Guild Wars 2

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

Nope.
I enjoyed the majority of what HoT brought to the game.

Yep.

But not the Tangled Depths.

Hate.

Let me tell you how much I’ve come to hate the Tangled Depths, since I began to venture there a year ago.

There are approximately 10 trillion cells residing within me, used as the building blocks for my human body. If the word ‘hate’ was engraved on each and every one of those hundreds of millions of building blocks, it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for the Tangled Depths at this micro-instant.

For the Tangled Depths… Hate… Hate…!

It’s fun playing the underdog isn’t it?(Really ANET? Isn’t – It is Kitten now?)

You just gotta grit your teeth and prepare for a real struggle at the mere thought of an encounter, and as someone already said, play super dirty. Whatever honor you had before (if you even did), you gotta toss away! Get rid of that useless garbage weighing you down, if you see a matchup that’s out of your league OR fair, RUN AWAY! (But not completely…) They won’t catch up to you anyway unless they’re a thief, and those duels are alright, but as soon as they lose interest in you, go cause some mischief.

Decap, stalk, harass, gang up on, observe, and wait for the moment to really turn someone’s day sour…

If you kitten off enough people with your shenanigans, they might start chasing you, and having someone chase you is actually an ideal situations as that means you have effectively removed 1 player from the field to stand in your teammates way… And if it’s more than 1, then you’re really pulling your weight.

A shame that the above relies on players being stupid enough to chase you though, some players simply don’t acknowledge your existence and let’s you go on your merry way.

Just run around, cackle like a maniac and consider who’s pants your gonna pull down next when they least expect it.

We may not be optimal, but… Hey, if you enjoy it, make the best out of the situation. A couple of weeks ago I was so depressed at this class, but now I love it because I have embraced my weakness and tossed aside any sense of fair play. Now, I run away at the slightest whiff of danger, and I frequently leave my stronk 1vMany friends to deal with the Many.

“Great sword, dual sword, Katana thief”

… Uhm, I don’t want ANY of that! Where do I sign up for this to NOT happen?

Except for maybe dual-swords because none of the medium classes are capable of that, and light armors even beat us to it.

Sidenote:
I see a lot of people clamoring for a Focus, of all things. Curious, what would it do? Do people already have a set idea for what kind of abilities it would bring? Other than a generic explanation like “It would support!”? Anybody got any details?

I am all for it if it’s implemented well though.

Hah, nothing, I’ve never contacted support about this, and I haven’t considered it a real issue, more of a nuisance, a nuisance I can kill by ending the process. It mostly happens when I DC, but the game tries to reconnect, failes, and makes another attempt, and fails again, which forces me to end it. Between every error message there’s like 30 seconds though, and I don’t have the patience for that.

Strange that the problem would persist over three hardware cycles, though.

Nah. Not much you can do, it’s pretty normal for a game to drop a few frames temporarily when it has to work harder to render new stuff that appears in the players view. Mostly dependant on hardware.

But even with the most beastly hardware available to you, you’re never really going to receive constant stellar framerates… This thread goes into detail why:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Bad-performance-good-specs/first#post5803706

I’m sure more people have noticed this, but if you get disconnected from the game involuntarily, the game will have a rough time shutting down without you giving it some help (I.E: Kill the running process), and even then it may take some time for the game to close.

This has been a thing for me since the game launched, and I’ve changed hardware 3 times since then, and while I have always hand-waved it and thought “I’ll deal with it”, I never gave it a real thought before it happened 5 seconds ago.

While most MMO’s will kick you back to a login menu and allow you to quit from there, GW2 just gives you an endless, dark abyss to stare into, and makes you contemplate the many events that shaped you into the person you are now and eventually lead to the current life you lead…

Until you ask yourself “Why is this a thing”?

I don’t know, because I am an ignorant wannabe-techie, with a will to learn.

So why?

