Guild Wars 2

It’s only really necessary higher end fractals as ascended gear had a slot to put Agony infusions. Agony is basically an HP degen during the end boss of fractals. The higher the levels get, the more it degens. Agony infusions counter that. It basically acts as a game mechanic gear check of sorts. WvW and other PvE it doesn’t matter tooo much but it does give a bit more armor value over exotic. All that aside though, I’d say it’d be worth investing in a set some day since now you can swap the stats on it fairly easily and cheaply as opposed to crafting/buying an entirely new set of exotic armor. You will lose any agony infusions and runes during the stat swap however which i guess makes it a bit more expensive depending on the upgrades you had in the armor.

o well yeah i guess if blind is a condi tick damage that would function. I was thinking inflicting blind causing damage instead my bad. Perhaps a trait called “Pepper Spray” or something to make blind as a DoT make sense lol. Not really a good name but yeah xD

The thing with SB is it can’t be buffed too much simply because it is in the starter area for humans and if a new player happens to stumble upon it, it wouldn’t be great fun if they were instakilled. Anet i’m sure has this in mind as far as difficulty goes for that particular event.

also, some classes don’t have the range to attack megadestroyer (depending how far in the middle he is) without the aid of those rocks so they can’t really get rid of those. More stuff going on on land around it would be cool though.

I would enjoy some reworks on the higher level bosses someday though. Much like what they did with Tequatal. Back in the day he was just another mindless 1 spam like shatterer. Hope HoT does indeed have more involved cooperation and effort in their events.

Yeah, server selection doesn’t mean much outside of the WvW function which is kind of a PvP/PvE hybrid. I wouldn’t worry about that just starting out.

There are tons of guilds always welcoming of new players. They usually throw a few advertisements in map chat in the big cities and starter areas. Can’t say they’d all be super active and stuff but you can join multiple guilds and leave at will until you find one you like.

It is an MMO so there’s always going to be helpful players and jerks. Just the nature of the genre. GW does seem to have a good percentage of helpful ones though compared to other games.

gw combat does have a lot going on that a lot of games don’t so might take a bit of getting used to. Just get used to dodge rolls early on because it’s something you’ll want to do often. Also, get acquainted with the skill combo system as well. Ele, engi, and thief can do a lot of cool self-combo abilities if you want to play as one of those. The game becomes a lot more fun imo and a lot of playstyle doors open up once you master your own classes combo systems.

Blinding shouldn’t do damage. Would pop you out of stealth using something like Blinding Powder if you’re already stealthed and it does damage. I do like a lot of your ideas though. Some of them might be a little OP working together though but I like where your heads at. I even proposed the endurance gain rolled into Assassin’s Reward in a thread a few days ago as well. I think that’d be a really cool idea and worthy of a acro thief GM.

I messed around on a condi thief in WvW for a bit with Apothecary gear. Was pretty fun. The low HP pool with health regen and condi removal while in stealth made me pretty tough to kill while i just kept popping traps down and death blossom. Haven’t tried it since the whole condi & build updates though but i’m sure it still functions. Might be cool on trap ranger as well but i don’t know how healing power affects any of their skills. Haven’t played ranger yet

Nice! glad it all worked out. If you can, I’d say invest in an invisible inventory bag for one of your inventory bag slots and keep that stuff in there. It’s come in handy on many drunken gw2 sessions myself lol.

You also get a vision crystal on the last day of your daily log-in rewards table if you select the Ascended Crafting Material option. Otherwise, yeah the posts above are right. SW would be your best bet to get all the materials. The only thing that might hold you back is the Obsidian Shards but if the Temple of Balthazar is uncontested and you have a decent amount of Karma, you can get those from Tactician Deathstrider @ the temple.

I wouldn’t hold my breath for any obscene rework of thief traits or base HP/armor. Wouldn’t really be fair across the board for all the other professions that are in kitten atm as well from the trait system rework. Thief still is one of the most mobile professions with SB-5, shadowsteps, steal, etc. The point of the acro line giving bonus speed to stealth is to try and add synergy but unfortunately, it feels awkward because the thief profession has really bad synergy between trait lines.

