Guild Wars 2

JonPeters.5630:

• 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.

Is this in addition to it’s current effect or in replace of it’s current effect?

All in all, this and Diamond Skin are interesting. The Burning Rage change helps my experimental d/d build as well.

Just speaking as someone relative new compared to others in this thread. I would like to see more cross-attunement stuff, especially for Fire. Stuff like a Fire Grandmaster trait: “Get X buff, based on attunement, when you attack a monster that’s burning. Recharge Y.” I don’t understand why Fire can’t help the other three in it’s own way (new Diamond Skin as described, being an example of Earth doing that).

Reevz.2617:

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

^This.

Also a serious review and analysis of imob stacking (PVP only) would be beneficial. Personally, I think it is over the top for pvp formats and should be reverted to its previous state.

just a quick question but will you be able to fix the Searing FLames trait for guardian to actually proc on people with boons and not just proc whenever you apply burning. The buff to this is great but I’d like to see it procs only when the target has a boon on them.

I’m upset that I will no longer have 50% endurance regen on my Ranger, but it is a sacrifice for all the buffs.

Necromancer Comment:

1) 1 bleed from Signet of Spite removed. I’m scratching my head on this. As I understand it, the (now dead) Necro condition meta build didn’t typically take this anyway. The nerf is small, but it seems really unnecessary. If you wanted to affect SoS, I would have removed the 5 stacks of vulnerability altogether, and perhaps added a bleed.

2) /The necromancer’s mobility will remain where it is currently, as we want the Necromancers to be focused on sustaining themselves through death shroud, siphoning health, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act./

This makes good sense for condition mesmers and Minion Masters (still haven’t fixed the Moa-kills-MM bug yet???), but power necros that use a main-hand dagger don’t have the tools to survive in melee range for long. They get focused down just as quickly as a condi-mancer except they’re up close and personal.

As someone who plays D/D ele pretty much exclusively, both in WvW and PvE, I have the following feedback:

Diamond Skin sounds interesting – I regularly get nuked down in WvW by a condition spike before having the chance to do, well, anything at all. Will be nice to have a build option which might let me get involved in the fight first before dying :-)

Moving all three of Cleansing Wave, Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina to Master tier is a mahoosive nerf to D/D survivability. (And we’re really squishy already in case you hadn’t noticed!)

Moving good defensive traits into higher tiers of Water and Arcane is the opposite of what you need to do if you want to encourage better use of Fire / Air / Earth. At the moment you can at least do 10 water for Cleansing Wave and 10 Arcana for either extra vigor or Elemental Attunement and still go for a damage build. All these particular changes will do is guarantee that most D/D ele’s run at least 20 / 20 Water and Arcane, further decreasing the Air / Fire / Earth possibilities.

Thank you for giving the ranger some attention at last! Also, thanks for opening up and giving us all a chance to provide feedback ahead of the changes.

Here are my thoughts around the ranger changes:

For the ranger, we’ve adjusted the placement of some traits so that rangers should have more build combinations. For example, by swapping Nature’s Vengeance and Spirits Unbound, so that rangers can have spirits follow you in tier 2, players can now opt out of the higher damage output from spirits and still have options elsewhere.

The move on Spirits Unbound is excellent. However, I think some of the other changes will ensure that build diversity is not increased at all. All the trait buffs appear to happen in Wilderness Survival and Nature Mastery, both of which are already popular for excellent things like Bark Skin and the spirit enhancements. The trait changes around Marksmanship and Skirmishing really won’t make much difference to me in a power spec because I still lack the thing that makes that spec work – power. Opening up more builds could be better done by one or more of:

1) Allow more things to affect both the ranger and the pet (I’m staring at you, 30 point requirement for ever using active effects on all those super-long-CD signets; maybe just lower the CD’s on them instead? Also, shouts take forever to recharge and don’t give much benefit considering pets are unreliable).
2) Pull some of the pet’s stats back into the ranger himself (bear gives toughness/vitality, cat gives power/precision, etc.).
3) Give pets some benefits from the ranger’s stats/equipment bonuses.
4) Combine some of the power-related traits, such as Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye in particular.

So is infused precision going to be changed as well? Because that still gives permanent vigor in combat, and can you guys move backpack regenerator to adept then? So people can take that and maybe adrenaline implant instead of invigorating speed

JonPeters.5630:

Mesmer:
The bulk of the mesmer changes are focused on two things. 1) Bringing up some of the mesmer support traits and condition removal traits. 2) Reduce dependency on certain trait lines. The changes to Mender’s Purity and Shattered conditions as well as the move of Dazzling Glamours are meant to accomplish the first of these two. The changes to Shattered Strength and Illusionist’s celerity are what we feel accomplish the second one. Before this change mesmers needed to place 25 points into Illusions for many of their builds. Now they can place only 15 points in there to get the Illusion cooldown which will give them back 10 more trait points to open up some new builds. Finally, we felt that the Mantra traits were fairly difficult to collect. Moving Mantra mastery to adept tier takes some trait pressure off of the Dueling line, allowing mantra mesmers to gain a good trait with only 10 points.

• Domination XII – Confounding Suggestions. Changed to increase daze duration by 25%.
• Dueling VI – Protected Mantras. Moved to Master Tier. Increase Toughness from 400 to 600.
• Dueling VII – Mantra Mastery. Moved to Adept Tier.
• Chaos 25 – Chaotic Transference. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.
• Chaos I – Chaotic Revival. Reduced cooldown from 35s to 10s.
• Chaos VII – Mirror of Anguish. Reduced cooldown from 90s to 60s.
  * Inspiration IV – Mender’s Purity. Now removes 2 conditions.
• Inspiration XI – Shattered Conditions. Increased radius from 240 to 600.
• Illusions VI – Illusionary Invigoration. Recharge reduced from 90s to 60s. Moved to Master Tier.
• Illusions VIII – Dazzling Galmours. Moved to Adept Tier.
• Illusions 15 – Shattered Strength – Moved to Grandmaster tier.
  * Illusions 25 – Illusionist’s Celerity – Moved to Master tier.

