Guild Wars 2

Account and Soul Bound are also concepts introduced progressively through your char life from 1 to 80 and though some cheap items. Also there is a warning when you bind an item to you the first time you try to use it isn’t it ?

The fact Unique items suddenly show up without any warning and any note in the patch notes, only on a level 80 very expensive item or in the kitten rings you get through pure RNG daily crap in the FotM dungeons doesn’t help either.

Ask for a GM for a refund, you deserve it since that bad feature is their fault.

STRanger.5120:

So you´re telling me that I´m the only one Thief in this game who can be finished while in stealth?

Yes. I know I use stealth at the last moment when people want to finish me and it works 100% of the time to prevent the channeling from connecting. And it wasn’t me using the teleport because at that point it’s usually in CD.

What you need to know is that the stealth doesn’t break the channeling indeed, it only prevents the finish from connecting. The downed stealth lasts only 2s so if you use it too soon, like right after the finish animation starts, or if you attack after stealthing you’ll be out of stealth right away and visible when the finish ends, and you die.

There is a similar issue to worry with mesmer downed 2. If you don’t teleport far away enough that you are out of range, and if you attack too soon, you get killed anyway.

STRanger.5120:

Yes, he can be finished even in stealth, if he stays in the place (most likely, because his teleport is on CD from the first finish evading), as all the ppl know, stealth doesn´t interrupt channeling, which finishing basically is. I hope you get it.
But if you´re too slow, of course you can´t finish him, but that is just your fault, the stealth is for 3 secs, put an AOE on him and just finish him after he appears again, or just kill him with dmg, you know where he is.

No the stealth does prevent finish from connecting. It must have been coded specifically like that too since indeed, stealth doesn’t prevent any other channeling attack from hitting you for the full duration.

Alex Kelley.2748:

1) And it is finished recharging in time to avoid an immediate second stomp after the thief has teleported away and whoever is trying to finish them has ran to their new location. This isn’t the case for any other profession, so I’m not sure why there should be an exception.

No it isn’t ready. Unless you slack with the stomping.

Alex Kelley.2748:

2) Mist Form lasts exactly long enough to finish one stomp. There is no way of leaving Mist Form once it is entered, so if the player is interrupted before they’ve entered Mist Form, they’re unable to attempt another stomp until the cantrip has ended.

This situation is so unlikely XD And interrupting the elementalist early like that is a gamble that in the best situation only wins you as long as one finishing animation. Which is never enough to allow you to use your skill #3. And in the worse throws your interrupt right into mist form anyway.

Shilian.5873:

well mate you are 100% right, but we all know that melee friendly bosses are just a dream..i had to respec my warrior to GS/Rifle while i would pretty much prefer to run dual axe, GS. it sucks but what can we do?

Complain. What else?

Well, there is the tree boss in swamps that is kind of melee friendly I found. It seems in melee you don’t get hit much with the poison attack.

Ditton.3149:

except they acknowledged this already and said they want to work to remedy exactly that situation.

Except I find the effort needed for an exotic set to be just right if a little too big. I doubt they’ll reduce ascended grind effort to exotic level any time soon. It’ll remain at least 5 times more effort than exotic.

Heimlich.3065:

My objection is that they’re raising the time to acquire max-stat gear by a fair bit. Exotic-stats require 1-2 hours of playtime per-slot to get. That time cost makes it reasonable to keep a few sets of max-stat equipment for multiple characters and/or multiple play types (glass cannon vs. survival vs. support).

From what they’ve released, they apparently intend Ascended-tier junk (the new max-stat gear) to take much longer. Probably closer to 10-20 hours per piece. That’s more time than I want to put into max-stat gear.

That does not respect my time as a player.

This is the best explanation for my problem with the current state of the game I’ve ever seen

Silyth.7150:

so what you’ve just said is “i choose to make this boss fight harder than it is, and then im going to come cry about it on the forums, when i know that i can kite him and survive quite easily.”

you choose to ignore common sense and strategy, please dont complain.

No, what I’m saying is replying to someone “this boss has no 1 hit KO” with “yes it has and no the fact you can dodge them or never get into melee to ignore them doesn’t make them disapear”

What I’m saying is that I’m sick of switching to the shortbow for all the fractals boss past level 10 because it’s far far far easier to avoid the boss attacks when you are at range than at melee. Because some attacks are plain impossible to avoid in melee.

