Guild Wars 2

Shortly, it feels broken how powerful torment currently is against thieves,
Sword-offhand warrior mainly, since torment is easier to counter on other classes.

Example:
For instance, warriors sword offhand can apply 5 stacks of 12 second torment on a
15 sec cd. To cleanse it we either need 10 points in shadow arts, shadowstep (50sec cd) or sword mainhand, Signet of Agility, which are all costly alternatives, and doesn’t always do the job since warriors are in most cases able to apply Cripple, Immobilize, Burn and Bleed next to torment if they run LB + S/S..

So in most cases, getting hit by a single impale results in a loss of 5k health if I’m standing on the same spot letting the warrior freely hit me, or if I blow cds and initiative teleporting away without moving and waiting for the torment to wear off, although the warrior is able to dish out another impale straight after the first one wears off. And if I’m moving and trying combat the warrior it results in a loss of ~11k health, which is quite a lot for a 15k health pool.

Possible fixes:

1. Simply some better way to cleanse it, Hide in Shadows and Pain Response are both good candidates, and seem intended to remove damaging conditions.
2. Increase thief health pool.
3. Reduce the duration of torment on every skill which possesses that long duration.

They really need to nerf +40%/-40% Condition duration food and reduce the ability to stack various different types of Conditions.

But the upcoming change to Sigils is just going to exasperate the issue rather than mitigate it.

Combine that with the changes to Crit-Damage and it’s just going to get worse.

Thieves really need some of their traits reworked in light of condition spam. Fleet Foot for example should remove one of all types of Conditions on dodge, not just Cripple and Weakness

Dee Jay.2460:

They really need to nerf +40%/-40% Condition duration food and reduce the ability to stack various different types of Conditions.

But the upcoming change to Sigils is just going to exasperate the issue rather than mitigate it.

Combine that with the changes to Crit-Damage and it’s just going to get worse.

Thieves really need some of their traits reworked in light of condition spam. Fleet Foot for example should remove one of all types of Conditions on dodge, not just Cripple and Weakness

Agreed to that, might be mistaken but isn’t fleet food also triggered while not having any conditions on you?

My biggest problems with torment has been in sPvP and tPvP, can’t even imagine the damage it would cause in WvW with cond duration food + higher cond dmg.
And as the strawberry on top of the cream, we cause little to no harm to them, with our burst barely taking away 1/3 of their health pool, which they regenerate quickly with healing signet and adrenal health while we are pretty much a 1 button kill to them.

I think the issue is how low is torment on condi cleanse priority… before torment, your condi cleanse will remove bleeds, cripple etc but torment is usually the last one to go and it hurts the most actually, especially the class that is build around moving around

Speaking of torment and thus impale… Can we at least make impale apply the 5 stacks outright? Instead of this stupid lead up to the full damage thing. At least if it was a full 5 stacks straight up you could cleanse it effectively.

First things first, I think Anet forgot to add torment to the list of condis Hide in Shadows removes. Then we’ll talk…

Hammerguard.9834:

First things first, I think Anet forgot to add torment to the list of condis Hide in Shadows removes. Then we’ll talk…

It was asked and reported as a bug already. And the answer from Anet is that it’s working as expected.

Well they should clearly rethink that. I thought hide in shadows intention was to remove all dot damage and give some regen. Torment is a dot… Remove it.

No to any thief buffs. The classdesign is hilarious and inconsequent enough.

The Condition System is just flawed with the Condi removal Skilsl that can heal all conditions, that you can’t choose the Condition out, which you want to heal, it always just heals the conditiln, that you received first.

Players need to be able to choose, which condition should be cured, if you have multiple conditions on you, so that the palyer can decide over it, which condition he/she wants to cure first.
This is nothing, that a silly mechanic should decide over for the player.

SO say I’m a Thief and I suffer on Burning, Bleeding, and Torment and I use the Signet of agility to clean one of those 3 conditions, I’d be able to choose the Condition which shoudl get cleansed by clicking on the Condition Symbols to “mark” the condition as the one that should be cleansed when using the next condition removal skill that can cleanse just all conditions.

