Guild Wars 2

Cozener.9804:

Would you say your hammer build is still viable? I’m running it currently and thouroughly enjoying it.

Hammer was great before because people didn’t really know the animations. Now, since everyone knows what to expect from a hammer warrior people have a much easier time to counter them. I also found that in 1vX it’s about scoring quick kills, being bursty and you don’t really have that with a Hammer. I think Hammer is much more viable in group play with some support.

I do remember seeing some recent footage (last 2 months or so) of someone playing Hammer / Greatsword and doing pretty well in 1v1s and 1v2s so you could try that.

But then again, this is all in theory, I just came back to playing warrior again and my first pick was this build, haven’t really tried anything else. I came up with it when I saw the “leaked patch notes” and stuck with it since, experimenting and finding the perfect combination for my play style of traits, runes, sigils and skills.

The following assumes that you’ve watched the 2 “Matale 8” videos or portions of them and that you’ve seen the gear and build at the end of either of the 2 videos.

The Build:
- The 20 points in Arms to get traits “IV” and “X” are absolutely mandatory for this build. Trait “IV” is what allows you to be bursty during stuns and score kills and trait “X” is what makes you mobile and helps a lot with both your defense and offense. Without trait “X” in many of the fights I wouldn’t have been able to get away and then jump back into the fight on my own terms.

- The 20 points in Discipline for traits “III” and “X” are also very important as they allow you to stick to your target and get away when needed. Trait “X” in particular is a great tool when fighting Mesmers as it allows you to get away from their immobilize when they’re trying to burst you with their Sword.

- You can do whatever you’d like with your remaining 30 points. I decided to invest them in Defense as it fits my play style better and I figured it would help me the most in 1vX situations. Trait “V” (Missile Deflection) has always been a favorite of mine as often you’re able to reflect either a bunch of damage or clutch abilities. With this build you can reflect pretty often with both your shield and mace. Cleansing Ire, even though is not a reliable condition removal, in this build it works more as a passive one and with the amount of conditions going around right now, condition removal is always a good thing. The adrenaline gain is also a huge help. Defy Pain helped me barely survive fights on several occasions and it helps you not get bursted down when you’re out of CDs.

The Gear:
- I used a mix of Valkyrie and Berserker for my gear. I used Berserker gear until I reached around ~20% crit chance and then all Valkyrie. Most of your kills will happen during stuns when your crit chance gets boosted automatically to 50% however without some passive crit chance outside stuns, you really won’t feel like you’re doing much damage. For me, ~21% felt like a pretty good choice however I didn’t do any particular math in order to come up with it.
- Superior Sigil of Paralyzation is a must for this build. It transforms your 3 seconds Mace stun into 3.45 seconds allowing you to get a full 100B during it. It also makes your 2 seconds Bull’s Charge 2.3 seconds. (I’m not sure if stuns get rounded or not). If you’ve watched most of the 1v1s video you’ll notice how occasionally, vs some of the more durable and long lasting professions such as Guardians or Elementalists, I was able to catch them off guard around ~50% HP and lock them down with a series of stuns to their death.
- For your second Sigil you can put whatever you’d like, I started out with Superior Sigil of Leeching and really liked it so I just kept it. After recording several fights I’ve noticed a few situations where I barely survived with 3-4k HP so I imagine that without those heals I might have died. I also don’t have a lot of healing sources so anything extra helps.
- Runes of the Ogre are there for extra damage and they’re doing a pretty good job.

Being Sustainable
- This is something that I’ve noticed warriors are complaining about left and right on the forums and with this build you’re able to achieve “Sustainability” to some extent. Being sustainable as a warrior however doesn’t mean you just sit there and tank through the damage, it means that you have the tools to avoid the damage if you play it right. With this build you’re able to do your burst and then get away for a few seconds and then jump back in again. You also have 3 different weapon abilities to block / evade attacks. The stuns also help a bunch as your target won’t be doing much during that time. It’s not something easy and definitely much more difficult than it is for other professions but it works. If they would have went through with the -5 seconds on the Healing Abilities CDs it would have helped a ton. I think I had over 10-15 clips of 1v2 fights where I was so close to winning but I had 2-3 seconds left on my heal or I died while trying to use it. While it’s not perfect, it’s not too bad either.