I’m glad the Dev team has taken into consideration what many Mesmers have stated and how the current builds have been a bit stifled due to weapon choices and placement of skills. So thanks for these changes, we needed them.

The above bold quotes, I’m very ecstatic about, because one makes one ability that was okay, in to a good option though it still likely would be better then pure condition removal skill, but now it’s a contender with condition removal skills as a secondary option instead of using 2 condition removers. This is magnified by the changes to mantras. The latter opens many builds back up, especially those that tend to use more limited weapons sets that actually “need” the skill just to use weapons of choice.

Overall, I’m very pleased with these changes as a Mesmer (main) player.
You have my gratitude. Only thing left on my Christmas list, is that shiny new Primary Hand Pistol

This post really made my day, thank you Jonathan and team. Looks like you guys are addressing some issues that have been around for a while. I think there is a mistake in your first ele line though ‘This was done by bringing up the base cooldown of attunements’. Don’t you mean brought down?

Ele:
- Looks good, some really interesting changes here. Trait variety and less arcane reliance has been a wish for so long.
- Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This is too much. Jonathan, there have been so many discussoin threads on the pvp forum about automated response being over the top as it is total immunity. This is the same. A single trait should not provide total immunity to conditions, even if it is situation. Please consider changing this to 50% condi duration while above 80% health or something. There are many builds in wvw that rely puerly on condi damage (rabid/dire gear), having a single trait being able to shut down builds is not right.

Engineers:
- Again, no change to automated response? A single trait should not be able to shut down a complete build.

Thief:
- These look interesting. Opening up more skill usage with better init regen. Though I do wonder about theives who spam 7 (?) heartseekers in a row now. That will be ammusing to watch.
- If this truely counters the 521 d/p spam troll spec in wvw, thank you. That was just silly.

Warrior
- No changes to healing signet or zerker stance? Are you waiting on the effect of the other changes to determine if they are too strong? There are some insane regen builds in wvw at the moment that will still be over the top with these changes.

Mesmer:
- IC change will open up so many new builds, thank you for this (and sorry for pestering you about it for months :P)
- Phantasm specs will be too strong. What this change means, is phantasm sepcs which had to put 25 into illusions can drop 10 points (as the 20% attack rate trait is bugged and doesn’t really work) and put 10 more points in dueling for more precision, crit damage and utility. This will mean even more damage. Please reconsider the overall phantasm damage, this is going to be too strong.

- Scepter auto attack needs to be buffed. The attack rate is too slow. The clones don’t do anything, just stand there and do their slow attack. Worse they overwrite useful clones (staff = applies condi, sword = vun + boon removal, GS = multi attacks). The attack rate/projectile rate needs to be buffed a little and the clones changes so they actually do something – 1 stack of torment/confusion/poison (2-3 seconds) would help. Or make it so the third attack of the chain transfers a condi from you/the clone to an opponent.
- Phantasmal mage (torch 5) needs a rework, this skill is often just horrible. 3s of confusion is medicore even in condi specs. 3s of retal on bounce doesn’t mean a lot. It’s bounce can only hit a single target once. Staff clones actually do more damage than this phantasm does, which is really bad. Changing it to apply chill, burning, torment or something else on bounce and a different effect when it hits allies would be much better (or even a random condi on hit, can bonce to same target more than once).
- Staff Winds of Chaos (skill 1) projectile is too slow. This weapon is not effective in pve as it takes so long to hit an opponent, in open world PVE with other players around, the opponent is dead before it hits them. Please reconsider this.

A couple of things in general to consider:
- Condi specs need some love in PVE. This is mainly due to bleed limits, only being able to apply 1 stack of poison/burning. Also confusion is almost useless in pve due to mobs attacking so slowly. Adding individual placement for burning/poison would be a start (so each player can have their own poison/burn). Double confusion duration in PVE only. Change bleeds so 25 stacks adds a ‘deep bleed’ buff which does a lot of damage per tick and then removes the bleed stacks.
- Perplexity runes. 6th skill needs an ICD. Strongest rune set in the game, stronger than most Mesmer interrupt traits.
- Revealed should be 4s in wvw to bring it in line with pvp….
- Retal needs to be reconsidered, as it can proc multiple times of a single attack (engines nades for example) which can lead to some specs not being playable in wvw due to retal. Change it to one trigger per attack. Passive tank builds shouldn’t rely on a boon for significant damage.

Thank you so much for sharing these changes and making an effort to balence some of these things!

Eng:

Incendiary powder being master tier creates a lot of problems. In Master it’ll be a choice of Incendiary powder, Enhanced Performance, Short Fuse or Explosive Powder. Adept teir sucks without IP. Accelerant Packed Turrets being moved down won’t help. IP has already received a nerf in the past and I find it pretty well balanced for the adept slot as is. I can’t see moving anything useful down to adept without it being too strong. IMO this move to master tier will only limit even builds more, not create diversity.

The increase in swiftness will be nice for quality of life, I agree perma vigor is a bit much.

Any progress on making kits scale up when you have ascended weapons equipped?

im just going to suggest my view on traits that should not be changed.

Critical Strikes 15 – Opportunist. Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase cooldown from 1s to 5s.
this one require thief to attack to build meter there no bs of cloaking waiting for meter to build up thief risking his life to gain meter.

Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.

this one should be moved to minor if changed to 1. there many good acro traits but if this is only giving me 1 regen it should not be a major.
—-
Critical Strike X – Critical Haste. Increase trigger chance to 25%.
well we are on topic of this one 5 second quickness buff would be nice : )

outside of that everything else i do not really care about it ok changes wont overall change anything.

I shelved my d/d ele awhile ago, and was hoping for it to make a return, because I love the class and I thought: “HMMMMmmm. Surely they couldn’t hit d/d even more, right? There’s only one place to go from the bottom of competitive play.”

My thoughts now: “it’s a shame I can’t sell my 2 Incinerators from my D/D ele on the trading post. What a waste of time to have made them.”

