Guild Wars 2

Can’t do this. Every class would need to be redesigned from the ground up. Ever notice the classes with the lowest health have near perma protection or even more powerful means of avoiding damage? They also have high burst damage. Notice how those with tons of health have no access to protection and face tank everything? They also have high sustained damage but burst is kind of missing? Notice how those in middle tier health are a mix in both scenarios?

If Ele’s and Guardians want to lose near perma protection and see their burst damage reduced, more counters to stealth introduced, and have their base sustained damage reduced, go for it.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

korelg.7862:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Harper.4173:

The fact that a full soldier’s thief is nowhere near as durable as a zerk warrior IS working as intended.
The thief relies on MECHANICS and not toughness and HP to stay alive.

Just wanted to point that out.
Also I think that threads that are trying to reinvent the game aren’t going to be a solution.

No class is as durable as a class that has: Highest Health, Highest Armor, Damage immunity, Condition Immunity, Damage Reduction(Dolyak Signet), Passive healing (Healing Siget) as well as traits for more healing, more condition duration reduction among other things as well as CC weapon(Hammer), as well as the BEST mobility in the game.

You really use a broken class as an example of how the game is balanced….

you sacrifice a lot of offensive traits to get all that defense though, I can agree that Warrs are the strongest offensive class for PvE, but you can be one thing or the other, a tanky warr won’t do any damage, just like every other class

Erm. No. Other than adrenal Health (15 trait points) you could even get dogged March AND Adrenal Health for 15 trait points seeing as they are both in the same tree and one is a Minor trait. everything else is either part of weapons, part of the class or utilities and heals.

Highest Health and Armor? Comes from Class.

Best Mobility? Comes from Greatsword. No traits or anything required but can be added and improved with lower cool down and such

Damage Reduction? Utility
Damage Immunity? Utility
Condition immunity? Utility
Passive Healing? Healing skill
CC? Hammer

but you see, to get addrenal health you have to sacrifice some big damage traits, for example I run with a axe/axe build 30/0/10/0/30 if i want to get those 15 points to get addrenal health I’d have to give up +15% damage or +15% crit chance

regarding utility skills, you certainly get things like endure pain, but then condition damage eats you up, shake it off removes only 1 condition, GS mobility does nothing against roots, unless you get the trait… I understand your position tough, warrs are probably the easiest class to play so a skilled player can do some crazy stuff… oh and I agree about the HP, they should be at middle tier at most, that hp pool is way too high

korelg.7862:

but you see, to get addrenal health you have to sacrifice some big damage traits, for example I run with a axe/axe build 30/0/10/0/30 if i want to get those 15 points to get addrenal health I’d have to give up +15% damage or +15% crit chance

regarding utility skills, you certainly get things like endure pain, but then condition damage eats you up, shake it off removes only 1 condition, GS mobility does nothing against roots, unless you get the trait… I understand your position tough, warrs are probably the easiest class to play so a skilled player can do some crazy stuff… oh and I agree about the HP, they should be at middle tier at most, that hp pool is way too high

15 trait points for even more regen as well as reduction to conditions. Gaining 150Toughness and 150 Healing Power. 15 points is NOT going to suddenly make it so you can’t deal damage. I was talking about Berserker Stance for Condition Immunity, sure still have the conditions at the time but no others for8 seconds….

It isn’t about dmg, but about killing.

I find this discussion a little pointless, the different base healths are essential to the profession identity. Asking for a change is like asking to take minions or condition control from necros, banners or stances from warriors, agies from guardians and so on.

So if there is an unbalance between the profession (which is the case) then this as to be solved in a different way than changing the basehealth numbers.

Muchacho.2390:

I find this discussion a little pointless, the different base healths are essential to the profession identity. Asking for a change is like asking to take minions or condition control from necros, banners or stances from warriors, agies from guardians and so on.

So if there is an unbalance between the profession (which is the case) then this as to be solved in a different way than changing the basehealth numbers.

guardians hp was as much as warriors originally but they decided to nerf the health bar than some abilities

Different health levels are fine. However, the massive variation in health, and the seemingly arbitrary nature of allocating health levels (elementalists get screwed) is NOT fine.

I haven’t heard about Guardian health ever being as high as Warrior, although the devs tried making it medium during BWE 2 as I recall. But then they were monsters in PvP. Admittedly, nobody knew how to play back then, so maybe the devs should review of their health tier. Or maybe they already have and figured that Guardian health was justified. I feel that a lot of Guardians would prefer having more health and less boons since the class is advertising itself as a defense-oriented class and a natural first-pick for tank players in other MMOs.

Warriors have high health, high armor and high regen because they have no access to aegis and protection outside of runes and allies. They take more damage than say a guardian but they regen more to make up for it. And it also makes sense from a lore point of view. I’m in favor of toning down their damage and making them more difficult to play, but I’d hate to see them made squishier. Warriors should be tanky by design because they are, well, warriors. I don’t think it’s right for them to also do the highest damage in the game. This should be reserved for high-risk-high-reward classes like Thief.

Thieves have low health because they should be using their evades, their blinds, their shadowsteps and their stealth to survive. They’re also the epitome of high-risk-high-reward in most RPG games with mostly offense-oriented play styles, and I think that’s what Arenanet wants the Thief class to play like. I’m not in favor of making the Thief any tankier at all.

