Guild Wars 2

Yeah with the thief positioning and evades nerf lets try another test. Reset health scaling to match the thief class across all classes. See how long every class lasts… Oh the rest of the classes have access to all those other buffs, no problem i guess.

This isn’t specific to the changes being made this run, but it does tie into the changes. I believe Anet needs to take a very hard look at the stat bonuses tied to trait lines. For many classes these are very haphazard, or they appear to be at the very least.

This may have been done intentionally, to promote hybrid builds and try to prevent overspecialization, however it hasn’t had that effect at all. People will always specialize, because specializing will almost always give better payout. Most of the classes that are viewed as ‘better’ and/or ‘More complete’ have trait lines that function with the stats given. The classes that are generally viewed poorly have trait lines that do not mesh with the stats given.

Examples:

Ranger
-traps (Which are all about conditions) are linked to a trait line (Skirmishing) that gives zero bonus to Conditions in anyway possible.
-Bows require an extremely high amount of traits to become ‘maxed’, most weapons for other classes only require a single traitline. Long bows require 70 traits and even then you are forced to sacrifice some because of poor placement.

Necro
- Soul Reaping is a defensive traitline tied to Critical Damage. This has been rectified slightly by giving us Deathly perception, however I still think the defensive trait being tied to these crit bonuses is very poorly thought out.

Engineer
- Same problem as the necro. Crit damage is tied to a traitline that gives defensive ‘Toolbelt’ tricks and modifications.

Now, for an opposite example lets take the Warrior.

Their crit damage tree, while not tied to a strait power/precision tree is tied to burst damage recharge. Obviously this meshes well with Crit damage. This is a good example of a tree that while not based on pure stats, does work well within itself.

I do hope that Anet takes a more ‘thorough’ look at these trees. Small skill changes aren’t really what people are looking for anymore. We’ve had a year of small changes that really haven’t fixed the basic problem.

Looks like Warriors Thiefs and Rangers havent got the Dev response yet.
So I’ll post my view and maybe it will prompt.

Warrior:

I LOVE the direction you are taking but I am scarred it might be too much of a swing, what happened to taking it slow. Moving opportunist and nerfing hammer damage, please start with 1 of the two and see how it goes.

I also thing the Sword/x Bow Condi build is stronger than people think and will come out more once the hambow nerf hits. So thats something to watch.

Thief

Overall its ok, I am concerned about limited weapon sets like P/P.
If these changes hit, I also think S/D thiefs should be due for a 3% damage increase overall. (once again taking it slow) as they will be evading a lot less and forced into combat.

Ranger:

Like the direction,
Enlargement will be a huge buff to some Niche WvW builds who want a passive stunbreaker.
Confused about Fury on Greatsword since Greatsword is a defensive weapon, I and a few other rangers think Retaliation might be a better boon for this trait. I would especially like this combo with fortifying bond in larger group scenarios where AOE is too prevalent.
I am still very concerned about shouts, I see guard being used for Natures Voice more than for what guard should be about. Ranger shouts are all over the place and I don’t ever see builds running 2 or more shouts, I think Ranger shout builds are hurting right now because the shouts don’t work well together, (IE one could kill your pet, One buffs your pet, and Sickem can be canceled if you try to control your pet)

Those are my thoughts.

Diamond Skin: I think this would be properly balanced if it was something like; immune to condition damage when health is above ~80-85%. Immune to all condition effects just seems excessive considering some classes do not have any self-buffs to compensate for locked out debuff effects provided through conditions.

ANET, your guardian changes are so subpar and do not effect the main issue we have. Those changes do not change any of the problems we have as a guard not even a little bit. The little healing power you are adding here and there is a joke. I mean I think you need to talk to one of us before you just throw out these little changes. Why is it we also get such little change compared to other classes. I mean those traits you are affecting are so subpar it makes me want to just stop playing guardian.

jmatb.6307:

• Symbol of Swiftness is a really good mobility change

And now please explain why do you think that standing on the ground is good mobility change :-)
Seriosly no joke, i would like to hear your opinion :-)

daros.3407:

jmatb.6307:

• Symbol of Swiftness is a really good mobility change

And now please explain why do you think that standing on the ground is good mobility change :-)
Seriosly no joke, i would like to hear your opinion :-)

Yes I agree with you lol. It is maybe if our other weapons gave us swiftness then that would be better.