Wargameur.6950:

TwiceDead.1963:

I have noticed something… We thieves, we are so kittening good at running away! It’s amazing how we can zoom across half the map in a matter of seconds and leave our opponents, who are already thirsty for our blood, thirsting for a bit longer.I actually love it!

Dying? NOT ME! I’ve got WINGS OF FLIGHT! (but not fight)…

Highlie.7641:

well you said you where new?

To make a successful thief you need to know the mechanics of other professions.
take a day and just roll other professions, this will tell you what to dodge and when.

Well, new to PvP, not the classes, or the mechanics of the game. I know every class as I’ve played them all in PvE, but PvP is a whole different adventure.

He was talking about the mechanisms in a pvp context. playing a DH in pve and fighting one on a node with a thief is a whole different matter. Vulnerability frames are not the same in pve and pvp.

Eh, I’ll pass. I’ll just stick with thief and learn through brute eagle-eyed observation. Mechanics are easy to grasp once you’ve been on the receiving end for long enough… With a little reading on the side.

I have noticed something… We thieves, we are so kittening good at running away! It’s amazing how we can zoom across half the map in a matter of seconds and leave our opponents, who are already thirsty for our blood, thirsting for a bit longer.I actually love it!

Dying? NOT ME! I’ve got WINGS OF FLIGHT! (but not fight)…

Highlie.7641:

well you said you where new?

To make a successful thief you need to know the mechanics of other professions.
take a day and just roll other professions, this will tell you what to dodge and when.

Well, new to PvP, not the classes, or the mechanics of the game. I know every class as I’ve played them all in PvE, but PvP is a whole different adventure.

Go to Metabattle.com, and read up on the builds there. How they’re used, variants, ratings, etc.

It’s a pretty good site to get a rough idea of where to start, at least.

To answer your question:
For fractals, it seems like it’s currently an all Berserkers Daredevil Staff build… According to the site at least. Whether or not you want to use it is up to you.

Wow, that’s a massive help… Thank you for a very informative post! Definitely the kind of answer I was looking for. I think I’ll roll with Longbow S/A for now, because of the hipster inside me, I have a tendency to go for the less popular variant when I have two or more viable choices…

So I’ve hit a wall. I am about to start crafting a second set for my Druid (already got Magi’s down), and now I can’t quite make up my mind for what I want for a DPS/Support setup.

The choice is between a Zerker+Assassin power build with Longbow – S/A, or a complete Viper set for condition damage with A/T – Shortbow.

I can’t decide what I want to do… So I turn to you guys to settle the matter for me!
That was a joke… I am just looking for some more opinions on this before I make up my own.

What are the pros and cons between these two? Which would you prefer?

Are ascended trinkets worth using if they don’t use upgrade slots? Normally exotic rings and such gain a large amount of stats from the upgrade slot, but I can’t really tell if ascended rings are balanced with that already taken into consideration and have boosted stats from the get-go, or if I have to do something specific to be able to upgrade them.

Please clarify?

EDIT: Actually that does seem to be already taken into consideration…

Huh. Apologies for the waste of space on the forums, everyone! ^^

Do tell me how ridiculous this is:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqaFWGKMvcQZq/wFAWAVg59XAsAC-TZRAABGcGA24QA0z+D6XGAgHAAA

I’ve had two rounds with it so far, and surprisingly, I haven’t had complete failures!

I mostly play unranked though, the promised land of limitless possibilities.

Silverbolt.2301:

Thief is trash in sPvP. If you give enough kitten about winning, you should play anything but thief.

Having said that, your only job as a thief is to run to points that don’t have anyone sitting on it and decap it. As soon as you see an enemy coming for you/the point, run away. Just…run away. Don’t even waste your time trying to fight them until you have your allies fighting them.

The other part of your job as a thief is to always look for the lowest HP and the squishiest target, in team fights, that just recently used all their blocks, invulnerabilities, and passive in an attempt to try kill them by getting the surprise jump on them as they fight your allies. If you fail to kill them with a surprise jump, you’re probably about to get kittened – so, do what thief does best and run away. Come back later and try again.