Elementalists… well I have no idea why they have low tier health other than lore. I thought they were intended to make up for it by having good healing with their water and good defense with earth, but that seems to attract nerfs, and doesn’t work so well in keeping them alive in the first place. Also, they aren’t really glass-cannon like Thief to justify their low health. It’d probably be silly to have Elementalists that tank stuff head-on like a Warrior or a Guardian so maybe more health is not the solution, but I agree they need more defense.

I believe the problem with elementalists and their sustain is that, with the high skill ceiling of elementalists, the top tier players are able to string together all of their boons and heals really efficiently. Elementalists end up being balanced around that skill level, and the casual elementalist gets shafted because of it.

The obvious solution to that problem is, unfortunately, not a very satisfying one. Basically it involves reducing the skill ceiling by locking attunements and buffing their individual actions in them. This, of course, kills the diversity of the elementalist, so it is less than ideal.

Anyway, one of the reasons why Elementalists have low HP is because of how well they could originally do everything. Eles have a lot of AoE damage and boon support, and also they had a lot of versatility and mobility. In sPVP this doesn’t show up much, but in group battles in WvW the elementalist is a frightening force to be reckoned with. I’ve seen entire zergs slaughtered in static fields and meteor showers at choke points.

Two flaws with this. First, as I mentioned above, all of their mobility and sustain is nerfed due to how effective they can potentially be. Second, all of their AoE skills (and many of their attacks for that matter) have long delays with extremely visible cues, meaning that actually hitting with any of these high damaging skills is nigh impossible. It is this large delay that made me reroll the ele when I first started playing the game. Sure, I get a bunch of big damage and flashy effects, but what good are they when opponents can just casually walk out of the way?

I don’t know about making any changes to HP tiers. Guardians and thieves are intimidating enough with just 10k base HP. If anything, I’d rather just buff Eles to be more frightening than increase their HP but leave them kitten in the end. The HP tiers themselves are set around the downed state, and it is important to note that GW2 is assumed to be a team based game. Because of this, high damage bursts from enemies are assumed to be easily mitigated by having teammates rez you from the down state.

I also view the high difference in health pools to be a big problem for balance. The low health classes have active balance necanisms to compensate le low durability of their respective class (evasion and stealth for thieves, healing for ele and boons for guardians).

The big difference in health make the balancing of theese active mechanisms really hard to do. Enough of tricks for the casual to survive make the good players unkillable (bunker ele back when they were meta and perma evade/stealth thieves). Balancing them for the good players to be ok makes the classes useless for the majority of players (eles right now in PvP)

That gives the game volatile low HP classes who get OP to UP to OP from patch to patch. Imho if the base health would be tighter (14k-16k-18k) then the classes relying on active defense would be easyer to balance for the good of the game (stealth could be toned down without destroying thieves and eles would be better in survival with the actual setup kept).

It is very evident from the marionette: warriors shrug off the sword hit, etc while elementalists are downed by it.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Harper.4173:

The fact that a full soldier’s thief is nowhere near as durable as a zerk warrior IS working as intended.
The thief relies on MECHANICS and not toughness and HP to stay alive.

Just wanted to point that out.
Also I think that threads that are trying to reinvent the game aren’t going to be a solution.

No class is as durable as a class that has: Highest Health, Highest Armor, Damage immunity, Condition Immunity, Damage Reduction(Dolyak Signet), Passive healing (Healing Siget) as well as traits for more healing, more condition duration reduction among other things as well as CC weapon(Hammer), as well as the BEST mobility in the game.

You really use a broken class as an example of how the game is balanced….

Ahhahahaha – Damage Reduction ? You meal the Dolyak Signet that DOESN’T REDUCE DAMAGE BUT JUST GIVES YOU 180 TOUGHNESS?! wow.

And it was the OP who set up the example.
The thief is NOT MEANT TO BE DURABLE – it is built to hit HARD and DIE FAST if hit.
That’s why the thief’s game mechanic is stealth – so he can go INVISIBLE and avoid being hit.

is it so hard to figure out what they did there?

I find it sad how you’re going all out with statements like " damage reduction" When you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Guardians have a signet that gives them a CLEAN 10% damage reduction.
Warriors have a signet that gives them 180 toughness. Which is basically nothing.

I find it sad how you might actually confuse people into thinking you might know some stuff when clearly you don’t.

korelg.7862:

if the HP problem is about PvE, just make mobs hit a fixed % of your max health, problem solved

Best idea so far. This would allow them to back off the one-shots in pve. I assume the reason for all these one hit down attacks are because of high survivability of pvt/high hp players. Making the mobs hit a fixed % of max health would be perfect for solving this problem. High health/toughness players would still get some benefit, while low health/toughness players would not have to endure one-shots as much. The current system of having so many one shots just to counter high health/toughness is a bad system because it overly punishes low health/toughness players.

korelg.7862:

if the HP problem is about PvE, just make mobs hit a fixed % of your max health, problem solved

Then why would you gear for toughness and vitality? By doing this you eliminate 2 stats from PvE.

ODB.6891:

Best idea so far. This would allow them to back off the one-shots in pve.