Hi Jon,

I know your reading as much post here as you can ,
so I think you know that the “hard to catch” getting a bad Response on all thief Players.
But to made him more interesting in a place of a master Tier, maybe a Change of stability instead of the swiftness buff and a smaller couldown would be a good part of your promised Mobility buff, compared to the vigor nerf.
And since theres no blur/block/shrink/invulnerable the Thief has acces to Counter incomming burst dmg and we already have much swiftness in our acrobatic traitline.
Please, dont let stealthless thief gameplay depending on a randomly teleport of the named trait which isnt a stunbreaker itself.

Thanks for reading

PS: Sorry for my bad amusing grammar

Soilder.3607:

Please consider buffing the ranger shortbow, maybe add an immobilize or something.

I find it funny…when roaming in WvW (as ranger) everyone and their Mother don’t seem to think twice about breaking off and engaging me 1v1 or 3v1…other professions seem to get more respect (at least people weigh the risks before deciding to engage)…with rangers everyone is like, “Hey, here’s an easy kill!”

For Ranger
Fortifying bond: I believe this trait should work both way, if the pet boons, the ranger should get a portion of the boons.
Ex : Red Moa F2(gain Fury) if you’re not in range of the skill, you missed it, same for Blue Moa, Fern Hound, Brown Bear,
Nature Healing: It heals you and the pet for 125 per second. It’s a grandmaster traits, and doesn’t scale with Healing Power.
Suggestion for Ranger
Ranger should get a trait that let them run (while in combat and using range weapon) backward, side way without the slow penalty. Make it easier for the Ranger to kite.
New trait, that whenever the pet use their F2, you also get the same effect of that skill. Scale with condition durations
Ex: Jaguar- Stalk: Gains stealth for 6 seconds, it stealth the ranger for X seconds.
Owl-Chilling Slash: Chill foe for 3 seconds, the Ranger next attack chill foe for X seconds

geekilo.8512:

For Ranger
Fortifying bond: I believe this trait should work both way, if the pet boons, the ranger should get a portion of the boons.
Ex : Red Moa F2(gain Fury) if you’re not in range of the skill, you missed it, same for Blue Moa, Fern Hound, Brown Bear,
Nature Healing: It heals you and the pet for 125 per second. It’s a grandmaster traits, and doesn’t scale with Healing Power.
Suggestion for Ranger
Ranger should get a trait that let them run (while in combat and using range weapon) backward, side way without the slow penalty. Make it easier for the Ranger to kite.
New trait, that whenever the pet use their F2, you also get the same effect of that skill. Scale with condition durations
Ex: Jaguar- Stalk: Gains stealth for 6 seconds, it stealth the ranger for X seconds.
Owl-Chilling Slash: Chill foe for 3 seconds, the Ranger next attack chill foe for X seconds

Incorrect: Natural Healing heals YOU the player for 133hp every 3 seconds, and the pet for 125hp every second

On a whole the Elementalist changes continue their trend of a “dog chasing it’s own tail.”

Still you put in more changes hoping to make the Fire/Air/Earth lines more attractive to use and still you fail to realize that the problem with those trees is not that they aren’t already compelling but that it’s extremely difficult to get away from points in Water/Arcane simply due to survivability issues. We lack the mobility/escapability of a Mesmer but have less HP. Design wise this makes absolutely no sense what so ever.

We used to have things that made up for this lack of HP but patch after patch they’ve consistently and constantly driven us deeper and deeper into survivability trees to make up for the losses. You took our in combat mobility away and gutted most of our healing and wonder why we spec down the most defensive trees? Really? When that no longer became viable we went the other route (full offense) and here you are now gutting that by making any decent adept trait go into Master.

