Guild Wars 2

The old +Stability buff which was a permanent buff on the Battle Standard was removed in the final days of Beta when they did their “beneficial AoE” revamp. (ArenaNet decreased the range of almost every beneficial AoE down to a 600 range. However during this process, the 240 range on Battle Standard was increased to a 600 range. If you have the T1 Tactics trait that augments Banners, the range is increased to 900.)

ArenaNet thought that a permanent 600 range +Stability buff was too over powered. For PvP (which is how this game is “balanced”), it probably is. As a result, the +Stability buff was removed and +Swiftness was added.

You’ll get a few seconds of AoE +Stability when you cast the Battle Standard and can use #2 on the Banner for a few seconds of AoE +Stability (with something like a 15 second recast). Beyond that, the Battle Standard no longer gives the +Stability that it did in Beta.

The cliche answer would be to say that you should use a Greatsword and a Rifle. Then go down the +Power / +Precision / +Crit Damage route to make yourself a glass cannon dps build. You’d take the Major trait from the critical line which grants +40 Precision per Signet that isn’t currently on a cool down.

My issue is that this “leveling” spec often becomes people’s full time spec. They want to run around the later areas of the game with this same spec, which is often very self-focused and typically party in terms of group support.

What spec should you use to level? I’d honestly say that you should level in whatever spec you plan on playing in the level cap range. By learning your spec as you level, it gives you time to make mental revisions and to test out new changes on various types of mobs throughout the many zones.

Back during Beta, a dev made a post that stated that IWAY was based on the old form of Rally mechanics and not the one currently used in the game. With healing Shout builds calling for a 3rd Shout with a reasonable recast timer, IWAY ended up being taken out towards the end of Beta and replaced by On My Mark.

Originally the dev wanted to do a complete revamp of IWAY since the skill wasn’t acting like they wished it would in its current form. Obviously this issue of rebalancing wasn’t very easy, which is why they replaced it with a completely different skill. Some people are asking for an upgraded form of IWAY being added as an Elite power, but we’ll have to see about that.

NallePoon.7652:

i see, Thanks mate, very helpfull as im soon 30!

Just beware that this dungeon in the Charr starter zone is a meat grinder. Seriously. Even in just Story Mode, you’d better be in at least 30th Green gear and have a bunch of Silver set aside for your repair bill. It won’t be as bad if you’re got some high level characters who are running through it under the standard down-leveling system. However it’s just painful for low level characters, especially the people who enter wearing low to mid 20’s Blue gear.

Also you’ll see many named mobs with the White Shield (w/ Dragon inside) buff. This means that they’re immune to control effects and the Blind debuff only has a 10% effectiveness on them. For these mobs, you just can’t tank ‘n spank them. You’re likely to see a lot of mob kiting and jousting in and out when they start their “mega attack” animations.

InsanityPlea.9163:

I have like 72 silver right now, I won’t really have access to any decent form of gold income (apart from gathering) anytime soon…

So just gather. I’m serious. Run a circuit in a 1-15 zone harvesting Copper Ore and use the BLTC “Sell It Now” feature. On a full run through the Charr starter zone, I can net around 20-25 Silver for circuit. (I think that my average circuit time is somewhere around 45 minutes or so with after the skill and trait speed boosters.) Every 24 hours, the Rich ore nodes reset and I can make a little more on a circuit. (Since I’ve got multiple characters, each one of them can take advantage of the Rich nodes within that time frame.) If you’re serious about getting a specific color, just wasted an afternoon on a weekend and grind out the Silver needed.

If you’re a pure dps build with +Power / +Precision / +Crit Damage gear, then you’ll have a glass jaw and will likely explode in a blood cloud when hit. For dungeons (and much of WvW), it will help to have at least some +Vitality for the health points to take a spike damage hit. Also having a bit of +Toughness won’t hurt since it increases your Armor’s effectiveness value, which is useful for when you’re possibly taking multiple hits in a short amount of time.

Other people and classes have noticed a % reduction in the damage that they’re receiving.