That’d make vitality a negative stat, btw.
The more vitality you have, the harder you get hit, the more compassion you’d need just to heal the same total compared to the mob hit.

• Unintuitive (which newcomer would expect +HP to make them more squishy?!)
• Unnecessarily complex (why not just rebalance HP, a much more straightforward change?)
• Prone to bugs (I get an effect giving me +200% vitality, mob starts a swing, my effect ends, hit supposedly hitting for 40% one-shots me)
• Doesn’t solve the underlying problem. HP differences are fine, delta is too large, given the context that it’s not balanced elsewhere.

Just to be sure about that last part:
Having different base HP is mighty fine. As is armour. But you’d think this gets balanced out with another inherent mechanic. As in, the lighter your armour the faster you regenerated endurance, and the lower your HP the higher your max endurance pool. Or something like that, just a random example.

To compare, in most RPGs, the tougher your armour the worse you become at dodging. You take the same total damage but in more reliable increments (making you better at tanking damage).

Carighan.6758:

ODB.6891:

Best idea so far. This would allow them to back off the one-shots in pve.

That’d make vitality a negative stat, btw.
The more vitality you have, the harder you get hit, the more compassion you’d need just to heal the same total compared to the mob hit.

• Unintuitive (which newcomer would expect +HP to make them more squishy?!)
• Unnecessarily complex (why not just rebalance HP, a much more straightforward change?)
• Prone to bugs (I get an effect giving me +200% vitality, mob starts a swing, my effect ends, hit supposedly hitting for 40% one-shots me)
• Doesn’t solve the underlying problem. HP differences are fine, delta is too large, given the context that it’s not balanced elsewhere.

Just to be sure about that last part:
Having different base HP is mighty fine. As is armour. But you’d think this gets balanced out with another inherent mechanic. As in, the lighter your armour the faster you regenerated endurance, and the lower your HP the higher your max endurance pool. Or something like that, just a random example.

To compare, in most RPGs, the tougher your armour the worse you become at dodging. You take the same total damage but in more reliable increments (making you better at tanking damage).

Vitality is already a negative stat in regards to having to heal back more than low vitality players. Yes, in this case, it would do more damage to a high vitality player. It would also leave that high vitality player with more remaining health than the same hit would to a low vitality player. I don’t think this would be counter intuitive at all. In fact, it would still give a survivability edge to high vitality players…depending on how they balance healing skills to compensate. I think that would be balanced. This just makes it more fair. One shots are not fun for anyone.

I think it can’t get anymore straight forward than attacks doing a percentage of hp. I don’t think that’s complicated at all.

The bugs issue is assuming that ANET would fail to implement scenarios like that correctly. I can’t say I blame you on that assumption though.

They just announced that they were nerfing vigor/dodge on multiple low hp classes…which seems counter intuitive to me. That pretty much says that they want the low hp classes to suffer.

ODB.6891:

korelg.7862:

if the HP problem is about PvE, just make mobs hit a fixed % of your max health, problem solved

Best idea so far. This would allow them to back off the one-shots in pve. I assume the reason for all these one hit down attacks are because of high survivability of pvt/high hp players. Making the mobs hit a fixed % of max health would be perfect for solving this problem. High health/toughness players would still get some benefit, while low health/toughness players would not have to endure one-shots as much. The current system of having so many one shots just to counter high health/toughness is a bad system because it overly punishes low health/toughness players.

The massive spikes are pretty much in there to force feed us their “active” combat. The thing that would be oh so innovative vs all the rest of the MMORPG market.

They pretty much kittened on existing games with their “i swing a sword, i swing a sword again, oh my i swing a sword again” spiel in the manifest.

But between the overly solid camera (bumps into every last branch and outcrop in the area), the map designs (all to often the fight is happening in a tight spot, or on top of a ledge or bridge), and their insistence on using a traditional control and targeting scheme (apparently it would be to action focused to go with toggled mouse look), the best option is all to often to simply stand there and duke it out.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

no. i strongly disagree.
the different health values are good, and working as intended.
if anything, they serve as a difficulty check for the professions.

easy mode – High (Warrior, Necromancer) – 18.372 HP
normal mode – Medium (Ranger, Engineer, Mesmer) – 15.082 HP
hard mode – Low (Thief, Guardian, Elementalist) – 10.805 HP

i firmly believe that the base health values are a core game play mechanic and should not be tampered with, ever.

You need to switch Guardians to Easy mode and Necromancer to Hard mode (not talking condition necro cause there are more specs than that). Necromancer has literally no defensive options after the nerf Death Shroud got a while back while guardians have a ton of “save me” options throughout an entire fight. Defense abilities —→ health.

Paulie.6215:

Samhayn.2385:

Paulie.6215:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

…so why should one condition class be punished and the others ignored?

Because the necro as a “condition class” can approach 40k ups with one key press.

40k health and can be perma ccd to death.

Spec better? Not sure what else to tell you.

All classes can be “perma ccd to death” necro isn’t special in this regard. 40k hp makes it way easier to survive.

Death shroud should get a 50% reduction in hp or have a 1 min cool down.

