Guild Wars 2

Arena net you said thief has no cooldowns now you put cd wtf is wrong with you plus you destroy the s/+ you nerf thief again and again and again just remove the proffesion

Initiative

To power their attacks, thieves rely on a resource called initiative, which regenerates over time. Weapon skills cost initiative points, but they have no recharge time, so thieves can use them back-to-back. This allows thieves to stay flexible and responsive in combat and unleash a rapid flurry of powerful attacks. This is the best proof that arena net are just forgeting what they said and they are blind

Since I really only play a Guardian (addicted), I can only speak for that class regarding the new patch notes. I’ll make this short and sweet since long walls of text are boring to read. In my opinion, I don’t care much really for skill/trait/damage changes since as players, we must learn to adapt all the time, regardless of our class. However, one thing I can not find an adaptation for with the various builds, is the symbol of swiftness nerf.

Perhaps you could enlighten me a bit on the reason for this change and the opportunities it has now set up? If not, “Retreat” or “Save Yourselves” will have to suffice.
-Please and Thank You

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Regarding Thief,

As a thief main, I support most of these changes. Nerfing D/P is a step in the right direction for our class, in that I think a good number of our nerfs in the past were encouraged by the community due to the perma-stealth capability of D/P. Now that it’s going to be dead in the upcoming Dec. 10th changes though, could we have our 1200 range back on cluster bomb and/or trick shot please?

Here’s my justification for the 1200 range. First of all, cluster bomb/ trick shot work as little more than a mob tagging mechanic. It does decent damage as well, but is by no means overpowered. However, with a 900 range, there are many locations in WvW where I have a difficulty even hitting the ground below me when I’m on the wall of a keep or castle or whatever. It’s really frustrating to be unable to contribute to a battle while standing on a wall because my shortbow range isn’t capable of hitting someone below me on the ground…. it seems like many of these locations in WvW were designed with ranged distance limits of 1200 in mind, and 900 seems to always be just frustratingly too short to hit anybody.

Thank you very much for your consideration, and good job on the changes in general!

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Is there any chance we could get some feedback on why there are no changes to the 1h sword for Rangers? I understand that there are only so many things you can address in a patch, but the mechanics of the auto-attack that prevent dodges has been something that has been complained about for a long time.

Elementalist:

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

Why? As a full cleric elementalist you will laugh at foes with full condition build… They will be unable to deal you enough direct damage to take you below 90%. This is almost as bad as “Automated Response”. Bad trait, no counter play.

Necromancer:

• Curses IV – Weakening Shroud. Increase recharge from 15 to 25.

Should not all traits which will give you boon/effect trigger everytime you do into ds? Most others DS traits have about 15s cooldowns. That is better, because you can still time it to trigger everytime.

But with Weakening Shroud it is a realy bad decision, because you do not see when it is more than 25s so you can go to ds to trigger it again. For necro, DS should be really his class mechanic and when he has some traits which will give him boon/spell, it should trigger when he pop DS. This will make a realy good necromancers even better at something you want them to be good, Attrition.

<Corrupt boon>
What about making Corrupt boon a channel skill (similar to Ether reneval)! With every pulse it will convert one boon to condition with maximum of 10 boons convertion. It will give your enemy time to react. He can dodge it which will evade 2/3 of that channeling or he can interrupt it. Yes if your enemy is afk then you will be able to corrupt 10 boons on chanell, but you will be in most times evaded or interrupted so the max of 10 boons corruption will hardly ever happen.

What do you think?

Roy Cronacher.1576:

vangedas.7358:

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.

There actually is counter play to this trait unlike some other similar mechanics. The goal of the elementalist with this trait is to stay above 90% hit points while the counter play is to do a bit of physical damage to the elementalist to drop them below this threshold in order to get the conditions rolling on them, which will in turn help keep them below that threshold.

In SPvP an elementalist can reach a maximum of around 20,000-21,000 hit points. This means that 2100 would be the most damage you would need to do to an elementalist to break through this trait and in most cases it would be a lower amount than that. That is not very much damage needed to do in order to start applying conditions. This still leaves room for the elementalist using healing traits/skills and kiting to try to stay above that threshold to increase their survivability vs conditions.

We have been doing internal testing and it feels like it in a good place for a tier 3 trait. That being said though and as a reminder, none of these changes are set in stone yet and are subject to change.

Wouldn’t the corollary to this be some kind of trait that would give condition classes immunity to direct damage until their health drops below, say 90%? The counterplay argument made would still hold: all someone has to do is deal 01% condition damage to the necromancer before he becomes susceptible to direct damage.