One issue with +300 Toughness is that it depends on your level. Making a minor investment in Toughness is like making a minor investment in Power. Yes, adding a little Power will increase your dps output. However it really won’t feel like much of a difference at 80th level when all of the +Stat scores are so high. In order to feel a real reduction, you’d have to noticeably invest in Power. This same situation applies to the Toughness dynamic.

People are reporting noticeable damage decreases in dungeon runs after heavily investing into Toughness. Please just remember that Toughness does not affect Condition damage dots (aka Burn, Bleed, Poison). Those effects will still hurt you for the same amount regardless of your having +0 Toughness or +1,000 Toughness. The only real benefit is a % reduction from standard damage hits.

Back on the GW2 Guru forums, there was an extremely precise thread done up after Beta Weekend #2. This person tried EVERYTHING and figured up around what % value of your Healing score is applied to every healing application.

Shout heals were using 80% of your Healing score. Banner regeneration was using 100% of your Healing score. Yes, your Signet’s health regenation function did use a small % of your Healing score. (I can’t remember what it was.) However the Adrenal Health trait (T2 Defense) DOES NOT get affected by your Healing score. This healing trait is based on a static amount that adjusts only by your current character level.

All of these complaints were made back on Beta Weekend #3 when this was introduced. The event’s developer posted a response in the MASSIVE forum thread that was the result of many threads being fused together by the moderators. He realized that the damage was out of whack for a 1-15 area. In his mind, this would be a fair and well designed event for high level characters that have started to master the game. However it was admittedly unfair for beginning players.

Yet…. Nothing happened. Spawn rates on the adds weren’t visibly tuned. Nor was the damage output from the named mob toned down. Its AI targeting still created lock down points on the bridge. All things considered, basically nothing has changed on this event since BW3. The only “improvement” is that the event’s reward chest actually spawns consistently and it’s not longer invisible. That’s it.

To the thread:

Thank you for the line about “centaur Moses”. I’ve got a picture of Charleton Heston’s role as Moses, except with a horse body on the lower half, stuck in my head now. It’s both funny and annoying at the same time.

At least some of the various lines that you can say when activating Battle Roar are interesting. “The Charr need no gods!” The skill does win style points with me. Unfortunately it doesn’t win game mechanics points with me.

As Musei answered above, the #1 weapon key on any Melee weapon has x3 attacks. If your auto attack is uninterrupted, then they’ll swing in order (and then recycle). Should the swing pattern get interupted by your casting something in the middle of the chain (or anything else that breaks this rythm), then the chain resets. However the chain does allow a couple of second delay for you to move into melee with your next target to continue the auto attack chain.

As a general rule, the 1st and 2nd swings are set up moves. Then the 3rd swing will do something special. It might cause a debuff on the enemy, a buff / heal on yourself, or simply more damage. The specifics of each 3rd swing attack are tied to each different weapon and how they interact with your class. For more information, the GW2 Wiki should listed all x3 swing buttons under the Class Skills link on the page for each character class.

1) No. There is no way short of “bashing #1” to trigger the 3rd swing in the auto attack sequence.

2) If you really just want to hit a mob with a Poison dot, there are other ways to do this. One simple way would be to run Spider Venom in one of your Utility slots. This would proc a Poison duration on any target hit (or extend existing durations) for the next 5 swings. (Missed attacks do still deplete your Poison procs.)

These are some simple ones that I’m involved with all of the time on my Thief and Warrior.

Ranged attacks + Darkness Field = free Lifedrain for the Ranged attackers
Ranged attacks + Smoke Field = lots of Blind stacks on the mobs
Blast attacks + Water Field = AoE heals
Blast attacks + Fire Field = AoE Might stacks x3 (per Blast)

For more general information on combos and the MANY possibilities, see the link from the GW2 Wiki below.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

I made my 2nd Warrior last night. It was everything that my 1st Warrior wasn’t. Going from a Charr Axe/Warhorn AoE buff build to an Asura Hammer area control build was a real switch. Especially since the Charr was max size and the Asura was minimum size. However I’m finding that I just love my Asura. Watching her sweet little face as I ninja leap into melee and jumping to hit people in the face is just priceless.

