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What happens if I buy gems?

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YOUNGaz.5690

I’d say go for it. You could save them for a rainy day to turn into gold or purchase limited time gem store stuff that you won’t have time to grind for if you’re short.

Also, if you have friends or anything that play gw2, you can always purchase cool stuff for them as a friendly present or something.

Or, if you want, just cash them in immediately and purchase a precursor off the TP (I think 4000 gems converts enough? don’t know exchange that well). That’s the least fun part of legendary crafting is getting the pre either through farming gold to buy it or throwing stuff into MF forever and crossing fingers. Everything else is straight forward and obtainable.

New Weaponset: Thief Shield

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YOUNGaz.5690

I really dig the init upkeep idea. All it needs is some fun shadowstep skill somewhere, hopefully using the bad kitten new ss skill animations for rev’s shiro.

Does condi feel underwhelming to you?

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YOUNGaz.5690

I’ve played many condi builds on different classes, never really thought about the presentation of the damage display being underwhelming. Thinking about it though, it could be prettied up a bit. I was always anticipating every tick seeing how much it’s ramping up, seeing 2k, 3k, 4k was always pretty cool to me.

I suppose a cool idea would be the display number getting progressively bigger and ‘bloodier’ like the crit display each tick as the tick damage goes up. Would be neat, but unfortunately that’s probably no where on ANet’s ‘things to do’ list =/

who's your favorite character?

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YOUNGaz.5690

Yeah I have to say Tybalt for me as well. Was my first character’s personal story so it was all brand new to me. He was very well written and the voice work was great. I really enjoy humorous characters so it was perfect for me. And, yeah….not going to do spoilers but…man, the feels. Never have I emotionally reacted to an event in a video game like that before.

Easiest way to re-create a character?

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YOUNGaz.5690

I think op just wants to make another character that looks exactly like a character they already have. But yeah, the easiest way without buying a mo kit would to just take a good amount of ss’s and work from those. should be fairly easy to get it close enough to not tell the difference.

Huntsman or Weaponsmithing?

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YOUNGaz.5690

I’d just go weaponsmith, get all your ascended daggers, then switch to huntsman for pistol & SB

New gear build

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YOUNGaz.5690

I personally opt for toughness before vitality. Like Tao said, it’s better suited for a more sustained fight. Vitality is generally good to counter heavy conditions and large damage spikes. Usually, you should be able to evade or stealth and prevent those spikes, and with Shadows Embrace on, damaging conditions shouldn’t be getting the best of you most the time. Also, keeping you’re HP pool lower with toughness, you’ll benefit more from healing skills which can be especially helpful for any “while health is above x%” effects on your gear.

As far as your build goes, I’d say that’s probably the right spot for toughness/vit to be at (at least for me) but to each their own. If you’re not making it through longer fights, try a bit more toughness instead. GL!

Nothing happens leveling past 80?

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YOUNGaz.5690

Well, they pretty much separated old Skill Points into 2 different things. Hero Points are the new things that unlock skills/traits. Spirit Shards took the place of old Skill Points as currency form.

As far as gaining a full XP bar post-80, you don’t gain any Spirit Shards or anything anymore like skill points used to. They’re dropped by foes and found inside loot bags and that sort of thing now.

parrot on shoulder skin! :)

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YOUNGaz.5690

tbh OP, that’s so good i’m surprised they haven’t done it yet. Especially considering there’s various pirate garb available in game and even in the gem store already. Would really fit in easily. Hope A-Net hits this thread up!

what is living world?

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YOUNGaz.5690

Yeah, the Queens Gauntlet event with all the boss battles was probably one of my favorites too.

Basically though, the Living World concept was designed to be a way to constantly update and add content without the need to release and charge for expansions. IMO, it’s a pretty cool idea and I really enjoyed it. But yeah, the problem is that if you’re on hiatus from playing the game, you miss a lot and sometimes really cool weapons or items. I missed out on the events for crafting Mawdry, so I’m stuck throwing away bloodstone dust until they add a core thing that’ll eat it like Princess does for dragonite. Some of the items required were only available as rewards for doing that living world segment.

Crafting your first Ascended weapon.

