Guild Wars 2

What I can recommend:
-Elementalist:
Can do Anything, ANYTHING You want to do. You name it, ele got it.
Insane burst? check.
Insane tanking ability? check.
Insane survivability? check.
Insane heal? check.
Insane utility? check.
Insane mobility? check.

It’s not like you can have everything at the same time but ele is one of the most flexible classes and the way, the skills and traits synergize with eachother is unmatched. There are probably more viable elementalist builds than there are builds for all other classes combined.
if you want (dagger/dagger)elementalist pvp footage, check here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/daphoenix555

As an alternative:
Guardian:
Can pack quite a punch while buffing allies and charging at opponents, shrugging off attacks left and right. More focussed on having allies around tho. If you are more of a loner, I’d rather suggest taking a warrior instead. Not sayin, warrior is bad in a team, quite on the contrary. Warrior is just the better solo.

Stampede!
the best part was when they started placing siege. I laughed my kitten off.

Kromsin.6359:

If rangers are so useless as someone said. Why do I freaking see so many of them.

Rangers are a bomb in PvE. Of course theres a lot of them around and quite a bunch of them just go to WvWvW.
That’s also the reason, it’s so hard to buff rangers for wvwvw. If you straight out buff them, their efficiency in PvE will skyrocket even more.
Also, 40% of the Rangers, you encounter in the wilderness are bots :>

About Charr vs Asura:
The Asuran ground troops can’t do kitten against the Charr war machinery…
Meanwhile, the Charr can’t do kitten once Asura really try to hold a position.
Asura can’t invade cause their troops just aren’t fit to face the most powerful weaponsystem, while Charr can’t invade either… Because if the Asura focus on holding on, they can do so almost infinitely with their technology. Couple a huge generator with a defensive grid and no Charr gets through.

In the end, it will be a contest of superweapons.
The Searing on Rata Sum vs a reproduction of the reactor incident on the Black Citadel or something. Dunno :>

LordByron.8369:

naphack cannot just be serious…
Its so clear he use a thief or a ranger….

Thief in wvwvw is just lame….permastealth can keep busy large grups for a lot of time contesting things…

Its quite obvious in WvW that a DD ele has lot of problems being stuck in short range.
How you are supposed to face zergs?
How can you defend from walls?
How can you kill siege machines?

Its so obvious….

DD ele is fast thus is good to take supplies (mesmer is obviusly better) or defend key points from small groups (not alone….of course).

Also ranger is so valuable in wvwvw against siege weapons….and defenders on the walls
Its not tpvp its wvwvw.

What are you talking about?
In an open battle, a D/D ele is way better than a staff ele.
The only thing staff ele is better is shooting up or down walls. Anything else?
Zerg vs Zerg? Storming/Defending the Lord’s room in SM, …?
Daggers are waaaaay better there. Yes. It’s true, I haven’t had a high lev Ele so far… Playing mostly Guardian.
But just look at how these huge clusterkittens work.
Thete’s 2 kinds of players who run risk of being fragged early.
1) “Heavy Duty” front liners, mainly Guardians and Warriors
2) “Back Row” guys who hang around far in the back and bombard the area with spells.
The safest spot to be in is the “skirmisher” who keeps jumping across the battlefield, creating advantage in numbers at small sections of the field to finish off opponents one by one. They are hard to track. And staff users are one of their most favourite meal.

You do not win Zerg vs Zerg battles by dealing a lot of damage. You win by stacking up small victories one by one while avoiding death. A dd ele does exactly that. A situation somewhere on the battlefield is 2v1? Jump in, make it 3v1, kill the kittener. Rinse, repeat.
The problem with ele is not that he’s too strong. On the contrary, if geared correctly, he’s fairly average. In EVERYTHING.
Ele just doesn’t have any weaknesses anymore at full equip. If ele has weaknesses, then it’s:
-Out of any class, depends the most on having good gear
-Only class in the game where most racial elite skills are stronger than the class elites.

Finally, let me tell you one thing:
A staff ele reacts to the battlefield.
A d/d ele shapes the battlefield.
That’s also the reason why everyone cries about thieves(aside from invis solo play). The ability to create advantages in numbers at small sections of the battlefield is invaluable.

And about wall battles: You can always carry a staff with you…

BabelFish.7234:

Klawlyt.6507:

BabelFish.7234:

Recently I’ve seen thiefs with 1 minute worth of stealth on themselves. To me that’s overpowered.