Overall, your job is to run away and fight the capture points that are held by nobody, cause that’s what you do best – air fighting. You’re really good at kittening up the air and imaginary enemies.

This seems to be the consensus of most people I meet… But I will persevere with the underdog because I am stupidly stubborn… Or stubbornly stupid. Or both.

babazhook.6805:

If wanting PvE venom consider p/p as a weapon. It might seem counterintuitive but you slap on Aristocrat runes and trait trickery for pressure strike and confusion (DA DD and trickery) and you can not only load the venoms on with any part of the weapon set , but spike that and normal damage up via the might stacking (you use vipers after all so why not both?). This in turn fuels party wide damage via shares.

You can easily get 10k poison ticks in PvE doing this and high bleeds/torment/confusion all in what shot that can near double that is you get a share in. (sharing a Skale venom with 5 is 20 stacks of vuln just from you so not only does might kick in but that vuln as well)

Any of the three GM traits in DD work fine here depending one what else you want in the build . Ie access to stealth via BP bound , more conditions via impaling or survival and mobility via UC.

If you load on your venoms and then do some unloads all those venoms get applied , and the might you stacked lasts 11 seconds. If you have concentration sigil on use SB and fire a poison field over target, swap and load venoms and unload your might lasts 14+ seconds. Those much harder ticks mean less a need for duration.

Depending on how much cleanse you want, DD can be traited for PI which can get you 3 stacks torment and a PI on a headshot interrupt which is not reliant on high precision for damage and can do significant damge when might is stacked.

It has weaknesses of course. There little to no AOE , Condition cleanse can be an issue and it can be flimsy with few of the other outs other sets have , but in PvE you can adapt to that.

Could you post your build? It sounds interesting and I’d like to try it. Been playing P/P thief in PvE for ages and it’s starting to get just a tiny bit dull (just a tiny bit though, seriously I am not growing tired of P/P anytime soon), and a condi-build sounds like a nice pace of change.

I play the regular unranked matchmaking stuff…

I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT THESE PEOPLE ARE PLAYERS… NO WAY! Nobody can possibly behave like these bots! I refuse to believe it!

…
Please tell me they are bots, or else my faith in humanity is going to tilt off the planet.

Are you sure it’s bad players? Cause these people/bots never jumped, never made any excessive movements (like trying to avoid AoE fields), or even tried to track me as I circled them. Some of them didn’t even fight back, they just ran straight to a point, stood in it, and did nothing.

They basically didn’t do anything of the sort that resembled human behavior.

Cause I was just in a match with 4 of them on the opposite team. Easy win and all, but seriously? How bad is this? I’ve tried sPvP seriously for 4 hours now and I lost track of all the bots I encountered!

It helps. Thank you.

EDIT:
Since I made this thread, I have had a much better experience with the class. Thanks everyone for your timely advice, I’ve read all of it several times over the course of two weeks-ish.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Old:
Running D/P, and Shortbow. Marauder’s amulet with Scholar runes, straight from Metabattle.

I hear Thief is in a bad spot when it comes to PvP, so I ran to the class like a stubborn idiot because I like to play the underdogs to get a quicker understanding of things. Trial by Fire if you will.

But I feel oh so useless… I am a hapless noob in sPvP environment and I don’t really know how to deal with encounters. I have an FPS sense when it comes to PvP, MMO’s are a whole nother beast.

So I should target squishy people, +1 opponents and cap points. I get that much. What do I do when I encounter 1 person though? Because it seems I just get instantly wrecked as soon as I attempt a clean 1v1 due to blocks, AoE fields, and who knows what? Doesn’t exactly help that I gotta get close to do any real damage, and if I attempt a P/P build (which I have), I get wrecked by various reflects and other shenanigans.

