Guild Wars 2

1) Unless you’re one of the more skilled Warriors who don’t deal with any kind of lag, you’ll pretty much be required to carry a ranged weapon with you on a dungeon run. FYI. Even then, some fights just can’t be done very well as a melee. (Though some of the more defensive melee specs, when combined with great dodging skills, can permanently melee in many of the encounters.)

2) If it were me, I’d go with a Hammer & Longbow build. The bow will give you some nice AoE ranged dps output and can create nice Fire Field effects that will synergy well with other classes. Then you’ll have a nice melee dps output with the Hammer. Though it’s not one of the highest dps melee weapons, it does have a lot of nice control aspects. Between the mix of control effects and AoE dps, you should be able to deal with almost any situation.

3) Any kind of more specific commentary would be tied to your Trait choices. The Hammer traits are in the Defense line and the Hammer builds do tend to be more defensive in nature. However you’ll still have a lot of trait points to play with, which can really alter the “best backup weapon set” situation. Once you’ve got a vague idea about the general trait build that you’re thinking about, post a link in this thread and we can give you some better advice.

Downed Skills: I really don’t know. For whatever reason, the special moves of every class are like this. My guess is that they want you to use your attack for a few moments in the hope of making you feel heroicly defiant.

Smoke Bomb: This skill is worthless if you’re dead in a spot that’s right where the mob normally paths. However the skill is rather useful when you become Downed by a mob that has chased you beyond its normal roaming range. Hitting the Smoke Bomb will put you into stealth, which will immediately leash the mob and make it run back to its normal area. In that situation, it’s a life saver.

As to the trait levels of Major and Minor? Not a clue. I wasn’t paying complete attention when I looked through your trait spec to peek at the Minor traits. If the GW2 Wiki says it’s a Minor trait, then you’re good to go.

Yes, you’ll kill mobs faster with an offensive Pistol Whip spec. But then again, my quasi-tank S/B character can solo rediculous things by using Smoke Screen and chain spaming Black Powder (while using Sword #1 for my dps output). By the time I hit 60th, I had access to Venomous Aura and that made Thieves Guild especially deadly when soloing.

Like I’ve already said, you can play S/P multiple ways. One of the key rules that I’ve learned about S/B “advice” is that it always comes from a specific view point. If you’re trying to follow someone’s advice and it isn’t working out for you, it may be because they’re playing a different S/B version. Just use whatever ends up working for you and ignore anything that doesn’t fit.

As a general rule, a lot of the more original weapon and armor skins come from the various karma vendor items. When in doubt, it never hurts to look around the karma vendor of a zone which you suspect the item came from.

There was actually a nice thread on the GW2 Guru forums in the Warrior section which talked about a similar situation. Their S/S build is a condition build in ways that are similar to Thief D/D. The result of this thread was actually a nice explaination about why Precision / Condition damage was a good chioce for the low to mid levels (beyond general gear availability). I think this reasoning also continued into the end game scene. Unfortunately I didn’t pay much attention to the thread since I’m not a big fan of dot builds. However I did just want to share that Precision / Condition Damage isn’t as rare as some people might think.

If you’re going for the offensive version of S/P that focuses on Pistol Whip for spike dps? Yes, it should work. All of the offense S/P people use Critical Strikes 30 in their build. Then I see that you took some AoE support for your Trickery line traits. The only comment I’ll make is that some builds choose to take the Critical Strikes trait that provides a 20% chance to grant +Init on a Crit. On marathon fights, you might want to think about shuffling your Major traits around to include this.

Yet if you’re going for a defensive S/P build, then it’s a poor Trait setup. If you were going that route, I’d expect something more like Deadly Arts 20 / Shadow Arts 30 / Acrobatics 20.

The nice part about S/B is that it can support radically differnet play styles. Between skill and trait choices, each S/B character can end up being different. Even the way that someone physically playing just the S/B weapons will all of the difference.

Atlas.9704:

My wife has stated if ArenaNet ever sold Quaggan plushies I am ordered to buy one.
Cute little melonheaded beluga looking things lol.

