Guild Wars 2

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

Hey guys,

Saw the Traveler Rune and the 6th bonus was 25% movement speed and figured if I picked that up I could choose a different utility. These are some ideas I am looking at.

Option #1 D/P – Offensive

Option #2 D/P – Defensive

Option #3 D/P – Balanced

With the removal of Shadow Signet, it allows me to adjust gear slightly towards other stats if I can throw in Signet of Agility or Assassin’s Signet. I like the Assassin’s Signet a little more primarily its active is very effective. I enjoy the math and I am sure Wish will have a field day on these so by all means, theorycraft away.

Ascended

Thanks

No shadow refuge?

Forget Rangers, they are terrible in PvE.
For PvE, I would suggest you any S/D or D/D combo, zerker stats. Your role would be that of kiting enemies, enpowering your mate with blast finishes, and occasionally heal him. Aurashare would be nice to have too.
Consider using Conjuring Weapons in Dungeons.

Elementalists are definitely more fun than mesmers in PvE, no doubt about that. They deal more AoE damage, are more survivable and more importantly are a ton faster than mesmers: mesmers are the slowest among the classes regarding moving around.

You’ll be incredibly BORED as a Mesmer in PvE for the first 40-50 levels.
I’m dead serious.
Depending on the kind of thief your partner is going to play, you could be a great asset to him as any tanky class (Eles are good at that although they require a higher skill floor than Guardians).

But I agree that a roaming Mesmer/Thief pair in WvW will be a hard encounter for everyone.

Excalibur.9748:

Results are hilarious.

Had this thief whack at me the whole game, my HP doesn’t even go down LOL. He was definately playing D/P. I don’t know if he was trying to burst or what but my HP didn’t even go down at all. I was whittling him down with just auto attacks and he had to run every time. Poor guy, dying to auto attack and can’t even hurt me lol.

Everytime I was close to dying when getting mobbed, I just used whirlwind attack and then rush and everyone was so far behind me. Basically just used auto attack and can kill everyone except for full bunker which can’t hurt me obviously.

You killed a D/P thief with autoattack?
That was a really bad thief.
Alas, Warriors are really good counters to thieves in 1v1.

KiltedCowboy.1945:

For me, it has always been my WArrior in a group. Nothing less.

Mesmers and Thieves, how I hate thee (And that is putting it lightly). They always catch me and I can NEVER catch or kill them.

If you can’t catch a MESMER as a WARRIOR, you are doing something wrong.

Don Alosi.2401:

question: by maxing up guard killer and defense against guards you would get 100 power, 100 con damage and 250 vitality after just killing five guards?!

Yes. Go solo a camp and kill a sentry and you will be with 2500-4000 more Health and deal a lot more damage.
People with those buffs are the funniest to kill, as they mostly are really, really bad at playing despite their high rank.

Nikkinella.8254:

I’ve been contemplating using them myself. they seem really good. bought 6 of them but haven’t decided what to do with them yet. currently have 2x sup water and 2x sup monk, and 2x sup melandru. I don’t know if it would be better to take out the melandru and just stick 2 in, or stick all of them in for the 25% run speed. I’ve also been considering full divinity. Those of you who do use full divinity, is the lack of boon duration runes noticeable or not really a problem?

I have a full divinity too, and tbh was not really impressed be that at all.

Warrior
(15 chars)

Samhaim.8956:

Those are the stats on the ascended dagger:

970~1030
64/64/97
not really that much of a difference from the exotic one, so i really dont get why all the complaints…

I’d hardly call a 50 attack gap “not that much of a difference”.

But I think it’s the upcoming ascended armor which will completely widen the gap between exotic players and new players.

I will not play until the september 17th patch, I want to see what class balances are going to be made. If I am not satisfied with those I’m quitting altogether.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Protector’s Strike: This skill will now trigger if an attack is blocked while the guardian is in midair.

Finally we get some meaningful changes! It’s only been months since the last balance patch and you are already pushing out such major things. In fact, I think this change might just revolutionize the way we look at WvW, shattering old metas and creating new and exciting ones to replace them. I was about ready to give up on this game a week or so ago, but these changes have made me carefully optimistic about the future of GW2.