Here’s an analogy. What if every boss in the game was very very hard for anyone, unless you equiped a small pistol bundle available at each boss arena fight. This pistol will lock all your skills, make you invulnerable but you’d kill the boss very slowly.

This is how I feel in far too many fights. The Dedge Powersuit, I’m not stupid. I fight it ranged. I stand my ground that it makes the fight boring and easy at the same time. The volcano boss? First form and second it’s the same. Ranged or die.

Boss fights where you HAVE to resort to a ranged weapon in part or in full should be a plain exception, not nearly the rule as it stands.

Dominae.3146:

As someone with Vigil medium pants, Whisper medium chest piece, and an engineer backpack on the same thief character … yes, yes it currently works.

Last time I used a transmutation stone, it was written clearly that transmuting would soul bind the resulting item. Are you sure it works currently ?

Ditton.3149:

I never saw the difference between skill creep and power creep honestly.

Well, getting new skills that aren’t just “old skill +1 damage” at least gives you some variety above the plain “sword +1 found, now go farm dungeon +1 to get sword +2”

Avatar.1923:

we all agree gw2 is no revolution.

its just a perfection of what was there before, like a meltin pot of the best things we saw so far.

Well except the part where they drop the genius idea “no vertical progression” from GW1 along with the “most parts of world is as rewarding as any other cause nearly everything is level max content thus ensuring practically no part of the world becomes obsolete”.

Kindread.9481:

20% of 869 is 173.8, this would mean you would heal for 273.8 per hit, which would be great … if it were true.

The actual value is 5% of your total Healing Power.

The link you posted even states that the value is 5%, I am confused as to why you say 20%.

Well my fault, it says 5% of your healing power right now, I was obviously thinking of healing power divided by 20 when I wrote that line I even did the math like that you can see.

Supposedly, according to the wiki (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Malice)

You get 100 + 20% of your healing power above base as health pet attack.

20% of 869 = 43 (rounded closer) which would make 143 health per attack.

nldixon.8514:

It doesn’t matter what build it is. There are so many ways to regain initiative on a Thief and still do above average damage and have above average survivability. As long as the initiative is the Thief mechanic and they have no cooldowns, it’s just going to be a series of FotM builds, one after the other, until Thieves are pigeonholed into playing one or two builds that work.

So either initiative needs to be reworked or Thieves are going to keep getting hit with the nerf hammer until they’re almost unplayable. Have you seen what happened to the Ranger profession since the betas? Is that what you want to happen to Thieves?

Repeating something louder again and again doesn’t make it true. You pretended to have some argument as to why initiative needs to go and all you presented was a weak and original build that isn’t imbalanced at all.

Rangers have CDs and no initiative, look at what happened to them since the betas? Is that what you want to happen to Thieves?

Here is a very plain and simple reason why thiefs repeat (spam) skills to kill :

- all the thief weapon sets got 0 or 1 initiative costing skill that deals damage. If the thief cannot use two Pistol Whips one after the other to kill you, he’d do what? Headshot you to headache with pistol 4? Root in place with Sword 2 you until you die of thirst? Blind you until you scratch your eyes out with Pistol 5?

Other classes weapon swap and got a couple different damaging abilities per weapon. Thieves got the weapon 1 skill and sometimes another. Of course they are going to dump their initiative into that other skill when they can! You cannot kill a player doing only 5k worth of damage so we need to use the only damaging skill we have more than once.

Well except the backstab combo but you might have to use Heartseeker more than once on this one.

nldixon.8514:

You use Cloak and Dagger

C&D regains initiative now? Awesome!

Sorry but the Death Blossom builds aren’t awesome. At best they are average to weak in PvP. Why would you take an average build and use it as a basis that thief needs initiative removed is beyond me.

nldixon.8514:

I’m not even sure you read my post. The BS build is pretty nasty, yes.

Death Blossom builds are (arguably) worse.

Death Blossom builds run out of initiative in no time and must gear up in endurance regen as much as possible to survive on dodges until initiative is back available. Death Blossom builds do all their damage through bleeding, through a single instance of a condition that every single condition removal skill in the game will nullify.

And lastly, Death Blossom actually applies far too few bleeding stacks to kill anything quickly by itself. The build in fact relies a lot on the Caltrop utility. Step out of the caltrop ring and the thief cannot damage you fast enough to kill you.

And let’s not talk about how hard an elementalist with the shock shield skill counters Death Blossom builds.

nldixon.8514:

Yes, I have a Thief. With the right build you can have initiative out the wazoo.