I apologize because this post really only turned into a whine post, but I really am lost when it comes to sPvP, I don’t know what I am doing, and I feel like this isn’t something I can make up for in skill because I feel like even if I make the right plays, I am not equipped to deal with the opposition for a longer than very brief encounters before I outright HAVE to bail…

Or is Thief actually really strong in sPvP and I am just whining like a hapless noob?

Huh, I have a habit of looking too deeply into things, and I actually did consider what you’re saying to be the case, but I stubbornly believed that there had to be something to the Precision (damage/healing increase wise) that I was not seeing.

Thanks for clearing up this simple matter for me!

I’ve been looking around on Metabattle and found the druid staff healer build, and it uses the Magi set.

… Why? It has Vitality and Healing Power(major), obviously these two are very nice indeed, but then it has precision alone? It doesn’t even seem to use any sigils or runes that utilize critical-hit chance procs.

There’s nothing of the sort in the build either.

Is it for DPS? But, to get decent damage from Critical Hits you are relying on Power and Ferocity as well, wouldn’t it be better to opt for Condition Damage instead? As the only stat you really need to increase to get decent damage is Condition Damage.

And as far as I can tell, Apothecary’s does just that… Or a combination of Apothecary and Shaman’s if you’re worried about getting too much toughness.

Now I am no raid, dungeons or druid expert, I am just trying to understand at this point. Can someone shed some light on this?

I wasn’t here when the ricochet trait was removed, had a long break from GW2 back then, and I am curious…

What was the cause for it’s removal? Was it unbalanced? Outright broken? I didn’t have the impression at the time that ricochet was broken when it was still around.

In regular PvE, anything is viable, really.

Seriously though, I love pistols. I run a DnD zerker P/P – Staff build, NOT using bounding dodger (sue me), and zoom around the battlefield pewpewing anything that moves… Unless it becomes too crowded, if that happens you go toe-to-toe.

It may not be optimal, but it’s super fun. Generally in big zergs I don’t really rush with the lot, but circle outside of it, and single out annoying targets, maguuma tormentors, snipers, and veterans, and dispose of them before someone falls prey to their shenanigans (someone always does).

It’s also super-satisfying to combine that with physical skills and using the Havoc Mastery trait, just to kitten with expectations you run into melee-range with pistols and unload + whatever physical skills you have equipped.

As the above poster said, you can make up a lot of the shortcomings of P/P by being a decent player, and as with every class, if you know what you can do with your current kit, you should have no problems at all.

P/P is so much fun though, definitely my favorite kit in the game for both Engineer and Thief.

I’m always on target though, have to be with the Action Camera.

Eh, you’re probably still right. The Action Camera is never 100% on-point all the time, so it’s probably the issue you’re describing even if you are on target.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

yolo swaggins.2570:

---

1.) Having a hard-hitting ranged attack would be broken on this profession!

First off ([True Shot] [Kill Shot] [Rapid Fire]) all of these are long range and deal more damage than a backstab. If anet is completely okay with these existing, then your fears are unwarranted.

And secondly, there are such things as costs which can be increased to provide more risk to using a high reward skill. You can give it a high initiative cost that would make it unspammable. You could make it telegraphed to the point it becomes punishable to only the most unaware and terrible players. hell, even the more decent Snipes suggested have high costs and obvious telegraphing WITH a root.

It’d be like every other long ranged death attack this game has, you deserve it if you die to it because it is just that easy to miss with them. Take your failure like any decent player and pay attention next time.

The only real reason why this argument would matter is if you are a baddie who falls to long range bursts because you are too busy with your face on the keyboard to notice a 7s chargeup pointing right at you.

The only way that these long range charging skills will be acceptable if it gives a better visual cues. Just like the sniper mobs in HoT, the target icon on your head is a good way of showing that you are being sniped. You can’t possible pay attention to every little details especially if it is coming from 1200-1500 range.

However, the main issue here is not really the damage, rather mobility. I can respond just fine against DH, War, and Ranger but a sniping Thief is different. If the Thief snipe me from 1200 range, there is no way to catch up on them because of their mobility — especially against shadowstep skills.