I’m 100% against this as well. Any ability, any trait that completely nullifies an entire type of damage passively is not good for the game.

These types of traits aren’t going to make things more interesting – they’ll just kitten people off.

I’m sure you guys can come up with a trait better than this.

I don’t understand where you’re going with Thieves. You say builds designed for being slippery/evading a lot are too strong, but where does that leave us? Design philosophy has stated MULTIPLE times in the past that Thief was SUPPOSED to be slippery, SUPPOSED to be mobile, SUPPOSED to be hard to catch. Now, you’re saying they can’t have that? What are we left with? Pigeon-holed back in to D/P that barely functions in this meta, or Cluster Bomb spamming because meleeing is pointless?

- It’s nice to see that Pistol Whip is getting some love, but it’s still going to collapse dead as soon as it comes across any Retaliation (which is EVERYWHERE), and the stun needs to function at 1 second again to allow any damage to land at all. This skill still needs love.
- Boosting base Initiative regeneration is a step in the right direction, but why keep a bunch of traits like Opportunist and make them awful now?
- Removing ICD on Sundering Strikes is nice.
- Infusion of Shadow change was necessary.
- Adding a cast time to Infiltrator’s Return is a complete disaster. You would totally eviscerate ALL Sword builds for PvP and WvW. The loss of mobility from the instant cast of this skill means that a MASSIVE amount of mobility for S/x is gone.
- All the changes to Vigor are CRIPPLING. You say you don’t like classes having access to large amounts of Vigor, but Thieves have an entire trait line that operates around the concept of evasion! Vigor and evasions are our lifeline at this point, because stealth in sPvP is in a dreadful state (speccing for it will violently destroy any of your DPS and make you dead weight when trying to contest points). You must NOT change Vigor in this way.
- Changing Assassin’s Reward to Grandmaster guarantees that nobody will ever use it. – - Quick Pockets and Assassin’s Reward were pretty much destined to work together if you weren’t using Quick Recovery, and now that’s out. Slightly increasing the healing will not have anywhere near enough of an impact on survival.
- Hard to Catch is still an absolutely terrible trait and you need to rework it completely before trying to coax us in to using it. You have no control over where you end up, the cooldown is long and you don’t even lose the disabling effect.

I just want to ask, what builds do you see as being viable in sPvP now that you intend of crippling most mobility, which is all Thief ever had going for it there?

As a necromancer I’m going to speak on behalf of a few of my fellow necros on BP that have at least 5 points in the blood magic trait line. I can deal with being nerfed as condimancer, but that summon jagged horror trait HAS to go as a forced trait. It’s practically useless. The jagged horror often dies before you move on to another enemy or dies almost immediately during battle or just gets in the way of PvE content like the jade maw for example. I can’t count how many times the maw has targeted my jagged horror after I killed a spawn for a crystal and then felt like a moron for it getting in the way.
The trait is especially an issue in WvW. When I go into large open field fights, the horror is killed practically instantly. There’s no time for it to get any bleeds up or make an actual difference in a fight. It feels like I flushed 5 trait points down the drain just so I could get staff mastery, and that’s not a good feeling.
I personally don’t care what it would be replaced with, as long as that mechanic is gone and not forced upon players. You could even keep the trait, but make it OPTIONAL. Please consider relooking at that trait in terms of large scale content, thank you.

Paulo.8459:

- but simultaneously nerfing endurance gain through halving vigor uptime is very, very bad. Normally a thief doesn’t take vigorous recovery and bountiful theft at the same time. After the change the thief would be able to dodge less than most other classes with acces to permanent vigor uptime, although the thief is considered to be the most evasive class in the game.

My proposal: either nerf shadow return or vigor uptime, but not both. “Shaving” means to tone down something step by step. Halving vigor uptime seems a bit drastic to me, especially along with the other changes wich affect the sword thief.

This suggestion, if overlooked, will largely make any play style of thieves laughable. Decide on which one you’ll nerf, giving shadow return a casting time or vigor up time. Nerfing both will destroy thieves everywhere.

as wvw mesmer here is my imput to your suggestions:

ty for buffing mantras. those traits were really all over the place and needed adjustment.

i think though theses buffs again help the spvp mesmer and roamer, but again as a wvw mesmer, im still waiting on aoe buffs. in spvp i think we got more access to viable builds, than we have in wvw. problem is our ai. i would prefer having more viable builds for wvw that dont depend on clones being shattered or phantasms being out as in a zerg ai dies very very quickly.
thats why the massive glamour build nerf was such a big hit to the wvw mesmers. it was 1 of the only viable aoe builds we had.

so i would like to see some improvements to certain skills or glamours or manipulation skills like mimic. mantras are interesting, but the recharging is kinda stressful in a zerg imo. in a zerg there is a lot that doesent work like it does in spvp or small roaming. i would love to move away from veilbot in wvw so maybe u get an idea if u look at the gw1 mesmer……

you said you wanted to give variety to ele build, then you move the best ele trait to master in arcana . you must be joking ! how many eles wont run at least 20 arcana still ??

