Guild Wars 2

Pie Flavor.1647:

Reikou.7068:

Because the game is more than just 1v1s.

not for thieves

I 1vX.

Also, thieves can be great for immobilization, vulnerability stacking, poison up time, aoe and single target dps.

Kaineng. We WANT you!

I have played thief, and only thief, since launch. No other characters but one thief. I’m looking into trying, for the very first time, something else. I’ve eliminated some and come up with two contenders. Necromancer vs Elementalist. I’m looking for something that has high dos, survivability, but is fun to play. No, I’m not going to play warrior/guardian.

I was thinking that the ICD should be removed, and should heal a of damage taken, so for example, 50 of damage received on EVERY hit you take. Now, this makes us stupidly tanky, but unable to heal since to balance, the active would be STUPIDLY low. So why not just scrap the active heal. Instead, make the signet active while in Death Shroud? This would heal your actual health bar, so the more they hit you to get you out of death shroud, the more try screw themselves over. However, if they don’t, you get to wail on them. With the new GM trait, healing in death shroud will now exist (something that made me very happy) and this idea is kind of redundant, but I thought I should share

Best Wishes,
Oscuro of Kaineng

What if we could control Zhaitan with our power of the undead. Give the necro an unlock able 0 skill that you get from completing the Arah story mode (reincarnate Zhaitan under your control). And, we could ride zhaitan and fly around through wvw demolishing towers and keeps… The catch is necromancer is no longer a profession option when making a character.

We can all dream.

Rennoko.5731:

helmino.4138:

Thanks all for the answers, so solo roam can be doable but difficiult you says, ok. How can i trait for permaswiftness?
Thanks all again

I think warhorn + spectral walk + 20 points in DM for greater marks gets you 100% swiftness. Warhorn is a niche offhand for a condition build though.

It’s 10 in the last trait line. It increases spectral duration. Then have warhorse off hand. I use war horn off hand in EVERY necro build because the daze and cripple is so good for 1vX, which I basically do all day in WvW.

Yes, necros have build diversity. You have the basic, effective, condition necromancer using plauge and heavy aoe. There is also the cannon necro, which has great direct damage to single targets. Also there is the Wellomancer which has pretty good aoe direct damage. There is also the terrormancer, which has some interesting stuff (very similar to the condition mancer, many consider them the same thing but they are not), and, last but not least, the perplexity mancer, which stacks perplex pretty well because of interrupt through fear.

When seen by a Zerg, escape is possible. Traiting for perma swift in a necro is easy. Also, fear and the staff marks provide great utilities for slowing down enemies, giving you time to escape/ooc. Hope this helped.

Best Wishes,
Oscuro of Kaineng

Go full apothecary with a 0/0/30/20/20 build with leeching venoms, signet of malice, and stack conditions with cluster bomb/choking gas

The nerf isn’t just to us… Cannon Necros, power warriors, dps guards, zerk ranger, all of them are going to be majorly impacted. I think there are still going to be effective power builds, though condis are gonna be so much more op since you can build bunker Condi and be immortal. My thoughts are regen thief but that may not end up working out, I’ll have to see.

I wasn’t thinking so much ladder as a siege tower. And then you can build other siege in the siege tower, like arrow carts and people. You need people pushing the tower and people inside to enter the target area.

@Heizero: I would like to argue on behalf of the Kaineng WvW thieves. There may be about 10 of us, but we are all very skilled. Some more than others, but we are all at least competent.
@OP: healing in stealth does not give an extreme amount of healing. Your numbers are far off, someone else posted the right ones on a typical thief build (10/30/30/0/0). Unless you calculated that while using healing power gear/traits, which almost no thief does. I don’t run with that trait all of the time, and can say it makes a marginal impact if the player is skilled enough to play thief properly. Stealth does not make you invincible. Their a are sti susceptible to attack and heavy damage. Stealth is primarily a tool for confusing the enemy. If a thief resets the fight with stealth, 1. You just won the fight. 2. You go into OOC regen, so them healing has no significance.