While I agree that stealth should work in WvW as it does in sPvP with regard to point capture, you didn’t see a thief with 1 minute of stealth stored up. It caps at 10 seconds. Granted, you can constantly be filling it to that cap, but you can’t just fill ’er up and go.

No, it was actually 1 minute. He was on my GoM server so I looked at his stealth buff after the 10 seconds and the stealth buff said 1m.

Hack or glitch?

P.S. I play a thief, I know how stealth works. :p That’s why I mentioned it, because it wasn’t working how it’s supposed to and I found that very, very odd.

was that in EB jumping puzzle, by any chance?
Cuz there’s fountains down there granting 5 minutes of invis, ya know?

Let’s put it that way:
In an all out war between Charr and Asura:

Ash Legion: with a little bit of motivation, these guys can infiltrate Metrica Province and assassinate various scientists.
Iron Legion: let’s put it that way: If it’s about dismantling some big metal thingies, they are probably up to the task. The only question is whether they can do it while said metal thingie is moving. But let’s face it. They know the weak points ov miving metal parts all too well, the golems will just be utterly destroyed
Blood Legion: enough brute force and stupidity to cleave a golem in half.

On the other hand, we have:
-Golems: Only effective in large numbers, else the Charr will rip them apart
-Big magitek cannons: The Charr’s tanks will get ripped apart by the ones who don’t backfire :>

The main weakness of the Asura becomes clear, however: They don’t have anything to face the most powerful weapon system(a russian with two AA-12’s a charr with sharp claws and teeth)up close. They can hide behind their Golems and Science as much as they want, they can’t overcome this weakness.

For Asura to invade the Charr successfully becomes rather unlikely, considering Charr technology is not too shabby either. What we gotta look for is the other way round.
It all depends on how well the Asura can improve their designs. Right now, it would all blow up after eating one or 2 mortar shells. If they can improve the durability of their devices, they will be able to hold back the invading Charr forces.

Ultimately, a war between foot soldiers and tanks will lead to nothing in a straight up Asura vs Charr battle. The Asuran Technology gives them a huge edge at defending while their physique gives them a huge disadvantage on the offense. In the end, it will probably come down to a super weapon showdown. Throwing the Searing on Rata sum vs recreating the reactor incident in the black citadel or something.

Well…
The charr will simply burn down the pale tree then :>
There, smartest race again.

However, I agree on Skritt.
Throw a thousand Skritt into a hole and watch them develop nukes.

Btw, how would a hypothetical war between Charr and Asura end?
:>

what are you talking about?
The single most broken character in this game is a dagger/dagger ele with tank spec.

Manticore Five.9867:

If you feel you need to justify being a warrior, you could focus on being a bleed warrior or a crit warrior or a gun warrior.

With wars, you have many specs to choose from that don’t need a norn’s might.

Shout-healers just need a big mouth… and I think we can all agree Asura has that >;)

Charr: “FOR GREAT JUSTICE!”
Everyone goes “RWAAAAR!” and bravely charges into the enemy lines.

Asura: “FOR SCIENCE!”
Everyone: “Wait… What?”

Dunno, shouts don’t really suit an Asura. Having to raise your voice over others in order to be recognised, means, your words don’t hold much weight.
The whole concept of adrenaline, battle frenzy, whatever… Fine.
But Asuras just don’t strike me as the kind of primitives who will go all hot because of a flag or someone yelling random glibberish…
That being said, my Asura uses banners regardless :>

“The Krewe” [KREW]
would be the best name possible…
oh, well, I’m rolling an Asuran rifle warrior right now. Name is “Peacemaker Napp”
As we learned in the tutorial, everyone thinks, peacemakers are useless and I wanted to fix this misconception.
Playing on Drakkar Lake right now, so meh…

wut?

Ele:
Jack of all Trades!!!! Whoever plays staff on ele didn’t quite get it. Dagger/Dagger can do almost anything any spec and any class can do … only better.

