Guild Wars 2

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Best-Most-efficient-roaming-build/first#post3870963

Swim.6830:

I was thinking of the 5 second non-removable root/stun, in case it wasn’t clear.

It was really clear and I answered you. Its better on paper because the Eles is never ready to burst down the oppenent as soon as the stun apply with the Ice Bow. On the other end 1,5 sec of the basilik venom is enough for me to get you a clean backstab for 8k dmg. And if the thief run full glass, then its a easy 10-13k dmg on you. An ele can do the same with Deep Freeze, but it take longer, so that’s why the stun is longer and can’t be remove.

What is nice with Thief Roaming build is that a lot of possibility exist.

That’s what i’m using right now : http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|8.5g.h2.8.5g.h4.d13.0.d13|5.1g.h2.0.0.0|1p.71m.1p.71m.1g.71m.1p.71m.5g.71m.1p.71m.0.0.0.0.0.0|2s.d13.2s.d13.3s.d17.2s.d13.3s.d17.2s.d13|0.u36c.u46b.a6.0|6f.1|57.5c.5b.5a.0|e

The 0/30/30/10/0 trait are pretty standard for a D/D roaming thief. But there is a lot that you can switch around to fit your gameplay. Some people prefer to have as minimum precision as possible since you already have 100% crit chance on your backstab, but i prefer to do damage not only on my backstab. Other people like to have a blinding power and reduce falling damage.

COMPLETELY disagree with that.

First, there is 3 good conjure weapons. FGS, Ice Bow and Light Hammer. These three all have their strength and are in a really great place right now.

Second, how about the trait that give you an advantage when you are in a particular attunements? I play S/F + LH build and if i can’t be in water when I use my Light Hammer, then I lost 20% damage, making by build far less viable. What about Elemental Attunement? What if i want some swifness while having my ice bow and switching to air will give me a Light Hammer when I want a Ice Bow? Will i need to say kitten it, i can’t switch to another attunement?

Anet should make a pop-ups with the LFG description in BIG in the middle of the screen when someone try to join a LFG. Then ask the question : Did you read and understand the description????

My expectation is that 5% more ppl will read the description. Well its 5% more ppl, i’ll take it.

Word of advice Lankybrit.

You seem a relatively new to the game and seem to be playing alone. With all the new guys in my guild I try to show them how to get a good build and stats combination ASAP, but we also show them how to play, how to earn gold and where is the best place to gear up.

The best for you would be a guild like that, that will show you most of the stuff like that, but if you don’t find one or don’t want to find a guild, then I advice you to take like a soldier armor exotic from Karma or Gold. If you play for a long period of time, you will propably change that armor, but its a great start to gear up while you begin to understand more about the mechanics of the game and all the possibilities for your build and gear.

But for the gear you should aspire to : Beserker Exotic of Beserker Ascended (but only for PvE, for PvP there is no 1 answer.)

Anet patch note are already a disgrace in the MMO community. Don’t get me wrong, i love the game, been playing for 1,5 year and I’ll continue to play. But these patch notes are a joke compare to those of most other MMO out there. They already skip a lot of fixes, changes, nerf, etc And a lot of the stuff that they do put into the patch notes are so vague.

If they keep secret about some of the things that will come into the game, they need to be careful. I have no problem if they don’t wrote about a specific content that is added to the game. Always fun to find a little quest, or a new funny NPC or something like that. But its frustrating when you enter a dungeon path and a Troll jump on you without any warning, that was so bad.

If on paper Deep Freeze seem more powerful than Basilik Venom. Longer Stun duration, shorter Cooldown, also apply chill.

In reality, Basilik is more easy to use, quicker to apply, and when you apply it you are ready to attack.

I’ll give you an exemple. I’m a thief, I approach a target, use my Basilik venom and then steal on him. He’s now stun for 1,5 second, which is enough for me to CnD then Backstab for a 5-8k hit. 45 second later? I’m ready for another round of Stun and hit.

Now i’m a Elementalist. I keep my distance from my target, spawn a Ice Bow, use the skill 5 of him to freeze him. Then what do i do? Drop the bow, use ride lightning, switch attunement then Fire grab? You need to be fast as crazy to be able to pull that off. I could Lighning Flash on my target then use skill 2 of the Ice Bow, maybe drop the bow and then Fire Grab if you’re really quick? So the difference? With Basilik Venom you are ready to hit as soon as the target is stun with a profession famous for its burst down dps in melee. For the Deep Freeze, you are not ready at all to attack, either because of the range or because you don’t have the right weapon ready. Also Deep Freeze is a telegraph attack easy to dodge, while Basilik Venom can come from any attack.

guanlongwucaii.3162:

no, the highest EP build is 0/20/25/25/0. of course, the build is a complete leech and is completely reliant on the rest of the party (eg other eles) to buff yourself, and has some other flaws like having dmg modifiers that are reliant on full endurance. however this is the build you will see the biggest FGS rush ticks on.

but if you’re in a dungeon where you aren’t rushing everything staff 30/20/10/10 probably will do more damage overall.