Overall, I’ve never felt more comfortable, confident and capable on a warrior than I do with this build. I am able to have a strong fighting chance vs anything I meet and if things get rough I am always able to get away and try again shortly. You will have problems vs professions that are very bursty (both power and condition builds) however learning when exactly to use your defensive abilities and not wasting them will make a huge difference. You really have to know your opponents and have played other professions to be successful.

This build also works in sPvP with Soldier’s or Valkyrie’s Amulet.

Hopefully this will be useful to all the warriors that are having a rough time in PvP right now. Good luck and hope you enjoyed my 2 videos!

Hi there,

My name is Matale, some of you might remember me from Beta and the first few months when the game came out when I played a warrior for a while. After playing a few other professions I’m now back on my warrior, with a new build and 2 new videos.

First I have a WvWvW montage of 1vX fights, mostly just longer clips: (my favorite is the last fight, still gets me pumping)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM-DvB4y1yw

The second video is just all the extra 1v1 clips so it’s a WvWvW dueling montage with A LOT of fights:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq1JmiOaPiQ

Hope you guys enjoy them!

P.S. – Sorry about some of the mistakes I make, hopefully you’ll also learn from them. By the end of the week I will upload these same 2 videos but without the music for the people from those countries where the video will be blocked so just subscribe to the channel if you’d like to be notified.

Iavra.8510:

The moment i saw the “leaked” patch notes i started leveling a warrior…mainly because of those points:

- leg specialist = immobilize on sword auto-attack.
- insane confusion output in CC-builds.
- multiple cleanses every 8s ontop of immunity against cripple/immobilize/chill.
- both Burst Mastery and Destruction of the Empowered enabling HUGE burst builds.
- still the best mobility in the game.
- all heal skills improved.

Warriors really start to shine in group battles of ~4+ people since it’s just impossible to ress someone if you are getting 3k+ auto-attacks + insane bursts.

Warrior is one of if not the best class to play in WvW zerging and roaming right now and i have seen good warriors absolutely crushing good duellers of every other class.

What you’re saying is very, very optimistic however it’s also incorrect. Warriors are not even close to being one of the best classes in WvW roaming and they’re pretty crap in dueling, far behind engineers, thieves, necromancers, mesmers and elementals. Watch teldo’s dueling tournament at youtube.com/teldo to see what the top dueling professions are.

PvP is pretty simple and it’s all about killing someone within a certain time frame during which you have a set amount of skills to keep you alive such as invulnerability skills, blocking, dodging, heals, invis and so forth. Once you run out of those, you’ll die pretty fast. Other professions are able to manage those skills that keep them alive for a longer period and since they’re on shorter CDs they can go forever. I’ve personally played a thief, elementalist and engineer after quitting my warrior and you can really last forever while killing people if you play it right.

On a warrior you just have long CDs for just about everything and you have to use them pretty fast to stay alive within the first 20-30 seconds of a fight and then you’re pretty much screwed until the CDs reset. The upcoming changes are a step forward in the right direction and I’m really looking forward to it. Personally I love the idea of playing a warrior and every couple of months I come back on it and try to make something work and after a day or two I just go back to my other professions disappointed.

I also know what I’m talking about, I’m not just making stuff up, you can see some of my PvP video montages here: http://www.youtube.com/user/stefanplc/videos

Tulisin.6945:

-Utilities-
The best solution I’ve heard for the trap issue is as follows: Give them a much longer duration, and make them re-arm themselves after a given time period. This makes traps a long term ground holding investment wherein a thief can create an unfriendly environment for their enemies. Reset time would vary by trap, but this one would do well being able to go off every 10~ seconds

That sounds like a really really great idea!

I’m really happy to see this thread! Here are my thoughts in random order:

1. I’m a little unhappy how with some builds you can be very successful without using all that many abilities. I’ll take Pistol/Dagger condition damage for example where all you really need to use to be successful is #1 and #5. There are also good situations for using the other 3 skills and you can learn when to use them properly however the extra effort doesn’t really give you a big advantage over someone who doesn’t and it feels like it should, after all you’re trying to fit in 2.5 times more abilities. For the P/D example, you generally also don’t need to swap to a second weapon set unless maybe you’re traveling and would like to use the shortbow for that. Having 10/10 weapon skills be important is a lot to hope for but using 2/10 and beating groups of people is pretty sad.

