Guild Wars 2

FACTORS THAT BALANCE RANGED COMBAT IN GW2:
Guild Wars 2 is a game that was designed to have players read their opponent’s skill cues. To this effect, ANet has designed several manners of reading an opponent such as:

• Instant-cast
• Post-cast delay
• Red circle
• Projectile
• On-caster visual cue
• Projectile that can be blocked, reflected or destroyed
• Gap-closer skill that requires the player to run or leap to a target/target area

However, despite these various cues, there are a many slew of skills in GW2 that forego 2 or more of the above balancing principles. These skills should be looked at critically and probably nerfed or functionally changed in order to bring them into line with how combat should appear in-game. Giving certain weapon sets or play-styles free hits for certain skill usage in a game where the “holy trinity” is absent is asking for trouble. Overpowered ranged skills in this game need to be wrangled back into obedience governed by the balancing principles listed above.

ON THE EXISTENCE OF “ENERGY” IN GW2
Cast-time is mana or “energy” in GW2. Longer cast-times on many powerful skills would clear up a lot of the generally messy combat that players often encounter in PvP and also cull the general tendency to spam skills on cool-down (or whenever you have enough initiative) which really is the biggest plague on GW2 PvP. Moreover, by removing spam skills from the game, clutch dodges and positioning would come back into the limelight as means of mitigating damage.

WHAT IS ATTRITION GAME-PLAY?
In the current meta-game, power is at a disadvantage because it has to actually hit a target while conditions just sort of float about thanks to spammy AoE skills, short cast-times, the ranged nature of most condition skills and passive procs. None of those have to constantly hit, the condition player just gets to use skills willy-nilly and all the while get in damage for free because of conditions. The system is flawed and should really be looked at critically.

Power-based damage should be king with conditions being a supplement. Conditions should only be a viable means of killing an opponent if the skills that apply those conditions are well telegraphed, have appropriately long activation times and long recharges. Attrition combat should be attained through movement control.

NEW TOOL-TIP: Delay

• Delay represents how long a skill takes affect after the initial cast-time is completed. Several skills already have post-cast delay periods between the end of a skill’s cast-time and when its effect actually takes place on the battlefield. Adding such a tool-tip to those skills would make it clearer how they work and legitimize the mechanic’s presence in-game. Furthermore, adding delays and visual cues to instant-activation skills that are already instant-activation and/or ranged skills that don’t use projectiles would make them more fair in terms of game-play by providing more counter-playability to opponents.

NECROMANCER CHANGES
Axe main-hand skills
[Rending Claws]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Cast out a whirling blade that inflicts vulnerability and returns to you.
• Damage: 159 (0.5)
• Vulnerability (1): 6 seconds
• Range: 900
  • Bright green-tinted [Vapor Blade] animation.

[Ghastly Claws]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 3¼ seconds
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Channel a cone of biting energy that slashes foes in a quick flurry of strikes. You gain life force with each strike. The final pulse removes up to 1 boon from foes that it strikes.
• Damage (9x): 909 (2.7)
• Duration: 3 seconds
• Strikes per second: 3
• Life Force per strike: 2%
• Range: 600
  • Strikes up to 5 foes.

Focus off-hand skills
[Spinal Shivers]: name changed to [Shivers of Dread].

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 3¼ seconds
• Recharge: 25 seconds
• Cast a chill over target area before unleashing a powerful curse that rips boons and lingers based how long you channeled it.
• Chill (4): 1 second
• Curse damage per pulse: 279 (0.75)
• Curse boon rip per pulse: 1
• Curse pulse: 1 second
• ¾ second channel: Curse duration: 1 second
• 1½ second channel: Curse duration: 2 seconds
• 2¼ second channel: Curse duration: 3 seconds
• Full channel: Curse duration: 4 seconds
• Radius: 240
• Range: 900
  • While channeling this skill, the area pulses chill (1 second) on the same schedule as Elementalist [Churning Earth].
  • [Shivers of Dread] shares the same pulse schedule as Elementalist [Lava Font].

Dagger main-hand skills
[Life Siphon]

• Now strikes foes in a cone.
• Now strikes up to 5 foes.
• Cast-time increased from 12 to 15 seconds.
• The final pulse now steals up to 1 boon from foes that it strikes.
• The final pulse now grants the Necromancer 2% life force for each foe that it strikes.

[Dark Pact]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1 second
• Recharge: 25 seconds
• Cast out spectral bonds toward your foe that immobilize and cripple foes in a line.
• Damage: 252 (0.75)
• Immobilized: 2 seconds
• Crippled: 3 seconds
• Range: 900
  • Now uses a bright green recolor of the Guardian [Zealot’s Embrace] projectile.
  • Piercing projectile.

Scepter main-hand skills
[Blood Curse]: Name changed to [Putrid Strike]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED; AUTO-ATTACK CHAIN REMOVED
• Cast-time: 1 second
• Cast out a bolt of energy that explodes over your target and adjacent foes, inflicting bleeding. If you strike a bleeding foe, you inflict torment. If you strike a tormented foe, you inflict vulnerability and gain life force.
• Damage: 279 (0.75)
• Damage radius: 120
• Bleeding (1): 3 seconds
• Torment (1): 3 seconds
• Vulnerability (1): 3 seconds
• Life force gained: 5%
• Range: 1200
  • [Putrid Strike] uses the Elementalist [Fireball] projectile speed and arc.
  • After-cast adjusted to 0.15 second.

[Grasping Dead]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Raise skeletal hands from the ground to cripple foes at the target location.
• Damage: 235 (0.7)
• Cripple: 5 seconds
• Bleeding (3): 5 seconds
• Delay: 1 second
• Duration: 2 seconds
• Radius: 240
• Range: 900
  • Uses a ¾-second after-cast animation delay (skill cannot be used while activating another skill).
  • For the first second, nothing happens. [Grasping Dead] produces a red circle with skeletal hands dotting the ground after the cast. After one second, the animated arms then trigger the grabbing animation, applying the skill’s damage and its conditions.

[Feast of Corruption]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 2¼ seconds
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Damage and hex your foe with feast of corruption. Whenever a foe under the effects of feast of corruption gains a condition, that foe is poisoned and allies near that foe are healed.
• Damage: (4x): 260 (0.2)
• Feast of Corruption (4): 10 seconds
• Poison: 2 seconds
• Healing: 84 (0.25)
• Range: 900
  • This skill applies 1 stack of a unique debuff called Feast of Corruption once every ½ second over its 1½-second channel. Each debuff lasts up to 10 seconds and cannot be removed with condition removal skills.
  • The effects of Feast of Corruption trigger whenever a foe suffers from a condition.
  • This skill chains into another skill upon cast activation: [Foul Feast].

[Foul Feast]

• Cast-time: ½ second
• Conjure teeth above target area. After 2 seconds, the teeth crash into he ground, damaging foes. This attack deals to a foe for unique each condition on that foe. You gain life force for each foe that you strike that is suffering from a condition.
• Delay: 2 seconds
• Damage: 386 (1.0)
• Life Force gained: 2%
• Additional damage per condition: 8%
• Radius: 240
• Range: 900
  • This skill hits up to 5 foes.

Staff skills
[Mark of Blood]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 8 seconds
• Inscribe a mark that pulses when triggered by a foe, bleeding foes and granting regeneration to allies.
• Delay: 1 second
• Damage (3x): 333 (0.3)
• Regeneration (3): 2 seconds
• Bleeding (1 stack per pulse; 3 pulses total): 6 seconds
• Duration: 2 seconds
• Radius: 180
• Range: 1200
  • Now uses a ½-second after-cast animation delay (skill cannot be used while disabled or while activating another skill). This is similar to how [Lava Font] functions.
• Added delay: 1 second
  • Now, when cast, only the visual mark will appear (no red/white circle), emitting a red mist (same particle effect as the dust created from Elementalist [Eruption]), and then lingers for 1 second. During this 1-second period, the mark cannot trigger. After 1 second, the mist will fade, a red/white circle will appear and the mark will trigger automatically as it does now.

[Chilblains]

• Cast-time reduced from ¾ second to 0.
• Now uses a ½-second after-cast animation delay (skill cannot be used while disabled or while activating another skill). This is similar to how [Lava Font] functions.
• Added delay: 1 second
  • Now, when cast, only the visual mark will appear (no red/white circle), emitting a blue mist (same particle effect as the dust created from Elementalist [Eruption]), and then lingers for 1 second. During this 1-second period, the mark cannot trigger. After 1 second, the mist will fade, a red/white circle will appear and the mark will trigger automatically as it does now.

[Putrid Mark]

• Cast-time reduced from ¾ second to 0.
• Now uses a ½-second after-cast animation delay (skill cannot be used while disabled or while activating another skill). This is similar to how [Lava Font] functions.
• Added delay: 1 second
  • Now, when cast, only the visual mark will appear (no red/white circle), emitting a green mist (same particle effect as the dust created from Elementalist [Eruption]), and then lingers for 1 second. During this 1-second period, the mark cannot trigger. After 1 second, the mist will fade, a red/white circle will appear and the mark will trigger automatically as it does now.

[Reaper’s Mark]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 2¼ seconds
• Recharge: 35 seconds
• Etch a mark into the ground at target location to trigger later. The longer you charge this skill, the more powerful it becomes.
• ¾ second channel: Damage: 92 (0.25); Fear: ½ second; Radius: 120
• 1½ second channel: Damage: 211 (0.5); Fear: 1 second; Radius: 180
• Full channel: Damage: 318 (1.0); Fear: 1 second; Radius: 240
• Range: 1200
  • While this skill does not display a red circle while channeling, its symbol is present on the ground and glows a violent, bright green.
  • After this skill finishes channeling, the mark appears on the ground with a red circle indicating its size according to how long it was channeled.
  • This skill chains into another skill upon completion: [Reaper’s Wrath].

[Reaper’s Wrath]

• Cast-time: 1 second
• Trigger your Reaper’s Mark.
  • The mark’s edges glow bright green when this skill is being activated.

Utility skills
[Signet of Spite]

• Cast-time increased from ¾ to 1 second.
• Active ability now uses a projectile: gold-tinted [Life Blast].

Traits
Dhuumfire (Spite – XI)

• This trait now triggers off of [Life Blast].
• Recharge increased from 10 to 15 seconds.
• Burning adjusted to 3-second duration in both PvE and PvP.

ELEMENTALIST CHANGES
Scepter main-hand skills
[Lightning Strike] – named changed to Lightning Bolt (to diminish combat log confusion)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 6 seconds
• Strike foes at the target location with a lightning bolt.
• Damage: 403 (1.2)
• Delay: 1 second
• Radius: 120
• Range: 900
  • Now creates a red circle on the ground.
  • [Lightning Strike]’s original functionality remains the same for passive triggers such as swapping to Air Attunement with 15 into Air Magic or the RNG proc on Runes of Air (6/6).

NEW SKILL: [Lightning Orb] (scepter; air 3)

• Cast-time: ½ second
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Conjure a lightning orb at target location that periodically strikes foes in the area with an electrical burst.
• Damage: 279 (1.0)
• Damage pulse: 2 seconds
• Damage radius: 180
• Duration: 8 seconds
• Range: 900
  • This skill pulses 4 times total: the first pulse occurs 2 seconds after the lightning orb is cast and then again at each 2 second interval after that until its duration ends.
  • This skill chains into another skill upon completion: [Blinding Flash].

[Blinding Flash]

• Cast-time: 0
• Detonate your lightning orb in a blinding flash that briefly reveals stealthed foes.
• Blind: 5 seconds
• Revealed: 1 second
• Radius: 180
  • This skill prematurely ends [Lightning Orb]’s duration.

