Rachmani

Dasryn, on 20 May 2013 - 02:55 AM, said:

Soloing is solo content - farming, soloing Champions, or general faffing around.
I mentioned it because someone asked me what I was running to solo the Champion Karka. I even spoilered it so it wouldn't be considered with the rest of what I've said for Dungeon content.

The rest of my posts are directly concerning group dungeons.

I stopped playing after the most recent patch after Flame and Frost ended and Southsun redux began. My information is still fresh.

I'm not trying to disuade you from taking the advice of anybody you perceive as an "authority" on the class. tbqh, everybody reading what I'm saying should be reading what I'm saying and trying to apply it with their own perception and experience to see if they can draw a logical reason as to why what I'm suggesting does or doesn't work - not blindly following it.

What I can tell you is this: S/P;Shortbow - switching to D/D or D/P; Shortbow for bosses - is the most generally efficient and widely applicable way to do things.
There are some pulls in the game where S/D is more beneficial to your group than S/P - all of those pulls are actually very easy and you could just shortbow them down with little impact to the party.
You can read up in the thread for all the reasons I've given as to why S/P > S/D for PvE.

BrazilTheHue, on 13 May 2013 - 06:15 AM, said:

Due to the fact that engineers do as much damage as warriors while adding the vulnerabilty, I am not justifying GK needless comments. He trolls almost every subforum here. I am just pointing that this is one of those very few times he actually mad a point with sense. He made a decent point here, even if he did troll the point home.

Beyond that, it looked like a nice speed kill to me.

Eon Lilu, on 13 May 2013 - 06:54 PM, said:

Since you're being a bit pedantic, let's compare it to other video game speed runs then.  Super Mario Bros. on the NES is "easy" by any relatively experienced gamer's standard, is it not?  Yet the speed run record for that is absolutely iconic in the speed run community.  

No one denigrates the record holder because SMB is an easy game, just the opposite actually: the easier the content the more perfect you have to be, because your competitors will also be making few mistakes and unless you are pristinely perfect you won't touch the record.  

So, so what if GL is "easy"?  The challenge of the record isn't in the difficulty of the content, it's in the difficulty presented by your competitors.

That said, I should have had to explain any of this to you.  It's obviously that no amount of explaining is going to make you understand that speed run records are taken seriously by a lot of people.  Since they aren't serious to you, you can't understand why they are to anyone else.  That view is a bit myopic, in my opinion.

GuanglaiKangyi, on 01 May 2013 - 04:56 PM, said:

Oh man.  My days of actually defending you to people is over after seeing your list of bosses its supposedly better to ranged.  Either you're a giant troll (congrats, if so) or you are just another bad.  Ranging Bloomhunger.  The shame!

Thieves are the top of the tier 2 professions in fractals, and probably named dungeons as well.  There are some fractals (dredge, specifically) where they are probably more useful than Mesmers, but the problem is that Mesmers are better on average across all fractals.

Thanks to the ability to switch professions in the middle of an instance you should never be in a situation where you have to choose between the two.  Unless, that is, everyone in your party only has one profession at 80 and geared up.

As far as the ele, engi and ranger go, they might have a few useful tricks but overall they are less valuable than any of the four professions ahead of them and that;s why they are tier 2.

And Necros... poor Necros.  If every fractal was the ascalon fractal they might be pretty good, but unfortunately that isn't the case.

draxynnic, on 17 March 2013 - 11:32 PM, said:

Which, if you're playing any dungeon other than CoF p1 is very, very, very useful.

If DPS was everything, no one would ever roll a Guardian. And yet it's the second-most popular class in the game.

I think it's important to add here, as that I never actually have, but the FT/EG is not the only build I use in Guild Wars 2 with my Engineer. It's my "main" build but if my CoF group needs more DPS it's not against me to re-trait with 30 points in Explosives.

I love the Engineer for its adaptability to fulfill a lot of roles in a group. I don't much care about whether or not the FT excels in all areas of the game. If it did, there would probably be something wrong about that. There is a reason I have three different exotic sets of armor for my Engineer.

So, like, kind of to try and clear the air here: I'm not against anyone who thinks the Flamethrower doesn't suit their style. I merely take issue with those that say that their style should be the same as mine. I've made a point to simply report any posts I find incendiary. I ask that you guys merely do the same and stop dragging this thread into the ground with, quite frankly, petty bullshit.

It takes a while to get to 25 Bloodlust even if you don't down, and some dungeons (i.e. CoF1) don't even have any mobs to kill.  You're better off with just Force in most cases.

Reikou, on 03 January 2013 - 04:06 PM, said:

I understand that you're trying to defend your own profession with passion, but in your process of fervently doing so, you're denying some of the experience that we've gathered through hundreds and hundreds of fractals, so here is me trying to defend for these experience.

1. There are many dps comparison threads on guru, some using coefficients + formulas + numbers, some using dummies (PvP lobby or LA dummy), some using numbers taken from various runs. Optimal single target damage, highest is full berserker mesmer with 3 phantasms out (either iWarlock or iSwordman) and attacking in Sword himself (due to a greatsword bug, otherwise greatsword comes slightly ahead). At one time (I say one time because I don't know if the numbers have changed too much since then) thieves were very close at second assuming you stay fully in melee doing optimal rotation (CnD + backstab) while managing initiatives and having 100% damage uptime. Thieves would win over mesmer for single target fights shorter than 25 seconds due to mesmers needing 16 seconds to setup the phantasms. Other than that, mesmer wins.

