Guild Wars 2

If the class balance Devs eyes haven’t glazed over by now, I have a suggestion for Ranger Pet AI that would GREATLY enhance their performance in WvW and some boss fights.

Where Rangers currently have a toggle choice of Passive (pet does noting, lingers in immediate vicinity of Ranger) and Aggressive (pet changes targets to follow the target of the ranger’s attack unless commanded otherwise with f1) I would like to put a third mode into the rotation: Ward.

Ward: Pet remains at your side until you attack or you or the pet are attacked (the same trigger conditions as aggressive). It then attacks the red nameplate closest to you within a maximum range of your current weapon(s) [or a fixed value of 1,000 if this is not possible with current technology]. After each action/attack, it again checks for the closest enemy/red nampeplate to you and focuses its attack on that target. This behavior is overridden by a direct command to focus target via f1 until the focus target is dead or beyond pet leash range from the ranger.

Essentially the pet focuses on harassing and repelling enemies closest to you, working outwards, allowing you to attack enemies at range without your pet immediately launching itself deep into enemy territory. This logic would allow better pet behavior in complex multi-target boss fights and be an enormous boon to managing your pet in zerg vs. zerg encounters making the pet is more likely to join the line and switch intuitively to dedicated bodyguard action when opponents break through.

To keep up with the current blue & red color coding for passive/aggressive I would give ward a yellow or black/yellow (hazard warning colors) icon.

Thief is all about mobility and evaisive,please DO NOT nerf the sword cause if you do that you might aswell nerf heartseeker with a cooldown
you will kill all the sword builds.

“Death 5 – Reanimator. Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.”

Frankly the trait will always be negligible if the cooldown is anything above zero. It has never any impact on the outcome of any fight whatsoever and reality is that it’s more annoying than a perk. If you want to keep them as they are, the reality is that i would rather take 800 year cooldown than 15 second one.

I really like dislike the first two death minor traits. I think the concept is flawed as in they got nothing universal about them. If you don’t play minion master, they do not advance your cause in any fashion. You occasionally just spot a rat that does nothing, dies instantly and the worse part is that you need to listen your character to cry after it.

Minor traits shouldn’t be build defined. Based on other traits the trait line is definitely not solely minion focused, so why the minor traits are? These two scream: “Filler.” The correct move would be to scrap them all together and just go for something more universal.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Proposed-Dec-10th-Changes-Some-Math/first#post3141316 <—- This post pretty much my sentiments for the incoming Thief nerfs. I really ask that a dev take a looka t this post because it really shines light on the core issue of this nerf and the damaging effects it can have on this class.

I am usually not one to worry about balance changes but this one has me very concerned for the future of my class and possibly my overall enjoyment of this game.

if you guys look at the ele forum. you will see what is wrong. NO VITALITY we are force to invest into water magic, even then build diversity when you start off with 11k hp is not going to happen. Condi builds as Eles? play your class…..
as for thieves guess no one is allowed to play except for d/d now GG

Why did the Ranger shortbow not get a boost to its damage as well?

I switch between longbow and shortbow for almost all world boss content and I’m already wondering why I even bother with shortbow as it is. I love how fast I can get shots off, and switching between the two on every weapon swap cooldown keeps a steady barrage of fast-paced AoE on mobs (with the use of piercing arrows). However, when glancing at the numbers and attempting …math… it appears as if longbow does the same if not more damage then the shortbow, currently, even at fairly close range. Or am I wrong about this? I’m in zerker gear and neither the shortbow or longbow are individually traited to do anything above and beyond the other.

If, according to these notes, longbow damage is increased even more (which is awesome and needed, thank you!), I just don’t see why anyone would equip a shortbow at all… for any purpose. If there is a choice between bows, how does it make sense to choose the shortbow over the longbow? If you want to equip them both and switch between them, what’s the incentive to switch between a ranged weapon that does more damage (and more/better aoe) to a ranged weapon that does less damage and less aoe?

This confuses me.

Jon,

Some time ago there was talk of making signets much more valuable. The toss up between using the signet or keeping it was something that I found very interesting and the changes to warrior signets took the first steps to make this possible.

My question is when can we see this on other classes? I will give some examples.

A condi Necromancer has no reason not to use Signet of spite currently. Condi necros don’t really care much for more power and as a result there is no dilemma placed on the player to decide if it worth losing the passive for the active. Maybe changing the attribute to increase condition damage, or to increase toughness/reduce damage taken would make it you have a reason not to spend it the moment you see a chance.

Signet of the locust has a lacklustre active that isn’t really related to the passive. If the active was a version of dark path (with a higher projectile speed) a Necromancer would have think “do I want to lose my movement speed bonus for a chance of catching and chilling the running enemy?”.

Ranger signet of the hunt is the same. The active is very weak for many players and as such you see players constantly holding on to the passive for the movement speed.

Mesmer signet of midnight is generally deemed a useless signet and needs work. The passive 10% boon duration is negligible at best, my suggestion would be change it to a movement speed increase signet. Also the active could be to cleanse 2 conditions instead of blind (to make it different from signet of shadows) and finally give the Mesmer some active condi cleanse. (Might need a slightly longer cooldown to compensate)

ENGINEER
I know engineer needs some love. Isn’t a 100% condition convert every 15s a bit OP? Wait for only 15 trait points?? Needs longer ICD IMO

THIEF
Please, seriously take another look at thief damage mitigation. Low hp pool, minimal condition removal and buffs. Now the plan is to take vigor and nerf sword positioning and cond removal? I for one am not playing at some LAN party, lag can be an issue. Reconsider these changes or revamp the whole thief mechanic in 2014 cuz the number of thief players is going to drop.

Some change possibilities. Add another buff to traits that give vigor, for example, vigorous recovery vigor X sec, stability X sec; Bountiful Theft vigor X sec, aegis or protection and steal two boons. Add a steal boon or transfer condition to kleptomaniac. Add transfer condition to some other ability, really any condition removal (low hp pool might be fun for a guardian).