Can we also propose a 1min cool down on every other class mechanic? 1min before you can switch attunements sounds nice I think…

Azzer.8137:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

no. i strongly disagree.
the different health values are good, and working as intended.
if anything, they serve as a difficulty check for the professions.

easy mode – High (Warrior, Necromancer) – 18.372 HP
normal mode – Medium (Ranger, Engineer, Mesmer) – 15.082 HP
hard mode – Low (Thief, Guardian, Elementalist) – 10.805 HP

i firmly believe that the base health values are a core game play mechanic and should not be tampered with, ever.

You need to switch Guardians to Easy mode and Necromancer to Hard mode (not talking condition necro cause there are more specs than that). Necromancer has literally no defensive options after the nerf Death Shroud got a while back while guardians have a ton of “save me” options throughout an entire fight. Defense abilities —-> health.

all those hardmode minion masters at spvp lol

tom.7468:

jihm.2315:

tom.7468:

jihm.2315:

i wouldnt mind seeing some nerf on guardian for base HP tradeoff for start,
there HP difference with warrior is a mockery, guardian is a “soldier” class like warrior its unacceptable to have almost the half HP, i dont want to comment on class power comparsion people have said it a million times on the forums and its pretty obvious by now.

Guardian used to have the same hp as warrior but arenanet figured they was too strong and nerfed it. You can always just make a warrior or necromancer if you want high hp thats one of the pros of playing those. If all was the same and equally good at everything there would be no point of professions.

then now that warriors are too strong they should drop there hp to the ground aswell

For a year warriors was considered a free kill the only thing making them survive for more than 5 seconds against conditions is the regen.
Then guardian can hold a point against 3 players and survive way longer than warrior.

except it turns out the 1 year of warrior free kills was a learn to play issue

No one used hammer at all nor sword

90% warriors ran greatsword with the trait that gave might on crit with greatsword and they all ran serker glass cannons

heck people dint even use leaps or dashes without auto target as a run away mechanic

Bearhugger.4326:

Warriors have high health, high armor and high regen because they have no access to aegis and protection outside of runes and allies. They take more damage than say a guardian but they regen more to make up for it.

It is fine them having High health, High Armor or High Regen, Having them ALL on a class that has so many skills that can make them immune to damage as well as STILL being able to deal damage is what is wrong.

Then you get into the insane broken mobility they have, the insane CC ability that the Hammer has. there is a reason why there are Warrior only dungeon speed runs and everything They are best in PvE, Best in WvW both Solo and in Zergs they are just to strong at every aspect.

Honestly, the only three professions i feel should be moved around is
Mesmer down to Low HP
Ranger to High HP (to offset their lower DPS thanks to pets)
Thief to Medium HP (at the cost of stealth only stacking twice)

jihm.2315:

all those hardmode minion masters at spvp lol

If you’re dying to newb minion masters in spvp, I’ve got some bad news for ya jihm…

Prysin.8542:

Honestly, the only three professions i feel should be moved around is
Mesmer down to Low HP
Ranger to High HP (to offset their lower DPS thanks to pets)
Thief to Medium HP (at the cost of stealth only stacking twice)

I agree with Mesmer, no idea about Ranger as i dont play one but i think Thief should stay Low tier and Ele moved up to medium due to all the nerfs to damage they have gotten the fact they have no stealth and can easily be 2shot. Warriors need to lose 2-3k health as well in my opinion

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Prysin.8542:

Honestly, the only three professions i feel should be moved around is
Mesmer down to Low HP
Ranger to High HP (to offset their lower DPS thanks to pets)
Thief to Medium HP (at the cost of stealth only stacking twice)

I agree with Mesmer, no idea about Ranger as i dont play one but i think Thief should stay Low tier and Ele moved up to medium due to all the nerfs to damage they have gotten the fact they have no stealth and can easily be 2shot. Warriors need to lose 2-3k health as well in my opinion

From a PvP/WvW perspective, I am really baffled that people quite frequently suggest moving Mesmers down to the lower health tier. I feel that there might be a bias when it comes to the survivability of Mesmers because of certain popular PU builds or old fashioned tanky phantasm builds.

Those builds do not represent the general survivability of the class. Mesmers lack innate recovery or defense mechanics to compensate a low health pool. They have to invest a lot to gain sustain. Generally, Mesmers neither have the heals and boons of an Elementalist or Guardian, nor do they have stealth on demand as Thieves do. Mesmers also remain very vulnerable to conditions. If their health is gone, it is gone for good. While clones are an interesting mechanic, they won’t cut it defense-wise. Clones do not matter in a PvE environment and rarely fool anyone in PvP or WvW. I doubt that Mesmers would be enjoyable to play if they were moved to the lower health tier.

I agree that Elementalists could be moved up a tier. However, I believe that this would just bandage certain symptoms of the class rather than fixing the real issues of the class, its mechanic and the dependence on certain attunments.

I also believe that Warriors should stay in the high health tier because of the class theme. However, Warrior players need to wrap their head around the fact that you actually have to sacrifice points on one side to gain something on the other side. Picking a heal and spending 15-20 points is not a high investment. There will have to be nerfs of some kind. Right know, it still feels that Warriors have it a lot easier to maintain a high damage with high survivability enhanced by either high mobility or CC in one build. I am not saying they can have it all because it is not true. But it is easy get a lot for a low investment when compared to other classes.

