Guild Wars 2

Well , I guess i’ll go back to D\P perma stealth troll build then .

Necromancer

1. 1 worthless trait is Spite 25 and needs looking at. Gain 1 stack of might when you go below 25% health.

However, the biggest change I want to see in a necromancer is Putrid Mark getting fixed. Since June, it has not transferred conditions from allies to enemies and it holds charges on blasts even when the field is gone and is triggered later.

Is there going to be a bug fix patch before December?

I like having longer swiftness on my engi and perma vigor is to strong, but I still HAVE to swap kits at the 10 sec cd now, cant you make it hold for 12 sec 10 sec cd? or 10 sec with 8 sec cd?

You easy lose momentum and you have to keep track on your swiftness during combat when you are buffing it on your own..

ELE

10 seconds… just like the current. seriously why couldn’t they make the base CD with 0 points in arcana 10. Then knock it down to 7 if you go full arcana giving us the base “weapon” cd. THAT is what would’ve made going into arcana not as much as a necessity anymore.

- With the way they moved both the V and VI to the master traits they’re now screwing up the D/D build even more so by now not being able to get the V in the adept trait line. Thus making the old arcana V,VI, XI now not useable. A fix i could see would be to remove the ICD on evasive arcana… letting us free up some points from the water line by not having to go 30 into water for OK condi removal.

- They also did the same thing with the water line by moving V to the master line thus knocking out cantrip recharge in the master line. Now its either cleansing wave, cantrip CD or cleansing wave, cleansing water/power aura… screwing up the water line now.

- Earth, DS is nice now for the start of fights but useless in wvw/pvp after the fight starts bascially. Toughness increase is nice but… its almost like a slap in the face with the other trait line changes.

- Air, Tempest defense cd is really nice. I can see they’re trying to get d/d builds into other lines than the standard 0/10/0/30/30.

- Fire still isnt worth going into with D/D.

In the end… this would entirely screw up the current/standard D/D build entirely and destroy it even further.

Oh jon…

Skirmishing XII – Moment of Clarity. Stun Duration increased from 50% to 100%.

Why must you tease me

If only it worked on Dazes..

I don’t even know what to say about thief changes other than I am very disappointed..

Thieves are going to be bottom of the barrel next patch. Nerfed strongest build and nerf to perma bp+hs. You boosted the healing on initiative and gave us easier access to htc? Htc is completely bugged and who cares how much we heal when it takes 2 hits to kill us. Thieves will not have the ability to stay in a fight and melee when they can get stunned every other 7s. Goodbye thief class.

Nice to see skull crack warrior will still be OP.

JonPeters.5630:

• Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse, rather than 8 seconds if you have no swiftness and 1 second if you have swiftness.

Isn’t this a bit of a harsh change for WvW Guardians who don’t zerg, it was already really hard to get away from a surprise mob of out of combat people with the usual speeders and teleporters, trying to get my symbol of swiftness to not tag anything so I get stuck in combat and caught for sure, glad I get to group with Mesmers often so I don’t have to completely waste a slot on retreat now, I think Guardians already had enough mobility issues seeing them all shell out 7-8 gold(per piece) on a new 25% speed 6piece traveler rune bonus(which again won’t let you get away from the heartseeker thieves and warping war/eles etc.).

I can’t figure out the reason for this change with the mobility other classes get, swiftness isn’t even that great in the first place and it’s all we get pretty much(besides judges intervention which a support guard should not be using).

Necromancer Increase base mark radius to what it is while traited. Trait will make marks unblockable and further decrese cooldown (or increase amount of targets affected instead of decreasin cooldown).
Or whatever. Just increase base radius of marks.

FluffyFox.2756:

If thief sword is going to get a cast time for infiltrator’s return, would it be possible to look into flanking strike and larcenous strike again? Ever since it was nerfed to only steal one boon, I find myself almost never using it, due to the fact that boon durations are generally very short, they are re-applied very easily, and there’s no control whatsoever on which boon you will be stealing anyways.