Other thoughts:
Deadly Arts
Throw out DA X, move DA XII Residual Venom to X and move SA XII Venomous Aura to DA XII. That or make DA X damage increase for skill 3 of dual wields.
DA VII Improvisation – Transfer condition on steal
Critical Strikes
Opportunist (dec10) with ICD of 4s
Shadow Arts
SA XII Shadow Sieve – attack after stealth transfer two conditions to target icd 10s
Acrobatics
A III Vigorous Recovery – gain vigor 4s and stability 2s
*A IV Change to Swashbuckler – Sword #2 is instant cast, or 25% speed w/ melee
A V Master Trapper – traps are instant and recharge quicker
Swap A VII Fleet of Foot with improved A V Master Trapper
A XI Hard to Catch – Turn to mist/smoke 2s & gain swiftness on disable (sorry but shadowstep skills are buggy with current terrain models and a class that uses positioning to survive… random movement is not conducive)
Trickery
T Adept Kleptomaniac – reduce ini 3 to 2, steal one boon
T VII Bountiful Theft – Grants Protection and Vigor, steal 2 boons
Basilisk Venom: gives target herpes, next 3 attacks (anyones) cannot be dodged, blocked, or evaded (at this point its only used for Rune set actives… Elite not so much)
Increase dps of sword overall by 5%, atleast give thief sword autoattack…
Increase speed of shortbow #5

JonPeters.5630:

Starfall.6813:

JonPeters.5630:

Symbol of Swiftness
To clarify the new Symbol of Swiftness will give you 4 seconds of Swiftness every single pulse regardless of if you have swiftness or not. This is a improvement in many situations and a slight loss in the situation where you were using the Symbol as just a one time buff. I think this makes it feel more like a Symbol, which is good. We are still discussing the idea of it being 5 seconds, but there is some danger of that going pretty high with boon duration.

Jon,

I like a lot of where you’re going with the Guardian here, but I am a little concerned about the Symbol of Swiftness change. Not as a matter of balance but just as a quality of life issue. 4 seconds of swiftness on a 15 second cooldown is pretty much useless as a means of traveling for a solo Guardian, and the symbol is one of the better ways for Guardians to get around. Having to stop and stand in the symbol to get the full ticks of swiftness while traveling long distance is just going to be counter productive and annoying. And I don’t like the idea that this skill is being balanced around the zerg rather than solo players who probably are only running one source of swiftness to begin with.

Math wise you can now sit in the symbol for 3 seconds with boon duration and end up with 9 seconds of swiftness which is more than you would have had before. I do still think it may need to be 5 seconds to account for the fact that you only get it every second so by the time you get the second one you have lost 1s of the first one.

Jon

but the problem is that within that 3 seconds of sitting in the symbol, you would have moved a certain distance already. now you have to stop to move faster… that’s the problem. now it feels like i am being CC by my own symbol.

Some suggestions for weapon skill buffs on ele which I feel have an risk/effect mismatch or are just not good enough:

Dragon’s tooth:
Has a big red warning sign that anyone can see within a radius of 500 miles and damage occurs after 2 seconds giving enough time for opponents to move out/block/dodge. Because this skill is a hit or miss most of the time – mostly a miss – why not buff damage a bit ? (I dont recall the last time ppl did NOT move out of CoE’s subject alpha’s dragon teeth and he throws like 4 of them at the same time)

Churning Earth:
Character with lowest armor and health pool in the game + standing melee range amongst sweaty warriors + Casting a spell for 3.25 seconds while standing still = Death/fail. Something needs to be done here – either increase damage or reduce cast time or both.

Shatterstone:
Again u see a crystal creeping up on ur feet and anyone with half a brain will move out of the relatively small AoE circle. Maybe add bleeding to it to make it a bit more attractive ? cos this one is a miss 50% of the time as well.

Before you say things are alright the way it is for ele, please look at what other scholar professions can accomplish with much lesser effort. Both the necro and mesmer have better AoE damage with negligible cast times and good recharge times with no big red warning signs prior to cast (phantasmal zerker/warden, death shroud skills 4,5).

Well.. Since there’s gonna be a rework to Elementalist to access to windborne dagger. Can this be buffed that it work in and out-of combat?

Signet of Air works fine but I have rather spend the extra utilities to elsewhere.

Thief initiative regeneration:

Quick Recovery
Changed to increase base initiative regeneration by 10% instead of 26.67%, which is a small benefit for Master trait. Similar Master traits of other professions reduce weapon skill recharge by 20% in addition to other benefits. Please consider leaving this trait unchanged to keep it inline with other professions.

Opportunist
Initiative regeneration reduced by 2/3 is a very big shave.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

The change to initiative regain baseline is a huge buff to ALL thief builds

From the looks of it I disagree. Thief builds which are already using the above mentioned traits appear to have their regeneration unchanged after the patch according to this post in thief forums. Could you please check the calculations in that post and comment on the findings?

My main gripe with Ranger: passive/active does not have a keybind!!!! Why this doesn’t have a keybind is beyond me. It should have had it from beta. This is a basic QoL change that shold have been done ages ago.

My 2nd gripe with Ranger: Give me a trait to make pets optional or just let me swap it out with preparations. The AI isn’t not up to par for a lot of situations. They still die too quickly. They can’t dodge in a game where dodging is the most important thing. Give back my Ranger back that DPS from the pet and get rid of it.

After 1100 hours of PVE/Dungeons with my Ranger, I’m done with it as a main until pets are removed (as I don’t think you, Anet, can fix them due to the computational requires of making a fantastic AI). I still play it for dailies and world events for dat chest, but that is it. Dungeons? Running with Gaurd, Warrior, or my Mes.

All in all, I think the endurance regen on Ranger is going to hurt. The endurance regen is one of the reasons my Ranger was fun to play. 25% less fun to play now for sure. No matter the build I always made sure to take that endurance regen. So.. Fark it.

Then, again, since I got my motorcycle I play a lot less and don’t miss it!

Myrkr.5803:

Best thing is, this is just the stuff they are communicating to us, by May 2014 they might actually tell us what really was changed. Hopefully with more tact then with the Putrid Mark change.

Tyler Chapman

We are changing the tooltip to clear up the confusion for this skill. It is a 3 condition transfer from self to foes when they trigger it. None of the other issues are bugs.
Hope this clears things up. This skill has undergone major balance renovations.

It will no longer cleanse teammates and it will always give a full cooldown when interrupted because its one of the best skills in the game.

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-Putrid-Mark/first#post3135004

flow.6043

Thx for clarifying!

The full cooldown “bug”, will it only stay this way for Putrid Mark? Or are all marks considered “best skills in the game”?

Myrkr.5803:

So basically one of our skills under went massive changes over FOUR months ago, and there was not a single patch note to communicate it. After which the Necromancer community spent over four months repeatly reporting bugs with the skill and asked for clarification. And this is our response…

Tyler Chapman

It will no longer cleanse teammates and it will always give a full cooldown when interrupted because its one of the best skills in the game.

I think this posts shal be here

its 1/2

Myrkr.5803:

And worse it doesn’t seem like they care about/understand Necromancer…

We have ZERO true active defense ~ Deathshroud’s Lifeforce pales in comparison to a 2 sec block in many situations. (One hit kills in PvE, Assist Trains, CC Chains, etc, etc, etc.) Which is why burning/terror is pretty well the only viable PvP build ~ 100% in ~ if we fail the condi-bomb we are dead. period.
At this point I’d trade Deathshroud in a heart beat for any other classes active defense!