Also just as how annoying it is that Ranger has a stealth on their longbow, it will be more annoying if Thief has a sniping skill and sniping stealth skill.

Because of these, the Thief’s damage will have to be mediocre to balance all the Thief’s escape utilities since you cannot balance the weapon skills on cooldowns, which Thief doesn’t have, or initiative cost.

Increasing initiative cost on weapon skills is not a solution because a high damage skill would have to require a long cool down. Since we have a shared initiative, the cost of each weapon skill will have to cost 8-10 initiatives — compare to War’s Kill shot and Ranger’s Rapid Fire (DH Trueshot is out of whack and outright broken). With that kind of cost, the weapon set will be unusable. So the only solution is to lower the cost and at the same time lowering the damage — it’s really the only way.

So in the end, we’ll get a 1200-1500 range mediocre damage weapon. Keeping the damage high while the cost is low for the Thief will be indeed broken.

^ Pretty much all of this..

yolo swaggins.2570:

TwiceDead.1963:

yolo swaggins.2570:

TwiceDead.1963:

Shovel Face.4512:

Azukas.1426:

sinject.4607:

Azukas.1426:

That would be extremely OP when you can go /p and just spam head shots.

Considering you must trait for it, spend plenty of initiative per Headshot, and hope your enemy has no stability and/or further trait for some reliability against stability spam by investing in Bountiful Theft over Trickster in a build without Escapist’s Absolution (rendering you extremely vulnerable to conditions) I’d say it really isn’t that overpowered of a concept at all.

Bountiful theft removes stab 21st so it’s always an interrupt.

Having that much damage on a,interrupt spamming class is,broken

Lol what class isn’t broken in this gahd awful system they have. I mean seriously, u don’t think DH traps are cheesy as hell?!

Just because something is broken that doesn’t mean you have to go and add to the pile to make things “fair” …

If everything is broken, then everything is more or less balanced. Letting one thing suffer because “its the right thing to do” isn’t an excuse nor does it excuse bad design.

If you balance by that logic you’ll be sending your game into a spiral of power-creep where the power levels will never settle on an even ground, something more broken will always take the most broken things place, and it will only increase the power-levels and eventually everything will go to kitten.

The game is already on this path, and spoiler-warning, it won’t be healthy for the PvE nor the PvP community. Both lose out.

Exaggeration. Also I don’t think you know what “power creep” actually is. Its power creep when new content makes old content obsolete like ascended armor and elite specs. It isn’t power creep when you buff new content to be on par with the rest of the new content that came with it.

The point remains the same, and since you’re not calling me out on my point and instead decide to focus on semantics, I assume you have nothing to actually counter with. GG.

yolo swaggins.2570:

TwiceDead.1963:

Shovel Face.4512:

Azukas.1426:

sinject.4607:

Azukas.1426:

That would be extremely OP when you can go /p and just spam head shots.

Considering you must trait for it, spend plenty of initiative per Headshot, and hope your enemy has no stability and/or further trait for some reliability against stability spam by investing in Bountiful Theft over Trickster in a build without Escapist’s Absolution (rendering you extremely vulnerable to conditions) I’d say it really isn’t that overpowered of a concept at all.

Bountiful theft removes stab 21st so it’s always an interrupt.

Having that much damage on a,interrupt spamming class is,broken

Lol what class isn’t broken in this gahd awful system they have. I mean seriously, u don’t think DH traps are cheesy as hell?!

Just because something is broken that doesn’t mean you have to go and add to the pile to make things “fair” …

If everything is broken, then everything is more or less balanced. Letting one thing suffer because “its the right thing to do” isn’t an excuse nor does it excuse bad design.

If you balance by that logic you’ll be sending your game into a spiral of power-creep where the power levels will never settle on an even ground, something more broken will always take the most broken things place, and it will only increase the power-levels and eventually everything will go to kitten.