Warrior:
Banners, Banners, Banners, … Did I mention Banners?
Also siege crew(Hard to kill, can throw out banners beforehand, …)
Crowd control
Main tank, damage dealer

Guardian:
Group buffs, main tank(with AH, you can do both at the same time)
Area control(Hallowed Ground, all the countless walls, etc.) Especially with a hammer.
Projectile block

Necromancer:
Area control!!!
Crowd control
Boon and Condition management

Mesmer:
Mass Haste!
Transportation service
Boon and Condition management
Projectile block

Thief:
Hit and run
Hit and run
Hit and run
and run without hitting(scout duty)

Engineer:
Long range crowd control
Damage dealer

Ranger:
Alt+f4 and login with another class

????
It’s absolutely NOT about gear.
The only reason you cannot compete with true 80’s who know what they are doing(my lev 50 guardian frequently frags 80’s) is that you don’t have that many trait points yet.
You could run around with a lev 80 char in full fine/masterwork armor and it wouldn’t matter much, except for some very close fights, you could duke it out with other 80’s without having to worry much about gear cause, honestly… The difference is not THAT big.
A naked char with full traits could kill a char with full exotics/Ascended and no points in traits(theoretical construct) any time. Go figure. The big impact comes from the traits for sure.

WvWvW is an inter-server war, where you bring everything you made so far into battle. What’d be the point of scaling everything flat?
Levelling everything flat is boring. And I say that as someone who has yet to reach lev 80.

John Lucier.5486:

naphack.9346:

John Lucier.5486:

One simple thing they could do to please tens of thousands of players(if not hundreds of thousands) about to quit over the ascended gear, like myself. They just make wvwvw seperate from PVE. Have it have the same gear system as sPVP except you can transmute PVE skins onto them, this will make everyone happy, and by everyone I mean the real wvwvw players who care about beating someone with skill and not stat increases, the real players, the one that played this game because progression was supposed to be cosmetic only.

As far as I know, the “real” wvwvw players don’t care about stat increases cause in the end 5v3 is always better than a 1v1. No need to outmatch your opponent in stats when you can outsmart them.
Strategy is everything. Stop whining about gear. Keep playing and you will catch up in gear to the PvE guys eventually. Anet is not stupid. PvE guys will get a headstart, as they get with everything but that’s gonna be it. They will allow you to catch up (in gear) to them PvE grinders soon enough.

That sounds like a wow locust zerg mindset, hands down. Yes, We real wvwvw players, do not care about stat increases to beat our opponents. But it does get out of hand when you face people with 20-50% more damage and/or 20-50% more tank, think about if your server has a dedicated wvwvw crowd, and the other has a PvX guild that gets all the new gear for themselves, the stats aren’t minor. A-net has made it clear, new gear, not fixing bugs, AOE limits, that skill cap in this game is set to low, and there is only so much a server can do when undergeared and facing a server full of new shiny ascended gear.

Real wvwvw players would take the spvp gear system, and welcome it, as long as PVE skins can be transmuted, even if it still takes durability hits on death, that way they can keep to what they PAID for, and not be forced to login to a 2nd job.

As it stands right now, the tens of thousands of posts against the ascended gear on these forums alone, then you have the same on reddit, A-net is taking this game down a path that would make NGE or SWTOR look like heaven.

Last time, I checked, it was like an overall increase of 2-3% in stats… Far from game breaking.

John Lucier.5486:

One simple thing they could do to please tens of thousands of players(if not hundreds of thousands) about to quit over the ascended gear, like myself. They just make wvwvw seperate from PVE. Have it have the same gear system as sPVP except you can transmute PVE skins onto them, this will make everyone happy, and by everyone I mean the real wvwvw players who care about beating someone with skill and not stat increases, the real players, the one that played this game because progression was supposed to be cosmetic only.

As far as I know, the “real” wvwvw players don’t care about stat increases cause in the end 5v3 is always better than a 1v1. No need to outmatch your opponent in stats when you can outsmart them.
Strategy is everything. Stop whining about gear. Keep playing and you will catch up in gear to the PvE guys eventually. Anet is not stupid. PvE guys will get a headstart, as they get with everything but that’s gonna be it. They will allow you to catch up (in gear) to them PvE grinders soon enough.

hell no.
WvWvW is an inter-server battle where you go in with everything you achieved so far and duke it out with your opponents. Why would you want to put limitations to that? I don’t play sPVP because:
-I don’t like playing with stuff I didn’t work for, so for low lev chars, it’s a no-no.
-I don’t like playing without the Stuff I DID work hard for, so for high lev chars, it’s also a no-no.
And the second line is the whole point. Who in their right state of mind would want to normalize a big free-for-all-anything-goes-brawl? Gear is overrated anyway but I sure as hell do not want everyone running around with the same standardized stuff. Leave that to the sPVP geeks.

just play a hammer guardian. It’s the best style out there.
Highest dps, highest utility, almost unlimited blast finishers at 5 sec cd, almost impossible to kill with altruistic healing and the right spec…

like having the option of making the AoE circles bright yellow.
Makes sense.