Also moving Arcane V and VI to Master tier is a humongous slap in the face towards any non staff build.

You really need to figure out what you want this class to be/do and stop with the “jack of all trades” nonsense because all you’ve left is a pitifully weak character at any role that isn’t better replaced with another class entirely. With these changes support is better done by a Guardian (because you can no longer spread your support out across all 3 traits) and all we’re left with is AOE tags for WvW. Whoopity doo.

ANET – I love the thief changes. HOwever, please consider improving ability to create better non stealth builds by thinking through how we can support groups in wvw. thank you.

don’t think the changes for damage focused guardians go far enough, the real dps ones sacrifice so much of the tanking ability that they have survivability below that of warriors, if we want to play our guars in a pure DPS role, we should have that option, that was the whole point of the removal of the trinity after all, no profession stuck in a stereotyped role

Manuhell.2759:

mini.6018:

@Jon Peters

When are you going to do something about conditions ?
The way they are designed right now they affect pretty terribly gameplay turning it from action mode to cast and forget mode ,beating the game’s first promotion factor wich was the action based combat system.
Right now condition damage needs only one stat to maximize dps and you also enforce it with bunker stats.Condition duration and precision are all non standing arguments since it only increases the condition dps in a fight by very little while if you go into power builds,stacking only power will give you horrible damage.Besides that conditions are to easily reaplied in comparison with condition removal and promotes easy non action combat.Conditions have only one counter wich is condition removal.

While the power counterpart forces you to stack 3 stats neglecting defence entirely and what is even worse direct damage has a lot of counters.

Range and need of constantly aplying the dps is just the first one.Biggest counter is protection and weakness wich funny enough is a condition hence negating even more the damage incoming to a condition bunker from a power source.

So we have protection,weakness,armor,kiting,dodging,blocking,blinding as a counter to one damage type wich needs to heavily invest in 3 stats to be effective while on the other hand we have only condition removal as a counter to conditions wich need only one stat to be effective

I already suggested that there should be a rework arround conditions and the main one would be drasticly decreasing any base condition durations,remove condition duration from food/runes and sigils and create a new stat combination available for example Condition damage/Precison/Condition duration to achieve the same effect as now and properly mirror the full berserker power builds are forced into to maximize dps.The next step would be to add weakness,armor and protection counterparts for condition damage.

I assume you’re talking about pvp.
Cause in pve, conditions aren’t that much useful as now. They’re constantly overshaded…by the direct damage you’re so much devaluing.
A suggestion like the one you made would make conditions even more useless in pve.
I think as well they need some serious rework…but they must work in all the game modes after that, not just one.

Npcs in pve still do not dodge,use protection or weakness on you.If berserker classes can do it i don’t see why you would need high armor to do the same?Condition is just too broken and in december it’s back.With thief nerf and warrior nerf we will enjoy 100% Bunker condition wars.Yhis will not be fun at all and will drow pve players away from pvp/spvp the second they set foot inside.

Still big LOL at the ones saying you need precision for condi builds and those 2 bleeds every 10 seconds are huge dps and “full potential”.Ive been playing arround with condi builds since launch and condition is still the strongest shutdown in the game.Chill + cripple plus fear plus bleed plus burn = insta death.

In the hope that this actually gets read…

JonPeters.5630:

Some internal thoughts on the necro

Mark of Blood
~snip~ This is one of the most versatile and powerful skills in the game. ~snip~

The fundamental issue with ALL of the balance changes here is that THEY ARE ENTIRELY PVP-CENTRIC. Mark of Blood is NOT one of the most “powerful and versatile” skills in PvE. Conditionmancers in PvE carry Staff for the utility. That’s it. I appreciate that the proposed nerf is PvP-only. But if “balances” of this nature continue to focus solely on PvP, it’s gonna spill over (it already has).

JonPeters.5630:

Weakening Shroud
This trait as it currently stands on live is a borderline grandmaster trait. It is near 100% AoE weakness uptime for a small investment. The new version is still probably worthy of master tier with almost 50% AoE weakness uptime. This line has a lot of powerful traits, but suffers from having only 1 choice at grandmaster tier.