Every class we play against complains about stealth and how it’s too OP and so we got reaaaally kitten. Sad to say, but thief just seems like the most neglected class in the game and they’re all-too-ready to gut the stuff we’re supposed to excel at, essentially making our build diversity and roles in game smaller and smaller.

I mean, how is stealth so OP compared to what other classes can do? Ele essentially has 20 weapon skills, necro has a fail-safe button called DS, other classes have full damage negation, stability, etc. We rely on our stealth and evasive mechanics as a play style but they feel the need keep stripping that away piece by piece. Very discouraging.

xD after watching the first vid, i already knew what the 2nd one would be lol. All the more reason to hope for rifle.

Cheers mate! Some games just aren’t for some people. There’s plenty of games I don’t like. I usually just stop playing though, never really felt the need to advertise my departure but to each their own. GL on your next endeavors!

NeoSoul.4198:

Ok, so I should invest extra gold to get berserker daggers to replace the assassin’s ones in that case I guess? They cost about 4g each but berserker ones were 6g each. I also didn’t mess with crafting, do I have to level it up to make anything that’s worth something or I should just forget about it?

Assassin’s is fine. The Berserker stuff does a lil bit more DPS so it’s always considered the most optimal in the game as far as pure damage specs go for thief but assassin’s is a close 2nd. If your not overly obsessed with min/maxing damage builds, i wouldn’t worry about buying Berserker stuff to replace your assassin’s gear.

Crafting sucks at first since the stuff you’ll make is basically garbage to sell/salvage and it’s made just for the sake of leveling the discipline but once you get to 400 you can start crafting your own exotic 80 equipment. So yeah, it’ll take some time leveling up which, depending on how many mats and money you have, could take either 30 mins or 30 days. Just all depends what you’re working with before you start craft leveling. For now though, I’d say save crafting for another day when you have a decent amount of mats and $ and just focus on doing dungeons/events to make the $ to purchase on the TP.

Well, there’s a few options:

if you wanna go the dungeon route, doing them nets you decent amounts of gold if you do each alternate path of each dungeon once per day. The rewards once you finish a path diminish each time you repeat the same path within the game reset time. You also get the bonus of gaining dungeon tokens to purchase specific gear from a vendor in lion’s arch but they’re no stronger than any other lvl80 exotic gear you’d get elsewhere. It’s mostly just about the skins. The only dungeons that offer token gear with berserker stats are CoF, CoE, and arah so i’d focus on those 3 if you wanna get gear with tokens.

You can also purchase exotic 80 armor from the various Temple’s for Karma. Each temple offers different stats. Keeper Jonez @ Cathedral of Silence has Berserker armor. If you have a lot of karma saved up, it’ll save you a good amount of money that you can spend on trinkets or weapons elsewhere.

If you make it to the end of the personal story stuff, you get access to the Silverwastes and that’s a pretty decent loot event map. The successful completion of the meta event gets you a good number of rares to sell as well as a bunch of crap loot to sell but it adds up pretty fast if you just want to buy your stuff on the TP.

It all really depends on what you feel like doing or what’s fun to you, whether it’s dungeons, event karma farming, etc.. The loot system for GW2 mostly revolves around getting stuff to sell to the TP to get $ instead of getting drops your character can actually use so that’s probably going to be the quickest route.

seems fun! i like the idea of skill and movement denial you got going on and generally making the other player rage as much as possible lol. One thing though about start of the combo, unless I’m misunderstanding, but if you’re starting off using Steal with BV active, you’re essentially using 2 dazes at once since Mug will proc a BV charge and Slight of Hand dazes as well. The thing that sucks about BV is that it doesn’t stack duration since it’s not a true daze but instead a petrification effect so you’ll just end up using 2 good uses of a 1sec daze up in 1 action instead of adding to the duration making it 2 seconds. Not really much you can do unless you wanna try casting BV after you steal but that’s a PITA.if you want, you could try opening up with Infiltrators Strike to proc the first BV charge and go from there to get all 3 dazes instead of just the 2. Just gotta try and time your first 2 BV procs so you get the 2nd one right after the 1st one ends or is broken. Sorry for rambling but just some food for thought! keep up the build making! GL HF!

