Guild Wars 2

Interesting notes. Though the Necro ones (presented here at least) really don’t do much to increase the sustain/attrition factor. I feel most reasonable Necros will agree our mobility doesn’t need improvement. What needs looked at, however, would be the level of sustain/control we can achieve, especially for non-condi builds that really want to focus on this aspect of gameplay.

I’m talking the viability of things like Dark Path, Death Shroud’s lack of usefulness against multiple foes (compared to evades/invulns/blocks of other professions), the effectiveness of lifesteal, etc. The last balance patch, which supposedly buffed lifesteal was really break even, if not a nerf in some cases.

Necros certainly aren’t the weakest profession, but I feel the Dhuumfire/Terror build creates an illusion that we are better than we actually are, and other builds suffer as a result.

Peter Buch.8071:

*….

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

Tempest Defense is a defensive grand master trait in an offensive tree, that just doesn’t fit the role at all. Air should be all around single target dps, mobility and some CC. No matter how much you reduce the cooldown, the trait remains bad because it is utterly wrong-placed there.

….

u has noticed the trait has 2 effects? defense + +dmg ?

Jikuim.1349:

DO NOT change :

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

This is a horrendous idea. I don’t even main thief, but you’re going to nerf numerous builds into the ground. Thieves will go from being alright to being completely garbage tier with this change.

Honestly, take it or leave it, but it’s a bad idea.

I have 2 thieves, I play wvw with multiple characters. The stealth spamming burst dps thieves are a bit OP, with all the evasion and everything else added in. I believe someone at Anet wants to tone this play-type down. What to compensate it with? Nothing that I noticed.

removing bleeds from necro will not slow us down as much as you think.
Dumbfire needs to be removed or changed to torment instead.

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.

I am not sure the intent of this change? When you use Symbol of Swiftness for swiftness you are almost always passing through the circle, not lingering in it. This change seems to reduce my swiftness to 4s while on the move, instead of 8s. Is that the intent? Will the new pulses stack swiftness to reward standing in the circle for longer, or is capped at 4s?

Could we get a secondary ability on SoS that lets you detonate to remove the circle? This way we could remove the circle if it is going to put us in combat which in my opinion is one of the biggest draw backs of SoS.

Thanks.

PS – typo in your list: Valor V – Retributive Armor. Should be Valor VI.

You dont want classes with perma vigor but you just change something on engineers for this regard? Every patch looks like the same, some hard nerfs and some minor buffs to turrets…

Brando.1374:

removing bleeds from necro will not slow us down as much as you think.
Dumbfire needs to be removed or changed to torment instead.

Dhuumfire doesn’t even belong in that traitline. IMO Dhuumfire and Terror need both be Grandmaster Curse traits, that way only one or another can be obtained. Then toss Spite a bone with some sort of Vulnerability or Chill focused trait, more appropriate for the Spite line’s design.

Hey Jon, just wanted to echo everyone who has already said thank you for the preview and for explaining the reasoning behind some of the changes. Is much appreciated by many of us and a great step towards collaboration

Removing elemental Attunement from adept is going to really hurt a lot of eles. There’s not a lot in the adept arcane range to entice people to put 10 in it let alone go up to 20.

I second the idea that moving cleansing wave will hurt. Condition removal is coming ever more important as Tower of Nightmares showed. Players need more access rather than less I feel since most mobs can just spam conditions without reprisal.

Mace is already feeling like the weak brother before skull crack changes. It needs to be a more viable option right now since it has such low dps. It’s better than ppl give it credit for, but when you seethat axe is faster and more dps…I’d rather have mace get some love. Maybe improve the dps to compensate?

Otherwise looking good!

will
Firearms XI – Modified Ammunition. This trait now works regardless of equipped weapon. work while kits are are equipped because if not I think this will probably go as a still mostly unused trait.

I think this one could become too powerful in wvw and possibly pve.
Inventions XI – Elixir Infused bombs. Increased healing scaling by 50%.

