Guild Wars 2

Might want to remove one venom for a stunbreaker. When fighting other players, atleast take 1 stunbreaker to be safe :P

If you switch out Potent Poison for Mug you will have my PvE build xD Mug is also a better choice, you can deal enough poison with dagger and if you use the spider venom, poison duration shouldn’t be a problem at all

You can also put the last 10 points you spent on getting Residual Venom in another traitline, perhaps trickery to get bountiful theft or in acrobatics for vigor on dodge. I understand the extra venom stack is nice but a well timed basilisk venom share won’t care if it has 1 or 2 stacks, the person who get hit will die in teamplay :P

What: Sword/X
Why: So much mobility with instant cast and curing a condition is just intolerable. I want to be able to land my stuns and that Thieves have NO way of recovering AT ALL! The fact that they actually can get away is just….so daft! Why do Thieves get to cure conditions at all? This should be nerfed into the ground! looks at 10 december notes…..ohhh shiiiiiiiiiiii we’re going to eat your kitten HAAHAHAHA

^
Sad story Q_Q

+1 I would like to see this happen very very very much.

I think if there were a dev team actually focussed on playing their game/streaming it and commenting on what they are doing etc to share knowledge it would greatly benefit their game.
As mentioned above, the challenge should be attempted with a BALANCED team. NOTE: Not 3 warriors, 1 guardian and a mesmer :P

Well…how awesome that idea may sound, Steal would be very strong and we know Arenanet + the rest of the community can’t handle that kind of awesomesauce.

I’d like to see
F1: Steal, base cooldown of 20 seconds (20 seconds so you can actually…you know….steal more often if you trait for it? Kind of honoring the button the class is named after…afterall :P)

F2: Will be the first skill you stole
F3: Will be the second skill you stole
F4: Will be the third skill you stole

All skills you steal will stay on the thief untill that thief goes into downed state or travels to another zone. If you use a waypoint in the same zone, the items should still be in your F2-4 slots.
If you steal again while having all your slots full, it overrides the oldest skill, so the F2 slot.

Also, rework P/P for sure….PWEASE xD

Asia Skyly.7198:

The reward should have been 1g/10 levels with silver increments in between. 1g/level 10, 2g/lvl20… 4.5g for level 45… 5g/level 50.

I’d like to see that happen sooooo much, but nooooo, Arenanet seems to think that every gold reward above 2 gold(look at current dungeon rewards, mostly 1G) will completely ruin the economy!
I think the rewards you mentioned would be great, seeing how most 40+ groups tend to need their time unless they are really well coordinated/skilled. It’s not like your average PuG dungeonrun!

Complete level 51 for the new daily chest. 41-50 is the highest bracket at the moment, so you won’t get a new daily chest from 50 if you have done something in the lvl 41-50 range.

Hope this helps, cheerios!

I’ve been wanting to make a thread about this aswell. I use Assassin’s Reward fairly often in PvE and WvW and I almost always take it for Spvp. I think the 35% boost (with whatever they mean with it) makes it useful for a master slot trait. I do not think this will be good enough for grandmaster AT ALL!!!

I quite frankly don’t get how they want to tone down the burst and up the survivability of the Thief while they are nerfing our sources of vigor, evades and wanting to place one of our 3 healing traits (the heal in stealth, venomheal and Assassin’s Reward) one tier higher, thus making it harder to fit in.
Sure they can push us into our defense traitlines and making our damage crappy if you want half- kitten d survivability but the AR trait to grandmaster is one of the things which makes Thieves go downhill, in my opinion.

sadface

It doesn’t really matter? It matters a lot! Norn comradery and brotherhood all the way!!! :P

tom.7468:

When playing warrior one thing that i find odd is that i never need to activate healing signet. Even if I’m low on health its better to just keep the passive effect.
So i was thinking what if we got 5 seconds of stealth on activate? then the healing would come when stealth ends.