Ok ya but that don’t seem to be a good build at all. With what weapons will you use that? No might of fury stacking, you will do kitten DPS with the Staff, you won’t have enough charge to use conjure weapons constantly so you are stuck with D/F?

Really? Can you be more lazy when asking for a build? A build for what? PvE, sPvP, WvW? For what kind of gameplay? Will you roam? Follow a Zerg? Speed Clear dungeon? Just casual all around build?

So many ways to counter a thief. You should roll one and see what is the pattern, because there is always one. He have a D/D or D/P, he WILL backstab you. Make him waste his Backstab because they are costly in initiative. The best is when you make him miss his stealth CnD or BP+Heartseeker. That waste initiative like crazy, pushing the thief into his utilities. Check if he have a signet of shadow, if he have he will only have 2 stealth with his utilities, maybe only 1. Prepare to push him out of his Shadow Refuge, that will kitten him off. Denied some of his stealth and he’s gonna be an easy target. And when you can’t? AoE the crap in your back, force the thief to take a beating to backstab you. And keep your burst for the 3-4 second after he backstab you, because you know he won’t be able to stealth right away.

I just couldn’t change my Travelers Runes. Thief strength are stealth and mobility. You need movement speed to get behind these players for a good backstab. A lot of possibility of gear distribution for that kind of build. Just min-max you own stuff depending on what you want to reach and how much you want to pay.

I love eles and I usually defend this profession against those that say it suck. But i can’t defend it in sPvP or Roaming situation. In WvW you can come into contact against a lot of different people when you roam, with a huge disparity in skills. Anybody can roam for a while and then make a video of all his best fight, where he win.

I didn’t roam for a long time with my eles, but for my Thief point of view, Eles are usually my first target (and easiest to down). I can get killed by any good Eles, don’t get me wrong. I miss a dodge at the wrong moment and i get hit my a fire Grab of 10K dmg, and the combat turn dangerously into the ELe side. But a Fire grab have a 45sec cooldown. You have few big attack to evade, but once its done, the ele can only survive until his cooldown return. The only time i get killed by a Ele is when they burst me down quick. The long cooldown is what killing them in small PvP fight.

But still, its a fun profession to play and you can still kill any profession if you are skilled with it. You just start with a small disadvantage.

Gearbox.2748:

Ehm.. you are telling me Mesmers are not good in wvw?. all those portals for golems… sneaky hidden portal makers in keeps to retake castles.?. option to instantly remove all conditions in a large aoe?, time boost?… good defenses with all the clones/phantasms? chaos storms? chaos armor?

and now they are giving a rather annoying GM trait that blocks use of skills for 10 secs further…. on top of what eles have as cooldowns…..

No no. I’m not saying that Mesmer are bad in WvW, but they only have a niche role like a Thief can have in Zerg. The Mesmer can do all the things that you said, which are powerfull, but in a Zerg of 15-20 you won’t bring more than 1, maybe 2 Mesmer. They are far more powerful in roaming than zerging.

LightningBlaze.4913:

The full dps would be something like 30/30/x/x/x/x.

That’s not really a full DPS build for Ele. 30/20/10/10/0 or 25/10/10/25/0 or something like that, but not 30/30/x/x/x.

If he think that stealth finisher are unfair, wait until he figure out stealth + shadowstep finishing lol.

1) Condition (major), Precision, Power : This one is obvious. Condition damage need a pure dps stats combinaison, like direct damage have.
2) Condition (major), Condition Duration, Power : Like the first, it give another option for a full DPS condition build. If the first work best for profession with a lot of condi on crit like Engineer, this one work better for the profession that don’t have that much condition on crit like an ele.
3) Power (major), precision, vitality and Power (major), Precision, toughness. That give good option for those who want to create an hybrid toon. Good DPS with just enough defense to survive if you need to practice or are just casual.
4) Power (major), boons duration, vitality and Power(major), boons duration, toughness : The current boons duration gear is pretty bad since it have no offensive stats at all. That would be a good option for a tanky WvW frontliner that give a lot of boons, like a guardian.

Yep Silver Doubloons are 1.37 Gold right now

GW2 don’t have a kittenty loot system. Its just different that the standard MMO system that people are used to.

In normal MMO you have more loots, but usually you need to split it between the people in your group. Because of that, the loots look nice and you will almost never buy or craft things. You will farm what you need, since its the only option and use what you loot.