Very disappointed in this change for how it will damage the invigorating speed trait, dropping it to 7-8 seconds would be fine but droping its effective usefulness by essentially 50% seems a bit much.
Tools VI – Speedy Kits. Increased Swiftness duration to 10s. This effect can now only trigger once every 10 seconds.

Warrior. Can we have “Aimed Shot” renamed to “Shoot like Chuck Norris”?

Don’t you think you’re overnerfing (sword) thieves with this? Half of the changes are obviously adressed at S/D builds. I predict that this patch will kill pretty much any sword build there is, and I belive that we’ll end up getting pushed out of the meta. So whats ANet prediction on the new Thief Meta Build(s)?

Why are you nerfing our vigor access, when other builds (besides S/D) are also affected and eventhough thief already is the squishiest class in the game? I’d guess it has to do with RFI (and yet again with S/D obviously).

Vigourous Recovery: Won’t be used anymore and it’s pretty lackluster, should be at least 6 seconds.
Signet Use: 1 Iniative? Like really thats only one second advantage over “waiting”. Definitely won’t be used anymore.
Quick Recovery: Again not only hurts S/D builds, but others aswell (D/D, D/P, P/D), won’t be used anymore, same reasoning as for Signet Use.

Pistolwhip will still be broken. Maybe you’ll be able to pull of the first two strikes from the chain, but thats not enough to justify a 5 iniative skill.

Infiltrator strike: I may be able to live with this as long as I can use it while being disabled, if not this will even further break the weaponset.

I’d really like to have an honest answer to this : Do you have Devs that main a thief? (No offense) We’re basically left on our own in the forums. I don’t wanna be a whiner, but sometimes it seems to me that you don’t really know what to do with our class and therefore just listen to the nerf callers.

Edit: Not saying all the changes are bad, some are good (infusion of shadows), but many should be overthought/tested.

Draehl.2681:

Brando.1374:

removing bleeds from necro will not slow us down as much as you think.
Dumbfire needs to be removed or changed to torment instead.

Dhuumfire doesn’t even belong in that traitline. IMO Dhuumfire and Terror need both be Grandmaster Curse traits, that way only one or another can be obtained. Then toss Spite a bone with some sort of Vulnerability or Chill focused trait, more appropriate for the Spite line’s design.

I agree. Make Necro’s choose between Terror or burning would be the best thing to every happen to this class.

all the Meta players will QQ and move away from this class while those who really know how to play their necro will have no problems with this.

Aza.2105:

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.

Great post, cant agree more.

Also symbols ofc! 55 points to trait them and we are talking about two (max in any build) weapons skills. Either move/merge the traits or move the symbols to one weapon. I prefer the staff and keeping the symbol traits as they are.Would be really lovely to have staff as main weapon instead of a situational secondary.

I would like to emphasize the importance of buffing survivability in zeal, why not make zealous blade affect all weapons and remove the scaling totally and buff it with roughly 100%. Making zealous blade scale with healing power isnt a good thing, its bad since if forces us to invest in healing power (not offensive) and also use a minimum of 15 points in honor to really benefit from healing power. So it dont give us more options to trait it forces us to trait specific traits.

Also master trait in radiance should be hat the passive of signets is still active when they are on cool down. Radiance needs a boost.

Both radiance and zeal needs more survivability trats. Just strap on full berserker and trait 30/30/x/x/x and from there design whats needed to use that in wvw and pvp. You get the picture, the boost has to be significant and the ones you are planning are just minor.

In short, very little changes tbh.

EDIT regarding symbols, make them apply the entire duration of boons when placed, all problems solved.

JonPeters.5630:

Elementalist:

• Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.

This is a very, very bad idea.

Where warriors have armor and high base health, the elementalist relies on its heals and regeneration to stay upright. Cleansing Wave is the most important skill of the set and currently, going 15 points in water allows the elementalist some basic defense to keep up with the basic defenses of other classes. Because it’s such a low investment, it’s a key component for offensive builds that without this bare minimum defense simply wouldn’t be viable. If you make this change without compensation, all you will accomplish is that players will flee back into the bunker builds because we need at least this to survive. By keeping it as an adept trait however, players will be able to go for damage and still take the neccesary traits for the basic survival.

