Guild Wars 2

Warriors do slightly less damage in my opinion, however.. they are really easy to play and far tankier (even when in DPS) than Guardians.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Conditions do have counterplay to them. Firstly, condition applying attacks are rarely superior to regular power attacks, so they can be dodged, blocked, evaded, blinded, countered by stun, etc. Second, conditions have cleanses. Third and most dangerous, there are classes that can transfer conditions, which is arguably the most powerful counter in the game. It literally transfers all remaining damage of an attack to someone else.

Dodging, evading etc also applies to Power builds.
Yes conditions have cleanses, but often you need to sacrifice a large portion of Power damage if you want to obtain these.
Also, there aren’t many transfer abilities available.

Very little condition cleanse.

Shield comes in really handy with reflect projectiles trait.

Stack full Power until you hit 80. At higher levels you will be able to pick up Precision also.
I highly suggest getting Bloodlust sigils and either sigil of Fire or Air.
Taking a Warhorn and movement speed trait is also very handy.

I haven’t played my Warrior in quite a while, however.. I geared this build last night and so far it’s great.

• Great survivability.
• Great condition management through Cleansing Ire, Warhorn, Food & Signet.
• Good mobility and CC
• And ofcourse.. permanent Fury and +5% damage

Build

You may wish to drop Furious Reaction as you already get permanent Fury through cripple and runes. You could possibly take Furious Speed and then drop Warrior’s Sprint and use those 2 points elsewhere.

I may be doing this shortly, as I really like the Spiked Armour trait. it’s excellent on builds like S/P Thief, GS Guardian, GS Warrior where they do a lot of fast attacks.

This looks like a pretty common D/D or S/D build to me.

I run close to the same build on my S/D.
People tend to run Acrobatics, but I like to be cheese and have that lovely heal on stealth.

There are several very viable builds for Thief.

S/D
S/P
D/P
D/D

The above with a mix of traits.

scabrous.7835:

Zach.3264:

Guardians because their mobility isn’t that great.

Zerg specs aren’t mobile but typical triple meditation Sword/Focus + GS or Hammer + GS are extremely mobile given that guardian has a target to port to; much like Inf Strike and Inf Signet and Steal.

They aren’t as mobile as others. And there’s not many builds in-game that can outrun Heartseaker/Infiltrator’s Arrow/Shadowstep.

I would go down the Acrobatic tree if you insist on playing S/D. Shadow Arts is really for X/D or D/P. You have very little stealth to be using Shadow’s rejuvenation effectively.

Personally I think I would play something along the lines of this

Guardians because their mobility isn’t that great.

Yes it’s been changed, there’s a thread on this page about it

Full berserker and Scholar runes.

Has good condi cleanse and you can heal upwards of 500/s in stealth. You don’t need any survivability in stats.

Tested AGAIN.

It’s really bad. If you’re facing away and use it, you dodge backwards but then moonwalk back to where you were.

Horrible, horrible and more horrible.

3. Critical Blades = Hunker down and charge your enemy dealing X damage and applying 5 stacks of Vulnerability. When charging you have 35% chance to avoid Ranged attacks.
4. Augary of Death = Shadowstep to targetted enemy dealing X damage. If target is moving, they are crippled. If target is stationary they are immobilized.
5. Shadow Strike = Block for 3 seconds. If you block an attack, you enter stealth and shadowstep to target gaining fury (3 sec?) and impaling them for X damage and inflicting weakness. If no attack is blocked, you recover 3 initiative.

My thoughts.

Thieves are still very viable in PvE.

Play what you like, not what other people want you to play.

You really don’t need Valkyrie.

Thieves have excellent condition removal, and you don’t need any armour because you can stealth and heal around 550hp/s anyway.

this is what I use.

I’d say some S/P.

They are really bursty, but lack stealth.

Tested it a bit more again today, the animation is really bad.

Everytime I use it, I feel like I’m lagging. The animation isn’t smooth at all.

Fair point, but what about all the other classes that can’t corrupt your boons?

You really don’t need any toughness at all when playing D/D

I crafted my Thief to 80 in a day, bought a zerker set and jumped right into WvW with D/D.
I’m by no means an elitist or think I’m above average, but I can honestly say I have still barely died to this date.

You have so much stealth that you can heal any raw damage dealt in no time, you also have a ton of escapes and evades.

After the recent patch I moved 30 points from Critical Strikes into Deadly Arts.
With this build you heal roughly 600 health every second in stealth. You really don’t need toughness.

With the WvW bonus, 25 stacks of Bloodlust and Revealed Training trait, you’re pushing 3.2k power BEFORE Might.

Play D/D or D/P.

Stealth is your best friend and Black Powder makes PvE extremely easy if you’re against melee mobs (or clustered Ranged mobs).

Dagger Storm is nice for the Stability and a low cooldown Stun is always a help.

I tried out a berserker build that was traited for huge initiative regen. It was by no means viable, but if you hang back and pick people off.. it’s extremely fun to play.

I know you’re looking for a ‘viable’ build, but still.. thought I’d share ^^

Build is here. You can use Unload so often it’s pretty funny.

As for a viable build, I’m not entirely sure.
I just made this right now. However, it actually looks pretty solid. I might have to test it later.

EDIT: Would probably change to this. Not a wide enough access to conditions to use Rampager Amulet. Bleeds would only tick for an extra 32~ or so damage.
Would instead play this

I spent a good 10 minutes writing a response for this. Though, I decided I was thinking too hard about it and there really is a simple response to it.