I had a really crappy day. Everything went wrong and I thought I couldn’t end this day crappier, that was untill I read that suggestion. You cracked my day up man with a suggestion like that. Thanks a lot xD Even my girlfriend went to check on me from the other room because I was laughing so hysterically :P

Well, as I said and Dilige said. Daggers are fun but you need to be skilled with it to make it pay off. You are putting yourself in really great risk compared to having a pistol offhand. And indeed LoL applies to the Thief class aswell. Learn your class and you will be good with it.

For the main PvE play as thief, I really then strongly suggest venomshare and the utility called Smokescreen to be unlocked eventually. Smokescreen is probably one of our most underrated and underused abilities. A 6 second wall which ABSORBS projectiles is very strong for PvE.

Also, make sure to have a Norn Thief! +1 in that case! :P

So many people viewed but nobody replied. That’s a bit sad to be honest!

Anyway off to the answers! I can only talk about my personal experience with the Thief class ofcourse.
For PvE I strongly prefer Sword/Pistol over anything else for melee. Cleave for more damage and mini AoE plus Black Powder from pistol….so so so good. Play that well and the party shall be really safe with all the stacking parts in dungeons, stuff won’t hit you :P

Daggers and Pistols are fun but more of a PvP/WvW thing for me.

Onto traits….well I personally use the venomshare build a lot. A build which utilises venoms to give them to nearby members and also lets people affected by one of your venoms heal a bit with each hit they do. So a support build
Thief is a class which relies really heavily on traits to function. You will feel really weak throughout the first 30 to 50 levels, for me playing a thief after 50 levels is where it got really fun in PvE (with more initiative regain etc). I strongly suggest playing around with traits on a skillcalculator or in the PvP area to get accustomed to what traitline has what kinds of traits. This is something I suggest with all classes to get to know them better :P

And yeah, the Thief forum is pretty depressing to look at. I can’t deny that. If I didn’t have 3 legendaries and so many ascended stuff for my Thief, I would have played something else a bit more, but the Thief still stays one of the most fun to play classes for me. You will have a lot of issues with PvP at first (unless you are just really good :P) and you will learn from trial and error. This however ensures you will get to learn what your build can and cannot do.

Sticking to a Thief isn’t for everyone. It’s not particularly strong nor is it particularly weak. I think Thief is one of the most balanced classes out there at the moment. Sure a lot of people cry about stealth in WvW…I think 10 december will change that a bit but there will always be cries to nerf stealth because people will have to think :P Don’t mind that. Enjoy the class!

I completely agree with every question you asked right there and explanations you have given. I wish they would update once a month…hell….even just good old fashioned expansions with a complete world/classes/races would be so much better than this living story.

Well, the thing that irks me a lot is that Scarlet COULD BE SO DARN INTERESTING, if they only implemented a tiny portion of that webstory into the actual darn game itself…But no, in the game Scarlet just pops up and goes like….HEEEHEHE I STOLE YOUR COOKIES….and killed the baker! HAAAHAHA….

Make her into the awesome “fleshed out” character you showed us she could be in that webstory. I think people would really really really change her opinion about her.

First of all I want to thank Arenanet for letting Thaumanova Reactor fractal be a total disappointment. I voted for Evon and I support the thought that even Arenanet hates the fact that Kiel won aswell! I mean, why else would they take a minute of their time to write in Scarlet into the Thaumanova Reactor, right? :P

Secondly YAY WINTERSDAY! That means we get away from Scarlet! WOOHOO! Or am I jinxing it now?

On a more serious note.

I expected a lot more from Thaumanova Reactor. Scarlet saying she caused havoc and that her work is done here….isn’t an interesting story. Sure there are good things here, like that there was no waypoint on death…err…kidding I mean the rarity function in bag and the whole mistlock instability mechanic. I think it’s a blast and I am having a lot of fun with fractals.
I am just getting tired of seeing Scarlet everywhere with every darn update.

Another post summed it up quite nicely. Scarlet having a full year of attention from story writers and yet she is the blandest character in the whole darn game. Hell, even the merchant NPCs have more character than her plus they are usefull! I really want to be able to say the same about Scarlet, but I can’t.