Guardian:

Powerful Blades is Sword and spear damage is increased.
Damage increase: 10%

what i typed before i reread Guardian buffs

“needs to have more to it can it be 10% damage or have 20% less CD on sword or some new effect (maybe Fury on 5th sword hit /dream) it fit with a critical hit stuff of the Radiance line.”

thank you for buffing Powerful Blades it was underwhelming when it was compared to difference Professions weapon traits (not mind if you toss 20% less CD on it to “wink”)

Comments from a D/D WvW thief regarding Infusion of Shadow.

1. D/D will probably become the new meta for thieves, the initiative regen is a huge buff.
2. D/P will be split into two groups

• old 10/30/30/0/0 that still take infusion of shadow, doesn’t perma stealth, high backstab, high survivability
• something like 0/30/25/0/15 permastealth via:
  BP + heartseekerx4 + infilitrator signet + hide in shadows on recharge + patience + buffed initative regen. Might need additional utility or quick recovery. High backstab. Loss of Shadows Rejuvination lowers survivability.

It’s nice to see that their is an actual choice between patience and infusion of shadow depending on whether you want to sit in stealth for a long time.

If the above permastealth build works, thieves sacrifice a little survivability and still maintain their ability of “being able to recharge all of their power while idling in a very long stealth.” Albeit, the level of difficulty is much higher.

fail permastealth math

Kind of reading the post, not a lot of suggestions for thieves…
Probably because…. (I know I can’t) not a lot of people know how to un-kitten this class… or they already quit on the class.

Agriope.4523:

I shelved my d/d ele awhile ago, and was hoping for it to make a return, because I love the class and I thought: “HMMMMmmm. Surely they couldn’t hit d/d even more, right? There’s only one place to go from the bottom of competitive play.”

My thoughts now: “it’s a shame I can’t sell my 2 Incinerators from my D/D ele on the trading post. What a waste of time to have made them.”

LOL it’s sad….I know. The best thing we can do is kitten and moan as much as we can on the forums and even whisper devs in game. MAYBE we have enough time to get this crap changed….hopefully.

Dhuumfire really has made a negative impact for Necromancers in PvE. It should be removed, or apply torment in stead. For PvE, we are practically the worst class because we bring little to no utility compared to classes while dealing a lot less damage than say, warriors or elementalists.

Hi, I have some Guardian suggestions!

TRAITS
Zeal

• 15 – Symbolic Exposure: Change the vulnerability duration to 5 sec up from 3. Why: You can get only 2 stacks at same time (during 2 sec) with symbols and it is a very weak trait in my opinion.
• VIII – Focused Mastery: Add a secondary effect, like Shield (+ Thoughness) and Torch (Burn duration) does. Why: This is an underused trait becouse is does not synergy very well with ‘Symbolic Exposure (15)’ becouse only 1 1handed weapons have symbol (mace). Adding a secondary effect can become more interesting to use too.
• IX – Scepter Power: Smite should be a symbol, but changed to “adapt” to its symbol status (to not become too powerful). Why: Like ‘Focused Mastery’ does not synergy at all with Symbolic Exposure becouse it does not have symbols.
• XII – Kindled Zeal: Even increasing the %, it will still be useless, this trait need to be chaged to something else. Why: We only have one condition (burning) that does not scales in group.

Valor

• 15 – Courageous Return: Make it to work when someone revives you (maybe only when downed?) Why: It should trigger if you rally, so, why not when someone revives you?
• VIII – Glacial Heart: Useless. Reduces its cooldown to 10~15 sec. Why: Its cooldown is still insanely high for its chill duration. Also you need to crit to trigger.
• IX – Honorable Shield: Move to Adept tier. Why: The shield is only viable with this trait becouse the shield have too much CD to its effects. Also if you are heavy support (mace+shield) you cannot equip ‘Mace of Justice’ and this trait togheter.
• X – Focused Mind: Change its duration to 5 up from 4 sec. Why: This 1 sec makes all difference between useful and useless. I tested this new trait and in this way the meditations builds with this trait would be more viable, without becoming too powerful.

Virtues

• V – Improved Spirit-Weapon Duration: Remove this trait and apply this effect permanently. Why: The Spirt weapons have too much traits and their uptime (duration / cooldown) is too low (1/3).

UTILITY
Spirit Weapons:
Overal their problem are:

1. A lot of traits related to them (5 in total). Solution: Merge some of they or remove some and apply their effect permanently;
2. They still melt to bosses (this is a problem of all summons). Solution: Make all summons evades when their owner dodges (or add traits to this);
3. Their uptime. They have 2 to 3 times their cooldown compared to their duration, also they still die easy. Solution: Reduce their Cooldown (some argue to make they invul, but I prefer lower CD).
4. Bow: Both Command and its “atks” should scales with healing power (if “A Fire Inside” scales with cond dmg, why it cant scales with healing power?). Also its “atks” should be faster or AoE.

Hallowed Ground: Its CD is still too long, even with the new effect. The major problem of this skill is that it is stationary, so to have 10 sec of stability, you need to stand still (the same problem of Purging Flames). Its CD should be 60 sec to be useful. Wall of Reflection and Sanctuary don’t have this problem becouse you only need to stay behind and not in a specific location.

Purging Flames: Like Hallowed Ground, its CD should be lowered to 25~30s, down from 35s.

Signet of Mercy: Still useless. Its cast time should be 2 sec and its cooldown should be 90~120 sec. It shouldn’t able to revive supervisor / keeps lord. (In my opinion the current use of the skill is just gimmick).

WEAPONS
Mace

• Reduce the cast time from the last hit from #1 to 3/4s, down from 1s;
• Reduce the cast time from #2 to 1s, down from 1 1/4s;
• Makes #3 (if struck) a blast finisher or whirl finisher.

Hammer

• Reduce the cast time from last hit from #1 to 1s, down from 1 1/4s.

Sword

• Make #2 a Leap finisher. If the Staff #2 and sword #2 (Swap) from mesmers are leap, why the guardian’s teleport from sword #2 cant be?

I thank you for taking the time to get feedback from the community on changes before they happen. Hopefully, there will be ideas exchanged here that may be constructive and of benefit that, perhaps, you hadn’t thought of previously.

I will address each point as I see concerns. First, let me say that I have over 4000 hours in this game, have been on Blackgate since launch, and mostly WvW, so most of my insites will be from a WvW perspective.