The game is already on this path, and spoiler-warning, it won’t be healthy for the PvE nor the PvP community. Both lose out.

Lettuce.2945:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Lettuce.2945:

No offense but I’ve seen your thief and you need a LOT of mechanical work. You play pp thief with thieves guild and the trap that spawns an AI thief as well. Naturally you will lose to anyone decent and get shredded by great players. This is really one of those l2p times.

Oh no!

Someone saw me in a duel room once and decided to call me out for absolutely no reason!
Whatever shall I do?
I know! I’ll be mad and turn this joke thread serious to defend my honor and extremely effective p/p build!

Tl;Dr Kek, drawing conclusions over duel rooms.

Tl;Dr(2) Didn’t you also lose to it? / [insert shameless mandatory provocation here]

Tl;Dr (3) I posted that exact build here, allow me to link you to its glory

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Feedback-Odd-build-King-of-Thieves/first#post5543602

((Brb, trying P/P Even harder.))

I’ve actually never lost to your build. It’s weak. You actually raged at me. Perhaps you should check my ign before talking.

Oh yeah?! Well I’ve actually never lost to YOUR build! You didn’t rage at me because you didn’t even know who I was! So HAH! There! OWNED! L2P Nubscrubdub…BUB!

In all seriousness though, boasting is easy, backing it up would be nice, and honestly I am genuinely interested in your build and how you play if you’re finding yourself at the peak of success so often.

So I’ve been running with the Torch a bit lately, and I love it… When it works.

But there’s been like 2 out of 10 times where I press to throw the torch, and nothing happens. It goes on an instant cool-down as if I don’t have a target selected, and nothing happens.

I am within the targets range, so he should at least throw the torch and something non-existent should ideally be obstructing it, at least that way I know the geometry is bugged as normal, but I don’t even get that.

Maybe I’ve been unlucky, but it’s been happening rarely almost consistently, and I don’t know what causes it.

Maybe it’s just me…

I play engineer because the amount of improvisation you have to do is completely asinine, and I love it. You have a kit for pretty much every situation.

Besides that, I feel like Batman and his omni-tool belt.

“Beware my crotch! It fires BULLETS!”

Shovel Face.4512:

Azukas.1426:

sinject.4607:

Azukas.1426:

That would be extremely OP when you can go /p and just spam head shots.

Considering you must trait for it, spend plenty of initiative per Headshot, and hope your enemy has no stability and/or further trait for some reliability against stability spam by investing in Bountiful Theft over Trickster in a build without Escapist’s Absolution (rendering you extremely vulnerable to conditions) I’d say it really isn’t that overpowered of a concept at all.

Bountiful theft removes stab 21st so it’s always an interrupt.

Having that much damage on a,interrupt spamming class is,broken

Lol what class isn’t broken in this gahd awful system they have. I mean seriously, u don’t think DH traps are cheesy as hell?!

Just because something is broken that doesn’t mean you have to go and add to the pile to make things “fair” …

Both are default cooldowns (30 and 60).

It’s about Initiative recovery. On the one hand, I get 1 initiative every 10 seconds which results in 6 every minute.

On the other hand, I get 6 initiative instantaneously every 60 seconds.

Both are stun-breaks, where the signet is available more often (every 30 seconds) compared to Roll for Initiative’s every 60 seconds… But this one comes with an evade as well, where the Signet comes with a Shadow Step (which you already kind of have with Steal).

Then again if I use the signet, I lose the Initiative recovery passive.

For Initiative recovery, which would you recommend?

Just go Charr. You have given your reasoning for not wanting Norns or Asura, so Charr it is. Charrs can be the size of a tall human if you shrink them down so being too bulky is not necessarily a drawback there. Same could be said for Female Norns though, so meh.

PvP…

I don’t think Backstab should be as powerful as you want it to be. Depending on your approach, you literally get the initiative in combat not necessarily with an initiative cost, you get to make the first move, you get the drop on opponents without any warnings and even though, yes, it deals less damage than Vault, it still deals a considerable amount of damage.