In GW2, you receive mostly currency (karma, skillpoint, gold, badge of honor, laurel, etc) You can use these currency to buy what you want, but the normal loots also need to be less good to compensate. (There is some exception like fractal weapons, sunless weapons, etc)

This system have some pros and cons.
Pros : It easier to get what you want, since you don’t rely on RNG that much. I want volcanus? I get the gold and some material and i craft it or buy it. I don’t need to a single dungeon over and over until i can drop it and that i need to roll the dices so i can get it and not the 4 other people with me.
Cons : Loots seem kittenty for a lot of people since they are not use to that. A lot of cool items end up losing their uniqueness. Since you can go strait for the cool item, a lot less people are bad looking gear and more people will have cool looking items faster. Legendary or other cool looking gear now lost a lot of their prestige since you can see them more often. The best way of demonstrate that is the Fractal and Sunless weapons which are still some of the rarest item in the game since you can’t buy them on the TP and you need to focus on a part of the game to obtain it.

Flissy. I’m pretty sure that the Gift of Color’s requirement reduction was already intended before people ask question about it. Since we didn’t had that much information on the issue, there was not that much complain on the forum about that. So I really don’t think they change that after, because of complains.

But true, the silver doubloons situation last for way too long.

I think its fine to have different degree of difficulty for world boss.

Easiest (usually in starting area) : SB, Great Wurm, FE, Maw, etc
Easy : Shatterer, Mk II, Jormag, Fire Shaman, etc
Medium : Karka Queen, Temples, etc
Hard : Teq, Triple Wurm.

I don’t think they should add more of the easiest or modify them to make them harder. But they should make more medium ones, since they seem to be of an ideal difficulty. The easy are too easy and the hard are too hard (at least that’s what you hear from the forum). But not a lot of complain against Karka Queen or the temples.

Kyon.9735:

So what do Eles get in general to compensate for being in the lowest HP and Armor tier especially in PvP? The damage can be justified in PvE because monster AIs are not good enough to learn to dodge but certainly not in PvP.

True. Eles compensate Surviability by high dmg and good support. But that’s only good in group when other profession can take profit of the Eles and help them survive in return.

But in roaming or sPvP, Eles don’t have that much to compensation in their own survivability, mainly because of Cooldowns. Anet gave a bunch of surviability skills to the ele to ’’compensate’’, but they were afraid that with that much skills, an eles will be overpowered, so they gave those skills some long cooldown. But, in the end if you only use a part of these skills, or don’t have the right trait, then you are left with a kittenty personnal surviability in a 1vs1 setting.

Armor of Earth for exemple. Its the same freaking skill as the Guardian’s ‘’Stand your ground’’. It give 1 more second of stability and protection and in compensation, its only work for the eles not the party and have 3 times the cooldown. 1 sec of boons is not the same thing as 3 times the cd.

Kyon.9735:

Thaddeus.4891:

Every profession have his pro and con.

Elementalist are already at the top of the profession in dungeon and are essential part of a Zerg. So i think its ok if they are at the bottom of the food chain in roaming/spvp.

This is completely wrong. IIRC anet stated as their goal is that any class should be able to spec into any build and still be on par with other similar builds of other classes.

The best example would be warriors. Warriors can spec to be bunkers, support, DPS, or Condi.

Its not because its their goal, that its the reality. Necro are bad in PvE, but good in WvW or sPvP. Ele are good in dungeon and WvW, but not that good in sPvP. Mesmer are good in sPvP or Dungeon, but not that good in Zerg. I’m just saying that i can live with that because i play different profession in different role.

If your numbers are good.

With or without fury, the best DPS is Build 2, followed by Build 1, then Build 3.

With 25 stack of bloodlust, or with Might, or with both, its Build 2, followed by Build 3, then Build 1

With 25 stack of perception, its Build 2, followed by Build 1, followed by build 3.

So i guess that i would take build 2. But if you really want the defence that the build 3 can give you, you can min-max your stuff (from sigil, boons, buff, etc) to minimize your DPS lost.

LordByron.8369:

Actually despite what people says, meteor shower is far less effective than necro’s aoes that lasts forever and have faster cast…

Its really hard with good commanders to land a meteor shower in the proper spot since zerg are dynamic and they never run straigt.

Its awesome for tagging and it deals lot of damage but its hard to land and soon really easy to avoid (see red circle incoming).

True. Necro are better for constant DPS. Especially since Ele also have other responsability (static field for switfness, static field for stun, water field, etc) But Meteor Shower is a great burst DPS. Its hard to use correctly, but when you get it right, its devastating. The best is on choke point like at a gate, when the ele can start to cast it just before the zerg come in so they don’t really have any time to react. Even when it don’t hit that much, Meteor shower is great to force a ennemy zerg to spread. When the ennemy commander call that a meteor shower is on them, usually a couple of his follower spread not in the same direction as the commander, these player are easier to target after. Like i said earlier, its also great to cast on yourself while using your our zerg as bait to lure the ennemy directly in the AoE. Especially good against enemy zerg with a bigger melee train.

Thesiuss.2679:

Thaddeus.4891:

Every profession have his pro and con.

Elementalist are already at the top of the profession in dungeon and are essential part of a Zerg. So i think its ok if they are at the bottom of the food chain in roaming/spvp.