From a PvE perspective, I don’t see the health pools being such a big issue that they should be change. It might appear unfair that certain classes are downed more easily. But that is how they are designed. However, the PvE gameplay could benefit from less one-hit-kill bosses in general. For example, mechanics which frequently deal a small to medium amount of damage without the possibility of bursting down enemies would encourage running supportive builds instead of all zerker.

Xaylin.1860:

From a PvP/WvW perspective, I am really baffled that people quite frequently suggest moving Mesmers down to the lower health tier. I feel that there might be a bias when it comes to the survivability of Mesmers because of certain popular PU builds or old fashioned tanky phantasm builds.

I have a level 80 Mesmer, no Bias here. The problem with Mesmer along with Warrior, Thief and even Engineer to an extent is that they don’t need to use any defensive gear as they are simply defensive enough even if they go FULL zerker thanks to the Mechanics and skills they have.

Thief = Stealth, Mobility, High Burst, Boons

Mesmer = Stealth, Clones, Invul, combat Movement, Boons (lots of them), Stuns, Interrupts, Knockbacks, High burst

Warriors = Movement (in and out of combat), High health, high armor, Invuls, Immunities, Blocks, Insane Regen

Engineer = Stealth, Healing, Movement (in and out of combat), Stuns, Interrupts, Poison, Boons

Though i think Engineer is in the right spot health wise, same with Thief. Mesmer and Warrior simply have to much when you look at what the class offers them as well.

Axialbloom.8109:

It is very evident from the marionette: warriors shrug off the sword hit, etc while elementalists are downed by it.

Dat PvE berserker gear!

Prysin.8542:

Honestly, the only three professions i feel should be moved around is
Mesmer down to Low HP
Ranger to High HP (to offset their lower DPS thanks to pets)
Thief to Medium HP (at the cost of stealth only stacking twice)

It’s like people think stealth is godly and brings immortality or something…
The fact that people use it, to survive, is due to how you can’t (or you can do a half kitten job) survive without it…. if there was some balance that allowed you to survive outside of stealth just as well as (supposedly) inside of stealth… Right now, there really isn’t a balance between surviving with stealth or without it…
Give medium HP to a thief while only allowing to stack stealth twice… LOL, you really hate the class don’t you?

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I have a level 80 Mesmer, no Bias here. The problem with Mesmer along with Warrior, Thief and even Engineer to an extent is that they don’t need to use any defensive gear as they are simply defensive enough even if they go FULL zerker thanks to the Mechanics and skills they have.

Thief = Stealth, Mobility, High Burst, Boons

…

Wait… what? “Simply defensive”, “High Burst” is defensive?… What?
The only thing i can think of what you’re tying to imply is… They use their high burst to kill the target so they don’t get hurt too much… Is that what you’re trying to get at here?
Possibly the only reason to go full zerker as a thief is if you go full tank (can there be such a thing?) your damage will be that of a critter and if you go anywhere in between zerker and full tank you will see a good decline in your damage but a very little (if any) increase in survivability. Essentially you will be dropping dead just as if you had zerker on but doing less damage then in a zerker… (For reference I’m mainly talking about WvW, as in sPvP I run condi p/d).

Boons? can you give me a list? Swiftness, and might? What else? Aegis? Protection?
Does might count into your “High Burst”… are you trying to say the same thing with it?

Stealth is probably the only valid thing there in terms of their defensive mechanics…
Maybe mobility depending on what you mean by it too…

@Zero Day
Thief stealth is way too long. Currently, a thief can with minimum effort, stay invisible forever. I cannot count the number of times i have been running in WvW, just to get backstabbed out of nowhere, even when i were paying attention to my surroundings, looking out for things, thieves can still be following 20 steps behind you, just waiting to make a move. They have it far too easy in terms of picking their fights. Even if they pick their fights poorly, they have almost no penalty for it, as in most cases they will be able to run away easily, and return at their own leisure.

If we gave thieves more health and reduced stealth stacking, to only stack twice, the thief would at most be able to stealth about 10 seconds. 10 seconds is a VERY long time to be invisible. More then enough to get away, way more then enough to sneak up on people. The only difference is that instead of being 100% invisible, you would be possible to spot 2-3000 range away before you can strike. Allowing others to get some sort of notice.
It is not fair, that every profession but one, can be spotted and made preparations against. The only way to prepare against thieves is to spam line of warding/ranger traps/thief traps/mines. Now, considering that to set up a “early warning system” will put any profession at a severe disadvantage in battle, as they would have skills on cooldown, makes it incredibly unfair.
A thief can close a distance of 2400 in less then 6 seconds if you got a target. That means you can be in visible range, and suddenly in the enemies face, all while invisible. The only difference between now and then, is that there is a slight chance that the enemy COULD prepare. It also works in favor of thieves as they can just tell people to stop moaning about stealth and pay attention to their surroundings.

In combat, your stealth would last about 7-9 seconds depending on the skills you use. That is still more then enough time to set up a backstab or clear conditions.

If thief health is raised, due to stealth, dodges and shadow-steps you would pretty much have the same tankyness as any BM bunker ranger going Sword Dagger evasion build. Now, it means you can be killed, it means you aren’t godlike, but it also means you do not need to rely 100% on stealth.
It would open up for use of other mechanics, such as dedicated steal builds, or further developing Venomshare to be even more supportive. It would also give devs a bit of leway in terms of your damage. It would help in PvE, as you wouldn’t be THAT squishy, yet you can still rely on your secondary mechanic (stealth) to carry you.