There’s someone on GW2 Guru forums that actually does make and occassionally sell Quaggan plushies. FYI. (It’s a thread called “Quaggan Plushies” in the Library of Whisper sub-forum.)

I’ve already been back and forth with Customer Support until I figured out the nature of this bug. When I boot up GW2, there’s a percentage chance that my entire account will become bugged (for the duration of running that program). This bug lets you look at items in the BLTC system, but grays out the Buy button and won’t let you make any purchases. At the same time, the BLTC can’t see inside of your Inventory system, which prevents you from posting items for Sell.

However this bug is inconsistent. It only shows up around 50% of the time. If you close down GW2 and reboot the program another 1 or 2 times, you should be able to get a working version of the BLTC system. For some reason, the bug always occurs when GW2 is booted up for the 1st time after starting my computer. Then it also automatically happens the 1st time after a patch has gone through.

I’ve seen other people talk about this in the zone wide chat channels. It’s obviously not just my account and it affects us all at a sparadic pace. We’d just like to see this bug end up being permanently fixed at some point.

Well that really depends. Both D/P and P/P are bad for AoE damage. Basically both of your weapon choices are about killing a single foe, then moving on to the next one.

Having said this, one of the more popular weapon combinations is D/D and P/P. This would give you access to AoE melee dps and high single target melee dps through the D/D set. Then you’re have high single target ranged dps, a way to AoE Blind spam from Pistol #5, and the ability to ranged kite foes.

I would normally suggest having at least one decent source of AoE damage. It doesn’t matter if your using a Shortbow or Dual Daggers. If I had my say, I’d tell you to drop the D/P and replace it with something else. But then again, I’ve never like D/P and I’m inherently biased on the subject.

Victros.8154:

I’m relatively new at playing a thief. So far, I’ve been using dual pistols. Compared to my greatsword/rifle warrior, my thief just seems a bit underpowered and squishy. Does it get better with levels? Am I doing it wrong??

Thanks!

Each weapon set performs differently. While I was a Warrior in all of the Beta events and started off as one in the live game, I’ve fallen in love with the Thief. Yes, it does feel fragile compared to our Warrior health point pool. Nor do it has the “point click boom” killing of the Greatsword’s 100 Blades. Having said that, the Thief can outperform the Warrior in many areas and my own Thief can solo far more than my Warrior ever could.

If you’re looking for a more survivable build, then you’re going to have to decide whether you want to avoid damage from dodging or from AoE Blind. Like another poster mentioned, the D/D weapon set is good for close range melee AoE damage that keeps you constantly dodging. Yet if that isn’t your style, I’ve ended up loving the Sword/Pistol (S/P) build.

The combo #3 move of Pistol Whip is a great source of dps. Some people build a dps burst spec based around Pistol Whip. Other people like myself use it as a situational skill. In our own playstyles, we’re constantly spamming Pistol #5 for the AoE Blind effect and spamming Sword #1 to cut down multiple foes. Either playstyle is functional if you spec yourself the right way.

Venomous Aura specs are brutally strong in organized sPvP. They will often run Deadly Arts 30 / Shadows Arts 30 / (???) 10. A well organized group attack on a single target would result in 10 seconds of stun from Basilisk Venom. Also the various Venom buffs really help out your fellow players.

Having said that, this is a very group dependant sPvP spec. If you’re entering a random sPvP match without good cohesion or coordination, then that kind of extreme spec won’t perform very well.

Okay. First off, you need to pick a general theme that compliments your weapons and utility skills. Then you need to build a general trait plan and a gear +Stat theme to go along with it.

Since your skill selection that you linked focused a lot on Signets, I’d suggest that you dump 30 pts in Critical Strikes. There’s a T2 Major trait which gives you +2 Init per Signet activation (while also lowering their recast timer). Another T2 Major trait gives you a 60% chance to Cripple your target for free on a Crit, which should be valuable to your build.

Beyond that, it’s really up to you. Seeing your D/P and P/P build, I’m getting the feeling that you’re going to need to be constantly mobile. One option is the Trickery line. It has a T1 Major trait that drops down Caltrops whenever you dodge, which will be another free source of Cripple to keep your enemies at range. Trickery also increases your +Condition Damage score, which could be useful on your Pistol #1 Bleed dots. Then you have multiple choices for your T2 Major slot.