This also applies to other builds where generally 2 abilities for each weapon set are pretty useless and it makes the game play kind of boring. As is, GW2 has less abilities than other games, lets try and update them in a way where they’re more useful. I feel that having more complex rotations and more solutions to various problems from which I can pick will make the thief profession just much, much more interesting. Right now it’s in danger of getting boring very fast.

2. I still think backstab thieves do a bit too much damage without really needing to work for it. While in a 1v1 situation, if you’re pretty good and with a bit of luck you can generally counter their burst, if you’re facing 2 opponents and you get stuck in a immobilize or a stun just for 1-2 seconds it usually means the end of you.

3. Shortbow just looks like an AoE PvE/WvWvW weapon and that’s it. I wish this weapon had a little more juice so you could actually use it in sPvP successfully without kittening yourself.

4. Pistol/Pistol also feels a little weak however I don’t have that much experience with it to point out what’s wrong.

5. This is an issue that’s not particularly just for thieves and it applies to all other professions. We’re currently lacking some stats combinations in gear which holds us back from playing some builds to their full potential.

6. I’m a little worried about the nerf approaches. There were some recent nerfs where skills just had their damage reduced by a % and while it helped tone down the bursty builds, builds that were already balanced and fun also got nerfed. I think a better approach would be to modify the way damage is currently scaling so that after a certain point you gain less from investing into offensive stats. I can’t really think of a situation where playing a glass cannon build is a great idea. In PvE it usually was viable in other games but in this one, it certainly isn’t, since there is no holy trinity and everyone needs to be able to hold their ground. All it does is allow some players completely dominate others without much effort.

Thanks for an awesome game!

Nerfing weapon damage in order to town down builds that do too much damage, while it helps in that sense, it actually does more damage than good to go the game. When you’re reducing a weapon damage by a percentage, sure, those builds that were over the top will now do less damage but at the same time, the rest of the builds that were doing ok and even the ones that were struggling also got nerfed even though they didn’t need to. This will basically push people to aim more towards offensive stats if they want to kill anyone in a decent stretch of time.

I think the main problem where more attention should be focused is how damage gets scaled. Changing the scaling from linear to a curve, could push people to turn towards some defensive stats instead of all offensive once they hit a certain point. Damage stats need to have a diminishing return so the more power/crit you stack, the less effective it becomes point for point. Distributing damage through out all the weapon skills is also something that needs a little bit of attention so that people can use a more complex and rewarding play style and not just spam 1-2 skills to win.

This patch didn’t really hurt my build that much but I know several other popular builds that were doing ok and now are kind of struggling and those people are also giving up on them. Reducing weapon damage by a percentage is just a lazy and wrong way to fix things that will hurt this game more and more in the long run.

dani.1956:

Cluster op ? You’re in a dreamland boy , you ever count how many seconds takes the bomb to land at max range ? Enough said !

You’re not supposed to use it that way, shortbow isn’t your max range weapon. Cluster Bomb was hitting a little too hard and especially in large zerg fights.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

How is this thief using his healing skill once every 5 seconds?

you can regen health during stealth and it’s quite a bit too

I’m wondering this myself but I really doubt we’ll see that before a new expansion.

I feel really bad seeing all the negative posts all over the forums and all of the complaints from many people that generally don’t even know what they’re talking about and like to exaggerate about every single little thing before it’s even out.

I welcome the new patch and as long as it doesn’t transform into a traditional treadmill seen in other games where you’re constantly updating your gear, I welcome a little gear progression also.

While I think that communication is something you probably still need to work on to avoid this kind of situations, I would like to thank you for all the work you’ve done so far. I’ve been playing since BWE1 and I’m still enjoying the game a lot. I’ve managed to enjoy every aspect of the game so much where in other MMOs I’d generally stick to PvP that even without this content update I still had things to do for at least a few more months.

I’m truly excited and looking forward to seeing more from you guys as I have a feeling that this game is going to blow everyone away even more than it did so far. Keep up the great work!

Webba.3071:

stefanplc.5234:

Free content being added slowly so there’s more stuff to do at max level. Everyone, HURRY! Quit! This is madness!