There are some huge problems with this logic.

1. It’s not 100% uptime on Weakness. Not even close. The number of conditions necessary to drop WS every 15 seconds makes it difficult. Not impossible, but difficult.

2. Once again—this is PvP ONLY thinking. Weakness is probably the only offensive support that a Necro brings to a PvE party. Seriously. I’ve played every conceivable version of a Powermancer since beta, and this is the only truly unique thing that a Necro can offer. But it’s nearly negated by the ill-conceived “buff” that is Defiant. So no. This isn’t dropping WS to 50% uptime on Weakness for PvE Necros. This is dropping it to 25% if that.

3. ICDs on on-Deathshroud traits are unfair. There’s no way to judge its CD. And therefore it’s not a true, “on-DS” trait. It either needs to fire 100% of the time, or there has to be some sort of CD timer on it. Otherwise it’s useless to use intentionally, and becomes a random benefit that can’t be counted on. TL;DR, if it’s going to be on-DS, it needs to be on-DS.

JonPeters.5630:

~snip~ There is a gaping hole at grandmaster here with Withering Precision (barely worthy of adept tier in our opinion), however we were really hesitant to either move terror and didn’t have a good alternative for redesigning Withering Precision.

I’m so very glad that you acknowledge the waste that Withering Precision has become. Once again, even its old manifestation gave Necros an edge in Boss fights. Sure it wore off quickly, but it could be reapplied just as quickly. Now it’s a crap-shoot. This needs to be re-worked badly. PvE Necros (particularly Powermancers) need something to offer groups.

JonPeters.5630:

Curses
This line just has a lot of good traits.
~snip~

Once again with the PvP-only thinking. And it’s also becoming very clear that you’re looking at this purely from a Conditionmancer’s perspective. Which is, in turn, somewhat understandable. You’ve stacked some excellent direct-damage traits in a line that primarily benefits ConD. The most obvious example? Curses 25. It’s mandatory in any high-direct-damage Necro build leaving only a few good choices in traits to fill it out.

The buff to Banshee’s Wail is excellent.

Re-working the entire trait line around Conditionmancers, however, isn’t. That’s not balance. At all.

It would go a long way to re-evaluate the synergy within each of the Spite line and the Curses line, and consolidate the direct-damage traits into the Spite line, and the ConD into the Curses line. A couple of the Spite traits are absolute garbage, so this wouldn’t be hard. (Particularly Spite 25, which isn’t even good for an Adept-tier trait, let alone GM-tier.) The present, chaotic mess that is the trait lines doesn’t improve build variety. Rather, it kills it.

All that to say, however, that if Weakening Precision got a good buff of some kind, I would gladly go 30 points into Curses in a Power build.

JonPeters.5630:

Dhuumfire
~snip~ I think the real problems with this trait are:
1) Having to put 30 points into the power line as a condition necro.
2) Requiring crit on a 30 point trait in a line that does nothing to improve crit chance.

We talk about a lot of different versions of this trait including moving to master tier, making it on hit instead of on crit, and reworking the numbers to making it more reliable to use and to counter.

Once again, ConD-focused and PvP-focused. But at least the instinct here is right. What’s a ConD trait doing 30-deep into a Power line? I’ll say it again, ConD in ConD line, Power in Power line. Debuffs can be spread between the two (Banshee’s Wail, Weakness-generating traits, Chill of Death, etc.).

[cont’d. below]

[cont’d. from above]

JonPeters.5630:

~snip~ The biggest thing holding that back is the lack of a replacement grandmaster in Spite. We aren’t huge fans of weapon or utility type specific traits at this tier otherwise an improved Axe Training might have a shot. This is the crux of the damage necromancer problem right now, and we will talk about it more next week so any discussion on it here will aid us in those talks.

Ah now we come to it. I would love to chime in here. There are a couple of big problems with the Powermancer at the moment.