All that 100% MF does is effectively double the standard drop rates for items. So if the mob that you’re fighting has a .1% chance of a Yellow drop and a 5% chance of a Blue drop, then this would effectively adjust things to .2% for a Yellow and 10% for a Blue. Yes, +MF does matter to some degree. Yet if the base drop rates are low for the mobs that you’re killing, then doubling a very low chance is still a very low chance.

Some runes can be crafted. Others are only dungeon vendor items. Also you can find runes on game drops, then remove them (while destroying the main item) with a good grade Salvage kit. I’m honestly not sure about the specific rune series you mentioned. You might try looking on the GW2 Wiki for more info.

I’ve even gotten Unidentified Dyes from harvesting nodes. Back when I was new to WvW, I accidentally tried to Mine a node that was above my current harvesting tool level. Amongst the x3 Ruined Ore, I also got a fee Dye. It balanced things out.

Longbow is our AoE weapon, while Rifle is our single target weapon. The assumption is that Longbow is only 900 range as a means of balancing its AoE capabilities.

Each dungeon has x2 armor set versions. The Yellow grade is just a generic appearance that is supposed to be the same for the armor drops in any dungeon. Then you have the Orange grade versions which all have their own unique appearances. However the Orange versions are much higher level to equip and cost a lot more dungeon tokens.

According to a friend, there is a UI option to lock targeting on a mob until it’s dead. It’s probably on the initial Options click box screen. I don’t use it since I mainly play melee characters, but it could be really helpful for certain character builds.

As I’ve seen it explained, it’s just a multiplier that used to modify existing drop rates.

For example, you have a 200% MF score. You’re farming mobs which have a 1% drop rate for Yellow items and a 10% drop rate for Green items. After your MF adjustments, you’d be looking at a 3% drop rate for Yellow and a 30% drop rate for Green. This means that +MF is great from item categories which already have decent drop rates, but really won’t make a noticeable amount of difference for item categories which have very low drop rates.

Based on your trait spec, it sounds like you’re a glass cannon Greatsword build. Those are normally built around +Power, +Precision, and +Crit Damage to spike damage mobs to death. However this won’t serve you well in WvW (except for certain situations) or dungeons. You’ll need to be able to take a hit. While thankfully we Warriors have a lot of Health points, our defense is sorely lacking.

1) Make sure that you’re packing at least x1 form of Condition removal for things like damage dots (aka Poison, Burn, Bleed). This will normally be our Mending heal or Signet of Stamina.

2) You’ll need some kind of defensive stats. While you can take both +Vitality and +Toughness, Warriors are normally high on the Health and weak on the damage mitigation side. As a result, my personal preference would be to stack up on +Toughness. Though condition damage dots ignore your Toughness score, you’ll have the Health and condition removal to deal with it. My main concern for a melee character would be the ability to survive the many hits that you’ll be dealing with. High amounts of Toughness will reduce each incoming attack by a % value and will make it easier to keep you healed up to full.

3) In general, blend gear however you can. You can mix and match jewelry pieces to get your desired +Stat spread. Just make sure that you’re using a full set of x6 Superior Runes on your armor (which you could add to any armor pieces as needed).

4) On a side note, your trait spec confuses me. I’d personally suggest something more like 30/30/0/0/10. This would let you take Signet Mastery out of the Disciple line (since most Warriors use 1-2 Signets) and it would also increase your Crit Damage by +10%. The T1 Minor abilities in the Defense and Tactics lines just really aren’t that impressive when you’ve got better choices.

Warriors will usually take Signet of Rage. This is especially true if they have the T1 Major trait called Signet of Mastery from the Disciple line. At times, people will take Battle Standard instead for grouping situations since it’s basically an AoE version of the Signet’s buffs. However the recast timer on the Battle Standard (even after the Banner recast reduction from the T1 Major trait in Tactics) is too long for most people to use it soloing.

Rampage is a transformation skill. As a result, you will get a bonus health bar while in this state. It also grants you Stability (if memory serves), which is very nice. However it will also replace all of your weapon skills, which can be bad. Its attacks have a lot of Knock abilities attached to them, which makes it a powerful elite that can lock down any single mob which doesn’t have the white shield buff which makes boss mobs immune to control effects like Knocks. There are some people who use this skill for PvP and some tanks who make us it as an emergency health bar for PvE. But in general, this is a mostly unused skill.