Getsuga.3697:

Paulo.8459:

- but simultaneously nerfing endurance gain through halving vigor uptime is very, very bad. Normally a thief doesn’t take vigorous recovery and bountiful theft at the same time. After the change the thief would be able to dodge less than most other classes with acces to permanent vigor uptime, although the thief is considered to be the most evasive class in the game.

My proposal: either nerf shadow return or vigor uptime, but not both. “Shaving” means to tone down something step by step. Halving vigor uptime seems a bit drastic to me, especially along with the other changes wich affect the sword thief.

This suggestion, if overlooked, will largely make any play style of thieves laughable. Decide on which one you’ll nerf, giving shadow return a casting time or vigor up time. Nerfing both will destroy thieves everywhere.

Pretty much this. What you are doing is NOT shaving.

Kelly.5293:

I think i would support removing UF and BM traits entirely before taking away hammers base dmg. This wouldn’t kill hammers in PvE and would be a decent blow to WvW. I shouldn’t be forced to run full zerker to get decent dmg out of a hammer in PvE.

pretty much something like this, the raw dps loss to hammers is way over the top… i am saddened but not surprised with anets history in going overboard when they nerf something.

on another note i dont suppose we can convince yaal to un-nerf mainhand axe which was never really OP to begin with?

JonPeters.5630:

Ranger:
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. We also brought up some Marksmanship and a Skirmishing trait to make power specs more appealing. We feel like rangers also currently have too much endurance regeneration through traits. Due to this, we’ve made adjustments to Wilderness Survival traits, and we’ve also brought down the passive of Sun Spirit and the active effect for Storm Spirit.

• Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500 range by 20%.
• Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500-1000 range by 15%.
• Marksmanship V – Predator’s Instinct. Increased the threshold from 25% to 50%. Increased the Cripple Duration from 2s to 10s. Increased the cooldown from 15s to 30s.
• Marksmanship VI – Beastmaster’s Bond. Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.
• Skirmishing XII – Moment of Clarity. Stun Duration increased from 50% to 100%.
• Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.
• Wilderness VIII – Oakheart Salve. Decreased the recharge of this trait from 20s->15s
• Wilderness XII – Bark Skin Increased the damage reduction from 30% to 50%.
• Nature Magic I – Circle of Life. Cleared up the text of this trait to clearly identify that it happens when downed, not defeated.
• Nature Magic V – Strength of Spirit. Increased conversion from 5% to 7% <—— why not just back to 10% ? another 3% won’t be hurt, ranger base damage already low and there is no ascended pet, even if it back to 10% still make us unable to compete with warrior or thief……
• Nature Magic IX – Two Handed Training. Added the following functionality to this trait. Greatsword and Spear attacks have a chance to grant Fury on hit. 50% chance. 3s Fury. 10s cooldown.
• Nature Magic X – Enlargement. This trait now uses Signet of the Wild to trigger. This reduces the cooldown to 60 seconds and allow it to interact with the Signet of the Beastmaster and Signet Mastery traits.
• Nature Magic VII – Nature’s Vengeance. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
• Nature Magic XI – Spirits Unbound. Moved to Master Tier.
• Beastmastery VI – Mighty Swap. The might from this trait is now applied to you and your pet.
• Sun Spirit. Reduced the passive burning from 3s to 2s.
• Storm Spirit. Reduced the damage from the Call Lightning skill by 33%.

Anet, you guys have to realize that simply decreasing the severity of the Arcana problem doesn’t remove it, not to mention that some of your proposed changes here actually counteract what you’re trying to accomplish.

Analysis of ele changes:

Fire II – Burning Fire

Cool. This is an interesting way to introduce alternative forms of condition removal.

Fire VIII – Conjurer

Irrelevant. Conjures are still not up to par. Their mechanics are too clunky and highly telegraphed to be competitive. This trait would have been nice if conjures functioned like engineer kits with a different recharge mechanic.

Fire III – Ember’s Might.

Our burns already have decent duration, often long enough to get cleansed before they run their course, without any significant boost to duration. Lack of cover conditions means that the potential damage increase this trait grants is wasted.

