supposed to help the thief prevent damage, and their easy access to it is met with a comparatively low health pool.

To be honest, spam aoe is the wrong answer unless you are sure you will hit him. Spam autoattack is the right answer. Don’t blow cooldowns on something you might not hit.

Also, l2notgethitinthebackwithbackstab

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Guardian: tank builds

I assure you

this is not the scariest guardian build out there. In fact, it’s one of the most laughed at builds by other guardians. Tank builds serve very little purpose outside bunkering points in spvp and being a healbot in wvw.

Jorund.6745:

Most roaming classes are thiefs or rangers (but could be others too). So you want to be sure to build a bit for them. Thief has the stealth with the backstab for example. If you time it right you could use Renewed focus to negate the burst from thief. Another trick could be to use a focus instead of shield and pop skill 5 when the burst arrives. Just negate as much as possible. When out of negation: use retaliaton. When he is out of initiative: punish him!

Actually there’s a pretty huge problem with negating their burst with renewed focus; unless they’re the instagib mug C&D BS burst type (which has been heavily nerfed, btw), they can re-burst every few seconds, whereas renewed focus has a pretty huge recharge. the best way to deal with backstab is to just spam your autoattack while moving around and/or whirling wrath while he’s in stealth. He only has 3-4 seconds to backstab you so you may as well punish him for it. He may backstab you for 3-6k depending on what side he backstabs you from (moving around more makes it more likely for him to miss a back backstab, do not under ANY circumstances run in a straight line unless you’re close enough to a keep or tower to escape), but you can return a couple 2k autoattacks and punish him with revealed.

If you’re facing S/D, just exchange autoattacks with him till he’s losing and switches to D/P. At that point, you can safely use boon utilities.

Rangers. If you are dealing with ranged rangers the spirit shield could work very well. But you need to get close to them if you really want to hurt them. Find some kind of leap or heavy CC. Change your scepter for sword so you can jump on them with a blind. And the 3th skill will do damage and avert arrows. Watch out for there pets wich could have some CC on them. Use your SYG with care.

spirit shield has 25% uptime on neutralizing projectiles ONLY. Once it’s gone, you have one utility slot on a 60 second cooldown. A bigger problem is, most rangers have the majority of their damage come not from arrows but in the case of BM rangers their pets, and in the case of trap rangers their traps.

Honestly, the biggest counter to their arrows is simply retaliation. It’s very possible to do more damage to a ranger through retal than he does to you through crossfire or sword auto.

The sigil on your shield isen’t the best at this point if you aren’t getting many kills. Also as a bunker you don’t gonna be killing that much i think. So you’re better of with some lifestealing or something.

Sigil of lifestealing sucks without respectable crit rate.

edit: One extra note: you could invest in more thougness or power/precision or even vitality with your amulets/upgrades. Healing power isen’t the best scaling stat and you
will seldom outheal a profession that is trying to nuke you.

That’s what i thought at first, but healing power is actually very useful. You can sacrifice some toughness if you have enough uptime on protection, and you WILL want to build for damage if you are roaming. There’s no other choice. 30 points in valor will give you 300 toughness and 30 critical damage, I strongly suggest you put 30 points in that line.

Just because I’m not the best player in the world doesn’t also make me the worst, and I should at least have a fighting chance vs many of the mesmers, d/d eles, engineers and bunk rangers…which, ironically, are the ones who can consistently beat me even though others might not. And I wouldn’t even say that all engineers beat me, because for some reason they do not.

1) I never said you were the worst. You brought up Holla and Nova beating you as some form of support for your conclusion that they’re OP. I disagree, I believe it is because they are better than you.

For the record, you HAVE won against them, although not nearly as often as they have won against you. For the record, they have also beaten me more often than I have beaten them. This does not lead me to the conclusion that the classes I play are underpowered, but rather that the players I’m facing are rather spectacular.

I am “A Reliable Goldfish” by the way. I also run Crystl Desrt Invadr (Ranger) and Whai Hello Thar (Thief) in Hammon’s 2v2s.

They aren’t the only players of those professions who can beat me, and I know how little damage I can do to most of them even with crits…and that’s the problem I will continue to have, and other thieves too, no matter what, as long as thief damage is not big enough to really do the job anymore.

You are in a 2v2 room specifically designed for dueling, do you not agree that most of the players who venture in there are quite skilled at what they do, more so than the average gw2 player?