If you’re taking the Shield trait from the T2 Defense line options, then it could be worth it. The same goes for using that slot instead for a dual Mace build. All things considered, I’m personally not a fan of those builds. However a Shield blocking build could be interesting. My own trait spec does give me this option to reduce Shield recast timers from the Defense line and giving me Might stacks for blocking attacks.

In Beta, this skill used to have a 30 sec recast for +15 sec Fury & +15 sec Might (x3). It was slightly longer on the recast side that FGJ, but it give almost double the +Fury duration. Twin pairs of Charr characters were both taking this to permanently chain up the Fury buff on themselves and up to x3 other characters within range.

It’s current form, which was the result of a change in the final days of Beta, made it much weaker. ArenaNet has always said that racial skills should be weaker than class skills. I was just surprised to notice that the original 1,200 range was still intact. Only a few AoE buffs are left with a 1,200 range after ArenaNet did a sweeping change to adjust almost everything AoE buffing wise to a 600 range. There are time when I’ve slotted this in my Charr Warrior (using AoE buffing abilities) for fights where everyone has to really spread out.

To be honest, this subject is a very loaded question. It really all depends on your weapon skills, your utility skills, your trait spec, and whether you’re grouping or soloing. While the ratios you listed up do look like they’re vaguely accurate, I wouldn’t put a lot of faith into them without understanding the big picture of your own character build.

1) You should only get the benefits of a Sigil or another kind of normal +Stats when the weapon is equip. There is no benefit to a switched out weapon set.

2a) I’m honestly not sure. It was my impression that it applies to any kind of offensive attack you down (be it with Weapon or Utility / Elite skills). However don’t hold me to that.

2b) The Sigil reads +3% Damage and not +3% Weapon Damage. Based on the Sigil’s wording and how +Damage traits work, the damage increase should apply to any offensive attack you do with either your Main Hand, Off Hand, or a skill.

3) This answer is contingent on whether or not I understand how proc Sigils work. (See my answer to 2a above.) From what I’m understanding, any kind of attack should have a chance to proc both of the Sigils when that weapon set is currently equiped.

4) It is my understanding that identical Sigils don’t stack with themselves. Therefore your 2nd +Bleed Damage Sigil is worthless. However you could run a +Bleed Damage and a +Bleed Duration pair of Sigils for full effectiveness.

5) Yes, running a +Healing / Condition / Precision stack Sigil and running a +Power stack Sigil would work. However you can’t double dip with x2 copies of a +Power Sigil since only x1 of them would work while the other did nothing.

1) Running x2 melee sets is kind of suicidal. Now if you’re built for it by using Shield blocks, damage immunities, and things that help you dodge, then it’s potentially viable. However that means devoting an entire build to just give you a chance to survive in melee against dungeon boss and open world zone bosses. All things considered, that just isn’t worth it on my book.

2) Flurry (from Sword) is great for laying down lots of Bleed damage dots. However there is a cap of x25 stacks on any mob. When you’re fighting against a dungeon or world boss with lots of other Bleed users, it’s extremely easy to hit the Bleed cap and only the Bleed stacks from you within this x25 amount will count towards your medal reward at the end. This is why condition focused classes like Necro will always get Bronze medal for live event completion.

Having said that, 100 Blades does prevent you from moving. That is a very large drawback to the skill.

3) AoE buffing specs using the Shout or Banner lines are completly viable. Based on how the Regeneration buff only stacks in +Duration, the T3 Major ability in the Tactics line that augments Banners is generally useless in group situations. As a result, people use Shouts as a group buffing spec (while still using Battle Standard as their grouping elite). Going Tactics 30 can get you the Healing Shout trait, which gets even better when you combine it with x6 Superior Rune of the Soldier. The runes add an additional AoE condition removal to each Shout (in addition to your traited AoE heal), which makes a Shout character very effective in a group. (The Superior runes can be used by 65 characters.)

However you need to keep in mind that you’ll need some kind of +Healing source to make your Healing Shouts trait effective. Many of us go either Defense 20 or Defense 30 for the free +Healing and the defensive trait choices. However you could easily just take other traits and you could grab +Healing on your gear.