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YOUNGaz.5690

lol pretty cool vid. liked the editing.

on a side note, i remember crafting my first ascended dagger. I had been playing my harp in town earlier so still had it equipped. Got all my materials finished, the end in sight. Hit the button, the bar filled, and BAM! Yay! open equip panel to equip and…

“Weapon type unusable by your profession”

I nearly had a heart attack. I’m like “wtf is this?” I was scrambling trying to find what the hell I did wrong until I decided to try unequip the harp. Apparently having it out doesn’t register your profession in game for things like that. Oh what an anti-climactic event 0_o

Good luck on rest of crafting =D glhf

Heartseeker Spam QQ

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YOUNGaz.5690

OP, how DARE you use any weapon skills other than #1 to do damage, let alone using a skill properly on <%50 HP players. tisk tisk -_-

build help

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YOUNGaz.5690

You could try dropping Smoke Screen for Shadowstep. You could also use Roll for Init if that’s better suited to your playstyle. I just usually use Shadowstep because you get 2 teleports out of it, condi clear and it’s 10 sec less CD than Roll for init.

PVE Condition Build for Fun?

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YOUNGaz.5690

As far as gear, I used to use a mix of Carrion and Rabid using condi’s. For thief, I’d mostly just focus on bleed and poison since that’s the most abundant dmg condi’s we have so i’d take deadly arts, trickery, and whatever 3rd you want but probably go with shadow arts though. P/D is a good weapon set for the stealth 1 for bleed app but very short duration. D/D deathblossom is the skill you’ll want to use the most so you can probably just run both those weapon sets. The shortbow’s condi app is pretty weak but i’d keep one in inventory just because it’s the best kitten weapon for thief there is.

Also i’d put a bit of power behind you’re attacks since bleed duration is pretty short base duration for pistol so since you’ll be applying them often, might as well chip away while you’re getting bleeds on them.

Condition changes

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YOUNGaz.5690

Withdraw + Resourceful Trapper + Trapper’s Runes = Poor Man’s HiS w/decent Condi Removal and Immobilize Remover.

I really wish they’d change the trap to drop at the start of withdraw instead of the end though. Would make that trait sooo much better with it. Hope they realize that and change it sometime.

Valk or Zerk?

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YOUNGaz.5690

well, between those 2, i’d probably only take valk if you need it. A few pieces wouldn’t hurt if you find yourself dying too much for your liking but zerk is just going to kill stuff quicker. i’d maybe get zerk weapons/armor with valk trinkets, and if you’re staying alive pretty easily with that, swap in some zerk trinkets instead. the higher DPS you have, the quicker you kill things so HP won’t matter much if they’re dying asap.

build help

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YOUNGaz.5690

well, i mean most the skills he’s using are still there so you should be able to make something similar.
You can try this out: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAqIOgJIePixO0JIAZoX4kUFA-TlhEwACV+Bw8HH9ArU/pgSQS7PAA-w

I’d take the Acro GM Don’t Stop over the healing for init spent trait though since Shadow’s Embrace doesn’t remove immob anymore and the guy in video doesn’t seem to be carrying any utility skills that will remove it.

Also, Shadow’s Rejuv doesn’t really do what it used to for init regen so don’t rely on it too much for that. Might need to take a stun break on your bar as well. Hard to Catch is very handy but it can trigger on a cc you don’t care to break, leaving you empty handed for 30 seconds when you’re stunned and really need a way out.

Hope that leads you in an alright direction. gl hf

My Idea of a general PvE/Dungeon build

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YOUNGaz.5690

eh could really use any. Fire or Air are relatively cheap and would work well. Depends if you want to do more AoE or single target. I would probably go Fire for PvE though

My Idea of a general PvE/Dungeon build

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YOUNGaz.5690

I was running something pretty similar on S/D a few weeks ago and worked out fairly well. I’ll give ya a few points of thought though, not necessarily suggestions since at the end of the day, builds are all about personal style, and because I don’t feel like working out all the math lol. If anyone does i’d be interested in hearing it as well. Anyways..

- Flawless Strike (CS) is very situational. 90% health is not much, especially on thief. I know you went for several items with Valks, but find out what 90% of your HP is, and keep an eye on it during fights. If you find it staying below for the majority of the fight, I’d consider Side Strike instead. A simple matter of positioning yourself in a fight would add 7% to CS chance, allowing you to maybe swap a piece of Assassin gear for Zerk, getting you more power and still maintaining your base 80% crit chance. Same idea for the Scholar Runes. If you’re not over 90% HP most the fight, it’s pretty useless. The 1-5 stats on the runes are great and always welcomed but if Rune#6 isn’t being utilized for the majority of your fighting experience, you could swap that one out for another rune with +power as the 1st bonus.