Simply put, we need 10 points + cleansing wave in water because they’re the bare bones of our survival. We don’t have the armor, aegis or higher health to make do without it.

Especially if you also take away Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina combination. Either change the arcana traits or cleansing wave, but not both.

as a note:

air II only works during air attunment
earth I only works during earth attunment

i suggest changing this to attunment independet.

I would like to see a solution for a passive 25% speed buff or another way to use swiftness for Mesmers. Currently we have to use either a passive signet that has a random chance to boon swiftness or we have to carry a focus. I find myself a lot of times missing out on sentry/tower caps in WvW or killing enemies when champ farming because the zerg breaks away from me with speed boosts that I don’t have. Even worst is underwater where we don’t get our focus. We have blink but a bunch of other classes have some kind of move that moves them forward faster in addition to swiftness.

I dont know why Earthshaker should be nerfed on the warrior. It is probably the easiest skill in the game to dodge.
The greatsword Rush skill should be decreased from 1,200 to 900 range. The mobility on the greatsword needs a nerf.

Awesome changes! Here’s my opinion about some of them:

1. About Warrior

I think that Healing Signet should have lower base healing and better healing power scaling. It doesn’t needs to be something drastic, considering that warriors will already get their pvp meta builds nerfed.

2. About vigor/ evasion traits

I think the nerf to the mentioned vigor traits are an excellent change, and will tone down dodge spamming. But please, do not forget Guardian and Mesmer, who can get perma vigor with only a 5 point investment. Those two professions are not any less guilty to dodge spamming.

3. About elementalists

The change to arcana is lovely, and it’ll open up a lot of new possibilities, but I worry about some issues that might cripple those possibilities. Here’s a few comments:

3.1. Elementalists rely too much on Elemental Attunement or Renewing Stamina to survive. Although it might be worth trying the scepter’s higher endurance trait now that it is at adept, I think the earth traitline should have a… worthy substitute for elemental attunement’s protection. Maybe it could have a stun breaker trait? Rock Solid could get it, but I fear it could make it too strong. Maybe as a grandmaster trait, and moving Written in Stone down a tier.

3.2. The fire traitline is now going to get a good master tier with condition removal, and with the changes to ember’s might and #25, it might create an interesting 100% duration burning build.

3.3. Maybe it’s good time to make Burning Precision equal to the Engineer’s Incendiary version. 4s of burning on critical, with 10s cooldown, at master tier. This change would change elementalists a lot. Higher sustain for many fire builds, good synergy with the new ember’s might, and also – worth considering, players would have to choos between it and the new Burning Fire.

3.4. Please, consider adding one extra 0.5 seconds duration to the One With Air trait.

As a powermancer, I appreciate the Chill Of Death idea. And sadly, that’s about it.

Please look into ranger sword auto attack, while the way the animation works in pvp is helpfull as it stands in pve it becomes a crutch that basicly roots you to the ground even if you switch the autoattack off and manually press the key.

No offense… but is there a point to this thread?

The last preview had almost 1000 replies and I don’t think a single line changed from the preview to live.

In case you are actually planning on making changes:

Necro:

Conditions simply aren’t viable in PvE. You must know this, i’m sure you actually play the game. Mark of blood was an underwhelming skill that was always just used on CD while waiting for other skills. This change doesn’t really make sense to me.

In PvE conditions need to be buffed, ideally with more torment coverage for necros. Changing dhurrmfire to 4 stacks of torment would be ideal for everyone. It would reduce the condition cover for necros in PvP, which would achieve your goal of reduced conditions there, and it would increase the PvE condition damage of necros in PvE where burn was useless due to other classes.

Of course all of this is fairly useless while the major problems with conditions still remain. You are essentially putting a band aid on my paper cut while my arm is still lying next to me in a pool of blood.

So I’m partially happy and partially bummed about the changes to thief.