As an example of a semi-aggressive Shout build, my own Warrior is Defense 20 / Tactics 30 / Disciple 20. My own primary weapon set is Axe / Warhorn, but you could easily run a Greatsword as your own melee set. That’s the weapon that I originally used on my Beta character that was testing out the Tactics line. (I found that my own trait spread lets me switch around my Major traits to meet almost any situaiton. It can let me switch between an aggressive soloing spec, a group support spec, and I can even switch out my Warhorn for a Shield if I need some more melee survivability.)

Things that make you go “hmm”:

While the skill Battle Roar is inferior in every way to the Warrior’s skill called For Great Justice (instead of just being a variant form of it back during the Beta days), I did stumble into something interesting. Did you know that Battle Roar still has a 1,200 range? That’s almost unheard of for any kind of AoE buffing power (which universally have a 600 range). I wouldn’t normally slot this power considering that the recast timer is horribly and its effects are lackluster, but the range does make this power situationally good.

Anyhow, I thought that I’d share that this power has a 1,200 range. It’s something that I initially missed and it could make the power potentially useful in specific situations.

While I’m not wild about all of the Human racial skills, I think that most of them have some kind of usefulness (depending on your class). For example, my poison focused Thief loves using Reaper of Grenth since my trait choices apply a short stack of Weakness whenever I apply a stack of Poison. Since the Grenth aura constantly applies stacks to anything around you, my Thief can chain Weakness someone while also getting access to Chill (which we almost never have access to).

The only thing that I have an issue with is the condition removal utility power. While it’s good for classes who have poor condition removal, the recast timer isn’t particularly impressive and I’ve have a hard time justifying a utility slot for that power.

Physical skills have always felt rather “battlefield control” to me. While I’m currently playing an AoE buffing Warrior, I do see the value of these skills. At some point, I’m going to have to make a Hammer character who’s devoted to the Physical skills.

1) You could always buy Karma vendor weapons or armor to help you level up. But at your level, that won’t happen.

2) You could buy the deity related Karma vendor armor sets from the Orr zones.

3) You could buy the Mystic Forge items which cost Karma and start saving towards making your own Legendary weapon. (See the Mystic Forge threads here on this forum and on the GW2 Wiki for the on going search to find out what the missing components will be for crafting the Legendary weapons.)

4) You could buy the Karma vendor food items (which are only found on various Karma vendors around the world). Many of those food ingredients can be turned into nice buffs by a Cooking character on your account.

Those are the main things that I can easily think of.

Sometimes people in the lower level zones accidentally pick up a Banner which I’ve dropped. I can often see them fiddling with it and casting different things while they try to figure out what they do. Since they normally don’t realize that they can simply drop the Banner through a weapon switch, it takes them a bit to find the #5 Banner key to plant it. All together, no real harm done and I’ve unintentionally given someone a crash course on what a Banner does.

But last night, I got hit by the Banner thieves. I dropped one down as I was preparing to do a big running spree across the zone. The moment it hits the ground, someone else who was running by me grabs it and hits the AoE Swiftness to speed off into the sunset. To be honest, I sat there dumbfounded for a bit. That kinds of junk never happens on Ferguson’s Crossing. Yet it appears that some people do understand what Banners do and are completely sociopathic about it.

It would be nice to impose some kind of limits on moving a Banner. I’d be fine with restricting it to group members for moving or using the Banner objects. While it shouldn’t normally be needed, sometimes things can just get really off kilter.

Lagg.3960:

I feel a nerf incoming for both Vigorous Shouts and Superior Rune of the Soldier (I use both as well).

Any particular reason for those gut feelings? I would think that anything buffing a Tactics (aka Shout) Warrior would be left untouched as a way of trying to tempt people into working together. There are so many Greatsword w/ Signet players running around, so you’d think that ArenaNet would want to keep other options available for people.

If you’re asking about what kind of gear to use in WvW, then a simple answer would be anything that’s Yellow (Legendary) grade or Orange (Exotic) grade. As a bare minimum, I’d advise using at least Green grade. Make sure that you have enough survivability options to keep yourself alive.