(Experience: played since beta; Thief, Warrior, Guardian, Engi, Nerco)

Best Wishes,
Oscuro of Kaineng

So, people, I will simply first say my qualifications. I have maimed thief since beta, I have a warrior, a guardian, an engi, and a necro as well as two thieves. I would first like to say that I do have experience in WvW roaming with each, and all of the classes (engi is the exception to an extent) are unbelievably easier to play than a thief. I am not being biased. I have far much more success with my thief in EVERY aspect of the game, but that comes from learn how to play thief since the very first open beta. I will say that playing all of the other classes has taught me how to be a better thief while being a thief has only taught me how to kill thieves.
However, thief is difficult to play. My argument is not L2P because I realize it is very difficult and frustrating to bash your head against a wall trying to kill someone who seems invincible (did this on my thief against op Condi regen god mode warrior), even though it is a way to get things done. So as I was saying, thief is difficult to play, and I will argue to try to teach the rationalization of stealth. If you were to take out stealth, it would be like fighting an infant. We would be so dependent on others to do our fighting we would lose all purpose in all game modes. If you want to take out stealth, you can remove the warriors CC, the engis kits, mesmer clones, necro death shroud, guardian virtues, ranger pets, and elementalist attunements. Now, imagine whatever class you play without that functionality. I’m sure the class would still be more than playable (maybe not mesmer, that’s about the same level as thief). Thief would be EVEN WORSE; yes worse, than however impactful stripping that aspect out of your class would be, if you were to remove stealth. That is the reliance thief has on stealth.
Now for the common misconceptions of stealth.
1. PERMASTEALTH DOES NOT EXIST
There is something called revealed that means we cannot attain stealth. The main problem people have is they absolutely freak out when someone disappears. That is the advantage thief has. I personally am in stealth for 2 seconds at most. Otherwise, they have time to react to the initial burst of confusion. If you are gone, then one second later they have lost a chunk of health, or have 5-7 stacks of bleed. If you are in stealth for too long, they have time to dodge, or block, or do anything to avoid an attack. But many thieves do this, which only hurts them, which leads to my next point,
2. STEALTH IS NOT A BURST HEAL
Stealth heals you ~200 per second. This means it heals less than a regen warrior, less than a regen guardian, and less than anyone with regen on, even if the numerical heal per second is different, because stealth lasts for 3 seconds. That’s 600 stealth if you just let stealth expire. Thieves use a healing skill (yes, they still exist, not everyone has the luxury of healing passively) while in stealth to assure they can heal. Unless you want to argue thieves shouldn’t be allowed to have a #6 skill, than stop complaining. This argument is invalid.
3. THIEFS ARE NOT UNKILLABLE/DAMAGEABLE IN STEALTH
Thiefs are not invincible (as many people have recently come to realize) in stealth. It is a confusion tactic. Health is the same and armor is the same. If a thief is running a perma stealth build, he can infinitely stealth, but can inflict no damage and must reset the fight. This heals you too. So that is not a valid debate because you should go into OOC regen unless it is a group fight, in which case, why are you targeting some one who can de-target get themselves?!

I will not pull the L2P card because I do realize the frustration that has. It’s like quoting the Bible to an atheist. It has absolutely no significance and is overused. I will give you a tip on how to play though.
When a thief stealths, swing around wildly and don’t stop spinning. This will significantly make aback stab harder for the thief and may reduce damage by a significant amount. This will also most likely damage the thief. If you can, dodge rolling backwards the run in to the side is a great way to get out of the range of their Backstab too

Best Wishes,
Oscuro of Kaineng

Everyone says that the only argue meant thieves have is you need to “L2P”. I will tell you right now, that is an argument, but not the best. Stealth will heal you 234 per second. This healing is less than the regen Condi, or regen dps warrior. Or the guardian. Or the bunker ranger. It isn’t what heals you. The healing skill withdraw is what makes them “burst” heal in stealth. Playing a thief is not easy. It is the average skill level of thieves being higher than any other class.
This is my argument. Thieves need stealth to compensate for the lowest base health and toughness in the game and to make their high damage possible. The stealth mechanic is fundamentally flawed, admit ably, but it is more in favor of the enemy, not the thief. You get some minor healing, but it does not serve as an invulnerability, infact, thief has no invulnerability at all. They get the chance to confuse the enemy for a short amount of time every 3 seconds. Maybe, they can pop off their heal, or prolong stealth, but ultimately movement in stealth is predictable. They will try to get as close as possible and hit you from behind. Timing and proper dodging can immensely reduce a thieves dps. A missed backstab is very bad for a thief. I time 2 seconds, then dodge and run. This usually expires their stealth. Granted I’m a thief so I can always time a Backstab (really confuses other thieves when I CnD off of them while they are in stealth). It is kind of l2p but more of a staying calm problem. People freak out when they lose their target. That is what kills you. When you lose half your health, don’t freak, they will most likely waste a ton of ini on heart seeker which is a fundamentally flawed tactic and they are very easy to kill in this state.
If it is a Condi thief… I just have to say REALLY?!?! You don’t complain this much about Condi warriors, or Condi necros, or Condi rangers. They are all basically as effective, some more, with more applicable condis, and more health regen/Condi clears. It is a problem with you being confused by shadow step and stealth, things that barely change anything. YIU get panicked because you lose sight of your target, that is irrational. It is a matter of remaining calm, not l2p.
My 2 cents.