Thank you!

I agree, it is pretty much all we needed to make this a balanced game.
Now it will be only be a matter of skill if my group wins or loses

Taking 2x Superior Rune of the Traveler, along with 2x Sup Water and 2x Sup Monk, will make us even more tanky, while buffing our damage by a slight bit.
Thoughts?

For reference: 2x Superior Runes of the Traveler provide these bonuses:
(1) +10 All stats, +2% Crit Damage
(2) +15% Boon Duration

Revealing medium armor pieces are quite rare. The vast majority of medium armor sets is composed of Long Pants and Long Coats.
As Zorby stated, use your PvP locker to find out what set best suits your tastes.
You could always go to www.gw2armor.com and take a quick look at a few sets

A good thief will make good use of it.
A bad thief will get killed (sometimes).
I know it can be frustrating, but try to play around it for a bit. Learn its cooldown, be prepared to get a free stealth if things get nasty.
Or, if you really hate it, make it proc when you are revealed

Buddy.7563:

It would be nice for it to be account bound, but there is a distinct issue with that balance-wise currently. They would need to change the way Gaurd Leech and Applied fortitude works to do that. Green arrows would have rediculous stats with both of the buffs plus guild buffs. And if they change the buffs, a whole other group of people will be kittened off and start complaining.

Killing an upleveled would still be joke even if it had 5000% more health.

Truebanana.5936:

Hihey, what work against most of elementalist wont work against a D/F who stay calm.
You can as you said in theory backstab 3 times in 10sec, but you wont be able to, because you wont want to die and it will be more like 1 Every 10sec.

I see that you are on an EU server, so i can show you in spvp. Even we wont have the same stats, you will be able to see the gameplay, because you didn’t actually try D/F before thinking it wont work, like most of people.
I will be at home at 8.30pm GMT+1 and have a lot of free time to play untill the 10 september.

Edit : the 5 skills in air and water to interupt, or the asura skill

Fair enough, I’d like to give it a try
I’m sort of a "tanky"thief, but with a zerker amulet I would still deal at least some damage.

One is an Elite, the other an Utility. Why don’t you take both?

Amins.3710:

hihey.1075:

I’m ok with this meta.
I would be ok if they change it too, but they will need to tone down bunkering so that every burst damage build would be able to kill in a 1v1 (eventually) a bunker build (healway guardian, d/d ele, cleric ranger, healing signet warrior).
To me, fights should end in a stale only in bunker vs bunker. A burst damage spec should be able, even if it takes them a couple minutes, to shut down any bunker build.

Wrong on so many levels.

Care to enlighten me a bit then?
Or are you one of those guardians who keeps QQing just because you must flee the moment you see a necro?

I’m ok with this meta.
I would be ok if they change it too, but they will need to tone down bunkering so that every burst damage build would be able to kill in a 1v1 (eventually) a bunker build (healway guardian, d/d ele, cleric ranger, healing signet warrior).
To me, fights should end in a stale only in bunker vs bunker. A burst damage spec should be able, even if it takes them a couple minutes, to shut down any bunker build.

Here’s mine.
I’ve spent hours in order to find the proper combination of gear to make my thief like this.
Especially the pistol, finding one that matched the color scheme was really a pain. But now I spend a lot of time just looking at her

So more power to AC? No please. Go to Harathi Hinterlands if you like to use siege.

AC taking no damage on walls is simply ridiculous. That way, no one will ever take a tower/keep.

The only nice idea is rams taking no damage from ACs. Everything else is not good if you look at the big picture (that is, not factoring only the few defenders vs few attackers).

Sandman.4192:

Agrios.9071:

Stop complaining about nightcapping, you have bigger numbers during the primetime. All your guilds are bigger then ours. Do we complain?
I am sorry that we cant bring 1 guild to the field that is big enough to match you…
Only Slay has the numbers but first they dont play that long together(as far as i know) and second they start playing later.