You have no evidence to support your statement. Looking at the LFG post in-game will tell a completely different story. Most that ask for specific classes will ask for warriors, guardians and occasional mesmers. Sometimes for groups running AC they will ask for an ele specifically to use the ice bow on the burrows and that’s it.

Already a lot of post about that. Pugs want Warrior, Guardian and Mesmer because they are 1 year late on the meta. They also prefer heavies only because they are easier to play. Most good group of dungeon player will use a wider scope of profession and Elementalist is on top of the list. I don’t really give a crap about LFG posting, usually because the worst post don’t get full right away and accumulate more than the other (so you see more heavies only, or 5k AP post)

Thesiuss.2679:

For the most part, the potential damage classes can do is near par and eles are asked to be on groups for damage, warriors are and they can tank the punisherment on top.

Warrior can reach their top DPS wihtout much problem. Ele most of the time do less dmg because its hard to get high DPS with them. But an good Ele player can make a lot more DPS than an warrior. And what you talking about tank the punishment is only breathing room for me. Ya its easier to survive on a Warrior but i’ll do less DPS with my warrior.

Thesiuss.2679:

And the only reason eles are useful to zergs is because of the water fields and not it’s damage. And at that you only need just a few eles to provide water fields for the entire zerg the rest are just there for the added dps which every class is contributing too. If a commander could choose to have all warriors, guardians, with 2 eles for water fields and a mesmer or two for cloak/portal, they most likely would.

Are you a commander? I’m talking about a organized guild zerg commander. Because you don’t seem to be. If you have only warrior and guardian with 2 eles you gonna be range to death. You gonna have a good melee train, that for sure, but that’s the easier trick in the book to counter. You need a good balance of melee train and range pressure if you want to win. With that kind of support you have no peripheral pressure, either you eles will be killed early in the game or you melee train will have to protect their ele in priority, and not doing their jobs. If you melee train is fast enough to reach the other melee train and outmanned them, then the ennemy Necro will put wells and Eles will put Meteor Shower directly on their own melee train as a trap, by the time your melee train get out, there is no eles for water field and they become an easy target. So ya guardian, warrior, 2 eles and 1 mesmer is only good against pugs groups, so not that good of a commander if he choose that composition. And if you think that an Ele Meteor shower is just some added DPS like the rest, you never had your melee train partially wipe by a single Zerker Elementalist’s Meteor shower/Tornado at the right place.

Does the Eles need to be buff for Roaming and sPvP? I believe that yes. But Eles are at a really great place in WvW and in Dungeon right now. And if you don’t see that or complain that they can’t do good damage, then you obviously just don’t know how to make good DPS with a Eles, because right now they are one of the profession with the highest DPS. Its just hard as hell to reach that DPS, so most people think that their Ele do kitten dps.

I’m not a RPers but i see the problem.

Yes most TC or PS will continue to play together, but the amount of outsider will become a lot higher. This fact in itself is not a problem, but RP are easy target for Troll and people that don’t really understand what RP is about. These people are in the game to have fun, not to be harass by some stupid kids. Right now, even non RPers in these server know where they are and what they should except to see, while most people that guest on these server do it to be part of that, or at least to view how its done. I guested myself a couple time there just see, and you guys are great, I had some really great moment.

But with the megaserver, there will be a lot of people not from their community, playing at the same place. Since RP is not that common, they may be more friction than usual in TC or PS. RPers don’t need or want that, and I can understand that.

I’m really excited about that change. Maps will be a lot more populated as players are more concentrate together and not spread across 20-30 copy of the same maps. Of course there is several points that need to be approach carefully. These can be problem, but i’m pretty sure that Anet will come up with solutions for most of these.

1) World Bosses. Maybe a fix timer for the pre events? This may be harder for some event like the Golem Mk 2, since the event change depending on the outcome of the last pre event. They need to come up with a way for people to find which World Boss is about to spawn. Since each copy of the maps won’t be named (at least it seem), the current system won’t work well at all.
2) Guild Mission. I’m worry about that one. Right now, on Crystal Desert you can run into another guild that do the same guild mission at the same time. For some of these missions its really nice since you can help them complete it and everybody will have the reward. For other, (like the southcove challenge), the other guild can screw up your mission. For other, you need to wait 15min so they can finish their mission before you can start your. Overall, something you can want to be between guildmate with nobody joining the activity (some mission can become trivial and way too easy if a big guild join you, sucking the fun out of it). If this can happen now, imagine with most maps full of people. What if 3 guild do the same event at the same time and 100 people storm a challenge in a couple of minutes, ruining it for everybody. What if suddenly there is 4 guild waiting in line to do a guild puzzle? The good side is that small guild, will have more chance to run into another guild at the mission to help them. I’m sure a lot of solution can be made to correct the problem. Just hope anet saw this problem coming.
3) A sense of community? I’m playing with my guildmate and friend mainly, but after 1,5 year i know a lot of people in my server (either I chat with them, or only by name). A lot of commander are known in WvW and PvE, commanders that run Champion Train, World Event Train, etc. There is a sense of proud about your server and of community with the people that populated it. This sense will partially disappear. First we will have to see if their system work well (to make people play more with the same people), but no more discussion at the vigil keep about the situation of my server, no more Viva Crystal Desert in a random map, no more sense of a community.