1. No offensive support or defensive support without hitting like a wet noodle. If a Powermancer wants to contribute to damage, he can’t offer support. If he wants to support, he hits for bad damage. In PvE, you are only valuable to a party if you can do both.

2. No cleave. Yes, Powermancers have Wells (the buff to these was AWESOME). But they’re a one-off and done. And they absolutely need Ritual Mastery to make them functional DPS boosts. Once the Wells are blown, the Powermancer’s AoE is shot. Piercing Life Blast does not count. The heavy DPS builds can’t or don’t.

3. Powermancers have to run Dagger. Axe is nice for burst or as the foundation for DS builds. But its AA hits like a wet noodle, and the Vuln stacked doesn’t compensate. At all. On top of that, thanks to the ill-conceived Defiant, Vuln doesn’t stick.

There are a couple of options here. First, give Dagger cleave on AA. Second, fix Axe’s AA—it’s so borked it’s silly. Third, (and this is my favorite) fashion a GM-tier trait in Spite that buff’s Dagger’s damage—possibly by adding Siphon as base to its AA.

Here’s the logic. Yeah you may not like making weapon-specific GM-tier traits. But the Powermancer has 1.5 Power weapons. Dagger, and maybe Axe. Maybe. So until there’s a whole load more weapons for the Necro, a GM-tier trait that buffs the Dagger’s damage and utility would be perfect. Absolutely perfect.

JonPeters.5630:

Death Magic
On the defensive side, the Blood and Soul Reaping necros are starting to feel pretty good. The Death line on the other hand is too focused on minions. From Reanimator, which we have heard over and over feels bad as a minor trait, to the fact that 1/3 of the remaining traits are minion traits, to finally the fact that both grandmaster traits are minion traits.

Blood Line is getting there, yes. Still far from arrived, though. The single most powerful thing that could be done is to make Siphons work in DS. That change alone would fix it from my perspective.

And Reanimator? It doesn’t feel like a bad trait. It IS a bad trait. It’s been the laughing stock of Necro builds since release. If I’m not running Minions (which I don’t, because they’re so subpar in PvE it’s become a joke), I will 100% of the time avoid the Death tree. Just because of that single trait.

There you have it. The above is coming from hundreds of hours on a PvE Powermancer. I’ve enjoyed it since Beta, but it could be so much better.

JonPeters.5630:

Thief:

• Trickery IV – Flanking Strikes. Move to Master tier.

i agree on almost everything here but this should not be moved to master tier, catching the enemy on the back/side is already a hard task once you are spotted, since they are nerfing perma stealth it should remain. also now a days most build are heading towards toughness and vitality.

you are just destroying the class by nerfing all normal usable skills.
have any of your testers actually really used a thief and fought with other classes?
really anet?

you should check necros, warriors and mesmers stilll they getting buff. what a joke anet.

Well I am sick of thief constantly getting nerfed so badly. I agree with the many nerfs that have come over the months, but now this is ridiculous. Thieves are not even OP any more, which no class should be but… What I am trying to say is that in the scheme of things overall thieves are not dominant anymore. I would say Mesmers, Necros, Warriors are the strongest classes and Mesmers are still getting good buffs. I just don’t understand the logic behind nerfing thieves more. I am very disgusted in Anet constantly taking viable builds away from Thieves. If they change Acrobatics V to do what they said here I am done with this game. I already had several friends tell me the same too because they are getting fed up. I caught wind of 20 thieves all talking about this today in my guild and they are all feeling the same way. Betrayed by Anet. And they too are at the point where they said enough is enough. The only things Thieves have to stay alive is going invisible. I truly hope that you lose a huge player base Anet if you go through with this nerf on Thieves, you can not just keep screwing over everyone like this at your will. It is not fair. Thieves already get rolled over by Warriors, Necros, Mesmers, and even Engineers that are good. And now you are taking away really only one of the viable thief builds.

I can not wait for ESO to come out, hopefully it is sooner than later.