Thats true!
SLAY is just started in the beginning of august now maybe 4 weeks old.
Some smaller WvW guilds join them because they had the same ideas.
So we are still learning from eachother each day.
And SLAY is Always later on, people got kids and have work and other things to do before they come online.

I have been arguing about this with another guy from GH: I am positive I have NOT seen any “Slay” guild in the previous matchups we had (iirc the last we had was 3 weeks ago), while he said that you were already active.
Was I mistaken?

Truebanana, how do you interrupt a thief from backstabbing you?
Updraft (istant cast) and Earthquake are AoE. The only thing a focus gives you is Obsidian Flesh, which is a safe Ether Renewal on 50s cooldown.
Then you have Arcane Shield, another safe Ether Renewal on 75 second cooldown.
Assuming you gain all the health lost to backstabs with these utilities, tell me how you are going to survive the huge amount of stealth and backstabs the thief is going to throw at you.
As a D/P thief, I can land 3 backstabs in 10 seconds, along with a couple Heartseekers and a few autos. Granted, you have a high health pool and decent toughness, but you will not escape a good thief. You use LF? I catch up with steal.
If you use Shocking Aura for Ether Renewal, I’ll interrupt you with pistol #4, and that’s a wasted Ether Renewal.
D/F surely will make the fight longer because it guarantees an Ether Renewal with Obsidian Flesh. But after 20 seconds either you are dead or you have every utility in cooldown. You MIGHT be able to do another Obsidian Flesh→Ether Renewal, but that’s it.
The difference between a stunlock warrior and a D/x thief is that the former one has better sustain which you could mitigate with your high health pool and Ether Renewals remember that Shocking Aura will work against a Warrior), while the latter is way more burst.
I am not even a zerker thief, but my BS crit for nearly 7k on D/D tanky elementalists. How do you mitigate a 7k burst every 5 second?

Given the actual condition meta, Ether Renewal is by far the best Healing we have (IMHO).

Truebanana.5936:

That terrible weapon as you say allow me to win every 1vs1 exept against good (still lame, but it end with a draw) stun warrior and always win against thief.
It’s a control fighting style, not a “i have to make it quick or i wont have enough cooldown against that class to survive” style.

In 1vs1 exept for fire skills, all focus skills are better. You can break the rythm of your opponent with all your control and the 5 earth DD skills is useless exept against begginer, even for an offensive build.

Against a D/P thief, you’re gonna die even faster with a D/F.
He can just chain stealth while you pop all your CD trying to evade that backstab.
It just requires them 2 BS (maybe 3) to take you down. If they need more than 3 BS (assuming they crit) you will not deal enough damage to kill them anyway.

Thank you all for your insightful replies

I usually try to fight “Champion x” opponents because there is a chance that I’ll learn something from those fights. I know that some classes are more suited for dueling than others (I do not expect to die when facing every type of Elementalist, for example), still I have always “respected” those players and have always fought with great focus when challenging them. I know you could be carried all the way to your title, but I hoped that these guys at least knew how to play their class properly.

Disclaimer: I rarely play s/tpvp. I usually do that to quickly try out new builds, but I am not familiar with this game mode at all and most of the times I perform very poorly.

How much is the title “Champion Slayer” (or “Champion x”) worth in the s/tpvp area?
I am asking this because I have always looked at that title as the “best” signature about the skill level of a player: whenever I saw a “Champion X” I would think “That guy must be good!”.
However, said thoughts did rarely meet my expectations.
I know WvW is different from s/tpvp, but I am talking about 1v1s here, done without any support from other players or from Guard Leech OP buffs.
Out of all the “Champion X” guys I fought, only a couple of them impressed me. All the others were running FotM builds and were playing very poorly, not knowing when to put pressure on your opponent and when to back off. Not to mention when to time their interrupts.

So, I am asking you, is that title worth something? Or has it become like the new “Dungeon Master” title, which has most likely been bought by the majority of the people using it?

Natronix.9827:

People just like role playing villains in this game at times. Im guilty as charged and its mainly caused by boredom and looking for something amusing…

I remember playing on my thief I found this squishy ele I could one shot down him, i let him on downed state and kept poking him whenever he tried to heal, keeping distance so he coudnt hit me or mobs… doing that over and over for about 8 minutes till someone came over and tried to res him.