Myrkr.5803

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Suggestion-for-Necro-Lack-of-Evade-Block/first#post3030165

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Necromancer:
*Vigor 9sec on 50sec CD (40sec Traited) requires two utilities

Elementalist:
*Vigor 5sec on Crit with 5 sec CD
*Vigor 6sec on Cantrip use
*Invuln 4sec on 50sec CD (Focus)
*Projectile Reflect 5sec on 30sec CD (Staff)
*Projectile Destroy 6sec on 30 CD (Focus)
*Block 5sec/3atks on 75sec CD (Arcane Shield)
*Invuln 3sec on 75sec CD (Mist Form)
*Invuln 3sec on 45sec CD (Earth Shield)

Warrior:
*Vigor 10sec on 20sec CD (Warhorn)
*Vigor 8sec when you use a Stance
*Block 3sec on 30sec CD (Shield)
*Evade 3/4sec on 10sec (Greatsword)
*Invuln 4sec on 60sec (Enduring Stance)
*Block 1atk on 15sec CD (Sword OH)

Ranger
*Vigor 10sec on 40sec CD (Lightning Reflexes)
*Vigor 5sec on 15sec CD (when crit)
*Vigor 5sec or 3sec/pulse on Heal
*Vigor 5sec when swap to Moa/Bird/Jellyfish
*Evade 1sec in AA chain
*Evade 3/4sec on 40sec CD (Lightning Reflexes)
*Invuln 6sec on 60sec CD (Protect Me)
*Evade 1/2sec on 8sec CD (Sword)
*Evade 3/4sec on 15sec CD (Sword)
*Evade 1 1/4sec on 10sec CD (Dagger OH)

Guardian:
*Vigor 10sec on 60sec CD (Save Yourself!)
*Vigor 5sec on 5sec CD (on Crit)
*Aegis on 60sec CD (Virtue of Courage)
*Block 2sec on 30sec CD (Shelter)
*Projectile Destroy 6sec on 120sec CD (Sanctuary)
*Projectile Reflect 10sec on 40sec CD (Wall of Reflection)
*Aegis on 60sec CD (Retreat!)
*Invuln 3sec on 90sec CD (Renewed Focus)

Thief:
*Vigor 15sec on 35sec (untraited) CD (Steal)
*Vigor 8sec on Heal
*Evade 3/4sec on 15sec CD (Withdraw)
*Dodge returns some Endurance (Feline Grace)
*Stealth

Engineer:
*Vigor 5sec on 5sec CD when gaining swiftness (Swiftness can be gained on Crit)
*Projectile Reflect 3sec on 30sec CD (Shield)
*Block 2sec on 40sec CD (Shield)
*Block 3sec on 20sec CD (Gear Shield)
*Invuln 3sec on 60sec CD (Elixir S)
*Projectile Reflect on 15sec CD (Air Blast)

Mesmer:
*Evade 1~4sec Evade on 60sec CD (Distortion)
*Vigor 5sec on 5sec CD (on Crit)
*Vigor 5sec/Illusion Shattered
*Projectile Block on 25sec CD (pWarden)
*Block 2sec on 15sec CD (Sword OH)
*Evade 2 1/2sec on 12sec CD (Sword)
*Block 2sec on 12sec CD (Scepter)
*Projectile Reflect 2sec on 15sec CD (Mirror)
*Projectile Reflect 6sec on 40sec CD (Feedback)
*Focus can be traited to Reflect Projectiles
*Stealth

((And I missed several guardian defenses as well as Thief’s withdraw heal))

Instead we were forced to trade Dhuumfire (4sec on 10sec CD, 2Sec on 10sec CD in sPvP, as a Grandmaster Trait (vs Engineers Minor trait that is 4sec in both game modes)) for:

Myrkr.5803

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-Putrid-Mark/first#post3135004

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A massive loss of utility on Putrid Mark (Stealth Nerf)

A Bleed Stack on scepter #2 (sPvP only)

Terror increasing to Master tier

Greater Marks increasing to Master tier

Terror Damage reduction

Not to mention in the same patch group Loss of Deathshroud absorbing a single hit

As well as Spectral Armor/Walk Lifeforce generation normalization.

That is an impressive trade off.

Soon the list will include another bleed (off Staff #2) and Signet of Spite (Which is a MASSIVELY telegraphed skill that applies as damaging conditions TWO bleeds and Poison currently ~ So terrifying.)

95% of my playtime is on Necromancer and basically the changes/responses since this game came out can be summed up as somewhere between Insulting and Quit/Reroll.

(“Necromancers haven’t figured out the really powerful builds yet” (read: L2P) (“Necromancers need to learn how to use Deathshroud” (read: L2P)
(And the most recent Putrid Mark “communication” come to mind easily…)

2/2
so there this posts shal be
Fo the future i think Developers shal tell on patch notes about ALL SIGNIFICANT changes to skills/trains.
This will make things mutch easier for all
cheers

LOL! THIEF – You guys are totally going to kill this class. reducing init. gain? Gonna nerf the thief so that it doesnt evade so much, i think is what i read. Isnt the point of thief to get into battle drop some burst then get out before you get 1skilled. lol! Next your gonna limit are stealth skills and reduce um

I was just starting to learn to play my thief… you guys do realise how hard it is to play a thief, i mean good? evading hitting and hiding is our niche xD

+1 to you KausKNT for quoting my guildie and spreading the truth. Anet Listen to the Players! talk to the people who are incredibly knowledgeable about their class! its been said on the necro forums(as a joke but not really) you guys should just reroll to a warrior or to a real class. Stop the nerfing give them something! Stop the nerfing, (yes nerfing cause what you are doing is not buffing)! fix the skills we don’t use, not the ones we do……… don’t force feed them either like you are trying to do with hard to catch. how to create build diversity….. rip My ele and thief.

I love the idea of changing Mantras and Signets to be more useful, as I love both skill types, but rarely want them on my bars (besides Signet of Midnight).

I think Signet Mesmers are simply lacking far too much when they use their signets. For example:

Signet of Illusions increases Illusion health, but when activated that is disabled and you get to recharge your shatter skills. This is on a 90 second cool down and that down time is extremely detrimental in chaotic, AoE-intensive environments. Perhaps adding a functionality such as stability (since Mesmers lack a great deal of this) for several seconds to the player only on activation along with lowering the cool down to ~60sec?

Likewise, Signet of Domination is simply lackluster in many situations besides sPVP. I love stuns and interrupts as much as the next GW1 veteran, but having 45 seconds where your conditions do less damage is pretty intense in hurting damage output. I would have to say I think that the skill is interesting, but should be:
Geared toward stunning and disrupting (lowering cool down on Diversion passively)
or
Geared toward condition damage (activating it now takes three conditions from the Mesmer and transfers (or copies) them to the enemy).