-Shadow Refuge is amazing in PvE and probably my favorite skill in all of GW, but if you find that you’re not using it often, you could run Signet of Agility. Again, the idea being to back out of some assassin gear and opt for zerk. Plus, the active on it is pretty useful in certain situations. Yes, if you activate it you won’t be perfect 100% crit chance for 30 seconds, but it will still be high that every hit you do while it recharges could still crit and you wouldn’t even notice you’re not 100%.

-As far as not feeling like a glass cannon, toughness can also negate damage as well don’t forget. Unfortunately there isn’t a Valk equiv gear with toughness instead of vitality but keep in mind that the more HP you have, the less effective Signet of Malice will heal. Toughness will keep you less glassy AND keep your HP pool lower, letting you heal more through SoM and perhaps keeping HP>90% easier through fights, letting your scholar runes and Flawless Strike work more often. A mix of Knights or Cavaliers might make a nice blend instead of some Valk pieces but yeah, Toughness is the main stat on those so DPS might take a small hit.

Sorry for long winded post but I really enjoy build threads and theory crafting lol. Again, not suggestions but just ideas to think about and keep the brain storming going. In the end, just have fun =D

WHy am i so glassy now?

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YOUNGaz.5690

A few players have already summed some points up but to recap:

  • The recent patch butchered S/D (vigor nerf, some traits being moved elsewhere or on the same line so you’re forced to choose ONE etc)
  • Everyone does more damage now yet some classes are suffering more because there was little to no implementation of defensive stuff or as previously stated, traits got moved around and you’re forced to choose certain things
  • The new thief specialization is called The Nerf Stick and it’s centered around being the absolute king of holding the most nerfs at any given time and is certain to accomplish utter failure to any extent due to the plethora of nerfs crowned upon it be it publicly announced, hidden or bugged beyond describable words.

lol and don’t forget, thanks to the 1500 stack limit, there’s plenty more room from Nerf stacks to come our way!

Thief is like Lucky Charms without the marshmallows at the moment. Just keep fingers crossed these next couple balance updates address our issues. We unfortunately got nerfs to both our survive lines, and the offensive line changes (while a few cool things added) kind of fell short compared to other classes.

I don’t know about you guys but it just seems like thief is the class Anet works on last, having run out of cool ideas.

New lv80 thief I have no idea what I'm doing.

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YOUNGaz.5690

What I would say is if you mostly just PvE and even then, aren’t doing expert dungeon or fractal runs, you can ignore most of the hate certain weapon sets, including D/D, are getting on the forum. Almost all of those comments are referring to PvP balance at the moment so from the sounds of it, you won’t really be able to tell what they’re talking about as far as survivability goes. The general PvE in GW2 isn’t particularly challenging once you know what you’re doing so any weapon set is viable really (except P/P now. No AoE options anymore so really hurts it. Everyone’s right about that one lol)

Zephyra pretty much covered everything. Just play for a bit, find a certain groove you enjoy playing in, and make a build around that. Websites that offer build templates to tinker around with armor, runes, trinket stats, etc help a lot in figuring out what sort of stats you’ll be getting before you end up buying everything and realize it’s not giving you what you want.

Not sure what temple armor you’re going for but do keep in mind that each temple offers different stats, so keep an eye out that you’re not getting gear for stats you don’t want.

As far as the D/D skills you say you enjoy using, as well as caltrops, you could look into a sort of hybrid Power/Condition Damage build. The lack of damage you’re feeling could be that caltrops and death blossom really do the most when spec’d into Condition damage to get the bleed going strong. Or if you do just prefer raw power, don’t forget about skill 2 Heartseeker. It’s pretty cheap on init, has a combo finisher, and does decent damage once their HP get’s low.