[Flamestrike]

• Now uses a projectile: bolt of orange fire that uses the Elementalist [Chain Lightning] projectile pathing and speed.

[Dragon’s Tooth]

• Now uses ground-targeting.
• Damage reduced from 756 (2.25) to 686 (2.25).
• Added tool-tip: Delay: 2 seconds

[Phoenix]

• Cast-time increased from ¼ to ¾ second.
• This skill’s audio cue now also plays when the player first begins casting it in addition to when the projectile explodes and turns around.
• Now creates a red circle on the ground where the Phoenix projectile is targeted to explode and turn around back towards the caster.

[Shatterstone]

• Damage increased from 252 to 336 (1.2).
• Added tool-tip: Delay: 2 seconds
• Now counts as an Ice Field (Duration: 2 seconds).

[Water Trident]

• Casting animation increased in size by 50%.
• Now counts as a Blast Finisher.

Focus off-hand
[Flamewall]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Recharge: 20 seconds
• Create a wall of flame at target area that damages and burns foes that cross it.
• Damage: 111 (0.3)
• Burning: 2 seconds
• Duration: 8 seconds
  • Now chains into another skill: [Breath of Fire].

[Breath of Fire]

• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Cause your flamewall to rile up into a tall barrier of flames that foes cannot cross.
• Duration: 3 seconds
  • While this skill is active, the Flamewall riles into a tall wall of fire that acts similarly to the Guardian [Line of Warding].
  • This chain skill remains active for 8 seconds.
  • This chain skill has a cool-down completely separate from that of [Flamewall]. [Flamewall] will begin recharging the second that it is activated rather than after this chain skill chains back into [Flamewall].

[Fire Shield]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Envelop yourself in a shield of fire that burns foes and grants might each time you are struck (cool-down of 1 second per attacker). If you combo this skill within a fire field, you gain aegis and create a [Lava Font] at your location.
• Fire Shield duration: 5 seconds
• Burning: 1 second
• Might (1): 10 seconds
• Aegis: 5 seconds
• Combo Finisher: Whirl

[Freezing Gust]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 3¾ seconds
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Conjure gusts of freezing wind over target area that inflict chill and vulnerability. If a gust strikes a foe with more than 10 stacks of vulnerability, it immobilizes that foe.
• Damage per gust: 229 (1.0)
• Gust radius: 180
• Chill: 1 second
• Vulnerability (3): 8 seconds
• Immobilize: 1 second
• Spell duration: 4 seconds
• Radius: 360
• Range: 1200
  • This skill functions similarly to [Meteor Shower] in how it produces the wind gusts.
  • Wind gust models are circular whirls of air. They produce red circles and they have a 1-second delay period upon appearing before they deal damage and their effects.
  • Level 1 channel: 4 gusts (1 per second)
  • Level 2 channel: 8 gusts (2 per second)
  • Level 3 channel: 12 gusts (3 per second)

[Comet]

• Now uses ground-targeting.
• Damage increased from 239 (0.8) to 314 (1.0).

[Gale]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1½ seconds
• Recharge: 40 seconds
• Channel a cone of biting wind in front of you that blinds and cripples foes before knocking them down.
• Damage (4x): 320 (0.5)
• Blind (4): 1 second
• Cripple (4): 1 second
• Knock-down: 2 seconds
• Range: 600
  • This skill hits up to 3 targets.
  • The final damage tick is the tick that inflicts knock-down.
  • [Healing Breeze] cone

Dagger main-hand skills
[Lightning Touch]

• Now attacks foes in a cone pattern in front of the player.
• Now hits up to 5 targets.

[Frozen Burst]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Detonate a chilling burst of ice at target location.
• Delay: 1 second
• Damage: 140 (0.5)
• Chilled: 3 seconds
• Radius: 180
• Range: 600
  • The target area is coated with the [Frozen Ground] AoE model for 1 second before the [Frozen Burst] animation goes off.

Dagger off-hand skills
[Ride the Lightning]

• Recharge reduced from 40 to 30 seconds.
• Recharge reduction on hit reduced from 50% to 33%.

[Updraft]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1½ seconds
• Recharge: 25 seconds
• Gain swiftness and evade backwards on a gust of wind. The longer that you channel this skill, the more powerful your wind gust is when you release it.
• Swiftness: 10 seconds
• No channel: Cripple: 2 seconds: Radius: 180
• Full channel: Cripple: 4 seconds; Launch: 200 range; Radius: 180
• Evasion: 1 second
  • Base evasion distance increased from 180(?) to 600 range.
  • The evasion will trigger immediately upon skill activation if the button is not held down to channel. This makes the evasion similar to [Burning Retreat] in that it has a 0-second (instant) activation time.

Staff skills
[Lava Font]

• Tool-tip added: Delay: 1 second.

[Flame Burst]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Recharge: 10 seconds
• Conjure an orb of flame at target location. After 1 second, the orb explodes, damaging and burning nearby foes.
• Delay: 1 second
• Damage: 85 (0.3)
• Burning: 5 seconds
• Radius: 180
• Range: 1200

[Ice Spike]

• Tool-tip added: Delay: 2 seconds.
• Now inflicts 1 second of immobilize if it strikes a chilled foe.

[Lightning Surge]

• A ring of electricity appears around the target during the casting period.
• Cast-time reduced from 1½ seconds to 1¼ seconds.

[Gust]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ½ second
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Channel a gust of wind that strikes foes two times in rapid succession. The first gust strike rips up to 2 boons from foes that it hits. The second gust strike knocks back foes.
• Boons removed: 2
• Knock-back: 400
• Range: 600
  • [Healing Breeze] cone.
  • Hits up to 5 targets.

[Windborne Speed]

• Now also grants Super Speed for 2 seconds.

[Eruption]

• Tool-tip added: Delay: 3 seconds.

[Unsteady Ground]

• Now uses the same hit-detection as Guardian [Line of Warding].
  • As it stands, casting a [Line of Warding] over top of an enemy will immediately knock that enemy off of its area. This is not the case with [Unsteady Ground] and the two should be normalized.

[Shockwave]

• Cast-time reduced from ¾ to ½ second.
• Bleed stacks changed from 1 stack for 20 seconds to 3 stacks for 12 seconds.

Utility skills
[Arcane Blast]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 20 seconds
• Build up an orb arcane energy above you for 1 second before sending it at your foe. It blasts your target for critical damage.
• Delay: 1 second
• Damage: 363
• Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (100%)
• Range: 1500
  • The delay represents how long the orb remains above the player before flying toward the target.
  • Current projectile size increased by 100%.

[Arcane Wave]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Conjure a ring of arcane energy around target area. After 1 second, the ring explodes, blasting foes in the area for critical damage.
• Delay: 1 second
• Damage: 628
• Combo Finisher: Blast
• Radius: 360
• Range: 900
  • The ring floats just off the ground and highlights the area targeted by [Arcane Wave].
  • Delay ring shares its coloration with [Arcane Blast]’s projectile.

[Arcane Shield]

• Recharge lowered from 75 to 50 seconds.
• Duration lowered from 5 to 2 seconds.

[Glyph of Renewal]

• Cast-time reduced from 3¼ to 2½ seconds.
• Recharge reduced from 165 to 150 seconds.

[Glyph of Storms]

• Recharge reduced from 60 to 45 seconds.

[Mist Form]

• Recharge reduced from 75 to 60 seconds.
• Duration reduced from 3 to 2 seconds.
• Invulnerability reduced from 3 to 2 seconds.
• Now also cures immobilize, crippled and chill upon activation.
  • Now chains into another skill upon use: [Cold Front].

[Cold Front]

• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Recharge: 5 seconds
• Dash in a target direction, chilling foes that you strike along the way.
• Damage: 33 (0.2)
• Chill: 2 seconds
• Evasion: ¾ seconds
• Range: 450
  • Warrior [Whirlwind Attack].

[Armor of Earth]

• Recharged reduced from 90 to 50 seconds.
• Stability reduced from 6 to 4 seconds.
• Protection reduced from 6 to 4 seconds.
• Duration reduced from 6 to 4 seconds.

[Lightning Flash]

• Recharge reduced from 40 to 30 seconds.

[Cleansing Fire]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Recharge reduced from 40 to 30 seconds.
• Cast-time increased from 0 to 1½ seconds.
• Channel a cleansing fire that pulses around you three times, damaging and burning nearby foes while cleansing 1 condition from yourself and nearby allies with each pulse. The final pulse knocks back nearby enemies.
• Damage (3x): 333 (0.3)
• Burning (3): 1 second
• Knock back: 240
• Radius: 240

GUARDIAN CHANGES
Sword skills
[Flashing Blade]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Recharge: 10 seconds
• Leap to target area and slash foes where you land, blinding them.
• Damage: 159 (0.5)
• Damage radius: 180
• Blind: 3 seconds
• Range: 600
• Uses the Warrior [Earthshaker] attack animation.

Utility skills
[Merciful Intervention]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 50 seconds
• Teleport to target location. If there was another ally at that location, you create a healing field.
• Healing: 1960
• Radius: 180
• Range: 900

MESMER CHANGES
Greatsword skills
[Mirror Blade]

• Recharge increased from 8 seconds to 10 seconds.
• This skill is no longer unblockable.

[Mind Stab]

• Recharge increased from 12 to 15 seconds.
• Now removes up to 2 boons.

Staff skills
[Phase Retreat]

• Cast-time increased from 0 to ¼ second.

[Phantasmal Warlock]

• Recharge increased from 18 to 20 seconds.

[Chaos Storm]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ½ second
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Create a magical storm at target location that builds boons on allies and conditions on foes. The final pulse dazes and removes up to 1 boon from weakened foes.
• Damage (4x): 1008 (0.8)
• Boon to ally: Swiftness: 6 seconds
• Boon to ally with swiftness: Regeneration: 3 seconds
• Boon to ally with regeneration: Fury: 1 second
• Condition to foe: Cripple: 2 seconds
• Condition to crippled foe: Poison: 5 seconds
• Condition to poisoned foe: Weakness: 1 second
• Daze: 1 second
• Duration: 4 seconds
• Radius: 180
• Combo Field: Light
• Range: 1200
  • [Chaos Storm] uses the same pulse schedule as [Lava Font].
  • This skill always checks the conditions/boons present on a given target, then chooses which boon/condition to apply.

Utility skills
[Feedback]

• This skill is now ground-targeted.

[Mirror Images]

• Upon activation, this skill puts [Mind Wrack] and [Cry of Frustration] into a 2-second cool-down if either of them are off cool-down respectively.

[Mimic]

• Recharge lowered from 25 to 20 seconds.
• Duration reduced from 4½ to 2½ seconds.
• Now grants 2 seconds of protection upon activation.

Traits
Prismatic Understanding (Chaos – XII)

• Now grants vigor (2 seconds) instead of aegis.
• Now grants swiftness (4 seconds) instead of protection.
• Regeneration granted reduced from 3 to 2 seconds.

WARRIOR CHANGES
Longbow skills
[Arcing Arrow]

• Recharge increased from 10 to 12 seconds.
• Added a minimum range: 180

[Pin Down]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1 second
• Recharge: 25 seconds
• Fire a piercing arrow that bleeds and immobilizes your target.
• Damage: 141 (0.4)
• Bleeding (6): 12 seconds
• Immobilized: 3 seconds
• Range: 1500
  • Movement interrupts cast-time; uses the same activation animation as [Kill Shot].

Hammer skills
[Fierce Blow]

• Cast-time increased from ¾ second to 1 second.

[Backbreaker]

• Cast-time increased from 1 second to 1¼ second.
• Added a unique visual cue to help further distinguish this skill from [Crushing Blow].