As for Signet of Inspiration, I love this skill, but it’s really only great for running around because of the chance for extra speed, or in strict support builds. I think it’s great for its niche, but if it is to see wider use in groups, it needs tweaking. Not sure where you guys stand on this skill but perhaps it could increase the duration of the boons it copies by 10-20% when it copies them? But keep the cool down at 45 seconds, and somehow prohibit copied boons from being replaced by another Signet of Inspiration cast to prevent super spam.

Signet of Midnight is in my top three favorite Mesmer skills. The increase in boon duration is fantastic, AND it breaks stuns, AND it causes unblockable blinds. ALL on a 30 second cooldown! I have nothing to say about this skill besides MAYBE allowing it to be an AoE skill active effect.

As far as Mantras go, the main issue is that they are so hard to get charged during combat, and are so hard to trait for. I think that latter part is being addressed by you guys well though, so it’s mostly the former that is an issue in many forms of play. One suggestion I’ve always liked is that Harmonious Mantras could become baseline for all Mantras. OR change it to the Grandmaster 15 trait, move Dazzling to 25, and add Wastrel’s Punishment to a skill (Signet of Domination, anyone?) so that HM is easier to obtain.
I was also discussing something with a Mesmer friend of mine about Mantras, which included a sort of “proc” system in which when a certain criteria is met, then whenever you cast a Mantra (say within 5 seconds), that Mantra’s effect will occur twice. So you’d get 4 conditions removed by Power Cleanse, 2 applications of damage from Power Spike, 2 Dazes (and 2 chances for stun from Power Lock/Confounding Suggestions), and double the duration of Stability from Power Break. Possibly overpowered, but I was really intrigued by the idea!

Personally I would love to see Interrupting become a more well-defined Mesmer role as it was in GW1. I’d really like having Signet of Domination focused on Interrupts rather than on Conditions. Adding that passive effect to lower Diversion’s cooldown would simply make things a lot more fast paced and make up for the semi-random methodology that comes with Interrupt builds as of now.

Hope that helps and I look forward to the changes you guys come up with for those things

Cheers!

-Juxt

Here’s how you fix Eles necessity for the arcana traitline in pvp.

Evasive arcana baseline spell – You have to do this if you want anything not 30 arcana to not get 1 shot. Simply put its a 9.5 second cooldown 2k heal. An absolutely huge deal.
Make the attunement you swap out of go on a 10(or 9.5 or w/e the base is now) second base cooldown.
Make the other attunements you didn’t swap out of go on a 3 second cooldown.
Make the Arcana passive reduce the cooldown of the other attunements you didn’t swap out of to the now baseline 1.25 seconds.

I would just like to add my voice to others who disapprove of the thief changes. For sword in particular, the infiltrator’s return nerf is going to make a lot of sword builds significantly less effective, when the class as a whole is pretty average. The d/p perma-stealth was an issue that needed to be addressed, but I don’t understand the severe hit to damage avoidance, whether it be the vigor or the infil return nerfs. It seems to me that builds utilizing stealth are far more effective and far more common than builds utilizing mobility. Plus, according to the class description, the thief class is supposed to be about mobility and maneuvering.

In addition to the mobility, the initiative change is a nerf according to the math in this post (which has been linked before, but I figured I’d throw it in.)
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Proposed-Dec-10th-Changes-Some-Math

If the initiative gain is truly a nerf, it will be another strong hit to most sword builds as they tend to be initiative heavy. However it’s not just sword that gets hurt, these are significant blows for every build.

For the class to be fixed it would probably take more work than can be done before the Dec. 10 balance patch. However, I feel as though these changes are a step in the wrong direction for thief as both of our primary damage mitigation methods (stealth and mobility, or simply avoidance) have taken a significant blow throughout the entire class when trying to fix specific builds.

guess ill just use my SB only, put on my swifness signet and just choke gas you and run away….

Realy?
Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.
Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

Thank u guys for nerf my wvw builds.I play for class which have the lowest hp and armor and u nerf my survive ability more.Are u kidding me?!

Now the most actual build will be dps with 30 in fire.Also i must spend many time for new gear to balance the build and its not fun.Support build will be not so good.D/D elem nerfed.Diamond skin usless at wvw(only solo roaming).So all elementalists will be at dps builds like the most actual without any variations.(30 fire/10 air///10 arcane)

Also thief nerf again…no comments…

Guys,u just kill my favorites classes…
I will delete this kittening game after this patch.

So what’s going on with bleed cap? We haven’t had an update on it in months, and it has enormous consequences in PvE.

JonPeters.5630:

Ranger:

• 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.

The change to this trait would be nice if you weren’t forced to go 30 deep into another traitline to make it useful. Please don’t make the signet traits mandatory to make this trait useful.

As for the signet traits, they could really use some trait-merging treatment tbh.

JonPeters.5630:

Another thing about this build is that you do not have all of the information you need about this power guardian right now, but I can’t reveal more without spoilers. /tease

Jon, since this is one of the main concerns in guardian gameplay can you at least share some overall thoughts?

Thief changes: Why is it necessary to nerf mobility on the class that is supposed to be the most mobile and relies on that mobility to function?

Quote:
“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… [SNIP]… This will reward thieves who are actively engaged in the fight rather than those who are just dodging over and over again.”

If you make it difficult for thieves to dodge over and over again, how exactly are they supposed to stay upright? Thieves have the lowest hitpoints in the game, very few condition removal skills and traits, no access to protection or aegis (outside of boon stealing and certain rune sets), and extremely limited access to stability. Any change to a thief’s mobility is a HUGE, GAME-ALTERING CHANGE.

If these changes are implemented the way they are listed in the preview above:

- Sword will become unused. It already has inferior damage compared to main-hand dagger and is currently only used for it’s utility. Take away Shadow Return’s instant mobility and the sword will lose the final thing keeping it a viable weapon since Larcenous Strike was nerfed last patch and Pistol Whip can’t reliably deal it’s damage (which already happens to be inferior to the sword’s auto-attack).

- Traiting for Vigor will no longer be an option because even with all the trait options selected a character will never be able to keep it active when they need it.

I’m very afraid that thieves will become lepers, much the same way rangers are stigmatized in PvE groups, because they won’t be able to stay alive against the harder content and in PvP.

please dont do that to ele’s. ive already had my mesmer ruined by the confusion nerf. switched to ele and geared him all out. try not to ruin that too please. gonna run out of good classes

seriously please do NOT do that to ele’s. i beg you

How about more weapon skills? For example 10 spells instead of the current 5,with progression to unlock that skills. When using the skill you open one skill “6” (as it’s now using a new weapon), which replaces this first skill, and the same for other skill 2-5( 2 opens 7, 3 opens 8 etc.) Thats a lot of work I think, but it would be very very cool!!