And for Wintersday, maybe we get a norn cultural tier 3 set with ice animation out! It would be shameless cashgrabbing and utterly lazy design, but atleast they get away from their fire fetish that way! :P

TL:DR: Scarlet again, shoo. Wintersday without Scarlet will be a breath of fresh air. If you are going for lazy and fast design, please make norn cultural tier 3 with ice animations please :P

Well, I for one will keep playing my thief. After 3 legendaries I feel he is rather hard to give up on xD

Sanduskel.1850:

I find stealth to be FAR more powerful than block, lol

I just love your answers Sanduskel. I’ve seen you posting in several other threads and it has been absolutely golden to read every single one of your absolutely elaborate replies xD

Stealth works on a person’s incompetence. Is your enemy competent….stealth is worthless, apart from the might it can give you or a blind it can inflict on your opponent(when traited for it ofcourse).

People who ask for stealth nerfs…well…yeah, they are a bunch of special people :P

Being a Thief player is a way of life! Can you handle the nerfbat every patch? Can you still see the light at the end of the tunnel? Do you love to make your enemies cry for more nerfs?
If so, Thief can be for you! :P

No but seriously. I have 1800 hours on my thief and I still love him. Also killing players with a thief remains fun. You need to put a lot of effort in killing decent players, but usually it’s worth it. The cries on the forum about how “imba” thieves are, is the thing that keeps me going with my thief.
Hell, even if we get nerfed into oblivion(we are well on our way) and still kill players, it’s worth it for me! :P

This is for the OP.

I main a thief aswell. Recently made 2 more thieves because I like the class alot and leveling a thief is just awesome.
I didn’t have a lot of trouble duo-ing the entire Tower of Nightmares. I don’t think that content was meant to be able to do it solo and as such, I do not treat it as solo content. I tried running through it solo, and that worked aswell, but with a lot of effort.
The only condition removal I use is from our stealth heal, which is enough for me in 99% of the scenarios.

Yes, the heavy armored classes have a LOT of room for mistakes, that’s why they are heavy classes. The thing is, I don’t see the payoff for users not being heavy. My thief is basicly a warrior without all the weaponry and has the option to go stealth heavy.

I don’t know if you have tried a pistol offhand a lot, but for PvE that offhand is king :P If you are full berserker gear, you may want to consider valkyrie or something else with vitality in it. I almost never go full berserker unless I know my party can hold its own or if I know I can get through everything. For Fractals I use armor with healing power and a venomshare build and it keeps people alive really well. It depends on what you want.

Do you want to put some effort in your gameplay and perhaps get shunned and, against all odds, play better than a high percentage of the community which thinks everything besides warrior/guardian sucks?
Or do you want to go with the easiest route?

I choose the former

aight here goes!

First of all I would like to say that I do not think people think they “should” be compensated in any way. it would be nice but by no means are you entitled to any form of compensation. Upon playing the game, I think it was first entering or making an account, you agreed to the Terms of Service. That massive wall of text no one ever bothers to read but says that they can do whatever the hell they want with their game :P

Secondly I think the level reset is because of 2 things. The leaderboards which I still do not understand and the mistlock instabilities which are added after 30. I am on lvl 50 myself and yeah, it sucks to get ported back, but if this makes things more fun, why the hell not? For those on level 80…well….yeah….you’ll get there again :P

This mistlock instability thing can either make it or break it. The gold reward n such is going to be nice. Hell, if you do fractals regularly already, it won’t be a problem getting back up your high kitten stroking level anyway! I know it won’t take me much time.

I do think the developers should respond for a change, instead of warning about the forum rules etc. That would be a nice change of pace :P

Just wait and see how it plays out.

Well you have a red bar underneath your skill telling you if you are in range or not. It could be highlighted in a way so it is easier to see though, it’s rather hard right now. But it is already in the game

+1

This seems like a really interesting thing to have!