Ceeps.3185:

Two thieves held a group of 20+ off at a supply camp by stealthing. Even when we killed one, another would run from spawn and contest the area. Despite AOE’ing every piece of ground, it still took us a good 10 minutes to take the camp that we had cleared in about 30 seconds. The group was not organized enough to stack on top of each other, but that shouldn’t matter. One player shouldn’t be able to put the brakes on 20+ people. There needs to be a way, be that a skill from a profession, a mechanic change (perhaps you cannot contest a capture point while stealthed), or a new piece of siege that reveals stealthed units around it. This thief problem leads to horrible imbalance in WvW. This requires little teamwork to have a huge effect on the game, and isn’t that fun for the thief, or the 20 players frustrated trying to kill him.

Simple fix:
Stealthed players only slow down capturing by 80% instead of stopping it entirely.
problem solved.

for a d/p thief, there are no gaps!

^nonsense.
I play wvw with multiple <80 chars…
As soon as a character hits lev 10 and has 2 utility slots, he’s good to go. YOu just have to stick with a group till your char is about lev 35 and got his first big set of rares(Trading post)
from that point, it doesn’t matter much anymore(At least for my guardian, it didn’t matter at all)
Just take note: Choose the correct builds!

Thief: sb and s/p.
reasoning: SB is another escape mechanism with infiltrators arrow. That’s all, it is good for at low levs but it does great in that regard. The true machines are infiltrators strike and pistol whip. Your job is not to kill stuff, it’s pinning down escaping opponents. You cannot kill stuff by yourself, let the group dish out the damage, you focus on controlling the flow of battle, dazing people trying to stomp your allies etc. Use blinding powder to save downed allies and scorpion wire to pull people to your group. Your group will thank you.

Guardian:
Start off with GS+scepter+offhand(doesn’t really matter, get what you feel comfortable with) your bread and butter skill are the GS pull and scepter immobilize… Also Smite against downed players and siege. From 35+, you can also play hammer, don’t advise playing hammer before that point. As for utilities, there is a lot. Save yourselves is great, purging flames awesome, retreat amazing… And that’s not even counting the countless knockdowns and immobilizes, you can get as utility.

Ele:
Contrary to popular belief, do NOT play staff. The true beauty of the ele is dagger/dagger, no matter the level.
All staff does is pumping out some negligible damage(as you are underleveled) on a long rage with ok AoE(no traits yet) with the only true cc being on lightning attune.
Just get dd and play it similar to an underleveled thief. find the right targets, RTL, updraft, attune to another element and lay down some burst and/or cripple.
As for utility, mist form is a must.

Warrior:
No personal experience here but while I played my guardian, my mate played a warrior. Just get any weapon with good cc and/or a long bow for the big flame field.
Grab as many banners as possible and forcefully thrust them into the ground. Your group/zerg will thank you.

Necro: No personal experience here, Staff, necrotic grasp and some defensive utility, I presume

Engi: No extensive personal experience here. This one is tricky. Grenades, rifle, net turret I guess?

Mesmer: Chaos Storm and Null field are awesome, no matter your level. Also, temporal curtain is amazing.

Ranger: Well, Rangers suck, end of the story.

was running around with my guardian the other day. saw a group running and discussing stuff like “man that was awkward.” “I think, he is gone now” etc.
Next I saw was a thief popping up in the midst of said group again only to vanish shortly after.
So I took my Hammer and went thief hunting.
Thief vanished into stealth… Just blindly used the barrier circle. A black animation verified, I did indeed catch the thief and he shadowstepped out.
As he was in no position to C&D from there(kinda stupid, if it was me, I’d shadowstep to the next target…), he also burned his shelter there and I just blindly swung my knockback into it, fishing for invis thieves :P
Well, didn’t quite get him there and so the hunt continued. Thief C&d me, so I scroll out and pan the camera to a top view, while seperating from the group. kittenhead took the bait, I dodgerolled away from his C&D and threw immobilize at him. He came at me in a straight line, desperately trying to cloak again, only to get smacked into the nuts with a huge hammer and ragdoll against the next wall.
Allies ran in, spamming some kinda AoE all over the place, his auto-blinding powder kicks in…
…Only to reveal a downed thief a few seconds later.
And once you are downed in front of an angry mob, the story doesn’t need to be told. Everyone knows, what came next.