I really believe that the advantage of a Megaserver will be greater than the disadvantage, but i’m sure the list of things that need to be addressed by anet is longer than mine. We’ll see some of their solution in the next two post.

pupi.2465:

3 more about facilitating friendly play…. guess what??

1- Improvemnts to LFG tool (no more beta)

2- You can transfer for a cheaper price to realm where your friends are

3- “Invite a Friend to GW2” by making him buy the game, and receiving a mini pet/whatever iten.

In other words, not a really Feature we were waiting.

Probably not. The Improvements to LFG tool was already announced on march 26th.

Transfer to a cheaper price to a realm where your friends are?? That would be so stupid. You just have to find someone in the realm you want to transfer too and make friend with him so you can transfer to a lesser price.

That’s how I use them. Not necessarily the best way for you, but there it is.

Laurel : I use them to buy Amulet, WvW Infusion and bags of tier 6.
Karma : I use them all to buy obsidian shard (ascended crafting or legendary)
BoH : I use them to buy Gift of Battle (for legendary) and for WvW Siege.

- I have already most of my amulet i need, so now i keep 40 laurels just in case and all the remaining go into bags for Tier 6.
- For Karma, i buy obsidian shard when i need them, don’t use karma on anything else, except some special things that cost almost nothing (spy kits, cooking crafting material, etc).
- For BoH I keep them, use them only when i have a daily spender or when I have no more siege.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Thief is not glassy, thief has medium armor and more base health plus stealth. Elementalist has light armor, lowest base health and no survivability mechanic.
Also don’t have any blocking skills, just a few high CD invuln spells.

Eh, Thief don’t have more base hp as the Ele. They have Exactly the same amount, just saying.

Also Elementalist have 1 Blocking skills (arcane shield). The profession that have not blocking skill is Necro. The Ele invulnerable spells are in part with most of these kind of skill of all profession. Most profession have 2-4sec invulnerability on a 60sec CD. The ele have two 3-4sec skill on a 50-75sec CD.

Every profession have his pro and con.

Elementalist are already at the top of the profession in dungeon and are essential part of a Zerg. So i think its ok if they are at the bottom of the food chain in roaming/spvp.

Zepidel.5349:

why not? that group comp has everything you would ever need, and the highest dps output to boot.

Ya that group bring pretty much everything you good need as skills and have a decent dps. But not the highest dps that is so not true.

Guardian and Mesmer bring utilities at the expend of DPS.
Warrior DPS is good, but not the best, he mainly bring offensive buffs.
Thief and Ele are the best pure DPS of the game, but you only bring 1 Ele. What would be the best DPS composition? The more Ele and Thief you can, while sacrificing the less possible buffs. It would be a hard job to create the best possible composition possible. You would need to make sure that you max Might and fury (2 Ele and 1 Warrior can do that), have all banners and Empower (1 Warrior can do that), have 25 Stack of Vulnerability (a bit trickier and depend on the build of everybody).

When maxing the DPS of a group, its not a simple task and you’ll have several possible answer with not real 100% sure way to decide which one is better.

Flytrap.8075:

Schizo.1375:

How about…
Edge of the Mist map
Aetherblade dungeon path
Southsun map
New FOTM maps
New Ascended gear
Guild Missions
Any number of activities
New Jungle Wurm

EotM had potential but the fact that it doesn’t contribute to WvW means that it’ll remain barren.

The fractal updates are a start in the right direction, but I honestly don’t PvE that often so I can’t really comment.

Ascended gear? You’re kidding, right? Exotics were supposed to be the be-all-end-all and then they decided to create yet another time and gold sink as if their game wasn’t grindy enough already. This is not content.

Guild missions are nice, but it’d be even better if small to medium guilds could actually participate.

I’m not even going to touch on the Jungle Wurm because the last thing we need is more world bosses.

I’d like to see some updates that actually add some depth to this game. New utility skills please and some new elite skills; three per profession is far too few. Or how about some new weapon sets for each class? Or, you know, considering that this is Guild Wars 2, I’d love to see some actual GvG functionality implemented.

Its not because you don’t like that content that its not content.