Shield skills
[Shield Stance]

• Duration lowered from 3 to 2 seconds.
  • Now chains into another skill upon activation: [Shield Slam].

[Shield Slam]

• Cast-time: ½ second
• Slam the ground with your shield and blind adjacent foes with the resulting dust cloud.
• Damage: 134 (0.5)
• Blind: 5 seconds
• Radius: 180
• Combo Finisher: Blast
  • Using this skill preemptively ends the [Shield Stance] block channel.

Utility skills
[Endure Pain]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 50 seconds
• Stance. While in this stance, you gain 1500 vitality.
• Duration: 5 seconds
• Breaks stun.

[Berserker’s Stance]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 50 seconds
• Stance. While in this stance, incoming conditions on you have reduced durations. Each time you would be affected by a condition, you gain might and fury.
• Duration: 6 seconds
• Condition duration reduction: 50%
• Fury: 1 second
• Might (1): 3 seconds
  • Upon using this skill, the Warrior gains two buffs: 1 stack of Berserker’s vitality and 5 stacks of Berserker’s rage. Berserker’s vitality reduces incoming condition duration by 50% for the next 6 seconds. Berserker’s rage grants the warrior fury and might (as described in the skill description) each time that the warrior would come under the effects of a condition. Each time the warrior would be affected by a condition, the stack of Berserker’s rage decreases by 1. If a warrior were to be effected by a condition, but the condition pops up as “immune” due to its duration being reduced beyond the point of being registered, the stack of Berserker’s rage would still decrease by 1 and the warrior would gain the fury and might.

[Banner of Tactics]

• Buff duration increased from 3 seconds to 10 seconds.
• Buff tick interval increased from 3 seconds to 10 seconds.
• Regeneration duration passively granted by the banner reduced from (current?) to 2 seconds.

[Compassionate Banner]

• Cast-time increased from 1 second to 1½ seconds.

Dogged March (Defense – II)

• Regeneration increased from 3 to 4 seconds.
• The regeneration proc now has a 15-second cool-down.

I don’t see how this could be helpful. Devs don’t have tim to read all this and figure out why you want this to be changed.

I would suggest you focus on the main things you dislike and make liberal use of “because”.

“Rending Claws need XXX because.”

I guarantee much better effect than this.

ENGINEER CHANGES
Pistol main-hand skills
[Explosive Shot]

• Damage increased from 118 (0.35) to 169 (0.4).
• Cast-time increased from ½ second to ¾ second.
• After-cast adjusted from (current?) to 0.20 second.

[Poison Dart Volley]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ½ second
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Fire an arcing dart bomb from your pistol that explodes at target area, leaving a cloud that poisons foes.
• Explosion damage: 418 (1.3)
• Explosion poison: 3 seconds
• Explosion radius: 180
• Cloud duration: 3 seconds
• Cloud poison (3): 2 seconds
• Combo Field: Poison
• Minimum range: 180
• Range: 1200
  • This projectile arcs through the air. Projectile speed is 50% faster than that of the Warrior’s [Arcing Arrow].
  • This skill chains into another skill upon completion: [Detonate Poison Bomb].

[Detonate Poison Dart Bomb]

• Cast-time: 1 second
• Detonate your poison dart bomb in midair, raining down poisonous shrapnel onto the area below it.
• Small explosion: 165 (0.5)
• Poison: 3 seconds
• Number of impacts: 3
• Radius: 240
  • Uses the same mechanics as the Thief [Detonate Cluster] skill.
  • This skill has an automatic ¾-second long cool-down imposed upon it upon chaining to prevent immediate spam of this skill.

Pistol off-hand skills
[Blowtorch]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 2¼ seconds
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Channel a cone of flames from your pistol. The final burst of flame from this attack deals more damage the closer you are to your targets.
• First 3 hits damage (3x): 495 (0.5)
• Final burst at 200-600 range: Damage: 165 (0.5); Burning: 2 seconds
• Final burst at 0-200 range: Damage: 510 (0.9); Burning: 5 seconds
• Range: 600
  • Hits up to 5 foes.

Rifle skills
[Blunderbuss]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1 second
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Fire a cloud of shrapnel that causes more damage the closer you are to foes.
• 600 – 400 range: Damage: 211 (0.5); Bleeding (1): 5 seconds
• 400 – 200 range: Damage: 386 (1.0); Bleeding (3): 5 seconds
• 200 – 0 range: Damage: 618 (1.6); Bleeding (5): 5 seconds
• Range: 600

[Overcharged Shot]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1¼ second
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Fire a blast so strong that it knocks back both you and your target. You also cure immobilized, crippled and chilled. This blast’s effect is stronger based on how long you channel it.
• Damage: 386 (1.0)
• Self knock-back distance: 300
• ¼-second channel: Foe knock-back distance: 450
• Full channel: Foe launch distance: 450
• Range: 400

Utility skills
[Grenade]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1 second
• Throw a grenade that explodes.
• Damage: 314 (1.0)
• Explosion radius: 120
• Range: 1200
  • This skill is now a functional auto-attack. This skill uses the Elementalist [Fireball] projectile arc and speed for its grenade.
  • Unaffected by the Grenadier trait (Explosives – XI).

[Shrapnel Grenade]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1 second (channel)
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Place shrapnel grenades in your hand to throw later. The longer you charge this skill, the more grenades that you throw upon release.
• ½-second channel: 1 grenade
• Full channel: 2 grenades
• Damage per grenade: 179 (0.5)
• Bleeding per grenade (2): 5 seconds
• Explosion radius: 180
• Range: 1200
• Minimum range: 180
  • Equipping the Grenadier trait changes the skill into a 1¼-second channel skill with a third channel tier that throws 3 grenades.

[Flash Grenade]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ½ second
• Recharge: 10 seconds
• Throw a grenade that explodes in a blinding flash.
• Damage: 33 (0.1)
• Blind: 5 seconds
• Explosion radius: 150
• Range: 1200
  • Equipping the Grenadier trait adds a second grenade to the attack.

[Freeze Grenade]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1 second (channel)
• Recharge: 20 seconds
• Place freeze grenades in your hand to throw. The longer you charge this skill, the more grenades that you throw upon release.
• ½-second channel: 1 grenade
• Full channel: 2 grenades
• Damage per grenade: 179 (0.5)
• Chill per grenade: 2 seconds
• Explosion radius: 240
• Range: 1200
• Minimum range: 180
  • Equipping the Grenadier trait changes the skill into a 1¼-second channel skill with a third channel tier that throws 3 grenades.

[Poison Grenade]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1 second (channel)
• Recharge: 25 seconds
• Place poison grenades in your hand to throw later. These grenades leave a poisonous cloud behind when they explode.. The longer you charge this skill, the more grenades that you throw upon release.
• ½-second channel: 1 grenade
• Full channel: 2 grenades
• Damage per grenade: 65 (0.2)
• Poison per grenade: 4 seconds
• Poison cloud duration: 4 seconds
• Poison cloud radius: 150
• Combo field: Poison
• Range: 1200
• Minimum range: 180
  • Equipping the Grenadier trait changes the skill into a 1¼-second channel skill with a third channel tier that throws 3 grenades.

[Grenade Barrage (first volley)]

• FUNCTIONALTY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ½ second
• Recharge: 40 seconds
• Throw four grenades at once.
• Damage (4x): 488 (0.5)
• Explosion radius: 150
• Minimum range: 180
• Range: 1200
  • Now chains into another skill upon completion: [Grenade Barrage (second volley)]
  • Unaffected by the Grenadier trait.

[Grenade Barrage (second volley)]

• Cast-time: ½ second
• Recharge: 40 seconds
• Throw four grenades at once.
• Damage (4x): 488 (0.5)
• Explosion radius: 150
• Minimum range: 180
• Range: 1200
  • This chain skill remains active for 2.5 seconds.
  • Unaffected by the Grenadier trait.

Utility skills continued
[Gear Shield]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1½ seconds
• Block attacks with a gear shield. If you block three attacks, your gear shield shatters, crippling and bleeding adjacent foes with metal shrapnel.
• Duration: 2 seconds
• Bleeding (3): 5 seconds
• Crippled: 2 seconds
• Radius: 150

[Elixir S]

• Recharged reduced from 60 to 50 seconds.
• Duration reduced from 3 to 2 seconds.
  • Now chains into another skill upon use: [Shoelace Tangle].

[Shoelace Tangle]

• Recharge: 5 seconds
• Cast-time: 1 second
• Tangle up your foe’s feet with wire, knocking your target down.
• Knockdown: 2 seconds
• Range: 100
  • This skill is only active while [Elixir S] is in effect.

[Fumigate]

• Recharge increased from 12 to 15 seconds.
• Poison duration per damage tick increased from 1 to 2 seconds.
• Now removes up to one condition from the Engineer upon use.
• Now behaves as does Cone of Cold or Drake’s Breath. Does not attempt to follow a target when a target is selected. Engineer must actively track a target within the cone in order to inflict damage.

[Acid Bomb]

• Now grants a ¾ second of evasion upon use.

[Flame Jet]

• Now behaves as does Cone of Cold or Drake’s Breath. Does not attempt to follow a target when a target is selected. Engineer must actively track a target within the cone in order to inflict damage.

[Air Blast]

• Now also counts as a Blast Finisher.

[Napalm]

• Recharge reduced from 30 to 20 seconds.
• Napalm wall duration reduced from 10 to 7 seconds.

[Smoke Vent]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 25 seconds
• Vent smoke from your flamethrower, blinding adjacent foes with the smoke cloud.
• Blind (2): 3 seconds
• Cloud duration: 2 seconds
• Cloud pulse: 1 second
• Cloud radius: 180
• Combo Field: Smoke

NEW SKILL: [Smoldering Round] (replaces Incendiary Ammo)

• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Recharge: 20 seconds
• Fire a round from your belt that burns your target.
• Damage: 65 (0.2)
• Burning: 4 seconds
• Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
• Range: 1,000

[Regenerating Mist]

• Now also removes up to 1 condition from allies in its radius.

Elite skills
[Mortar]

• Base range on skills increased to 2,000.
• Range on skills when traited increased to 2,400.

[Launch Elixir]

• Recharge reduced from 15 to 12 seconds.

[Launch Ice Mortar]

• Recharge reduced from 20 to 15 seconds.
• Ice field duration reduced from 10 to 7 seconds.
• The mortar projectile’s initial hit now stuns enemies for ½ second.

[Launch Concussion Barrage]

• Recharge reduced from 30 to 25 seconds.

Traits
Shrapnel (Explosives – II)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Blunderbuss, Shrapnel Grenade, and Concussion Bomb inflict additional bleeding when they hit.
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Bleeding (3): 8 seconds
  • This is a global/shared cool-down among the skills.

Precise Sights (Firearms – V)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Blunderbuss, Static Shot, Shrapnel Grenade, Concussion Bomb, Elixir F, and Flame Jet inflict additional vulnerability when they hit.
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Vulnerability (5): 8 seconds
• This is a global/shared cool-down among the skills
• Only the final damage tick of [Flame Jet] inflicts the vulnerability described in this trait.

Incendiary Power (Explosives – IX)

• Recharge increased from 10 to 15 seconds.
• Now, when this trait activates, it summons an invulnerable flame turret near the side of the Engineer (possibly using the same summon detection as [Phantasmal Warlock]). The turret arrives on the field using a miniature [Supply Drop] animation. This flame turret then attacks the Engineers current target with a [Fireball] projectile. The projectile deals no damage, but does inflict the burning described in the trait. The turret explodes after shooting the projectile.

THIEF CHANGES
Stealth skills
[Surprise Shot]

• Recharge increased from 0 to 10 seconds.