No more gaining initiative with multiple jumps through black powder-yay!

Baseline initiative regen higher-yay!

Vigor uptime reduced in a Defensive traitline…..-do not like—-Eles, Mesmers, and guards can gain vigor on a crit 100% chance for 5 seconds every 5 seconds. I know we have feline grace, but alone that’s one more up front dodge than normal then after that it is slightly worse than the 100% uptime on vigor. It really finds it’s strength on the class supposed to survive by dodging when paired with other initiative regen, so this seems like a move in the wrong direction on vigorous recovery. This may be fine with the increase to initiative regen so weapon skill could be used in place of dodges, but if that happens could you make those weapon skills with evasion frames interrupt the current action. Nothing is more disappointing then using a weapon dodge but due to a previous aftercast or current ability it goes off after you’ve been hit by that one big attack.

No mention of putting reliable condition removal (not an icd trait) in the acrobatics line…-It would be nice to trait out of shadow arts entirely but the current condition spam meta won’t really allow that if you wan’t sustain instead of burst. Something like putting condi removal on dodge in a master tier (letting fleet of foot apply to all condis and severely reducing icd). Single condi removal on dodge would be similar to traited eles getting cleansing wave on dodge, without the health gain and only for personal use. If you used it for burst cleansing then it would still only clear 3 condis at that time and then leave you with no dodges for the fight.

Pistol Whip further reducing time between stun and flurry-yayish? The problem I have with this skill is that the stun takes long enough to fire that it can’t be used to actively interrupt or as a dodge like flanking strike can. Maybe having it work more like shadow shot where the first hit is almost instant would be a better way to go.

I don’t particularly care for another sword nerf. If “infiltrator’s return” is getting a cast time does that mean it can no longer be used as a port backwards while stunned? With all the knockback and fear going around it was at least nice to not be run off a cliff if it wasn’t truly breaking the stun.

Thanks for reading.

Constructive feedback, no QQing :P

I am loving these changes, and hope that they will bring ele back into the meta ^-^. One suggestion would be to keep renewing stamina In the adept tier, it is almost necessary to keep an ele alive unless you are going full bunker.

Also, One with air Should be increased to 2-3 seconds and moved up to master tier and be replaced with a new trait to reduce Ride the lightning to 25-30 seconds? I feel like this would really give an option to less defensive builds. Because our mobility is almost matched by warrior and thief. And that is not very good considering that we are the squishiest class in the game.

Thief changes coming from standard PvE
25/30/0/0/15
S/P on trash
D/D on bosses

Pre-changes init/10s ~ 15-20 depending on opportunist proccs

Post-changes init/10s ~ 12-15 MAX which is a 20-25% nerf

Shadow return = need to be insta since thiefs have 10.5k hp and warrs have 18khp in same gear. Unless we can dodge and deal damage at the same time this HUGE disparity will ruin PvE. Post changes init gain levels, ruins dodging while dealing damage since you cant pistol whip spamm anymore.

This can be countered with upping powerscaling/evade duration on D/D #3 as it will then also give a decent AoE option for powerbuilds, doing damage while evading as an alternative to pistol whip with a lower init cost.

Critical Haste is useless since it didnt recieve 2x duration when all other haste skills got it.

Assassins reward self healing, is useless since you are oneshotted in any decent pve-content. So its either dodge or die, and you just nerfed dodging by alot by vigor nerf.

Flanking strikes changes = flat 5% damage nerf, since you need bountiful for decent group support in pve if going higher in trickery.

Focus on: Fix Improvisation = doesnt work at all. Fix offensive options in Shadow Arts line low tiers. Fix venom share traits in Deadly Arts line so its consistent.

Final: Stop balancing the game based on PvP. Do as you did with GW1 and split all skills.

I also want to add:

Elementalist’s Scepter regeneration trait doesn’t stacks with vigor. This leads to bad synergy with Phoenix.

Some changes sounds good and needed for PvP, but would be op in WvW, because we have 30% more stats there. (i.e. condition damage)

I think a rebalance of the PvP amuletts stats is needed to achieve a balance in all 3 gamemodes.