And that could be just done by making for example a simply right click onto the Condition Symbol to makr it that way as the priorized Condition that should get cured.

In brief, give players more decision power over which conditions shoudl be cured when you use an all condition removal skill.

@foreposter,: your comment is ridiculous, it makes you look like somebody, who just wants to see that class getting death nerfed.
in fact, Anet has so far nerfed the thief with mostly every single balance patch, while most other classes got always buffed.
Its time that the thief gets finally some buffs too, especially among its traits. So much useless and underpowered traits or simply said alot of traits there, that should get merged to make place for some new more useful traits.

vanensang.1389:

No to any thief buffs. The classdesign is hilarious and inconsequent enough.

While dealing 80% of someone’s healthpool as damage with 1 single button, with a class with 20k hp, 3.2k+ armor and loads of regen, on a 15 second cd isn’t.. It’s broken.

I’m not here because I seek any buffs to thief, I’m here because the issue I’m adressing is gamebreaking. I believe a fix to this issue in particular wouldn’t be a buff, it would be something to create balance at a place where balance doesn’t exist.

And I agree that the torment buildup of Impale should be faster to make it more bursty against players with cond removal over time, but making it all instant would at the same time be a nerf since it would be easier to cleanse.

The lack of torment removal on Thief has irritated me ever since they added it into the game, since the heal skills are very particular with condition removal. And since Torment is a DoT that does greater damage if you’re moving (thereby discouraging movement), I think it would fit within the realm of either Hide in Shadows or Withdraw.

Torment is fine against thiefs. It is suppose to be anti mobile professions.

Dee Jay.2460:

They really need to nerf +40%/-40% Condition duration food and reduce the ability to stack various different types of Conditions.

But the upcoming change to Sigils is just going to exasperate the issue rather than mitigate it.

Combine that with the changes to Crit-Damage and it’s just going to get worse.

Thieves really need some of their traits reworked in light of condition spam. Fleet Foot for example should remove one of all types of Conditions on dodge, not just Cripple and Weakness

I agree thieves need a better counter to torment, and that the +-40% condition stats needs to go. The Crit-Damage gain is completely justified as crit damage gives more than other stats on trinkets, which simply doesn’t make since. In PvP crit damage isn’t changing. The point I disagree with is that their should be less condition diversity. If you want a class to have 1 or 2 conditions to do damage with all condition cleanses would need to be removed so that condition builds could do damage. That has no counterplay and is a ridiculous suggestion in general.

aspirine.6852:

Torment is fine against thiefs. It is suppose to be anti mobile professions.

Is it anti-warrior then? Many times I cba to even bother looking at conditions on my warrior, they just disappear with my general rotation.

And while playing thief if I trade everything for damage, how come I can’t even take these warriors down to 40% blowing several 40+ sec cooldowns and they do nothing to counter me.

While they down me with a 15 sec cooldown ability, balance at its finest..
Feels completely broken to fight them.

I agree that torment should be strong against mobility, but by no means it should be a 1 button kill and nearly uncounterable.

Well most warriors run with -40 food, traited for low conditions and even with runes. It’s hard to compare a frontliner to a sneaky class like thief in general. Thief in general has the most OP ability so I dont really feel sorry for thiefs and there lack of condition removal.

Tormet in general is pretty riddicolous. Nr2 on my Mesmers Scepter does 11k damage…

So you’re getting rekt by conditions because you didn’t bring any condition removal?

That sounds like it’s WaI to me. If it bothers you so much you can always use Shadow Return or Shadow’s Embrace.

@Sizzle: As I wrote, there’s more counterplay to avoiding torment from other classes having access to torment, the problem is warriors impale. And my main idea is not to bring that one down. I would rather see thieves receive some ways to deal with it.

@Brutal: That’s not the case here, as I described, the cost to clear it or deal with it is way more expensive than it is for the warrior to reapply it, and with every other lethal condition flying around it’s not even certain that you will get to the torment stacks with your condiclear.

Here you can find some numbers: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQFgsCFPMRBEkCNsKOKSilA-TgAAzCpIaS1krJTTymsNB

Hide in Shadows has a 30 second cd, the warrior is still able to get nearly 2 full impales off before the thief is able to pull off another HiS.