[Tactical Strike]

• Recharge increased from 0 to 10 seconds.

[Backstab]

• Recharge increased from 0 to 10 seconds.

[Sneak Attack]

• Recharge increased from 0 to 5 seconds.

Sword main-hand skills
[Crippling Strike]

• Damage reduced from 437 (1.3) to 314 (1.0)

[Infiltrator’s Strike]

• Initiative Cost: 3
• Cast-time: 1¼ second
• Dash at your foe to deliver an immobilizing strike. You gain Super Speed if you are in combat when you use this skill.
• Damage: 252 (0.75)
• Immobilize: 1 second
• Super speed: 1 second
• Range: 600
  • Uses the Warrior banner [Sprint] attack animation.
  • If you strike a foe with this skill, it chains into another skill upon use: [Infiltrator’s Return]

[Infiltrator’s Return]

• Initiative Cost: 1
• Cast-time: 0
• Evade backwards and lose 1 condition.
• Evasion: ¾ second
• Evasion distance: 600
  • Condition removal occurs before the backwards evasion roll.
  • This chain skill remains active for 20 seconds.

Dagger/Pistol combo skill
[Shadow Shot]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ½ second
• Initiative cost: 4
• Fire a shot that marks your target if it hits.
• Damage: 314 (0.3)
• Mark duration: 3 seconds
• Range: 900
  • This skill is no longer unblockable.
  • Now chains into another skill: [Shadow Stab]
  • A small [Shadow Shot] skill icon appears over top of a target marked by [Shadow Shot].

[Shadow Leap]

• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Initiative cost: 1
• Leap to your marked target and stab your foe, inflicting blindness.
• Damage: 92 (0.25)
• Blind: 5 seconds
• Range: 900
  • Uses the Elementalist [Magnetic Leap] attack animation.
  • This chain skill remains active for 2.5 seconds.

Sword/Pistol combo skill
[Pistol Whip]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ½ second
• Initiative cost: 2
• Pistol-whip your target, staggering the foe. If you strike a staggered foe you inflict daze and this skill chains into another skill.
• Damage: 111 (0.3)
• Staggered: 2 seconds
• Daze: ½ second
• Range: 130
  • If this skill strikes a staggered foe, it chains into another skill: [Malicious Assault]

[Malicious Assault]

• Cast-time: 1¼ second
• Initiative cost: 3
• Dash at your foe, leaping and delivering a devastating strike with your sword.
• Damage: 718 (2.5)
• Super Speed: 1 second
• Range: 900
  • This skill uses the Elementalist [Fiery Rush] attack animation.
  • This chain skill remains active for 20 seconds.

Shortbow skills
[Cluster Bomb]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Fire a cluster bomb at target area that deals more damage based on its distance from you.
• Damage inside of 180 range: 179 (0.5)
• Damage outside of 180 range: 487 (1.45)
• Bleeding (1): 4 seconds
• Radius: 240
• Combo Finisher: Blast
• Range: 900
  • The damage is determined upon skill activation rather than when it actually lands.
  • Range indicator changes color based on its distance from the player: yellow when inside of 180 range; green when outside of 180 range.

[Detonate Cluster]

• This chain skill now has an automatic ¾-second cool-down before it can be activated.

[Disabling Shot]

• Initiative cost increased from 4 to 5.

[Choking Gas]

• Radius reduced from 240 to 180.

Utility skills
[Infiltrator’s Signet]

• Active ability FUNCTIONALTY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Gain stability and dash to your foe from within a cloud of smoke.
• Protection: 2 seconds
• Stability: 2 seconds
• Super Speed: 1 second
• Infiltrator’s Signet duration: 2 seconds
• Range: 1200
  • This skill functions like Elementalist [Ride the Lightning] in how it moves the Thief except that it does not strike its target for damage.
  • Thief becomes a cloud of smoke while this skill is active similar to how the Elementalist turns into a ball of lightning.

Traits
Cloaked in Shadow (Shadow Arts – VI)

• Now has a 10-second internal cool-down.

RANGER CHANGES
Shortbow skills
[Crossfire]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Fire an arrow. Bleed your target if you hit them from behind or from the side.
• Damage: 211 (0.5)
• Bleeding (1): 3 seconds
• Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20% chance)
• Range: 900
  • After-cast adjusted to 0.25 second.

[Poison Volley (first volley)]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Recharge: 12 seconds
• Fire an arcing arrow that explodes at target location, leaving behind a cloud that poisons foes.
• Explosion damage: 252 (0.75)
• Explosion radius: 180
• Cloud poison (2): 2 seconds
• Cloud duration: 2 seconds
• Cloud pulse: 1 second
• Cloud radius: 180
• Minimum range: 180
• Range: 1000
  • The poison pulses 2 times.
  • This skill chains into another skill upon completion: [Poison Volley (second volley)]

[Poison Volley (second volley)]

• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Fire an arcing arrow that explodes at target location, leaving behind a cloud that poisons foes.
• Explosion damage: 252 (0.75)
• Explosion radius: 180
• Cloud poison (2): 2 seconds
• Cloud duration: 2 seconds
• Cloud pulse: 1 second
• Cloud radius: 180
• Minimum range: 180
• Range: 1000
  • The poison pulses 2 times.
  • This skill chains into another skill upon completion: [Poison Volley (third volley)]

[Poison Volley (third volley)]

• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Fire an arcing arrow that explodes at target location, leaving behind a cloud that poisons foes.
• Explosion damage: 252 (0.75)
• Explosion radius: 180
• Cloud poison (2): 2 seconds
• Cloud duration: 2 seconds
• Cloud pulse: 1 second
• Cloud radius: 180
• Minimum range: 180
• Range: 1000
  • The poison pulses 2 times.
  • This use of this skill sends the skill chain into full recharge.
  • This final chain skill has no minimum range.

[Quick Shot]

• Recharge increased from 9 to 12 seconds.
• Swiftness increased from 3 to 5 seconds.
• Retreating leap distance increased from (current?) to 450 range.

[Crippling Shot]

• FUNTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1½ seconds
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Charge up a piercing shot that cripples foes. The longer you charge this shot, the more powerful it becomes.
• ½ second channel: Damage: 111 (0.3); Crippled: 2 seconds
• 1 second channel: Damage: 229 (0.5); Crippled: 3 seconds
• Full channel: Damage: 279 (0.75); Crippled: 5 seconds; Your pet’s next three attacks inflict bleeding (5 seconds).
• Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
• Range: 900
  • The player can move while activating this skill.

Sword skills
[Hornet Sting]

• Recharge increased from 8 to 10 seconds.

Axe main-hand skills
[Ricochet]

• Skill removed; replaced with another skill chain: [Hack]; [Slash]; [Cleave the Wind].

[Hack]

• Cast-time: ½ second
• Hack your foe with your axe.
• Damage: 202 (0.5)
• Range: 130
  • This skill cleaves.

[Slash]

• Cast-time: ½ second
• Slash your foe with your axe.
• Damage: 202 (0.5)
• Range: 130
• This skill cleaves.

[Cleave the Wind]

• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Slash with your axe, unleashing a cone of wind that damages foes.
• Damage: 252 (0.75)
• Vulnerability (2): 5 seconds
• Range: 450
  • This skill hits up to 5 foes.

[Splitblade]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¼ second
• Recharge: 10 seconds
• Lob an axe to target location. At the target location your axe ricochets off of winds, appearing to multiply while it bleeds and damages foes in the area.
• Damage (4x): 1000 (0.9)
• Pulse: 1 second
• Bleeding (1) per pulse: 3 seconds
• Duration: 4 seconds
• Radius: 180
• Minimum range: 180
• Range: 900
  • The axe uses an low arc path and moves quickly. The AoE shares the same pulse schedule as Elementalist [Lava Font].
  • AoE is a red-circled collection of axes bouncing from side to side in a circle.

[Winter’s Bite]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Leap to target location and slash foes when you land, inflicting chill. Your pet’s next attack inflicts weakness. If you strike a foe suffering from vulnerability, you also inflict bleeding.
• Damage: 252 (0.9)
• Damage radius: 180
• Chill: 3 seconds
• Weakness: 6 seconds
• Bleeding (4): 6 seconds
• Combo Finisher: Leap
• Range: 600
  • Uses the Warrior [Earthshaker] attack animation.

Axe off-hand skills
[Path of Scars]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: ¾ second
• Throw an axe that ricochets between foes.
• Damage: 204 (0.5)
• Maximum targets: 3
• Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20% chance)
• Range: 900
  • Aftercast adjusted to 0.30 seconds.
  • Functional ranged auto-attack.

[Whirling Defense]

• Cast-time decreased from 5¼ seconds to 3¼ seconds.
• Duration lowered from 5 to 3 seconds.
• Recharge reduced from 25 seconds to 20 seconds.
• Now grants 1 second of protection upon activation.
  • Damage and number of hits do not change. Attack animation and hit procs are sped up to fit into the new 3¼-second long channel time.

HEALING SKILLS
Guardian healing skills
[Shelter]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 2¼ seconds
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Gain a shield that blocks up to 3 attacks while you channel a spell to heal yourself.
• Healing (5x): 5000 (0.7)
• Channel duration: 2 seconds
• Shield duration: 2 seconds

[Healing Breeze]

• Recharge lowered from 40 to 25 seconds.
• Self-healing lowered from 6525 (1.0) to 4850 (1.0)
• The final channel pulse now removes up to 2 conditions from the Guardian and allies inside the cone.

[Signet of Resolve]

• Cast-time increased from 1 second to 1¼ seconds.
• Recharge lowered from 40 to 30 seconds.
• Healing lowered from 8,150 (1.25) to 6,050 (1.25)

Warrior healing skills
[Healing Signet]

• Recharge reduced from 20 to 15 seconds.
• Passive healing reduced from 392 to 250 (same healing modifier).
• Now, when this skill activates, you gain protection and regeneration based on your adrenaline levels.
  • Protection per adrenaline bar: 1 second
  • Regeneration per adrenaline bar: 3 seconds

[Healing Surge]

• Cast-time increased from 1 second to 1½ seconds.

[Mending]

• FUNCTIONAILTY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 3 seconds
• Recharge: 20 seconds
  *Heal yourself and remove a condition with each pulse.
• Healing (4x): 6400 (1.0)
• Duration: 2½ seconds
  • Healing and condition removal pulses once every ¾ seconds.

Engineer healing skills
[Elixir H]

• Cast-time increased from 1 second to 1¼ seconds.

[Healing Turret]

• Cast-time increased from ½ second to 1 second.

Ranger healing skills
[Healing Spring]

• Cast-time increased from ½ second to 1 second.

Thief healing skills
[Hide in Shadows]

• Cast-time increased from 1 second to 1¼ seconds.

Necromancer healing skills
[Consume Conditions]

• Cast-time increased from 1¼ seconds to 1½ seconds.

[Well of Blood]

• Cast-time increased from 1 second to 1¼ seconds.
• Recharge lowered from 40 to 35 seconds.
• Duration lowed from 10 to 5 seconds.
• Field is now a water field instead of light field.
• Healing per second generated by the field increased from 152 (0.4) to 252 (0.5).
• Now converts up to 2 conditions into boons upon use.
  • Well of Blood uses the [Well of Power] condition-into-boon conversion table.

Ravious.4269:

I don’t see how this could be helpful. Devs don’t have tim to read all this and figure out why you want this to be changed.

I would suggest you focus on the main things you dislike and make liberal use of “because”.

“Rending Claws need XXX because.”

I guarantee much better effect than this.

The main things are in the first post. Concrete examples are needed in order to illustrate how to properly carry out the main ideas from the first post.