Edge of the Mist map : I’m not a fan, but i tried it a couple time and i play more and more on that map. Its different from WvW and its a good thing.
New FOTM maps : Since i PvE player, its was nice to have new maps in there.
New Ascended gear : Agree that this is not content. I would be happy with all exotic to be honest.
Guild Missions : That would be nice if two small guild could make an alliance to complete these missions. Anyway, that pushed us to grow a bit more as a guild and to integrate more people into our little group and now we have a healthy medium size guild that do all guild mission each week with 12-18 ppl each time.
New Jungle Wurm : I passed 2 weeks with TTS to get him down the first time. It was freaking awesome. I would like more content like that, but they also need to balance between these Mega World boss that need much more coordination and normal world boss that can be done on a regular basis by pugs groups.

Dalanor.5387:

Zepidel.5349:

You cant design better encounters with the current skill/trait/stat system.

Honestly, that’s not true again.

The best group makeup for challenging content is always going to be 1 ele 2 war 1 guard 1 mes all running full zerker (might stacking / banners / aegis and reflect / Timewarp condition removal and reflect)

Neither this.

I agree that both these statements are completely untrue.

1 Ele, 2 Warr, 1 Guardian and 1 Mesmer is not even a good group to begin with. There is not even a consensus on a best composition for a specific dungeon path, so suggest that there is a best composition for everything is not only bold, but totally untrue. Why a guardian in CoF if you talk about best composition? That make no sense.

These are the dungeon i try to do most days.
AC path 1 and 3 : The path 2 is quick too, but it can be a pain if your group is not decent enough.
CoF path 1 and 2 : I’m already at fireheart rise for the path 1, i’ll also do the path 2. It can be a pain when defending magg with a bad group, but it happen less and less. You can stick to path 1 if you are alone and pug 4 ppl.
CoE all path : Usually you can get good pugs there. A lot of people with good dps do these path, they are quick and give you the best loots.

With pugs you can do all that in 2 hours. With my guild it took us about 1.5 hours.

During the weekend i add,
CM path 1 and 3
TA foward and up
SE path 1 and 3

On the weekend, all this can take about 4 hours with pugs, 3 hours with your guild.

And sometimes we do Arah path 3 when people want to.

Yoroiookami.3485:

Those are actually some good points. The only point I disagree with is
“… and stop complaining.”
Neverrrrr.

I definitely don’t dislike the berserker for the reasons you pointed out. It’s mostly that this game REWARDS going berserker more than anything else. This guy did waste over 30 mins to kill that spider queen, even though it was extremely ‘noobish’. I just think that teamwork in this game should be rewarded no matter what. I don’t see much teamwork in running 5 zerkers, except, that maybe – you respect other people’s time more. Thanks for showing me your point of view.

Actually, but that only my opinion, since my guild and I start running all zerker, we do much more teamwork. Like A LOT MORE.

When we use to play on our hybrid build, we were all pretty independant from each other. But with our group now, its all about teamwork. For a few example.

When we run full zerker, we usually have 2 warriors and 2 eles. We always talk to each other in mumble to time our interrupt. 2 Warrior with mace 5 and 1 LH ele with the skill 4. That 3 interrupt that we use at their best when you do the golem in CoE for example. We never did that before, because the golem don,t hit hard. But this golem can wipe most of us if we don’t pay attention. So we use our interrupt to stop his bigs attack, but that take coordination. We developed role. Who gonna agro the boss, who gonna push it on the wall, who gonna use his FGS at which boss? When i bring my guardian to Arah i have a huge job to do to make the lives of my teammate easier. I need to time my aegis, block and everything or they gonna die. Even after 1 year in GW2 during which i played full DPS character, when i started to do full DPS run (outside of Cof Path 1) we understood quickly that we had to develop new method to be able to survive and dps at our maximum. From my experience, dungeon never needed as much teamwork as they do since we run a full dps team in our guild.

Kal Spiro.9745:

This just makes me happy.

Can i ask why? Just curious.

fadeaway.2807:

It’s fairly easy for skilled, organised and well informed players to do what you mentioned, whether it is excelling at pve or stomping twice your number in wvw. The difference in stats between exotic and ascended is also fairly small, which is one of the things which allows this.

The problem however is that gw2 was always advertised as a grind free game where everybody would have the same gear setups and the fights would always be on a fair footing. Yes the gap is small, but it exists, and it’s a psychological barrier to those who want to be maxed out and/or on the same playing field as all the other players.

I guess your right about the psychological barrier. But you seem to understand it pretty well and you seem to have a head on your shoulder. I understand someone that is new, or don’t really understand the deep mechanics of the game. Its simple for these people. Exotic is less stats than ascended so if i need to compete i need ascended. But when you understand how the game work, then its a totally other thing. Just a example guys.

I think its Nike or Obal (probably more Obal) from DNT. He posted a video of the maximum Damage you can get from a guardian wearing different gear and using different trait. I don’t want to talk about the max dps of the zerker full dps build. This prove nothing, only help you give some numbers. No the point that was astronishing was the damage he was able to pull off with a clearics gear and an AH build. Ya the exact build that everybody scream about because of his DPS.