It’s not a fun profession (for me personally), so I don’t play it often. There are so many ways to regain initiative, it’s ridiculous. A dagger/dagger build with the right traits will pretty much never run out of initiative if you know what you’re doing.

If by “know what you are doing” you mean the 5, 1 (backstab), 1, 1, 1 => back to start combo, there’s no wonder the thief never runs out of initiative since he barely never uses it.

I should add that this combo only works in PvE against bosses you can melee and don’t turn around randomly all the times. Which is a very uncommon beast, especially in fractals once you increase the difficulty a little.

FrizzFreston.5290:

By your logic, the whole game was a waste of time to begin with. Because all that time you spend getting masterwork or blue gear for you next level was a waste of time, and in a few years time the level cap (and storyline) will have progressed, as they have said they would, way beyond your current gear. And then you will have to start again to attain maximum gear, which, by your reasoning, is a waste of time too.

Blue and green gear value is roughly equal to the NPC sale value. There isn’t really a huge cost getting those and then selling them to the NPC when you are done with them.

Buying a level 80 rare is like getting a temporary gear you’ll turn into ecto one day, or put in the mystic forge. Heck, people actually buy them directly to do that in the first place. Same case here, getting this kind of stuff is like investing some money into a stable value knowing you get back most (if not more for rares) of your money back when you need to sell that investment later.

Buying an exotic armor set or jewelry on the other hand … The buy price is a LOT higher than the resell value currently. So it’s no wonder that many players that equipped themselves in exotic gear at no meager cost (a full exotic set is NOT cheap) are kind of pissed when some new gear with better stats comes out of nowhere.

nldixon.8514:

I’m sure it’s already been said, but initiative is a broken mechanic. It’s the main problem with the Thief profession.

Funny, the main complaint I see about thieves is the backstab combo which never repeats a single skill that would get a CD.

Well, let me tell you the places where such skills ARE very useful. In fact, I’ll only give you one place : Solid Ocean.

All the mobs in that phase spam knockdowns and cripples. And they are all vulnerable to blind. All the signets are useful there.

There are no utilities in the thief arsenal in that map that are more useful than packing Infiltrator Signet, Signet of Agility and Signet of Shadows.

But then again, I’m using the signets for their activation effect and not their passives which isn’t probably the kind of people referenced in the first post. The only signet I really take for it’s passive at times is Signet of Malice when I plan to use a lot of AoE :
- calltrops
- pistol whips

You should try Sword/pistol really if that’s your concern.

Pistol 4 is an awesome skill altough less useful in PvE than PvP. But for PvE Pistol 5 is one of the best skills you can get.

Got 2 mobs on you? Pistol 5 and Sword 1. The Sword skills are nearly all AoE 3 targets. I already survived to save a guardian that was ganked by the skelks in the north part of the jungle fractals like that. Poor guardian, he must have felt bad getting downed that easily by mere mobs and seeing a thief facetank his way out of them to save him

Alex Kelley.2748:

The fact that he’s still alive at all after a second stomp is the exact problem I’m trying to address.

You do understand that the downed skill 3 starts in CD right? Why wouldn’t a thief be allowed to use it’s skill 3 to avoid a stomp?

You know that I have more often avoided 3 stomps in a row on my engineer than on my thief?

Alex Kelley.2748:

You can deal damage and target a player with stability, which in some cases could be enough to decide whether or not they live to finish you. As I stated above, Obsidian Flesh is the only skill that does not restrict you from finishing a player while invulnerable. Mist Form can be used mid-cast, but there’s still an opportunity for the elementalist to be interrupted. You can’t interrupt what you can’t see.

If you interrupt the elementalist before he uses mist form, you didn’t save much. You see, you need to interrupt the stomp at the end of it’s cast bar to save as much time as possible. Doing your interrupt before the cast starts at all only saves you 1-2s max.

GW1 was close to perfect.

Let’s see, as fun as it is to get new items with bigger numbers, for me the most fun part is in beating some good fun challenging content. Fun is in not doing some content because I don’t like it or because I’d rather do that other content I like better first.

Now, if that challenging content gives me new numbers, the next time I want to beat it, it’s not challenging anymore, it becomes easy so it’s not fun anymore. Then what happens? Beat content A cause I like it the best first, then get new stuff, then content B, C, D and E becomes easy, thus not interesting anymore? Or maybe B is too hard unless I got the A numbers, then I need the new B numbers for C etc… But then again, if I liked C the most and wanted to do it first I couldn’t.