“‘X’ because ‘y’” is not enough at this point. The game has fundamental problems that need to be worked out with concrete examples. I’m doing just that.

Swagg.9236:

THIEF CHANGES

Of course you want to completely annihilate the thief class.

• Stealth Skills: care to elaborate? This change would only serve to destroy all stealth-based builds. I have never had any problems whatsoever countering stealth skills across all classes. There’s no justification for this; it simply seeks to serve the worse players by making it far more difficult for even top-tier thieves to get any sort of advantage against them for the time they’ve put in to hone their skills.
  Sword
• Crippling Strike: As I’ve said before, this skill is a) the third in a chain that b) has no side effects already (such as condis) and c) includes skills with insanely large aftercasts anyways. Furthermore, Crippling Strike has a fair amount of windup for the amount of damage it does.
• Infi Strike: completely destroying thieves’ mobility. The usage of this skill, as always, is extremely predictable… Since the December 10th patch (actually, even before then, but now especially) I’ve had no problems whatsoever against S/D thieves with any class because I know the basic strategy to fight against them, much of which I’ve developed myself. This nerf is just trying to further drive the spec into ruin. Not to mention- the fact that you have to hit an enemy not only gets rid of some of the positional tricks that you can do with IS/IR but severely nerfs S/X thief’s main source of condition removal.

• Infi Return: another nerf to thief mobility, which was supposed to be one of the thief’s main attractions anyways.

• Shadow Shot changes: what? The shot in and of itself is already easily evadable, and spending 4 initiative just for a teleport and a single blind seems pretty poor. The marking ability only makes the skill even weaker (even more predictable), and the mobility nerf to the skill… Again, there’s no context within which you can justify this.

• Pistol whip: one of the worst ideas I’ve ever seen. You basically have to hit a skill two times in a row within a 2 second time span and then you have to cross your fingers and hope that your skill with an incredibly obvious animation hits your opponent for less damage than Final Thrust at <50%. The counters for this would seem pretty obvious, but apparently not to you…

• Cluster Bomb: I’ve told you this before… The problem that any player has to accept who wants to fight from melee is that he/she gets to play by his/her opponent’s rules. This nerf to Cluster Bomb is a severe nerf to this tradeoff. Not to mention- it already has a painfully slow cast time.

• Disabling Shot: an already incredibly weak skill with a terribly obvious animation and vulnerability, needing a nerf? You certainly can’t control a point with this skill, and it’s only good for one, maybe two situations anyways. But hey, leap on the bandwagon…

• Choking Gas: this has no side effects outside of poison, the poison lasts a relatively short period of time (5s is much shorter than most people tend to imply that it is), and it has a fairly predictable pulse. Not sure what the logic is with this.

• Infi Signet: so what’s your problem with mobility, anyways? Everybody likes this skill how it is currently, this is just a terrible change.

• SA VI: if nothing else, this skill is pretty easy to counter just by swinging your sword once. You seem to have a major hatred for blindness, though your supposed “fixes” that you’ve listed out suggest that you’re probably blind anyways.

Swagg.9236:

WARRIOR CHANGES
Longbow skills
[Arcing Arrow]

• Recharge increased from 10 to 12 seconds
• Added a minimum range: 180

That minimum range is just stupid, longbow is a weapon good in close combat due its slow Arrows from AA and arcing arrow, most of the time you have to use pin down to even land a arcing arrow.. but giving it a minimum range is just a HARD counter to this weapon.. do you give every ranged weapon a minimum range also?? rifles? pistols? shortbows/longbows scepters? even axe or something that does range damage??
All you have to do is stick on them and they cant do anything… right good suggestion!

[Pin Down]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1 second
• Recharge: 25 seconds
• Fire a piercing arrow that bleeds and immobilizes your target.
• Damage: 141 (0.4)
• Bleeding (6): 12 seconds
• Immobilized: 3 seconds
• Range: 1500
  • Movement interrupts cast-time; uses the same activation animation as [Kill Shot].

1sec casttime + can interrupts on movement and kneel down.. you call this balance? why not remove the skill and just leave it blanco??
also 1500 range? there issnt a single skill on longbow that also have 1500 range, cool… you just did a 1500 immob but you cant hit him with arcing arrow because it would never make it that far.. even if could make it the immob would already be gone due to the slow arrow

Hammer skills
[Fierce Blow]

• Cast-time increased from ¾ second to 1 second.

Why? 3/4 issnt long enough? you have connection latency maby?

[Backbreaker]

• Cast-time increased from 1 second to 1¼ second.

1,25sec.. + some delay ofc making it 1,5sec casttime… cool now i will never get hit by hammer warriors :-)

Shield skills
[Shield Stance]

• Duration lowered from 3 to 2 seconds.

WHAT?? a 30sec cooldown skill that gives only 3 sec block.. and you want it a 2sec block? even sword can block longer with 15sec cooldown.. you even play warrior??

[Shield Slam]

• Cast-time: ½ second
• Slam the ground with your shield and blind adjacent foes with the resulting dust cloud.
• Damage: 134 (0.5)
• Blind: 5 seconds
• Radius: 180
• Combo Finisher: Blast
  • Using this skill preemptively ends the [Shield Stance] block channel.

its just a 1sec stun that helps allot for a interrupt or doing a burst after.. and you make it a blind.. why? because you hate stuns?? because you don’t run with stability? your necro? Why chance this skill when its already a very balanced.. a 1sec stun on 25sec cooldown.. i don’t see ANY problem with this..

Utility skills
[Endure Pain]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 50 seconds
• Stance. While in this stance, you gain 1500 vitality.
• Duration: 5 seconds
• Breaks stun.

WHY?? endure pain is in a good spot.. why do we need 1500 vitality? this doesn’t make any sense..

Wow, I’d love to see all of the calculations and research you did to come to these conclusions.

adrianz.9672:

Wow, I’d love to see all of the calculations and research you did to come to these conclusions.

Too much to read. Devs will feel the same (as the sticky asks nicely not to make huge posts). I skimmed the ele changes and it seems all you want to do is nerf them and barely compensate. This will not go over well with the pvp community because ele is already the least represented class in ranked pvp. I don’t think an ice field on scepter 2 water is worth further gutting the elementalist class.

For some reason I feel like the OP rolled up his sleeves typed this out with a cup of coffee as if he was really going to work.

Arganthium.5638:

As a general response to your post:

garethh.3518:

@Swagg.9236

You’ve been touching on the big issue with the thief class, I don’t now if you ever outright said it since I didn’t bother to read through all the 100~ posts but I’ll type it out here anyways.

The class is time starved, in its very design it needs to make each action net the thief allot of value or the thief fails (low health, med armor, typically low healing). Since there are only 5 attacks and Anet wanted lots of mobility/blind/stealth to make up for the classes squishy nature, the attacks ended up being super attacks (teleport+blind+dmg, leap+dmg+stealth, unblockable high dmg, blind+combo field, exc, exc.) or else the thief can’t work, or else the thief can’t net enough value with each action to work.

The thing is, with no CDs that means the class is made up of extremely strong spammable attacks…

The class desperately needed some secondary mechanic on top of initiative, like if all of its attacks where in the form of infiltrator’s strike, they had a chained second ability. The first ability would typically cost little if any initiative and then pop up the second ability for 7-20~ seconds and that ability would cost a fair deal of initiative.
It’d be a psuedo CD system.

You could buy an ability off CD or specific perc (the second ability in the chain) by spending the 3-5~ initiative, or you can wait the CD (7-20 seconds for the chain to reset) and spend little if any initiative. It’d make initiative regen traits a playstyle choice instead of necessity. It’d give TONS of room for depth, and numerous ways to build/play a thief, without requiring cheesy spam.

I’m planning on re-working/adding onto my current suggestions based on the brief exchange that I had with the above poster. It’s true, though, that the Thief is currently the black sheep of GW2. It breaks all of the rules by which GW2 combat was supposed to operate and ends up either being a class where you get all the free damage and walk away with a kill or you just die like a wounded dog. It’s a fundamentally bad design from a GW2-combat perspective in which combat is supposed to change flow based on how one reads his opponent’s cues and movements.

A way to balance out the time-starved Thief is to give the thief more ways to contribute to a fight, redistribute its damage/utility out across new weapon skills and prevent spamming the same skills over and over again via new chain skills with functionalities that will accomplish the former two goals.

Arganthium.5638:

Now, as a more specific reply to parts of your post:

Stealth Skills: care to elaborate?

As I’ve said before, if thief had more viable options to dealing damage in a fair manner, we wouldn’t need a [Backstab] to do 8k. Thieves simply don’t have good DPS. Their damage is typically all bundled up into skills without post-cast delays that they spam as much as possible. Thieves just need more DPS. Adding more chain skills to theif weapon skills that dealt some damage and/or provided battlefield utility would be a way to correct this situation.

Furthermore, being able to spam a skill until it hits should not be how anything works in this game. That is the true flaw of stealth skills. So long as you’re in stealth, you get to spam a stealth skill until it hits because it has no recharge and it costs no initiative. That’s unfair and it should be addressed.

Arganthium.5638:

Crippling Strike: As I’ve said before, this skill is a) the third in a chain

A normal attack chain. We’re not talking about a legitimate time investment here.

Arganthium.5638:

that b) has no side effects already (such as condis)

Except that it inflicts weakness and cripple.

Arganthium.5638:

and c) includes skills with insanely large aftercasts anyways. Furthermore, Crippling Strike has a fair amount of windup for the amount of damage it does.

A quarter-second after-cast is almost nothing. Moreover, a one-half-second cast-time is an outrageously short wind-up for more damage than a meteor strike from [Meteor Shower] that also inflicts cripple and weakness. Again, this whole effort with regards to the thief is to make the class something that actually fits in GW2 properly. This require a lot of additional weapon skills to the current sets as well as damage redistribution.

Arganthium.5638:

Infi Strike completely destroying thieves’ mobility.

A super-speed, 600-range sprint attack is not poor mobility.

Arganthium.5638:

The usage of this skill, as always, is extremely predictable

It has no cast-time or casting animation.

Arganthium.5638:

another nerf to thief mobility, which was supposed to be one of the thief’s main attractions anyways.

A 600-range retreating leap is not poor mobility, especially if it comes off of a 600-range super-speed sprint attack.

Arganthium.5638:

The marking ability only makes the skill even weaker (even more predictable), and the mobility nerf to the skill…

A 900-range direct-to-target leap is not poor mobility. I’ve already discussed why animations are important in order to keep this game’s combat balanced.

Arganthium.5638:

Again, there’s no context within which you can justify this.

You can read my first post: the very first paragraph. A lot of individual thief skills break many of those rules that govern the balance of a ranged ability in GW2. This is one of them. You cannot argue that.

Arganthium.5638:

• Pistol whip: one of the worst ideas I’ve ever seen. You basically have to hit a skill two times in a row within a 2 second time span and then you have to cross your fingers and hope that your skill with an incredibly obvious animation hits your opponent for less damage than Final Thrust at <50%. The counters for this would seem pretty obvious, but apparently not to you…

This is more along the lines of redistribution of thief damage. Also, hitting a player 2 times in a row in order to hit them with a more powerful skill is literally an auto-attack. You are complaining about having to go through the process of an auto-attack to deal damage.

Arganthium.5638:

• Cluster Bomb: I’ve told you this before… The problem that any player has to accept who wants to fight from melee is that he/she gets to play by his/her opponent’s rules. This nerf to Cluster Bomb is a severe nerf to this tradeoff. Not to mention- it already has a painfully slow cast time.

High damage, very large AoE spike skills with very short cast-times shouldn’t be melee range weapons. They should be ranged abilities that either support an on-going battle or a skill that requires clutch timing and aim in order to land on an opponent. This is currently the same issue with Warrior [Arcing Arrow].