Burning Rage 25

Making a small improvement to a 25-investment trait conditional damage that still only starts to stack up to similarly functioning traits that aren’t conditional still leaves Burning Rage in the dust overall.

Air V – Soothing Winds.

Irrelevant. If you were going to give this a meaningful conversion %, it would necessitate a tier move.

Air XI – Tempest Defense.

This is something I can get on board with in terms of bringing eles up to par, although I still dislike the concept of auto-proc traits like this.

Earth 5 – Stone Flesh

40 toughness seems nice but isn’t much in the long run. The lack of incentive to invest in the line even after your other changes doesn’t help the case for this trait.

Earth VII – Strength of Stone.

Makes sense for a condition trait to be in the condition damage line, but condition eles are still subpar; this isn’t accomplishing much right now.

Earth XI – Diamond Skin.

This sounds rude, but a change like this just shows a lack of insight into core mechanics in your game. Eles are tied for the lowest base health among all professions. Even with max toughness/vitality, you will only resist conditions for at most a few seconds into a fight, after which you can almost count on this trait becoming effectively nonexistent.

Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity.

Honestly disappointing; this trait actually helped all eles decrease their need to invest deeply in Water Magic, even if it’s not part of the meta. Now it’s been shoved even farther out of the meta.

Water V – Cleansing Wave.

This seems like a change brought on by your alteration to Burning Fire, but again ends up making it harder for eles to avoid investing in Water Magic.

Water VIII – Arcane Abatement.

This trait is too niche for a change like this to matter.

Water X – Soothing Wave.

Another irrelevant change. This trait is still not worth taking. Mist Form is barely on-par, conjures are still gimmicks, and Signet of Water is sub-par.

Arcane III – Arcane Retribution.

Moving a potentially interesting trait farther up the Arcana line while trying to decrease the necessity to invest in the line?

Arcane IV – Final Shielding.

This isn’t bad, but if the utility skill it mimics had a decent recharge to begin with, it could have been scrapped for something much more interesting.

Arcane V – Elemental Attunement.

No. Just no. This trait single-handedly spotlights the entire issue with Arcana being a required traitline, and you’re making it worse if this change goes into effect.

Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina.

Same thing as Elemental Attunement. Elementalists basically require boons to function at a base level as-is, not to mention that more than 90% of all vigor-exclusive-related traits are Adept level.

Arcane VII – Vigorous Scepter.

Doesn’t stack with Vigor, and is vastly inferior to it.

Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff.

Part of the problem with Blasting Staff is that in many situations it’s required for the elementalist to be effective with a staff. Simply making this function easier to access while simultaneously restricting our much-needed boon access within the same line isn’t helping the problem.

Arcane IX – Windborne Dagger.

With the myriad sources of swiftness eles have, this trait is irrelevant.

I have no idea if anyone said anything along these lines, but why take away thief vigor? In order to proc Vigorous Recovery you have to burn your heal skill. If you’re using Malice with the Signet Use trait, then you are without heal for 12 seconds (this is the shortest recharge available). 4 seconds of vigor is only helpful if you have already been dodging, so it can recover immediately, and then you get maybe one more useful dodge, if you’re lucky. That just seems like too big of a trade off. At least if you are going to reduce our dodging so much, make it so Expeditious Dodger gives us more than 2s of swiftness. That would be an acceptable trade off, in my opinion.

I know I’m already biased because I am an evasion/init gain thief, but this balance just makes me want to quit my thief because my entire build is dead. Halved init from signets, absolutely terrible proc rate of Opportunist, Assassin’s Reward moved to grandmaster, and Flanking Strikes moved to master, where I am already using either Ricochet or Initial Strikes. I don’t even do the best damage, its just a really fun build, and it is completely shut down because of modes other than PvE.

Tei.1704:

Blasting staff- Guardians got their symbol enlarging trait for free. Engineers got their bomb trait for free. How long until eles get the same? Some of the staff skills have truly pitiful radii without the trait.

I believe that will happen in negative 2 weeks, when the October 15th patch goes live. Can’t wait!

Two issues for guardians. One is the often mentioned symbol of swiftness change. If you’re worried about zerg mobility, maybe change it so that it gives the full swiftness to the caster and then changes for everyone else? The bigger picture issue for me when it comes to offensive build variety is the grandmaster traits. I don’t play with symbols or one-handed weapons, so the only useful offensive gm traits available are both based on burning. It seems like zeal should have some sort of general-purpose gm direct damage trait.

necro axe #1 when are you going to buff it?

why wait for december 10? release the patch nao!!