As has been said before, new content – wonderful, bi montly gear progression – terrifying. Its NOT hard to understand.

It’s not like there will be a NEW set every month to grind for. They’re adding a few items now and once you get them, that’s it, those are best in slot until next expansion. Do you honestly believe that a few months from now they’ll come out and say hey guys, we have a new set of gear that’s slightly better than ascendants but lower than legendary, bla bla bla?

3 items are being added right now which is basically 2 types, rings and backs. This whole process could take between 4 and 10 months to finish, probably just in time for a new expansion.

Free content being added slowly so there’s more stuff to do at max level. Everyone, HURRY! Quit! This is madness!

they really need to work on their communication skills.. you don’t release that kind of information and then just let it marinate without any explanations

this blog post needs to hurry up lol

Dociu Excavation

Not sure if it’s been mentioned already or not, but I bet that zone in Dredgehaunt Cliffs was named after their Art Director Daniel Dociu.

The only thing I’m afraid of is that introducing raids will not work with casual game play. Right now you can get all the dungeons done and farm whichever gear set you want on your own time because it’s easy to form a 5 man party. When you’re looking at 15 or 20 people parties or raids, those type of dungeons will be much more difficult and people in general will work towards setting up a roster which you won’t be able to be a part of unless you can make it 3-4 nights a week and play.

Right now if for example I’m busy during the week and then I have a really light weekend, I can make up progression wise during the weekend, say play 5 hours on Sunday morning or something like that. Well with raids it probably won’t work like that. For raids to work you need to follow a schedule.

that girl is gorgeous lol… aside from that, the interview was pretty good, I always love hearing new stuff about GW2… if they made a TV show about that, I’d watch it

You can currently go to a gw2 database website, get the code for that item and then paste it in game and see what it looks like but yes, please implement this!

I think at this point in time, it’s probably a better idea if the current weapon sets get tweaked. A good idea would be to just wait a little longer and see which “general builds” become more popular as I’m sure each profession will end up having 2-4 and then tweak the weapon abilities so they compliment those builds more. Many builds that are currently very successful don’t even use all of the weapon abilities, some not even half and many don’t even need to swap to a secondary weapon set. This creates a very boring play style and even if you try yourself to find a use for the other abilities you won’t really be better than the next guy who doesn’t.

I think this is something that needs to be addressed first before moving on to adding new weapons.

I agree that a Commander title should be achieved through skill and experience and not through purchase. Maybe they can add a new title “Grand Commander” in the future so the people that currently purchased their Commander title don’t complain.

If anything, make those world bosses give better rewards and everyone able to participate whenever they can instead of having to dedicate yourself to a set group. World bosses giving out tokens for some new set of gear would be an awesome idea.

I’d really like this for screenshots also.

Please don’t add raids. I don’t want to make a video game a part time job just so I can get the skins I want. The main thing I absolutely love about GW2 is that I can play on my own time and progress in all aspects of the game. I don’t want to become irrelevant simply because someone else can dump 3 hours a night 3-4 days a week and I can’t.

The only way I would like to see raids was if the SAME gear was obtainable through other means, meaning dungeon content could scale up. This would never happen because the moment that would be implemented, since the more players are involved the more difficult it gets, those players would want better rewards and they would deserve better.

Well the main issue is also the type of complaints we’re currently getting. Generally speaking since launch, the majority of complaints were related to other professions doing too much damage. People didn’t really complain about not having ways to avoid the damage or counter it and so forth, it was more like “Wow, that guy hit me really hard, doesn’t matter that I could have avoided it, why can’t I hit like that?”.

I’m all for complaints, as long as they’re constructive and documented because it helps the game progress. I feel like the majority of the GW2 population atm isn’t educated enough to come up with constructive complaints and them being able to see solutions to their problems could help that. There are those few players that when confronted with a problem try to figure it out and don’t go running to the forums and showing them as an example would help the entire community.

I’m sure just like many others, you’ve noticed the high amount of threads just about in every section about class X being OP and about poor balancing. I think an implementation of Spectator Mode in sPvP and a proper ranking system where viewers could spectate some higher end PvP could put an end to this. If people could see good PvP players play and how they counter FOTM or so called “OP builds”, then they might stop all this crying and understand that in many of the situations it’s just a l2p issue. It’s really getting annoying and it gives GW2 a bad vibe and image while most of the time it’s just miss-informed complaints.