I am all for mounts! Bring in mounts, lots of them. Racial mounts, faction mounts, Mounts only obtainable with achievement points and mounts obtainable with getting experience from certain factions would all be really cool! I want a Dolyak mount for my norn! :P

I remember guild wars 1. After around a year of Prophecies, glorious Factions was released. A whole lot of new skills for existing classes were implemented, A complete new continent was fleshed out and 2 new classes were introduced. Also a whole heap of new armors and weaponskins were released. You bought the expansion and you could get everything IN GAME!!!!

Give us some permanent content, I do not care if I have to buy an expansion. I am really sad that there hasn’t been any new complete armorset in the game since launch obtainable via in-game means.

But yeah. +1 to new race and/or class!

It’s part of the legendary. Love it! Do it now! :P And I agree, being able to choose your footfall when you dual wield legendaries would be cool.

I wouldn’t mind an official RP server but then there would have be rules of agreement before making a character there and preferably a GM or 2 to keep everything RP based if needed.

Would love to see more RP by people in general across all servers though. Bring back the RP in MMORPG!!!!

If I imagine the looks of that….I want legendary armor on all my characters. Well thought out with the effects!

This gets a +1 from me!

The way to gain them only being in-game non-costing is really appealing. I wouldn’t mind ‘grinding’ aspects of the game for those pieces to drop. Make it challenging to get the pieces and somewhat repetitive so that only dedicated players will go for it.

A small cash cost could be added or something like 2 eldritch scrolls somewhere.

well if you really are into roleplaying, it’s not hard to RP a zerg in queensdale. The thing is, roleplaying requires cooperation.

You could go like: Greetings warriors in Queensdale. Where are my comrades hunting at this moment?
We are hunting this magnificent boar at the moment. We have not found him yet but he is close!
Thank you! I shall make my way to you and help in the search! etc etc etc

@ Gabby, I sadly already have 8 lvl 80s in Far Shiverpeaks EU server :P Too bad cross-continent guesting isn’t here.

I’m fine with the ‘sexy’ armors. Sure big breasts and all that sells. I just don’t like seeing nearly naked female whateverclass. I myself am a guy and from a roleplaying perspective cannot play a female due to my own gender hindering my imagination. I simply cannot roleplay a girl. As such I only have male characters.

I am probably one of the few who gets a big turnoff from playing girls and (un)dressing them with skimpy/sexy armor. Maybe a lot of guys secretly wish to be a girl, hmm? :P

I agree on this needing to be high on the priority list. Guild Wars 2 isn’t about Guilds at all. There is no Guild vs Guild….and you would think you would have that in Guild WARS.

Guild Halls and Player Housing, I would like to see those two things implemented really soon. Sadly the focus is more on living story

Aww tarnished is an american server isn’kitten sadface

Guys guys keep it calm. I just wanted to point out the fact that it isn’t happening enough to my taste in other servers. I mean….it doesn’t happen on other servers outside tarnished coast and piken then! :P

Shirk is obviously a player who just purchased GW2 for the MMOG it is and not the MMORPG it could be if people wanted to. I am just sad that the whole RP element has been forgotten widely and I wanted to know what you guys do to bring it back in your own way

Got to agree with Gabby here

Well the thing is, I would like to encourage RP on more than just the unofficial servers Thanks for replying so quickly. And to Shirk, your attitude is exactly the reason why the RPG is gone from MMORPG. That saddens me a lot.

People have trouble immersing themselves nowadays and getting into character is becoming a stranger and stranger concept. I wish to see it come back to MMORPG again. But thanks to the tip to guest to Tarnished Coast and Piken Will definitly check that out and talk with the guys and gals there!

Hello everyone!

FIrst of all I want to start saying that I do not know where this could be posted best. This is more of a suggestion and a question towards the community of the game.

I want to talk to you about the RPG (Role Playing Game) element in Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 2 is, as we know, a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) but it feels more and more like a MMOG. The Role Playing aspect has been lost for many a years, in my personal experience.
There always is a tight small group who keeps on roleplaying but they seem nearly extinct.
Do you not wish to be in touch with your character more or further define your character instead of that random CoF geared warrior or Arah geared necro?

I currently have a forumpost made for my own guild to make them think about roleplaying in the game.