Guardian:

Shattered Aegis: seems like a nice little buff.

Zelous Blade: This could be very nice.

Kindled Zeal: Most guardians don’t care bout condition damage in WvW due to cleanses. I haven’t seen any viable condition builds anyway. I don’t see this having any kind of impact. There are so many good, high dps guardian builds, I just don’t see a condition build competing with it.

Seering Flame: This sounds great, but looses the synergy with Shattered Aegis. Not too important because there are many other ways to apply burning.

Powerful Blades: good buff. Might provide an incentive to use sword.

Retributive Armor: This didn’t need a buff. Now it is even more important to spec into this.

Pure of Heart: Most people don’t spec into this in favor of other traits. Might make this more viable.

Supreme Justice: This is a nice boon, especially when synergized with other traits.

Symbol of Swiftness: Whatever. Rather minor thing that seems to be an improvement. Something like this should be done no matter what.

Conclusion: The issue with the guardian is that the health pool is so low. The guardian must spec into things that grant it survivablility. As such, almost every guardian build is a 0/0/30/30/10 or something similar to that. There are certain traits that are just too valuable to give up: Strength in Numbers, Purity, Retributive Armor, Mace of Justice, Altruistic Healing, Two Handed Mastery, Superior Aria, Empowering Might, Pure of Voice, Concecrated Ground.

Granted, there are some pretty nifty roaming specs and pve specs, but for group play, most of the above traits are a must. Until something is done about the health pool, guardians will aways need these traits and the extra toughness, vitality, and healing power. The other issue is that there just isn’t a good armor choice to make up for this if one chooses to spec heavily into the first two trait lines.

tayloriusrex.4532:

piffdaddy.8014:

iriyabran.6218:

So you want to take away some of the need for eles to go into arcane and you actually do exactly the opposite by moving multiple mandatory traits up in tier you force people to invest even more and even more trait points in water and arcane. Also people who go high in arcane go for “evasive arcane” NOT for the attunement cooldown.
You basically doom us to set ourself in stone with 30 water 30 arcane and 10 whatever, the attunement recharge won’t matter and diamond skin genuinely made me laugh. I wish good luck to everyone who decides to test spending 30 trait points and trying to stay over 90% health in PvP often enough for it to be a trait that justifies the investment and sacrifice of everything else.
I am not even joking when I say this I really don’t know how you guys play ele if you play it at all.

Quoted for kitten truth…I hope anet reconsiders some of these changes to arcane and water to avoid “power creep” when the “power” we are getting is not even worth going for. So basically we end up with unneeded nerfs. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I agree with these posts very strongly. For those of us in the WvW community these changes are mind baffling.

QFT ^^^^^

You want build diversity for eles…

- Remove attunement CD % from arcana and make the set attunement cd 10 seconds.
-> replace attunement cd% with celestial +to all stats or something else.

- DO NOT move our only worthy adept skills in arcana and water to master tier.
-> Youre doing the exact opposite of giving us diversity and making us go with atleast 40 points into arcana and water for vigor/boons, 1 condi cleanse.
-> instead you need to keep said skills at the adept trait tier. Fix Evasive arcana to have either no ICD or a 5 second ICD to let us free up a lot of points from water.

- The only viable d/d build atm is the standard 0/10/0/30/30… because… we rely so much on boons, dodges, short attunement cds, and condi cleanse. Anyone who says otherwise has never faced a competent player in any situation.

Why else do you think there were NONE, ZERO, NADDA, NO ONE, NOT ONE, ZILCH players using an elementalist in the last PAX tournament… its not a kittene… Because the ele class is already practically destroyed for anything other than a gimmicky easily avoided s/d burst build let alone a staff that you cant 1v1 with. If this goes into effect your almost guaranteeing that noone will ever play an ele in Tpvp and noone will be using any D/D builds.

JonPeters.5630:

Guardian:

• 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.

As a guardian, maintaining swiftness while running out of combat is an absolute must to maintain quality of life. Presently, the best way to do that is with Symbol of Swiftness, because the staff can be easily swapped out regardless of cooldowns for an alternate weapon just before joining combat. Retreat, on the other hand, cannot be swapped out if it’s still on cooldown from running. While I appreciate the 4 second stacking effect making it worth dropping symbol of swiftness in zergs, this change destroys the utility that staff has for a guardian moving around by themselves or a guardian that is serving as the primary source of swiftness for a small group.

PLEASE consider this alternate change:

• Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 8 seconds of swiftness to targets without swiftness, and 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse to targets that already have swiftness.

I don’t think 8sec/4sec feels overpowered, as swiftness is sorely needed by guardians because they lack the control effects to keep targets in range that every other class has easy access to. But most importantly… in order to gain the full benefit of all the swiftness provided by the symbol, the guardian must STAND STILL instead of moving. That goes directly against the entire purpose of the swiftness buff. Let a fresh tick be 8 seconds. It’s hard enough to do anything without a group as a guardian as-is.

anet,

please.

continue on with the pve / pvp skill split already.

(putting this in a separate post to make things easier to read)
Thief thoughts:

I understand that a lot of the changes for thieves are based around balancing out the S/D initiative spam builds that have predominated tPvP. However, I think this is being done from too many angles and will hurt sword builds too much.

Approaching the S/D changes from addressing initiative regen and availability to vigor is, I believe the right idea. As much as I love my thief mobility, I understand why this is being done.

Putting a cast time on Shadow Return, however, will be too heavy of a change to keep sword builds viable in PvE. I understand that being able to Shadow Return on a stun stun/knockdown/etc. is still really strong, even without it being a stun break, but thieves are very, very squishy to direct damage and I believe you will see that a small change like this having a drastic effect since thieves can’t eat a stun like most other classes can.

Finally, I think pistols on thieves still need some attention. I’m really glad that the devs tried to help it out with the Body Shot change, but I think that instead of having an immobilize, the weapon set needs some mobility. Pistol/Pistol still doesn’t have access to a stealth or an evade. All other weapon sets have access to at least one of those, if not both.

JonPeters.5630:

Warrior:

• Discipline XI – Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed erroneous adrenaline gain fact.
• Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
• Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.

