Guild Wars 2

stof.9341:

jkctmc.8754:

Stealth is the best defense in the game, so a glass canon Thief is MUCH safer than say a glass canon Warrior. Not only that, but the best defense in the game are the procs available to crit builds.

Vigor + 40% endurance Regen food >>>>>> most damage.

Vigor doesn’t stack with the Regen food.

Using dagger storm just for the stability isn’t a terrible idea in the right situation.

I approve this message.

Tulisin.6945:

spif.7580:

Find a spec that excels at everything – decent 1vX capability, usefulness in a zerg or siege, etc. – hint: it does exist

It is called any viable main-set with a shortbow swap, being useful in a zerg/siege is not hard at all.

Excels at everything is the key. Being useful isn’t quite the same thing. A low level ranger can be “useful” in a zerg.

GC thieves – spend a lot of time down when they get caught out of position. Lots of damage, but very fragile in an environment with tons of AoE.

Condition thieves – don’t do enough direct damage and conditions don’t scale as well in this situation.

Same.4687:

Yes please ignore me, while he “murders” everyone.. with a swabstick.. while they are afk.. fired at by siege weaponry.. and a zerg.

A full invaders set like I said doesn’t do anything but make everyone with half a brain and WvW experience lol and either walk away while you dance around them with a weaponset of which 2 buttons are absolutely useless (you know, #2 and #4) and do just enough damage for him to kill his opponent by the time WvW resets for the next matchup.

“Balanced” sets which basically means “lets toss all kinds of crap on this mofo” don’t work well on thieves. We are squishy, have an insanely low basic health pool and yes by adding a metric kittenton of vitality and toughness helps, little bits of it don’t. You want survivability go for a cond build with 30 in Shadow Arts that gives you a nice +300 vit and +300 toughness toss a set of Carrion on that bad boy and you have yourself a lean mean killing machine that no “balanced” S/D spec wants to mess with.

Condition builds excel at small scale fights so that has to be kept in mind.

The P/D condition spec in the hands of a good player is pretty much untouchable at this point.

Run into a zerg or a siege situation, and your capabilities are seriously hampered.

Find a spec that excels at everything – decent 1vX capability, usefulness in a zerg or siege, etc. – hint: it does exist

It’s not a P/D condition spec – unless you are traited specifically for venom share – of course losing one the most powerful part of the P/D spec (healing during stealth).

Haha, and people are wondering why we left this bracket…

Reslinal.2359:

The stat increase with current introduced ascended gear is small enough that I can afford to not care about it and stick with my exotics. Once the full ascended gears are introduced they better implement some ways to get ithem n WvW, otherwise i will quit the game.

Pretty much this.

Zizanzi.4678:

Shananigans.8412:

I’ve had some of my best fights with alot of people in all three of these servers. Whatever you think of me, i don’t really care, but before i go id like to give Props to some of the great guys ive met on the server(s).. Stylii and NoQQ/LARP you guys are insane, always a pleasure. ENVY i think you guys have made me say oh kitten more than any other opponent, and to everyone else its been great fun.

It’s not a matter of us having no loyalty to the server, if you want a full explanation you can ask for it.

Good luck to all

No need to give me props, we made the fun together & we both enjoyed WvWvW together. So the props should go to you and others for making them memorable.

As for your depature, you will be sorely missed :-(. I still remember you running with us the very first time i meet you on your low level Elm watching what we do. You had a blast if I recall right.? Little did I realize the last I would see of that Elm would be jumping up and down on my dead body with a a nice guild tag showing above your head on your last day on the server. (I won’t mention the guild tag here). That was so epic & I couldn’t stop laughing. . Thank you for the memories and friendship in WvWvW.

Your FRIEND always,
Stylii Elementalist (Staff)
Shoulda Rolled Kaineng (NoQQ) Leader

We didn’t get to spend enough time rolling around together – you will be missed bro.