I want to know what you guys think about roleplaying and how you could make it interesting for others.

Thank you all in advance!

I’ll hop on the shameless bandwagon of bumping!

I almost never get on the forum but for this I did!
I main a Thief, got 1500+ hours on him but I took a break from GW2. Came back and saw my sexy mustache man engineer and thought I’d give him some attention.
The annoying thing about the hobosacks for me is it really does not match most armors AT ALL.

I saw a suggestion of having different themes of backpacks depending on your chestpiece or weapons. That’s fine but will take a lot of new skins.

The solution I would love to see is that EVERY RACE gets its OWN backpack skin. So there would have to be 5 skins for grenade kit.

Asura could have hightech stuff
Sylvari could have a plant backpack
Norn could have a leather backpack with pelts and bones or something hanging from them
Charr would have leather packs/steel boxes with studs or flamey/steamy bits.
Humans can have a mix of the current hobosack with norn and charr bits.

For legendary weapons you could just add some blingbling to the new and racial engineer backpacks. Like an engineer with Predator would have a flamey backpack and the appropriate footfalls ofcourse.

Yes there will have to be some drawing and programming done, but this seems to be the least intense way of solving the current hobosack crisis! Just 5 skins per kit and you will have solved it for all eternity!

I highly support the idea Binabek came up with. It would be great to have checkboxes for different kinds of items for salvaging! I know guildies of mine salvage a truckload of rares so it would be sucky for them if it only counted for greens or lower!

The 2h to 1h ratio seems a bit out of wack like the poster before me said. Allthough, I do not think the mats themselves are that hard to get….The t7 may be hard to get, but the total of like 180 ingot here 180 planks there 100 this etc etc…that’s not too bad at all!

One of the reasons a dev mentioned was that high level crafters can make their own materials to put on the trading post. Since these materials are time gated they will keep a certain value. Not everyone will go to 500 crafting. I personally will because i think it’s f-ing awesome! :P

Ascended stats will mostly affect Fractals due to infusion slots and WvW due to a bit higher base damage and a few stat points more. Exotics are still really easy to get. Ascended can kind of be considered as mini legendaries. Getting one should be a nice goal!

I for one cannot wait to craft my first ascended weapon, out of the 6 I want

P.S. I have 7 alts, they will remain in exotic armor and weaponry untill I fancy them more than my thief! xD

Ooookay…xD Thanks for taking the time to answer!

Hey guys!

So as the title says, I have a question about the respawn timer of the gathering nodes, ori ore and ancient sapplings mostly.

From what I understand these nodes respawn around after 24 hours have passed.
Yesterday I gathered everything on my necromancer at around 23:00. Now I log in and I see that the ores have been respawned and this is at 19:20.

Do the gathering nodes now respawn together when daily resets? If that is so, that would be super sweet!

Thank you in advance!

+1 to this idea. You are going for a legendary weapon. How can you even start making something if you are not even a top tier weaponsmith? Oh I will just make this extremely delicate and rare weaponsmithing thing….while I am not even a grandmaster smith.

Change it to 500!

Hiya! I wish I could answer that but I do not think you will get an answer now. We have only seen the preview of ascended mats in the stream of Linsey Murdock. As far as I know, nobody has even seen the mats for themselves so I suggest just waiting untill tuesday!

@Travlane: Thank you for giving some extra information. Yes timing is important. I was prone to leave something out. Wrote it when I was at my college and had some time before my tests

@Blankverse: I am pleased to hear you are saying I am basically right with the points I mentioned. I thought so too and that’s kind of the reason I posted it :P
And indeed, Thieves are not bots. So is the warrior who uses to learn his shieldbash after a person used his dodges and other evades. Ofcourse we learn from mistakes and so should other people!
I wrote this so most people would get a grasp of what can happen with the D/D and D/P set instead of crapping their pants and sucking their thumb hoping for the Thief to leave them alone. Contradictionary to popular believe is that we have no immunity or whatever when we are in stealth. Immobilize us while we stealth and we are still in the same spot where you immobilized us. Vulnerable to the same attacks as before!!!