After reading these proposed balance changes, I have a few questions, and also a few suggestions.
Guardian:
I like the general idea of making it stronger, however what I don’t know is, why are you nerfing the symbol of swiftness. Is 8 seconds soo much, that you have to nerf it to 4? Guardians are slow already, don’t make them slower.
Please just leave it at 8 seconds, as it is.
Ranger:
You guys said that you want more builds for rangers?
The way I play spvp is that I get my survivability from evading, dodging.
“Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.”
If you make this change, you won’t get more builds, you will just make people throw away what they already have.

Necromancer:
I don’t have any problems with the changes, I just want to tell a story.
I have been playing Necro in WvW for a few months now, and after you proposed these changes,
50%-60% of the players I play WvW with are stopped playing their characters, and started a necro.
This is happening. Seriously.
I suggest that you rethink these changes from a WvW-er’s point of view.(I mean the changes on all characters.)
Otherwise I’m glad to see how hard the development team is working.
If you guys put this much work into developing spvp arenas, this game would be truly awesome!

Dekk.3459:

ENGINEER
I know engineer needs some love. Isn’t a 100% condition convert every 15s a bit OP? Wait for only 15 trait points?? Needs longer ICD IMO

Don’t be fooled by the wording – it converts incoming conditions, not the ones already applied on you.
Let’s suppose you’ve got 10 stacks of bleeding.
You get dealt 2 other stacks and the trait activates – it will convert only these two stacks, but the others will remain untouched.
If anything, this is a nerf. Especially since the engineer has no control on its activation, and whereas with a small chance but no ICD we could count on it as a small defense against conditions, with this change its effectiveness (that wasn’t great even before) got greatly reduced.

And it was our only passive condition “removal”, too.

Original post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/page/17#post3138694

Cogbyrn.7283:

I can understand your passion, but I don’t think you’re being particularly fair in your analysis. In short, just because you notice a synergy and appreciate its elegance doesn’t mean the synergy is balanced.

Taking your example, perhaps you should have to spend more than 30 trait points to guarantee an Eviscerate crit. I’ve seen how hard Eviscerate hits, and pressing something like 3, 4, F1 to do that much damage should be the focus of a build, not just 3/7ths of it. Instead of 0/20/0/10, you’ll just need to go 0/30/0/10. You lose something, yes. But have you stopped to think that maybe you should be losing something?

Personally, I think that’s a neat little synergy that I haven’t used myself, but there are still ways around it. Of course I’m sure it isn’t your only example, but when you find synergies that efficient that provide such good interaction at a cost of only 30 trait points with no real sacrifice, it’s probably time to stop and say “wait, should this be this easy?” I’ve often thought that my build was a little too clean, and now I’ll have to make a choice, and I think that’s a good thing.

There are strong arguments to be made about outlier builds that people run that hinge on these intensely powerful traits at low requirement levels. I get that it will be a bummer for those people, and I think they should be considered. However, it doesn’t affect the fact that traits like UF are quite strong and should probably be at a higher commitment level. If a bunker or support character relies on the 50% crit to do burst damage, there’s already something wrong with this sentence. Why is a bunker/support able to do burst? Because they want to 1v1 someone down? Why should they be able to put on that hat when they’re wearing another? That isn’t to say the support builds for Warriors couldn’t potentially use a bit of love, but is leaving damage potential in for these builds worth the ripple effect it has on other builds that are potentially dominating a meta?

Again, I respect the fact that you’re passionate about it, but sometimes passion can also cloud judgement.

It’s awesome that you’re responding to my earlier post, and I greatly appreciate your insight and opinion, but you looking at exactly the wrong things. Heck, I even warned you about them! I know you mean well, but I literally facedesked just now. As I said previously:

• Avoid getting pinned on that one example, because it’s just the first example I could think of.
• It isn’t about changing a certain trait that appears too powerful. It is about preserving synergies that aren’t the (immediate) objective of the change.

And you seem to do / assume precisely the opposite. I can only assume (hope?) that you didn’t actually read it properly.

You seemed to think I was arguing that Unsuspecting Foe doesn’t need a Nerf. I wasn’t. It could do with a toning down. I even said so. If you’d taken the time to read my actual post, or perhaps if you re-read it, you can see that the point was not that one specific trait change shouldn’t happen. The point was that:

It would be nice, when Arenanet changes a skill with the objective of bring a certain build A into line with what they feel is balanced, they wouldn’t inadvertently nerf additional builds / synergies X, Y and Z that they never even considered / knew existed, due to those not being part of the flavour of the month / meta.

I know they’re trying hard, and doing a okay job of it. It’s just that some these balances are making it painfully obvious that they don’t know enough about their own game to balance it. And that’s fine, I guess. They’re excused. But it does mean that when they try, there’s a good chance of it being a punch in the guts for the player-base who do actually care enough to think things through.

You said you think the warrior example is a neat little synergy, but you’d never even thought of using it. That speaks volumes to me. It’s not being abused, or even used a lot. Why would it have to disappear? It’s collateral damage, because just like you, Arenanet never thought of it. Yet they’re destroying it. You don’t see anything wrong with a situation where Arenanet just changes skills without knowing the scope of the outcome? Because I do.

That right there is my point. They don’t know enough about their own game to balance it.

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

FINALLY, we were the ONLY class with 2% bonus per point, thats something that should warned you. Its not a buff in my mind as it was necessary since the release.

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.
Maybe a thing to consider as cleanse by water have been screwed up.

Fire VIII – Conjurer – Moved to Adept tier.
Who care, conjure shouldnt have charge (but in my mind, they have enought)

Fire III – Ember’s Might. The effect of this trait has been changed to Burns you apply last longer. 25%.
Burning Rage 25 – Increased damage dealt to burning foes from 5% to 10%.
Nice, no longer two identical trait, buff for every “30 in fire” spec

Air V – Soothing Winds. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
useless as there is much much better trait but still a buff

Air XI – Tempest Defense. Decreased the cooldown from 60s to 25s.
Very nice buff (for the instant kill spec and the staff)

Earth 5 – Stone Flesh – Increased toughness while attuned to Earth Magic to 1.5/level (120 at level 80).
Almost useless unless you debug lingering element

Earth VII – Strength of Stone. This trait is now Gain condition damage based on your Toughness. 10%.
Buff for condi, but condi sucks in pve, and condi ele <<<<<<<<< necro, engi.
I dont think the old trait was used as he has changed, but still can be a nerf.

Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.
AS the max HP we can get going full sentinell and 30water is under 23K, thats mean we’re immune until we take less than 2K3 damage ….. not conviced.

Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.
Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.
Water VIII – Arcane Abatement. Moved to Adept tier.
Water X – Soothing Wave. Moved to Adept tier.
Nerf for every set up (my build is unchanged as i use cleansing wave and arcane abatement (WvW) or piercing shard (pve) )

Arcane III – Arcane Retribution. Moved to Master tier. Decreased cooldown from 90 seconds to 45 seconds.
Arcane IV – Final Shielding. Decreased cooldown from 90s to 75s.
Buff, but not really sure those trait were used (probably why they got buffed)

Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane VII – Vigorous Scepter. Moved to Adept tier.
Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff. Moved to Adept tier.
Arcane IX – Windborne Dagger. Moved to Adept tier.
Here we are: the ULTIMATE nerf to DD elementalist. So now we have to choose between vigor or regen+protect, having those 3buff was the thing that compensate or low HP and armor pool. I’m using DD since the release, the best thing i can do now is to sell them to a museum and buy a staff for wvw and a scepter for pve. Thanks Anet, i believed that your creed was “everyone should be able to play what he like” …

Conclusion:
- WVW build: 0/30/0/30/10 staff obviously
- PVE build: still 30fire spec or LH spec
- No more DD

Ranger

just one thing, the Sword Auto-Attack
I’d really love to hear wether this is intentional or not.
For Damage Sword is the best option, but it also has the only AA ingame that makes it harder to evade.
Sure, we have 2 evade on the Sword, but timing them is a lot harder than just dodging (because of casttimes and aftercast).

The other changes look pretty good so far

Why reduce the mobility of the Guardian even more? Why symbol of Swiftness gets a 50% nerf and how is this contributing in the overall idea of making guardians a bit more offensive?

Dev’s please don’t nerf weakening shroud so much…that is a long CD on an ability that, when used right, can save your bunz in WvW…because we have no other real defense, and DS is not the answer for everything.

All this because of that stupid pvp that 5 people do? Split these two things up if you are to proud to admit your pvp is a complete failure.
Is there anyone on your team that worked on gw1 left? you know they split pvp and pve and there were hundreds of more skills..

Dear devs

Please keep SPVP exclusive changes limited exclusively to SPVP game mode seriously, by now the rest of us are begining to hate SPVP players due their constant forcing of nerfs etc. on the rest of us. In fact, if its that much trouble and requires that much resources, just remove SPVP from the game, you will not miss many customers and via reallocating resources to the other game modes you will in fact gain a lot more new ones.

On the side note, I might be able to go back to my old mesmer build which would be fantastic.

JonPeters.5630:

Starfall.6813:

JonPeters.5630:

Symbol of Swiftness
To clarify the new Symbol of Swiftness will give you 4 seconds of Swiftness every single pulse regardless of if you have swiftness or not. This is a improvement in many situations and a slight loss in the situation where you were using the Symbol as just a one time buff. I think this makes it feel more like a Symbol, which is good. We are still discussing the idea of it being 5 seconds, but there is some danger of that going pretty high with boon duration.

Jon,

I like a lot of where you’re going with the Guardian here, but I am a little concerned about the Symbol of Swiftness change. Not as a matter of balance but just as a quality of life issue. 4 seconds of swiftness on a 15 second cooldown is pretty much useless as a means of traveling for a solo Guardian, and the symbol is one of the better ways for Guardians to get around. Having to stop and stand in the symbol to get the full ticks of swiftness while traveling long distance is just going to be counter productive and annoying. And I don’t like the idea that this skill is being balanced around the zerg rather than solo players who probably are only running one source of swiftness to begin with.

Math wise you can now sit in the symbol for 3 seconds with boon duration and end up with 9 seconds of swiftness which is more than you would have had before. I do still think it may need to be 5 seconds to account for the fact that you only get it every second so by the time you get the second one you have lost 1s of the first one.

Jon

Ok but the problem here? Most of guards use SoS only one time. And this is no just my speculation, this is just the truth :-) I will gladly log in to game and ask every guard i meet how they use their SoS and then send you their answer :-D I am 100% sure that almost everyone will say something like ,,When i need swiftness i just run, put it before me and cross over it as fast as i can becouse i need to get somewhere fast" No one actualy use it as a ,,symbol".
We use SoS to move faster in WvW, dungeons or to open world events or just run out of fight when we are almost death :-D and waiting for 3 sec every cooldown will slow us down instead of make us faster.
I beg you answer me this question- Who wants or can afford to stand even for 3 sec when he needs to get somewhere fast? It is a simple question please :-)
Even 5 sec is not enough we already have very bad mobility dont take away from us completely please :-) Leave it as it is and if the fact that it does not act as symbol is problem for you just change it to not to be symbol but keep its effect :-)

All those trait changes are good but what about skill changes?

like Focus/Scepter/STaff ele

Musha.4025:

These changes look great and very well thought out. Thank you for submitting it beforehand to get player feedback. I would very much like to offer my opinions on the Ranger class and the proposed changes.

• Natural Vigor should not be changed. Rangers are outclassed by pretty much every other class in terms of damage output, but what they do have is their speed and agility. This trait is key to almost every Ranger build out there and this change simply cripples and underclasses the Ranger. In order for a Ranger to get the “too much endurance regeneration” it has to invest trait points into those lines. Just like every other build out there, this means the Ranger must sacrifice other traits to get this survivability. Please don’t remove this cornerstone for Rangers. If this change MUST happen, at the very least, make it a conditional endurance regeneration like, ‘while health is below 50%,’ or a ‘chance on hit,’ but this change really does cripple the Ranger, forcing him to invest even more trait points to get that extra survivability, becoming even more outclassed by every other profession.

• Rangers have to spread their trait points too much to get a nice condition damage build going. Why does a trap ranger have to invest 30 points into Skirmishing, a precision/crit damage line, to get the most out of their traps? Marksmanship and Wilderness Survival are the condition damage lines and trap Rangers would like to see more trap synergy in those lines (ideally, obviously, Wilderness Survival); perhaps the trap traits should be moved to WS.

• Condition Damage Rangers are forced to choose between utilizing shortbow skills or trap skills by having to choose either Quick Draw or Trapper’s Expertise, respectively. Moving Quick Draw to the Marksmanship line and merging it with Piercing Arrows would be an ideal change and would bring the Ranger’s traits in line with the traits of other classes, like the Warrior, and would allow a shortbow/trap Ranger to have a decent build that uses both traits. This would free up room for a new trait in Skirmishing; something more suitable for a Skirmishing build. You could create more synergy for a pet build, like: pets do 5% more damage while wielding a bow, or pets have a higher crit chance (synergizes with Pet’s Prowess). You could also offer more offhand options, like: increase the duration of conditions caused by offhand skills, or offhand skills do 5% more damage. You could also offer some sort of payoff for sword, greatsword, spear Rangers investing into the Skirmishing line, like: chance to grant boon on crit, or conditional damage increase, etc.