Condition builds have weaknesses against certain classes (necro and D/D elem for example) so while they may be have high survivability I wouldn’t consider them the most successful all-around.

It doesn’t say random, it’s the last boon, as Sorrow has pointed out.

Dodge, immobilize, dodge immobilize, irritate with a few extra conditions, dodge immobilize

Shouldn’t have to put in work-like hours to enjoy a game.

If your enemy is superior, evade him. If angry, irritate him. If equally matched, fight, and if not split and reevaluate.

Sun Tzu – via Bud Fox @ Wall Street

If you want small unit action, tier 8 (any of the servers) is where you want to be.

Rock Paper Scissors in action. When one class becomes common and over-used, counters to that naturally arise.

D/D elems are pretty tough for thieves to take down 1v1.

As a WvW thief with over 19k kills, D/D elementalists are some of the hardest guys in the game to kill.

Recommend trying to move your “home” movement keys from WASD to ESDF. This puts your pinky on A (still giving you access to tab, caps, shift, ctrl). If you touch-type then you won’t have to move your left hand to communicate quickly even during battles.

Now look at your hand – you will have keys such as Q, W, R, T, G, V, C, and to a lesser extent, Z, X, Y and H. All of these should be considered for your skills. The number keys and F1 are just too far away in comparison.

Both are viable.

SpaceLord.4590:

Nice alliance Kain and Ferg Well played on DR borderlands tonight.

You guys even in the same Teamspeak too lol

I love it keep bringing it, sharpens the skills. Back to the fight.

:P

Because our surprise assault on fergs SM tonight while DR was almost about to cap is evidence of this.

And when we took the keep in DR bl from ferg, after DR took down the south gate (thanks again :P).

We woke up on the server to a full green map – of course we were going to focus on you. I guess the fergs had the same idea.

Strange though don’t you think? Whoever owns Stonemist tends to get double teamed. It should be expected really, as the game was designed to follow that pattern.

The rivalry and server loyalty that has developed over the past few months has certainly created an atmosphere where real diplomacy – spoken or not, can actually happen.

stinkypants.8419:

I’m really enjoying using the short bow in WvW and was wondering how I can make it more effective. Right now I’m traited all in Acrobatics and Trickery (not quite 80) and I’m finding I’ve got good decent damage and great survivability but would like to eek a little bit more out of it… especially more damange

Any suggestions?

Deadly arts to 15 is a win. Your choking gas will now spread Weakness.

TheAmpca.1753:

If you are running d/d or d/p or d/anything then you probably want to stay pretty much a glass cannon since you have stealth as your survival mechanic. If you want to be tanky so you can fight in the zerg, no build will really make you very useful, you need to just fight on the edges of the zerg and pick off stragglers. We have no 1200 range weapon so we are pretty much screwed in those long range zerg fights.
If you want a tankier build I suggest valkryie and going s/d with flanking strike/auto atacks being your main damage output.

S/P (or S/D) + SB. Plenty of points in acro and trickery, requisite mug and lotus. P/V/T armor w/ Divinity Runes, Knights jewelry w/Rubys. Endurance food, and energy sigils for lots of endurance.

Swap weapons a lot to take advantage of endurance boosts. Stay in stealth when you can and spam your choking gas (it does both poison and weakness) this is your anti-zerg mode. Choking gas does not break stealth. I like to use a stealth approach, teleport behind the main line into the squishies/ranged, and drop shadow refuge. Stay in the refuge and spam your choking gas and get as many people poisoned and weakened. If they try to focus you down, shadowstep away. If they are aware enough to aoe your refuge you’ll have to modify your strat a bit, but the goal here is to disrupt their aoe damage so your boys can push them back (controlling the downed state of the battle).

This will cause confusion and help your team because now their ranged AoE will be disrupted. They either have to move out of the poison/weakness impacting their ability to focus their fire or try to ignore the multiple stacks of poison/weakness that they get by not being aware enough to move out of the red circle that has mysteriously formed beneath them. You will have enough vit/toughness and dodges to make yourself extremely difficult to take down. If they are wasting time trying to get you down, then you’ve done your job.