Learn to deal with it. if it’s a C&D build, just use friggin dodge rolls…
If it’s d/p smoke combo, well… That’s the kind of build you don’t bother trying to kill anyway unless he’s in the very circle you try to conquer.
He doesn’t go for massive damage and that’s all you need to know. If you can’t kill him, ignore him, if you can kill him, use your brain and bait him into a situation where you can outsmart him, then crack his skull open. It’s surprisingly easy once you get the hang of it.

Drakkar Lake…
unorganzied Zergs with a comparatively high solo skill across the players, leading to daytime domination. Obviously tho, as a tagged server, we have to re-capture our keeps and towers every morning.

it muted you for speaking in third person, obviously :>

Anyway, I feel like muting commanders is stupid…

Who says, Asura cannot fight on par with Humans(ok norn could be problematic… Without enhancements, that is…)
Their intellect would allow them to develop highly systematic and effective combat styles. Throw in some kind of power gear, exoskeleton and whatnot and you are ripping apart norn and charr like it’s no problem.
Also, just play with rifle+sword/warhorn and be a sniper.

From the moment in the tutorial when my freshly created ele went:
“She is rarely wrong. Don’t tell her, I said rarely, by the way.”
And I was like:
“God, that chick has the same screwed up mindset as me.”

Also: EARS!
nuff said.

There is so many ways of counting…
Maya used a base 20 system(counting with fingers and toes)

Base 12: Finger segments. Each hand has 14 of them, exclude the thumb, which is used to count and you are set :P

Base 16: possible with 2 hands, using the thumb to count fingers and the spaces between them.

Base 10: Lame cause stupid and inefficient… Counting up to 10 and there is the end of it :P

Base 60: Yes! Base 60! Just sayin Babylon, nuff said.

Base 2: Best system.

DinosaurIRL.2498:

I think siege and QuarterMaster upgrades would be much better if only karma were used, even if that involved the karma cost going up. People want to max out their gear so throwing out the best part of a gold coin isn’t appealing until they’ve made sure they’re as good at 1 on 1 as they can be.

I’ve seen people writing stuff like “need 20 more silver donation to purchase wall upgrade!”

It’s a server/group thing after all. No need to buy upgrades by yourselves.
Dunno about american servers but us Germans manage just fine.

what are you guys all talking about?
I guess, he’s not talking about C&D spam but rather about a dp thief, using smoke and heartseeker for infinite combo finisher stealth.
And that’s a kitten to fight against. Traps, marks, wells and other ground control skills are a must… But the thief will just get rid of too many conditions anyway :>

Katsumoto.9452:

Phoenix.3416:

At this rate, glade and gunnars hold will swap next week so drakkar watch out :P we will be going for your slot

Survive the prime time and you can beat them On EB most of us on Aurora Glade spend our time defending as well as we can and tend to hold our own corner more or less, and have some guys capping supply camps. But sometimes Drakkar get really organised and it’s really impressive what they can do.

Then night hits and there’s nobody left for them. It’s kinda sad to see.

the curse of the german tagged server tt…
srsly, I’m thinking about moving to some US servers, so I don’t have to bother with this tagged kitten anymore. (Even if I leave DL, then it’s gonna be the opponents who are severely handicapped by the tag)
There’s enough organized germans to bring one server to the top listings in spite of being a tagged server. By no means, DL can do the same, sadly.

Khaun.4321:

I’ve always been bothered by this games hard line attitude toward using gimmick skills to cheat the terrain. I’m surprised that this skill works this way because in my experience I haven’t been able to jump gaps with either the ranger or the guardian leap skill. I don’t see why these kinds of skills even exist if they can’t be used in fun ways like this. And if the answer is that they don’t want them to be used to get to places that you aren’t supposed to, I direct your attention to the hundreds of invisible walls that infest this “fully explorable” world. Besides, the mesmer portal and necro worm pet can be used to blink through and across ANYthing so I’m really confused about the limitation on most other movement skills.