And as far as combo’s or anything like that goes, just keep playing around until you find something you like. What helps a lot is going to the PvP starting zone place. Click the sword icons up top, and it’s just a sort of town/practice place. They have training dummies in the NW area of the zone you can mess around on. They don’t attack or anything so go wild. IMO, you’ll have a lot more fun if you find attack strings and builds out yourself rather than copy/paste from websites.

shadowstep needs QoL fixes

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YOUNGaz.5690

hell, today in silverwastes i had to spam SB5 around one of the vw lanes for like 5 seconds trying to find a spot that wasn’t off limits, and there’s NOTHING in the way or on the ground, at least visibly. probably glitching on some map design issue.

lol idk, if they don’t, they should hire people to give a shadowstep seal of approval for any new map/area. Anet, i’m available if need be. you can pay me in legendaries. thx

D/D Thief since Beta Speaking Out..

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YOUNGaz.5690

Yeah i think they sort of jumped the gun on SE changes. I mean, all the utility skills that give stealth are all pretty high CD’s as is, and a x/D C&D attempt is expensive on init now and is blockable, dodgable, countered by blind and requires a 130 range.

The whole idea (at least in my mind) of a thief is, just as you say, ‘slippery’. Thief should highlight this idea, otherwise you might as well just play another class. Whether it be through stealth, evasive mobility, or some mix between the 2. It should be played as an evasive kitten to make up for the bottom-tier health pool and the class design to be close range in battle. That’s what make’s thief fun to play.

As a class without any base access to Aegis, Protection, Resistance, Retaliation, etc, all we have is our stealth and endurance, both of which have been crippled. Blind is being used as a crutch now and even then, it’s weak unless you stack a build around it which really limits options as far as survivable builds go.

Thief - Sniper Rifle

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YOUNGaz.5690

yeah there’s a LOT going on with that. 2 dazes, blind, stealth, projectile block, piercing unblockable shots, long duration, high stack bleed and vulnerability, 10 second swiftness, and the init cost seems waaay too low for these. plus there’s no shadowstep mechanic which would make it kind of boring.

i really hope the elite spec isn’t rifle, just doesn’t really seem thiefy. If it is though, they’d really need to incorporate thief mechanics to make it interesting and it seems like that’d be easier to do with staff than a rifle.

P/P Ricochet

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Ricochet was always kind of a weird thing, all be it fun. As far as PvE goes, I always got a little frustrated when a bullet would ricochet to a nearby neutral mob and aggro it. I do agree that there should be some sort of AOE option for pistol though. Perhaps a trait where pistol bullets have a chance to explode on impact damaging foes near your target. I don’t think it’d go too much against ‘purity of pistol’. And as long as the blast radius isn’t too insane, you’d still maintain decent aoe like ricochet used to offer without a bullet randomly traveling somewhere you don’t want it to.

Which crafts for a first character?

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YOUNGaz.5690

Huntsman & leatherworker sound good to start since you’ll benefit from them. I usually try to keep 2 active ones where the base mat’s don’t interfere with each other too much. Like i don’t want 2 crafting disciplines that both use a lot of ori/ancient wood, or else you’ll be going through your stock very quickly and hit a standstill on both of them.

Longevity Skilling

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Either one’s fine, but i think if you’re just learning PvP/WvW, you’ll probably die less with Guardian starting out. Ele’s the most versatile in all 3 i think but can have a bit of learning curve unless you know all 20 weapon skills by heart and when/how to use them.

Mini karka

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I was in a karka hunting party a few weeks ago and some person pinged the mini karka hatchlings he got dropped as loot just then. possibly could have been bs’ing but i dont know why they’d bother lying about it. I figure if hatchlings can be dropped as loot there, the karka queen probably can too, just insaaaanely rare.

Best use for Forward/Back buttons on mouse?

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YOUNGaz.5690

I know a lot of people use those mouse 4/5 buttons for dodging and can be pretty helpful. I ended up using mouse 4 for weapon swap myself. I kept dodge on V so i can do the cool jump dodge thing by just mashing V + spacebar with my thumb together.

You could also try binding one to the 180 degree instaturn if you find the need for it. I dunno how useful it is for all classes though but it makes it pretty slick on thief with backward evades like Withdraw and Roll for init if i want to move forward instead of backwards

Is Basilisk Venom worthy of being an elite?