Teleport out and heal up a bit. Always stay mobile and use your stealth to create confusion and escapes.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mckmMc0MzMFLloMFCaof9MxpcMsaVk08khf7khA7khf707khA70z7kGL70V7ofD8ofv

A few changes to my original spec.

5 points from Trickery to Deadly Arts for Lotus Poison. Since choking gas doesn’t break stealth, you can dump this into enemy zergs while remaining a ghost. I miss the daze on steal but I think this is far more effective in a group setting. Poison and Weakness on a significant portion of the enemy zerg is very strong.

Pain Response → Quick Recovery. Similar thinking as above; Pain Response is great in a small fight, but Quick Recovery works better with Assassins Reward and Lead Attacks. Sword #2, Shadowstep and Signet of Agility are usually enough condition removal.

Vigorous Recovery → Power of Inertia. This works great with the energy and might stacking food which I now use. Miss the Vigor, but since it doesn’t stack with the Endurance regen food, the loss isn’t as bad. 100% uptime on 40% energy regen isn’t too far from about 75% uptime on Vigor. Maybe a lower cooldown heal would make this work better, but Hide in Shadows is just too strong with the condition removal.

Sigils of Bloodlust and Sigils of Energy. Run a second set of swappable weapons that have Bloodlust. Once you get full stacks, swap to the Sigils of Energy. The endurance return works very well and makes up for the loss of Vigor on heal.

Ruby’s on the Knights jewelry pieces and Runes of Divinity provide a good balance of all stats.

Morningstar.6208:

Hello guys I am Sir Morningstar Devona’s EB commander. I would like to say you guys are doing great this week. It really started some competition between servers which is good for everybody to get ready for next tier. See you in game don’t give up.

Doing whatever we can to keep you guys in this tier ;>

Chaster,

Perhaps take a “break” and do something different instead of trying to win the points game. Unless you can guarantee 24/7 coverage, these gaps in play-time will always be something out of your control. Those of us who have been on Kaineng from day 1 have seen many players and guilds come and go: those who stay are the ones who can get beyond the numbers game. Your primary goal should be having fun and cracking open some Sun Tzu to self analyze the technical aspects of your apparent frustrations.

Take your boys and develop your Zerg vs Zerg skills – I know you have a lot of PvE players in your group and there is always room for improvement when it comes to fighting. Look at the Envy guys from Ferg or NoQQ from Kain: they do more with a few players than just about anyone else out there. They have fun and don’t care if they are outnumbered or are winning the scoreboard race.

Maybe you can start mentoring another player from your crew to help do some leading and take some stress off of you. One tactic we have found works well is to load up a 5 or 10 man group with your most aggressive players and have them run interference. Players that have no interest in leading a large zerg (this is NOT a fun task most of the time) may jump at the opportunity to flex a bit of their creativity and develop smaller unit tactics as well as zerg busting.

Take a break, do whatever you need to, and get back having fun soon.

Rastofin.6132:

spif.7580:

Ah, our beloved Morningstar making the pages

Your bravery is only outmatched by the number of corpses you leave.

Morningstar came from Kain?

No, we just like killing him.

Ah, our beloved Morningstar making the pages

Your bravery is only outmatched by the number of corpses you leave.

Stack power, get the most efficient means of crit damage (divinity/ruby). If you want high acrobatics then you can look at stacking might from dodge to boost. Get a reliable form of fury (I like fury on steal) to help out your lower precision.

If you want any toughness/vit you will have to make some sacrifices in dps.

Now they just need to add the voice to match.

“GET OVER HERE”

Something feels off this week though – I fully expect this position to change during the week. Might be the winning – fair weather player thing going on as well. I know when we are losing badly we just get fewer players out there.

The few guys who moved from Devonas to Fergs made a larger impact than may have been expected.