Korsbaek.9803:

as guardian i have seen 6k hits backstaps on me when i have proctation up and im not a GC heck im 3,3k armor and 20k hp, come and say that my 300 or so retaliation on you hurts;)

Why, from another fellow guardian, would you stack PVT and then put yourself in a situation where you get backstabbed in the back by a thief? o_O

Sorry, that kind of guardian build deserves to lose to a thief.

And yes, I can attest to the fact that I can whirl for 4-5 -6kon thieves while they backstab, well more like frontstab because I tend to do an okay job of avoiding backstabs, on me for 3k.

This is post patch, btw.

Edit:6k backstab on a 3.3k armor guardian with protection up. Did not see the bolded. Do you know how circumstantial that is? He has to build up bloodlust stacks, eat damage food, build completely glass, and run utilities that are all offensive. So if he fails, he is dead meat, unless you are a lot worse than him in terms of skill…or unless you run PVT, which you do, which is terrible.

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

Do you guys think there is a rock, paper, and scissor mentality about the classes?

No

There is a rock paper scissor mentality about builds, though. Vitality counters condis, condis counter toughness, toughness counters direct damage, direct damage counters vitality. Well, not so much counter as much as “work better against than the other”.

What would give that away?

Meridian.

I have a good memory.

Which one are you, perhaps novah or holla or one of the others who plays an OP build and says thief is not underpowered when you always kill them easily?

novah and holla kill you easily because they’re better than you? IIRC Holla is the one who killed you without a chestpiece. And he also kills other DD eles without a chestpiece so…yeah maybe you’re just not as good as you may think.

Here, read this interesting article

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

Oh wow

Would you perhaps be the guy known as meridiangreen?

glass cannons can beat bunkers.

If you can’t idk what to tell you other than simply to L2P. Like the more experienced players tell those who complain about thieves, Learn to Play?

This escalated quickly…

Anyways, I dueled a couple thieves yesterday that were quite good. So let me give you my experience.

Thieves typically use two of three weapon sets when roaming, if they focus heavily on direct damage that is. Set 1) D/P. Set 2) S/D. Set 3) Shortbow. The first set does the most damage, the second set steals your boons and gives them weapon skill teleports/stunbreakers, and the third set is their ranged set that doesn’t really have a lot of utility in a guardian fight. If they’re carrying #3, that means once they want to disengage they will, so you will have to kill them within 10 seconds after they switch to D/P or S/D and/or keep them interested while they’re in shortbow.

That’s just ROAMING though, I was fighting under duel rules, which means no disengaging if you’re losing.

So how did I beat them? Well, I still equipped shouts, but here’s the thing, I didn’t use them while he was in SD. What I did, was I exchanged autoattacks with him. I don’t know if it is just my build, but my autoattacks hit him harder than vice versa, so he would have lost an up front slugging match. The only shout I used was SyG, and I used it to stunbreak his dazes and stuns. It doesn’t matter to me if he steals 4 seconds of stability/retaliation. That expires very quickly and he just wasted 4 initiative.

So what do they do? They switch to D/P most of the time. THIS IS WHEN IT IS SAFE TO USE YOUR OTHER SHOUTS.

Also, to a lot of guardians, you underestimate the power of your own autoattacks, I rarely see them used when I fight other guardians. Did you know the autoattack chain on the Greatsword has high dps than whirling wrath? The only reason you would use whirling wrath is for up front burst and/or AOE, I use it when he stealths so he can’t backstab me without taking punishment in return.

Good for me, traps don’t exist in sPvP, I don’t take my thief WvW’ing, my other classes will have a far easier time killing thieves.

Now, does that mean it’s fair? Nope. But it sure does benefit me!

My bet is on Larcenous strike.

To be honest, it’s deserved. It’s bugged so it’s much more powerful than it is supposed to be, at least according to patch notes.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Teamkiller.4315:

He did go back to DD

Sooo does that mean people won’t look at me weird when they see an Usoku on my left, and an Usoku on my right as well? Because I honestly believe DD can still be used effectively, maybe not as great as DP but you catch my drift.

I like DD more than DP as well. DP is more forgiving than DD however, because you do not need to get into melee range to stealth, nor do you need to risk eating tons of damage.

