Guild Wars 2

ronpierce.2760:

Wolfe.3097:

ronpierce.2760:

Wolfe.3097:

so what i gather, is we shouldnt have viable alternative choices in builds?

k

It’s a refusal to believe you can function without it (same as Cleansing Ire). It’s one of those traits that feels so nice to have you couldn’t imagine not having it. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to be successful without.

you cannot be successful without it in pvp

so i guess, in pvp, we shouldnt have viable alternative choices?

dont give me that holier then thou pvp doesnt matter crap either

this isnt just for warrior, but any class, they shouldnt have viable alternatives? guess not according to a few people in here.

warrior would need a lot of changes in pvp to be viable without fasthands.

A tree has dominance in PvP? No way! That’s not a big deal… Arcana, Soul Reaping, trickery are all basically mandatory for PvP. Not a big deal. You still have 2 other specializations to mix it up with. And yes you can still be somewhat useful in pvp without it. Even now I have made banner condition warriors as S/S+LB that can do decently well without it.

pretty well doesnt mean squat

your whats wrong with games like this.

you know what fine, delete fast hands, that way warriors can get buffs in other areas

ill go play some other class until then

good to know basically pvp isnt a big deal tho

ronpierce.2760:

Wolfe.3097:

so what i gather, is we shouldnt have viable alternative choices in builds?

k

It’s a refusal to believe you can function without it (same as Cleansing Ire). It’s one of those traits that feels so nice to have you couldn’t imagine not having it. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to be successful without.

you cannot be successful without it in pvp

so i guess, in pvp, we shouldnt have viable alternative choices?

dont give me that holier then thou pvp doesnt matter crap either

this isnt just for warrior, but any class, they shouldnt have viable alternatives? guess not according to a few people in here.

warrior would need a lot of changes in pvp to be viable without fasthands.

so what i gather, is we shouldnt have viable alternative choices in builds?

k

ill be honest, hammer+GS=possibly the most kitten weapon combination…ever

Elorna.5329:

Elixirs would fit thematically, although they might be too similar with stances. Some form of minion might be possible, but meh, there’s already too many of those. Mantras are stance-like, but would be a thematic fit like elixirs. Consecrations might be possible.

i think it depends on what they do. if a mutagen actually changed the way you looked it would be different enough but i see what your saying.

whats that mean to me?

heavy armor

huge norn male

melee

this leaves me with warrior/guardian and eventually revenant

the questions

is guardian a bit…namby pamby? all that light, virtue nonsense

is there any real downside to being a giant norn in pvp? will i just be more likely to be targeted or something?

anyone got any kitten male norn pictures?

This thread was very different then i figured to rephrase it to be more inline with the title.

necros get a gs and shouts and go melee, this is very far different thena regular necro

guardian gets a solid ranged option

basically classes are getting things to “round them out” or give them tools in situations where they previously had none.

warriors have a lot of options, single target, aoe, ranged, melee, aoe placed marks (banners), shouts, stances,burst, sustain, control, etc there is not a lot a warrior doesnt have that other characters have in some similarish way.

So we can look at this objectively, what does a warrior NOT have.

stealth
poison
minions
magic
potions
(feel free to chime in with others if you think its worth a note)

now there are others but i feel they overlap too much to create a really distinct feel (virtues=stances as a example, banners fill the aoe ground placed utility)

so of this list (and any you can think of) what seems most likely?

nobody seems to like the idea of minions even tho it does fill a gap.

poison/stealth-ya warriors dont have these but one sucks and the other im not sure if its wise to spread it around too much.

potions i could see being imbibed buffs like mutagens.

magic, lot of people dont want this one either, but it would also make sense.

also to note, i believe there has been zero weapon overlap with the new weapon options for revealed elite specializations yes? so we can assume this to continue.

ranger has staff, thats the only one of the currently revealed classes that we dont posess. so scratch it.