I do agree that it was too powerful at 2 boons stolen per larcenous strike, but I find it far too weak at 1 boon stolen… do you think the skill could be modified in some other fashion so that it’s not such a waste of initiative anymore?

It should still 1 boon, then another boon of a subset – protection, vigor, retal or regen – that way it properly limits the power of boon bunkers without overpenalizing DPS/hybrid setups that rely on might/fury/swiftness to fulfill their roles.

Wow these look amazing. I can’t express how thankful I am that you all are looking deeply into class design. These changes show that you all are listening to feedback from the right people.

The following applies to SPvP:

I think the new earth XI trait, Diamond Skin, for elementalists is very, very interesting. I think that I would prefer a game style where conditions are harder to apply and remove, but that doesn’t seem the direction the designer’s want it to go, which is interesting and viable.

I think the danger here is that people compensate by just bringing more conditions, and you end up with teams of 4 necromancers/engineers and a guardian.

I’m still very concerned with the extreme lack of burst and AE available to the Ranger class. Are there weapon changes in addition to these changes perhaps?

You’ve given the Ranger traits like Remorseless and Moment of Clarity but scarce are the opportunities to use these traits. Remorseless in particular leaves you nothing to use this trait with but low damage #1 attack of the Longbow. The only other option is weapon swapping, but with no trait to reduce the cooldown of weapon swaps, the Ranger is stuck in a terrible weapon like Greatsword waiting for Maul to come off cooldown or waiting to swap back.

Now I don’t much care if you introduce a utility skill or change longbow to have a high burst skill, but the class desperately needs it. There’s still very little synergy with the traits for this class. Still no synergy between weapons. And still nothing to elevate the class above 8th place in WvW.

[Feedback/Suggestion]

Since you are going to nerf 10/30/30/0/0 to death and s/d too, I think it would be nice to bring 3s revealed back to pvp so that some thieves that loved playing condi could do it again.

Can we safely say this balance is only for pvp/wvw? Just to make sure.

You’ve buffed several of the skills which were 5% of stat X buffs stat Y. Some of these were buffed from 5% to 10%, although for others it was buffed to 7%. Maybe I’m just misreading or mixing up my traits, but why is this the case?

On another note related to such skills, what is the current opinion of them in anet? They’ve always been such boring traits to take as they don’t really add a whole lot of change or uniqueness to a build. Unfortunately a lot of the traits fall into this category but these stat X boosts stat Y ones were always particularly the worst for their blandness. Is there any chance of seeing these replaced? Do they have a certain role that isn’t quite so obvious to us?

Hey great ideas! How about a trait for engineers? "remove a condition when you use a toolkit skill? hmm? dunno about you but I get annoyed by having to drop a vial every 15 seconds to remove ONE condition. Has the balance team considered buffing the mortar elite yet?

I’ll talk about elementalist since I’ve been playing it since beta.

The things I will mention are the things I disagree with, everything els is fine.

• Water V – Cleansing Wave: It’s one of the very few condition removals an elementalist has. And for it to be effective he still has to put a lot of points into arcana for it to be good. Even after the buff to the elemental cooldown it would mean you can only remove 1 condition every 13 seconds. Which is not extremly great for a master tier trait.

• Arcane V – Elemental Attunement and Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina: Yes 1 should be moved to a master tier but not both, each one of those traits are almost an essence to have on an elementalist. My suggestion would be to put Arcane VI into the master trait, that way elementalists still have the choice to pick between a slightly less effective endurance regen traits such as Arcane VII ( vigorous scepter ) if they would only put 10 points into arcana.

• Earth VII: I would honestly put this into the adept trait tier. Elementalist has very little ways to deal condition damage, for it to work they have to stack into toughness for it to be effective, meaning they would lack a lot into vitality and other departments. There are a lot of better traits to take into earth and personaly I would never take that trait, not even if it was in the adept trait line.