Crafting is also great if you tend to experiment around with new builds and gear combinations and you have an okay collection of mats. You can also make runes and bags as well. Crafting isn’t that great if you’re new and don’t have a lot of mats saved up but later on, it will save you a good deal of $ if you’re able to craft, say, 3/6 Ranger runes or some pieces of exotic armor and buy the rest. You could also just craft high level items and sell them if you have the mats already and it’ll be profitable.

Sounds like Death Blossom would be way to similar to the rev’s UA. I mean, DB is fine for what it does, it just needs to be fixed to function properly. At the moment the evade time is way too short and it’s plagued by skill lag so you can’t even use it to evade properly unless you’re spamming it during long attack animations. They really should rework weapon evade mechanics and give them priority like dodge rolls and immediately cancel whatever action is currently going on when the button is pressed. That’s why, as it stands now, it is an almost completely ignored skill for D/D power builds

Not me, but I found Ted “Theodore” Logan from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Strange things are afoot at the personal bank.

Revealed Training would be cool if I ever came across Engies or Rangers putting revealed on me or hitting the reveal traps in WvW but that’s almost never the case. I leave it on most the time just in case though. Some day it will pay off! Some day….

aha nice. must be crazy adrenaline rush stealth rezzing in the middle of 30 people. love the ‘lol’ on guy in the keep. cool vid mate

you also get some doing three of the daily achievements and also using Tomes of Knowledge on a lvl 80 if you’re into doing PvP at all, you get a good amount from that.

It already does that for wvw/pvp/pve for the traits. Just not the skill bar. And fractals technically counts as PvE so it uses that build.

yeah keep at it and tinker with build as you see fit. Never think you can’t change a build up to suit you just because it’s not 100% meta. And yeah, as Jericho said, the role is a bit different to what you’ve played on other classes probably. Try playing a bit more passive and focus on decaps and not so much trying to 1v1 every enemy you come across. Thief has the benefit of being able to disengage and escape very easily so don’t get in over your head trying to beat bunkers or winning 1v2’s, 1v3’s etc. If you have several enemies on you, that means there’s probably cap points open you can take so just disengage and run for those.

Fleet’s Shadow is great actually, but yeah, it’s very situational. Being the same tier as the only real condi removal trait in Acro though, you’ll either have to run SA & Acro lines together, or you’ll end up with minimal condi removal via SoA or Trickster. It will help you stick to target better if you’re under effects of movement impairing conditions in combat, almost negating their effects completely while stealthed.

ToT is right, servers only really matter for WvW nowadays. To add, if you and your friends are in a party and are on same map but happen to be in different instances, right click on player in party window you want to meet up with and it’ll have option that says "Join in ‘map name’ " and you’ll zone to their instance so you’re all together

Come to the thief side. We’re nice & have cookies. I never played FF so can’t say how similar it is to recommend it like that, but thief is very fun. It has a lot that can be learned such as self-combo perma stealth & aoe perma stealth, shadowsteps and their cool wooshing sounds, how auto-attack and auto-targeting can be bad sometimes. And yes it does have somewhat of a learning curve because you’re fairly squishy so it would get you used to general game mechanics like dodges. Good luck on whatever you decide though!

nice write up. The suggested FG change is what I had hoped they would do instead of adding 2s more vigor. Vigor isn’t really very interesting on a class that’s supposed to to be king of dodges since a lot of classes have access to vigor, while straight endurance gain seems more fitting. Perhaps replace Assassin’s Reward’s heal on init spent with endurance on init spent would be interesting.

