Guild Wars 2

haviz.1340:

abelooi.9156:

Well maybe I am wrong, but I have yet to team up with a thief who can tank as well as a guardian. Time to get my thief up. Unfortunately, even in the normal process of levelling up, the disparity between the survivability of thief and guardian is so apparent. I’ve never breezed through the content the like of guardian.

Pistol offhand makes tanking as thief a trivial task, and that’s with glass cannon build. Your “tanking” guardian needs a “tanking” gear.

Really? I am not kidding – I would love to see a thief tank a champion or mobs. I have never seen a thief that outperforms the guardian in the role of tanking and dishing out damage. Perhaps the pro need to chime in on this.

I don’t know; I think there’s a reason why it’s always the guardian who volunteer to “tank” or “defend” something. Have you ever come across a situation or a group which ask the thief to “hey could you tank this kitten?”

Derk.3189:

abelooi.9156:

Derk.3189:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Derk.3189:

abelooi.9156:

Kain Francois.4328:

As someone who recently mained a Thief, I bring:

- Permablinds (Black Powder)

- Anti-Defiant (A thief can consistently chip away stacks using Headshot. It’s the Warrior’s fault he isn’t using this opportunity.)

- Shadow Refuge

- SUSTAINED DPS (Pistol whip in a Glassy initiative regen build should not be underestimated.)

- Spammable blast finishers

- Perma weakness or poison

- Boon stripping

Honestly, I don’t see why it is people hate thiefs. We have tons of survivability options, and if people are still dying, they must be playing like shadowstepping assassin “narutards” from GW1.

We have tons of survivability, including an on-demand reflect. However, with each Unload and Pistol whip, we regain 900 HP using Signet of Malice MINIMUM! And that’s WITHOUT life-steal!

I wouldn’t call myself a pro, but I wonder what those PUGs are doing wrong to die as a Thief? We’re pretty comparable to a Guardian in that we make up for our low HP with all our survivability options.

To say that you are survivable is one thing, but to claim that you are “pretty comparable to a Guardian .. in terms of survivability options” is laughable at best. Not to underestimate a thief or any other profession, but a guardian’s survivability is unrivalled in PVE.

It isn’t laughable at all. DB caltrops is untouchable in the cheapest way possible and sword/dagger can easily disengage from combat whenever the thief chooses. I outlive guardians all the time in fractals. Thats not to say me being the only one alive does much for the rest of the dead party members, but thieves are easy to be ‘tanky’ if people get out of the glass cannon roles.

Difference is that a guardian can stay in the fight and do damage while they’re absorbing damage. You’re disengaging and evading, which causes drops in DPS, as well as you aren’t being a damage sponge for your team. I’m aware you’re condition damage, so you probably always have bleed stacks ticking away, but what you’re referring to as survivability on your thief is different to that of a guardian.

The original post is talking about survival options anyways, not tank support capabilities, which is what I assume the guy I was replying to is debating. I might not be ‘sponging’ damage for a team, but if you throw a thief and guardian of equal skill into a group, special circumstances aside, they will both come out surviving easily.

Yes and no. Effective-survivability has to be measured based on whether or not you are contributing while surviving (sorry didn’t make this clear). Hell, I can take any toon and do zero dps and survive, that doesn’t mean nothing. Just like what the above poster said, a thief disengages frequently if they want to stay alive, take nothing away from that, but it’s a massive loss in dps or whatever support. Guardian on the other hand, survives and take it for the team. So you cannot effectively compare the survivability of the two, which I meant by laughable. Try tanking a mob while dishing out respectable damage like a guardian. It is different from say, guardian, or any other class really, can disengage like a thief and survive.

Lately I’ve been running a DB caltrops build. The DPS is constant (higher DPS during DB, lower during caltrops spam, constant with bleed) and yes, I can tank a mob while doing respectable damage, like a guardian. You won’t run out of endurance, and the bleeds easily amount to 1500+dps per second. As I stated earlier, its actually quite cheap.