Small thing about reducing the elemental cooldown. I like this idea a lot, it will open a lot of build diversity for sure but there is still one big main issue in arcana. And that is evasive arcana. It gives INSANLY a lot for being 1 trait, it gives me every 10 second a 1.3k heal and removing 1 condition, A blast finisher, 5 second burning, and a blind (not that great but still)

Personally I wouldn’t know how to solve this since it’s an extremely important trait and without it an elementalist probably wouldn’t be viable anymore. It needs to be a grand master trait but somehow reworked that you’re not forced to spend 30 points into arcana. maybe put it into a different trait line? Although I wouldn’t know exactly which one. I would like to know how other elementalist think about this.

mas.7401:

Hey great ideas! How about a trait for engineers? "remove a condition when you use a toolkit skill? hmm? dunno about you but I get annoyed by having to drop a vial every 15 seconds to remove ONE condition. Has the balance team considered buffing the mortar elite yet?

Engineers have more than enough tools to combat pressure from conditions.

Yea I agree with Josh Davis , you could run with 3,5k armor and 30k hp and still run around landing 4k crits it was broken . But I have a question …
Burst mastery will no longer give adrenaline after a burst skilll??

Would love to see the radius of Mesmer mantras increased (Power Break, Power Cleanse and Restorative Mantras) .

250 radius is way too small and requires you to practically be on top of your ally, 600 units like Shattered Conditions and Warrior/Guardian shouts seems fair. This would allow mantras to be more viable in large scale combat situations.

JonPeters.5630:

….

• Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.
  …

without any build in mind i see this making problems when elementist engages condition bunkers and has at least some sort of selfheal. means this alone kills all pure conditions bunker builds. what isnt a bad thing imho. at least u need to use carrion amulett or someone to help bring him down to < 90%..

but i dont want to know how that goes for bunker eles. with this u can only engage them via raw dmg.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

a t s e.9614:

Healing signet needs NO NERF , don’t listen to the whiner . Warrior has no sustain outside of high regen . Those hammer dmg nodes nerf are perfect . But im dissapointed about thief changes honestly , S\D is the only viable build anet

The change to initiative regain baseline is a huge buff to ALL thief builds, so don’t jump so early to those conclusions!

But you also nerfed Init regen traits – I don’t see how much overall net change this will make. Why not, instead, replace some of the init based traits with traits that help define builds?

Thank you for posting these changes way in advance. And the elementalist stuff sounds like it might be game changing for us. Probably 90% of my posts are complaints about our state in pvp currently.

I’ve been waiting the nerf of warrior for like half year… and looks like it finally happening at December!!
This patch can kill a bunch of unskilled face roller, idk about other professions, but for warrior I’m sure it is.
Can’t wait till it arrive <3

I do not think we should nerf vigor for the thief. I can understand the nerf to perma stealth initiative gaining thieves, but now that stealth heavy builds are greatly reduced, we should be giving thieves more evades, not less. Just my personal opinion.

a t s e.9614:

Well , I guess i’ll go back to D\P perma stealth troll build then .

Heh, NO.

Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.

so sad

Guardian Feedback:

Zeal V – Shattered Aegis. Damage instead of Burning.

Whatever damage this will do, keep in mind you are competing with a 10% damage modifier that is always on because it triggers on duration stacked condition for Adept and then the Improved Zealous Blade in Master …. I have a feeling it’s still not going to get used if it doesn’t compete with those two traits.

Zeal XII – Kindled Zeal. Increased conversion from 10% to 13%.

This is a rather weak effect for a level 30 trait. The 3% difference @ 2000 power is … 60 condition damage stat. That’s a whole 15 more condition damage per burning tick. Someone making a dedicated burning build will have around 700-750 burning per tick. The increase is insignificant. If the goal here is to make it condition build more attractive, you have to seriously start considering 30-50% here.

Valor V – Retributive Armor. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.

Another insignificant increase IMO. At 2000 toughness (a value that someone might have if they focus on a defensive build), this will give at BEST another 2% crit rate increase. If the goal here is to provide people making defensive builds with damage benefits, it’s of no consequence with the suggested increase.