this leaves us with

shortbow (too similar to longbow imo)
pistol (possibility for a van helsing like potion imbiber)
dagger (possibility)
scepter (possibility)
focus (possibility)
torch (possibility for a van helsing like character again)

of these options unless my basis is super far off the ones that seem most likely are pistol and torch imo. unless they do something magiclike and completly off the wall i cant think of.

tico.9814:

GS/LB but you gotta know how to play it thou. In the right hands this setup destroys people, you can start first with hambow since it’s easier to learn.

i have to ask why is it harder? the only difference is yoru first set of bars….

those two sound decent, im ok with having longbow, i just want to do a lot of damage. preferrably with twohanders wich you list.

basically i just want to have fun and smash peoples faces into the ground. I want to do high damage, be in your face, and “to a point” not rely on my team.

thats not to say i wouldnt support my team, its just in solo que i like taking the hurt to the enemy.

the question is what is that? ive seen shoutbow…i dont want that. i made a GIANT MUSCLEBOUND NORN WARRIOR and i would like to play him as a GIANT MUSCLEBOUND NORN WARRIOR and smash people in the face.

Doggie.3184:

I already made a Sylvari Revenant and he’s already lvl 80 with full ascended.

closed beta access? /jealous

Finally a class i want to roll and want to roll Norn

love those big burly guys <3

a ranged dominant option would i guess make sense tho i dont really personally enjoy the idea

what is a thief right now…mostly assassin. stealth, burst, mobility

what does thief lack

tankiness, group support.

i could see at least one if not both of those pretty easily. but in what form?

if they keep in general theme of a thief (and i imagine they will) they are not super magic inclined, more about shadow arts and martial prowess. so i expect maybe sigils/marks/shouts type of thing.

as for a new weapon? we have sword/dagger for melee and pistol/shortbow for ranged…i can see them making a rifle option in a attempt to rival shortbow that will either fail and be pointless or create a pure ranged thief that uses rifle/shortbow.

for a melee option? im honestly not sure what they could give that would really give good flavor/mechanics. shield? for tanky option /shrug

thanks! i will employ these with due haste!

see title <3

hmmm that is indeed troublesome. i suppose i could still do it but id have to play spvp games differently.

hmm, may i ask why a reliance on stealth is bad in spvp? i only ask cuz its been a VERY long while since i played

i used to have a build when i played this game. it involved tons of blinds/evasion/stealth/healing/condition removal.

it wasnt great damage, but at the time with thieves really high base damage it was still enough to “chainsaw” thru enemies. the damage wasnt negligible, it just wasnt one shotty.

just wondering if something like that still exists, i really liked using it cuz people thought i was a prime target until they realized i just wont die.

Title sums it up. i can give you guys what i like/dislike and we can go from there. I used to play a thief and used non burst builds typically (i remember making a blind/defense build that just walked thru everything a mesmer could throw…fune times)

But thieves have seemed to get nothing but nerfs since the game launch, and it looks like that hasnt changed.

So

I like melee, mobility, control either over my character or over someone elses (meaning either abundance of CC or anti CC)

this would be for spvp obviously

i dislike

standing still, cast times, animation locks, getting chain CC’d into the dirt, having my damage made irrelevant

i was just hoping for something fun that i could put some investment into.

as far as the gem thing i guess i dont care.

but as far as community, gameplay, balance, etc .

as far as my reason not picking up thief, ive thought about it. however their mobility isnt that good imo, and they pretty much have 1 really viable spec and had many issues both in pvp and pve.

so im understandably hesitant, especially if they are bieng made even worse.

warrior or guardian have good mobility?

i need to find another game by the sounds of it, very sad.

really? kitten , no good mmo’s out there it seems.

one more bump of hope.

no im not looking for a whats best at pvp or pve or whatever. rather i wanted to illustrate my tastes so you guys can make informed educated suggestions as to what i may enjoy.

First thing, mobility-i want to be mobile. i dont want to be a slow guy basically.

second thing, direct damage-i dont really want a lot of DoT’s, this may stem from other games i played but lots of DoT’s means slow killing.