GW2 had the seeds to be a perfect MMO, like GW1 but the later wasn’t MMO enough. Now it’s still an MMO but it’s heading in the wrong direction.

GW1 I had a whole world to have fun in it. Never did I feel like this starting zone was such a waste of my time to be in it.

GW2 past three (four now) maps I cannot get the best T6 mats while killing stuff which since the usual T6 = highest possible = expensive/ not T6 = cheap = practically no value applies means doing stuff outside of those three maps is “wasting time” it still got stuff to improve.

And now, we had the dungeons that were working more or less correctly, then the new dungeon breaks it. And now we are reminded that the level cap might very well change along with all the obsoleting of the old content that goes with it.

GW2 isn’t a perfect MMO and is going in the wrong direction for that :/

Alex Kelley.2748:

I just have a simple question: If a player can finish somebody while stealthed, why are thieves immune to being finished after they’ve used their smoke bomb to vanish? I fail to see why a thief should be any more difficult to finish than any other downed player of a different profession.

The next time you are getting stomped by a stability powered guardian or an invulnerable elementalist and a thief comes and stealths you, you’d better tell him how it is such crap that you can avoid stomps with stealth.

Azjenco.9425:

Two places I missed though. Yeah, trinkets I kinda forgot about. I think some of mine are still rare or even masterwork. For some reason I don’t care a whole lot about them, but that doesn’t mean others feel the same, so yeah, my bad.

If you don’t care for your gear, why discuss with people that care?

This is how it should be like :
1 set of Exotics – Moderate play
2 sets of Exotics per chars with 3 chars – A lof of Play
1 Legendary – Dedicated play

This is how it is now :
Motivation to farm multiple sets and gear up alts to vary the experience : 0

Azjenco.9425:

Pointing out the very hard to get exotics wont exactly win your case.

Why?

Azjenco.9425:

Crafting an exotic is perhaps the easiest way, or acquiring those from the TP is perhaps even easier. 2-3 gold per piece, 6 pieces of gear, that’s about 12 to 18 gold, not too bad.

I’m not living in the same world than you then. For me a full set is at minimum 3 weapons, 6 armor parts and 5 trinkets for a total of 14 items at 2-3 gold each.

Azjenco.9425:

Or running a few dungeons each day, not too bad either, which is how I got my gear and that took me less than a week. Karma is perhaps the hardest, then again, you get karma when doing dungeons and from dailies. It takes around 46 karma jugs, along with the 10 you get for your monthly, it’ll take you less than a month to acquire. If you use a boost, even less.

Once again, you forgot that gear isn’t limited to just the armor. But hey, I’m guilty of that too. I forgot how much the runes cost too. The most common choices are, strangely enough, the most expensive by far. Some rune sets cost as much as a full set by themselves.

Azjenco.9425:

For the end all gear, a week up to a month isn’t all that bad. From there it’s all cosmetics. Right now, ascended takes a whole lot more to get.

This only gives you ONE set of stats. How can you experiment with stats and builds when it takes you 50g to buy a full set of a specific stat? Try with rares? But if the result is that the build isn’t working that well, is that the fault of the build or of the weaker stats from rares?

Your berserker gear isn’t survivable enough for dungeons? Just go grind 50g, buy some power/toughness/vitality and try if it works better! Ah, you just noticed that you don’t gain very much survivability with it but the damage output has been reduced significantly? Well you got a chance at getting ectos and ori with that set! It’s not all wasted see? And you’ll save 80% of the runes you used too! Aren’t they so kind?

NightyNight.1823:

Ye Infiltrator’s signet .Even more of a useless ability in PvE.1 initiative in 10 seconds.Thats huge! And breaks stun and shadow step to your opponent. Thats another smart way to go against mobs.
Signet of Malice is good one tho.

A 30s CD (24s traited) remove stun skill is useless? That’s new to me.

Fact is, from all I tried the signets are the best Thief utility skills currently. They aren’t the best in ALL situations but once you get the corresponding trait, their short CDs make them really stand up and you feel like taking more of them.

- Signet of Malice : best PvE thief heal in the game. Low CD, insanely low CD traited (12s) and passive heal when you don’t take too much damage.

- Assassin Signet : 30s CD stun break. Passive Initiative regen isn’t bad when not needed either.