RIP In Peace Thieves.

Earthshaker 20% debuff and unsuspecting for to master well time to roll GS war. I am ok with a debuff but 20% maybe 10% allowing people to bring it up via merciless hammer.

Alright my first post in the forum and I feel if I don’t post it, I’m gonna quit playing elementalist after after 10th Dec.

Firstly I think the Dev has made a point in wanting us not to rely so much on Water and Arcana and also don’t want us to have perma vigor(they nerfed engineer’s speedy kit too “We don’t like classes having permanent Vigor, and this is one of the areas we needed to tone down the up time of the engineer’s Vigor.”) I’’m totally fine with this.But….

As every elementalist who play within the range of 600 LH and D/D can tell you, Renewing Stamina or elemental attunement are what’s keeping us alive, in PVE with all the one shot burst damage in high FotM.

And now you’ve moved arcane V and VI to one tier deeper in to arcana, hence decreased our survivability even further, we will simply be more dependent than before on the water line(from the HP and vitality) and Arcana 20 (to get either trait mentioned above) to be anywhere close to survivable.

Don’t you feel your goal of removing perma vigor and making us less dependent on water and arcana contradicting each other? Or are you saying that elementalist should not play melee range/don’t care about of dps by discarding D/D or LH

Even going 30 into toughness line will not make a difference on our survivability.

To fix this, while still following the above two goals, is to find a way to improve our survivability without vigor or ot to improve dps while not in melee range. One way to approach this is to make more use of aura(decrease their CD), decrease the CD of cantrips, or increase the damage capacity of focus so more people will use it, make soothing wave apply to all cantrips, improve our access to blind, give us reliable damage in staff Air/Earth/Water. A good example of these in other light amrour classes are necro’s DS and mesmer’s clones and sword 2.

Oh and lastly don’t tell me soldier build will solve the problem. I want to cry when my full zerker necromancer has more survivability and double the damage output compared to my full soldier ele wearing a LH.

And I feel really happy with this transparency with the community thing, good job ANET.

Why am I not allowed to survive stun, daze, fear, knockdown, etc as a Thief ? :o

I’m trying to run a stealthless build to kill my boredom and you guys are making it harder and harder.

Hey Jon,

What is the idea behind the pure of heart buff? I’ve seen it buffed twice, once in a patch we got not to long ago and now. Even with the buffs I can’t seem to find any practical use for it. On paper receiving a heal when you lose aegis seems good, but in practice mobs and players do so much damage that the heal goes unnoticed.

JonPeters.5630:

• Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier.
• Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
• Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.

Jon I understand this was most likely the reason hammer getting this treatment even though it’s not finalize.

However don’t nerf Earthshaker damage nor Staggering Blow due to the unsuspecting foe bonuses. This will affect builds that isn’t primarily focus in burst damage forcing them to choose another weapon that can fulfill average damage. Losing a CC weapon is one thing, but using a CC weapon doing horrendous damage on it’s burst skill and number # 5 attack on a non zerker build is absurd. This will lead into more frustration in pvp overall on that warrior player and I’m sure we all don’t want that.

I suggest unsuspecting foe is move into the grandmaster tier to those that wishes to be pure burst builds. They will be dangerous but they’ll also be taken down quickly once their endure pain or block duration is gone. They’ll most likely play a build like build 0/30/10/0/30 or 0/30/20/0/20 for some defense though it won’t support them as much.

So please Jon reconsider this thought just not for me, but for all non burst warrior build players. We too have a say in this.

Thank you for being transparent and explaining the changes.

While balance is very important to us, as someone who likes to play a lot of alts big changes to traits like this make it difficult to stay on top of all the different professions and build options.

I understand that you have to continuously improve the product but I’d recommend you release changes to one profession (or at least fewer) at a time.

i would have to suggest if ur ganna move unsuspecting blow to 20 u need to add some new arms adept traits cuz for a dmg warrior all the adept traits in arms seem pretty lame and weak since i can hold perma fury. and also to the person who had the idea of putting hb as F1 that is the worst idea ive ever heard of seeing as u cant move useing it, its easy to dodge and arcing slice is wayy better for holding fury

Dear Anet,

“This patch’s goal for the elementalist was to increase the power of the Earth, Air and Fire lines, while taking away some of the need to go into the Arcane line.”

&

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

Please try not to contradict yourself in the same post.

We appreciate the preview, but a reduction on attunement swapping cooldown for <30 arcane builds doesn’t make up for losing those traits.

each class shoud have difrent post in difrent section u place them all in once and u making chaos here arena net grow up

About the ranger changes:

You speak about changing around a few things to make power builds more appealing, but in reality these changes do close to nothing to bring them up.