Again not doing a kittening thing about Death Blossom being a worthless odd man out in the D/D weapon set. So people who want to play this burst spec will still have to rely on their enemies being imbeciles that cannot counter a one-trick-pony. Thank you so much Arenanet

Nemesis.8593:

JonPeters.5630:

Some internal thoughts on the discussion about Necromancers.

…

We talk about a lot of different versions of this trait including moving to master tier, making it on hit instead of on crit, and reworking the numbers to making it more reliable to use and to counter.

All of this back and forth could upset a lot of balance, but if this moved down to master tier Terror would almost certainly be moving up to grandmaster to accommodate. At least then condition necromancers would be 20/30/x/x/x, which just makes so much more sense. The biggest thing holding that back is the lack of a replacement grandmaster in Spite. We aren’t huge fans of weapon or utility type specific traits at this tier otherwise an improved Axe Training might have a shot. This is the crux of the damage necromancer problem right now, and we will talk about it more next week so any discussion on it here will aid us in those talks.

Death Magic
On the defensive side, the Blood and Soul Reaping necros are starting to feel pretty good. The Death line on the other hand is too focused on minions. From Reanimator, which we have heard over and over feels bad as a minor trait, to the fact that 1/3 of the remaining traits are minion traits, to finally the fact that both grandmaster traits are minion traits.

This line receives a lot of discussion as well, but any proposal we talk about always ends up with more work than we have time to build, much less test.

I hope this helps direct discussion a bit, and thanks for your patience,

Jon

Almost all of the people on this forum can testify to my love for the necromancer class, and the respect i have for ArenaNet. How i still advertise the game and the class…
With that being said… allow me to say that while everything you said is true, you speak as if besides all of these… necromancer can survive focus fire, can chase and escape…
We had all of these because we can not survive focus fire, we can not chase… we can not escape !… our damage was all that we had going for us…

I have an idea… one of your best necromancer players fights vs 2 of my people and see if he doesn’t die instantly. Then you get two of your best guys… and i will bring you one of each class (except necromancer) and i will prove to you that you can’t kill him… he will escape you, at least for a minute or more…

Not to sound rude… but have any of you tried playing high end TPvP ?… If so please show me how can you survive focus fire, and be more alive then dead in those situations, which are… almost all the time…
No aegis, no block, no distortion, no invulnerability, no mist form, no revive, no total condition immunity, no total physical damage immunity… no mobility…All we had was our damage which made us really strong 1v1… really bad at everything else.

Take that away from us… you’ll see way less necromancers in TPvP, and that is because people will eventually get tired of fighting a bit then dying from focus fire… fight a bit, die… fight die / low damage = kill nothing because targets always get away… chase = negative.

1.This post shal be here to- meaby then Developers will read it
2.This post explain some of the problem here.
3. Will You dear ANet Teach necro players HOW they can fight on ff in high end TPvP?- i think all necro players will be very grateful for make some video showing this challenge (meaby live stream?).
4.Thank you for Your understanding and patience

Cheers!

The Warriors healing signet needs be nerfed. It’s far too powerful in pvp 1v1 situations. You can’t even kill them if they don’t have poison on them.

Sanduskel.1850:

ANET – I love the thief changes. HOwever, please consider improving ability to create better non stealth builds by thinking through how we can support groups in wvw. thank you.

Which is where Bountiful Theft comes in handy as a support, only the boons you strip are pretty useless, so the drastic drop towards the Vigor uptime would be counter-productive to the idea of them giving us more build diversity.

If you still think it’s a good idea to add a cast time to Shadow Return/Infiltrator’s Return, I still insist that you should consider making it a Stun breaker once again, which would compensate for the nerf.
I agree that Kleptomaniac should be kept as it is since we are putting points into Trickery instead of elsewhere, we get to steal every 29-35s so there shouldn’t be a nerf for the sake of nerfing, you should be making these traits viable at the same time.

Can we get a detailed explanation of the debates around ranger as you have done for many classes?