It’s a shame, necro life steal needs a buff with how it scales, when I build around lifesteal I can heal myself for 0.025% of my hp per a steal just not viable in PvE

Ok as a engi main:

Most of the nerfs were completely acceptable, perma vigour for kit builds is strong as kitten (And still possible to get, you forgot 10 in arms for swiftness on crit) and incindiary powder is a very strong trait that people should have to sacrifice more to get. I feel like you’re not doing enough to open up more alternate builds though, but that’s just my opinion. A lot of the less used utilities weren’t even touched and that change is not going to make a difference to turrets.

Thieves are still extremely reliant on the critical strikes line. 90% of thief builds will grab 30 critical strikes, and 90% of that 90% will grab executioner. It would be nice to see a few alternatives open up where possible and I don’t see this happening much. The permastealth nerf is good though, although I don’t see much in return for people who just run DD.

Warrior changes are great, hambow needed some severe taking down, but I still think the healing signet is the root of half the problems in the game. Nerf that bad boy or make it require some kind of active input and suddenly mesmers, eles all get a lot more viable again, hambow gets weaker, and so forth. All these other changes are skirting around the true problem.

Well…This sucks… Most of these are terrible…

Keeping it short and simple, just gonna highlight some of the more important ones:

Necro:

- “Mark of Blood. Removed 1 bleed in PvP only.” Really? Mark of Blood was already massively underwhelming. It’s just something you use while using the rest of your marks before you switch weapons. That has ALWAYS been the problem of Necro’s staff. It’s also the reason that, no matter how much you want, Greater Marks is mandatory. Because marks are exclusive to the STAFF, and staff is exclusively marks.

- “Signet of Spite: Removed one bleed.” – Nicest way I can put this is “Who gives a kitten?”. The bleeds on this are pathetic, they’re just cover conditions for the rest…

- “Death 5 – Reanimator. Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.” – No. Wrong! This trait needs to disappear from the minor trait and switched for something else… Or you need to move staff traits, and other traits not exclusive to minion master, away from this horrid tree.

Ranger:
- “Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500 range by 20%.” and “Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500-1000 range by 15%.” – Yay, only….what? 15 skills left to go?

- “Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.” – lol…. because… kitten ranger… I guess… Nevermind the classes that have perma-vigor (coughcoughmesmerguardianengineercoughcough).

- “Nature Magic XI – Spirits Unbound. Moved to Master Tier.” – This doesn’t need to be lowered in tiers, it needs to be kittening BASELINE for god’s sake… It’s a functionality issue. Spirits are useless without it.

Warrior:

- (general) gg. You still haven’t nerfed what you should (passive play), and instead nerfed what you shouldn’t (everything else). GG. 0/20/20/0/30 instead of 0/10/30/0/30.
- “Tactics 25 – Reviver’s Might. Now applies 3 stacks of Might instead of 1.” – Who cares… Still a useless waste of a trait. The activation condition is too situational. Ditch it. Rework it entirely.

There’s more, and I didn’t pay a lot of attention to some (engineer and ele for example), but yeah…. completely disappointment. There are some good changes here and there, but nothing is being done to address core, fundamental class problems.

The problem with Warrior is the kittening passive play of healing signet.

The problem with Ranger is that they’re ball and chained to a disfunctional mechanic – the pet.

The longbow still requires 3 MASTER traits to be at full power, meaning a 50 trait point investment, one of which (1500 range) should be BASELINE.

A lot of things that should be baseline because they’re fundamental to certain weapons or skills are still traits you gotta invest in, just to have that weapon/skill set work – Ranger spirit’s moving with you, Necro’s greater marks, Ranger’s 1500 range on longbow…

Several trait trees, some more than others, are still plagued by disfunctional and useless minor traits – trait you can’t opt out of in favor of more useful ones. Warrior’s Tactic’s tree, Ranger’s Marksmanship tree, Necromancer’s Death Magic tree… Traits that are extremely circumstantial and of practically no impact, or extremely build dependent and useless (or detrimental) for mostly everyone else…

Guardian still has issues effectively running after or away from people, or keeping people from running away… More so now with the horrid change to Symbol of Swiftness…

Start by fixing the core problems with classes… The stuff that’s broken… Then worry about tweaking minor stuff…

I can’t help it but… (I mean this with the utmost respect, but I’ve been waiting for this for some time now) When will there finally be something for condition mesmers in PVE, PVE being the key term here. In PvP, they are fine but in PvE they simply are inferior. When will the staff get a PvE damage buff in order to make it more viable, or do you think they are fine (with which I’d have to disagree).