Or if you’re asking about how to buy WvW token gear, then obviously you need WvW tokens. The drop rates from killing players aren’t the best. (Make sure to loot the randomly spawning bags at their dead bodies.) If you’re looking for some fast WvW generation, then the jumping puzzle in each of the side WvW zones is your best source of token generation. However please keep in mind that some guilds like to camp these puzzles as a way of getting easy WvW kills, so you may not be able to realistically access the jumping puzzles all of the time.

Nice. Thanks for the quick response. Now I just have to remember to buy a 7th Rune and slap it into my underwater helm.

1) The trading post is a universal system which all servers tie into. While you can always try to play the market, just understand that you’re competing with EVERY other player in the game (instead of just your specific server).

2) You’ll get +20 Silver coins for every non-city Map Completion. If you complete all of the Heart, POI, and Vistas on a map, then it can be very nice.

3) Sell crafting materials. Crafted items are often used while leveling up. Also people are grinding many crafting classes up to the 400 skill cap because they’re needed to make the Legendary grade weapons. As a result, some of the raw material crafting items sell for a ton. Interestingly enough, you can make good profit margins on some of the lowest T1 crafting materials and on certain crafting materials in each higher tier. When you find something that looks profitable to farm, I would suggest that you just choose the option to instantly sell them using the “Sell to Lowest Offer” choice. While they’ll normally under cut the lowest selling price on the market, you can often find some decent profit margin offers and you’ll get the cash instantly (instead of trying to compete with hundreds of other selling offers on the market).

The whole issue with the jumping puzzle has to do with grinding out the WvW tokens needed for the Legendary Weapon line. While people are still figuring out all of the final ingredients necessary for the Legendary item, one of the confirmed ingredients is 250 WvW tokens. With the drop rates being rather spotty from standard WvW kills, this is driving everyone towards the jumping puzzles. However at the same time, there is often 1 or 2 servers on a guild who devotes themself to camping these things. It’s a perfectly legal strategy, but extremely aggravating to a lot of people.

Does the 6 set piece bonus of the Superior Rune of the Soldier apply to just the caster of the Shouts? Or does the condition removal apply to everyone within range (similar to how Healing Shouts works)?

Like it’s been already mentioned, you want to make sure that you’re using the Critical Strikes traits which augment Signet use if that’s the kind of build that you want to do.

To cover you other question, yes you will have to eventually use ranged combat a lot in things like open world zone boss live effects and dungeon named mobs. Even though I’m a melee machine with my S/P weapon set, there are times when I’m forced to switch to my Shortbow. It might be because I just took a bit hit of damage and I’m hanging back to wait for my heal to refresh. Or it might be because we’re being forced to ranged kite a dungeon mob as a group. Some mobs just have so many AoE effects that it’s just too difficult to stay in melee range for more than a few quick attacks. In those situations, you’ll need a backup ranged weapon set of some sort.

The karma vendor for Cherries (that I’m familiar with) is the zone that’s x2 zone maps North of Lion’s Arch. (In other words, the one North of Gendaran Fields.)

You can find this Heart quest through a hidden underwater tunnel to the NW from the zone in point. Follow the lake’s edge NW under you’re forced to swim. If you’re just barely underwater, you’ll see an obvious tunnel located just below the mountain line on the surface. You’ll emerge in a watery cave where you’ll have to mess around with crab cages and killing crabs. Once completed, you can purchase Cherry x25 bags.

Now if you’re looking for a low movement key class, a Sword/Pistol wielding Thief might be up your alley. While most people design them as mobile glass cannons, you can also design one to act more like a quasi-tank.

Both their class Steal mechanic and the Sword #2 move will teleport you into melee. Then you use Pistol #5 to AoE Blind everything near you. Cut them down with Sword #1. Drop down a Smoke Screen to block ranged projectiles from enemies which you haven’t locked down. Rinse and repeat.

With a more defensive Trait spec (such as a Venomous Aura build using Deadly Arts 20 / Shadow Arts 30 / Acrobatics 20), you can actually play a Thief which isn’t required to dodge a lot of the time.

Daredent.2961:

I haven’t played a engineer (so engineers dont flame me here) but they appear to just setup turrets and let them do alot of the work in PvE.