- Signet of Agility : passive effect isn’t that good but it’s an AoE condition removal (yes, it removes one condition on you and every team mate around) on a short 30s CD again. And of course the killer bonus feature is the full endurance refill.

- Signet of Shadow : passive effect isn’t that important in most dungeons unless you run some timed even like collecting bombs. The passive is kinda addictive though. Active effect isn’t bad as team support. There are specific situations where an instant cast ranged AoE blind can save you pain (like those tentacles that pop out of the ground at the worse possible moment?)

- Assassin’s Signet : the only weak signet for PvE. Very few fights need the burst it provides in the first place and the small DPS benefit isn’t worth much. I’d only use it in the rare fights that revolve around hitting static items where you cannot crit anyway.

All the good signets are on a 30s CD which becomes 24s with trait. 24s CD stun removal? Yes! 24s CD AoE 1 condition removal? Heck some fights really could use that one. 24s CD full endurance refill that also removes one condition in the process? Count me in!

Other utilities that help :
- Shadow Refuge : if you take it as a way to fix mistakes, it got too long of a CD to really be effective and you shouldn’t ideally get in that situation in the first place. If you take it as a tool for long stealth for the situations that warrant it on the other hand it’s a very good one.

- Shadowstep : situationally awesome. Really. Some fights or events REALLY make this one shine and it should just be put in your bar when it’s warranted

- Smoke Screen : one of the best underrated utilities of the thief. I do use it as soon as it get’s effective. Traited it’s even better. It’s usefulness also spikes in places you need long stacking stealth (Smoke Screen + Cluster Bomb spam)

- Calltrops : very good to proc Signet of Malice. Second best AoE skill we got but kind of needs condition gear to be damaging. Some situations call for this one specifically but not much.

- Scorpion Wire : very situational but can be useful.

- Smoke Bomb : too long CD for what it does. It’s very bad to save your life for normal situations (how many times some mob focused me and killed me right through stealth because it doesn’t break channels?). Too long CD to be used as a blind applier (signet of shadows does it better and ranged) I only use it in places that only require long stealth.

- Ambush Trap : DPS bonus from the melee pet is nice, but honestly her survivability is bad. And the random scorpion wire she casts really get in the way at times

- Venoms : since the advent of the venom share trait, Arena Net felt the need to nerf ever single venom into uselessness. The way conditions stack, if a venom is good solo, it’s OP shared, if a venom is good shared, it’s weak solo. The only good venoms are the poison one to proc more life leeches and the immobilize one cause that condition plain rocks. The elite is situationally useful only. Myself I use it as a bonus condition removal skill + aegis on a 45s CD XD

- Other traps : all useless

- Roll for Initiative : too long CD for what it does : need stun break take signet, really need the immobilize removal for some reason ? Take Withdraw. And there’s never really the need to take it for 6 initiative

- Haste : I tried using it and, honestly, the stun break isn’t bad, the bonus attack speed is cute. But in the most dangerous fights, the long types, that small burst of attack speed is meaningless. The instant loss of all dodges and 4s of no endurance regen really puts you at a lot of risks. The only safe usage I found for this one is to improve shortbow 1 spam at times because if I only do shortbow 1, I don’t lack initiative and so I can use shortbow 3 to evade instead.

FrizzFreston.5290:

stof.9341:

Yes there is. Try the ultra rare expensive exotic weapon skins from Mystic forge. Try to get 3-4 full sets of different stat builds. Try to do the same with 2 alts.

Oh right, the destroyer core backpiece, and the destroyer lodestones rings, oh and the destroyer lodestone armor. Oh wait, there is none. :p

Not to mention this basically pidgeonholes you into farming type X lodestones. Or farming for gold to get lodestones. Hell you might not even like the destroyer or corrupted gear.

Sure you’re right, it does indeed “fill the time-gap” But it certainly doesn’t have the content to go with that gap.

And 3-4 full sets of different stat builds is completely ridiculous. I already cant be bothered to change my armor every content piece I do and I only have two sets.

There’s more variety than that in mystic forge gear but meh. From expensive to cheap. You haven’t seen the Foe Fire’s Greatsword? The Ambrosia focus?

What if I want to change builds? I cannot use half my skills due to a lack of condition damage gear. I cannot use some traits due to a lack of healing power gear. All that grind hurts experimentation with builds.