I have a guardian mind you, and I’ve made hilariously tanky builds but they are low on damage, and high damage builds that are low on survivability. The builds that are in between, can tank for a good amount of time, but will eventually run out of steam.

Well maybe I am wrong, but I have yet to team up with a thief who can tank as well as a guardian. Time to get my thief up. Unfortunately, even in the normal process of levelling up, the disparity between the survivability of thief and guardian is so apparent. I’ve never breezed through the content the like of guardian.

Derk.3189:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Derk.3189:

abelooi.9156:

Kain Francois.4328:

As someone who recently mained a Thief, I bring:

- Permablinds (Black Powder)

- Anti-Defiant (A thief can consistently chip away stacks using Headshot. It’s the Warrior’s fault he isn’t using this opportunity.)

- Shadow Refuge

- SUSTAINED DPS (Pistol whip in a Glassy initiative regen build should not be underestimated.)

- Spammable blast finishers

- Perma weakness or poison

- Boon stripping

Honestly, I don’t see why it is people hate thiefs. We have tons of survivability options, and if people are still dying, they must be playing like shadowstepping assassin “narutards” from GW1.

We have tons of survivability, including an on-demand reflect. However, with each Unload and Pistol whip, we regain 900 HP using Signet of Malice MINIMUM! And that’s WITHOUT life-steal!

I wouldn’t call myself a pro, but I wonder what those PUGs are doing wrong to die as a Thief? We’re pretty comparable to a Guardian in that we make up for our low HP with all our survivability options.

To say that you are survivable is one thing, but to claim that you are “pretty comparable to a Guardian .. in terms of survivability options” is laughable at best. Not to underestimate a thief or any other profession, but a guardian’s survivability is unrivalled in PVE.

It isn’t laughable at all. DB caltrops is untouchable in the cheapest way possible and sword/dagger can easily disengage from combat whenever the thief chooses. I outlive guardians all the time in fractals. Thats not to say me being the only one alive does much for the rest of the dead party members, but thieves are easy to be ‘tanky’ if people get out of the glass cannon roles.

Difference is that a guardian can stay in the fight and do damage while they’re absorbing damage. You’re disengaging and evading, which causes drops in DPS, as well as you aren’t being a damage sponge for your team. I’m aware you’re condition damage, so you probably always have bleed stacks ticking away, but what you’re referring to as survivability on your thief is different to that of a guardian.

The original post is talking about survival options anyways, not tank support capabilities, which is what I assume the guy I was replying to is debating. I might not be ‘sponging’ damage for a team, but if you throw a thief and guardian of equal skill into a group, special circumstances aside, they will both come out surviving easily.

Yes and no. Effective-survivability has to be measured based on whether or not you are contributing while surviving (sorry didn’t make this clear). Hell, I can take any toon and do zero dps and survive, that doesn’t mean nothing. Just like what the above poster said, a thief disengages frequently if they want to stay alive, take nothing away from that, but it’s a massive loss in dps or whatever support. Guardian on the other hand, survives and take it for the team. So you cannot effectively compare the survivability of the two, which I meant by laughable. Try tanking a mob while dishing out respectable damage like a guardian. It is different from say, guardian, or any other class really, can disengage like a thief and survive.

Kain Francois.4328:

As someone who recently mained a Thief, I bring:

- Permablinds (Black Powder)

- Anti-Defiant (A thief can consistently chip away stacks using Headshot. It’s the Warrior’s fault he isn’t using this opportunity.)

- Shadow Refuge

- SUSTAINED DPS (Pistol whip in a Glassy initiative regen build should not be underestimated.)

- Spammable blast finishers

- Perma weakness or poison

- Boon stripping

Honestly, I don’t see why it is people hate thiefs. We have tons of survivability options, and if people are still dying, they must be playing like shadowstepping assassin “narutards” from GW1.

We have tons of survivability, including an on-demand reflect. However, with each Unload and Pistol whip, we regain 900 HP using Signet of Malice MINIMUM! And that’s WITHOUT life-steal!