Evasive arcane+ renewing stamina+ evasive arcane has been a very strong and popular choice in pve ever since release. An enitre playstyle gets crippeled by this one change and I see no reason for it. The three traits get their power from their synergy, they aren’t that strong at all.

While I highly doubt this “discussion” is anything more than an advanced warning that the described changes will be taking place, regardless of public opinion, I will contribute my concerns, criticisms, and suggestions.

I will start by expressing my disappointment that the trend of emphasizing conjured weapons is still continuing with no visible effort on the part of ArenaNet to address the core failure of these skills.

To play an elementalist properly, you need to use all the skills in all your attunements. We cannot sacrifice the very versatility on which we rely simply to gain access to conjured weapons that supersede our attunement-based weapon abilities. The only conjured weapon ability that provides any amount of healing is the frost bow auto-attack, which is a waste to use given the limited charges on these weapons (even with the Conjurer trait). There are no conjured weapon abilities that cleanse conditions, grant swiftness, break stun, etc.

I understand that Anet’s intention is that these weapons be used for only as long as you would normally be in a particular attunement, after which you switch to another, but attunements don’t have 60-second cooldowns, a prohibition in how long I can stay in them, or a requirement to sacrifice a valuable utility slot.

The only way I would consider making a conjured weapon a fixture of my skill bar is if it were re-done to function like an engineer kit. This is something I have discussed with dozens of serious elementalists who all feel the same way. We would be able to use the skills when we want them without sacrificing the use of our other abilities nor having to contend with the dilemma of wasting remaining charges because we have to go back to our normal weapon(s) to put down some healing.

Some of these proposed changes also display contradiction in their intention. You want people to move away from dumping points in arcana and water, but then you move staple adept traits such as Cleansing Wave and Elemental Attunement to higher tiers?

I cannot help but question whether the balance team actually plays the class, because if you did you would be aware that there are two major traits every elementalist needs from the Arcana line: Elemental Attunement (V) and Evasive Arcana (XI). If you didn’t want people to have to dump as many points into the trait line, you wouldn’t bump up the former, you’d bump down the latter.

I see that Cleansing Wave’s importance is going to be mitigated by the introduction of the re-designed Burning Fire (II) trait and Diamond Skin (XI) trait, but I am still not convinced it’s necessary to raise it to the next tier. Burning Fire is set to be a Master trait and Diamond Skin is a Grandmaster trait. Why eliminate all the condition removal available in Adept tier, especially the condition removal present in the Water trait line, which is supposed to be dedicated to exactly this sort of thing?

Furthermore, if you bump up Cleansing Wave you remove the option to take Cantrip Mastery (IX) as a Master trait, which would be yet another (hidden) nerf to cantrip builds. Instead we’ll have to sacrifice the ability to instantly cleanse one condition (by switching to water) with the Soothing Wave (X) trait that would lead us to take Signet of Water (cures one condition every 10 seconds), further occupying a utility slot. Perhaps it’s just me, but I believe traits that require the use of specific skills to be fully beneficial belong firmly in the Master and Grandmaster tiers.

Finally, I would like to state that the changes to attunement recharges, given that most people will continue to run 30 in Arcana, are meaningless. Consider, as well, that an elementalist with 30 in Arcana will still have longer “weapon-swap” cooldowns than a Warrior with 15 in Discipline.

This is what I feel you should do for the upcoming December patch:

• Make conjured weapons function like engineer kits.
• Move Evasive Arcana to Master tier.
• Leave Cleansing Wave and Elemental Attunement as they are.
• If Cleansing Wave is moved up to Master tier, it needs to cure 2 conditions.
• Keep Soothing Wave in Master tier. (Or move it to Adept if Cleansing Wave is bumped up.)
• Apply further reduced cooldowns to attunements.

Something I would love for all professions to have is a signet with the passive effect of +25% movement speed.

It is extremely frustrating if you happen to have a profession which doesn’t have this (Mesmer for example), and when you’re in WvW, you quickly see your zerg fade off into the distance whilst you’re casting focus #4 skill trying desperately to catch up.