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didn’t even notice it didn’t stack duration with it’s 2 applications. that is kind of stupid actually especially because of the nature of venoms on triggering on attack damage. i mean, it acts as interrupt so that’s cool but so does steal with daze every 20 seconds but i guess to get the most out of it, you’d have to wait a second for it to expire to hit again with the 2nd BV charge then? Just glancing at some other stun skills, there’s several with almost 1/2 the base CD of the venom with 1 sec stun and that do a LOT more than just stun.

honestly i think the only reason a lot of people use it is because it’s the shortest cd elite and does offer an extra stun to the build which is usually useful, but yeah, looking at BV compared to other similar skills, it is pretty boring especially for an elite.

i was really hoping for reworking of venoms with the 23rd update. I really like the idea of venoms, seems like a very cool design for a way to use a skill and having it primed to use as it CD’s but outside of the poison one and maybe the torment one for condi builds, the rest just don’t seem to offer anything worth dropping another utility skill for, especially since they’re evadable, blockable, etc unless you use an unblockable attack

As far as venom aura goes, yeah it really only shines in groups and even then, as far as like dungeons or stuff goes, the only viable ones are the condition ones. BV and the immobile one won’t work on most boss mobs so unless you know to change them out for certain things, you’ll essentially get into battle with half your skill bar useless. Honestly, I think if they got rid of Venom Aura, as cool as it is, they could actually make the venoms themselves more useful and not have to keep them so underwhelming on high CD to balance for Aura.

For BV (and hell, even the rest of the venoms), perhaps a +damage% while foe is under effect of venom? Or have it weaken them, add vulnerability, anything really. i don’t know. Balancing them around Aura is really holding them back i think.

(edited by YOUNGaz.5690)

Thief issues

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lol he never said he didn’t care about thief or hardly touches it. It was more along the lines of he hadn’t looked at them in weeks so he didn’t remember exactly everything they settled on as far as changes. I get that everyone there’s probably grinding on the HoT expansion but it’s obvious they didn’t put as much time and thought into the changes compared to the other classes, especially their precious pride-and-joy Elementalist. I mean, kitten, they still think after all this time that all venoms are equally worthy of a 40 sec CD. Hopefully they focus on us better when HoT development isn’t their main priority but i doubt it. Thief is always going to be the least tended-to class probably.

PVE meta build - how to survive conditions?

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YOUNGaz.5690

unfortunately as far as traited condi removal, shadow arts is going to be your best bet but you’ll have to probably change your build around a bit to get the most from it from the sounds of it. Not sure what build you’re running exactly if you want to post it.

If you’re Human there is that Kormir skill that removes 3 condis but 40 sec cd and takes up skill slot. Kinda dumb.

Could use agility signet’s activation that’ll remove 1 condi per nearby ally (yourself included so it’s always at least 1. Plus the signet’s passive gives a good prec boost when not activated.

Running sword main hand gives you Infiltrator on 2 that removes 1 condi on return. If you keep your init managed you can use it fairly often.

since you’re in trickery, using the trickster trait removes a condi if you use withdraw heal plus puts it at like a 14 second cooldown.

You could also try to out heal the damage for a bit with invig precision in crit line or assassin reward in acro or both if you’re desperate.

I personally like sword 2 since it’s pretty quick and accessible almost all the time. just watch init.

(edited by YOUNGaz.5690)

Ricochet solution?

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i wish i could try out NQ and hidden killer together just to see how it would play out. It seems like it could be cool but 4 sec Reveal duration and the 2 sec Fury added with nq plus being reliant on entering stealth might just make keeping constant pressure for crits more viable. Guess we’ll never know…

Sundering strikes with ricochet does sound like it’d be an awesome way to bring it back. I think the only thing with it is it’d be kinda weird rolling a random pistol buff with a trait that causes Vulnerability regardless of weapon.

The easiest would be to just roll it into Ankle shots somehow as is. Perhaps have the ricochet chance always on regardless of the CD of ankle shots, and just get rid of the extra 10% damage to crippled foes. It’s kind of a ‘hit or miss’ thing to have a 3sec window every 8 sec (or more since its chance on crit) to do extra 10% damage. It’s a good window to use unload but who knows how it’ll be avoided.

Or hell, i don’t know what the census is on the skill but if no one is even using Ankle shots, they should just slot it ricochet where it was before. I think it’d have good competition with practiced tolerance or sundering being whether you want more AOE damage or single target damage.

(edited by YOUNGaz.5690)

Bountiful Theft trait vs Trickster?