For PvE, all the mesmer wants right now is the MH sword and that is a real shame. I can apprecaite that you are working on the traits, but the weapons are more important in my honest opinion.

Bsgapollo.5364:

I’ll talk about elementalist since I’ve been playing it since beta.

The things I will mention are the things I disagree with, everything els is fine.

• Water V – Cleansing Wave: It’s one of the very few condition removals an elementalist has. And for it to be effective he still has to put a lot of points into arcana for it to be good. Even after the buff to the elemental cooldown it would mean you can only remove 1 condition every 13 seconds. Which is not extremly great for a master tier trait.

• Arcane V – Elemental Attunement and Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina: Yes 1 should be moved to a master tier but not both, each one of those traits are almost an essence to have on an elementalist. My suggestion would be to put Arcane VI into the master trait, that way elementalists still have the choice to pick between a slightly less effective endurance regen traits such as Arcane VII ( vigorous scepter ) if they would only put 10 points into arcana.

• Earth VII: I would honestly put this into the adept trait tier. Elementalist has very little ways to deal condition damage, for it to work they have to stack into toughness for it to be effective, meaning they would lack a lot into vitality and other departments. There are a lot of better traits to take into earth and personaly I would never take that trait, not even if it was in the adept trait line.

Small thing about reducing the elemental cooldown. I like this idea a lot, it will open a lot of build diversity for sure but there is still one big main issue in arcana. And that is evasive arcana. It gives INSANLY a lot for being 1 trait, it gives me every 10 second a 1.3k heal and removing 1 condition, A blast finisher, 5 second burning, and a blind (not that great but still)

Personally I wouldn’t know how to solve this since it’s an extremely important trait and without it an elementalist probably wouldn’t be viable anymore. It needs to be a grand master trait but somehow reworked that you’re not forced to spend 30 points into arcana. maybe put it into a different trait line? Although I wouldn’t know exactly which one. I would like to know how other elementalist think about this.

agreed, I would honestly be fine with all the changes if they were to remove the ICD on EA letting us free up points from water. As it stands were still required to spend 50-60 between water and arcana.

Ranger longbow has come along ways since release but is still frustrating because 3 traits (piercing, range increase, and CD reduction) are necessary to fully utilize the weapon. Consider merging the piercing and range increase traits to a single master trait in marksmanship. The extra trait points would encourage build diversity and could be used for defensive options such as traited signet of stone, which the longbow ranger sorely needs.

Kensei.1495:

a t s e.9614:

Well , I guess i’ll go back to D\P perma stealth troll build then .

Heh, NO.

Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.

so sad

So deserved. The only reason I’ve spent weeks soloing keeps, recording and putting it to youtube is to put an end to D/P perma troll build in WvW.

D/P will still be good and more reliable than D/D is atm since you stealth with no target, you blind opponents around you (and your target). It’s slower than D/D is tho.

But the vigor changes.. ugh T.T..I agree s/d is the only viable thief build in sPvP, so theres definitely some work to do to make other builds more viable again.

JonPeters.5630:

• Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.

With this reduced after cast, how will the new PW compare to the pre-Oct. 15th patch PW? I haven’t played in a while so I don’t remember the exact values for flurry time and post-flurry aftercast, but will this change at least allow S/P thieves to land 2 hits before the stun wears off again? In other words, will PW be at or close to where it was before the changes to all stuns on October 15, or will it still be in worse shape overall?

JonPeters.5630:

Guardian:
Tanky and supportive guardians are in a strong position in many gametypes. We do feel that damage guardians are not as powerful as they could be. While we don’t want guardians to be as strong offensively as some of the other classes (given their powerful defensive abilities) we opened up more offensive guardian builds.