I wouldn’t call myself a pro, but I wonder what those PUGs are doing wrong to die as a Thief? We’re pretty comparable to a Guardian in that we make up for our low HP with all our survivability options.

To say that you are survivable is one thing, but to claim that you are “pretty comparable to a Guardian .. in terms of survivability options” is laughable at best. Not to underestimate a thief or any other profession, but a guardian’s survivability is unrivalled in PVE.

Thief? the one who always sleep on the floor first? Yeah that one. Either they output too high dps, in turn get aggro, and then die, or they are negligible. In dungeon, or fotm, unless it’s farming like COF, the key is to survive. After all, no matter how hax your dps is, if you are always dodging or running away, you are not actually attacking.

Let’s put it this way, most dungeons can be skipped safely even without group stealth. For mobs that are too hard and people die, chances are the thief will die very soon too, so stealth ressing is a gimmick. So for those reasons, it’s always easier to bring, say a guardian, which prevents people from dying in the first place.

Most dungeons are about sustained dps (not burst). Many people play dungeons like they are all meant to be played across the board like COF. They don’t work the same way.

Ungood.3054:

Fury.6281:

Edit: what loflux said is accurate. It does its job by making us experience different parts of the game that we otherwise may never try. The jumping puzzle monthly was an example of this.

snips

At the same time it has been made clear that the Dungeons are designed to not be doable by everyone.

…snips..

You don’t see the paradox there?

Hmm, dungeons are designed to “not” be doable by everyone? Did I miss the memo by Anet? It’s only 5 x dungeon runs. And the echo everyone above, you are not required to do the monthly as well. To go to the extreme, some people might find it harder to craft than to do dungeons. It’s all subjective. I never did monthly before this, and I only attempt this month (hopefully onwards) because of the rewards. If you want it, you will do it.

Great piece! Heh

If you don’t mind I’ll point everyone to your direction whenever I see also a thread about the removal of wp ressing.

Bas.7406:

ProxyDamage.9826:

Bas.7406:

Currently in pve or pvp the Minion mancer is rarely seen in dungeons, spvp, tPvP, and questing. Occasionally we will pass a Necromancer who has 1 or even two minions, but the minion mancer has slowly fallen out of favor due to the strength of the necromancers condition damage, and the dagger power/lich form builds.

Correction. “Minion” based builds didn’t fall out of favor because other builds were stronger, they fell out of favor because they were pretty bad. You’re relying on AI, which is rarely a good thing, and the minions themselves are rather lackluster. They’re not that strong, not that resistant, their abilities are meh at best, you can’t control them properly (even less so than Ranger pets), extremely long cast times and cooldowns, and most of the bloody things don’t even regen at all.

In PvE the minions are unreliable since you can’t control them properly, and summoning a new one is extremely unresponsive because of cooldowns and cast times. In PvP the whole concept is laughable since, again, the impossibility to properly control the minions together with slow cast times and long cooldowns makes them unreliable “meat walls”, and mostly everyone will simply ignore the minions and go directly for you, since you’ll be extremely weak.

It’s not that every other build is way better than them, although they generally are, it’s that the build itself is, currently, extremely flawed. I question whether it’s viable at all, really.

Correction: None of this is factually true. They are very strong. Combined they are as powerful anything not named Lich Form. They respond very well with a few minor glitches that can be worked around which is still better than some of the other utilities we have. They are very resistant if specced correctly.

Your second point about getting wrecked when they ignore it is ignorant at best. If I dodge a thief’s burst. He gets trainwrecked a warrior who gets locked out or confusion during 100b gets trainwrecked. A condition necro who gets all his conditions cleansed will get wrecked.
Every single class and utility that doesn’t say bunker has the option of getting wrecked. Do I need to post more examples?

Let’s also clarify how you can’t control them. Let’s make this very clear just because you can’t do something doesn’t mean everyone can’t. Minions are easily controlled with their utility buttons, and I have yet to have one randomly attack something I didn’t want to attack or that wouldn’t have aggro’d to me anyways.