I know this could take a while to implement but until then a good idea would be to actually form a tournament of all the high end PvPers with a good representation of each profession and then publish that footage to show people that it’s really not that bad.

Something being done in this direction could transform all the nonconstructive threads where people just complain, point fingers and spread all this poor documented information into constructive threads where people start asking “HOW” and come up to real solutions to their problems.

Even just a ranking system similar to WoW’s armory could do the job. If people start seeing their profession at the top, they might look differently at the situation.

People who generally were bad at PvP now are under the impression that they have improved and are GODs simply because they’re playing a thief and it is gross and absurd how much they blindly defend some of the OP aspects of this profession. The worst and dumbest explanations for their reasoning are those comparing apple and oranges (ex: look at that profession doing that, as if they were comparing to another thief). Seriously, get some common sense.

Mwari.8016:

Thanks for the video…. I am currently running a condition build, and am in the process of crafting my exotics. I still tend to die fairly quick, but seeing how you spec and play (which is very similar to me) I can get an idea how “durable” and how well conditions will tick once I am finally geared.

Great video by the way, shows how deadly thieves can be, without a gimmicky backstab build.

Glad you enjoyed it! You just really need to watch your opponent and avoid his burst combos and with this build you definitely have plenty of ways to escape and recover.

play other professions that you’re having trouble against and find out their weakness… this may sound cheesy but it’s really helpful if you just go in the mists and try and play another profession for a couple of days and learn more about it.. you’ll know what to expect when fighting them

Oldgrimm.8521:

as far as i experienced about sigil,

no two runes with the same property,(passive, active, on crit, on kill, etc etc)cannot go together

all runes have internal cooldowns,
eg if you use rage sigil(cooldwon 45 sec) + air rune (5 secs)
if rage procs, you should wait for 45 secs for the next possible air rune to proc

this.

Fourth.5603:

So what is the build?

I saw a 5/0/30/30/5 build that seemed similar, but am curious exactly what you are using.

whatch the last few seconds of the video please

Because I’m playing a condition thief and fights tend to take a little longer especially versus opponents with condition removal, I considered that it was really important to get both self healing traits Shadow’s Rejuvenation and Assassin’s Reward. This way I’m constantly healing while fighting and while hiding in stealth. You’ll often see in the video situations where I barely survive a burst combo but then I’m able to quickly recover, bring my health back up and even win. Shadow’s Embrace I found to be absolutely vital to my build as I’m often in stealth and my condition removal isn’t exactly top notch. Infusion of Shadow is also one of my better traits because it practically makes my Cloak and Dagger cost nothing if I stay in stealth for the full duration and it makes Shadow Refuge act like a battery and charge up my initiative by 2 every time it pulsates. I’ve debated a little bit between Fleet Shadow, Vigorous Recovery and Power of Inertia but I ended up picking Fleet Shadow because it helped me stick to my target without using initiative and at the same time it was great for when I had to escape. Thrill Of The Crime was the only option I really liked for the first trait in Trickery as the swiftness you gain is great for catching your opponents and for escaping. Bountiful Theft is another great trait. There are many cases when this trait is useful however my favorite is after a warrior uses his elite skill, Signet of Rage

For my utility skills I just picked the ones that gave me stealth, Blinding Powder and Shadow Refuge and Shadowstep which is perfect for breaking stun or enemy burst combos and also to catch enemies that are running away. I usually use Blinding Powder and Shadow Refuge during burst moments as at that point I prefer to use all my initiative on doing damage instead of Cloak and Dagger. Shadow Refuge with Infusion of Shadow also replenishes a lot of my initiative as explained above so I can immediately come back and apply more pressure.

As far as strategies go, you can see them in my video. I generally like to open with my short bow and try and apply Choking Gas while dodging their opener. Many players like to start strong with their hardest hitting ability and while I apply my poison I watch out for those and do my best to dodge them. Meanwhile I try and get in melee range with them and swap to my daggers close enough so they get the 3 bleeds from my sigil. I try and Death Blossom usually once and then go in stealth, trying to force a condition removal ability. There’s no point in dumping all of your initiative unless you know they have no way of removing your bleeds and poison so I found that starting slowly is a much better approach. Obviously, you can’t really do that all the time since many situations require different tactics however that’s my general rule. I am interested in playing this build with a pistol/dagger instead of my short bow as in theory I think it could be better, more bleed stacks so more damage.