This would pretty much render the hammer completely useless, especially if UF is moved to Master.

• Earthshaker already takes a damage reduction if you don’t have UF. I fear that nerfing it even more would make it very weak for an F1 skill (even less if burst mastery is also nerfed.)

• In order to get UF once it is moved to Master you need to sacrifice either Burst Mastery (extra damage), or Merciless Hammer (extrta control) or Cleansing Ire (extra survability).

• I can unerstand staggering blow being toned down a bit since it has become mobile and can actually hit something but -23% seems a little harsh.

I truly believe that all of this added together is overkill and will completely destroy the hammer warrior. Why not start with just the changes to UF and the longbow and see how it all evens out with other professions being buffed.

I’ve never really been bothered about these kind of updates and changes before, as I’m not big enough into sPvP or WvWvW for them to truly make a difference to me. However, as an elementalist these changes seem like too much for the worse.

By making “more builds available”, this simply makes the few actually viable builds worse. My main plea here would be to not bump both Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina up to master tier; this hurts far too many builds too much. I love D/D, as the overall feel and style just does it for me, but it seems like the overall number-nerfing that’s happening here is just too much.

That said, I like the transparent approach you guys are taking here. It’s nice to have things put in front of us before the changes are actually made, and know that you may actually take some of the feedback on board.

Hello. Thank you for opening this dialogue. I will follow your prescribed form as best I can. I will only comment on changes that impact my playstyle and I feel qualified to judge.

Elementalist- I play a DPS Berserker staff ele, and I have since near release. I earned Champion Magus running 30/30/0/10/0 and 30/20/0/0/20 and have world completion on this character. This character is 100% ascended. I never bought into arcane as a necessity, but I do greatly appreciate the cooldown reductions.

Burning Rage 25 – Increased damage dealt to burning foes from 5% to 10%.
This is a good buff to the fire line as it translates into other specs. It gives Earth DPS builds some more oomph with Signet of Fire applications and combined with the duration buff option it is a nice trait change.

Air V – Soothing Winds. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
I actually use this in PVE for lack of a better air trait. Not a bad adjustment, but I’d consider this going to 10% like some other trait changes.

Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.
This is interesting. I’m a little concerned that this trait may not play out well in PVE with either some content being trivialized or it being inconsequential most of the time.

Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.
Given the other changes to Water I feel this is the one that is a bit too much. Majority water players are going to be paying too much in the 20/30 tiers. Keeping this adept at lets the water players get more DPS from their 2 skills without trading it for the main water focus.

Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.
While moving it to Master can we please add to this? Maybe make it so Soothing Mist removes a condition if applied for 10s? So those that stay in water pulse removal?

Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff. Moved to Adept tier.
This is a tremendous buff and will likely convince me to move 10 from air to arcane, or 10 from water to arcane.

Engineer- I play a DPS Rampager Engineer with high precision flamethrower and elixir gun. I have map completion on this character. This character is 5 slot ascended. I do not see any particularly major changes to my playstyle.

Guardian- I do not currently play this class. It will be my 8th project.

Mesmer- This is my current project. I play a DPS/Support hybrid mesmer with healing mantras and a focus on reflection, control and phantasm stacking. I am over 50% world complete on this character. This character is 5 slot ascended.

Illusions 25 – Illusionist’s Celerity – Moved to Master tier.
This will help almost every Mesmer build.

Necromancer- I play a Cleric’s Healer/DPS build specced 30/0/10/30/0 with a focus on dagger/focus + staff, well healing/dps and I occassionally retrait within the same spec to vampiric minion master which I can support with my extremely high healing. This character has map completion, soloed Aetherblade Retreat including Mai Trin, and is 5 slot ascended. My favorite playstyle, just unnecessary in most content.

Spite 15 – Death into Life. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%
I’ll take it. I’ve topped out at 410 hp/s regeneration on this character. This will get me near 420-425.

Death 5 – Reanimator. Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.
With enough healing these guys can actually soak some hits in trash situations.
Death 25 – Deadly Strength. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.
This is a fair buff and has me considering builds to utilize it as a DPS variant of my current setup.

Blood Magic 25 – Blood to Power. Decreased health threshold from 90% to 75%. Increase Power from 90 to 120.
One of the secrets of this super high HPS build is that it actually does good power DPS when supplemented by wells, vulnerability and flesh golem. Rewarding my healing with power is great.

(Continued)
Ranger- I play an apothecary beastmaster ranger focused on being very tanky and ablatively absorbing damage for my groupmates through my drake pet or my greatsword evasion/toughness. This character is map complete and 5 slot ascended.

Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.
This was way too much for far too little.

Wilderness XII – Bark Skin Increased the damage reduction from 30% to 50%.
Wow, what a buff when combined with the hp boost from recent patches. My pet will be a juggernaut.

General Spirit Nerfs:
I think this is warranted, but in light of this lost potential can we please consider making them easier to use for less investment?

Thief- I play a super-survivable cleric’s venom share/tank sword/pistol + shortbow thief in PVE and in PVP. This character is map complete and 5 slot ascended.

Anet let me first say that I am 100% aware of how survivable thieves can be with signet of malice, venom share and healing power.

Increased the base rate of initiative gain from .75/second to 1/second.
I don’t really rely on Initiative to accomplish much in my build, but I appreciate the implications. S/P could use an offensive initiative dump.

Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.
Not really a fan of this. I think it should be unable to escape CC but as a tank thief with low vitality I rely on this as a condition cleaner. Please reconsider.

Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.
Can we please get some kind of bonus for completing a pistol whip on an enemy? Extra damage perhaps?

Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
This is cool. It actually makes straight tanking without venom share more viable. But the math must be done. At 1 ini/s this is still only 150 selfish hp/s for a thief. This just loses to venom share and would be more appropriate without the increased scaling and dropped a bit in tier.