To top it all off, It’s better for minion masters when your pets are ignored. The good players destroy the minions and then kill me. The bad players who think minions are horrible leave the minions up and get farm killed by Minionmasters. I guess we know which category you fit in.

Thanks for your obviously biased opinion which contained nothing of any value to the Minion Master. In the future, constructive posts usually don’t contain worlds of misinformation along with overstated complaints while completely ignoring anything of value.

Actually he has a point. The state of the AI of the minions right now they are really unreliable. I have tried minions too because I felt that’s the way to play necro. Some of them don’t fight sometimes. That’s kinda annoying.

The reason why people don’t go for minions is simple – for normal PVE content it really don’t matter what build you go with, they are a breeze. For harder stuffs (read dungeon more specifically bosses) then they are a liability. If they just die after a massive aoe from a boss then they just did nothing with 3 skills on cd in your utility bar (count 4 with the elite flesh golem). Those 4 cds could be spent on actually using skills that actually do something, support, damage, etc.

Minions are awesome, they provide constant firepower, but as it is in this game, the cd after they die is a tad too long, AI is not reliable because it doesn’t always work.

I think they could do with a charm like how another MMO I used to play deals with minions – give them a permanent buff that cannot be stripped that lets them have massive AOE damage resistance.

XiL.4318:

All classes should be able to perform the same across the board.

All classes should have a spike damage glass cannon /w cooldowns

All classes should have a heavy defense damage soak/avoid/convert/etc…

All classes should have trait/weapon synergy

All classes should should be able to fill every role equally depending on build, gear, and player skill.

Necro cannot spike, Necro cannot defend, Necro has broken weapon synergy, broken traits, and is excessively complicated to master because of counter-intuitive trait/skill synergy.

Necro can Hybrid. That is all Necro can do. And to do that effectively you need to develop skills that the game does not encourage you to develop. This is the problem. Necro is far harder to “LEARN2PLAY” than any other class because the traits and weapons and often the gear options are counter intuitive. They don’t make sense to someone who has never played an MMO before.

I can run Necro effectively with no traits assigned and no pants. No pants.

But the vast majority of players do not have a decade of experience with broken MMO mechanics guiding them through the counter intuitive nightmare that is learning to play Necro in Thief Wars 2.

/thread

Have to say, LOVE this. +

Quillixx.7034:

But your posts were more liken to a vein attempt to pass gibberish off as English…

Boy oh boy, so you come to forums to teach English, or to learn? I certainly don’t; I’m only here for the lovely banter and my… sorry for being such a disappointment. Not everyone’s first language is English, and perhaps those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Cheers!

I know if there are enough demands, and if a company sees it as a way to make more money, then they will eventually do it. Unless it’s just not feasible budge-wise to do it. Something like it costs too much time and money to develop that function.

I’d love to be able to race change – as for those who argue that Anet has put alot of time and effort designing story lines and alot of money and all that would be for not, that’s stupid argument really. What they have put out we have already paid when buying the game. That’s the deal. It doesn’t matter if you only play 1 hour of the game, or 500 thousand hours, you still have paid the same amount , to them.

I also agree there are actually people who would love to play a new race, but not wanting to roll a new character. And how about those who want to play a new race, but same class? It will be redundant to use 5 slots devoted entirely to say, warriors of different races.

I’m honored you go so far as to check and quote me thanks! But, WHAT? all classes are supposed to be played exactly the same? Like just because warrior and elementalist can solo a dungeon everyone should be able to! NOT FAIR!

So if wanting to be the same as other classes as in insta-spammage, is not QQing, then I do not know what is. Thanks for disproving yourself but really, who’s to say who has much/ or more experience than others?

That’s what I meant by you being ironic. Coz you called someone out, and now you ain’t taking kitten from people calling you out. This is really a thread of QQing, whether you like it or not. It has zero contribution towards how to better play a necro. Nothing in your first post is constructive, it’s merely “the only profession that bla bla bla…”.