The only thing I don’t like about this build is that I can’t seem to implement Heartseeker and Cluster Bombs into it. Heartseeker just barely does any damage (usually around 1-1.5k) and the only times I use it is if I need to catch someone or my target only has around 2-3k HP and I can use it a few times to finish them off. I would really like to see this ability become more viable and one suggestion I had was that maybe each Death Blossom could increase the amount of damage my next Heartseeker does by a certain percentage so that after 5 Death Blossoms or more it would be a good idea to use Heartseeker. Cluster Bombs is even worse. Choking Gas which lands much faster and has a bigger radius is pretty difficult to land versus a decent player. Cluster Bombs is close to impossible even vs the worst players because everyone knows to get out of red circles. I can’t detonate them in melee range either because they land really fast. My only regret is that I wish I could use these two abilities more often for a more diverse and interesting combat system.

Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed the video!

Gear wise I picked full carrion stats which are condition damage, power and vitality. I didn’t feel comfortable with a low HP so condition damage and vitality were my 2 main stats. I would have liked to switch power to precision and pick up Sigil of Earth (apply bleeds on critical) but I don’t think a gear set with those stats exists.

For sigils I went with Geomancy (apply bleeds on weapon swap) for one of my daggers and short bow and Corruption (+10 condition damage on kill) for my other dagger. I would have liked to use other sigils instead of Corruption however all the other good ones such as Sigil of Doom (apply poison) shared CDs with Geomancy meaning they just didn’t work.

As far as runes go, I went full runes of Undead. I don’t care that much about condition duration because any decent player is going to have a couple of condition removals so I doubt my bleeds will tick for longer than 10 seconds. I found it more important to increase bleed damage.

Hi there,

Some of you might know me from my warrior Matale; I played him since BWE1 and released 7 PvP videos. After my last video I felt that it was about as good as it was ever going to get on my warrior and that a Mesmer or Thief would fit my solo play style much better and I ended up picking a thief. Bellow you can see my first montage as a condition thief dagger/dagger – short bow in WvWvW called Sohpital 1.

I’ll try and explain a little bit my choices for gear, skills, traits and play style to try and answer any questions some people might have.

First I’ll start with the play style. Basically what you’re aiming for is to apply bleeds when you have initiative or on weapon swaps and then pretty much wait for your opponent to die while you stealth or kite him. The damage you do outside bleeds is bellow average so going head to head with someone would just result in a loosing battle.

Scribbles.7493:

That’s a classic, really. Bad players getting good players nerfed.

Things like backstab combos do not take a lot of skill. They’re crutches that make mediocre players believe they’re PVP gods.

It’s World of Roguecraft all over again.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Heartseeker at 25% on my condition thief hits for up to 2k… keep in mind there is no cond/prec/vitality gear, so my crit chance pretty much doesn’t exist… The other day I got spammed by 3 heartseekers in a row for roughly around 4k each after using my dodges to try and predict that incoming combo from stealth, which worked. I had to use shadowstep to get far enough and recover and I ended up winning so I think it still hits for twice as much, especially since yours can crit and mine can’t.

A cool idea could even be that for every Death Blossom used you get 10% increased damage on your next Heartseeker and it can stack up to 5 or 10 times. This way, that 2k heartseeker could hit for maybe double that once per fight.

The d/d condition build looks pretty fun right now and I’m having a blast with it, it just bothers me that I don’t always get to use all my skills and I’m afraid that soon enough it’ll just feel far too simple and 1 dimensional.

I’m currently recording footage for a montage and in many of the clips I’m just spamming 3 and then going into stealth and its pretty effective. I want to do more to be just as effective or better.

I play a condition thief and I rarely find Heartseeker useful in my PvP rotation since applying 3 stacks of bleeding simply puts more pressure. The only times I use it is maybe if my target is almost dead and I just need to do 2-3k damage and I spam it a few times or if I just need to catch up to my opponent. In general, it’s also pretty clear that as far as dagger/dagger goes, Heartseeker is the ability preferred by burst, crit damage thieves while Death Blossom is used by condition damage thieves.