So I was playing a build with my pistol/dagger power build and figured I would like a little more damage, and found the bleed unnecessary when not playing a Condi p/d (I love the p/d skills). There is already a trait that boosts pistol damage by 10%, but I saw a way that p/d could be warped even better into being a universal set. Since it is the only ranged weapon set other than shortbow, I find that having it be usable as both Condi and a burst set would strongly boost the versatility of thieves.
The trait:

Full Metal Jacket
Replace bullet jackets with solid metal, making the bullets deal more damage and pierce, and no longer cause bleeding.
Damage: 10%

This could be implemented on the power/condi duration line (can’t remember the name off of the top of my head) as a grand master trait. I feel this could have some cool synergy with possibly the ricochet trait for some pretty cool aoe capabilities.

DeceiverX.8361:

oscuro.9720:

A skilled thief can only be countered by a skilled player.

Wait a minute… are you implying that the way to beat a good player is to be better?

Holy cow, that’s unbelievable and totally revolutionary!

I know, but GOD FORBID people have to learn how to play!
Alas, people will never take responsibility for themselves. But in all seriousness, a thief is counter able. We we squishy and rely on not being hit. Use that.

Kaineng will rise again!!!

I’m just going to list the common builds an average thief will have trouble with:
•Condi tank warrior
•Super damage zerker ranger
•Condi necro
•PU mesmer
•Possibly a Condi engi…
•Super tank of invincibility guardian
•Basically anything that stacks too many conditions…
•Burst builds that hit you first…

That’s 8 examples that took 1 minute to type, idlf I actually thought, I could think of others. Now remember! This is scaled to an average thief player, not one who is skilled. A skilled thief can only be countered by a skilled player.

I gotta say, I have to personally disagree with most of you. I found out the wonders of D/P a long time ago in late December of 2012. I loved it because, at the time, it wasn’t the meta, it was a freak build. People complained I was “trolling”. But then somehow, everyone started playing it. In not making the “I did it before everyone else” claim, because I don’t know if someone played it earlier, but as time has gone on, and I have played other builds, it has been very funny, for me, to watch this build blossom from “troll” to “OP”!

Upstanding Gentlemen of Tyria [UGT] is looking for any and all level 80 thieves! We are an all thief, WvW guild. We are based in kaineng!

Now, I understand you are probably wondering “why would I want to transfer to the server in last place?”. Well, I can tell you why! Look at it this way, kaineng is only going up. There’s no going down, no risk of , well, messing up.
Also, the community is chalk full of good, dedicated players. We may be in last, but is not a lack of skill, but a lack of man power. We are fierce fighters who go until the end. Every player who visits Kaineng WvW even semi frequently, or occasionally, is skilled in, at the minimum, the rudimentary basics of having a smoothly functioning force on a WvW map.
So, all thieves, get ready! The free transfers are coming, and the Upstanding Gentlemen of Tyria [UGT] are ready to welcome you to the fight!

^ Oh yeah, forgot to mention that ^
Though I have soloed a lot of champions (I think I’m at 19 different champions) with this bud:)

You can do this. P/D Condi build full dire. I’ve been running a custom Condi p/d build for ~7 months. Very fun. You use the torment venom and use #3 as your main dps output. It works well. I focus more on bleeds with a bonus of torment in the build. I also use spider venom to give me some poison against passive heal classes (can stack 2 and a half minutes of poison:)

I know this happened a long time ago but is it possible that te quark is turning into Zhaitan to replace him? This has been really hugging me ever since I beat teq again last week.