My charr Guardian doesn’t have any problem crossing 2 platforms in one go or any wide space with the greatsword leap…
The problem are altitude changes as she will jump straight forward and then suddenly drop to the ground, turning by almost 90 degrees mid-air. kind of a let-down

It’s called WvWvW and not something like wvw+wvw+wvw.
Of course, every of the 3 worlds will bring their own agenda. Every world has their own goals and if there’s a mutual interest in non-aggression between 2 sides… So be it, as long as the interests stay mutual, if they don’t, one of the sides will be backstabbed. It’s a cruel world after all, don’t expect people to play nice.
Btw, most alliances don’t even need an agreement. It’s just 2 agendas overlapping and the other server feeling the pressure of 2 servers attacking them while merely fortifying the border to one another.

this by itself is merely one small part of the general problems in wvwvw. You play against an anonymous blob.
All the same color, all with a generic name. No rivalries, which gets intensified by the fact, you’ll play different servers.
I want to be able to distinguish between players more.
Right now, if you wanna be remarkable, your only choices are getting a sylvari with a very distinctive skin color or getting a charr, which tend to stand out a lot too.

jup… Falling down and triggering a symbol of protection, which aggroes the pet of the ranger nearby which causes his mates to think you deliberately attacked him and “retaliate”, which causes all the 3 teams currently in the arena to slaughter eachother.
Mass paranoia in jumping puzzles is fun.

Didn’t someone tracking and analyzing the packages already fix the misconception of it being for performance?
I kinda recall, the result was, the server still sends all the standardized colors for every piece of armor.

WTK, guys?(what the kitten)
Seriously, what’s your problem? You can 90% see if an opponent is hostile or not. If he simply stares at you, /wave, if he /waves back, its fine until the point a second guy of the same server comes along. That might break the balance and someone might get hurt but deal with it.
I for my part love the 3 way stalemates in the arena.

just add a charge time to porting…
Like the teleported dude slowly fades out of sight while appearing on the other end(he can be damaged on both locations during that time)
He can’t do anything while porting and only sees his sight slowly fading into whats on the other side.
If that’s still not enough, you can simply add changes like teleporting people take x% more damage during the port animation, port animation lasts x% longer etc.
No need to castrate the strategic utility of a portal, just tackle the tactic utility of “portal bombing” by making the teleport not instant.

Don’t leave out the jumping puzzles… In a stalemate of fully organized teams, controlling these is key to victory. You can put down portals in obsidian vault for instant blueprints for your team while defending against anyone trying to breach you. Do not think about putting arrowcarts on top of the arena, have some perma stealth thieves in the dark room and siege at the exit there.
As for the borderlands, I always feel like these jumping puzzles are underrated. It’s an easily defendible position which can hardly be sieged if done right. Plus it’s not some kind of “out of the real map” stuff like the EB one. You can actually use it as a base for operations.

The ultimate strategy might have more focus on the jumping puzzles than you maybe want to admit.

Cancer.9065:

In PVE all professions do well so whichever you liked more (or disliked less?) is good. I would not dismiss Necro and Guardian because of your friends as you can play a different build/role.

Don’t dismiss Warriors either some people consider them dull because they play them with signets only. Banners can really make a difference when used correctly same for Shouts and they have many abilities that interrupt, which makes it a rush to wait for the “right moment”.

Banners are the single most broken skills of the warrior!
Just played WvW the other day, we were greatly outmanned but kept Piken shut down in the ogre camp where they camped with a treb and some arrowcarts. They always tried to push us back and claim Ogre Watch but one warrior with a bunch of friggin banners and shouts held them back for almost half an hour…
Until the point, they managed to burst him down. Our defense crumbled like 10 seconds later.

Elementalist is strong. Just really hard to master.
If you wannna talk about the “worst” class, it’d probably be necromancer, cause their builds are fairly limited with even requiring exact trait builds to really do well on top of it.
I have similar problems but I enjoy rolling my Guardian. As Guardian is a big “no” for you and warrior is not much of a challenge(seriously, my friend rolls a warrior alongside my guardian. He’s better in almost every single aspect except utility/battle control(who needs these when he can outdps any class in the game anyway?) where he comes in as close second. Don’t wanna discuss healing here as there are more important things than heals.