Why doesn’t the patch look into the crappy skills and traits and make them better? For example: the ranger trait that gives increased critical damage while using mh axe is really weak, especially since axe mh is total crap in the first place. Also, why are there no buffs for weaker skills such as flametthrower kit and ice drake venom, while no nerfs for op skills like heal signet?

And stop balancing pve based around pvp and wvw. NPCs and players are not the same

I’m an elementalist with over 2k hours played and I approve of these changes. I really love how I can be able to do massive damage in exchange for being as glassy as it gets. That new trait in earth (diamond skin) is rly strong but still not worth going too deep into earth, please don’t try to make condition elementalists happen, it’s not going to happen. There are better classes at it and there’s simply no point.

Mesmer comments:

1) Mesmer block/counter attacks, achieved successfully blocking with Scepter #2 or Sword #4, have a cast time and appear to be blockable and dodge-able, rendering the ‘punishment’ part of this attack null in some cases. These are fairly underutilized weapons. I think it would really help if the counterattack was made either instant or unblockable.

2) Many mesmers still choose main-hand sword over scepter, even when building hybrid condition/physical builds. Primarily they do this because Blurred Frenzy (sword #2) provides greater protection than Illusionary Counter (Scepter #2). I think scepter, given how it is primarily a condition-based weapon, gave a more protection to the mesmer. If Scepter #2 continued to block for the full duration (unless activated) of 2 seconds, it would greatly help mesmer survivability, or perhaps giving the mesmer 1-2 seconds of protection after finishing the use of scepter #2.

3) Vengeful Images (Inspiration 5 point minor) gives retaliation to Phantasms, but only lasts 5 seconds. In practice, most Phantasms are not even targeted until they’ve been out for 4+ seconds, rendering this all but useless.
Vengeful Images used to give phantasms perma-retaliation, which was too powerful. Now it only punishes players who are quick to react to phantasms, which almost seems unfair. I’d think you’d want to reward players for reacting to Phantasms. I’d prefer to see Phantasms gain Retaliation after they have been out for some time. Perhaps something like 10 seconds of retaliation 7 seconds after they have been spawned. This would make Vengeful Images useful, but would be defeated by a player that is quick to react to the Phantasm.

On the WvW and PVE side of things, Phantasms often die nearly instantly due to AoE. This is especially true in WvW, where they are recognized to be of 0 use in large groups as they are killed from AoE the moment the spawn. For PvE and WvW it would be really good if Phantasms spawned with ~1.5 seconds of invulnerability.

JonPeters.5630:

Elementalist:

• Fire II – Burning Fire – This trait has a new effect. Use Cleansing Fire automatically when you have a number of conditions on you. 3 conditions. 40 second cooldown. Moved to Master tier.
• Fire VIII – Conjurer – Moved to Adept tier.
• Fire III – Ember’s Might. The effect of this trait has been changed to Burns you apply last longer. 25%.
• Burning Rage 25 – Increased damage dealt to burning foes from 5% to 10%.
• Air V – Soothing Winds. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
• Air XI – Tempest Defense. Decreased the cooldown from 60s to 25s.
• Earth 5 – Stone Flesh – Increased toughness while attuned to Earth Magic to 1.5/level (120 at level 80).
• Earth VII – Strength of Stone. This trait is now Gain condition damage based on your Toughness. 10%.
• Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.
• Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.
• Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.
• Water VIII – Arcane Abatement. Moved to Adept tier.
• Water X – Soothing Wave. Moved to Adept tier.
• Arcane III – Arcane Retribution. Moved to Master tier. Decreased cooldown from 90 seconds to 45 seconds.
• Arcane IV – Final Shielding. Decreased cooldown from 90s to 75s.
• Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
• Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.
• Arcane VII – Vigorous Scepter. Moved to Adept tier.
• Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff. Moved to Adept tier.
• Arcane IX – Windborne Dagger. Moved to Adept tier.