And yeah the poison aspect of DA really needs some buffs. I feel they really held back thinking the condi changes would make it too OP. Even running hybrid builds or straight condi builds, Dagger Training is no where near as beneficial as Mug or even TR. Hope they realize that someday

yeah i’d say traiting withdraw with trickster is only really necessary when you’re not running shadow arts with SE. As it stands, withdraw is already a very effective heal compared to a lot of other classes. Clears immob, chill, and cripple, evades, heals for ~ 1/3 base HP and is only 18 sec CD untraited and an extra condi clear and reduced CD is very helpful. As for the boon ripping part, I think at the moment a lot of players feel they need to play a bit passive and focus on self preservation. Of course, it’s very situational but with the recent shake-up of our traits, I see a lot of thieves playing a little more cautiously to be on the safe side. At the moment it seems for the best since SA doesn’t remove immob and other CC’s anymore, but withdraw does so why not make it better.

IGN: Em Aza

Thief Type: Artisan mostly. Always willing to teach what I know and learn more from others.

Server: Henge of Denravi

Experience with thief: Main thief so much since the Pre-Order beta all those years ago, i didn’t level a 2nd character to 80 until a few months ago. Carried over from maining assassin in gw1 so really enjoy the evasive play and build style.

PvE mostly just because I really enjoy build making and experimenting with gear setups.

PvP here and there but I really don’t enjoy the amulet system very much. Trying to do it more though since my go-to pvp game went to shiet so all i have left is gw.

WvW I haven’t done much but I just recently xferred servers to a more active one so hoping to hit that up more.

eh I can perma stealth with my Thief. Doing any white damage will pop you out of it though so not really worth much other than sneaking past people. Still susceptible to AOE and can’t cap in stealth either so it’s not as OP as it seems.

o god i can just imagine the sound of this gameplay now. WaooshWaooshWaooshWaooshWaooshWaooshWaooshWaooshWaoosh

naw but seriously, i think swiftness would just work better

Do keep in mind they changed Chill recently to I think 5 stacks of duration max? Honestly couldn’t tell you how that affects things, never really messed with chill that much in GW2, but I guess try to optimize your skill use so you’re not wasting stacks too much.

That being said, the idea sounds really cool! I’d say the ice venom is a must have as well. Really hope the build turns out well and you have fun with it.

I like where you’re coming from, but we’re never getting consistent access to things like stability, block, reflects, protection, etc and imo, that’s not really what the class is about. The problem is that the charges are used up as soon as you attack, so for you to really spend charges for the effects, you’d have to cast the venom, use the charges you need, then attack again and just seems like a long process.

I do like the idea of secondary effects for venoms though. For most thief builds, it’s usually the same small pool of utility skills so perhaps have venom activation put you into stealth or make them break stuns. Activating a venom grants x number of initiative.

There’s so much they could do with them but yeah, the problem is balancing Venomous Aura and that the only 2 traits that alter them are in SA. Venom’s are something that would be great to have an entire trait line around but sadly that is not the case.

Haven’t really made a list or anything but one thing that came to mind shortly after the big 6/23 update was that I want more healing mechanics on mobs in PvE.

Since poison stacks intensity now, it sounded like a more viable option to have some poison in a condi build instead of just bleeds and the rest that stack. Sadly, although it does stack allowing more consistent damage, it’s still outdone by bleeds. I understand it is lower because of the healing debuff, and i think that’s the right thing to do, but I think I’d feel more fulfilled using poison if the debuff wasn’t a wasted mechanic for like 95% of mobs. I play a class with an entire trait line revolving around poison and I really want to try and make a build around that, but as far as PvE goes, it just sort of acts as a weaker bleed and no utilization of it’s debuff, making it seem not worth the time.

Yeah I have an ‘about face’ key (Q) and just click withdraw. Sometime suffers a bit of lag depending on animations going on so takes some getting used to. As the withdraw is happening, i rotate camera towards where i’m going on keep heading forward when withdraw animation ends.

and also on top of what everyone’s said, keep in mind that just because you see the lowest seller price is high doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s being purchased. If you ever get a chance, hit up a trading post site and check out some of the graphs they have. An item that seems like it’s listed as being a little high could sit there for weeks, months, or even longer and not be bought. Hell, scroll to the bottom of the Seller list. the highest is usually an obscene amount of gold and chances are, it’ll never ever sell.

Yeah power gives more damage over all but there’s only so much power stats you can get. To further increase DPS, precision + ferocity exist.