I would really like to see both abilities be used by both types of thieves. What if Heartseeker had an extra condition applied to its tooltip where it did more damage if your opponent has bleeds applied and the increase was large enough where it actually be a good idea for a burst thief to use Death Blossom first and then spam his Heartseeker and it would also be a good idea for a condition thief to use Heartseeker to finish off his opponents when they’re around the 30% or lower because it actually does more damage than 3 stacks of bleeding.

This is an extreme example, but just as an idea, the current damage of Heartseeker could be cut in half, however if your target is also bleeding, it would pretty much double the damage. This could cut down on how much damage a thief can do within the first few seconds of a fight and could also make the thief rotation a little more interesting rather than just spamming one ability.

Players with condition removal would also stand a better chance at surviving a thief burst and at the same time a thief won’t be able to just hit you as hard as he does right now and kill you within a few seconds, it would take a little bit of planning, skill and patience.

I would like to see some buffs to traps, venoms and the shortbow. I really like the shortbow as a weapon however I feel that the damage is really low and hard to pull of vs any decent opponent mostly because it takes forever for the #2 skill to land. While it’s pretty decent in AoE, it kind of sucks in single target so perhaps we could have the abilities altered so they do a little more damage to the first target they hit and something extra to the people around. Perhaps the first hit of the auto attack does more damage to the first target and less to the rest. That #2 skill attaches the bomb to your target and does a bit of damage to him upon detonation and a little to the people around, etc… Maybe through buffing the venoms and the traps, you could mix those with the shortbow to increases its potency.

These are just some ideas, I’m not sure what the perfect solution would be. One thing’s for sure, these could use some love. Lets try and make that shortbow a little more than just a tool for traveling and the venoms and traps a little more worth using.

I can’t even believe the large amount of people defending Thief single target damage in this thread. You must be out of your mind to think that killing someone within 3-5 hits is normal.

I play a thief and I’m very very very very happy to hear thief damage is getting toned down. I’m pretty sure this glass cannon 1 trick pony build will go away as fast as the 100 blades build did for warriors. Far too many people thought they were good because they could kill someone in 2-3 seconds. It’s about time they get a reality check.

I’ve seen several well documented complaints from professions with quite a bit of armor where they received within 3-4 hits up to 20k damage. If you cut that damage in half, that’s still a huge burst for a few seconds but at least it would be a step forward.

The current state of the backstab thieves doesn’t affect me personally. If you pay attention and are ready for it, you can counter them in most cases, however the numbers are just absurd and it ruins the fun in PvP at lower levels.

The way I see this situation is that a thief, if he lands all of his abilities should go through roughly 20-30 points of initiative before killing someone that’s wearing gear with at least 1 defensive trait such as Vitality or Toughness.

The only issue that I see with the upcoming nerfs is that it could ruin some builds that aren’t pure glass cannons. For example right now, as a double daggers / short bow condition thief, when using daggers there are situations where it’s smarter to use your #1 and #2 abilities over your main damage ability #3. Currently, coming out of stealth as a condition daggers thief it’s still a pretty solid idea to try and go for a backstab as it can hit around 800-1200 (Carrion Gear – power/cond/vit). It’s also still a pretty good idea to use your #2 skill if your opponent is under 25% or around there as it can still hit around 1200-1800. A nerf aimed at toning down backstab thieves could ruin other builds and make them super boring. In my case, if the damage of the #1 and #2 abilities got nerfed it could mean that there’s no point in using them at all in the examples above and it would make the whole build super boring as just a #3 spam.

While backstab cannon glass thieves need a pretty big nerf, it needs to be done in such a way where it doesn’t ruin already existing balanced builds. I’m not sure how damage currently scales, but it might be a good idea to try an approach where it scales as a curve, similar to toughness. The more you get, the less good it gets, pushing people perhaps towards picking up different traits and stats not just damage boosters.

Really looking forward to seeing your decision!