I’d say, just give the elementalist a try. Dealing damage is rather hard at the beginning(honestly, now that I’ve played both a guardian and a thief, my ele seems rather weak) but that will change later on when you got a bunch of traits(my ele is still 16)

The biggest disadvantage of ele is the lack of a really good elite(he’s up there with engi in crappiness of elites. And engi has supply drop which pulls him ahead due to being a reliable stun.) so roll him with a fitting race(a charr ele just outright sucks. Don’t even try.)

definitely smaller than Daggerfall
(Buggerfall)

[…]The Axe similarly is a weapon with a long history of powered offensive in favour of defense. A wooden half with a crude blade for hewing logs turns into an instrument of dismemberment, well suited for hacking through bones and tearing through sinew. With no cross guard, your fingers are left open in favour of wide swings that effectively use the power of shoulders and back muscles to cleave through that sweet tender flesh in macabre displays.[…]

you got half your stuff right and half of it wrong.
Firstly, the cross guard of a sword was never meant to block anything besides locking a sword at point blank range in a pushing duel. That’s what gauntlets are for after all. The main point of a cross guard(and the pommel) was to balance the weight of the blade and make sure, the blade can’t be knocked out of your hands that easily/it can’t slip. A high powered thrust would bash your hand heavily against the cross guard, which in turn would make your hands slip all the way over the blade without. no biggie, you got a gauntlet anyway, but there’d be absolutely no force behind that weak kitten thrust. About the rest: The main reason why swords were favored over axes is:
1) Axes have a predictable arc… Basically. You can still bash opponents with it as a surprise maneuver and cause heavy concussions but that’s just not as effective as a sword, which can thrust, stab, slash, depending on the weight balance even chop.
Against armored opponents, axes should be more effective than a sword, which can only hurt them with hammer strikes to the head or full force thrusts, but that leads us to
2) An axe was highly risky cause it would tend to get stuck way too often. An axe was a disposabble weapon at best, you’d always need a secondary weapon in case it gets stuck. Speaking of weapons which do well against armor, a mace would be way superior in that regard. It can be swung any direction, doesn’t get stuck and is more sturdy on top of that.

One of the most famous uses of the axes was, after all, as a throwing weapon, with the sole purpose of crippling the foe, getting stuck in his shield to make it heavier and cause panic. In a direct fight against armed opponents, there were simply better choices. And that was around a time where there were hardly any usable swords around cause they didn’t know jack about metals back then. the average sword size at that time would make any knight from 3-4 centuries later laugh his kitten off.

[…]scythe[…]

hell no. First you go “historically this, historically that” and then you mention one of the most impractical of any improvised weapons out there? Even a stick is more dangerous than a scythe. Especially against an armed and possibly even armored opponent. A scythe has exactly one, read: ONE! range, where it can actually lay down some hurt and even there comes in a friggin predictable arc from the left to the right(hf with an overhead swing. Opponent dodges, blade breaks and that was it) a tad bit closer or further away and the scythe is a bulky, useless piece of junk. To make a scythe halfway useful, you’d have to turn the blade by 90 degrees and make it into something like a cheap knock-off Naginata. I’d really prefer the genuine article tho.

There were Scythe weapons out there but guess what they made: take off the blade and, yes, put it on a short grip and wield it like a sword/claymore.

And I didn’t even mention the restrictions for close quarter fights.

Simple fix: Swap reanimator with shrouded removal.

try to defend a castle with an arrowcart in WvWvW with an Asura… I always feel like my Charr is way better in that regard.

Works as intended, I’d say.
Would be waaay too imba, unless the max initiative was cut by 40% or something. You could spam like there was no tomorrow. If you’d really want to spam, you could even equip the same kinds of items twice for teh lulz.
With such a change, it would now REALLY be impossible to escape from a thief without at least 15 seconds of invis and the thief running in the wrong direction…

Had similar Issues, tho I chose to abandon Quinn. Poor guy got cut in half after
Dunno if its thieves being weak in the early stages or the human story being harder than the rest.

Try the following:
Pistol main, dagger offhand, short bow alternate, slot skill venom.
Just stack up bleeding and poison while spamming the kitten out of your dodge key, using stealth-attack to stack up even more bleeding and switching to shortbow if it gets really dangerous(especially against ranged condition builds, shortbow is way better for getting away.) I don’t know what kind of opponents you face but in the “abandon Quinn” storyline, Doc Howler was a real pain in the kitten stacking bleed and poison like there was no tomorrow.