Acrobatics in General:
Acrobatics is a line which rewards active fighting and that means visible fighting. This line needs a way to reward players who are not stealthing and instead relying on evasion, momentum, mobile attacks and initiative use for survivability. The problem is that you only need to be caught once to go down fast in both PVE and PVP. The line needs some mitigation.
As a cleric venom share I often suffer from similar issues due to not relying on stealth but instead combat prowess to survive.
Can you guys please look into adding some mechanics which -reward- thieves for not stealthing in this line? For example adding an Acrobatics trait like:

“Performer’s Swagger: Gain Level/2 Toughness for every 5s you are visible and in combat. Maximum 5 stacks Stacks expire when leaving combat or entering stealth.”
To really enforce “thriving on combat.”

“Rolling With the Punches (Adept Major): When an attack would do more than 25-50% (numbers for Anet) of your maximum health take 25-50% less damage (numbers for Anet), lose 50% endurance. 5-10s cooldown, requires 50% endurance to trigger.”

Thieves need help in PVE where a single hit can mean death. A 5-10 point Acrobatics trait that helps thieves stand their ground (but can not be used with stealth as an active defense) would go a long way to improving thief melee capability.
Also being the boon tree I’d really like to see a way to apply group regeneration to allies, potentially in the 5-10 point range to round out venom share.

Warrior- This is my 7th class and as of yet is still only in alpha stages.
As a PVP player I am just glad to see Hambow tweaked.

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.

How likely is it for us to see the Mesmer’s Temporal Curtain focus4 skill inherit this behavior in some form?

In its current state, even if we have 0.00001s of swiftness remaining when we pass through it, we get no additional swiftness. The only time this skill would function properly in granting swiftness is if whoever passing through it currently had no swiftness.

Fun fact: this specific behavior/bug contributed to the price of Centaur and Air runes and their subsequent collapse when the new Traveler runes came out.

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%.
…
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 Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.
• Critical Strikes VIII – Signet Use. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
• Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Reduce initiative gain from 3 to 2.
• Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.

This is a good direction (there definitely is a net increase over the long term fights, except for Infusion of Shadow which was just overused). But as initiative is one of the more restrictive Thief mechanics, I’m not surprised this issue is overlooked, again: it does not help the problem with weapon swapping and skill use (which you originally “addressed” last year by increasing base Init regen), unlike other classes where weapon swapping returns full use of their skills. The change you add now results in a net loss in the short term since we can’t do our Init burst regens anymore (spamming signets/stealth etc). Quick Pockets should be something to look at, either combining with Quick Recovery with active/passive effect (i.e. if you swap to activate Pockets, it goes on 5~10s cooldown and you can’t get the Recovery bonus.) so we can use another trait, or making it more available by lowering its tier. Without, it punishes those who use skills wisely.

JonPeters.5630:

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.).

• Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.
• Critical Strikes 15 – Opportunist. Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase cooldown from 1s to 5s.
• Critical Strikes VI – Practiced Tolerance. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
• Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 4s from 8s.
• Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 8s.

Thieves were built with high evasion capability (Shadow Return, Roll for Initiative, Withdraw, Feline Grace, Vigorous Recovery) because we lack the Vitality/Toughness to absorb the damage. Can we get something to compensate the loss? The 2% increase from Practiced Tolerance is puny compared to the halved Vigor and insta-cast SR.

JonPeters.5630:

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.

• Acrobatics XI – Hard to catch. Moved to Master Tier.
• Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.

Hard to Catch is a weak, RNG-based trait, so it doesn’t increase Thieves’ survivability at all. Making it accessible doesn’t help, because people won’t choose it in the first place. If you want Hard to Catch to work, you either need to grant it Stability, or it needs to move the Thief at least 1200~1500 distance away, not 600, allowing them to choose to re-enter combat or disengage.
Assassin’s Reward Healing scaling isn’t helpful… unless you meant base healing, not the stat?

Ranger: Why aren’t you bringing rangers up to par with warriors via more trait compression and fixes to the class in general?

Trait Compression & Modifications:

• Piercing Arrow: Only Pierces yet Warriors get the same trait that also reduces cooldown of the same weapons. Suggestion: Merge Quick Shot into this skill from the Skirmish tree.
• Eagle Eye: This should be affecting shortbows too. It’s illogical that we can only increase longbow range and not our other bow too. Suggestion: Add shorbow to the skill for range and damage increase. Move to Adept Tier and move Trait V to Master tier.
• Quick Draw: (See Piercing Arrow above): Replace this skill with the following: Reduce cooldown on weapon swaps by 5 seconds. (same as warrior minor trait).
• 5 pt Natural Vigor: Seeing as you’re nerfing this skill, why not make the other 25% a chance on hit. 10% chance to grant Minor Vigor (25% end rec) on hit. It still won’t be perma vigor but it won’t be as crippled either.
• Signet of the Beastmaster: This never should have been a trait seeing as pets are intrinsic to the class and you can’t get rid of them. This should have been a natural class ability. Suggestion: Remove this trait and just roll it into the class. Add a new Trait “Active Signet effects, affect nearby allies”. This gives more party buff ability to a class that is sorely lacking in this department.
  *Nature Magic IX: This trait should be merged into the cooldown trait, Martial Mastery and left in Wilderness Survival.

Weapons:

• 1hs rooting not addressed. This weapon is terrible due to that and having to use kludgy dps killing workarounds in combat sucks (eg not attacking and turning auto attack off to try and prevent rooting so you can dodge when needed etc..)
• Longbow.. the “miss party buffs to do damage weapon”. the mid range boost is ok but the auto attack is too kitten slow. It should be a bit faster as you’re losing damage to flight time and range anyway.

Skills & Pets

• Spirits still have internal cooldown, can be killed, can’t be moved easily and don’t do damage on summons unlike Warrior Banners (w/traits). Suggestion; Remove the internal cooldown and on every 25% health lost give the buff to anyone in range.
  *Pets still die to AoEs from bosses in world events and dungeons. The health increase did little to nothing to remedy this situation. Pets should either be immune to boss aoe damage due to not being able to dodge or get out of red circles or have the damage taken drastically reduced from these things, otherwise in the fights that really matter you’re losing out on 1/3 your damage.

PvE of course. PvP needs to be split from PvE in most every way.
That’s enough for now….

For the remaining (cut to 2 posts due to length):

Nerfs:

• Trickery IV – Flanking Strikes. Move to Master tier.
  This one’s a huge nerf, now all the increase-damage traits on Thieves are in 2nd tier. Thieves are more likely to go the Deadly Arts line now (for the extra Power) if they want the increased damage for backstab. A big loss for support (being able to switch between damage & Merciful Ambush), and a win for no one.