• Zeal V – Shattered Aegis. Damage instead of Burning.
• Zeal VII – Zealous Blade. This trait now scales with Healing power (2%.)
• Zeal XII – Kindled Zeal. Increased conversion from 10% to 13%.
• Radiance V – Searing Flames. Reduced cooldown from 20s to 10s.
• Radiance X – Powerful blades. Increased damage from 5% to 10%.
• Valor V – Retributive Armor. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
• Honor VI – Pure of Heart. Increased scaling with Healing power from 25% to 40%.
• Virtues VIII – Supreme Justice. Number of attacks going from 4 to 3.
• Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse, rather than 8 seconds if you have no swiftness and 1 second if you have swiftness.

Mr. Peters,

Very positive changes. Though if you want my opinion, regardless of the kindled zeal change it still won’t be used. Its not that condition damage isn’t good rather guardian only has access to one condition: Burning. So investing in condition damage feels like a waste of investment.

Some possible changes would be: Power is converted to Vitality, Power is converted to healing power, Power is converted to toughness.

Searing Flames = Good change
Powerful Blades = Good change
Zealous’s Blade = Good change

The rest of the changes don’t seem like it will change guardian too much to be noticeable. I don’t want to go off subject to much, but it would of been great if spirit weapons were made viable. The traits are split through out 3 different trait lines, the spirit weapons themselves are lackluster aside from shield.

I always felt if they were made viable then guardian would have more damage options while wielding the hammer and sword. Even before the change that made them no longer invulnerable they sucked, after the change they were even worse.

Looking at the awesome art of guardian wielding spirit weapons makes me sad, because the class never really uses them due to how they are implemented.

JonPeters.5630:

..

• Air XI – Tempest Defense. Decreased the cooldown from 60s to 25s.
  ….

25s is to much reduction. now u need as example as warrior stability to secure the final blow to an ele via cc. but if u miss u need more time to recharge your stability before the defense is up again.

The nerf to Infusion of Shadow was pretty much needed: no more perma stealth thieves in WvW.
I main D/P too, but I rarely chain more than 2 HS inside the blackpowder field. Usually I just need to chain 1 to proc stealth.
Thing is, I will not be able to troll a zerg endlessly anymore. Now I just have to run if too many people start gathering.

The nerf to warriors was pretty much needed. Personally I would have addressed other issues – such as the cast time of Pin Down (0.25s still seem too few for me), but we will see how Longbow becomes after the change to the burst skill.

Glad to see that my Staff Ele builds for guild raiding and Phantasm Mesmer build for sPvP won’t be touched – actually, the Mender’s Purity buff will be really appreciated, at least I won’t have to give up Decoy or Blink for Arcane Thievery (or Null Field) anymore.

Also, the slight nerf to Engineers pleases me because their condi bursts were almost on par with the necro ones and had so many ways to mitigate damage that they were really tough to take down, both in WvW and in sPvP.

As for the Ranger… I don’t know. The change of Natural Vigor hurts a LOT imho.

Can’t say anything for Guardian as I rarely use it since it is not a class which is meant for me :/

The incendiary powder change only “really” affects HGH build which is weird since thats not a build that is currently being used a lot. The meta grenade/bomb build is still fine with this change.

Longer swiftness for engi is good but I assume vigor is only 5 seconds? Which is a shame but seeing as skullcrack gets a better animation and hammer damage is reduced seems like a fair change.

For the elementalist, I don’t really get the point of the changed cooldown, since every build starts with 30 in arcana for Evasive Arcana (It’s that good). Plus mixing up the traits actually screws a couple of base WvW builds.

Guess you guys really don’t want perma-vigor anymore.

Critical Strike X – Critical Haste. Increase trigger chance to 25%.

I would suggest reworking this trait entirely.

For one, this trait encourages insta-ganking by engaging from stealth and gunning down your opponent before he/she can react.

Another is that a trait like this is just too RNG to be reliable.