Warrior are better for Dungeons, but they’’re also the most boring class (in my opinion).

Thieves are still very much viable. They are also far, far more enjoyable.

I mained a Warrior from the beginning and crafted a Thief to 80 a few months ago, jumped in WvW right away and have been in love since.

PU Mesmers and other bursty Thieves (Stealth is the problem)

The way I see it, it’s simple really.

Thieves guild is around x3 longer cooldown. In the 1.5 sec you CC someone with Basilisk Venom you can do a ton of damage.
Like above, Basilisk Venom is on a much lower cooldown, you can trigger certain rune sets more frequently.

Though, the main one for me..

If you use Thieves guild and stealth, the Thieves will follow you around and they give away your position to the enemy.

I was trying Disabling shot last night and I stopped because I wasn’t sure whether I was lagging to hell or it was the animation, but I was bouncing around all over the place and it was plain horrible.

Aspect Arena is unbelievably boring..

Wind form #3 and you can run orbs with little effort. Orbs is what awards all the points, killing players does close to nothing to the scoreboard.

You want an area of the game that is “easy” to be rewarding?

……

I had this happen to me several times yesterday at the Flame Legion area also.

I had a group running around killing them for the achievements and we all got wiped as me ran up the ramp, was pretty funny.

Make it happen
15char

I use F because I don’t mind missing blues and greens.

Took me quite a long time to kill Liadri, but there were moments of madness where I actually quite enjoyed it.

What’s worse, is i’m colour blind. I could barely see the AoE markers..

Yeah, the key to beating another class is to learn them.

My Asura ele is called Little Asuran :>

I don’t really care for lore, I’m told it ‘should’ be “Little Asura”, but hey.. who cares?

Don’t let them kite you.

I’m not online at the moment so I can’t check,

but I’m pretty sure I play something close to this

Willycat.7310:

I dont think i will be able to play Elementalist well……It seems you have to put out combo fields/stack might or some other party utilites/buffs,I am not good with these kinda of things

I’ve had my Ele for roughly 100 days now, I shelved it for a long time because I sucked at it.
I currently have nine 80’s and Ele was the only one I seemed to be bad at. However, I finally got round to getting it level 80 (#9) just 2 days ago. After running CoF P1 several times with Staff/DD/SD I can definitely see improvement.

I think the biggest hurdle is learning what each of the attunement skill slots do, having a rough idea when they are off cooldown and constantly swapping to provide boons.

One of my bad habbits when I started was only using Fire/Air and swapping to Water for healing and Earth for the knockdown. When you get to grips with constantly swapping and using the skills effectively you will see a drastic improvement.

About a week ago (before I hit 80) I spent a fair few days in SPvP trying to get better, I was barely killing anyone and I seemed to die super easy. After spending some time doing PvE at 80, I’m fairly competent in SPvP now (still have a long way to go) and I even managed to win a 2V1 earlier. They may have been just as bad as me -if not worse- but I’m still pretty pleased with the result.

Ele is probably the hardest to learn, but believe me.. from someone who chose an ‘easy’ class -Warrior- it’s extremely boring at endgame because there’s little, to no challenge.

I’m beginning to roll off a tangent now, so I’ll wrap this up.

Ele is great if you take the time to learn it.

Necromancer are amazing in fractals – provided there’s no other condi build in group/someone who’s going to be applying alot of conditions.

I love my Necromancer in fractals. Applying a Condi rotation then using Epidemic and watching groups of mobs melt is too enjoyable.

That being said, Necro are fairly selfish class. Elementalist on the other hand have a lot of team support through boons, heals, conjured weapons, condi cleanse etc.

I like Signet because I can kite behind objects etc and keep casting spells to heal. Ether Renewal looks good, but you’re able to take damage as your healing. If that happens, then it’s close to useless.

I love Staff #2 on water. It’s decent damage, low cooldown and nice Vulnerability stacking.

I’m not sure if it’s a Lightning Flash bug, but CC/Port in general. I got hit twice in one game yesterday where I was rooted to the ground until I died. I tried using Mist Form and everything, couldn’t move.

It seemed to happen on both occasions from a Warrior #5 Longbow.

I eventually went with the fur hat.

I liked the cap because it reminded me of the Scouts in Team Fortress for some reason, but I wasn’t too keen on the ears flopping around when I’m hopping about.

I’m really happy with the outcome.

I’ll begin by saying the character I have played most on is Warrior, so this is by no means a hate campaign on Warriors.

However, I noticed in the last game I played a Warrior playing the broken Hambow build was rooting me with Longbow #5 but for some odd reason I was still snared even after the Immob. wore off? I even popped Mist Form on my Ele and still I couldn’t move.

I’m not sure if this was a bug tied with Longbow #5 or some other factor causing it, but I know it happened after I was rooted.

Anyone else experience this?

Hi folks, I got 80 on my Elementalist yesterday, spent around 100g gearing it and now I want to change my looks already.

I’ve spent the last 30 minutes or so trying to decide, and I’ve managed to narrow it right down to the point where I’m stumped between head gear.

I’d like to ask for your preferences!

Option 1;
Front View
Side View

Option 2;
Front View
Side View

Help!

Steven.6425:

Evil thief with incinerator

Which dye is this?

Your build isn’t something I would necessarily play, so I can’t comment.

However, I play something along these lines usually;
Build

Darnis.4056:

Jesus Christ, 255% ? :/
I have 125% with Outnumbered..
How do you get your MF so god kitten high? :/

Buying a lot of greens/blues when they announced MF update.

Full zerk vs full zerk/no armour.