I agree. I moved from Blackgate to Yaks Bend. From there I got bored and moved to kaineng. This was before Kaifeng was at the dead bottom of the NA rankings, but who cares. All we do is small group and solo. We don’t have enough people to form a Zerg, and I’m fine with it. Every so often we do form a Zerg, but that is just when all of our formers and havoc a come together to do something major (take/defend a keep). Many times we have a Zerg without a commander, then break apart into small roaming groups after the keep capture/defense. It doesn’t matter that we are dead last since. Everyone who is on our dedicated WvW crew is skilled. The reason we are dead last is that we have about 10-15 people in WvW. But hey, with 10-15 people we’ve held KBL from 35-50 man zeros because we know siege placement and where and when to choke because we have only fought outnumbered for the past 4 months. With free transfers to Kaineng (are they here yet?) you should come join us!

Most of you figure thieves require no skill. I’ve played every class but ele, and I choose thief in every situation WvW and PvE. Yes, I have a warrior that can steam roll, but that’s not fun. The mechanics of thief is very fun. Also, many of you have posted thief is an easy class. This is stigma that we need to get out of. Thief is very difficult to be good with in WvW. If you fight a bad/noob thief, you’ll know because they will maybe get an opening Backstab in, but usually they will miss all of their major skills. The current WvW outlook on thieves is just plain wrong. The reason I picked a thief is that they are fun, but only once you have gotten to be good.

Mosharn.8357:

oscuro.9720:

If you are in kaineng, you have no doubt seen me fighting in WvW, for I am Oscuro. I can assure you there are more than ten people. The problem is that recently a lot of our WvWers have gone to PvE for the new Lions Arch event. Yes, we have lost a lot of WvW guilds, but look at our BL. Whenever I on, we hold out. Our keeps rarely fall (especially hills ) We thrive when it comes to Roaming and small group play. If you need someone to roam with, shoot me a whisper in WvW. There’s plenty of activity in our wvw, you just need to know where to be. (Don’t go to EB, that’s kind of hopeless right now). ALSO, do not “axe” t8 servers. That’s a terrible idea. I came to Kaineng from Yaks, which before I was in BG a long time ago. The lack of ques and small group roaming is great. We are low tier because we don’t have numbers, it’s not a lack of skilled players our server is fun (for me) and getting rid of it would be upsetting for others too.

Its been 4 weeks. The last time i saw more then 15 people was couple days after the escape from LA event started. I wont lie to you my good sir. Removing it isnt the best option but look at it. The last time someone came here they made it worse because all of them ditched it and the guilds that were here since release left aswell. It became two times as worse as it was in december 2012.

Where do you WvW? KBL, EB, or other BLs? Get into one of our wvw guilds. They run guild WvW, just don’t use map/team chat.

If you are in kaineng, you have no doubt seen me fighting in WvW, for I am Oscuro. I can assure you there are more than ten people. The problem is that recently a lot of our WvWers have gone to PvE for the new Lions Arch event. Yes, we have lost a lot of WvW guilds, but look at our BL. Whenever I on, we hold out. Our keeps rarely fall (especially hills ) We thrive when it comes to Roaming and small group play. If you need someone to roam with, shoot me a whisper in WvW. There’s plenty of activity in our wvw, you just need to know where to be. (Don’t go to EB, that’s kind of hopeless right now). ALSO, do not “axe” t8 servers. That’s a terrible idea. I came to Kaineng from Yaks, which before I was in BG a long time ago. The lack of ques and small group roaming is great. We are low tier because we don’t have numbers, it’s not a lack of skilled players our server is fun (for me) and getting rid of it would be upsetting for others too.

Kaineng has pretty nice roaming and skill level, just be okay with losing every matchup because we don’t have any zergs due to low WvW pop. I run an all thief guild if that tempts you

I would make a video with my all thief guild, but I dont really want to. All you have to do is dodge. Hammer trains are fundamentally flawed, as they rely on a couple of certain skills which have long cast times. The true stun lock class is thief. Off hand pistol spam 4

Man, I’m sick of black gate this and blackgate that! How about kaineng! Let’s see kaineng come back and get some T1 action!

Now back to Earth, seriously, someone help kaineng.