Buffs:

• Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.
  A nice buff, the awkward animation and rooting was a downer in its original and previous incarnations, hopefully now it’s actually going to be slightly usable somewhat in PvP.

• Critical Strike X – Critical Haste. Increase trigger chance to 25%.
  Still useless, 2 seconds on 30 second cooldown.

• Acrobatics IV – Assassin’s Retreat. Increased swiftness duration to 20s.
  I don’t know how this is used or how it fits in with this balance patch’s ideas, but it’s a welcoming buff.

• Trickery VIII – Trickster. Move to Adept tier.
  Nice welcome for Condition Thieves, but they’re typically 2 tiers into Trickery anyway and would’ve gotten this regardless. I think it’s just pulled down to accomodate the moving of Flanking Strike upwards.

Directionless:

• Deadly Arts VI – Sundering Strikes. Increased the trigger chance from 50%. Remove ICD. Decrease Vulnerability duration to 6s.
  Again don’t know how this fits in with the balance patch ideas, and sundering is useless anyway since it can’t upkeep the stacks, you’ll only ever get 2-3% damage increase at most (2-3 stacks). I’d rather pick Mug.

I do not play as Ele but I see a major problem for them: Arcane trait line. It should only reduce the CD of attunement by 1% per point, but reduce the cooldown of attunement to 14 sec. In this way who gets 30 points in arcane line still gets 9 sec of cooldown, but they really wouldn’t feel forced to go this line if they don’t want.

Seven Dreamsong.9802:

anet,

please.

continue on with the pve / pvp skill split already.

For real. The Thief changes in particular are absolutely going to wreck PvE builds. The Thief above all others has suffered the most from this insistence on balancing around PvP. Just split the skills. Please.

JonathanSharp.7094:

For Dhumfire and Terror: we have plans on reworks for those down the road, but they won’t make it in for this patch. We have plans for those, but they’re a little further down the “balance” road.

Whoa wait… so let me get this straight, Necromancers were a borderline joke class until the Dhuumfire patch.

Ever since then most of the other condition related skills and traits have been nurfed because of the damage and pressure increase these skills added to the class, and these were pretty big nurfs too (fear damage, scepter 2, corrupt boon, greater marks, weakening shroud, mark of blood, spite sigil, numerous traits are the ones i can remember) and you still plan on nurfing (“reworking”) Dhuumfire and Terror?

Will you be reverting all the changes you’ve made to all the skills to ‘tone down’ or offset the damage Dhuumfire and Terror added?

Phenn.5167:

Seven Dreamsong.9802:

anet,

please.

continue on with the pve / pvp skill split already.

For real. The Thief changes in particular are absolutely going to wreck PvE builds. The Thief above all others has suffered the most from this insistence on balancing around PvP. Just split the skills. Please.

+1. I don’t play PvP why I need to be balanced around it?

I main a thief and alternate between d/d and d/p. I love the change. Soon people will run out of things to complain about when they get owned by a thief.

Additionally, thank you for acknowledging the state of necromancers right now. They were getting out of hand.

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

I’d rather you target patience over infusion(just me or might find others who will agree)

D/P setup if you do Nerf Infusion the only people you will find running D/p are those who are returning to the game from a break. i know that perma-stealthing is a problem, perhaps increase the init regain to 3 maybe 4 depending on how much the new init regen will help. I have to manage my init very well to be able to kill anyone. much less any good player who decides to breathe on me. In Spvp i rarely find high lvl players playing thiefs in tourneys(Might be a reason for that or might just be me).
With Ele’s I can’t get away from evasive arcane soooo poop for me :/

By nerfing Infusion of Shadow, you are not nerfing perma stealth builds. Perma stealth d/p build can be played with only points in Acrobatics. The thing you’re nerfing right now is our survivalbility in a fight. Most importantly, our effective condi removal without wasting a utility like Shadowstep to clear condis.

You said “using a lot of different abilities to maintain stealth is ok”, but all you did was nerf the builds that actually rely on all these other abilities to maintain stealth if needed, and it wasn’t even always guaranteed you could maintain it with out 30pts in SA and none in Acrobatics.

If you’re going to go through with all these changes, can I please have free transmutation stone sand splitters so I can get my expensive skins onto a condi set? Or can you grant me a free level 80 warrior or Guardian since you think they’re the only two classes that are allowed to be played?

Thanks

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Damaskinos.1263:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

AgentChaos.4932:

good change to symbol of swiftness but can we have pure of voice removes 2 condi back?

I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for that one.

• How is the change to symbol of Swiftness any good? So many classes move much faster then Guardians. If you want to nerf this, give us an Adept trait, that gives us flat 25% movement spead, like Warriors have it.

In many cases the symbol of swiftness change is actually a buff and not a nerf. Currently it will only apply the initial large portion of swiftness if the target does not currently have any swiftness on them. If they have swiftness on them or after that first pulse it will then add 1 second of swiftness per pulse. This is very awkward and clunky.

The change makes the spell apply a consistent 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse without the strange hidden mechanic. Basically. if you already have swiftness on the people which you using the symbol on or if you take the time to stand in the spell for the full duration then it will just be a buff. =)

For me it will be a nerf. Now I can use the symbol to get 8 sec of swiftness while I’m walking, but I only get 1 sec more if I already have (I only use it when I don’t have swiftness). Now it will be only 4 sec instead of 8 sec.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Damaskinos.1263:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

AgentChaos.4932:

good change to symbol of swiftness but can we have pure of voice removes 2 condi back?

I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for that one.

• How is the change to symbol of Swiftness any good? So many classes move much faster then Guardians. If you want to nerf this, give us an Adept trait, that gives us flat 25% movement spead, like Warriors have it.

In many cases the symbol of swiftness change is actually a buff and not a nerf. Currently it will only apply the initial large portion of swiftness if the target does not currently have any swiftness on them. If they have swiftness on them or after that first pulse it will then add 1 second of swiftness per pulse. This is very awkward and clunky.