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I’ve been having fun with Trickster traited and Withdraw and Roll for Init on my bar. I guess it depends what other forms of evade and damage avoidance you have other than dodge rolling. If you don’t have much else and all you can rely on for evade is dodging, you might be better off with Bountiful.

Help me choose my Ascended Armor.

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yeah, as far as DPS goes, craft the ascended Berserker (or Assassin’s too if you have a need for more crit chance than power). From there, I usually tinker around with rare/exotic trinkets to fine tune the build to what I want and then i’d invest in the Ascended versions. Just be careful though because some stat combo’s don’t exist in Ascended so just fyi. At least now, it’s relatively easy and cheap to change stats on ascended armor through the mystic forge so there really isn’t any reason not to craft it. and chances are, any new elite spec will work fine with it. So far the theories are Staff or Rifle and I don’t see those being anything other than power/crit trees but that’s just speculation.

I might be a little tardy to the pardy

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YOUNGaz.5690

you could always run the heal venom

Increase every thief's vitality!

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the problem is you can add gear to increase vitality already, which a lot of people refuse to do. a bit more options for traited condi cleanse would help outside of shadows embrace or a specific skill would be nice though. Feline grace is a good idea on the right track. A few evades with S/D-3 helps fill it up nicely between dodge rolls. I kind of feel dodging should still return a small amount of endurance through Feline grace regardless of successful dodge but even more with a successful one. If you botch a dodge roll, you’re pretty much SOL.

What i’d like to see is some sort of merging or tinkering with Feline Grace and Pain Response. Something like removing damaging condi on dodging would be cool. Essentially trading endurance for condi removal. Pain Response kind of seems out of place since it relies on you being hit to trigger, and acrobatics is all about avoiding damage. There’s too many instances where getting condi’s on you is unavoidable and playing your best, avoiding a dodging all attacks, pain response won’t trigger. Seems like you’re being punished for avoiding damage.

Haste from Flanking Strikes lowered cooldown?

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Flanking strikes CD can be effected by the trick CD reduction trait if you don’t mind losing vigor on steal. I would like really like if the base CD was reduced though. Now that it doesn’t completely wipe your endurance, it is very fun to use. I think it’s just that high because they threw stun breaker on there for some reason. What I’d like to see is either the stun break removed and just make it like a 30 sec CD or seperate the skill Haste and Flanking Strikes and make the trait version 30 seconds without stun break.

Doesn’t really make sense to have a stun break on a trait that you need to attack the back/side of enemy to trigger.

(edited by YOUNGaz.5690)

So, one hour of fury huh? Ty Anet!

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I have been having a lot of fun with No Quarter and actually have messing with builds that relies less on full zerk, and even a bit less ferocity too since i took the master trait that gives you some ferocity based on precision as well. The thing that does keep it from being OP is the 2 sec CD though so you’re not triggering it every crit, just like you’re not getting crits ever hit. But yeah, Unrelenting strikes, NQ, and thrill of the crime can keep fury up throughout fights pretty easily but you won’t be getting hour long fury’s unfortunately.

[PvE] Draft: Hybrid build

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YOUNGaz.5690

Undead runes are always a decent (and cheap) choice for condi builds, especially thief. Gear looks alright enough, haven’t messed around with sinister builds yet so can’t really say much.

Looks like you really want to use d/p which is fine but you’re probably going to at least use D/D or P/D as second set. D/D will give you Poison and 10 sec Bleeds, and P/D has a very quick stacking (but short duration) bleed app. Those are the 2 most accessible condi’s we have and the build doesn’t really utilize them well.

As far as traits go, they all look fine but I would probably try out Shadows Rejuv instead of Cloaked. The only 2 abilities you have to enter stealth that don’t already blind are steal and HiS. Without an off-hand dagger to constantly stealth on C&D and trigger Cloaked in Shadow, seems kind of a waste.

Also you might have fun trading in bewildering ambush for slight of hand if you’re good at timing interrupts to trigger Pressure Striking plus you can do it every 20 seconds instead of confusion every 26 seconds. Not sure which would be more dps and worth it but i love seeing those little evil faces ticking way >=D

New condi traits feeback

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Posted by: YOUNGaz.5690

YOUNGaz.5690

What gets me with potent poison as a GM trait is on the adept line Engie can take a trait that adds 50 percent duration to ALL conditions.