What about the fact that all the efforts you put into exotics today are already planed to be wasted later? Why oh WHY must every grindy MMO in the planet make it 100% useless to gear with intermediary rarities because one you bind it, there’s no more use for it. Why couldn’t ascended rings be all crafted by upgrading a corresponding exotic ring with some common material drop from the fractals? For example, the vials of the mists aren’t RNG drops anymore, you get one guaranteed at the level 10 daily and you need 5 + 24 skill points + exotic ring + 50 T6 mat corresponding the the ring and bam, you got the ascended ring you wanted?

Why must ascended gear implementation mean that all my exotics I bought because I was under the impression they’d be the BiS in their class for a long time be now only worth the ectos I’ll get once I salvage them?

Azjenco.9425:

The time gap between exotics and legendaries mean that exotics now are easily obtained, and legendaries are supposed to take a very long time. Right now, there is nothing that takes a moderate amount of time and effort and feels worth getting.

Yes there is. Try the ultra rare expensive exotic weapon skins from Mystic forge. Try to get 3-4 full sets of different stat builds. Try to do the same with 2 alts.

This is exactly what GW 2 needs : even less reasons to play the old dungeons.

Silyth.7150:

lol that your even getting hit by that, and that your standing behind him instead of kiting him with the rest of your party to the next lava stop.

Whatever you say about that doesn’t make those attacks any less 1 hit KO.

Avoiding the bombs can be hard when you dumped all your endurance into avoiding the agony attack. Hitting the boss in the back worked perfectly for me and my backstab spam build in low level fractals, never pulling aggro somehow (all that stealth spam must have helped) and so never preventing the boss from reaching the next spot.

And then, it starts to 1 hit KO you with little cues. One reason why this boss is boring is that I’d rather be doing 85k backstabs every 4s on the boss (along with a full 1 combo cycle and one C&D) than meager 10k shortbow attacks from the front using only skill 1 while endlessly backpedaling.

I’d add that far too many bosses got a much shorter “time from cue to impact” for melee range compared to ranged. Some attacks even only have the projectile travel time as time to dodge so when the boss suddenly changes aggro to you and throws this attack, it’s incredibly hard to dodge.

Silyth.7150:

He doe not have a 1 hit KO attack, im an elementalist and have never had that happen to me.

The bomb is 1 hit KO at 15k damage on low toughness classes. The dual attack he does also 1 hit KO and weirdly hits in the back even though the animation for that attack shouldn’t.

ConterK.3972:

what exactly you mean by being a Skill based mechanic?? as far as i know agony can be dodged.. making it a skill..!!

Infusion would be useless them. You can hardly beat level 10 without learning to dodge agony attacks and most people get their first agony resist by beating level 10.

Truth is, the Jad Maw boss applies a full party agony at each phase change, including the very start of the fight. You cannot dodge that one at all and at level 18/20 it plain kills you if you don’t have resist. You cannot really heal it either. The farther you go the stronger it gets.

Actually, there is a big imbalance between the value of T6 mats which has to do with some having desirable stats and others not.

Currently, the farm for exotic gear is already a lot of work if you want multiple sets for build variety. Add in Ascended gear and even a single set is a HUGE grind. Currently crafting a single ascended back piece is equivalent in farm to 3 or 4 full exotic crafted set.

Implement a system like in GW1 where the armors are just skins and the stats themselves are cheap to get. Of course, it doesn’t mean getting some white armor skin and putting in it some exotic stats. Put some berserk insigna in an exotic armor and it gets exotic level berserk stats. The insigna itself can be a consumable and cheap to craft or some reusable item soul bound on use and a lot more expensive. People would still farm multiple armor sets for multiple looks or for easy switching in the middle of dungeons for example.

Flax.4980:

I have had all of these issues. Because of the pick up crystal delay issue the only way I’m guaranteed to survive the jade maw death ray is if I’m already stood over a crystal when I see the skull.

Let’s not go that far. There might be a delay but you still have some time to walk around to a not too far crystal.

Shadow of Azrael.1205:

You dont really need crystals except the very end of the fight, just dodge when boss starts to scream. ;-)

You need to damage the boss one day or another to reach that point though

Stin.9781:

4. Our movement skill Shadowstep is also condition stun/condition removal, so if we run away from something its very usefull.

Not really. The condition removal part doesn’t work well when you run away from something since it only applies on the return part.

Overmind.3705:

To Thief players…
Name one other profession that can kill a player in under 2 seconds.