How about no? Why can’t people just accept the way it is, it’s kittening Anet’s game and if you don’t like it you can just quit and not whine. For every player who loves to hate the game there is one who loves playing it for what it is.

I don’t want to barge in on an argument, but this thread is of no value at all beyond QQing, which I also agreed with what Jknifer has said. Nothing you guys have posted are of any value at all too, which is ironic coz that’s what you shot Jknifer with in the above post.

Your above post also, to quote you, "post needless … comments, backed by hollow insults (implying he/she is not skillful), and no real content that proves yourself (again, by saying he/she lacks the comprehension required).

Sorry, but you sir, are most ironic.

“Ele is a better class; the end.

I don’t understand how people can compare. They are both meant to play differently. It could be a better class to many people, but to certain people, Necro could be a better class simply because they think it is. Comparison by nature, is subjective.

I am with Jknifer and Somoe, less QQ – L2P. Necro is a very difficult class to master and not your typical spam spam spam 2 skills ftw.

If we are talking about insta-spammage winnage, then yes, necro is outperformed by many (if not all) other classes aside from engineer. To be good in necro means you have to utilise every kittening thing in your arsenal, a surprise huh?

@TS,

Seriously, DO NOT go to the forums to look for validations. If you are serious about making a necro, you are gonna make it anyway. If you are not, these peeps are going to turn you away faster than you can say necro, so it won’t matter.

Necro is a beautiful class, it’s the only character I play to 80, I played all other classes just got bored of it after awhile.

Yes this class is really buggy at the moment, and probably alot of stuffs need fixing. The satisfaction is there though that while we are now at arguably our weakest – I am still playing my necro on par with those supposedly flushed-out classes.

And necro survivability is awesome. Don’t listen to them above. What necro lacks in escape, avoids, blocks and all those nonsense (which will be covered by your team anyway since you should usually play harder/hardest stuffs in teams, and if you’re alone it don’t matter a necro can’t die on PVE content) , they more than make up for it with their vast amount of hp (double that up with DS).

Seriously, I’ve played together with bunkers, dps, or whatever other classes. Most of them are this – either they tank well but end up not getting too much aggro coz their dps fail, or they hit kittening hard but take one two hits and kittened out – ended you have to share the aggro. THIS is what makes necro good, while we don’t dish out the best dps in game, or tank the best, we can do both at the same kitten time.

Unfortunately anyone who visit these forums already bought the game (MOST) so I doubt Anet would give a kitten about us.

i’d really love to see people try this with necro. REALLY. Those who claimed skill of a player offset the class. Have fun burrowing. ^^

i don’t know guys… complaining about Necro being UPed on land is one thing, but necro’s definitely one of the better ones underwater, borderlining on ridikulusness.

edit – if the whole GW2 is underwater like a gigantic kittened up version of Atlantis, then hell yeah you’ll see people asking for nerfs for Necro ( QQ necro too op)

I’m assuming that you’re building it squish, but thiefs generally have a hard time bringing me down, but then again I run soldiers/knights. And if you’re in DS while they combo off you, then you’re in a fantastic position, but let’s not go there.

Moreover a thief has to sacrifice so much vitality and toughness to get that insane burst, that anything worth its salt will bring it down. High risk/reward. Just remember a thief is as scared of you as you are of him.

I think if there’s no defiant stacks then generally CC will get out of control since this game has no diminishing returns. It functions more or less like the bleed cap. I think defiant makes the game more challenging strategically and it’s one of the very few things that I think Anet did right.

Firstly thanks for the guide!

I myself tried a variant of this build last night and find that going 0/30/25/15 suits better. The lack of power is compensated for the fact that I crit alot more (seeing I use a full-flush of soldier gears and knight accessories).

End up with 25k hp, 3k armor, 2.7k power, 39% crit chance.

Took dark armor to help with the effectiveness of dagger #2 and DS#4.

But of course if you’re about Axes, then Spite trait 30 is a no-brainer.

Thanks again!