I think potent poison needs 25 percent more damage along with 50 percent duration. It is after all only for one condition type. Otherwise improv always the better bet in a condi build for the stuff you steal and the resets you can get on venoms and the like

Never messed with engie so never saw that trait before. Now I really want that for thief poisons.

This update really kind of pushed us down to the bottom of the pack. It’s not that thief even got worse, it just seems that the changes to thief were interesting and thought-out ideas to make it better, and all the other classes kind of went ape-kitten with their op condi’s.

I guess the thinking behind it is poison should be lesser duration/damage since it negates healing, and that makes sense i’m okay with that, but the base durations just seem so low for dagger poison applications. If you need to break out of a fight for even a few seconds to regroup yourself, poison wears off and they’ll heal. Really pushing the poison DA line to be about keeping almost non-stop pressure to get any use out of it.

(edited by YOUNGaz.5690)

D/P vs D/D

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Posted by: YOUNGaz.5690

YOUNGaz.5690

D/P > D/D in pvp because D #5 (CnD) is not a reliable source of stealth, if people dodge, block, blind you, get invul, etc… you will lose 6 initiate and will still not be invisible so you are pretty much kittened
Not to mention that pistol off hand gives you a interrupt skill and a blind fild wich are very good in pvp

everything this. once D/D-5 whiff’s, you’re put into a more cautious/defensive state if your build is relying on stealth. Unless you’re working some Death Blossom condi or evasive build, D/P is just all around more reliable at negating attacks.

Is a condi thief build viable in PvE?

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Posted by: YOUNGaz.5690

YOUNGaz.5690

Personally, I found full Carrion armor and Dire trinkets and weapons work well for me. And if you ever plan on ascended gear, just keep in mind there’s not any Carrion versions (yet at least) so that’s why I went with that set up.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Occam’s the carrion prefix for ascended weapons/armor?

woops! yeah ty. edited to specify trinkets. Occam’s is indeed prefix for Carrion weapons and armor. my mistake!

Trapper thief nerfed lol

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Posted by: YOUNGaz.5690

YOUNGaz.5690

that’s crazy mate since there hasn’t been a game build update since june. can’t see how they could have nerfed anything without changing anything. had to take the troll bait mate sorry

Thinking of Trying Thief

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Posted by: YOUNGaz.5690

YOUNGaz.5690

Looks interesting enough to try. Only thing is the torment on interrupt trait in trickery. You’ll probably be a lot better off with bountiful, plus not sure how you’d be interrupting with this set up. If you wanna mess with torment, you could try changing the trickery GM to slight of hand for the daze as well as having a steal cd reduction. if you manage to get it right, you’d have an initiation that’ll slap torment on them with the daze and a get a stealthed pistol auto immediately from hidden thief. You could P/D 3 out for another short stack but you’d probably want to swap to D/D and keep them trying to dodge out the way letting torment work in your favor. GL and have fun!

Is a condi thief build viable in PvE?

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Posted by: YOUNGaz.5690

YOUNGaz.5690

As far as general PvE, condi thief is still plenty viable. The thing with them though is duration. Even with krait runes, it’s still going to need constant applications to keep the damage going. Knowing that, I’d say have at least part of your gear have a little power behind it to chip away along with the condi app. Personally, I found full Carrion armor and Dire/Rabid trinkets and Dire weapons work well for me. And if you ever plan on ascended gear, just keep in mind there’s not any Carrion trinket versions (yet at least) so that’s why I went with that set up. Just spec into shadow arts and get stealth every possible way you can for the stealth pistol auto. I use D/D for 2nd set just because the SB eats away init for hardly any payoff as far as condi damage goes.

And if you’re part of a small group or something, Venomous Aura works well for single target spikes with Basalisk & Spider Venom. The rest of the venoms are pretty useless so don’t even bother. gl!

(edited by YOUNGaz.5690)

Scorpion wire + Basilisk Venom

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Posted by: YOUNGaz.5690

YOUNGaz.5690

Yeah, functionally it’s doing what it is supposed to do. The venom activates on a damaging hit and Scorp wire does damage when it connects with enemy. Would be cool if it damaged after the pull but what are ya gunna do… does make for a 1200 range stun if the situation ever calls for it though =D