As a warrior if I’m to get around 2200 toughness my total HP is around 20k and that toughness is just about the most you can get. You might be able to boost it up some to maybe 2400 with some runes and signet/shield trait. I almost got 2 shot by a thief, thank god for the Ignore Pain trait with that much toughness. I play a thief now too, but a condition damage one because the power/precision/crit damage builds are just plain and simple dumb and OP. There’s no fun in 2 shotting pple left and right unless you’re bad and you just started beating people for the first time in your life.

I highly suggest joining the server EU Desolation, ton of pugs and solid groups that you can join.

Krulz.6245:

So, the hold 1 wave with one guy doesn’t work any more right?

still works, but if you fail you have to reset the dungeon

Hi there,

I’m looking for an active, English speaking PvE Guild with a large population on a EU server. I’m interested in a guild that does a lot of dungeons all the time including the more difficult ones and the more difficult paths. I generally play during the afternoon or late at night.

I’m really tired of having a tough time finding groups for dungeons and when I end up finding one constantly failing due to players that don’t even understand basic strategies.

I’m interested in a guild that also does Arah and SE runs in addition to the popular dungeons such as CoF or AC.

I have a warrior with full Arah gear and a thief that I’m currently gearing in CoF and SE.

Thanks in advance!

its mostly just enable auto attack on the number 1 skill and use 2 as soon as you have initiative

I’m playing something like this myself however I’m using a shortbow and d/d. Vs beginners and generally people with poor condition removal it’s pretty nice however I’m sure you’ll see that vs people that know a little bit about what they’re doing it’s not quite as easy.

In that initial situation if people just dodged away from the caltrops and used a condition removal they could have easily countered your strong opener that used quite a few CDs and all initiative.

I play this mostly in WvWvW and some sPvP and my strat is to start with just a few stacks of bleeding and poison and go stealth with the #5 dagger ability and try and force a condition removal there and then go in a little stronger. So I basically aim at a longer game not throw everything off the bat. I also play this with more survivability utility skills and traits, something like 0/0/20/30/20. My play style is basically bleed and wait it out in stealth until they’ve used most of their stuff. It does pretty well vs multiple opponents too.

My warrior has around 2250 toughness and the same thing happened to me. Luckily I had the Ignore Pain trait pop or I would have died right there. There’s no l2play issue or me going glass cannon, he got on me and hit me literally 2 or 3 times.

Title says it all, I’ve searched around and I wasn’t able to find an answer to my question.

Tooltip for Lead Attacks says: Increases damage by 1% per initiative

Does that mean active initiative, like how much I have left or is it for the total amount?

Has anyone tried a shortbow condition damage build or does the shortbow simply just work much better as a crit/power build? I’m asking mainly just PvP wise.

Thanks in advance for all the tips!

krakenstar.1674:

You must pick your battles carefully if you want to melee in WvW. And you will die even if you are careful. It is the price we pay for glory! Run with a party of 5 of all melee so you go in at the same time. Make sure the rest of your guild is behind you and be that spearhead to smash apart the zerg!

I’m currently running with hammer/sword+horn build. 10/0/30/30/0. My equipment are mixed basically of knight+soldier. With steak, I’m sitting at around 3k attack, 35%(55% with fury) crit, 3k armor, 30k hp without orb bonuses. At siege I either get on a siege engine or I pull out my longbow over the sword+horn.

Healing Surge, Adrenal Health, healing Shouts gives me about 15k health total every 30 seconds.

I almost never die due to ranged weaponry. It is almost always getting caught out of position, invisible mobs and/or didn’t pull back with rest of my team. And 95% its a CC that stopped me from getting away and gang kitten by the rest.

I do not do the same damage as say 100B, but let me tell you people pay attention when they see the hammers. the AoE hammer stun is frightening when the enemy mob is bearing down on you. And 2.5k swings 5k crits are not trivial.

If enemy zerg thins and skirmish ensues switch back to horn and fall out for 10 seconds. It gets the focus off you. Then jump back in you go with hammer. If enemy zerg routs switch to sword+horn for the chase and cripples. Let your guild does the killing you focus on slowing them down one by one.

You will not win any 1v1 against a dueling spec thief, mes, or guardians with any decent playing abilities. But noone else can Earthshake, staggering blow and Fear me to break apart that zerg.

It’s very similar to what I do with my Hammer warrior in WvWvW, not sure if you saw Matale 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hCCpq7e624 there’s also additional raw footage in 7-2