The change makes the spell apply a consistent 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse without the strange hidden mechanic. Basically. if you already have swiftness on the people which you using the symbol on or if you take the time to stand in the spell for the full duration then it will just be a buff. =)

The symbol of swiftness is primarily used by guardians to give themselves a speed boost while moving out of combat, more than any other use. The change may be a buff when other swiftness is available, but it is most certainly a nerf for the primary use of the skill and a very negative quality of life change for guardians trying to get from point A to point B out of combat.

I would like to voice my concern about the reduction of vigor boon times on thief, mostly because it is a class that sort of depends on dodging regularly and often to avoid getting squished.

The Problem: This is a big drop to Vigor maintenance, as these are the only sources of Vigor for a thief.

Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 4s from 8s.

Shortest thief heal cool down is 11 seconds on Signet of Malice when traited (20 points critical strikes). Leaving 7 seconds without vigor (excluding the cast time on malice).

Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 8s.

Shortest cool down steal is 21.5 seconds with 30 points into Trickery and traited using up Master and Grand Master slots. Leaving 13 seconds vigor down time (in addition, VIGOR is not granted if there is no valid target for the steal, or if the target dodges out of range of the steal)

• Thieves rely heavily on Dodges, yet our only 2 sources of Vigor is getting reduced by 50% and 45%, when other classes can proc Vigor off Critical Hits for 5 seconds on 5 second cool downs in 10 point trait lines.

• Understanding that the majority Thief weapon skills have 1 source of evade (aligned to skill 3 d/d, s/d, sb) and (aligned to skill 2 spear). However, what about the weapon sets that do not (Pistol/Pistol, Pistol/Dagger, Dagger/Pistol). This particular change is not building a bigger variety for build/weapon diversity, it is reducing it.

The solution: Reduce the reduction from 50% to 75%
Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 6s from 8s.
Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration from 15s to 12s.
—-
Other suggestions:

• Still no chance to combine up:
  Trickery VI – Long Reach with Trickery V – Thrill of the Crime
  (there are 4 traits (2 adept, 1 master, 1 grand master) that effect steal in the trickery line, we can only take 3)

• Any chance for a passive 25% movement speed increase getting added to one of the following:
  Acrobatics VI – Fleet of Shadow or any other Adept trait in Acrobatics

• No change to Acrobatics XI – Hard to Catch (add breaks stun/1 second of stability to prevent immediate re-stun)
  Fight any dragon level boss; when you get feared, you shadow step away, gain swiftness, and then immediately get feared again running further and faster away.
  Also, why not remove DAZE from triggering this.

JonPeters.5630:

Necromancer:
we want the Necromancers to be focused on sustaining themselves through death shroud, siphoning health, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act.

• Mark of Blood. Removed 1 bleed in PvP only.
• Signet of Spite: Removed one bleed.
• Spite 15 – Death into Life. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%
• Spite X – Chill of Death. Increased trigger threshold from 25% to 50%.
• Death 25 – Deadly Strength. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.
• Blood Magic 25 – Blood to Power. Decreased health threshold from 90% to 75%. Increase Power from 90 to 120.

Just wanted to point out just a small portion of things that I know of from the list of your planned upcoming changes:

Mark of Blood like all other marks goes on full cooldown when cancelled/interrupted
Death Into Life does not work with Deadly Strength
Death Into Life does not work with Blood to Power
Death Into Life does not work with Sigil of Bloodlust
Death Into Life does not work with Might Boon
Chill of Death will not improve the frequency of the user to slow down an enemy
Death Shroud does not work with siphoning
Death Shroud does not work with Regeneration from Mark of Blood
Death Shroud does not work with Signet of Spite’s Passive effect

I just had a question mesmer illusion trait : illusionary elasticity this trait has been asked about a few times on the forums, and the last official word on it was it was being looked at.

Could you clarify if this trait is supposed to work with clones? I.E staff clones casting winds of chaos, which has a bounce effect?

Thanks a lot.

10 december?

Are you serious?

why are my posts being deleted?

is simply suggesting that the pve / pvp skill split be continued
when they do balance patches considered to be ‘offensive’ ?

it would simply make sense since end game pve bosses / zergs do not follow
conventions and skill limitations of a player to player fight. what scales up well
in pvp, does not automatically equate in pve. anet was wise to do it in gw1,
so why is it stalled here in gw2? anet would avoid a lot of headaches in trying to please
both pve and pvp crowds with a system that separates them.

Jayce.5632:

JonPeters.5630:

Necromancer:
we want the Necromancers to be focused on sustaining themselves through death shroud, siphoning health, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act.

• Mark of Blood. Removed 1 bleed in PvP only.
• Signet of Spite: Removed one bleed.
• Spite 15 – Death into Life. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%
• Spite X – Chill of Death. Increased trigger threshold from 25% to 50%.
• Death 25 – Deadly Strength. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.
• Blood Magic 25 – Blood to Power. Decreased health threshold from 90% to 75%. Increase Power from 90 to 120.

Just wanted to point out just a small portion of things that I know of from the list of your planned upcoming changes:

Mark of Blood like all other marks goes on full cooldown when cancelled/interrupted

So do Well of Power, Life Siphon, and Tainted Shackles.

I would really like to thank the devs for posting their ideas beforehand, this is very appreciated. Thank you ! Seriously – thank you !

If you read the opinion about the elementalist changes you might notice that some posts are getting increasingly toxic. I have played my elementalist for more than 1500 hours and I can really understand them. You have moved far too many traits into master tier, which will force players to go 20 water 20 arcane even more than before We did take these traits because they are needed – they still are, but now we can only get one or even none, which is simply a nerf to a class that has already enough trouble finding a spot in a group composition.

Even staff users will rather agree that they have not been nerfed too much, instead of saying they stayed the same or say they have even been buffed. D/D or S/D setups were nerfed the hardest without even adressing some of the core elementalist issues (focus being useless, same applies to lingering attunements, arcane precision, one with air, any +damage trait except for PvE MinMaxers with very specialized group setups… too many issues to list).

Simply put: I would rather keep the old state of the elementalist without any change at all, than take the changes posted in the preview.