I stealthed stomp him at 99% health.

Haha, that made me laugh, though I would have probably stopped you if I were there XD
OP, there is a 99,99% chance that the thief who killed you will not read this thread. Get used to being killed by a thief, especially in a JP.

Great night for roaming. Had some really interesting fights with a lot of thieves tonight!
We even grouped up with a few RoF and charged the UW pug zerg a few times in RoF Border XD

Special thanks to the Underworld Footman D/P Norn Thief, it was the most intense fight I had in a few weeks!

Know this: everything is viable in PvE; but not everything is viable in WvW.
As such, try to figure out what gear you need to fit your role in WvW, then grab that and use it in PvE too.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Neko.9021:

Ele’s matchup against Thief at the moment is pretty much in the Thief’s favor, 100%. It’s one of the primary things that keeps them out of being competitive in sPvP. I honestly think it’ll take a patch for things to change around, sad as that is.

Pretty much this. You can beat Thieves on an Ele, but it’s tough. Don’t go full zerker, they’ll one-shot you. A Knights/Valkyrie’s mix can work well. The trick to beating Thieves is pinning them down and ripping them apart, not just out-bursting them. They’re rightfully the kings of burst, so don’t try to beat them at their own game. Make the game yours. Hit them with a Scepter 2 and 3 when they pop out to kill part of their burst them switch to Earth for protection and hit 4. Then Fire for a Pheonix and Fire Grab (Flash to them if you need to), then back to Air where maybe you hit them with a RTL+Updraft combo.

The key is to land your CC, then carpet bomb the area if they use Shadow Refuge. Don’t blow everything on a thief who hasn’t been forced to use all his emergency escape options.

It won’t work against any above average thief. Any D/D – D/P will just laugh the moment he sees a S/D Ele.

Nice fight, though I do not agree of some of the utilities used by the thief who recorded (using HiS while already having 10+ seconds of stealth from SR is a waste, especially with S/D since you can reliably go back anytime you want).
Still, enjoyable to watch

Any thief who gets killed by an Ele is a REALLY bad thief.
Or a condi thief. Which is still really bad.

D/D and D/P thieves should NEVER lose to any kind of eles. The most an Ele could do against one of these thieves is being tanky enough to run to the closest safe point on map. Or just cast your FGS after Shocking Aura.

If you plan on roaming, you MUST take the stealth cleanse, otherwise you’ll die the first condition roamer you face.
Going 0-20-30-20-0 is nice. But you Signet of Agility is meh. I’d go for Infiltrator Signet: a reliable stunbreaker and gap closer, with a really nice passive. I use that when things get really bad (such as when a group of people come in during a fight) and have already used every other utility. Lifesaver.
The equipment is NOT good. I have Celestial Helm, Soldier pants and Knights Coat. You do not want berserker-valkyrie gear on head, pants and chest, you lose a huge amount of stats.

pejot.4806:

Fun reset Thank you WBC, TEO and FRS from GH ansd AA and DEX from UW for a lot of fun fights, we especially enjoyed the 3 way in Astralholme, it was epic, before some UW decided to build an AC.

GuM, you officialy made it to the top of my list of most boring guilds to face (beating Tz from Arborstone, which was a tough thing to do). We want to fight you, not your ACs and supply traps…

I am really afraid that once UW keeps turn T3, there will be even more AC-hugging :/

Just wait for the night, we’ll take them with our famous golem rushes

Wrong. Imagine 10 people going back to Siegerazer via Waypoint, refilling their supplies instantly and with no effort, who then go back to the keep by using its waypoint. During a siege.
Defenders already have so many advantages in this game. I think it’s fine as it is.

The Umpire.9510:

nothing better to do anymore so we did something else….

attachments:

http://oi42.tinypic.com/2eqan2e.jpg

Yeah, I saw that when was protecting Vale a couple hours ago. Shame they did not reach the top of Briar, where AS put a nasty Treb which destroyed Bay outer XD

Anyway, thank you AS for one of the best nights I have played! Had some great fights in FSP BL!