Third, Versatility, a class that is good at several playstyles so i dont feel pigeonholed into one style of play, and if i get bored with one, i can learn another

fourth, aesthetics, this is mainly aimed at mesmers…i like there concept, HATE there artstyle. to the point where its hard for me to play one.

right now im looking at thief, ranger, engineer. but im open to any suggestion (tho youd have to make a strong case for mesmer)

Demented Lemur.7861:

I like death blossom to stay the way it is it a great AOE bleed and has cripples and poison to support it as well a a gap closer to get in close I don’t consider it really needs any fixing that’s like saying I think that a back stab should have more conditions and less power just cause a skill doesn’t work for your build doesn’t mean its broken

i read this as…i like deathblossom so i want to keep D/D as a incomplete set for my own benefits.

i know thats probably not it…but thats what it sounds like.

your last line is also completly rediculous simply because of the inherent nature of thieves weapon sets and there mechanics.

other classes, you dont see them using much in terms of condition weapon sets if they are focusing on power, and vice versa.

why do thiefs have to be the ones who are unfocused and weaker for it? because some people like deathblossom? please, make it scale with power and be done with it.

honestly D/D and P/P both are oddballs in the general thief weapon sets. for opposite reasons.

D/D all power based skills except deathblossom…why?!

P/P a bleed autoattack and a power scaling main damage ability…why?!

just dumb imo

MIrra.3604:

Wolfe.3097:

so basically you want to DP to choose between our one viable (because of anets changes) way to play, or be able to stealth..survive, and not kill.

sounds kitten backwards to me.

also what about D/D or just x/D? thats ok with its own level of stealth? yet D/P who while can enter stealth more reliably, has to expend noticeably more initiative to do so, is the culprit?

as far as stealth stacking goes, ive yet to see a post by anet saying thakittens bad or unintentional, until then, talking about nerfing it has no real merit.

sorry, i understand your trying to be constructive with this post, and i dont fault you for it certainly. But i fail to see how D/P is anything more then what the other sets should strive for, a well rounded set that has all useful abilities and can support a group offensively as well as provide good solo capability.

How is this any differant than a D/D spec going 25/30/0/0/15 for max damage and a 10/30/30/0/0 or 0/30/30/10/0 for some burst + some toughness? Everyone should be forced to pick one side or the other.

Devs said stealth stacking is bad or unintended. They just don’t know what to do about it.

if stealth stacking is bad fine, i dont care, fix that, dont nerf D/P into the ground in other ways.

and thats my point, why can D/D have nice things but D/P cant? thats the logic im seeing with the OP

still not seeing how initiative is the problem. its only the problem if you want to copy the other classes.

complaining about skill useage? that doesnt matter so long as we can perform (which i admit, for reasons other then initiative therer are problems with that)

if you want to be a thief, be a thief, if you want every skill to be high damage and basically press them in sequence, pick another class.

so basically you want to DP to choose between our one viable (because of anets changes) way to play, or be able to stealth..survive, and not kill.

sounds kitten backwards to me.

also what about D/D or just x/D? thats ok with its own level of stealth? yet D/P who while can enter stealth more reliably, has to expend noticeably more initiative to do so, is the culprit?

as far as stealth stacking goes, ive yet to see a post by anet saying thakittens bad or unintentional, until then, talking about nerfing it has no real merit.

sorry, i understand your trying to be constructive with this post, and i dont fault you for it certainly. But i fail to see how D/P is anything more then what the other sets should strive for, a well rounded set that has all useful abilities and can support a group offensively as well as provide good solo capability.

unless you can reliably net multiple targets to melee down simultaneously and none of them are ranged/have a long enough reach that they can stop just outside of your blind aoe…imo d/p is better.

more damage basically.

ive had multiple times where the above scenario has happened to me on my way to just level 24. and has gotten me killed more then once. and thats with scorpion wire too.

at the end of the day i prefer the higher single target (better at soloing stronger mobs too) and the ability to enter stealth with my weapon set.

your mileage may vary however. i can certainly see merit to S/P and malice combo if you can reliably find groups of melee mobs with normal reach.

uhm…i honestly feel you are not looking at the skills closely AT ALL.

every build has mostly 1 damage skill. the rest are situational utility.