And fyi, I wouldn’t take the time to look from several perspectives if I just played thief,
I know very well that changing the ability on warrior would break other things.

Sizzle Hint.1820:

Tormet in general is pretty riddicolous. Nr2 on my Mesmers Scepter does 11k damage…

You’d do 14k with 5 stacks of bleeding? O.o

torment would be much better with bigger difference between normal dmg and dmg while moving and with much shorter duration

stay still for 2-3 sec or “die” from condi dmg

pierwola.9602:

torment would be much better with bigger difference between normal dmg and dmg while moving and with much shorter duration

stay still for 2-3 sec or “die” from condi dmg

Then it might as well be an immobilize, since there are limited ways to cleanse it.

:/ Don’t see why it wasn’t added to Hide in Shadows or Withdraw (considering it “Cures immobilized, chilled, and crippled.” so i guess torment would sort of fit in there too)

Torment was a major fail… The number of times I’ve actually stopped moving to reduce the damage are near zero.

Should be -50% damage AND duration if you stop moving

stof.9341:

Hammerguard.9834:

First things first, I think Anet forgot to add torment to the list of condis Hide in Shadows removes. Then we’ll talk…

It was asked and reported as a bug already. And the answer from Anet is that it’s working as expected.

In this case, it is something they should change.

style.6173:

In this case, it is something they should change.

You don’t need to convince me :p

hey I’m complaining about torment on a 15 second cooldown against a cheese condition based warrior (I have no condition removal), when I can easily play an equally cheese condition based thief and apply 2 stacks of torment on no cooldown and own the warrior.

Thiefs can condi cleans very quickly.

Carighan.6758:

Sizzle Hint.1820:

Tormet in general is pretty riddicolous. Nr2 on my Mesmers Scepter does 11k damage…

You’d do 14k with 5 stacks of bleeding? O.o

tooltip says 10,6k if moving half dmg if not moving (now lets be serious, Standing still in this game is suicide so its 10k or pretty kitten Close to it)

Thiefs will be whining if they cannot move, what else is new. Nerf stealth and we wil talk about nerfing torment. Talking about a minor condition when you have acces to the most OP ability in the game.

aspirine.6852:

Thiefs will be whining if they cannot move, what else is new. Nerf stealth and we wil talk about nerfing torment. Talking about a minor condition when you have acces to the most OP ability in the game.

Give buff our (thief) survivability and then we’ll talk about stealth nerf.

aspirine you are obviously a noob who has never played a thief, in pvp/wvw that torment stack does 5k untreated, people still complain about how we go in stealth and heal up using shadow rejuvenation and other traits in shadow arts. Did you know that a thief has around 15k hp? Did you also know that the warrior can apply torment to us if there first one hits, the rest will still hit? that sword 4 is just super op, along with long bow, making it impossible to actually kill a good warrior.

Dark FQ.1038:

Thiefs can condi cleans very quickly.

No they can’t. They can cleanse consistently, yes, but not quickly (unless they use their heal or Lyssa Runes). Thieves get wrecked by condition bombing just as much as everybody else.

Even if a Thief puts down a Shadow Refuge he’s only removing one condition every 3 seconds. And that means he can’t actually be fighting anyone.

I’ll admit though that a small number of conditions (2-4) don’t really pose much of a threat to Thieves.

Sizzle Hint.1820:

tooltip says 10,6k if moving half dmg if not moving (now lets be serious, Standing still in this game is suicide so its 10k or pretty kitten Close to it)

Well then, Torment is doing it’s intended job. Apparently the target has to choose between standing still or taking major damage. I remember faintly that this was in the original description. :P

And yes, Torment is mostly a stronger bleed. But only mostly. With the amount of spam-cleansing going off, it’s not that difficult to remove it in many cases. It still works well in catching single targets, but then 1v1 balance is hardly ever something discussed in MMO development.

Does this hurt highwayman gameplay? Aye.
Was that probably part of the intent? Aye.

It also works the other way around. The best way to avoid highwayman is to not give in to the fight. Their raw damage output when you ignore them is usually rather low, they need the part where you stop and attack them.
Torment is a major source of damage if someone just tries to run away.