Xsorus.2507:

Nikkinella.8254:

Well I just found out something disturbing that I could do with runes of perplexity. respecced my thief so I had as much initiative regen as possible ignoring everything else, spam headshot over and over again. Instant win. You don’t have to dodge or stealth or anything. No matter how many condition cleanses your opponent has, they will NEVER be able to get the confusion off of themselves and they will die no matter whakittens kind of funny watching someone struggle and die just from healing and be able to do absolutely nothing about it while I literally just stand there and press 1 button, but this is kind of ridiculous. Those runes need a serious nerf. they need a 30-60 sec cooldown on how often they proc confusion. Keeping a constant steam of confusion on people and making it impossible for them to take any action whatsoever without dying from it is really overpowered.

Do nothing else?

So what are you going to do when you fight a class with Stability?

Wait for it to expire?

I’ll also add:

:Grant stealth to elementalists only and remove it from thieves and mesmers.

Zorainda.3495:

Just wanted to say that BROS guild reflects poorly on FSP server. Twice now they have apparently glitched towers in EB and attempted to take them. First time Klovan, we found two inside attacking lord without any wall or the gate being down. Second time Aldon’s, and while our group was fighting at overlook, the tower suddenly turned blue,without swords ever appearing. Same guild again and no siege at all around the tower, so perhaps another glitch.

I ve never seen anyone else from FSP exploiting glitches like this, so no one is accusing the whole server, but it does add a sad note to the great game we are having this past week.

They are also known for interrupting duels and killing everyone, when everyone from both servers was just watching.
But they seem to roam only in EB, so it is safe if you play in BL :/

Understanding the reason why you lost a game is one of the hardest, yet most important, aspects of becoming a better player.
Some games offer better ways to deal with this.
Sadly, GW2 does not provide enough information to give a player a better understading of why he lost.
In my experience (I have been playing Halo competively for 8 years), one of the best ways to learn from your mistakes is watching a video of your gameplay. If we were able to watch the whole match again, with the possibility of switching PoV anytime during the playback, it would be really useful, though a little time consuming (but believe me, nothing works better than this).
Of course, there are ways to do this, albeit through other softwares.

Speaking of post game statistics, I agree that nothing is proven by those. They should provide you with more information, and not only regarding YOUR play, but also about your teammates’.
Displaying only your kills is the best way to approach casual play, not to mention that since every kill is “shared” with you teammates, it becomes even harder to understand if you did well or poorly.

Xillllix.3485:

Literally paying a thief = f1 (stealth) or 5 – 1 – 2222 -1111 (guy dead)

Literally playing a staff ele = f3 -5 /interrupted – f1 -2 -5 -3 – f4 2 – 5 – f3 – f2 3-5-4 (why is that spell so slow!) – f4-f4-f4-f4 (f4 kitten it recharge) – oh noes Im gonna die -f2 – f2 -f2 – 6 / interrupted / 789 (pop all utilities) yay mist form noooooo I have 15 stacks of bleeding (health is going down), jump off cliff.

Ahahahah! This made my day XD
However, yesterday I was amazed when I saw a Staff Ele dueling with a decent Guardian and actually managing to ALMOST kill him. Too bad a zerg came and killed that Ele, I wanted to see how that fight would have ended.

Really, at the moment our bane are thieves. I rerolled thief when I saw how easy it was for them to kill me. I don’t have many problems in dealing with any other class as a D/D-S/D Ele, really.

Kaleygh.1524:

hihey.1075:

Kaleygh.1524:

hihey.1075:

5 more kills given to FSP Legendary Defenders @ FSP Spawn in EB

there`s plenty of other places to fight in EB.
…you do know that right ?

Yeah, but in order to fight you need an opponent. And it looks like that from 3 to 5 AM GMT+1, you FSP can fight only when you are outnumbering us 7 to 2 and near the protection of your Defenders.
Still, it is fun. But somehow I get killed in the process of finishing someone or when I try to lure someone away from the spawn making them think I am about to die

If its really that bad try changing the time you play at. Im sure you`ll find decent people to fight.