Arganthium.5638:

• Disabling Shot: an already incredibly weak skill with a terribly obvious animation and vulnerability, needing a nerf? You certainly can’t control a point with this skill, and it’s only good for one, maybe two situations anyways. But hey, leap on the bandwagon…

It’s currently too easy to spam it for invulnerability frames. I have another idea of how to give it a chain skill in order to solve this issue, though.

Arganthium.5638:

• Choking Gas: this has no side effects outside of poison, the poison lasts a relatively short period of time (5s is much shorter than most people tend to imply that it is), and it has a fairly predictable pulse. Not sure what the logic is with this.

No quick-activating AoE skill needs to be 240 radius. It completely takes the risk out of actually aiming the thing.

Arganthium.5638:

• Infi Signet: so what’s your problem with mobility, anyways? Everybody likes this skill how it is currently, this is just a terrible change.

A 2-second stability, 2-second protection; 1-second super speed [Ride the Lightning] is not poor mobility.

Arganthium.5638:

• SA VI: if nothing else, this skill is pretty easy to counter just by swinging your sword once.

If you dodge properly, then swinging your sword has worked for months now. Where have you been? Moreover, it really hurts classes that don’t readily have skills that cleave.

nicknamenick.2437:

That minimum range is just stupid, longbow is a weapon good in close combat due its slow Arrows from AA and arcing arrow, most of the time you have to use pin down to even land a arcing arrow.. but giving it a minimum range is just a HARD counter to this weapon.. do you give every ranged weapon a minimum range also?? rifles? pistols? shortbows/longbows scepters? even axe or something that does range damage??
All you have to do is stick on them and they cant do anything… right good suggestion!

High damage, very large AoE spike skills with very short cast-times shouldn’t be melee range weapons. They should be ranged abilities that either support an on-going battle or a skill that requires clutch timing and aim in order to land on an opponent.

nicknamenick.2437:

1sec casttime + can interrupts on movement and kneel down.. you call this balance? why not remove the skill and just leave it blanco??
also 1500 range? there issnt a single skill on longbow that also have 1500 range, cool… you just did a 1500 immob but you cant hit him with arcing arrow because it would never make it that far.. even if could make it the immob would already be gone due to the slow arrow

Immobilize is a powerful support tool. More importantly, the [Pin Down] —> [Arcing Arrow] combination is extraordinarily easy to land while in melee range and does a very high amount of damage. There is an enormous discrepancy between the risk in using the combination and the reward you get for landing it (the risk being effectively non-existent while the reward being able to turn an encounter around). This is a sign of imbalance. It needs to be fixed.

nicknamenick.2437:

Hammer skills

Why? 3/4 issnt long enough? you have connection latency maby?

1,25sec.. + some delay ofc making it 1,5sec casttime… cool now i will never get hit by hammer warriors :-)

By better defining individual skills with hefty cast-times, more skills will emerge as unique activations that can turn the tide of battle individually instead of hammer being 1 long channel skill that just perma stuns somebody. Warriors have the 5-second weapon swap so better defining hammer skills would be akin to how an elementalist might have to swap around attunements in order to find the right skill for a given situation.

nicknamenick.2437:

Shield skills
[Shield Stance]

• Duration lowered from 3 to 2 seconds.

WHAT?? a 30sec cooldown skill that gives only 3 sec block.. and you want it a 2sec block? even sword can block longer with 15sec cooldown.. you even play warrior??

Blocks need to be generally cut back from this game.

nicknamenick.2437:

[Shield Slam]
its just a 1sec stun that helps allot for a interrupt or doing a burst after.. and you make it a blind.. why? because you hate stuns?? because you don’t run with stability? your necro? Why chance this skill when its already a very balanced.. a 1sec stun on 25sec cooldown.. i don’t see ANY problem with this..

You completely misread my post then. This is a new chain skill for [Shield Stance] not a replacement for [Shield Bash].

nicknamenick.2437:

Utility skills
[Endure Pain]

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 50 seconds
• Stance. While in this stance, you gain 1500 vitality.
• Duration: 5 seconds
• Breaks stun.

WHY?? endure pain is in a good spot.. why do we need 1500 vitality? this doesn’t make any sense..

Effective invulnerability needs to be culled back from this game. Giving a player 1500 vitality is often enough to double that player’s current hitpoints. Double a player’kittenpoints allows that player to soak up twice as much damage. This provides a way for [Endure Pain] to soak up damage while not resorting to it just being damage invulnerability. It also helps deal with conditions because it gives the warrior more health.

piffdaddy.8014:

Too much to read. Devs will feel the same (as the sticky asks nicely not to make huge posts).

I know what the sticky says, but this game needs more than just a fluffy two-line idea with “because” sitting in the middle of a sentence.

piffdaddy.8014:

I skimmed the ele changes and it seems all you want to do is nerf them and barely compensate. This will not go over well with the pvp community because ele is already the least represented class in ranked pvp. I don’t think an ice field on scepter 2 water is worth further gutting the elementalist class.

You’re doing just what everybody else is. You looked at one class and then not at anything else.

More importantly, you probably didn’t read the first post. Elementalist is loaded with many skills that are unfair ranged abilities. Furthermore, I redistributed a lot of elementalist scepter damage along with adding more utility and damage to focus off-hand all while keeping the first post governing rules in mind.

• Stealth skills- so you plan on amplifying our damage by severely nerfing our stealth skills? I might have considered some of your points about chain skills valid, but the fact that you’ve created a bunch of extremely weak chain skills in your notes seem to stand quite contradictory to such a position.

• Crippling Strike- a) (see point c about casts) b) I mean that the rest of the chain has no alternate effects. It’s significantly more difficult to hit the second skill of any chain than the first, and even more so to hit the third skill of any chain as opposed to the second (because of the small time windows between which you can use different chained skills)- not to mention that the weakness and cripple are too short to be able to stack it again before its duration runs out unless you’re playing practically stationary opponents- and c) have you ever actually used the skill chain before? I told you to research this last time, but apparently you’ve chosen to completely ignore Jumper’s and my research. Unfortunately I deleted the video that I took of the testing a while back, but basically what I did was test different attacks on golems with S/D in the Mists and recorded my doing so. I then slowed the video down to .1 seconds/second and marked the video at the times where the beginning of an attack occurred, the damage landed, and the next attack of any sort was started (aftercast). As it so happens, the animations on all three attacks in the auto for Sword have extremely long after casts, resulting from the continuous motion of the sword downwards and then up and back downwards (or forwards) again for the next attack in a chain. If I had the data still for these particular skills then I would certainly present them, but I can tell that you haven’t researched this because the cast with aftercast is certainly much more than .25 seconds. Also, Meteor Shower is an AoE across a large area that has a 1200 range on a long-ranged weapon and has a very, very different attack pattern. You seem to use Meteor Shower as your base standard for everything in the game, but you clearly fail to understand the extreme difference between this skill and the skills you’re comparing it with.

• Infi Strike- you’re completely nerfing vertical mobility so that we can only attack opponents across two dimensions. That’s a pretty significant nerf. As for cast times, you’re wrong. I do actually have data for this. While my sample size is not large, it is at least indicative of the actual cast time for the skill: between the time when the skill was used and the damage/immobilize hit, across four trials, I found a cast time (activation to damage) of 6.9, 6.7, 5.6, and 6.2 tenths of a second (I took a note about the 5.6 result, which came from strafing for that particular trial). The time between which a player activated a skill and teleported, respectively, were 3.2, 2.2, 2.1, and 2.5 tenths of a second. You clearly have a bit of leeway before the damage hits, and you can take advantage of this even more if you watch your enemy’s boon/condition bar, which has the Infiltrator’s Return ability marked on it when active. Not to mention- thieves, by their nature, follow a pattern in terms of their attacking and retreating, and knowing that, it is extremely easy to predict when one is going to use IS (IR to a lesser extent, however). Also, the retreating leap makes it infinitely more difficult to move along the z-axis as well, and the fact that it doesn’t “anchor” you to a specific spot makes its effects not only much less predictable (this randomness reduces skill required) but prevents you from trying to be “in two places at once”, which is one of the main attractions to any sword build.

• Pistol Whip- your “redistribution” of damage seems more like nerfs across all decent-damage attacks… A chain skill can be evaded and is far more predictable by its very nature, making PW much harder to hit with your changes. Furthermore, the 2-second time window between the first two hits is significantly less than the time window between auto attacks, which is a huge problem unless your opponent just wants to take a bunch of attacks to the face without moving or evading.

• Cluster Bomb- what? Melee-range weapons should be “high damage, very large AoE spike skills with very short cast-times”. That’s the reward of melee- you fight on your opponents’ terms with much less area to attack from, so you should, naturally, get something to compensate- otherwise, melee damage is absolutely pointless and ranged weapons should always be used. And you clearly don’t know how hard it is to land a CB on anyone more than, say, 500 range away…

• Disabling Shot- research cast times. They’re not “invulnerability frames”, and DS will often position you to some place that you don’t want to be anyways because of its basic linear movement. Not to mention- it has an incredibly obvious animation and does trash for damage.

• Choking Gas- the initiative cost is too high for the reward it gives to simply just point-click-spam the skill.

• Infi Signet- it allows us to SS stomp, stunbreak, instantly teleport, cast while using the signet, and use the z-axis. 2s stability and 2s protection and the RTL abilities are not enough to make up for this nerf.

• SA VI- the vast, vast majority of stealths, in practice, come from attacks. Time your auto right and you’ll at least be able to hit one of your attacks to remove blind due to aftercast on HS and CnD. It’s really not that difficult.

Arganthium.5638:

• Stealth skills- so you plan on amplifying our damage by severely nerfing our stealth skills?

You’re not even considering the idea that they aren’t incredibly imbalanced. That’s the real issue here. I’m making stealth skills as fair as any other skill in the game. More importantly, my ideas are yet complete since I just decided to move this thread into the proper forum and the forum mods aren’t letting me reserve any posts. For now, what you see is a half-step through a full motion of changes for the thief.

Arganthium.5638:

• Crippling Strike- a) (see point c about casts) b) I mean that the rest of the chain has no alternate effects.

It’s an auto-attack chain. I don’t have to justify why a skill-chain like that should be weak/underpowered in the first place. Regardless, it still does a very high amount of damage.

Arganthium.5638:

have you ever actually used the skill chain before?

Yes, I took my thief into the Heart of the Mists and took to attacking golems repeatedly as you did. While I don’t have the ability to capture video like you do, it was easy to almost permanently maintain the cripple and weakness (durations were 2 1/4 seconds respectively) on a golem just by auto-attacking it. To this effect, I inferred that the entire auto-attack chain must take about 2.5 seconds. Given that the cast-times for each skill in the auto-attack chain were 1/2 seconds respectively, that left an extra 1-second of after-cast littering the chain. Seeing that [Crippling Strike] had the longest amount by far, I estimated it again. [Crippling Strike]’s after-cast seems closer to 1/2 second with the others being closer to 1/4 second, making the total time consumed using [Crippling Strike] probably around 1 second.

The issue here is that apparently 1-second is too long of a time to tolerate for a single skill activation for thief. That’s a legitimate issue. Making combat lightning fast with teleports everywhere isn’t a good idea in a game that is supposed to revolve around seeing your opponent doing things. Things need to be slowed down and damage needs to be reduced.

The more I think about it, once thief is properly fixed, it could probably use a little hp buff.

Arganthium.5638:

• Infi Strike- you’re completely nerfing vertical mobility

Spammable teleports go contrary to GW2’s combat fundamentals about being able to read opponents and taking advantage of good positioning.