Another option is Acrobatics. This line would help to keep your dodge meter full through the T2 Minor ability and it has many Major choices which increase your mobility, survivability, or +Init generation.

My personal suggestion would to be to run something like Critical Strikes 30 / Acrobatics 20 / Trickery 20 or something like Critical Strikes 30 / Acrobatics 30 / Trickery 10. These kinds of build would focus on keeping you mobile, slowing down your enemies, and you chain spamming skills like Unload while getting lots of bonus +Init generation from activating signets and from passive Acrobatics traits.

I completely agree. My helmet if surpressed on my Charr Warrior for a reason. The same goes for the shoulders on my Thief. It would be nice for the Character Selection screen to recognize those appearance preferences.

I wish. Basically this Cooking change just completely shafted the low level Cook players who didn’t get their skill boosted up before the patch. Not having access to things like Butter is more than a little nuts and honestly kind of insulting.

As so many have already mentioned, ArenaNet specifically said that they DID NOT want a traditional trade window. Why? They didn’t want to have to deal with the “sleight of hand” trade box scams that you can pull in other MMOs.

Basically people would put the item in the trade box, let you put your item / cash into the trade box, then they would try to quickly move it before you could finish clicking Confirm. If you’re not reacting fast enough, you’ve now hit Confirm on a one sided trade where they’re getting your stuff and you’re not getting anything in return. Then while you try to move your mouse over in time to cancel out the trade, the scammer hits their Confirm button to complete the transaction. This results in one player being ripped off in a “technically legal” and extremely immoral transaction which can be hard for Customer Service to deal with.

ArenaNet doesn’t want that crap. They specifically said in one interview that you should ONLY use Mail with people that you completely trust. Even then, you should go into those Mail situations with the acceptance that you’re doing an un-secure transaction and it’s your own fault if you get ripped off.

The whole point of this current system is to basically force people to use the BLTC auction system. This system will prevent “sleight of hand” trade box disputes and will protect you from Mail fraud. At the same time, it will also remove a bit of currency from the game’s economy. To ArenaNet, this “safety” and money sink byproduct is more important than having their own Cusomer Service dealing with trade box scams.

To be honest, I’m having trouble understanding the concept of your proposed Trait specs. Link #1 was only partially filled out, so it’s hard to comment on. Though the sprinkle of x5 pts into so many categories confused me. Then Link #2 fleshed out the concept of Link #1. You’re dipping into the T2 Minor traits of many lines, but going no further. Why?

Most of the successful specs will run builds that are either 30/30/10 or 30/20/20 between x3 trait lines. Your shotgun spread approach will prevent you from accessing T2 Major & T3 Major abilities, which will make you much weaker than your average Thief.

Yes, I know that the title seems a bit silly. You want there to be a Burst skill for the F1 slot when wield a Banner summoned object? Are you crazy? Well… Maybe so. However I’ve started to fall in love with wielding the Banner in battle.

(This thread has also been cross-posted in the Warrior forum in the hopes of getting some Warrior player feedback.)

Depending on the Banner you’re wielding, it isn’t that bad in combat. I’ve gotten used to wielding the Banner of Strength when running around in open world content. While I’ll still weapon switch to instantly drop the Banner (as per the standard rules for carried objects) when I’m getting over whelmed, I have been able to kill a surprising number of mobs at a respectable rate and have kept my sense of style in the process.

Banners are one of our class features. It’s always felt a bit strange that we can’t access a Burst skill for the Banner weapons. To me, it just makes sense to have them. Even if they share a single Burst skill, I think that it would really add something to the flavor of the Warrior class.

Yes, I know that the title seems a bit silly. You want there to be a Burst skill for the F1 slot when wield a Banner summoned object? Are you crazy? Well… Maybe so. However I’ve started to fall in love with wielding the Banner in battle.

Depending on the Banner you’re wielding, it isn’t that bad in combat. I’ve gotten used to wielding the Banner of Strength when running around in open world content. While I’ll still weapon switch to instantly drop the Banner (as per the standard rules for carried objects) when I’m getting over whelmed, I have been able to kill a surprising number of mobs at a respectable rate and have kept my sense of style in the process.