He was able to get 13K dmg in a single Whirlwind attack from a guardian with full clerics gear and AH build. Most people that play the game, in full zerker gear will do about 10-15k in most run with a full zerker, full dps build. How’s that possible? Simply because he know how to play and use all the bonus he can get. Of course that’s not a number you can normally reach with that kind of build. It was in perfect situation with the party created specifically to max the DPS of the guardian. Don’t get that as clerics is op, because the same whirlwind with a full dps build did 56k dmg (so more than 4 times the dmg).

No my points is, not only the difference between ascended vs exotic is small. Its become FREAKING SMALL if you use the buffs and the game mechanics at your advantage. Its just sad, that some people reject the game because of ascended gear. I get the feeling and I would had prefer that they don’t add ascended gear to the game in the first place. But to me its like quitting your job out of principle because you boss ask you to work 5 more minutes per day. Ya its not the best feeling, but if its a great job and you have already a good pay, why quit.

I was crafting legendary before the path and will continue after it. But i really don’t think i’m gonna use the legendary skin much. I like that each of my toons feel different. My sunrise won’t fit at all on my Warrior so i prefer to keep my coblat until i’ll craft Foefire’s Essense. My Meterologicus could fit on my Ele, but i play LH so i don’t really care. And you will never see my Bifrost on my Necro. The only think i could do now is dual wielding of Incinerator on my thief. But i think that i prefer to have something like a fractal dagger as my off-hand and not a second incenerator.

Yup, i really don’t think i’m gonna use much of that feature to use the same skin on several character. But that’s just me.

fadeaway.2807:

Thanks for the answers.

That’s a shame.

I realise the grind is small compared to a real grindy game, but one of the draws to gw2 for a lot of people was the promise of no grind. I don’t have time to grind either a different playstyle set of ascended gear or a set of ascended gear for another character, and the thought of returning to the same playstyle and same class I played before isn’t too inviting. This is true for a lot of people.

I always had a hard time figure out, why people want so much that ascended cost almost nothing so they can put any stats they want and on all their alts. I’m an hardcore player. I have 8 toons at level 80, 3 legendary, i do dungeon speed clear with my guild where we push our selves and our build to the max, i do WvW where we actively search for ennemy zerg that outmanned us and we feel ashamed of ourselves when we lost a 15vs30. And still i use exotic armor and weapons on all that. My ascended armor is on my guardian pve that i use only in some casual run or when i do guild missions.

We can answer yes to all three of your question.

But at the same time. I have 1 ascended armor, a second one almost complete (only need 2 more damask) and i have 3 ascended weapons.

And i never did any grind. I simply accumulated material by playing like always. Only two things i did different. My alts that i don’t play much with (they change depending on what i do these day and what i want to play) are no longer next to orichalcum vein, but next to a Rich Iron Vein. And i take 5min per day to do my daily crafting. Now you can see that as grind, but i’m not.

Kadin.2356:

I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop when all the “non-zerker” types that are laughing right now realize that the offensive jewelry that they were getting most of their damage from is getting hit hardest of all.

REALLY?? Oh kitten i never saw that coming. Oh my god.

If only we figure out that ascended trinket were the best way to gain crit dmg.
If only a month ago we could had see that ferocity remove that efficiency for the trinket
If only when we all did our math 1 week ago we could had saw that we gonna lost a big part of dps from the trinket and a small part of our dps from our armor.
If only it would change sometime and not only be at the end the same % of dps that we lose.

If only wait what. Oh ya we already did all that. Old news.

The only Dungeon gear that had some prestige is Arah. And 1.5 year after the launch, any people with a minimum of effort can make that Armor. With the guides that you can find on the internet, people that can show you the different path, and all. Any decent guild can form a 5 man party and learn how to complete Arah in a relatively short period of time.

I didn’t think about that enough to say if its a good idea or not. But the intent behind this are freaking great. I would love to make Maps train. Tag up with 5-10 of my guildmates and take over the whole maps, taking in route a couple of pugs that run around the maps.

That would be awesome for people doing map completion, they would have a lot of company while doing some gold. That would also be a blast for new players. They see a bunch of 15-20 player running next to them and join them on their quests over the map. They do that today at queensdale, but its for the same 4-5 events. With a similar system they would do 10-20-30 differents events. Tbh i’m pretty sure in the last 1.5 year i maybe done 30-40% of all the dynamic events. That would be nice to view the other stuff and getting some reward for it.

Liet Talen.7284:

I understand. But where/what is the loophole?

The loophole is :

1) You can buy directly Sunrise and Twilight for 5350 gold, account bound them so you have the two skins, then make Eternity and sell it for 4500 and make 3817 Gold.

So it cost you 5350 Gold – 3817 Gold = 1533 gold to get 2 legendary skins.

2) You can also craft a sunrise and twilight for 4000 gold, and gain 3817 Gold by selling Eternity. So you gonna have the skins of Sunrise and Twilight for 183 Gold, 2 millions karma, 1000 badges of honor and 1000 skillpoints.