Dagger/pistol has heartseeker for damage, shadow shot for gap closing, headshot for interrupts, and black powder for entering stealth, blind aoe pulse, etc. there is no “omg this skill suxxors” and in fact id say your suggestions would make thieves a less well rounded class.

sword/pistol has pistol whip and there gap closer that acts like a mini shadowstep.

dagger/dagger is about the only one you could argue has 2 damage skills. and they support different builds, heartseeker and deathblossom. with dancing dagger as a slow that can hit multiple targets, and CnD to enter stealth, nearly all its abilities do good damage as well. so it may be the best one for you since you feel all our abilities should be omg damage.

sword/dagger a evasion ability that strips boons

pistol/dagger a gap opening ability

shortbow has a self actualizing combo with cluster and poison aoes. a gap opener/snare and a mobility tool.

honestly, this isnt a initiative problem, this is a design BECAUSE of initiative and is a boon to the class.

if there are people still posting with there inability to combat a thief, then there is no hope for htem in this game.

they will be rocked in dungeons/fractals

owned in wvw

and slammed in spvp

and will never make it to higher level of play. you see high level players complaining about thiefs currently? i dont.

Zenith.7301:

Black Powder is outrageously cheap for what it does.

Some suggest to increase the initiative cost but that changes nothing as the current stealth build grants initiative on stealthing and all the thief needs to do is heartseeker multiple times through it for stealth and refill his initiative bar to full and get might in the process.

What they need to do is increase initiative cost and have it so you can’t blast/leap multiple times on the field and stack stealth. Stealth shouldn’t even stack beyind the base duration. Remove the extra second of stealth trait. 4 seconds of stealth is just dumb when used so often — utility skills have 30-40 sec cd’s for those effects.

please nobody listen to this person.

heartseeker costs 3 INI

trait in shadow arts regens 2 ini per stealth…we are not regenning all our stealth back by heartseeker spamming!

and im fine with stealth not stacking (tho that would ruin certain tactics in PVE) but not taking away the extra second stealth trait.

man im glad anet doesnt listen to its playerbase sometimes >.<

i dont know, i just dont think blind should make you automiss, maybe have a 25-50% highe rmiss chance instead? i mean, if your swinging your weapon around theres still a chance your gonna hit, not 100% chance of fail.

this is coming from a player that has ALWAYS used blinds on his thief in pvp.

Master of Timespace.2548:

But but, what if I play thief and think it’s OP? Am I still bad?

not at all you probably just play something like hunter/warrior in pvp. or your used to the complexity of elemental/engineers which i will admit, they are more complicated.

this is sad that this is still an issue for people, are you new players? stealth stomping is entirely interruptable, its not even the most effective way for thieves to stomp/res, you want effective? black powder says hi. aoe pulsing blind preventing you from hitting the thief with ANY interrupt.

traits id say power line or crit line to start.

lots of people suggest S/P but i find the killing too slow, i went D/P, you dont get aoe, but that can be taken care of with shortbow imo.

i also went down crit line, cuz i like critting, and the damage seems to be quite nice.

best way to combat necros is to have few conditions yourself and many ways to remove conditions, along with high burst preferrably.

basically, a power/crit build with condition removal.

far as i know, necros still have little in the way of defense.

everyones using math, thats good to a point, but doesnt take everything into account either.

math is more the reason to experiment, not the deciding factor in..well…decisions.

i guess ill have to play with it.

wish.1027:

Wolfe.3097:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlUmiO3ey5E9pEx2jeqTe6VgsA-ToAA2EOpcy5kxJpTWnGjsAZiB

some may scoff at the choices, but honestly, it seems to offer the best consistancy and balance between damage, and survivability,and the utility that D/P brings.