He did go back to DD

Lightsbane.9012:

Teamkiller.4315:

Lightsbane.9012:

Travlane.5948:

horrible idea. you would have to up there total defense about 75% making it just under what a warrior is.

or you could stack vitality and toughness, like everyone else trying to counter this OP broken class.

OP broken class -_-

I would like to hear your reasoning on this?

Also travlane says things just as bad as what you just said so don’t think I’m singling you out. He’s just beyond hope.

because as a bunker engineer i’m still taking 6k backstabs. just how much armor do i need to reduce damage from a thief?

Against a certain guardian build I care not to detail but have had to pleasure of dueling against, I can say that you are likely to take 4-5k mighty blows from him with that amount of armor. Mighty blow recharges every 5 seconds, 4 if 2H weapons are traited (they are in the build) is AOE, is a gap closer, and is 300 range.

I’ve not seen one complaint from people about mighty blow. Why is that?

You would also be able to avoid a backstab by just…running around while the thief’s in stealth. If he’s bad or mediocre, he will backstab you in the front, effectively mitigating half the damage. If he’s good, he’d have a good chance of landing the backstab, but what’s wrong with a good player killing you?

Lightsbane.9012:

Travlane.5948:

horrible idea. you would have to up there total defense about 75% making it just under what a warrior is.

or you could stack vitality and toughness, like everyone else trying to counter this OP broken class.

OP broken class -_-

I would like to hear your reasoning on this?

Also travlane says things just as bad as what you just said so don’t think I’m singling you out. He’s just beyond hope.

Yeah, shouts are easier to use because you can just spam boons. Like I said, the change isn’t all negative for guardians, while it is kind of a “nerf” it does force the mindless boon spammers to step aside for a bit to let some other pioneering builds in, and those who continue to use shouts will have to be situationally aware and not just spam 6 7 8 when they’re off cooldown.

And if you are up for a duel, I’ll meet you in spvp then? My name is “A Reliable Goldfish”.

Setun.4368:

Teamkiller.4315:

1. Why would you use shouts if you were roaming anyways, lol. Spirit weapons, signets, and Meds are all better in solo situations.

I’ll put it in a way a non-guardian might understand. Shouts are to the rest of our utilities what deception skills are to the rest of a thief’s utilities. Similar analogies to other professions: cantrips for eles, elixirs for engineers, etc.

Basically they for the most part outclass our other utilities and can be “traited” to make them even stronger than they already are, compared to our other utilities. I trust you’ve seen our 200% boon duration build that offers permanent retaliation and almost permanent uptime on almost all other boons in the game?

They are, in fact, superior in 1 on 1 situations than spirit weapons and meditations. And they still are, with the exception of fighting S/D thieves, maybe.

Actually cantrips have a closer semblance to meditations than shouts(with the earth cantrip being the only cantrip that’s closer to a shout as it gives boons.) Shouts versus spirit weapons are indeed strong in favor of shouts, but they’re not stronger than meditations. Equal footing perhaps, but not better.

I would challenge any non-leaderboard-ranked meditation guardian to duel my shout guardian and I’d be willing to bet a significant amount of money that my shout guardian would win (or at the very least draw). And I’d be willing to do this in spvp, where shout guardians are nerfed to begin with.

And my analogy was more of “these utilities are just superior”, and that’s why you see shout guardians in far more abundance than medi just like cantrip eles are more common than arcane…not saying the other two can’t work but they tend to fall short of the better utility skills.

1. Why would you use shouts if you were roaming anyways, lol. Spirit weapons, signets, and Meds are all better in solo situations.

I’ll put it in a way a non-guardian might understand. Shouts are to the rest of our utilities what deception skills are to the rest of a thief’s utilities. Similar analogies to other professions: cantrips for eles, elixirs for engineers, etc.

Basically they for the most part outclass our other utilities and can be “traited” to make them even stronger than they already are, compared to our other utilities. I trust you’ve seen our 200% boon duration build that offers permanent retaliation and almost permanent uptime on almost all other boons in the game?

They are, in fact, superior in 1 on 1 situations than spirit weapons and meditations. And they still are, with the exception of fighting S/D thieves, maybe.

2. The consecration that I was really talking about was Sanctuary, as that’s a really good way to control thieves. It’s also extremely annoying. -.-

Except you forgot it’s on a 120 second (96 if traited) cooldown with a cast time of 1.5s (less if you use a differing trait, however). Yes, it is a very good way to control thieves, but you can only control them for an extremely short duration of time compared to the lengthy cooldown associated with it.