Frenzy Hundred blades warrior

Evilek.5690:

Enemy armor 2755=1883,22 DMG !!!! with crit=150% normal damage + critikal rating - 70%=220%——>18883.22 DMG*2,2=4142DMG 15% signet of assassin 20% <50%eagle runes +5%=4142*1,4=5198 DMG !!

ON your screen 7752 DMG back stab=2960 non crit—>+- 1900 armor.
Heh man YOU ARE GLASS CANNON AND UGLY LIAR !!!!!

You forgot :
- thief trait Deadly arts 25 = +10% damage on target with a condition. Thankfully, C&D puts a condition on the target already.
- thief trait Critical Strike 25 = 10% damage when above 6 initiative which isn’t have to pull if all you did is a single C&D
- major thief trait Trickery = +5% damage when attacking the back or flanks. Backstab kinda guarantees it’s on the back or flanks
- C&D puts vulnerability on the target, 3 stacks

Result? Assuming the traits add themselves up additively we get +25% from traits and +3% from vulnerability.

The damage becomes 6700.

You said to use Eagle runes but the Scholar runes are much better for backstab also. And then activating signet of assassin gives 5 stacks of might if traited (which it’s probably). He could also have used another signet for even more might. I don’t think 7700 damage is far fetched.

The last time people did equip other races cultural armors, you got an army of naked people running around because the model doesn’t exist.

Slacker.2679:

The only thing that could make that part more perfect would be if the only way to kill it was with a holy hand grenade.

One you’d get from the veteran bandit bomber? Hmm.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Gift, prototype back, 40 crystals or 240 philo stones, and 1 vial makes an ascended prototype back.

But honestly, by the time you have enough relics for that, you will have gotten enough gold to make one of the other ones twice.

If you can get the dungeon tokens to buy that, you might as well get it and save tons of gold since you don’t really have a better use for those tokens in the first place.

Lex Talionis.5396:

stof.9341:

Try that : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stun_break

This isn’t a PvP concern. It’s a PvE one, where chainstunning happens more often than you can prevent it.

I know some chain stunning situations are annoying. Like half the difficult boss fights in this game are difficult in a “annoying and unfair” way. But still you can still dodge most of these. You can stun break and dodge at the same time to avoid this.

Stun break skills aren’t a bad idea in PvE in fights where you expect to have a use for them.

Try that : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stun_break

Aleaf.8174:

What’s wrong with rewarding skill as opposed to time invested in the game?

Gear can be a substitute to skill. Heck, sometimes gear is more important than skill because without gear you mechanically have barely no chance to succeed and with gear you’d only need a moderate skill.

Now, I’d say rewarding skill as opposed to time invested in a game is doomed to begin with. I mean, rewarding skill with better gear is doomed. Giving better gear to someone lowers the skill level required to do stuff. So, once you get rewarded for your skills with a full set of ascended stuff, everything in the game requires a little less skill to be done. Thus the gear treadmill people complain about.

On the other hand, if skill rewards you with filling little bars and cool looking stuff, you don’t have that issue. You don’t obsolete old content through your progression.

I don’t mind grind if I’m doing something fun. I don’t mind grind locking me out of things I desire. I do not want grind to lock me out of better stats because if I’m tiered of grinding something, I can just say “forget it, that unicorn bow isn’t THAT worth the effort”. If on the other hand grind locks stats, I cannot say that because, heck, if I don’t get those stats all the other grinding I’ll be doing will be less efficient, to the point I might even be unable to access the content at all.

This is why I complain about that stupid heavy grind for gear ArenaNet is adding.

Derk.3189:

niea.7504:

I haven’t gotten my first piece of ascended gear =\

The back item is RNG (even though they said pre release this would never happen). The ring at level 10 is also RNG because there is apparently a bug that stops you from getting it to drop 100% of the time.

It’s not a bug, it’s working as intended.

You cannot join someone in the main server map of a different server than yours. You need to have one player in an overflow, and then you should be able to join him there.

Should max stat gear be easy to be obtained?

Yes, try gearing up alts or even multiple builds on your main in max stat gear and we’ll talk.

Making it an insane grind just to gear ONE main char for ONE build is just causing players to be bored and forced to always play the same thing the same way. No room for build change, no room for alts. No room to vary your play style. This way resides boringness.

Aldred.9345:

Oh and if you want to upgrade your back item to an Infused version – you need 5 more Vials of Condensed Mists Essence. Good luck with that!

Or you drop directly the T2 vial from the 11-20 difficulty fractals.