However compared to Vault, it’s not easily defended against. You’ll see a Vault come a mile away (literally) and evade appropriately. You can’t really evade a backstab unless you know it’s coming, which in most cases you don’t unless you’ve already engaged a Thief in combat.

In PvE though, I agree. D/D is outclassed by Staff in almost every way.

@SqualZell

So Zerkers bring more support-utility to the table since they can use AF more often?

That does sound backwards, you’d think Clerics would be the ones to throw support-utility around as they are pretty much sacrificing all their DPS for the trade-off to be supportive.

Huh…

Was a bit surprised to see how similar the specializations were!
Also fumbled with mine as I picked a Shortbow trait without a Shortbow. Rectified.

Using two staves to take advantage of the daze you get on weapon-swap along with Geomancy? How’d that work out?

Justine.6351:

I’m still happy with druid, maybe I am broken ;-(

You and me both in that case.

Think people are just overreacting. I play Ranger mostly for PvE and I don’t feel like I fare any worse than any other class, but that’s probably more a case of everything in PvE being manageable with any class.

Won’t speak about PvP or WvW as I don’t play those modes with a Ranger.

SqualZell.7813:

4 and 5 The AF generation is not only that you can’t generate with people at max health. It’s the combination of both max health limitations AND generation on tick (instead of generation per amount healed)

lets take arbitrary numbers. Zerker heals hit for 1000HP and Cleric heals for 5000HP Ally has 10,000HP

The Zerker will be able to throw 10 heals to max out Allies’ health generating 10 ticks of AF generation
The Cleric will be able to throw 2 heals to max out Allies’ health generating only 2 ticks.

so at this point a Zerker with 0 healing power druid will have Celestial avatar available to him/her much more often than a Maxed out healing power Cleric Druid.
(so much for the zerker meta being bad for the game)

But couldn’t you argue that you don’t need AF if you manage to heal your allies up in just 2 ticks compared to the zerkers 10? I mean the Clerics are 5 times faster healers than the Zerkers, according to these arbitrary numbers, and if they can do that without using AF then the heals they must output with would be quite a boon indeed.

Then again arbitrary numbers are just that, arbitrary. The point you are trying to push is that AF generation is static, and not dynamic. Based on ticks and not amount healed/damage dealt… I think at least, I might be misunderstanding.

I agree that is indeed, strange. I don’t feel like AF generation is particularly slow though, but that is just me. Maybe because I wasn’t running around as a ranger when you could build AF ridiculously fast, if you ever could.

So I’ve been toying around with the build editor for a while and came up with this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAW3fn0rClrg1sC2CCctgFGBDOqWV7qPPhVXqjpAc5CAl8s0A-TBRFwAAM/EU5HL1fEt/AA-e

I don’t think it’s optimal, and that was not the goal, but I think it might be fun.

Currently running a full cleric build on my druid, but killing things takes a while. . . So I figured I’d try a condition build. The good thing about condition damage is that you don’t really need to rely on three stats to get decent DPS, at least that is my reasoning.

I want to do damage, but I also want to heal, so I wen’t with something hybrid. The idea being to switch between Staff when heals are needed, and Axe/Torch when heals aren’t necessary to help burst down enemies.

I don’t really intend to bring this to raids, that would probably be frowned upon, mostly going to use it for open-world roaming and the like.

Not really sure what I am doing though to be honest, haven’t played Ranger much, so any advice is appreciated.

What was lost and regained?

I… I… I…
I shall submit to these teachings and take them to PvP.

I also feel like I will sorely regret this decision.

White Hunter.3416:

Fluffball.8307:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Yassith's_Viper's_Insignia

DO NOT craft this. This recipe requres 75 Fulgurite for each Ascended piece. This is a crazy grind.
Craft non-hot ascended chest with any another stat, then change it in the Mistic forge to Viper’s stats via this http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Forge#Ascended_equipment_prefix_change recipe. you need only Viper’s exotic insignia instead of ascended.