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Around 12:00 min into the video:

“We feel like right now AoE skills in WvW, as well as in PvP, is probably a little bit too strong across the board. So we’ll be doing a major update to all the AoE skills to kinda bring them back in line a little bit”

If Anet seriously think our AOEs are “a little bit too strong” (well since we don’t know if its gonna be a nerf on our side) then it’s LOLtastic. On the other hand, it could be they are nerfing other classes AOEs to bring it on par with ours.

Dang guys… for the last time.. guild wars is a game of skills, those defiant stacks can be withered down… you don’t mindless bash like a regular mob because you ain’t. Use CC wisely and keep the boss defiant stacks at the last one (which makes the next CC legit) and save one on a stomp or whatever crap that cannot be avoided for whatever reason. Then get his defiant stacks down again. You don’t just kittening spam skills and attacks like mindless hoogoo.

As for stability, there’s always a counter to everything, if they have stability why the kitten you go use your fear? Use your corrupt boon, well of corruption, and whatever that is that counter that.

edit – regarding fear-immune, well, what can we do? It’s Anet decision to kitten us up so we just suck it up and move on

Don’t know if you’re trolling or what.. but if you

1. “have no social skills at all”
2. “don’t like people anyways”

then perhaps

a MMO is not the game for you. Try Skyrim. Thanks

Hmm, because getting good loots in this game is not as important as in other games, or hell, not important at all. Run dungeons like normal, get tokens, exchange with gears, run for a few weeks, get enough gold, buy exotic accessories in trade, done. I’ve not used a single piece of magic find gear, and dont even consider myself farming and if I’d saved up all those Gs I got randomly and casually dungeoning, I’d have managed to upgrade the account multiple times (at least 3) just by converting Gold to Gem.

Seriously, this game is about having fun playing skillfully. Your ascended gears, while looking fanciful, is not gonna insta-gib my performance. I’ve kittening run lvl 80 content in Greens and the dorks around me stacked me exotics still die about the same as I do, in situations where people die by the hundreds anyway.

So honestly, I never understood why people has to bring extra gears (other than that of no repair canister and has to swap on the go).

Is it crazy that while I have lowbie alts, I still only ever play my main necro. The short time I’ve played over 4 builds of her, all decked out with exotics. I don’t know, with all the claims of her shortcomings I should probably shelf her but I just couldn’t.

Anyone who isn’t an altist too, like me?

p/s – nothing gives satisfaction like that of a QQ from a player who sneaks behind enemy lines to try own u coz (hey there’s a clothie let’s pawn her) and find that you are actually a tougher nut to crack than you seem to be

i don’t know guys, nothing is more fun than watching everyone gets floored on a huge attack because everyone just simultaneously run out of heals, protection, block, endurance or whatever that is that keeps them alive. DS can take that one extra freaking hit (actually more than one) than will mean reviving more members and preventing a wipe.

Sure, alot of those boons that we have are selfishly for our own perusal. But think about it this way, if you don’t die it means u are keeping the team going. With 3k armor and 30k hp (kindly double that up to 60k for DS), I am not kidding, I can even purposely get pulled by Kholer and live to tell the tale.

@Sheobix

Just want to say I have always been following necro threads in this forum and found that your advice on necro builds and tips are one of the best there is.

Built my own jugger yesterday and had so much fun it in that I decided to completely transmute a full set to my own liking and even have them dyed nicely teehee. Now I have no access to ascended gears yet, and even the rings, accessories and amulets are rares with crest only.

Even that gives me super health, toughness and power. I reason with a friend who ran dungeon with me (if i stand around forever and not ended up getting down all the time (or half the time), my effective dps is still about the same as u considering u missing half the action, and he was surprised I still stand after everyone got knocked their socks off by a giant slam which usually immediately downs. Not only I didn’t go down, I ended taking 3 hits to the face (one in DS) and started ressing everyone. That’s the kind of support it brings and I’m glad we have you around in the necro thread.

Love the flexibility and gameplay of the necro and, thanks!

Cheers!