Banners are one of our class features. It’s always felt a bit strange that we can’t access a Burst skill for the Banner weapons. To me, it just makes sense to have them. Even if they share a single Burst skill, I think that it would really add something to the flavor of the Warrior class.

(EDIT: I just cross-posted this into the Suggestion forums to follow the official procedure. However I would still like to hear some feedback from my fellow Warriors.)

The casting timer was added because of the Venomous Aura specs. A hard core VA spec could potentially trigger a net of 10 seconds of unpreventable stun after all of the procs from you and your allies hit the same target. That’s pretty crazy, which is why ArenaNet tried to make the skill harder to use.

Of course they also made the skill basically broken for all of the non-VA players, but they don’t seem to care about that part.

Yeah, you really can’t get Venomous Aura easily. It’s the kind of trait spec which you have to intentionally center yourself around. Basically it demands Shadow Arts 30 (for Venomous Aura) & Deadly Arts 20 (for the Venom recast reduction). Some people will argue that you need to really have Deadly Arts 30 for the extra Venom proc on each venom skill, but I’d disagree with that. Then after those minimum of x50 Trait points have been used, you’ve got room to assign the remaining x20 into another line of your choice.

My own character is a tanky Thief who run S/P and more defensive stats. The trait spec to compliment this is Deadly Arts 20 / Shadow Arts 30 / Acrobatics 20. This character build is certainly abnormal by the normal Thief standards, but I’m really enjoying it and it’s performing well. In the end, we all have to play whatever makes us smile.

Unlike the choices of some other races, our god selection is more for flavor and not for substance. Now a Charr’s choice immediately affects what class of NPC pet they have running around with them in Story Missions. Therefore a Charr would experience things rather different between things like the Engineer, Guardian, and Thief options (beyond their own voices and talking styles). However we really don’t get that as a Human.

Sirds.9523:

Psilocin.1435:

… that means I’ll have to wait another week to be able to finish…

Or you can just go and fight. Seriously this is WORLD Completion, this can`t be easy walk on the park. And WvW is just some PvP elements, this is mix of PvE and PvP.

I agree with Eochaidh.

While I agree with this comment, the reason that people are complaining is because they want their ultimate end game Legendary weapons ASAP. Since one of the many items is a reward from a 100% World Map completion, people are really impatient about clearing everything on every map.

I’m personally finding it humorous that people want to burn themselves out rushing to get the “ultimate” stuff, then be left with nothing else to aspire to (except repeating the very lengthy process on another character). But it’s their lives and their game, so they’re free to play it how they wish. Just don’t expect all of us to be completely sympathetic.

Venomous Aura isn’t very clear in the text description. While it does share your Venom skill buffs to targets in range (up to 5 targets, including youself), this Major trait’s true power is that is also shares ALL of your Venom related trait abilities at the same time.

This means that it would trigger Venomous Might (T1 Deadly Arts) and Leeching Venoms (T2 Shadow Arts) to every target that gets your Venom buffs. For example, you cast Thieves Guild. Once your x2 Thief pets spawn, you activate Spider’s Venom. Both you and your pets get x2 Might stacks, x5 procs of Spider’s Venom, and x5 Life Drain components added to your Spider’s Venom. This means that a single hit by your pet will do more base damage because of the Might stacks, they’ll increase the Poison dot duration (which really doesn’t matter), and they’ll do bonus Life Drain damage to the target (regardless of whether or not your pet could benefit from the healing function of the Life Drain).

As a 60th level character, I can run with Thieves Guild and x2 Venom powers to easily solo down any of the road guards in WvW. While that isn’t impressive on its own, I was surprised just how quickly I could burst dps the guard down. There was a noticeable increase in my net dps once I got Venomous Aura and could buff my Thieves Guild pets.

On a side note, Leeching Venoms does have a 1 second cool down for its Life Drain function. So if you did something like a S/P Pistol Whip move, the rapid amount of swings would only cause x3 Life Drain procs while still using all x5 Spiders Venom procs.