This is the problem. What if you are being obliterated in wvW and have nothing but one supply camp. You won’t be able to get supply to cap a tower and start back up from the idea you are putting forth, or did I miss something?

The thing is, if they do the 4 second revealed, it will affect d/d more severely than most other builds. More d/d thieves will play d/p. it will reduce build diversity, and that is something that is not good. Additionally, there is a limit to how much you can do about reveal. We have a limit on time in stealth, and the reveal, IMO, should be at least one second shorter than the gained stealth time, or this would destroy the whole tactic if the stealth mechanic. The 3 second reveal is perfectly contrasted with the 4 1/2 second stealth time, IMO, and it already makes surviving something more than a 1v1 more difficult. I feel 4 seconds would be too destructive to the thief, and so I must say no.

I suggest you run full dire with 0/0/30/20/20. Dire weapons, trinkets, and utilities as:
6. Withdraw
7: any stealth skill
8: spider venom
9: caltrops/speed signet
0: anything really, most are good
Been running this build for about a year maybe more, and I love it. It is fun in WvW and if you run with organized dungeon groups, it is very effective. You come out to about 20k health 3k armor and 1,4 k Condi damage, then add food for somewhere close to 2k Condi damage.

Asura because one day, we shall rule the world. In seriousness, think about it, it is already hard to see a thief, now take the smallest thief possible. I’m just a bit over twice the hight of a bunny. It’s amazing.

I don’t feel the complaining is justified. It really isn’t any better than another set. Though I don’t use it as my main build anymore, it is still very fun to play, and I do roam with it sometimes. It’s not super easy node. Since the fix to Off hand dagger a few months back, I find d/p and d/d to be equals. People don’t necessarily hate the layout, they just hate losing, and since it makes the learning curve easier, they die more often to it, and, thus complain. To play d/p well yields nearly identical results to every other thief layout (except p/d Condi builds)

Dee Jay.2460:

What I like about D/P is that, contrary to what many people claim, you actually use all skills on a regular basis.

Yes, I played d/p a long time ago when It wasn’t popular (December of 2012) and it was hilarious because no one understood it, and it was one of the most fun builds I’ve played for that exact reason. Now I play p/d because so many people complain about it now. Granted I still have the armor and run it some times, it just got annoying, and, eventually, repetitive.

I feel something like a mass invis for 3 seconds that cures ALL conditions would be nice. Put it on a 60 or 90 second cool down, and have it effect a 600 radius. It could be called Shadow Purge.

That would be cool, but I just bought the zodiac medium armor for an asura, and I’m not sure I can ever wear anything else. Ever.

With the idea of a trait focused around revealed, and people not liking defensive abilities, why not have something like a 3 second haste on revealed. Or it could be implemented where we gain some sort of attack buff (i.e. Might)

How are elementalists at 1vX

Okay, I made an eel and he is at lv 10, and pretty fun (go asura!)

I definitely feel the bugs should be worked out first as many have stated and Josh so kindly posted about After that is worked out I had some personal ideas. People mentioned things such as ways to pickup turrets, but I feel like this would be somewhat difficult as turrets such as the healing or thumper turret wouldn’t really have much functionality to be picked up and would appear to be very heavy too. This is when I got an idea looking at a flame ram. They levitate!!!! Why can’t our turrets do this?! Granted I understand this would not make sense with the thumper turret, but things such as the rifle turret or flame turret could utilize very interesting tactics if they levitate. For example, they could function similar to Messer clones, and kitten minions. You could choose their standard stay in place, a function similar to the Mesmer clones, in which they attack your target, but don’t self destruct. Or they could levitate protectively around you, similar to the necro’s minions, EXCEPT, they function similar to the targeting system of the basic stationary function (closest target). This would be applicable to rifle turret, flame turret, and net turret (any others you think could work?).
My 2cents

I am looking into making an elementalist, primarily for a mixture of both WvW roaming, both small group and solo, and small amounts of pve. So are they any good, the other class I’m looking into is engineer, so how do elementalist compare?

I have made an engineer and it is fairly fun, but how is it at WvW roaming at level 80? I have heard they can be good but how is the difficulty? I’m not trying to play the easiest class, I already have a warrior, and it bored me to death…

How is the Engineer currently, as I’m looking into making one to function for both WvW roaming and PvE?