The following changes were done to reduce the necessity of putting points into the Arcane trait line.

• The base cooldown of the attunement that you just left is now reduced from 16 seconds to 13 seconds. Attunement cooldown rate now increases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now Attunements go from 13s to 10s instead of the old range of 16s to 10s.
• Base global attunement cooldown is now 1.625 seconds. Global attunement cooldown rate now decreases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now global attunement cooldown goes from 1.625 to 1.25 instead of the old range of 2.0 to 1.25.

I have some serious concerns with the movement of both Elemental Attunement AND Renewing Stamina to Master Tier.

Right now you basically have to use both of those traits, as obviously being able to dispense boons on attunement swap is highly useful, and vigor on crit is not just useful, it’s pretty much absolutely necessary with the way you have designed the game to be “dodge everything or get one shot”. in the past I have shared concerns of why Mesmers and Guardians get the exact same trait as a minor 5 point trait while Elementalists have it as a 10 point major trait. now you’re going to make it a 20 point major trait. Yeah whatever you can run scepter instead, but that is severely limiting to weapon choices wouldn’t you agree?

You’re talking about avoiding a power creep, currently, I like to spec arcane V, VI, and XI (evasive arcana) in PVE and V, VIII, XI in wvw. Now I suppose my WvW spec is still okay because blasting staff is moving downward, but for PVE purposes I basically lose my dodge heal, with nothing gained back for it. I have to go 30 points in still in order to get my boons on attunement and vigor, and I guess I put on blasting staff even though I don’t really need it for pve. I just lose out on a heal.

Please make one or the other master tier but not both.

Same thing goes for Water Attunement I (Aquamancer’s Alacrity) and Water V (Cleansing Wave).. eles who base themselves on a lot of support use both of those traits and water XI (cleansing water) especially in WvW to have water fields on demand and be condition removal powerhouses.

The moving up a tier doesn’t prevent power creep, it also flat out nerfs support elementalists. We get nothing good in return. Fall damage trait and regen on a few skills is hardly a fair trade. BTW, if you want people to use signet of water, consider making it an aoe condition cleanse instead of just a single target chill skill and people might consider it.

Well! good upcoming changes.

Now the question is, will you and Arena.net be faithful and committed to these upcoming changes?

What i mean by that is, i don’t want you to change your words in the end by rewarding the superior classes (at the moment) with the same if not more to what already is overpowered due to their threats and demands.

I’m very serious about this because of history and experience as a voice for game balance, and a voice against favoritism, and unjust treatment for the less capable classes due to elitism.

In other word, I’m worried Arena.net will Sympathize the elitist class and not fulfill their devotion to the upcoming patch note.

As a Ranger, while i do appreciate the changes to our class, one thing is missing though! where are the changes;fixes to our pet class?

Please remember, our pets are our companion after all and should deserve the same good treatment as us.

(Isn’t that what Companionship is all about, Reciprocity?)

JonPeters.5630:

Thief:
One of the issues we are working on for thieves this patch is the dependence on the traits which boost initiative. We did this by shaving a significant amount of initiative gain from these traits while simultaneously boosting the generic rate of initiative gain by 33%. We have also somewhat reduced the effectiveness of high evasion thieves by reducing vigor up time and adding some cast time to the Shadow Return skill on the sword. This prevents these thieves from evading too much and too easily dealing with being disabled (stun, daze, fear, knockdown, etc.). Also we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait and increased effectiveness of the Assassin’s Reward trait. This will reward thieves who are actively engaged in the fight rather than those who are just dodging over and over again. The change to Infusion of Shadow is meant to stop players from gaining initiative by applying stealth while already in stealth. This should keep thieves from being able to recharge all of their power while idling in a very long stealth. We felt that using a lot of different abilities to maintain stealth is ok, but re-using the same ability over and over for almost permanent stealth was just bad for the game, especially when gaining large amounts of initiative.