Thieves are easily becoming the dominant go-to-class in WvW. Many of my friends have dropped their first choice to become thieves just because they are so flexible and powerful in an open battlefield.

The issues inherent with stealth abuse are generally not fun for many of the players involved. Many of these issues can be overcome by player skill and experience, but the baseline power level of this class is just too high.

Stealth should probably be modified to not be so easily abused. The 2 init return going to stealth from Cloak and Dagger is probably the primary culprit here. At 6 init this skill isn’t that strong.

Heartseeker spamming is just annoying to deal with and promotes skill-less play. Raise the cost of this ability to 4 or reduce the range, add a condition such as weakness or vulnerability maybe.

Mavec.7469:

Daecollo.9578:

@Mavec
I’m sorry your math is incorrect.
15 points in Vitality is 15% Boon Duration.
2 seconds + 15% = 2.3 seconds of swiftness.

Extra % Stealth would make our “Regeneration in Stealth” Moves 100% better, that IS our Buffs.

Feel free to test it, the boon duration increases from 1sec remaining on application to 2sec remaining on application with 15 points into acrobatics (it counts zero as a full second on the countdown timer). Its along the same lines of 15% sigil of Paralyzation increasing our 2sec sword daze into a 3sec daze. It is an anomaly with their rounding not my math, I understand how percentages work. I don’t understand why these 15% increases result in a full second added the duration of these abilities.

It could be a simple float to integer conversion situation coupled with network code minimization.

I assume it benefits everyone equally though and certainly changes the min/maxing a bit (not having to stack mesmer runes if you have para sigil for example).

This idea has merit.

Also like the idea of harsher penalties for being revived repeatedly.

Ender.3508:

Your ignorance is showing.
1) I’m not complaining, I thoroughly enjoy winning, but victories over doors are empty ones indeed.

Semantics – sounds like complaining to me.

Ender.3508:

2) Kaineng used to actually keep fighting regardless of odds, something a large majority of the server seems to have forgotten.

Not really – it’s just like every other server: when they are losing, less people play. We’ve always just had less to start with than most other servers. We still have bodies out there roaming around like always, just nowhere near the people to play the point game.

Ender.3508:

3) Not my plan, just a plan from various people who were sick of your trashtalk on the forums.

We could refer to it as The Plan if you don’t want to take ownership. The plan was still stupid.

Ender.3508:

This used to be a friendly rivalry, but this no skill trashtalk has pissed people off who now want to put you in your places. My advice, Kaineng, stop letting the forum warriors speak for your server.

A few people talk trash and you associate this with the entire server? That’s not how trolling works, son.

Power/Toughness/Vitality Armor – Runes to taste (I like Divinity)
Knights Jewelry with Rubies

This puts you at about 30% crit and 30% crit damage, not great, but not bad either.

Acrobatics with Might on Dodge + Bowl of Orrian Truffle (Might on Dodge).

Get a second offhand weapon with Sigil of Bloodlust – when you max out your stacks (go after neutral camps), swap out with +5% damage Sigil.

You should be able to maintain 5-8 stacks of Might during fighting, often more if you are judicious with your evasion.

All told, you can get upwards of 3700 power with this setup. You will have over 1600 toughness and vitality as well as the naturally tanky Sword/Pistol setup.

Mr Girly Man.6893:

Ahhh, this thread is nice relief. If you look at the number of posts that have the word PRO in it in the other thread, you’ll find it’s probably greater than 66%. I don’t know why they like to spam, but they do it well.

As to that random DR dude who can’t read, I know that quite a few of us in Kaineng are tired of capping stuff when we are on and losing everything an hour after we get off. You’ll probably be seeing a lot more open field and supply camp fights because we are tired of getting night and day capped and then told that we are outplayed and it isn’t a numbers game.

I don’t know if you know this, but no one really cares about other servers giving themselves pats on the back. Don’t really care if you are communicating better or your commanders are awesome. I just wanna kill sheeit.