Vertical mobility should just be attained by super jumping ala the Skyhammer jump-bumpers. On that thought, I have ideas for some additional skills now.

Arganthium.5638:

Also, the retreating leap makes it infinitely more difficult to move along the z-axis as well, and the fact that it doesn’t “anchor” you to a specific spot makes its effects not only much less predictable (this randomness reduces skill required) but prevents you from trying to be “in two places at once”, which is one of the main attractions to any sword build.

A retreating roll with evasion frames is a very powerful juking maneuver, especially if the length of the retreating roll is 600 range or more. It’s very easy to throw an opponent off by letting him catch up to you and then rolling backwards through him. It’s also possible to use the about-face button and then roll immediately afterwards in order to put distance between you and an opponent if you are running away.

Arganthium.5638:

• Pistol Whip- your “redistribution” of damage seems more like nerfs across all decent-damage attacks… A chain skill can be evaded and is far more predictable by its very nature, making PW much harder to hit with your changes.

You are upset by there being risks in skill-usage is a sign that this game has deep flaws. As I’ve said before, once thief is properly balanced, it might need an hp buff.

Arganthium.5638:

Furthermore, the 2-second time window between the first two hits is significantly less than the time window between auto attacks, which is a huge problem unless your opponent just wants to take a bunch of attacks to the face without moving or evading.

The first two hits were lowered in cast-time to 1/2 second and would come with a short after-cast. It would be much less than 2 seconds total before reaching [Malicious Strike].

Arganthium.5638:

• Cluster Bomb- what? Melee-range weapons should be “high damage, very large AoE spike skills with very short cast-times”. That’s the reward of melee- you fight on your opponents’ terms with much less area to attack from, so you should, naturally, get something to compensate- otherwise, melee damage is absolutely pointless and ranged weapons should always be used.

Spamming 3.5-4k damage in a 240 radius around you every 1/2 second is not a balanced melee attack.

Arganthium.5638:

And you clearly don’t know how hard it is to land a CB on anyone more than, say, 500 range away…

No, I’m aware. That’s why the minimum range is only 180.

Arganthium.5638:

• Disabling Shot- research cast times. They’re not “invulnerability frames”, and DS will often position you to some place that you don’t want to be anyways because of its basic linear movement. Not to mention- it has an incredibly obvious animation and does trash for damage.

It’s not a damage skill. It’s a spam to run away for free skill. That’s why it could use an adjustment as well as a chain skill with some utility to at least diversify its usage and give the skill a little more character.

Arganthium.5638:

• Choking Gas- the initiative cost is too high for the reward it gives to simply just point-click-spam the skill.

Once again, your worry about risking a skill’s usage is a sign that this game is in bad shape.

Arganthium.5638:

• Infi Signet- it allows us to SS stomp, stunbreak, instantly teleport, cast while using the signet, and use the z-axis. 2s stability and 2s protection and the RTL abilities are not enough to make up for this nerf.

I’m going to address this with an update.

Arganthium.5638:

• SA VI- the vast, vast majority of stealths, in practice, come from attacks. Time your auto right and you’ll at least be able to hit one of your attacks to remove blind due to aftercast on HS and CnD. It’s really not that difficult.

It’s still very much a free hit given that it negates an auto-attack. Furthermore, this game’s ranged auto-attacks are at an extreme disadvantage to this trait because they do not cleave and often (or at least should) have longer cast-times.

Update to Elementlist scepter and dagger off-hand skills.
The goal is to give scepter more reliable and fair DPS options instead of just throwing everything into a poorly cued spike rotation. Updraft’s change is to give the dagger off-hand more mobility as while still maintaining its possible use as a clutch control skill.

Don’t worry Swagg, this is good stuff. Smart, comprehensive suggestions go way over the average forum troll’s head

jmatb.6307:

Don’t worry Swagg, this is good stuff. Smart, comprehensive suggestions go way over the average forum troll’s head

I really appreciate it.

Swagg* your definitely balancing more around your ingi and hows the best way to balancing classes around ingi

For example,
Cluster bomb has its reason why the Player can detonate by clicking again
also simple decreasing dmg with no effort, thiefs already had a bunch of dmg-nerfs
you want making shortbow more useless with theese changes and also other skills and mechanics of the thief

Arkantos.7460:

Swagg* your definitely balancing more around your ingi and hows the best way to balancing classes around ingi

I really don’t know what this sentence is trying to say. Also what do you mean by “ingi”?

Arkantos.7460:

Cluster bomb has its reason why the Player can detonate by clicking again
also simple decreasing dmg with no effort, thiefs already had a bunch of dmg-nerfs
you want making shortbow more useless with theese changes and also other skills and mechanics of the thief

Again, not… entirely sure what you’re trying to say, but I will say what I’ve said before: a 240-radius, high-damage PBAoE that can be spammed and has a 1/2-second activation time is not a properly balanced melee attack.

Making adjustments like adding minimum ranges to powerful ranged abilities will help better define battlefield positions in this game. As it stands now, positioning doesn’t mean a lot to most GW2 players in a fight. People just spam skills because they hit. That is an issue.
[/quote]

Swagg.9236:

Arkantos.7460:

Swagg* your definitely balancing more around your ingi and hows the best way to balancing classes around ingi

I really don’t know what this sentence is trying to say. Also what do you mean by “ingi”?

Arkantos.7460:

Cluster bomb has its reason why the Player can detonate by clicking again
also simple decreasing dmg with no effort, thiefs already had a bunch of dmg-nerfs
you want making shortbow more useless with theese changes and also other skills and mechanics of the thief

Again, not… entirely sure what you’re trying to say, but I will say what I’ve said before: a 240-radius, high-damage PBAoE that can be spammed and has a 1/2-second activation time is not a properly balanced melee attack.

Making adjustments like adding minimum ranges to powerful ranged abilities will help better define battlefield positions in this game. As it stands now, positioning doesn’t mean a lot to most GW2 players in a fight. People just spam skills because they hit. That is an issue.

[/quote]

IM sorry, should wrote ingi = Engineer(engi), sorry for my bad english ^^ writing like speaking …. XD

To the fact, you want to prevent thief from spamming , right?!
You already know thiefs having an INitiative pool to “spam” attacks and doing “burst damage”,
of curse you can spam and making this pool empty, for the higher risk to be vulnerable.
But because of this , all other classes gain Immunity skills to avoid dmg except the Thief and because of this reason to be Glascannon you have to evade and replacing all the time you were in fights. Maybe you didnt realize this when playing as or against a Thief, but little mistakes will cost your life.
(stealth is not an Option for real avoiding dmg)

Otherwise, tell me some range/dmg inidcator of grenades, preventing Engineers from spamming grenades in melee range !
That is an issue , too.

Also not meant abusive against you or Engis ^^

jmatb.6307:

Don’t worry Swagg, this is good stuff. Smart, comprehensive suggestions go way over the average forum troll’s head

You’re one to talk, given the outcome of our last discussion. At least have the respect to contribute something rather than continue trying to flame me.

• Stealth skills: “You’re not even considering the idea that they aren’t incredibly imbalanced”… I’m guessing that’s not what you were trying to say. As for stealth skills “not being fair”, they’re always fairly predictable (even if you can’t see your opponent), and stealth by its very nature allows you to damage opponents while they can’t do anything back to you without removing stealth. The risk is that if you even take 3, 4 hits maximum (unless they’re e_really_ low-damage hits overall), then your entire combo will be pointless because you’ve been hit by more damage than you’ve dealt. Condis still apply while stealthed, and you can use CC lines/circles and/or AoEs to damage thieves easily. It’s a tradeoff, so you’d better justify why these skills are supposedly “unfair”. In the meanwhile, you should also justify why skills like Surprise Shot (hardly more damage than the auto attack without the bounce and a relatively short 2s immobilize that has a noticeable cast since it’s an arrow that essentially pops up out of nowhere) are as unfair as Backstab and so should thus get the same CD as BS does.

• Crippling Strike- as I’ve said, there are no alternative abilities to any of these skills, and with their large aftercasts it would make sense that the last skill at least does a decent amount of damage. Also, if I recall correctly, one of the reason why the Sword auto chain is so powerful against stationary/barely moving opponents (and I suspect this is the case with all melee weapons) is that a continuous usage and striking of the auto chain will slightly decrease your cast times (more fluidity in your motions). Furthermore, if 2.5 seconds is too little time to be able to react to an auto chain, then that’s simply a skill issue. Players can respond easily to half-second casts, so a lack of ability to counteract a chain that lasts 2.5 seconds in its entirety is simply a player issue, not a game one. Your changes are only an attempt to make this game even less skillful than it already is, which defeats the purpose of experience.

• Infi Strike- I’m not even going to address this one until you tell me why you “should” only be able to access vertical mobility via things like the bumpers on SHammer. It turns this game into a two-dimensional one with much less dynamism than it currently has. As for the IR changes, you can already evade in whichever direction you want with Withdraw. You can just as easily put distance between you and your opponent with the current form of IR, except that that skill requires more skill as opposed to luck as you’re anchored to a single point that you have to use to your advantage rather than just evading in some direction and crossing your fingers that you get somewhere safe. Not to mention that this nerf would only further make the thief identical to warrior, which certainly isn’t the reason most of us chose to play thief instead. You also ignored what I said about the casting times, which would seem to imply that you in fact either researched them (which I presume from the fact that you bothered to research CS’s cast times) and have ignored what I have said, knowing it to be true, or you were too apathetic to research it at the same time you were researching CS, which implies that you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about in the first place. Heck, if nothing else, just get somebody to video it for you- a friend or a guildmate, for instance. It’s really not that difficult… And if it was, then it would simply be best for you to stop talking about how IS has a “zero” cast time and is “completely unpredictable”.

I can’t see the rationale behind quite a few ele changes, and as for others they seem overdone.

For instance playing primarily thief I’ve dodged many arcane blasts. That skill isn’t particularly troublesome being positioning widens the reaction time. The projectile itself has a slower velocity than say an arrow or bullet so you can react. It becomes really instant in melee range. Honestly I’d leave it as it is.

Arcane wave however with that instant ground target gives you jack flipping squat to react to in any circumstance whatsoever. Don’t get me wrong it’s alright for some skills not to be very telegraphed and even alright for a few to have none but Wave isn’t one of them and so I agree on giving it a delay, but it’s not really looking on something like a 1s. Even a 1/4 or 1/2s cast makes it no problem given aftercast takes care of the rest. If you just want it evadable, given you have it hitting the location 3/4th cast generally take care of that given a proper indicator.

Also don’t see why you’d think making Dragon’s tooth ground targetted would warrant a damage reduction. The reality is it’s going to drop the successful hitrate on a general level even further giving the same delay and radius. That’s just reality. I also don’t see why scepter 3 would need any sort of change, or a chain skill to make its use clunky at what it wants to do which is immediately stop an attack.

Focus is a more defensive/supportive weapon set so the freezing gust change really doesn’t compute and comes off as an anomaly. While this Flame wall chain skill is interesting and certainly something I’d refrain from judging, I just don’t see the point of the rest of the changes, what is the direction, what is the purpose? To increase the damage of the focus? High cast time skills/channels seem counter productive to that. While a channel skill with a CC at the end has it’s place, I don’t see where it fits in on the focus with its emphasis on range skills with defensive options when it isn’t ranged. Freezing gust seems completely out of tune with D/F.

I wont be text walling over everything but these stood out.