I could not agree more. I feel like rangers are being pushed towards one build: berserker. Every other way of playing it has been overlooked in the balancing.

I disagree with the thief initiative changes as I feel they are a tad too much altogether and all at once. Introducing them in pairs or one at a time could flesh out intended/desired results without turning thieves into a mandatory friend that follows someone around.

As for their sword #2 change, why not make it the reverse effect? Have it teleport the attacked target in a random direction 900~1200 away from the thief or have it transfer 2-3 conditions to the target. Infiltrator’s Strike shadow return probably should have never even existed simply because thieves have access to Blinding Powder, Shadow Refuge, Shadowstep, Hide in Shadows, Withdraw and Roll for Initiative. Even worse is when those skills are used in conjunction with Infiltrator’s. Put bluntly, if the thief wants to get away from their target for whatever reason they need to burn a utility skill, not sword skill #2 and its forgiving initiative cost.

Next I feel pistol should be rethought. Pistol skill 1 is somewhat painful to use as an auto attack. Maybe speed it up a little? Also maybe it should shoot twice while using a pistol offhand too (thief has two pistols after all…) and get two bleeds on the target. Headshot needs at least a second and a half daze or something new entirely. For its initiative cost, it is just useless (even as an interrupt). Finally I think Black Powder needs a change. Instead of the little aoe blind that only bads, nubs, berserker stanced warriors stand in, maybe make it like the mesmer trick shot in that it bounces up to 5 targets and delivers 6 second blinds.

Now for the ranger. I like the proposed changes. Anything to get this class up to par really. But there are a few things that irk me the most, specifically the pet and sword auto attack.

The pet is… there. It is encumbersome in that it attacks slowly, its F2 skills are on seemingly the pet’s terms (unresponsive/very delayed/long animations), most of those F2 skills and normal pet skills are on long CDs, the AI for them is bothersome to say the least (it likes to take the most illogical path to the target only to backtrack that said path and opt for a new one), and much more often than not a ranger loses precious traits spec’ing into their pet. Quite often I go entire games with the pet dead and don’t have a qualm about as I consider its dps a “bonus” while alive. Really the only reason I just don’t hide the pet is for that off chance someone mistargets the creature instead of me and wastes CDs on it.

Sword auto attack. The way it dictates and controls the ranger is absurd. It is aoe bait. Please make those animations stop. Make them instantly breakable or redesign them to be more like the other classes. I don’t want to fight against the jumps and roundhouse kungkittenwhen I already have others pounding away on me. I need to dodge on demand not when the sword grants me permission… after I’ve face tanked the very thing I wanted to avoid.

Ranger signets. Only four and there are only two that I will take: Signet of Renewal and Signet of the Hunt. Even with Signet of the Beastmaster, Signet Mastery, and Beastmaster’s Might they just aren’t that great (having to go 30 points into marksmaship just so the player can benefit from them isn’t that rewarding) . As it stands, the passive effects are the highlights of these skills. With the pet being an obese sidekick all of the active effects are a waste with the exception of Renewal. Screw the pet. Perhaps changing all active effects to include the player naturally to reap more benefit and changing Signet of the Beastmaster to allow the ranger to grant allies the passive/active effects within a small radius?

aspirine.6852:

All this because of that stupid pvp that 5 people do? Split these two things up if you are to proud to admit your pvp is a complete failure.
Is there anyone on your team that worked on gw1 left? you know they split pvp and pve and there were hundreds of more skills..

Seems i’m one of the many that cannot for the life of me understand why PvE builds are suffering at the hands of constant PvP nerfs.

Can i politely ask, we just get some feedback as to why PvE skills are not split from PvP or WvW changes?.

This is one area that is crippling some peoples fun with build diversity.

JonPeters.5630:

Starfall.6813:

JonPeters.5630:

Symbol of Swiftness
To clarify the new Symbol of Swiftness will give you 4 seconds of Swiftness every single pulse regardless of if you have swiftness or not. This is a improvement in many situations and a slight loss in the situation where you were using the Symbol as just a one time buff. I think this makes it feel more like a Symbol, which is good. We are still discussing the idea of it being 5 seconds, but there is some danger of that going pretty high with boon duration.

Jon,

I like a lot of where you’re going with the Guardian here, but I am a little concerned about the Symbol of Swiftness change. Not as a matter of balance but just as a quality of life issue. 4 seconds of swiftness on a 15 second cooldown is pretty much useless as a means of traveling for a solo Guardian, and the symbol is one of the better ways for Guardians to get around. Having to stop and stand in the symbol to get the full ticks of swiftness while traveling long distance is just going to be counter productive and annoying. And I don’t like the idea that this skill is being balanced around the zerg rather than solo players who probably are only running one source of swiftness to begin with.

Math wise you can now sit in the symbol for 3 seconds with boon duration and end up with 9 seconds of swiftness which is more than you would have had before. I do still think it may need to be 5 seconds to account for the fact that you only get it every second so by the time you get the second one you have lost 1s of the first one.

Jon

Math wise it apparently works for your calculations, situation wise its not working at all Jon. If you are chased and want to escape you don’t have the luxury to stand static in top of a symbol not for even 1 second. Unless you want to root the guardians and permit them the ability to escape overall. Why was this skill so important to be “fixed” and why it was broken?

Tongku.5326:

Dear devs

Please keep SPVP exclusive changes limited exclusively to SPVP game mode seriously, by now the rest of us are begining to hate SPVP players due their constant forcing of nerfs etc. on the rest of us. In fact, if its that much trouble and requires that much resources, just remove SPVP from the game, you will not miss many customers and via reallocating resources to the other game modes you will in fact gain a lot more new ones.

You should ask different questions. Lets take condition damage as an example:

• In PVE/WvW you can get up to 2k condidmg and 76%+ condi duration (not including might and sigil stacks and no runes with +duration)
• In sPVP you get 1,5k condi damage and only 30% duration (with undead runes like above)

If I read some posts in sPVP forum complaining about condition damage being too strong, I have to ask my self, what are they talking about? Are those people playing WvW?

Berserker stats on the other hand get same power, same preci and 45% less crit damage, but vitality in sPVP (not including buff food). In the end this means a thief hitting you for 4k damage instead of 7k.

The big question in my oppinion is, what should be balanced and where? I think anet makes their live harder than it could be, having 30%+ stat difference in those gamemodes. I think they need to rebalance this stats at first, otherwise we dont see any good balance, with the same skills for the whole game.