As for stealth damaging mesmers survivability… well they only got 3 reliable ways to gaining stealth, and the two most used ones (veil and mass invis) wouldnt be nerfed that much.

GvG would possibly take a hit as you would be limited to 2 veils, the 3rd wouldnt stack. But then again, 12 seconds of stealth is more then enough to get things done.

@Prysin
Hey, goodluck with that. By all means let them make that change. I would be curious to see what happens… if you do turn out to be correct and nothing really gets worse, awesome, fixed the stealth spamming issue.

Zero Day.2594:

Wait… what? “Simply defensive”, “High Burst” is defensive?… What?
The only thing i can think of what you’re tying to imply is… They use their high burst to kill the target so they don’t get hurt too much… Is that what you’re trying to get at here?
Possibly the only reason to go full zerker as a thief is if you go full tank (can there be such a thing?) your damage will be that of a critter and if you go anywhere in between zerker and full tank you will see a good decline in your damage but a very little (if any) increase in survivability. Essentially you will be dropping dead just as if you had zerker on but doing less damage then in a zerker… (For reference I’m mainly talking about WvW, as in sPvP I run condi p/d).

Boons? can you give me a list? Swiftness, and might? What else? Aegis? Protection?
Does might count into your “High Burst”… are you trying to say the same thing with it?

Stealth is probably the only valid thing there in terms of their defensive mechanics…
Maybe mobility depending on what you mean by it too…

You can’t kill someone if you are dead. Thief burst (very safe from stealth) is very good at that. Any boon is good for you, they all work in different ways. Plus, they can steal other peoples boons as well, that works BOTH ways seeing as it removes them from the target thus making them weaker and giving them to you making you stronger.

Of course it is not as strong as the stealth they have, which is why i didnt put it at the top but it is there. Of course Stealth is top of the list when it comes to defense.

I would count boons as being good defense on any class that has access to them. Of course their are better ones but they are all very useful.

ODB.6891:

They just announced that they were nerfing vigor/dodge on multiple low hp classes…which seems counter intuitive to me. That pretty much says that they want the low hp classes to suffer.

And you’re proposing the exact opposite. How likely would you think your idea happening is, given that? :P

But seriously, Vitality would be a stat worth removing in your system. As would Toughness be, as would – in fact – Healing Power be (because you need to be able to heal 1 full percentual attack extra for it to be worth anything).

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I believe the problem with elementalists and their sustain is that, with the high skill ceiling of elementalists, the top tier players are able to string together all of their boons and heals really efficiently. Elementalists end up being balanced around that skill level, and the casual elementalist gets shafted because of it.

The obvious solution to that problem is, unfortunately, not a very satisfying one. Basically it involves reducing the skill ceiling by locking attunements and buffing their individual actions in them. This, of course, kills the diversity of the elementalist, so it is less than ideal.

Anyway, one of the reasons why Elementalists have low HP is because of how well they could originally do everything. Eles have a lot of AoE damage and boon support, and also they had a lot of versatility and mobility. In sPVP this doesn’t show up much, but in group battles in WvW the elementalist is a frightening force to be reckoned with. I’ve seen entire zergs slaughtered in static fields and meteor showers at choke points.

Two flaws with this. First, as I mentioned above, all of their mobility and sustain is nerfed due to how effective they can potentially be. Second, all of their AoE skills (and many of their attacks for that matter) have long delays with extremely visible cues, meaning that actually hitting with any of these high damaging skills is nigh impossible. It is this large delay that made me reroll the ele when I first started playing the game. Sure, I get a bunch of big damage and flashy effects, but what good are they when opponents can just casually walk out of the way?

I don’t know about making any changes to HP tiers. Guardians and thieves are intimidating enough with just 10k base HP. If anything, I’d rather just buff Eles to be more frightening than increase their HP but leave them kitten in the end. The HP tiers themselves are set around the downed state, and it is important to note that GW2 is assumed to be a team based game. Because of this, high damage bursts from enemies are assumed to be easily mitigated by having teammates rez you from the down state.

Elementalists are bad in high level play as much as in low level play. They just flat out suck in any competitive environment at any level.

And, by the way, in PvP you usually don’t even bother to ress or to stomp an ele. A couple of AoE skills on the corpse are enough to kill him from downed state and to out-perform the ress healing.

ODB.6891:

They just announced that they were nerfing vigor/dodge on multiple low hp classes…which seems counter intuitive to me. That pretty much says that they want the low hp classes to suffer.

You sound shocked. They don’t play any of them classes – why would they care? As long as Warrior stays top of the pile that’s all they want. No one else find it odd that the class the Devs main just happens to be the one that is the most broken in the game?

I have absolutely no idea what was going through ANet’s minds with a 70% health difference between the lowest and highest classes…in a game where the tank/heal/dps trinity isn’t supposed to exist.

Chaba.5410:

Axialbloom.8109:

It is very evident from the marionette: warriors shrug off the sword hit, etc while elementalists are downed by it.

Dat PvE berserker gear!

So warriors are allowed full berserker gear and spec, but eles have to go full bunker? Thanks for highlighting the problem for us.