This is actually really helpful. Thanks for calling this out, I don’t have tons of resources to spend yet so any shortcuts are welcome to me. :P

Is there anywhere that can tell me how to get this? I have never tried ascended crafting before and I figured I’d start with my Engineer as he is by all accounts my favorite class.

I am just going to start small, one piece at a time, and I figured I’d learn the rest if I learned one, but I have no clue where to begin…

Wolfey.3407:

Clerics
There is no conditions of importance on staff…

I’m still fighting and nagging for Burning on Solar Beam…

it kind of makes sense to have burning damage on Solar Beam doesn’t —- it? Like 1/2 second burns. Lower the direct damage if you have to.

I don’t really mind either way though, but thematically it fits.

Cleric it is. xD

Questions in the title. Edit: It’s PvE related.

It seems it would be better to run Apothecary’s as to get the full potential from Power you need Precision and Ferocity as well, while with Condition Damage all you really need is.. Well, Condition Damage and potentially Duration foods.

Opinions?

Here’s what I am currently running:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqaWn8lCNOhVOBGmCkmilxiybACgDYbDLrOce379jH-TxBBwAfOBASUCaU5HgnAAO1fot/QgDBAA-e

As Jugglemonkey said, Most thief builds are a variant of Daredevil+Trickster+Deadly Arts/Critical Strikes.

I mostly use P/P with this build though, and I have heard I am downright suicidal for running with this build, but for open-world roaming in PvE I can just dodge the world so there’s no problems, really. I don’t die much at all unless I miss-time a dodge, which only makes it more exciting… It just means you gotta be attentive and prepared to dodge and not miss-time/waste them. A little rough for sure, but fun.

Unsure how much of a damage boost Assassins Signet actually is though, I would consider switching it out if you feel you die a lot. Personally I don’t so I’m keeping it.

Again as Jugglemonkey already said, but is worth repeating:
Just play with a build you have fun with, honestly. Doesn’t matter if it’s optimal or min/maxed to kitten, if you can perform with it it’s yours to play with.

Hah… They couldn’t escape the Trinity could they?

Oh well, looking forward to try healing again.

Jinx.4619:

First you build will get you killed
You don’t have Condition Cleanse
You don’t have sustainable in a long fight
Why you pick trickery when you dont have trick utilities on the bar
In critical strike trait line you should pick #3 on Grand master trait for sustain
Take away Power signet its useless take signet of agility for condi cleanse
You dont need flanking strike combine with trickster 48 on quickness and 1 condi cleanse you are not playing pvp go for Thrill of crimes its better remember you have 12 initiative not 30 take daze on steal its give you free 50 endurance in 20 sec cooldown and its give 3 initiative
Take bouding dodge combine with blind powder to gain acess to stealth minimize the threat in a group fight
DD gm its up to you btw take spinning dagger on elite its reflect projectile

Fair advice, I will ignore most of the survivability/sustainability" advice though, as I never die unless I make a royal kitten-up myself. I can dodge the world. Again, survivability/sustainability is not an issue to me, the build I use has been put in practice for weeks now, I wouldn’t be using it if it got me killed ever 5 seconds. Compensate your lack of utility with skill/cowardice.

Critical Trait Line #3? Uh, no I won’t…
I’ll take the 250 ferocity and perma fury, I suspect that’s where most of my damage originates from.

Oh and, you have 15 initiative, not 12. Steal gives you 2 initiative.

Jinx.4619:

And please dont jump dodge on the blinding powder it wont give you stealth

I don’t even know where you got this from…

Re-read the following:

Bounding Dodgers grants some interesting utility though, you can do some cool tricks with Bounding Dodgers leap finisher, like Black Powder stealthing (arguably a waste of initiative as Unload does more damage than Vital Shot, but cool nonetheless).

Regardless, I did find some useful information from your post, thank you for your attention and time.