2. Shortbow AoE is DECENT, but that's DECENT. Do you really want number matches with elementalists / necro / engineer? Are you that confident that you'd do more aoe damage than a 100B or Axe warrior? Or how about Greatsword Guardian? So really you're just talking about ranger and mesmer then, 2 out of 8 professions?

3. We're talking about "high level" fractals right? That means 40+, 50+ and 60+ fractals? Where warriors stay 80% in rifle and guardians stay 80% on scepter? I don't know which groups you're referring to, I can practically count the number of people LFG at those levels on North American server and probably have either grouped, seen, or heard of most of their names. Because there aren't many, you keep running into the same ones. And as far as I know none of those thieves are glass cannon. And thank goodness they're not. Unlike a mesmer who's offensive trees are possibly also their best survival trees, a glass cannon thief going 30 30 0 0 10 without any points in shadow arts or acrobatics? I don't want to take that risk. I've seen, too many times, how badly things can go wrong.

4. AA critting 2K - 2K - 3K in a 1.7 second chain = 4.1K dps. 3 iWarlocks critting for 10K each and casting every 5 second = 6K dps, while the mesmer takes off the weapon and /dance. Pales in comparison? The point is, the 3K means very little unless you put it into perspective --- Thieves are definitely very formidable single target dps at melee, no one is arguing that. And of course mesmers can't pull off 3 phantasms all the time, especially on trash. But the problem is that: for high lvl fractals, as a thief you simply can't stay in melee for more than a few seconds at a time, what you see in explorable dungeons is no longer true, your numbers plummet, your play style needs to change. While mesmers lose next to nothing switching from sword to greatsword and stay happily at 1200 range doing almost identical dps to their explorable dungeon numbers. That's why the OP asked: where then, can the thief shine in higher lvl fractals. To which my own answer is similar to many ahead of me --- support, stealth, lockdown, mobility, and doing all of these without completely sacrificing damage due to initiative system.

Reikou, on 03 January 2013 - 05:36 PM, said:

1. If your mesmer just sits there spamming auto attack and wishes to compete with ANY profession in the game at all, you really should just stick with your other professions. No really, not trying to be sarcastic, maybe the mesmer play style does not suit you well. No matter the spec, phantasm is a major damage component of a mesmer, and in many situations the absolute top priority over even 20K shatters and completely overshadows the mesmer's own weapon damage. That's where staff is strong, other than its utilities, its phantasm hits like a truck in group play.

Now for aoe: This is an example of how you do a group of mobs on a mesmer. NOT casting auto attack and wonders why it doesn't hit more than 1 target. Start by casting GS #2, bounces on 5 targets hitting 2-3K each, create a clone that temperarily attracts the mobs attention so your up coming phantasm can do it's attack. Cast GS #4 and summon iBerserker, whirling for about 7K AoE + cripple + bleed on those mobs. Cast GS #3, that's an ground target aoe hitting 3K on each mob. Dodge into the mobs, now you should have 3 illusions out, if you got bad luck one of them (the first one) is killed and you only have 2 left, but you can make up for the lost illusion by using instant utility skills. You press F1 as soon as you dodged into the mobs, voila 20K shatters. Immediately you either switch to staff and press #2 to teleport out of mobs to save yourself, or if you have sword equipped, switch to sword and #2 to do 8K aoe damage while evading attacks. All of this should take you less than 3-4 seconds (minus the sword #2 which lasts 2 seconds). Bottom line: you don't stand there and auto attack, that's for when you absolutely have nothing else to do.

Mesmer isn't the best sustained AoE, that's known. It's one of the best AoE BURST though, for things like cliffside this really helps. But all in all comparing thief's AoE to a mesmer's is ridiculous, you might as well add the ranger in there and it's a party. A party that will amuse all the engineers/elementalists/necros.

2. I assume he's talking about fractal, and that your answer is directed to higher level fractal players in general. If you're not in 50+ fractal yet, please wait until you get there to make these kinds of conclusions. If you are in 50+ fractal, please let me know who you are if you often LFG either through website or through /map on North America servers --- Like I said there's really not that many people once you get there. You keep grouping with the same people. And I'd like to know which one of those thieves are dying because they need to "L2P", maybe you can enlighten me since you probably have played with them as well.

Minion, on 03 November 2012 - 05:08 PM, said:

Funny thing is critique is also a verb. Also to criticize implies negativity. But to analyze critically doesn't. Isn't English great?

Rachmani, on 23 August 2012 - 05:45 PM, said:

Or maybe Tinky Winky...

coglin, on 16 August 2012 - 04:13 AM, said:

I think people are still stuck in the mode that support = healing.  One of the things that Anet addressed in their blog is that healing is the weakest form of support, since it can only be reactive.  If you interrupt a Warrior that just started channeling 100b on a team mate that is CCed, how much damage did you just prevent?  Isn't this better than trying to heal this damage after it is already done?

Scottiiboi, on 23 July 2012 - 10:11 PM, said:

We need a meme, "Makes post in builds thread bragging about his build, refuses to show it"

Scottiiboi, on 23 July 2012 - 10:11 PM, said:

Well then I'm not impressed. Until I see something and it gets my seal of approval then I don't consider it good just sayin'