First off the longbow. While bringing up the power of the auto-attack at closer ranges is a good idea, you didn’t do enough to solve the problem.

Currently:
1,000+: 0.9 coefficient
500-1,000: 0.65 coefficient
0-500: 0.5 coefficient

After the change:
1,000+: 0.9 coefficient
500-1,000: 0.74 coefficient
0-500: 0.6 coefficient

See how large the gap still is? Long range shot struggles to competes with the shortbow’s damage output minus its bleeding at 500-1,000 range. I’d suggest buffing the damage to be 0.8 at 500-1000 and 0.7 at 0-500 to create more acceptable damage at non-max range.

Now the trait changes:

Predator’s Instinct is a nice change. Ranger’s have a lack of stuns available so increasing stun duration on Moment of Clarity won’t be very useful outside of gimmicky builds that use things like racial skills for extra stuns. The cool-down on Beastmaster’s Bond being reduced is nice, but the real problem with this trait is it relies on your pet going below 50% health to trigger. Why are we encouraged to let our pet get killed to buff ourselves? Don’t you think this trait would be more viable if it activated on something like a pet swap?

Furthermore, when comparing these traits with the other one’s we have available, none of these are worth using because the ranger is forced into heavy traiting to make their utilities and weapons acceptable. Do you want to make the longbow decent? There’s 3 traits for that. Want to make your signets not suck? 3 traits. Want opening strike, which eats up all the passive traits under marksmanship, to be good? Use a grandmaster AND a longbow for stealth to trigger it, otherwise it’s lousy.

If you really want to improve power specs merge some of the traits so they have more options.

Signet Mastery and Signet of the Beastmaster could be merged into the same trait under master or grandmaster. Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye could be merged as a master trait as well as Eagle Eye increasing the shortbow from 900 to 1,200 range to make up for the cartoon logic nerf you gave it to make the longbow more appealing.

So in conclusion: The longbow buff is insignificant and trait changes are nice but won’t put power builds in a better spot. Then you look at the nerf to endurance regeneration and realize this patch is an overall nerf to power rangers.

Lordryux.9785:

they cant do a split between pve and WvW because technically WvW is still pve. The only splits can happen is between pvp and pve because pvp is a totally different game type as of right now so it aint goona happen. Personally i think warrior will be alot more balanced now those nerfs was needed be lucky u didnt get healing signet nerfed aswell.

You guys can defend it all u like but ive seen alot upon loads of warrior vids of thier hammers hitting well over 7k damage thats pretty ridiculous and these guys wasnt even full zerker either so thats saying something and thats probably why that nerfed happened. Now alot of classes can actually deal with a warrior and lets face it that skullcrack nerf was incomming to deal with the asuras animations since they cant do anything about it they made it more obvious to see. Blame the asurans.

Changes outlined for warrior hit some builds too hard. I’m running a shout/hammer and the best crit I can do is around 1700, typically it is around 1000 to 1300.

The builds you are seeing is a dps hammer and I would even bet that the player being hit is squishy which is the only time I’m hitting them for 1700.

There is a difference in balance and killing other currently viable builds.

You people nerf thiefs every single patch… we are unplayable at this point. We take as much damage as the critters that are scattered across the map, and now we cant sustain damage at all. We are a one trick pony to say the least.

Jaytee.9513:

Not to sound negative but changes to elementalist seems to nerf survivability a bit. Being the squishiest class available (lowest hp, light armor) with no passive defenses or evades seem a bit unfair.

Devs have taken away mobility (RTL nerf), heals (EA internal cd of 9 sec and healing co-efficients), buffs (through boon stealing-removal or boon hate type traits given to other classes) but given nothing in return leaving ele’s as the least played class in pvp tournaments.

Taking 50-60 points into water and arcane traits is a must if you plan on running solo or small groups. Without those traits ele’s die far to easily and now you want to bump up some of those traits to master tier lvl? Even if people chose to place 30 into arcana line they still will lose out either elemental attunement or renewing stamina (protection buff generation or increased dodge ability) and this sounds like a big nerf to survival.

What do ele’s get in return? A 2 sec reduction on attunement swap. Slightly lower cd on a few utilities……..

With all the power creep from equipment and “balancing” other classes, elementalist are having a hard time staying alive long enough to be of benefit to groups in sPVP or WvW, which is why there is less and less of them playing (they are becoming rally bait- more of a detriment to the group).