I always liked the thought of a world boss mix-up for April 1st lol. The logistics of getting it all to work on the dev’s part would probably not be worth it just for 1 day but I always thought it’d be cool to be in Queensdale finishing up the Shadow Behemoth pre-events, head to the swamp and BAM… suddenly it’s Megadestroyer instead of SB, or throwing Tequatal in Jormag’s event.

1. Not sure which game type you’re playing, but as far as PvE goes, there’s plenty viable builds. Basically for Fractals or dungeons though, some parties form a lot of Berserker only groups because it’ll deal the most DPS and get it done quicker because they do them all the time. It’s not hard to find non-meta groups. Never played ESO so can’t compare but in GW2, it’s kind of designed for each player to hold their own with dodge rolls, heal skills, the rally system so overly specing into defensive gear is kind of pointless. A bit of vitality or toughness is alright but going for max defensive isn’t really smart. You’ll actually survive easier killing things faster, giving them last time to do damage to you than you will spec’ing to deal with the damage for longer.

2. As far as ranged combat goes, SB is insanely better than the pistol and I personally like to have the option to back outta combat and go ranged for 10 seconds if heal is on CD and i’m taking too much of a beating. The auto damage isn’t the greatest but cluster bomb does great DPS to up to 5 enemies. The main reason though to carry one is utility. Has a shadowstep, poison heal debuff, evade, decent AOE and blast finisher. Idk exactly HOW new you are but you’ve probably seen a bit about combo skill effects. Having a blast finisher is immensely helpful for might stacking with an Ele and you can self-combo AoE stealth very easily with smoke screen. I’d say don’t carry it as weapon swap if you don’t want to but you should always have one in your inventory at least.

with D/P-3? i don’t think so but D/P-6 does fire a 900 range blinding shot to a single target on top of the AoE blind it does.

0_o jesus… i sure do hope so for your sake. It’s very hypnotizing to look at lol

yeah like baba said, depending on build, fury shouldn’t be much of an issue to keep up without rage runes. Now say you decided not to spec into Trickery with Thrill of the Crime, then maaaybe i’d say go with rage but even then, it depends on the stuff you’re doing. Fury’s usually pretty plentiful in dungeons and group events.

And yeah, i’m personally not a fan of >90% HP buffs just because on a low hp, low defense build, it’s too easy to lose 10% of your health. SoM can help keep it up a bit but might not work in all situations and I’m not a fan of builds that only work in certain situations or events. Easy way to see is just find out what 90% of your current build’s HP is and if you see it below that number often when you’re playing w/e you play, Scholar might not be the best choice. gl on build, mate!

This is the build I’ve been messing around with the past few weeks. Pretty much just general PvE build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoaVl0MhSnY3TwxJQ/EH0E1+BGuK0HGpRZoDgJMCA-TRCBABRtgwWKNQTJ4oq/AxJAALlZA8AAyTPgT7HAA-e
Decided to spec into DA/CS/Trickery and forgo the dedicated defensive lines. My plan was to play around with critical strike chance and getting it up to 100% (ended up being 101% with Fury, Health>90%, and positioning to attack from back/side).

I prefer not-so-glassy builds so got 2 captain’s rings for +200 Toughness and Invigorating Precision. The IP trait works wonders when crit chance is between 90-100% and is really what makes this build fun and sustainable for me.

As far as the skill bar, D/P-3 and Steal are the entry and Withdraw & Shadowstep are exits. Shadow Refuge is just too cool so I pretty much take it on every build if I can. The power signet I usually take for most things but I’ll swap it for Roll for Init if I’m doing something I want a little more defense for.

As far as condi cleanse, trickster traited Withdraw is usually enough for PvE stuff. Any remaining condis it doesn’t get rid of are usually out-healed with IP until it’s duration ends. Of course anything can be tweaked to fit different play style preferences.

It’s not some min-maxed full zerk build but 2.5k Power and crit chance with fury (14 second duration with Thrill of the Crime & Unrelenting Strikes) being pretty much 100%, it still hits pretty hard and isn’t completely helpless in sustain. Cheers!