I dunno about you, but personally, I like to use all my trait points. When I click your link and check yours, I see 0/30/0/0/10…
I preffer this site though:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/
Some of the math is off and it doesnt seem to update traits, but it gives you a good idea of EHP ED and precision.

Ghostwolf.9863:

Wolfe.3097:

nice builds, ive considered hidden killer over executioner, the ability to ALWAYS crit from stealth is super nice, does it outweight executioner? not sure cuz when you do crit with executioner it hits harder, and your attacks outside of stealth will hit harder after that 50% mark.

It’s honestly hard to say which is better.

Its not hard to say which is better, I did the math before, check my post history if youre interested. But the conclusion is that if backstab does 50% of your damage using hidden killer, it barely wins. Thats effectively the break even point. If backstab does less than 50% of your damage with the hidden killer trait selected executioner is better.

sorry i fixed my link. and i prefer that one anyways.

and yes hidden killer is better in a vacuum but im more curious about how it performs in actual play, where you cant gaurantee a stationary target.

thief is almost entirely reliant on ACTIVE mitigation. evasion/stealth.

no matter how much toughness/vitality you get, your still squishy as a thief.

easiest way is for black powder use with offhand pistol. however, this is a common setup and may be predictable for some better players.

beyond that, its about knowing WHEN to dodge.

havent had any issues in PVE

havent done much pvp lately tho

nice builds, ive considered hidden killer over executioner, the ability to ALWAYS crit from stealth is super nice, does it outweight executioner? not sure cuz when you do crit with executioner it hits harder, and your attacks outside of stealth will hit harder after that 50% mark.

well by all means please share your other solutions! if nothing else it may give other readers some ideas to something they would prefer

what do you find fun to play? guardian/warrior are both immensely more boring and simplistic imo

engineer/elemental is the only ones that are harder/require more skill.

the rest are about even.

also i sense you have a aversion from dagger mainhand since i dont see you comment on it. it may suck thakittens the best option, but its still the best option, and it is fast.

quite simply until things change, pvp wise dagger/pistol is probably the best, dagger/dagger is great in skilled hands tho.

as for pve, imo, either go ranged or sword/dagger with poitns in trickery

EDIT* fixed the link, my bad

for pvp/roaming/wvw

Dagger/pistol, old standby…not innovative, predictable maybe…but kitten it if i cant find a better weapon set :P

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlUmiO3ey5E95Ex2jeqTey9wpGtpeFILA-ToAA2EOpcy5kxJpTWnGjsAZiB

some may scoff at the choices, but honestly, it seems to offer the best consistancy and balance between damage, and survivability,and the utility that D/P brings.

i see a lot of people take mug…and honestly dont understand why. it cant crit, the heal is better used as a non opener which is what i use steal for usually. imo 20% more crit, speed to keep up with people, and a bit of extra damage outweighs the singular value of mug. hence me taking bountiful theft.

you could make an argument to drop ten points from shadow arts and sink it into either deadly for mug, or trickery. but i find the extra healing really helps with staying power (YMMV)

feel free to tear into it, as ive yet to come up with anything that performs better, and ive spent quite a lot of time staring at these trats and trying different things.

so i like the way steal can be so well focused around boons, but i dislike how so few builds really feel good about going that route.

at the moment the only one i imagine that can take it easily is unicorn builds.

so i wanted to create something that wasnt that! and still used trickery 30 points.

Sword/dagger, 30 in shadow arts, 30 in trickery, 10 in deadly arts.

essentially youll be evading, boon stripping, boon granting, and dazing. anyone have any opinions on ideas in this direction?

atm im running mesmer runes, sigil of nullification and purity.

stealth heal, shadow refuge, shadowstep, signet of shadows.

yay necro, my second class :P

D/P is better at killing

S/D is better at harrassing and arguably surviving…but imo also has a higher learning curve.

of this, as long as things stay relatively the same, i see myself doing S/P+shortbow in PVE and S/D+either P/P or shortbow in fractals.

doing either S/D or D/P in WvW roaming