With this aspect, Warriors healing signed is in sPVP 30% to strong, because there is less damage, maybe it is needed that strong in WvW, but in sPVP it is over the top at the moment. The question now it, where does this lead, split every skill and trait between PvP and WvW, but what happens than to PvE? I think anet has 2 option right now:

1. increase PvP stats and include bufffood as a permanent buff (This sounds strange in first place, but it is needed to balance both gametypes)
2. the other possibility would be reducing every stat you can get in PvE/WvW to the same numbers you can get in PvP.

Otherwise all game-type drifting apart and balancing will be impossible sooner or later without splitting every single skill.

What I would like to see for PvP would be an amulet where I can choose my stats the way I want them, instead of having those prebuild ones, I think this could increase build diversity in PvP as well.

Ranger

I just saw that u were thinking about moving warrior’s crack shot to adept trait.

So if I understand well, Rangers will have to spend 40 points in 2 different trees to get the benefits a warrior can have by spending 10 points ???

Seems pretty unfair to me ….

Minor changes to the Guardian offensive builds. At the moment this class have unused damage dealing potential. In my opinion slightly increasing damage on greatsword skills would help guardians be more offensive. Moreover, condition builds are still not profitable as the other builds. Conversion rate in Zeal XII – Kindled Zeal are insufficient to be noticeable, same with Valor V – Retributive Armor, conversion rate should be higher.

ELEMENTALIST
usually i run as dps/support s/d full zerk gear with 0-10-0-30-30 i’ve done high lvl on fractals and almost all dungeon, i’ve tryed to run some dungeon with 0-30-30-0-10, like Jon suggested… i know that some trait will be different, but mainly is the diamond trait so about condition, so i’ve used some utility for remove it and have an idea about the future build… with full zerk and this news build i have 11k hp at lvl 80 and i’m usually downed in the most of case, no more evasive arcana, healing ripple, less healing power and vitality, and attunement swap also not really good … i’ve also tryed 0-10-30-20-10, for a better survibility, but w/o fresh air, attunement cd is too hight ( and will be also with modify) i lose alot of dmg, so i’m no more a pure dps as before, and my support is not good, so i’ll back on my 0-10-0-30-30 now my dps is not bad, but ofc it’s worse as before, but now i can stay alive, do dmg and help the party….

so i dont like this patch, also cause you move some traits, at the same tier, so my build will not work as before, and new builds make me a walking death man… i dont think that ele will be viable on hard pve content as fotm or some other dungeon… also cause a death player do 0 dmg
my suggestion for keep you way, is to improve vitality, and move evasive arcana on adept, or give a big burst to healing signet when heal per cast… i dont think any good ele whould be spend the half of time downed or death, also the diamond trait will be useless if i have only 11k life also if treshold will be on 80%

JonPeters.5630:

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.

You may want to consider reevaluating Shadow Refuge. Below is a post I made in the Thief forums that discusses making Refuge a more interesting skill:

Gilburt.9146:

In its current state, Shadow Refuge is an extremely boring skill to play against. There is not much counter-play for it (except for a select few skills that can knock an enemy out of it). When traited, Thieves only need to stand in it for 4 seconds, and then they are free to do whatever they want with 16 seconds of stealth. That is a huge amount of stealth for very little “cost” (i.e. using only 1 skill with a 60s cooldown and standing in a relatively large area for only 4 seconds). And even if you damage them a lot while they’re in the Refuge, so what? They still have 16s of stealth and there’s nothing you can do about it as long as they don’t get downed. This essentially gives Thieves the ability to reset any fight without even having to make much of an effort to run away.

As a Guardian who doesn’t particularly like using Shield and a Thief who doesn’t particularly like using Shadow Refuge (in its current state), whenever I see an enemy Refuge go down, I know that the only thing I can really do is run away to prevent them from opening with an unpredictable Backstab. This is how Shadow Refuge is against most classes. When you see it go down you usually just have to accept that the Thief is going to escape or reset.

Shadow Refuge should be changed to help give Thieves more sustainability in a fight rather than simply resetting the fight altogether. Right now it’s all to often just a skill that terribad Thieves use so they can easily escape once they realize you’re not an easy kill (no, I’m not saying everyone who uses Shadow Refuge is bad ).

As someone who plays Thief often (I usually prefer roaming on Thief instead of Guardian for obvious reasons), I would like Shadow Refuge a lot more if it lasted 5 seconds rather than 4, only gave 7 seconds of stealth total (8 when traited for Meld with Shadows), but healed for 4000+ (or something to that effect). The healing should only be active while stealth (so you can’t put down the Refuge and continue fighting if you want the healing). On a side note: I also do not believe Shadow Refuge should affect downed players, because it often makes it impossible to stomp/kill a downed player before they are revived (especially in outnumbered fights).

Why do I think this would make Shadow Refuge a more interesting skill to play with/against?
1. Thieves interested in staying in a prolonged battle can view this as a huge buff.
2. This version is based around the idea of the Thief staying and fighting, rather than just running away and resetting with 16 seconds of stealth. It gives them more health back, which allows them to return to the fight quickly and have a little more sustainability. Because it would give 2-3 extra seconds of stealth (after its 5 second duration), the Thief would still have a chance to reopen on their opponent with a Backstab.
3. It allows for more counter-play besides just knocking the Thief out with a select few skills. Thieves will have to focus more on evading their opponents damage while remaining in the Refuge so they can benefit from the healing and then reopen. In other words, it requires more skill from the Thief than Shadow Refuge currently does to be beneficial.
4. The Thief is a little more predictable. It will be clear that the thief is probably nearby even after the Refuge ends. Additionally, any Backstab coming from the Refuge’s stealth will be possible for a skilled player to avoid because the Thief will only have a short (and, may I add, reasonable) time-frame in which to pull it off. The Thief can, of course, chain stealth from another source to make this Backstab less predictable.
5. Thieves won’t be able to self revive with 16 seconds of stealth anymore! This means that when I see a Refuge go down I won’t have to spend the next 20 seconds running around looking like an idiot stupidly spamming skill 1 in a vain attempt to prevent a Thief who probably is not even downed from self-reviving! Yay!
6. It’s actually a… “Refuge.” Currently Shadow Refuge just makes you stand in one spot for 4 seconds and then you can do whatever the kitten you want for 16 seconds. Not much of a “Refuge.” More like an extended vacation from the fight. :P

…

I havent really played GW2 in a while, let alone my warrior… Are warriors, specifically in PVE, receiving the nerf they desparetely need? Currently, if you are not a zerker warrior or zerker mesmer, speed runners hate you. GS warriors are dime a dozen. What has been done to combat this? Sadly, it is early in the morning and I can’t tell from the patch notes.