And one step ahead, yes stealth is supposed to give us an edge in combat, apart from the mobility on the sword. It’s the only thing we got going for ourselves. We use it to reposition ourselves. This thread is to show that you are not at a loss when fighting a Thief attempting to repositioning himself. You still have a good chance of hitting him or atleast evading some damage.
Also I am sorry that you don’t see a way to counter Thieves from personal experience but I think you actually do. You acknowledge my points so you admit that you know how a Thief works in a sense. Use that knowledge on your other professions and I think you will be fine!

@Xavi: Same goes to you what I said to Blankverse

I appreciate the time you took to read this or atleast the time you took to reply! Keep it coming!

One of the thumb rules is that if you are too much trouble, Thieves will usually run off into the great wide beyond. If you are intent on killing a stealthing Thief, prepare to anticipate a lot and get hurt. If you can draw the Thief in by letting him hit you, you know where he will be aproximately (drooling at the sight of your bare back, yes i am looking at you, all you scandelously clad female characters roleplayed by men! :P). Use this to your advantage and prepare some cripple/chill/immobilize/blocks.

The reason I am writing all of this, while I almost never post anything, is that I am absolutely tired of all the rants from the other professions about how ‘imbalanced’ the Thief is and that they are so broken OP and all other accusations. We prey on the unwary and mentally challenged :P If you do NOT know how to counter stealth we have a huge advantage. If you do know how to counter stealth it’s an annoyance to fight against them but they will be left dumbfounded when crushed into the ground with your well placed AoE’s and autoattacks.

So please stop crying for nerfs and try this out :P

TL:DR
Anticipate the movement of Thieves. Try to not get hit by key attacks like Cloak and Dagger, if that fails try to position yourself in a way that a Thief has to do a lot of effort to connect with backstab. When they are revealed (usually when you get backstabbed) dodge to evade their cloak and dagger and bash em!

So please don’t cry for more nerfs and call this profession imba broken etc. I want to keep playing this awesome profession and that it isn’t worthless in any aspect of the game. It’s pretty terrible in PvE at the moment when it comes to group play. No being massive DPS isn’t counted towards being a great group asset in my book, if that’s the only thing i can bring :P (yeah yeah venomshare, I know and I love that build)

Also, stay nice in this thread please!
If you have questions or anything, add Thorgar Shadebeast to your friendslist and whisper me when I am ingame or post in this thread!

Thorgar Shadebeast signing out!

Hello everyone!

For starters I want to say that I am placing this thread in the Thief thread since this seems the best place for my targeted audience. Everyone who is whining on the Thief and about all the stealth stuff comes to this particular bit of the forum anyway!

Without further ado I am a lvl 80 thief, have logged around 2050 hours on it and can say I main it intensely. Yet every time I log on and see the Thief forum it is filled with requests of nerfing the profession into the ground and of people with full glasscannon builds getting hit for high amounts of damage. To the latter I say: IT’S YOUR OWN DARN FAULT! :P

But how to fight Thieves who ‘permanently’ stealth?

To know this is to know there are 2 kinds of thieves who have easy acces to stealth via their weapons and thus enabling to ‘perma stealth’. These weaponsets are the Dagger/Dagger (of which skill 5, 6 initiative cost gives stealth in melee range) and the Dagger/Pistol (of which a combination of skill 5 and skill 2 give stealth, a hefty cost of 6 + 3 initiative to pull that off).

A Thief in WvW usually has Shadow Refuge on him aswell and sometimes Black Powder (instant stealth smokebomb).

Dagger/Dagger
The main damage of these stealth builds usually come from the skill Backstab which requires you to atleast be close to your enemy. If you get hit by a Cloak and Dagger and the Thief stealths. All hope is not lost. He has 3 seconds to hit you before the stealth wears off. Use this to your advantage! The Thief will want to hit you, so if you make it hard for them to position themselves behind you, this will reduce damage. If you count to 2 or try to anticipate when the Thief might strike, dodge the complete attack. This will render the Thief without stealth (if he was slow) or atleast with 1 second of stealth left.