IMHO elemental attunement trait should be a built in passive as part of the class mechanic, attunement recharge have a base of 10 sec, and perhaps specific condition removal for each minor (air 5=cripple removal, fire 5=chill removal, earth 5=burning removal, water 5 bleed or poison removal) which would make attunement swapping important to survival.

These changes would decrease the need for water/arcane trait lines.

That would actually help remove the need for a d/d spec for evasive arcana and also promote us to go into other trait line. If they were to so that with a lot of the other ideas/changes people have stated.

I can’t see how you think you are balancing out Thieves survivability by drastically reducing our mobility, especially as we do not have easy access to most boons. unless you run a rune set like Lyssa.
Mobility apart from Stealth, and the upside you get from pairing it with Health Regen under stealth are what helps keeps us alive in big/small scale fights.
Traits like Hard to Catch won’t compensate for the loss of our mobility- Assassins Reward being a GM trait and Scale with Healing Power; it’s a Stat that we hardly pay attention to because it scales badly for thieves.

The Nerfs to our Vigor uptime IMO are over the top along with the increased cast time to Shadow Return/Infiltrator’s Return, Sword mainhand is going to take a big hit to it’s viability- so why not make SR/IR a stun breaker once again?

I can accept the changes to how we Regen our Init, I put 20 into the Trickery line so I don’t really need Quick Recovery, I can always use Infiltrators signet if I need it, but D/P will still be a strong set to use, while Sword Builds may well become even more niche despite the small PW Buff.

Think about it, to make a trait line less dependable is to make vital trait more accessible with less point invested. How can they get this right with mesmer by moving illusion celerity down to 15 but totally messed up the elementalist by moving up Water V and Arcana V and VI?

I don’t get Anet’s logic.

Adiemus.2081:

Think about it, to make a trait line less dependable is to make vital trait more accessible with less point invested. How can they get this right with mesmer by moving illusion celerity down to 15 but totally messed up the elementalist by moving up Water V and Arcana V and VI?

I don’t get Anet’s logic.

Its not rocket science — those three traits were very, very, very strong (i.e. OP) for Adept level traits. (much, much stronger than IC)

Auesis.7301:

I don’t understand where you’re going with Thieves. You say builds designed for being slippery/evading a lot are too strong, but where does that leave us? Design philosophy has stated MULTIPLE times in the past that Thief was SUPPOSED to be slippery, SUPPOSED to be mobile, SUPPOSED to be hard to catch. Now, you’re saying they can’t have that? What are we left with? Pigeon-holed back in to D/P that barely functions in this meta, or Cluster Bomb spamming because meleeing is pointless?

- It’s nice to see that Pistol Whip is getting some love, but it’s still going to collapse dead as soon as it comes across any Retaliation (which is EVERYWHERE), and the stun needs to function at 1 second again to allow any damage to land at all. This skill still needs love.
- Boosting base Initiative regeneration is a step in the right direction, but why keep a bunch of traits like Opportunist and make them awful now?
- Removing ICD on Sundering Strikes is nice.
- Infusion of Shadow change was necessary.
- Adding a cast time to Infiltrator’s Return is a complete disaster. You would totally eviscerate ALL Sword builds for PvP and WvW. The loss of mobility from the instant cast of this skill means that a MASSIVE amount of mobility for S/x is gone.
- All the changes to Vigor are CRIPPLING. You say you don’t like classes having access to large amounts of Vigor, but Thieves have an entire trait line that operates around the concept of evasion! Vigor and evasions are our lifeline at this point, because stealth in sPvP is in a dreadful state (speccing for it will violently destroy any of your DPS and make you dead weight when trying to contest points). You must NOT change Vigor in this way.
- Changing Assassin’s Reward to Grandmaster guarantees that nobody will ever use it. – - Quick Pockets and Assassin’s Reward were pretty much destined to work together if you weren’t using Quick Recovery, and now that’s out. Slightly increasing the healing will not have anywhere near enough of an impact on survival.
- Hard to Catch is still an absolutely terrible trait and you need to rework it completely before trying to coax us in to using it. You have no control over where you end up, the cooldown is long and you don’t even lose the disabling effect.

I just want to ask, what builds do you see as being viable in sPvP now that you intend of crippling most mobility, which is all Thief ever had going for it there?

That’s exactly what i said in the Pvp version of this thread.

this patch will totally kill thieves, especially Sword ones, since we’ll get crushed among condi spam and stun spam.

Reducing mark of blood by 1 bleed changes nothing if not for necros spamming from afar,without touching the worst offender : runes of geomancy.