Ele’s got quite a bit of defensive utility in PvE. Sure zerker may prove hard to use at high level PvE/endgame content, but if using the right weapons and the right attunement, you can get away quite nicely.
Scepter dagger allows for some defensive play, and some hefty DPS. Using cantrips and glyphs you can increase your survivability by a lot. Some conjurations, such as the hammer and icebow give you even more survivability as the utility they offer can allow you to retire to a less dangerous spot. Sure some professions will forever have a harder time then others, that is how any MMO game is, with or without the trinity balance system.

Prysin.8542:

Ele’s got quite a bit of defensive utility in PvE. Sure zerker may prove hard to use at high level PvE/endgame content, but if using the right weapons and the right attunement, you can get away quite nicely.
Scepter dagger allows for some defensive play, and some hefty DPS. Using cantrips and glyphs you can increase your survivability by a lot. Some conjurations, such as the hammer and icebow give you even more survivability as the utility they offer can allow you to retire to a less dangerous spot. Sure some professions will forever have a harder time then others, that is how any MMO game is, with or without the trinity balance system.

You mean trait + slot skills for full survivability and sacrifice tons of damage? Yeah every class has that option, except that some classes like Warrior, Mesmer and Guardian can get away with full zerker+ damage traits/slots and survive with class mechanics or base stats alone.
If Ele’s trait/slot for damage + wear full zerker they get insta-killed for miss-timing a single dodge, or insta-killed during corner/wall stacking. Having 11k health + lowest armor is not even funny.

I recall playing Mage back in WoW and how many sheer survivability tools I had at my disposal…Blink to move easily around danger zones, shields/wards to absorb damage, frost spells to AoE freeze and kite stuff, Invisibility to leave combat, etc. A squishy class but equipped with tons of versatile tools, now THAT was a mage class.

Elementalist meanwhile is a joke.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Zero Day.2594:

Wait… what? “Simply defensive”, “High Burst” is defensive?… What?
The only thing i can think of what you’re tying to imply is… They use their high burst to kill the target so they don’t get hurt too much… Is that what you’re trying to get at here?
Possibly the only reason to go full zerker as a thief is if you go full tank (can there be such a thing?) your damage will be that of a critter and if you go anywhere in between zerker and full tank you will see a good decline in your damage but a very little (if any) increase in survivability. Essentially you will be dropping dead just as if you had zerker on but doing less damage then in a zerker… (For reference I’m mainly talking about WvW, as in sPvP I run condi p/d).

Boons? can you give me a list? Swiftness, and might? What else? Aegis? Protection?
Does might count into your “High Burst”… are you trying to say the same thing with it?

Stealth is probably the only valid thing there in terms of their defensive mechanics…
Maybe mobility depending on what you mean by it too…

You can’t kill someone if you are dead. Thief burst (very safe from stealth) is very good at that. Any boon is good for you, they all work in different ways. Plus, they can steal other peoples boons as well, that works BOTH ways seeing as it removes them from the target thus making them weaker and giving them to you making you stronger.

Of course it is not as strong as the stealth they have, which is why i didnt put it at the top but it is there. Of course Stealth is top of the list when it comes to defense.

I would count boons as being good defense on any class that has access to them. Of course their are better ones but they are all very useful.

Access to boons… can you please list how and which boons the thief has access to? Please.
You’re trying to justify everything by saying “stealth”… good job.

Still fail to see how:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

… they don’t need to use any defensive gear as they are simply defensive enough even if they go FULL zerker thanks to the Mechanics and skills they have.

Thief = Stealth, Mobility, High Burst, Boons

High burst is implied to be a defensive mechanic… How? explain that please?

Zero Day.2594:

Access to boons… can you please list how and which boons the thief has access to? Please.
You’re trying to justify everything by saying “stealth”… good job.

Still fail to see how:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

… they don’t need to use any defensive gear as they are simply defensive enough even if they go FULL zerker thanks to the Mechanics and skills they have.

Thief = Stealth, Mobility, High Burst, Boons

High burst is implied to be a defensive mechanic… How? explain that please?

Regen, Haste, Quickness, Stability, Swiftness, Might, Vigor, Fury. They can also steal that item (Mesmers i think) that steals Boons as well. So sure while they don’t have a huge amount of access to them, they still have a decent amount considering they have Stealth, Blinks, Evades and such as well.

High burst can be a defensive mechanic. It forces people onto the defenisve.

Axialbloom.8109:

Chaba.5410:

Axialbloom.8109:

It is very evident from the marionette: warriors shrug off the sword hit, etc while elementalists are downed by it.

Dat PvE berserker gear!

So warriors are allowed full berserker gear and spec, but eles have to go full bunker? Thanks for highlighting the problem for us.

Like the full zerk warriors who spend more time running than killing which seems to generate qq in this forum? Yep. Good problem to have.

Chaba.5410:

Axialbloom.8109:

Chaba.5410:

Axialbloom.8109:

It is very evident from the marionette: warriors shrug off the sword hit, etc while elementalists are downed by it.

Dat PvE berserker gear!

So warriors are allowed full berserker gear and spec, but eles have to go full bunker? Thanks for highlighting the problem for us.

Like the full zerk warriors who spend more time running than killing which seems to generate qq in this forum? Yep. Good problem to have.