Actually that’s a deceiving thing. Turrets drop facing the exact way your character is facing. A well played Engineer will be running all around since the turrets drop at your feet (until you have a high end Trait) and will be aimed based on your pin point directioning. For a person who has true constantly moving around, I would never recommend an Engineer (based on what I’ve heard back from the Engineer that I know).

From what I’ve been able to understand, the Charr don’t neccessarily see the human gods as “divine”. They completely accept that these are ultra-powerful beings whose abilities seems god-like in nature. The Charr respect power, so they give credit where it is due. (After all, the whole reason that Humans are even still alive on this continent was due to their “gods” alpha striking down the Charr leadership on the eve of the original final battle of the human invasion onto the continent.)

What the Charr seem to have an issue with is the concept of divinity. It sort of follows the whole “Epic Rules Handbook” philosophical question in D&D. At what point does an extremely powerful spellcaster start to be classified as a “god” when they are already capable of god-like acts which could even include nearly eternal life? The Charr thought that they had their own set of gods, but these ended up being just extremely powerful mortal constructs. Who is to say that the Human gods aren’t the same way?

It really depends on your character build and the general situation. For general open world content, I’d say Shadows. The permanent movement increase is just too good (as well as the emergency AoE Blind). Having said that, you could always switch it out for the Assassin when you know that you’re about to fight a Group Event or Skill Point mob.

Soloing Melee Spec (always running at least 2 Signets)

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#MMkzMc0zMnovMMFrvo0xGG0MRqVRMs

Soloing Ranged Kiting Spec

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#MMkzMc0zMmrvMMFrvo0xGG0zRqVkVk

Grouping Spec

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#MMkzMc0zMFLvMMFrvo0xGG0cRqzkMa

Those are some general character builds that you can all use with that specific Trait point spread. Each one of those builds will play very differently and can be instantly changed to adapt to the upcoming battle.

Dagger Storm is kind of a situational power. I know that people will argue with me about that statement, but it’s how I feel. If you’re knowingly running into a large group of mobs and you need lots of AoE damage, then Dagger Storm is a nice choice. But for single target dps, the Thieves Guild pets are brutally efficient. Also since one of them is a Dual Pistol build, you’ll get a lot of free Blind hits on the mob when your pet fires through one of your Black Powder clouds.

I prefered Link #1 which was Critical Strikes 30 / Shadow Arts 20 / Acrobatics 20. Now I will admit that I’m not completely wild about all of your specific Major trait choices shown. However that point spread should give you some nice synergy in shifting around your Major trait selections (which you can always do for free at any time). Between your trait point spread and switching out which Major abilities are currently needed, that looks like a generally effective and versatile build.

Tier 3 abilities are a hit or miss kind of situation. Some people love certain T3 Minor/Major abilities for their class, so they’ll run a 30/30/10 spec. However other people (like myself) are more drawn to the various T2 abilities in the various lines. This causes use to design 30/20/20 builds. (For a Thief, I’m not really impressed with a lot of their T3 abilities. Some things like the T3 choices for Critical Strikes and Shadow Arts will have a direct impact, but many of them just grant bonus +Init generation. However the T3 abilities of other classes can often be very game altering.)

Just as a FYI. Assassin’s Reward gives healing based on a complex formula which is based on your level, the amount of Init spent to activate an ability, and it is influenced by your +Healing score. While it’s a very strong ability on character builds which have some +Healing (from the Shadow Arts line or from gear choices), it’s much weaker on characters that haven’t increased that ability score.

Mattidore.3482:

awesome! Glad to know I dont have to build something I don’t want to just to be viable in PvP!

Back on the GW2 Guru forums, there was a defensive build called Captain Hammer. I know that he’s got a Youtube account where he posts his PvP videos. His build was based around using a more defensive spec while wielding a Hammer. He used his control aspects and defensive capabilities to output the offensive burst classes. All things considered, it was considered a rather successful and viable PvP spec.

You can make many things work in PvP. Just figure out what the major problem will be, then come up with a way to deal with them.

For whatever reason, Fast Hands has been bugged since the early days of the public Beta events. We’ve all posted many threads about it, but ArenaNet still hasn’t fixed it yet. While it will hopefully be fixed in the near future, it is currently a worthless trait.