• Increased the base rate of initiative gain from .75/second to 1/second.
• Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.
• Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.
• Deadly Arts VI – Sundering Strikes. Increased the trigger chance from 50%. Remove ICD. Decrease Vulnerability duration to 6s.
• Critical Strikes VI – Practiced Tolerance. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
• Critical Strikes 15 – Opportunist. Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase cooldown from 1s to 5s.
• Critical Strikes VIII – Signet Use. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
• Critical Strike X – Critical Haste. Increase trigger chance to 25%.
• Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.
• Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 4s from 8s.
• Acrobatics IV – Assassin’s Retreat. Increased swiftness duration to 20s.
• Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
• Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
• Acrobatics XI – Hard to catch. Moved to Master Tier.
• Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Reduce initiative gain from 3 to 2.
• Trickery IV – Flanking Strikes. Move to Master tier.
• Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 8s.
• Trickery VIII – Trickster. Move to Adept tier.

Overall great changes to thief here. I cannot wait to see the new initiative regen. However, there are some awkward changes like the trickery changes, that hurt other builds like for example, a 25/30/0/0/15 build that would have wanted flaking strikes, for that extra bit of damage. Personally I do not find flanking strikes to be that great of a trait, and to be worthwhile of a master trait.

Bountiful theft having its vigor reduced hits d/p thieves more so than the thieves that were dodge spamming without this trait. A trait setup like 10/30/0/0/30, with s/d is still effective in its own right, and does take a toll to this change as well.

Hard to catch, IMHO, is just a bad trait. And its a stun breaker, the thief does not have to use, not anyone would be a fan of that, if it rose to power. I do however like the buff to assassins reward, and I will love to try this trait out in some kind of condi build.

Probably, I’m cutting into my on flesh now (or outing me as a noob), but:

If “Menders Purity” now cleansens 2 Conditions:
How will this work with “Mantra of Recovery”?
I neither use Menders Purity nor Mantra of Recovery at the moment so I dont know if you lose a condition every time you activate this mantra.
But if this works, with the Buff of Menders Purity, Mantra of Recovery would be as effective as Mantra of Resolve (the actual condi-remove-mantra), while only having half of the Cooldown. Ok, it wouldn’t be an “aoe-cleanse”. But being able to cleanse 4 Conditions + heal yourself on a CD of 10s (or even lower when traited) sounds rly awesome…speaking as a Mesmer.
If you want to give Mesmer better cleansening possibilities. Couldn’t you somehow add a Trait related to Condiremove to the “classical” shatter-builds: (20,20,0,0,30 / 10,30,0,0,30).
An “anti-condi”-trait into the “illusions” tree would be great.

Most of the thief changes I can totally understand. The thing that does surprise me however is that your focusing a lot on the vigor and stealth aspect of the class but at the same time you’re not addressing some of the the survivability against conditions. Also it just feels that a lot of initiative is being moved around to make the class even more creepjacker focussed.

what about the proposed expanding of existing weapons to more classes?

You should really adjust the skill more than just numbers, necro marks for example still have little to no coutnerplay. this has ALWAYS been an issue give marks travel time or somthing already.

you should really find an alternative from traits like incendiary power there is no counterplay in that at all. Also be careful with buffing rangers because most of what all their builds do is auto attack. you should really lower auto attack damage across the board and skills like pin down and hammer 4 on warrior need better more discernible animations, hammer 4 should be a longer cast time, it’s borderline undodgeable even if you’re looking for it only..buffing initiative regen is a mistake

Taz.2394:

I’m an elementalist with over 2k hours played and I approve of these changes. I really love how I can be able to do massive damage in exchange for being as glassy as it gets. That new trait in earth (diamond skin) is rly strong but still not worth going too deep into earth, please don’t try to make condition elementalists happen, it’s not going to happen. There are better classes at it and there’s simply no point.

u know thats a anticondition trait? pick signet of restoration and/or other heals and destroy pure conditionbunker.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Sepreh.5924:

Hey Jon, just wanted to echo everyone who has already said thank you for the preview and for explaining the reasoning behind some of the changes. Is much appreciated by many of us and a great step towards collaboration

No prob, that’s why we wrote those out for you guys.