Yeah I’d probably say Ele as well. It is a rather attentive class, played best when you know the 20 weapon skills like the back of your hand so it is very engaging. Plus, from what you said about being disheartened by necro neglect, ele is Anets pride and joy and is the most tended to class making sure it’s usually the best.

Yeah, probably my favorite thing about the patch. Now i can experiment with builds again! I’ve heard around the forums that there is some plans to do something with ascended trinkets do don’t toss them away yet. Not sure what they plan to do exactly but hopefully it happens soon.

What would make venoms worth taking outside of dungeons would be to just make the dmg worth losing a utility for. The might proc on activate trait helps, especially now that there are less might gaining traits than before, but the skill cd still holds it back. Perhaps roll into Venomous Aura something like “Venom Recharge is increased x seconds for each ally you share with”? Might make it more viable to use solo being able to do decent dps and recharge would increase since sharing it would increase DPS even more. Idk, maybe even like another thief said on a different thread, have Venom activate act as a stun break as well. I really want to like venoms.

it’s not even general condi’s, it’s just specific things. A lot of things about mesmer are really op at the moment, not even condi related. Pretty much a 1-hit KO atm. Burning really needs a stack limit. It was already the most damaging condi and what kept it from being ridiculous was it was a 1 stack limit but not anymore. Should maybe limit it like they did to chill or lessen the damage just a bit. Condi cleanse only works so well unless you take several of them which is kind of boring and limiting for builds. Bleeds haven’t changed, just got a bit more powerful but nothing crazy going on. They’re fine. For poison, from what I’ve seen, have been given extremely low durations when stacking was introduced and is rather annoying trying to keep it on an enemy. Poison is understandably weaker because of the -healing effectiveness element of it but some base durations really do need extended.

You know, I forgot until just recently that we have special skills for only using 1 weapon lol. Would be interesting to have some sort of trait for that, though I doubt adding 2 more skills would happen.

Perhaps a trait that gives you the chance to proc a good amount of Might on successful hit while wielding only 1 weapon (SB not incl). It would have to be a pretty decent bonus though since you’d be gimping yourself by only playing with 3 weapon skills. Neat idea Tao lol. Would be a cool to play around with.

I like what they tried to do with Feline Grace but yeah, isn’t really working out as well as they probably thought it would. Vigor on evade instead of just rolling was supposed to have more access to vigor with S/D and even deathblossom but it is too hit-&-miss, leaving very little room for error when dodge evading. I’d like at least something met in the middle like dodging returns some endurance again but evading returns even more. Might be good compromise.

A trait like “Attacks with main-hand weapon give endurance” might be cool. Would cover all weapon sets (though base endurance gain from dagger AA would be removed). Or even like 50% chance when landing a hit. We need to be able to play how thief should be played. An annoyingly evasive, stealthy kitten. If we don’t have that going for us, then what’s the point? -_-

if you’re condi, the only 2 venoms you should be taking are the poison and torment/vuln one. Leaves you room for 1 more utility which can be a stun break, or you can run agility signet for condi removal. Also acro has traited stunbreak and condi removal as well. My experience, your best bet would be SA/Acro together, and probably DA for added +dmg. Take Shadow’s Embrace for condi removal and put either withdraw as heal for immob remover or RFI.

I’d say probably trade in D/P for D/D and it’s death blossom. good duration bleeds on multiple targets and get a bit more condi damage aside from the poison on AA as well as the x2 dmg backstab. As far as gear goes, you can try looking into sinister gear. might go nicely with the hybrid sort of thing you’re going for.

Threw this together real quick of what I would do sorta based on what you had: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAoYnMJCNNhFNBOOB8PhDaiiXD5wNoDgJMC69VQEoA-ThRDABHrEsG1fWW5nJ6BSa/BAM/BA-e

Also, another heal might keep you alive easier. the venom one is frustrating sometimes with it’s cast time and lack of any condi clear.

Only thing is, with mine there’s no way to trigger fury but it’s usually plentiful in dungeon groups and pve events. You could also add an accuracy sigil and get ~40% which is decent enough. You’d basically be playing a CnD BS build with venoms. Hope it gives you some good ideas.