Thanks for that completely irrelevant comment.

Axialbloom.8109:

Chaba.5410:

Axialbloom.8109:

Chaba.5410:

Axialbloom.8109:

It is very evident from the marionette: warriors shrug off the sword hit, etc while elementalists are downed by it.

Dat PvE berserker gear!

So warriors are allowed full berserker gear and spec, but eles have to go full bunker? Thanks for highlighting the problem for us.

Like the full zerk warriors who spend more time running than killing which seems to generate qq in this forum? Yep. Good problem to have.

Thanks for that completely irrelevant comment.

No problem. Irrelevant topic about pve meta deserves equally irrelevant responses. Only happy to help you.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Zero Day.2594:

Access to boons… can you please list how and which boons the thief has access to? Please.
You’re trying to justify everything by saying “stealth”… good job.

Still fail to see how:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

… they don’t need to use any defensive gear as they are simply defensive enough even if they go FULL zerker thanks to the Mechanics and skills they have.

Thief = Stealth, Mobility, High Burst, Boons

High burst is implied to be a defensive mechanic… How? explain that please?

Regen, Haste, Quickness, Stability, Swiftness, Might, Vigor, Fury. They can also steal that item (Mesmers i think) that steals Boons as well. So sure while they don’t have a huge amount of access to them, they still have a decent amount considering they have Stealth, Blinks, Evades and such as well.

Again trying to justify it by mentioning stealth…
Thanks for the list, can you provide ways in which the thief can acquire those boons?

Axialbloom.8109:

High burst can be a defensive mechanic. It forces people onto the defenisve.

Yeah kind of valid, but you have to be on the offensive, rather then defensive to do high burst…
it’s kinda like “i will support you, by killing everything that can harm you”

Wouldn’t mind the bonus HP for capping at two stacks of stealth. Actually, with the new change coming that will nerf most thieves’ damage by 10%, I don’t see much harm. That bonus could really help us seeing as that will drastically affect viability and force us into staying in fights longer.

A previous suggestion I had was to simply increase stealth duration for all of the skills, but have revealed be an override regardless of whether or not you enter stealth – a pre-revealed debuff times out which lasts the duration of the stealth skill and then applies revealed at the end of the skill, meaning permastealth no longer exists and there could only be a fixed ratio of stealth time : revealed time, while also making the stealth skills in themselves a little more useful with proper situational use instead of just a permanent solution to being unseen.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I have a level 80 Mesmer, no Bias here. The problem with Mesmer along with Warrior, Thief and even Engineer to an extent is that they don’t need to use any defensive gear as they are simply defensive enough even if they go FULL zerker thanks to the Mechanics and skills they have.

Thief = Stealth, Mobility, High Burst, Boons

Mesmer = Stealth, Clones, Invul, combat Movement, Boons (lots of them), Stuns, Interrupts, Knockbacks, High burst

Warriors = Movement (in and out of combat), High health, high armor, Invuls, Immunities, Blocks, Insane Regen

Engineer = Stealth, Healing, Movement (in and out of combat), Stuns, Interrupts, Poison, Boons

Though i think Engineer is in the right spot health wise, same with Thief. Mesmer and Warrior simply have to much when you look at what the class offers them as well.

I wasn’t talking about you specifically. But having a level 80 class doesn’t make you unbiased at all. For example, a considerable amount of stealth requires a high investment in form of specific weapon, utility and trait choices (Torch, Decoy, MI, 30 Chaos, probably 20 Domination). This would be a PU build and is not innate to other builds (bias). This also means that you will have less interrupts because you can’t use a Pistol (Stun), Focus (Pull) or Offhand Sword (Daze). Another example are boons. Outside from PU builds the access to boons also is rather shallow and random (bias again).

Without judging the quality of the list you provided you certainly make it sound like Mesmers get it all at once. This is not the case. While Mesmers do have nice set of tools, only few of them are innate (Clones, F4). You have to decide what to get and make compromises (e.g. stealth vs. interrupt or damage/burst vs. boons). Lowering the base health of Mesmers will force them into defensive gear because the innate or easy-to-get defensive mechanics are weaker than most people think.

3 pages and nobody came up with EHP? Goood troll bait, gooooood.
eatspopcorn.gif
Pure health doesn’t solve every problem. Sure, more hp gives more room for error in every game mode, but armor affects the incoming damage noticeably (Harper: Dolyak signet is ~7% damage reduction bonus) or when you push one button and negate infinte amount of damage (Paulie: See? It’s more than 40k, nerf guardians!) or push another and let the poor mob kill itself (Feedback? Anyone?).
Or just think about Skyhammer, everyones favourite spvp map. 1 knockback and you can stick your hp pool in your kitten …
Sooo can we close this pointless thread, please?

ps: I enjoy the rage here, it’s just pointless.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

style.6173:

Increase the lowest 3 by 2k, decrease the highest 2 by 2k and it would be fine.

The problem with that is – Thief have low damage but insane burst potential as well as stealth. Now the way Ele were they deserved the low health but after having so many nerfs i feel they are the only “low” health class that needs it to be buffed to counter all the nerfs they have received

Eles have a much better heal potential though. As for burst, I argue that a GC mesmer could put out as much damage as any class.