IchigoHatake.5098:

aspirine you are obviously a noob who has never played a thief, in pvp/wvw that torment stack does 5k untreated, people still complain about how we go in stealth and heal up using shadow rejuvenation and other traits in shadow arts. Did you know that a thief has around 15k hp? Did you also know that the warrior can apply torment to us if there first one hits, the rest will still hit? that sword 4 is just super op, along with long bow, making it impossible to actually kill a good warrior.

Rule number one in game discussion, if you do not agree call the other a noob……

Atleast you can go into stealth when you get hit by that torment stack, unlike many other professions. My thief has almost 20k, I do not care if you want to run without the health pool to deal with heavy condi damage. You do know that condi damage is the current meta in small fights do you……

aspirine.6852:

Rule number one in game discussion, if you do not agree call the other a noob……

Atleast you can go into stealth when you get hit by that torment stack, unlike many other professions. My thief has almost 20k, I do not care if you want to run without the health pool to deal with heavy condi damage. You do know that condi damage is the current meta in small fights do you……

How does going in stealth because I get hit by a stack of torment help the fight?
That you call stealth so kitten op, proves you know nothing about the class.

I’m not even touching the shadow arts traitline anymore, because I find something every other class has access to way more powerful; positioning and proper use of dodges combined with skillful use of teleports and mobility.

And also since you brought it up:

20k hp on a thief.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQBQCZrQF29AAAAAA-jExApvioxqXwUmER1ujioVDA-w

20k hp on a warrior
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQFADCAMF+B-jUxAYLgkXR0Y1LYqSioa3BGA-w

The biggest difference is (except that the thief has 30 points in acrobatics and full valkyrie) that the warrior has the means to sustain this high health pool, thieves haven’t. So thieves not bumping that many points into vitality do it for a reason, it’s not optimal, you waste lots of dps for a healthpool you can’t sustain, having great dps and burst is a part of the thieves survival, if you hit like a wet noodle you are more likely to get bursted down quickly.

You’re going to get little sympathy as a thief… especially using words like “cheese build”.

Most of the player base (as in more than half) feel that the stealth mechanic is total cheese.

I totally agree that without stealth the thief has no survivability — but that’s a direct consequence of how stealth was designed and implemented in this game. To remove stealth is the same as reworking the entire thief profession.

As for cleaning torment: it’s really an anti-thief condition. You should not be able to clean it easily without making some sort of sacrifice. At the very least it should impact what utilities you take. At the worst you should have to sacrifice offensive traits for defensive ones. Otherwise your build decisions are meaningless and the game becomes junk.

juno.1840:

You’re going to get little sympathy as a thief… especially using words like “cheese build”.

Most of the player base (as in more than half) feel that the stealth mechanic is total cheese.

The entirety of the TPvP playerbase and any SPvPers who have more than an hour’s experience with the game understand that stealth is in no way cheese in PvP – It’s actually seen as fairly weak. Seeing as Ghost has said repeatedly his problem is in TPvP/SPvP, the other opinions do not matter.

As for cleaning torment: it’s really an anti-thief condition. You should not be able to clean it easily without making some sort of sacrifice. At the very least it should impact what utilities you take. At the worst you should have to sacrifice offensive traits for defensive ones. Otherwise your build decisions are meaningless and the game becomes junk.

Have you read literally anything Ghost has pointed out? The entirety of his point revolves around the fact that Even when you do specifically take utilities for cleansing conditions, the reapplication rate far exceeds the maximum amount of cleanses a thief can possibly take into a fight, even when choosing utilities specifically for their ability to cleanse conditions. Shadow’s embrace is not a viable solution because not everyone wants to play stealth, it does little against burst conditions, and stealth has a ton of drawbacks in capture point play – there are no other trait options for a thief that will handle torment, and only 1 other trait that will help against conditions in general (and poorly, I might add)

killahmayne.9518:

hey I’m complaining about torment on a 15 second cooldown against a cheese condition based warrior (I have no condition removal), when I can easily play an equally cheese condition based thief and apply 2 stacks of torment on no cooldown and own the warrior.

Please elaborate – I’m having trouble following your logic here.