Instead, I’d suggest changing the trait to read “Gain 3 seconds of haste when you drop below 33% health”. This would be a more skillbased trait based around winning a sustained, difficult fight.

Zero Day.2594:

JonPeters.5630:

Warrior:
…We don’t mind warriors doing massive damage, or doing great area of effect control…

Well, good thing I already started re-rolling warrior. Still on the fence though as which is better warrior or guard…
(Going from thief to warrior.)

taking it out of context I see huh,

here’s the whole quote ! don’t try to make it sound like something it isn’t, a nerf is still a nerf !

We also reduced the damage on the hammer’s burst skill to separate the control from the damage. We don’t mind warriors doing massive damage, or doing great area of effect control, but we’re trying to prevent them from easily doing both.

Ranger Moment of Clarity. Did you mean it to increase the stun AND daze from 50-100%? I hope so as the stun is currently positional on the SB and GS. It would help a lot if it increased daze too for SB#5 and GS#5.
Mighty Swap. It provides BOTH might and condition to the pet but as stated would only provide the might to the ranger. Is this poor wording or intentional?

On signet of spite – removing 1 bleed isn’t enough. I would remove the poison instead. This is coming from a 2000 hour necro in wvw/pvp and pve

Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.
Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.

I liked having both of these always for staff and sometimes s/d ….. intentional nerf ? if not could it please be one or the other

Skull crack is a 130 range ability *130 range * .Do you guys know how hard it will be to land that on a moving target with the cast time being doubled? It’s also a single target skill.Something needs to be given in return here or no one ever in their right mind would use mace main hand.Used to be a good counter to thieves for skilled players but now you are turning it into useless again.Better make the stun 2 sec again imo it would be much much much less of a nerf.

You guys say you want more build variety yet you come up with changes like these that instantly kill 3 or 4 builds and 2 weapon choices.Instead you make rifle/gs kind of viable for pve .I’m speechless.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

a t s e.9614:

Healing signet needs NO NERF , don’t listen to the whiner . Warrior has no sustain outside of high regen . Those hammer dmg nodes nerf are perfect . But im dissapointed about thief changes honestly , S\D is the only viable build anet

The change to initiative regain baseline is a huge buff to ALL thief builds, so don’t jump so early to those conclusions!

Initiative isn’t the problem. The real problem is the limited viable PvE builds thieves have.

JonPeters.5630:

Elementalist:
_

• Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.

This effectively negates almost all condition builds against Elementalists in PvP. A suggestion to keep this idea but not have it be too good would to reduce condition damage by a % while over 85% health.

First impression for thief changes:

Let’s see so our base regen will be increased (nice) but a lot of traitlines will be deemed useless to compensate (time to create some new traits?), vigor upkeep nerfed (perma vigor on all classes that had it with no effort and low cd’s was to strong anyway so good), sword mainhand probably killed cause the flow won’t be smooth (sounds bad), permastealth made harder especially with d/p setups (good).

Then they keep pushing useless traits like hard to catch into play when they are more a counter to a thief then a protection, if you want to give us more survival make it more realiable not something that puts you off your target or pushes you in walls and whatnot.

Same for buffing our quickness proc when the duration was never changed since quickness nerf to begin with.

-Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.

This seems a change done right, for Quick recovery however i suggest just creating a new trait, or adding something extra like the Signet use has in terms of Signet cooldown.

Overall some decent changes, but feels like the compensation however lacks a bit.

Overall the balancing looks great for most if not all classes.

However I don’t think that moving the Explosives Adept Tier Trait V – Incendiary Powder to Master Tier is a good idea since a lot of builds invest only 10 points in this line just to get this trait which also provides builds at least some form of burning(especially for rifles).
Take my Engineer for example which doesn’t use any kits(because I like my dual pistols build) or turrets.
By moving this trait to master tier from adept tier takes one of the few dps options for support engineers.

Other then that I think everything else is good and even though some people think it makes things worse, might actually make it better so the best way is to use it and see when it’s released(like the thieves initiative regain).