Only use your dodges for making sure he cannot stealth or hit you with the tremendous painfully backstab. Don’t expect a flawless fight. You will get hit and getting hit by certain attacks is part of a strategy to take them down.
If a Thief spams heartseeker while you are on full health. You can allow yourself to be hit by some of them. His initiative will be low and the blows will be fairly weak. This can be used to draw the Thief in a nasty trap of your own. Be clever with your own positioning since the Thief is a primarily position focussed profession. Screw up their board and they are bound to run.

An example of how I killed a Thief from Piken Square yesterday.
I was youtubing a bit for some metal but had vision on my hp bar. I saw it quickly downed to 50% health. I was in my venomshare build and had D/D active. I used my stealth heal followed by basilisk venom. The other Thief didn’t hit me with his cloak and dagger so was visible. I threw a dagger (Dagger offhand skill 4) to turn him into stone. I had a second and a half to close in and use my own cloak and dagger to prolong the stun (trait residual venom). I succesfully connected with cloak and dagger and proceded with a backstab on my stoned (huehue) victim. I activated my Drake venom for chill after my backstab. I knew the thief was going to stealth or try to so I had to keep him near me. As the stun wore off he used cloak and dagger, I got hit BUT I knew where he was. I turned a bit to my left and used cloak and dagger and backed off. The other Thief was dumbfounded and tried to beckon me over with /laugh. I whipped out my shortbow and started shooting. The other Thief used cloak and dagger + steal combo for instant stealth. I could see the animation for cloak and dagger and barely managed to dodge it. I knew now that the other thief either had half initiative or almost none. This was my time to strike. Basilisk venom was recharged again, I activated it and threw a dagger > cloak and dagger > backstab > followed by the drake venom > heartseekers and a win.

With the fight above I want to make clear that positioning and anticipation is key. If a warrior was in my same situation, use your blocks or defensive skills to negate or mitigate some of the damage. Wear him down. The same advice goes to other professions!

Dagger/Pistol
This is a much harder setup to beat if you are primarily focussed on melee damage. This kind of Thief doesn’t really need backstab to kill you. If you stand in the black powder smoke field…well…that’s not really smart :P If you do decide not to stand in the smoke field, the Thief may use heartseeker (a leap finisher) to go into stealth via their smoke field. Try to stay at a distance of a few seconds walking. This will make sure the Thief has to pull off some awkward movement to connect. usually this will fail and the Thief becomes visible.
Again positioning is the key in this fight. Backstabs are a one trick pony. Facestabs don’t do as much damage, they still hurt but not as much. Anticipate the movement and try to imagine where they might be headed.

I’m very sorry to read the stories of failed ticket hunting! And yeah, as mentioned above, the wintersday skins weren’t all that great :P People actually DO like this skin!

And reading responses like this only makes me more aware of the hate towards RNG chests. Sure they make more money BUT if people actually do like the skins they will buy them anyway. And I think people will even buy them faster when they can buy them directly. the 800 gems for a ticket, which was mentioned above, is actually a pretty good idea. 10 euro for them, 1 awesome kitten weapon for us.

HAHAHAHA brilliant! absolutely had a blast with that video. That being said, there is absolutely no relevance of your comment on the issue I am trying to adress :P

Even so I ask myself if they would add the weapons with a gemprice attached to it to the store, if they wouldn’t be making even more cash than with the RNG boxes. I myself would be willing to pay around 700-800 gems per weapon and I would like atleast 6 of them. That’s already a nice amount of cash out of me. Ofcourse I would have to farm my kitten off for the gold so I would scrounge around for some money xD

I agree with SpyderArachnid all the way. Now I hope enough employees of Arenanet will actually get to see this and the anti RNG revolution can break through! :P
Sick of being kitten out of luck but paying myself silly for something I want. Box after box after box I get nothing. That doesn’t really make you feel good :P Not like we can sell the skins when we get them anyway! So it’s a complete loss UNLESS you want the skin badly.