Now you can say, oh ya but its only skins, you don’t have the ascended stats or the swap stats capability. Legendary is all about skin. They used to have exotic stats, usually poor stats at that like soldier or rabid. And people crafted them anyways, because its all about the skin. Think about it, SUNRISE AND TWILIGHT for 183 Gold. I get that amount of gold in 2 weeks. 183 Gold you can buy that with 34.77 USD, thats nothing.

Well if you deleted you item, its because you didn’t want it anymore. Its a non issues really. Now you want ti back. But for what? You probably won’t use it more now, since you deleted it. Except if you deleted it by accident (but this is a totally different debate). The only reason why you would want that skin in your wardrobe is because you are a completitionist that would like to have as much skin as possible unlocked. I know i’m one of those, but if i deleted my item its totally on me.

To be honest. Even if i don’t fall into the ‘’oh i bought several high price item and now everybody can only buy 1’’ mentality. The one think that i found a bit sad is the legendary becoming more common. Its already pretty common. It take time right now to make a legendary, but not that much. If you play on a regular basic it take about 3 month to craft one. And since the game is out for almost 1.5 year, then even normal gamer could have between 1 and 6 legendary, with some having like 12.

Its already not that hard to make a legendary, add the fact that you can bypass the World Completion (which can be a huge deterrent for some people) or gain a legendary only with real cash, by buying the legendary strait from the TP. Also add the fact that Badge of Honor drop like crazy right now from WvW and from Achievement chest (it was a huge part of making a legendary back in the days). And finally now add the fact that you can skin a legendary over 3-4 of you character.

Legendary are more and more common as the game progress. Not only because people play for a longer period of time, but also because Legendary are WAY more easy to get than before. It’s not game breaker. I like my legendary and their value to me stay the same. But back in the day, it was nice when people ask me about my legendary and i was always nice to see another guys with a legendary in you dungeon.

lZoranl.6859:

My zerk thief that has 101% cd as of now. After the patch it will have roughly 966 Feroicty and since 15 ferociry is 1% cd my cd will be 64%.

Now assuming my non crits are 1000 my crits are 2510 currently
After the patch my crits will be 2140.

The damage reduction is closer to 15%.

That is some wrong math right there. First of all your number for ferocity is just wrong.

Exotic Armor = 224 ferocity
Ascended Trinket = 376 ferocity
Exotic Weapons = 128 ferocity
Superior rune of the Scholar = 100 ferocity
30pts in Trait = 300 ferocity

Total = 1128 ferocity not 966. So 75%

Your second mistake is about the math itself. You calculated like if you had 100% crit. But you should probably be more around 60% on a zerker thief. So with you 1000dmg that give you.

Right now you would do on average = 1000 × 2.51 × 0.6 = 1506 dmg
After path you would do on average = 1000 × 2.25 × 0.6 = 1350 dmg

So 10.35% less dmg.

Anet didn’t bullkitten us. They said that its gonna be a 10% nerf on full dps toons and it is. BUT, you can also speculate on buff, sigil, boost, etc. All those things that a lot of people are using in dungeon and wvw. When we take into account everything and not only the basic full dps build. Then you get a nerf of between 15-20%.

Of course this is not the actual numbers for 2 reasons.
1) Speculation on some buff. How many ferocity will the banner of discipline will give us, how many from Buttersquash? What with the crit dmg in the traits? Etc. We don’t know, we speculated. Don’t think that most of us are in the wrong, but Anet could surprise us.
2) We didn’t min-max the builds post patch yet. Ya its a 15-20% nerf with the current meta, but the meta could change. I can use more power and less pecision post patch and this change in buff, food, trait, etc could decrease the nerf a bit.

Don’t think that Zerker/Assassins will be as good. It all depend on the mix-maxing at this point. The ratio precision over power will be reduce that for sure. So all full DPS build will remove some of their precision to gain more Power that’s for sure. Now at which point you gonna want to remove precision to gain more power? That’s the question. Would we keep our Zerker/Assassin armor, but nourishement and sigil will all be for power or maybe we are better with a full zerker armor. We will have to make the math for that and i don’t want to try to do the math until the path is there and we have all the right numbers.

The Temple of Balthazar is not that hard, but its very long and need a lot of people. But its not abandoned. On Crystal desert, there is about 2-4 run per month. I guess its similar to most server, some do it less, other do it more.

This been discuss overs a dozen tread in the last days. Ya that suck for people that crafted or buy several of the same item. But you can either see it as you crafted or buy several item for nothing or Anet give you copy of all you have for all your character. I can understand the feeling, but in the end you had 2 white and now you gonna have 1 on each of your character. You feel cheated but you actually gonna have more stuff after the path.

For the legendary, if you made two, you have two legendary. AFter the path you can only put the skin of the legendary on another weapons.