Said it as well as I would have bothered.

For a few hours an evening, there will be blood. Hard to care about a score that means nothing but how many people you have online.

Make similar items available through WvW – make sure the time required to obtain is similar in scope and you should have no problems.

Daecollo.9578:

spif.7580:

If you take in the amount of health a player gains by using heal – headshot may be one of the most efficient skills in the game (when you interrupt and then lock-out the heal ability that is).

It’s an ability with a somewhat high skill-cap.

Its one of those things that would be really nice if it didn’t have a int cost and be on a 15 second CD.

because the way the system works is if you use it you sacrifice a ton of dps.

With the way thief is, it pretty much HAS to have damage or its just not worth using, we can’t be like other classes and use our utility skills and damage skills, we have to pick, which is impossible because who cares if you interrupt them, you could of killed them instead with a damage attack!

I’m just going to disagree with you. I play a balanced build in WvW using S/P and SB. I have zero points in critical trait line and only 10 in power. I have no problems taking on any class, any spec. Over 15000 kills, you just have to get out of the cookie cutter mindset.

If you take in the amount of health a player gains by using heal – headshot may be one of the most efficient skills in the game (when you interrupt and then lock-out the heal ability that is).

It’s an ability with a somewhat high skill-cap.

Klawlyt.6507:

spif.7580:

This and Shadow Refuge should never leave your utility bar if you are playing WvW. It’s that good.

I prefer the much less popular Blinding Powder to SR. It makes a much better oh kitten button, and with the blind and instant cast, helps counter the frequent 100 blades and fellow thieves’ bursts.

I have a friend who runs it as well for the instant oh-kitten-button.

SR just brings a bit more to the table.

Longest stealth duration capability (I’ve been able to spike 3 people while still stealthed).

Useful for resurrecting pals.

Can invis your entire party.

Combo field for AOE blind spamming with shortbow #2.

Can pretty much be used as an oh-kitten button as well.

Headshot and Blackpowder (especially Headshot) are very under-rated for what they bring to the table. More damage would be welcome, but unnecessary.

Laeroth.3198:

When we < uXa> looked into moving, we saw the bottom 3 servers and just did a random pick. we had a vote in vent, and the guys were just told the names of the servers, not their overall placement. There was no real reason other than happenstance we choose DR over the other two. We came down here to look fro smaller scale fights and less kitten wagging. Plus i highly doubt our 20ish actives will have such an impact that the server balance will be off kilter.

Except what you are doing will push it a bit further out of balance.

Xyrm.5602:

spif.7580:

This and Shadow Refuge should never leave your utility bar if you are playing WvW. It’s that good.

Yeah, right now I’m running Shadow Step, Shadow Refuge, and Signet of Shadows (I think, whichever gives 25% movespeed with blind on activate).

Only way I’d change this is if you have deep acro with vigor boosts to offset losing signet of shadows (I personally use signet of agility instead).

First thief/rogue type build that had enough flexibility to be played as a brawler.

This and Shadow Refuge should never leave your utility bar if you are playing WvW. It’s that good.

Don’t be afraid to try new things.

Avoid the cookie cutter styles of play – good players have seen this before and will be prepared to deal with it.

Sounds are very important indicators – pay attention with your eyes and your ears.

Nothing can replace practice.

All this talk about points, who really cares?

When I log on for a few hours the blue score always seems to be on top. That is all that matters to me and most people that play the game. Hard to care about what happens when we are sleeping or at work.

People are actually playing and competing. The past where people would just leave when out-manned are hopefully long gone.

Dred, too bad you don’t play when I do, I would love to duel you.

Very Big Ladders

Daggerstorm also provides stability – which persists even if you cancel out of the animation with a dodge. I’ve used this to escape a mad zerg more than once.

Also, lol at Rogues tonite around 12 EST.

When anyone does this to me, I smile knowing that I just killed them so hard they fell off the internet.