• Pistol Whip- that’s not what I’m saying at all. What I’m saying is that the risk far exceeds the reward for this skill- hitting the same skill twice in a row within a 2s period is extremely difficult. I will say, however, that I am somewhat opposed to a large number of risk-reward skills because they invite an element of randomness into the game which then decreases the skill required to play. Knowing what you get when you get it allows you to focus more on perfecting the usage of those skills instead of gambling each time you play. Also, about the cast times- if you haven’t noticed, every single cast time in the game is more than the tooltip says (with a couple of exceptions). For example, pistol’s .5 second cast has a massive aftercast that makes it more like 1 to 1.5 seconds, and Infiltrator Return’s .25 second cast is easily more like a 1.5 second cast as well. Thus, the idea you’re proposing implies that the casting time used will be more like a full second, particularly because it’s not an auto attack and thus doesn’t activate instantaneously after the first aftercast is finished.

• Cluster Bomb- further evidence you don’t know what you’re talking about. Any thief that’s spammed Cluster Bomb for any reason at all during his/her career knows that the timing between CB’s, even when you burst all of them, is more like 3-4 times what you said. You also fail to ignore that there are many melee skills that do exactly that anyways, and aren’t nearly as obvious as CB is… When was the last time you saw a thief spamming CB, anyways? I don’t know that I’ve seen one do it in the past 2-3 weeks.

• Disabling Shot- sure, ignore what I said about casting frames as well, I don’t mind. Just wasting my time.

• Choking Gas- or maybe it just means that the marginal benefit from using Choking Gas decreases to almost zero after you’ve used it once?

• Infi Signet- nice update you have there…

• SA VI- how is that a free hit? You’re getting at least one free hit from your opponent coming up to you using BP+HS or CnD anyways, how many do you need? And I don’t see why there can’t be a counter to ranged weapons from melee, especially when you need to work much harder to use stealth against a ranged opponent anyways.

This topic is so godam awfull.

You are basically removing everything on GW2 combat that shines compared to other games.

Please, just quit. Go play Blade Symphony or something.

I don’t like your Ele or Ranger changes, Swagg. As far as the Ranger goes I like the shortbow and axe as is. Axe is a great tagging and condition weapon already as is the shortbow. They are not broken. If anything all they need is a straight damage boost to AA. I also like the Guardian and Mesmer as is. I haven’t played the Engi enough to pass judgement on that one. Mine is only level 22 atm. Also, warrior is in a pretty good place, IMO.

Oh, and TL:DR for the Devs… You know this, right?

As a general response to the posts above before I do any sort of specific replies:

CURRENT STATE OF GW2

• Spam-centric game-play
  • Individual skill definition is at an all-time low (many weapon sets are more or less just a long-channel skill of spammed abilities—a beam-attack of sorts—instead of being 5 individual skills that have unique and powerful effects on the battlefield)

• Conditions are king
  • Conditions are an unfair way of doing DPS compared to power-based builds since you don’t really have to keep hitting an opponent. Front-loading spam-centric throwaway skills that require minimal aim, thought, timing and hold no risk to the user for their activation completely outclasses how power-based builds work and turns combat into a face-roll.
  • The way to fix this is to make condition-based builds more like power builds in how they apply conditions. Tie conditions to well-cued, long-recharge skills that actually have a strong impact when they land on an opponent instead of making conditions just something you get for free by pressing buttons willy-nilly while you have a target selected.

• Read my first post about what is balanced ranged combat, energy and attrition game-play in GW2.

These are the things that I am out to fix. They require a vast reworking of how GW2 currently plays and overall will create a healthier pvp scene by better defining where a profession or certain weapon sets belong on a battlefield. Furthermore, this reworking will return clutch use of powerful skills that require timing, aim and positioning to the forefront of winning a match up. In return, timing active dodges and other damage mitigation skills will become more of a staple in GW2 combat instead of just eating spam and then healing it off as is the current manner of doing things.

If you want to argue me on any points, argue me on what I have said here. These points are the fundamental reasons behind my skill changes. Saying “I don’t like x because I like the way it is now” is not a valid argument. Just try to give me a reason why GW2 pvp is even remotely healthy or even mentally engaging based on what I’ve said here.

ensoriki.5789:

I can’t see the rationale behind quite a few ele changes, and as for others they seem overdone.

For instance playing primarily thief I’ve dodged many arcane blasts.

That is none of my concern.

ensoriki.5789:

That skill isn’t particularly troublesome being positioning widens the reaction time. The projectile itself has a slower velocity than say an arrow or bullet so you can react. It becomes really instant in melee range.

The trouble is exactly that it becomes almost instantaneous when used within melee range. That’s the fix.

ensoriki.5789:

Arcane wave however with that instant ground target gives you jack flipping squat to react to in any circumstance whatsoever.

That’s why I added the post-cast delay period.

Don’t get me wrong it’s alright for some skills not to be very telegraphed and even alright for a few to have none [/quote]
Not in GW2, it’s not. That’s one of my main points that govern this thread.

ensoriki.5789:

but Wave isn’t one of them and so I agree on giving it a delay, but it’s not really looking on something like a 1s.

No player is going to run out of a 360-range radius in 1/2 or 1/4 second. They won’t even make it out in time if the post-cast delay is 1 second long. The goal of the animation cue tied to the post-cast delay is to give an opponent time to dodge or use a block. It’s dodge bait. Dodge bait is very strong. It’s also a blast finisher anyway so it has multiple uses.

ensoriki.5789:

Even a 1/4 or 1/2s cast makes it no problem given aftercast takes care of the rest.

Except that [Arcane Wave] has no after-cast. Furthermore, giving [Arcane Wave] a cast-time or after-cast would take away the ability to actively layer skills on top of a battlefield. That’s one of the key interesting aspects of the Elementalist.

ensoriki.5789:

Also don’t see why you’d think making Dragon’s tooth ground targetted would warrant a damage reduction. The reality is it’s going to drop the successful hitrate on a general level even further giving the same delay and radius. That’s just reality.

No it’s not. It’s not reality at all. If [Dragon’s Tooth] were a ground-targeted skill, you could lead targets with it in order to compensate for its average radius. Even better, you could work with allies to maneuver a player into a [Dragon’s Tooth] AoE.

On the topic of the damage reduction, it was sort of a second-hand thought because of how [Dragon’s Tooth] would just be much easier to aim after the change so I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just constantly wrecking people for 4-5k damage. However, because the radius is average and it has a 2-second delay, I might reconsider the damage reduction.

ensoriki.5789:

I also don’t see why scepter 3 would need any sort of change, or a chain skill to make its use clunky at what it wants to do which is immediately stop an attack.

If you’re talking about [Lightning Orb], the goal is to give the Elementalist more viable DPS options across the board for scepter that can supplant the poorly cued, near instant spike style that it currently runs. It’s current skills go entirely contrary to how GW2 combat is meant to function and so I’m fixing it with fair skills that deal high DPS in order to balance out the sources of damage.

ensoriki.5789:

Focus is a more defensive/supportive weapon set so the freezing gust change really doesn’t compute and comes off as an anomaly.

It is an anomaly. The goal of the anomalous [Freezing Gust] is to give off-hand Elementalist focus a powerful card to play when the player finds him/herself in the proper positioning with the proper amount of time to commit to such a powerful control skill. This is more on how I’m attempting to better define individual skills. The current [Freezing Gust] is a throwaway skill that someone just uses because it’s there and there’s no risk to using it when its off cool-down and because chill is a powerful condition. By giving [Freezing Gust] a makeover to something into a game-changing skill that requires a lot of time-investment as well as good positioning and maybe some supplement defensive skills to pull off, it really shapes the skill into its own and gives the off-hand Elementalist focus a powerful tool to shape the battlefield.

ensoriki.5789:

To increase the damage of the focus? High cast time skills/channels seem counter productive to that.

As I’ve said before, I’m defining individual skills by giving them risk-reward paradigms based on cast-times and powerful pay-outs upon cast completion. The focus is above all a control skill and so remaking a lot of skills into better control-style skills was my main goal.

ELEMENTALIST CHANGES CONTINUED
Utility skills
[Signet of Air] (active)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 30 seconds
• Strike target area with a blinding lightning bolt.
• Damage: 179 (0.5)
• Blind: 5 seconds
• Radius: 240
• Breaks stun
• Range: 1200

[Signet of Fire] (active)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 15 seconds
• Conjure a fire at target location that burns foes. The final burst of flame inflicts a longer duration of burning.
• Delay: 1 second
• Damage (3x): 687 (0.9)
• Burning (3): 1 seconds
• Final flame burst damage: 314 (1.0)
• Final flame burst burning: 4 seconds
• Duration: 4 seconds
• Combo Field: Fire
• Radius: 180
• Range: 1200
  • This skill works in the same manner as [Lava Font]. The first damage/effect pulse happens 1 second after the field creation and continues to pulse until its duration ends.
  • The signet’s image appears on the ground duration the delay time.

[Signet of Earth] (active)

• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 25 seconds
• Trap foes in earthen binds at target location.
• Delay: 1 second
• Immobilize: 2 seconds
• Radius: 120
• Range: 1200
  • Foes struck by this skill have a rock jutting into them from the ground similar to how [Unsteady Ground] displays its rocks when triggered.
  • The signet’s image appears on the ground duration the delay time.

[Signet of Water] (active)

• Cast-time: 0
• Recharge: 25 seconds
• Chill foes at target location with a burst of cold frost.
• Delay: 1 second
• Damage: 179 (0.5)
• Chilled: 3 seconds
• Radius: 180
• Range: 1200
  • Uses a shrunken [Frozen Burst] animation to display the damage and the effect.
  • The signet’s image appears on the ground duration the delay time.

Arganthium.5638:

Your post on stealth skills

Look man, you’re not even arguing my points anymore for the Stealth Skill changes. When I say “Stealth Skills are imbalanced because a, b and c,” a proper rebuttal is not “But you get conditions while you’re in stealth.” Nor is a proper rebuttal “Stealth Skills are predictable” when I’ve already said that the real issue with Stealth Skills is their ability to be spammed until they hit so long as the player remains in stealth (which would be as long as the stealth holds out since a miss doesn’t deal damage to break the stealth). You are literally saying that an auto-attack is predictable. Just because it’s predictable doesn’t mean that the player doesn’t get to use the skill until it hits you.

You’re not winning any argument here.

Arganthium.5638:

Your post on how difficult it is to hit with crippling strike

Are you also not moving while using the skill? You can move while using that attack chain and keep pace with a target, especially if you manage to cripple it with [Crippling Strike]. However, if the player that you are attacking has swiftness or manages to get away, then that is their victory. You were outplayed.

Arganthium.5638:

Your changes are only an attempt to make this game even less skillful than it already is, which defeats the purpose of experience.

My changes are to make combat more defined and make skill-usage more of a high risk-high reward paradigm that requires timing, positioning and aim. Since when do abilities like make game-play less skillful?

Arganthium.5638:

Your post on [Infiltrator’s Strike] and super jumping

I’m not going to keep arguing about why [Infiltrator’s Strike] (or a ranged gap-closer in general) is imbalanced when it clearly breaks several balance-governing rules that I’ve defined in my very first post. Those are truths related to how this game was designed. This skill is breaking those rules. That’s a sign of imbalance.

As for super jumping, super jumping is something that would not only enable a thief to reach places and make vertical positioning plays, but it would also be something that an opponent could see happening and to which that opponent could devise counter-play.

If the thief had a profession mechanic that allowed him to scale walls and skills that granted super jumping, that would make the thief a lot more fair than just giving him free spammable teleports between vertical levels on a plane. It would give the thief vertical mobility while also allowing opponents to react to it (or, you know, if the thief climbed the right walls and jumped over the right places, he could just sneak up on people anyway; the thief also has stealth).

Posting to see if this fixes the thread. All I’m seeing is a blank page and I think it skipped to the second page without rendering the first one.

edit: Yeah, that fixed it.