Rachmani

With transmutation stones? Yes, works still.

Soki, on 18 May 2013 - 05:53 AM, said:

Fine with me. As I said, I didn't want to sound too harsh myself.
Difficult here on guru, I know what you mean and now that I understand you better I can follow your argumentation.
So it's all fine and dandy!
On SB, I guess Perma Weakness makes all the difference. My build doesn't have it and it's really, really strong.
I actually played with it for quite a while but our guardian is almost godly in terms of timing, healing and such and complained about blasting poison fields so I - as he seemingly didn't need it - stopped using it and worked on meleeing stuff that oneshots you instead. Turned out fine and from there things evolved.
But to be honest, i had to solo Grawl shaman on 48 from 20% downwards and was happy to have a SB equipped. So when I say "you don't always need SB" I'm actually not talking about THAT many occasions. I do... cliffside acolytes with S/P & D/P (ironic, i know ) for example, and stuff like that.

Soki, on 18 May 2013 - 02:34 AM, said:

What a pity. New Flankingstrike is good though, give it a try, should you reinstall. And try it instead of dodging through a mob. You lose literally no attacking time.

Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is that there is plenty of room to be successful - and by successful I mean "doing stuff without failing" - from tight groups and speedruns to not so speedy runs. The point is, with the exeption of speed, a lot can and does work. My own group has two rangers and we don't fail in fractals up to the currently possible lvl (i actually don't know wether you can exploit Jade Maw - we never tried it).

So why was I getting at you? Simply because you "stormed in" without giving whatever you said a proper context. We obviously have our "differences" in terms of playstyle or whether you always need a shortbow or not etc. but I'm surely not above admitting that my group doesn't have the best killspeed (guardian, warrior or ele, ranger, ranger, thief), for example. I'll also freely admit that I could never get a grip on S/P (and I consider myself to be really good with S/D) and never got it to work the same way S/D did.
So naturally I have my problems with "the better set", if that statement lacks said context - and if only because I adapted my build and my experience tells me otherwise. I am however free to admit, that that might only be me - that's why I stated above that every thief should try out all sets to find the one best suited for himself. If that happens to be S/P - perfect.
Will you have to switch weapons eventually in fractals? Absolutely.

In short, I have absolutely no problem with your statements, as long as you give them the personal context needed for all to understand where you're coming from and where your priorities lie. I don't find S/D useless in any form, personally, not even inferior to S/P but I it's more than fine for me if someone says "naaa... I favor Sokis view on this".

P.S Lyssa is a nice strategy for the champion, never considered it tbh. I tried him once - only to be supported by a group of friendly farmers or whatever you might want to call them at about 75% of its hp. Not sure if I would have killed it though. Maybe I'll try again.

*sigh* Why do you guys always have to exaggerate lvl 70 AND DUNGEONMASTER! If you're at 70, have done 30 with no gear, 20 with no traits why even mention dungeonmaster? I'm really sorry because I actually WANT to believe you but what you write comes across so...scattered. What I'm saying is: Your opinion doesn't mean less to me should you happen to not have done all that you've said. I just need a context in which to put it, but... I don't follow your argumentation, tbh. It just seems weird to me.

You're on the currently nonreachable lvl 70 - I know it could be done prior to some update - and you insist on S/Ps general superiority - which wasn't even contested, at least not from my side - talk about redundancy and being an elitist while on the other hand
a) the dodge on S/D 3 ain't about redundant dodging, it's about a dodge that stays in melee range, does damage and gives you a 5 second time window for a high damage attack at a very low cost, which, as a bonus happens to steal boons.
sigil of nullification has a 10 sec CD and triggers without any boons present. You could have argued it's the mesmers job, but... the sigil is just bad (i know because I've actually tried it).

Sorry if that came a across harsher than I wanted it to be, but... I got so many answers from guys that "had seen it all" over the years who turned out to be just overexaggerating. You're probably goint to post a screen now and put me to shame but... actually that would be great and I will be the first to apologize for not trusting your word on that. Hell I'll even admit that I'm probably to much of a fan of S/D to see clearly and the really serious GW2 elitists (cause i'm not really one) just take every advantage the can get - even when running naked.

I don't want to be picky, but you haven'nt answered my question. The question being:
Did you actually do every dungeon, pull or boss in every difficulty?
If so fine - experience may vary - but the way you avoid to answer this simple question lets be believe you haven't - which is absolutely fine. Just don't make general asumptions then.

Btw. S/D better than S/P on Rabsovich whether you exploit his spawn or not. Actually on the whole dredge fractal tbh.

In terms of dodges... just learn to utilize S/D 3 please. It's not a crutch at all. if you know what you're doing. You can even use it for gapclosing. And no, you don't want to always use S2.