I’ll try, but I don’t like being interrupted by a zerg (being it from GH or from FSP) while fighting.
I am the kind of player who /bow after each fight and does not interfere in a duel, unless I see a guy from my server being outnumbered.
I think I’ll avoid EB altogether, at least you don’t get oneshotted by legendaries in borderlands :/

Red Falcon.8257:

There is no shame in relying on getting in&out constantly, you have a mobility built it’d be shame not to do that.
Rather, I wonder why you did not keep SoR up all the time. +5might +fury would have helped a lot.

Because, if you paid more attention, you would have noticed that he was wearing Lyssa’s Runes (since all boons were gained by him everytime he used his Elite). So maybe he wanted to save it for different occasions.
Nice video, though I was asking myself what the OP was doing near the 6minute mark

gilch.6458:

PvE

Thank you…I couldn’t make any sense out of why D/D thief was condi… but didn’t wanna be rude to the guuldy lol..is precision / power the way to go?

Oh well, if it’s PvE then pretty much everything works. You have some access to conditions in with D/D, but none of them are useful in WvW/sPvP (which I thought you were asking for).
Also, for PvE I would suggest carrying a x/P set, those blind fields works really well against anything that is not a Champion

Pwnzor.5682:

well i made a d/p build, gone try it but is this a good 1? http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQJAoalUmaPHfy4E+5EymidqC5e4UGVT1pArsKA-jEyAYrAm8gSfEZsVtioxqWwUlLqW5C4NY0qFCI0EA-w i try’d it out and works pretty good for me

With 0 Extra Toughness aside from the 60 provided by Divinities, the moment another FotM Zerk thief catches you by surprise you are dead. I’ve lost count of thieves I killed that way, as well as all those times a FotM Thief tried to kill me only to get badly beated up as soon as he realized I was still alive after that BS+BV combo.
To be “somewhat” safe from a Backstab, you need at least 2600 toughness.

Just my 2 cents

Minfast.5489:

hihey.1075:

Kaleygh.1524:

hihey.1075:

5 more kills given to FSP Legendary Defenders @ FSP Spawn in EB

there`s plenty of other places to fight in EB.
…you do know that right ?

Yeah, but in order to fight you need an opponent. And it looks like that from 3 to 5 AM GMT+1, you FSP can fight only when you are outnumbering us 7 to 2 and near the protection of your Defenders.
Still, it is fun. But somehow I get killed in the process of finishing someone or when I try to lure someone away from the spawn making them think I am about to die

Post of the thread. I once spawn camped 1v20 and managed to kill a few Defenders aswell. But I think you might have topped it. I mean you guys managed to get an enemy server ticking at 5-10 points for a couple of hours while being outnumbered.

I’m not joking. We even had the “outnumbered” buff this early morning. We were 5 in all EB: 2 roaming for map completition, 2 fightning in front of your spawn against 7 people, the last one watching us from the keep.
If “you” prefer gaining 2 lootbags thanks to defenders every 15 minutes instead than going around, scoring points for your server, that’s your fault.

Kaleygh.1524:

hihey.1075:

5 more kills given to FSP Legendary Defenders @ FSP Spawn in EB

there`s plenty of other places to fight in EB.
…you do know that right ?

Yeah, but in order to fight you need an opponent. And it looks like that from 3 to 5 AM GMT+1, you FSP can fight only when you are outnumbering us 7 to 2 and near the protection of your Defenders.
Still, it is fun. But somehow I get killed in the process of finishing someone or when I try to lure someone away from the spawn making them think I am about to die

??
D/D has nothing to do with conditions.
What game mode are you going to play anyway? PvE? WvW? Dungeons? sPvP?

One thing I have always wondered is if it is wise to destroy the turrets when they are deployed. They’ll take just a couple of seconds to be destroyed…

I’m asking this because I don’t see many engis in WvW – and those I meet are really terrible.

5 more kills given to FSP Legendary Defenders @ FSP Spawn in EB