You can take it from someone who runs a near full consecration build and uses only 1 shout (stability/retal/stunbreak). The patch has barely affected me because I’m not boon dependent like those other silly guardians and I can dish out immense damage compared to say, the healway build, but I still don’t feel as comfortable against thieves as I do with full shouts, even after the patch.

DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, RUN SHOUTS.

Shouts put you at a disadvantage against sword thieves 1v1 but why wouldn’t you do so otherwise? No other class really counters boon spam.

Even tho this is a nerf to our class, I feel like it’s done some of our guardians a favor, as now shouts isn’t the universal build to go to for both solo and group play. Also don’t use consecrations in a 1v1, bad idea.

Ezeriel.9574:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRcTKt47ixk

11:40 there is a 1 on 1 guardian fight…

13:30 is a 2 guard v. 1 thief

..and then various outnumbered fights with guards after that

…and keep in mind that since this was made, they have given thieves the ability to steal guardian buffs.

You posted a Video by Yishis…I don’t know what point you were trying to prove?

Did you maybe notice in this and his previous videos he also beats thieves in 1vX’s? Yeah, he’s a good player, unlike you, who said you barely know what you were doing, you didn’t steal any boons, and you still slaughtered guardians like they were nothing.

So I challenge you to slaughter me like I was nothing.

And it works. It’s painful how well it works. It just shuts down your damage. Even with a GS, guardian attacks are slow, and Black Powder shot will keep you nearly permanently blinded unless you use Whirling Wrath.

I don’t understand how you expect a guardian to just stand in your black powder. Maybe you’re one of those guys who stands in red circles but I assure you most non-terrible guardians won’t.

Edit: Also Yishis is not the one who came up with the D/P build and is not the first to use it like that. In fact even I used D/P before he started doing it. He only started doing it after the 4 second revealed patch.

Ezeriel.9574:

I’m sure this thread will see a hundred posts from people explaining nothing while telling you how easy it is for them to kill thieves. (no offense, Kronyx^)

You may also get advice like “I just use scepter and altruistic healing” or the standard “guardians do so much self healing thieves are a joke, you must be doing it wrong.”

The fact is, while other classes are spec’ing to kill people guardians spec to run across the map, and then hide being other people.

My newest 80 is a thief, and I am horrible at playing it, but I took the trait to steal boons, because there was nothing else to take…

Long story short I remember that I could steal boons while fighting a guard that had popped Save Yourselves. I stole his retaliation and protection, and it left me feeling sorry for him.

I slaughtered the poor guy without needing to steal any boons, and without even knowing what the hell I was doing.

In recent memory I can only recall one guardian that did enough damage to be a threat, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes.

The 1 on 1 balancing in this game is some of the worst I’ve ever seen, and your chances of beating a thief that off-hands a pistol are non-existent.

You aren’t gonna beat one that used a pistol and off-hands a dagger either.

…you should probably avoid ones using a shortbow too.

TL;DR

1v1 me, we’ll see how your words stack up.

WOOT! Go Guardians! WE win!!!!!!

Caom.9251:

Teamkiller please don’t start on logical fallacies. You have already evoked Ad hominem in your statement while you were addressing me.

Please familiarize yourself with what Ad Hominem is before accusing me of such a thing. As it stands I only made an attack on your character. I never made the attack on your character any of my arguments, hence it is not ad hominem.

Also may I point out I did indeed quote something you said to address your previous point:

That is a complaint? Hardly, it sounds far more like telling travlane that thieves have tools to deal with their low HP compared to warriors with high HP and not many tools to deal with losing it.

You are clearly making it seem as though the thief is superior by playing down the other 2 classes. The thief must also sacrifice stealth to go on the offensive. The revealed debuff lasts for 3-4 seconds of which they must fight fair. A mesmer can use blurred frenzy, a mesmer can proc boons, a mesmer has clones which can double as meat shields.

Also what is the period of time the damage needs to be applied over for it to be considered burst?

Again, not a complaint. It downplays the other two classes in comparison to burst because the thief is clearly better at it, which travlane does not dare admit. That is their purpose, that is their meta. Did I ever say that I think the thief is OP? That burst should be toned down? Did I EVER mention that warrior and mesmer bursts should be buffed? Did I make ANY statements in regards to changing balance?

No.

Never.