Reducing Hammer stuns damage changes nothing if you can disable whole teams while yours is killing everything.

if these changes will go live, we’ll see thieves completely removed from any form of PvP, even WvW.

moreover, we’ll see mesmers everywhere, since they’ll become even more powerful than they were in the first times.

OMG, thieves were the only thing keeping absurd DPS classes away, next meta will be shocking.

I only play Mesmer in WvW, and mostly for what little else I do.

I have no complaints about these changes. If anything they give me some advantages, and take nothing away, but I see no reason here to change my play style.

I have equipped a Necro with good gear, but let me take this moment to again complain about how hard it is in this game to gear up an alt. This is the most alt-unfriendly game I’ve ever played.

However, this discussion is based on these trait changes and I don’t see anything here to be upset about. The changes you’re planning for necro will not affect my play style for this character.

If you are going to take 20% dmg away from hammers you need to let them do 20% more dmg against enemies with Defiance

“Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.”
Not a good idea hombre.

Ele

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

this sounds very bad, I like to play d/d. I need fighting in melee range with low armor, low HP. If the fight starts I have a lot of ccs to avoid dmg but after 15-20 secs all is on cd. Then i need vigor from Renewing Stamina and protection from Elemental Attunement only to survive. If I can choose only one in future it would very bad because the pressure from other classes will just over roll me.

So i am not happy with this idea. I think it will hit d/d ele very hard. More then all other ele weapons.

alanis.6094:

Adiemus.2081:

Think about it, to make a trait line less dependable is to make vital trait more accessible with less point invested. How can they get this right with mesmer by moving illusion celerity down to 15 but totally messed up the elementalist by moving up Water V and Arcana V and VI?

I don’t get Anet’s logic.

Its not rocket science — those three traits were very, very, very strong (i.e. OP) for Adept level traits. (much, much stronger than IC)

I agree they are OP for Adept. Then why are elementalist so dependable on these 3 traits?

The notes for engineer say you want to promote build diversity, but the change to Incendiary Powder absolutely guts a dozen builds. It more or less kills the majority of HGH builds out there.

Soulview.4532:

Ele

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

this sounds very bad, I like to play d/d. I need fighting in melee range with low armor, low HP. If the fight starts I have a lot of ccs to avoid dmg but after 15-20 secs all is on cd. Then i need vigor from Renewing Stamina and protection from Elemental Attunement only to survive. If I can choose only one in future it would very bad because the pressure from other classes will just over roll me.

So i am not happy with this idea. I think it will hit d/d ele very hard. More then all other ele weapons.

Totally this. Same apply to PVE and high level FotM. With low armor and low HP, even mob can down you in 2 hits. How do we survive in melee without vigor and protection?

alanis.6094:

Adiemus.2081:

Think about it, to make a trait line less dependable is to make vital trait more accessible with less point invested. How can they get this right with mesmer by moving illusion celerity down to 15 but totally messed up the elementalist by moving up Water V and Arcana V and VI?

I don’t get Anet’s logic.

Its not rocket science — those three traits were very, very, very strong (i.e. OP) for Adept level traits. (much, much stronger than IC)

That might be true. However both traits are NEEDED on an Elementalist unless you hide behind a sizeable group of other players with a staff. A-Net cannot send a class with lowest hp and armor into melee (with S/D, D/D or D/F) and expect them to survive when they dont have a really good survival mechanic (and I mean, something else than utilities on a 75-90 second timer). Vigor from renewing stamina and elemental attunement was providing that additional help that melee elementalists need so much.

On eles:

Massively nerfing 2 trait lines and then buffing 2 others does not encourage build diversity. If you want get more diversity, leave Water and Arcane alone, and add the buffs to Earth and Fire. This would actually give us the option to choose between different builds, rather than having to abandon all existing builds in favour of new ones. A few months after the patch, there’ll be the same lack of diversity, just with a different build.

Ton’s of people don’t run unsuspected foe trait. Please keep this in mind!! The hammer has been a meta build in WvW since launch. Hammer shout warriors. They are used in every organised guild, Gvg and zerg play. Their main goal is to CC and condi cleanse. The damage is a bonus but will now be even further reduced!

And even in small-scale roaming and sPvP, not everyone runs that trait. So those who don’t run that trait are going to be punished. As someone mentioned before. This is not shaving. Do it step by step. Choose between changing unsuspecting foe to master or reducing hammer damage.

If you could increase the speed of thief projectiles, that would be great.
I feel it takes way too long for cluster bomb to get where it needs to be, it’s already frustrating enough I can’t launch a second arrow without blowing up the first one which has not even reached its target.