We’ll try to do more of that going forward!

Seriously out of all the posts in this thread, this is the one you respond to?

• Discipline XI – Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%.

I like this trait for Axe and Rifle and to be honest it’s fun doing tons of damage with it. They both have really obvious animations, easily avoided or blocked, and I wouldn’t want to see their damage fall by even 3% for the reason that another build was causing problems. Aren’t the changes to the burst skills themselves enough?

Also, thanks for posting rationale for the changes, it seems to keeps peoples heads cooler.

Also, I don’t understand why Elementalists (and Engineers) have to invest heavily into trait points to get Vigor on critical hits, when Mesmers and Guardians get them for only 5 points as a minor traits. Elementalists are the squishiest profession of all and being able to dodge well fits the glass cannon principle that they seem to be built around.

Why not change vigor on crit into a fire or air trait for the elementalist? It’d be a great change for Zephyr’s Speed and if you’re worried it’d be too powerful, just make it trigger while attuned to air only. Bam, glass cannon offensive builds are much more viable all of a sudden.

Tyops.5894:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Sepreh.5924:

Hey Jon, just wanted to echo everyone who has already said thank you for the preview and for explaining the reasoning behind some of the changes. Is much appreciated by many of us and a great step towards collaboration

No prob, that’s why we wrote those out for you guys.

We’ll try to do more of that going forward!

Seriously out of all the posts in this thread, this is the one you respond to?

+1. I would like to see answers for my questions..

Yes for the ele changes<3
EXCEPT elemental attunement and renewing stamina are almost necessities! that could make people either still have to trait up to 30 arcane or it could really hurt survivability because every ele i know always has those 2 just to survive and even then ele’s low hp and armor makes it difficult. maybe move just 1 to adept or shuffle some of those boons from those 2 traits to others? some utility skills still need work but this is definitly a good start<3

Been fun, guess i’ll hang my hammer up forever.

Diamond Skin

- this can be absurdly broken. Please, please, do not go with this. Not only pure passive immunity to conditions is very powerful, cheesy and and cannot be counter-played, but this new trait would literally kill specs like trap ranger, not to mention it would hurt necromancers.
Once again, do not go with this trait, it would be a huge mistake.

“Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.”

Im sorry but thats a huge nerf right there.. so you are asking us to choose now? Really was there a problem now with the survivability of ele? I dont see any need on changing this at all.

Hi Jon,

Can you please split the balance posts to the 8 professions forums next time? It’s very difficult to follow all the repsonses for 1 profession, I can’t imagine this being easy for you guys, and us, to read

Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

…………Are you kidding me.

JonPeters.5630:

Thief:
Also we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait and increased effectiveness of the Assassin’s Reward trait. This will reward thieves who are actively engaged in the fight rather than those who are just dodging over and over again.

I thought I would try to keep this post more constructive Mr. Jon Peters.

Do you realize what you have just said here? You are saying that thieves should now rely on a trait that randomly teleports you. This trait is more disorienting for the thief than the enemy trying to kill him. It’s a joke trait that is terrible. Last I checked it also doesn’t work against basilisk venom, but that was 2 patches ago. So, our survivability is now based on a random trait. Sometimes you get ported to safety, sometimes you get ported into 5 enemies and all their AOE. Fantastic choice of survivability.

Assassins reward is to help us in stay in melee combat? Unless we are healing 1-2k HPs every hit an assassin is not going to be able to stay in a melee fight for very long. This is not going to make an assassin stay in a melee fight. It’s more of a boost to d/d condi build than anything else.

I expected nothing but buffs to this class, not a bunch of huge nerfs.

I expected infusion of shadow to replace Last Refuge and last refuge to be a choice because infusion of shadows is a must have trait for shadow arts line and last refuge gets you killed more than it saves you.

I expected to see more changes like this. How about giving all thieves all venoms (except basi) as F2-F4 skills? Every thief should be able to use poisons, it’s a class thing not a build thing.

These are the things thieves need, not a bunch of nerfs with slight buffs.