I think a +25% passive movement skill for all professions is essential. Being in combat already slows us down to a snails-pace. It even feels as if you’re been blasted with a freeze skill or something, so the minimum all professions should have is this skill, because it’s unfair for some to have it, and others to not have it at all.

Some good changes, but also some others that will further cause huge problems. List of please-for-the-love-of-Abaddon skills to not implement.
Elementalist
Air XI. I personally felt that the recharge time was to high to legitimize going 30 into air magic. 25 second recharge though? That means 3 D/D ele’s can lockdown a large group of people with perma-stun auras. That would be ludicrous.
Diamond Skin: Ele’s really do not need more anti condition skills. A half decent one is already pretty much impossible to kill on my condition necro. Plus they already have a high rate of regen, so staying at 90% hp would not be hard against a condition build.
Engineer
Elixir Infused Bombs: While I do always greatly enjoy a buff to group healing power capabilities, this might be a bit overpowered. Engi’s are already incredibly hard to kill. Perhaps reduce the healing gained to the engi?
Guardian
Kindled Zeal: Lets face it, guardians have very little condition capabilities. Further increasing this trait does not fix this in my eyes. I have no problem with guardian being condition crippled. I would love to see a trait that buffs the damage output of the hammer.
Mesmer
Chaotic Transference + Protected Mantras: Confusion is without question the most powerful condition in the game. It ignores armor, and can lock down melee very effectively. With this proposed change, I know that condition mesmers will have a huge advantage in almost every situation. They will be able to unleash their confusion stacks, which, done right, can stack up quite high, and sit back while they gain a boat load of toughness and even more condition damage. I do not see anyone appreciating this, except of course those condition mesmers.
Necromancer
As a necro main, I disagree with removing bleed stacks from anything. This is currently the only reason why condition necros are viable. Instead I suggest reducing the condition duration of poison, weakness, cripple, and nerfing Signet of Spite.
Ranger
I would agree to a buff to rangers, but the raw damage output they could receive with longbows from this update would leave me very worried. With decent stability access ranger would be alot more viable in sPvP.
Bark Skin: Absolutely ludicrous. I do not know how else to put it, or what else to say, other than that a 50% damage reduction while under 25% hp is an insane advantage. Combine that with Companions Defense and weakness from axe main hand and devourer skill, well, they would be practically un-killable.
Thief
The change to initiative is ballsy, and I would like to see how it pans out.
Sundering Strikes: Would be very overpowered with pistols.
Assassin’s Retreat: I’m not sure giving thieves perma swiftness on top of the highest burst damage in the game would be a good idea. I think engi’s and warriors should not have this either.
Warrior
Great Fortitude+Armored Attack: Warriors already have an insane capacity for power and vitality, I do not think these traits need buffs.
Spiked Armor: 50% uptime of retaliation on a warrior sounds pretty mean. They have an incredible capacity to balance tankiness and damage output. In WvW giving enemies more retaliation would mean heavy aoe classes like ele’s would have an even tougher time staying alive.
Thrill of the Kill: Equals 100% uptime to adrenaline in WvW.

I hope these words find an open ear, because I can honestly say that the proposed changes that I have discussed here will have some major issues if implemented. Thank you for not only reading this but also sharing the proposed changes with the community. Happy balancing to you.

I really enjoy the motivation behind the Engineer changes, so that they reduce the reliance on randomness and gambling on % procs. However, the intent of increasing build diversity has not done much to broaden the versatility within the builds themselves. Modified Ammunition helps, but does not do much to soften the lock-in of certain weapons/skills in other traits. A few comments below are to address that issue and provide more context for the weapon-based trait-lines.

Explosives:
As stands, there is not much to encourage us to make a power-based Explosives-heavy focus meaningful outside of a Grenade-exclusive build.
*Incendiary Powder – Why move to Master tier as-is other than to replace with Accelerant turrets? It still has the potency of an Adept trait. Why not buff inside Master tier so that perhaps it is triggered by all shots, but cannot proc more than every 10s. After all, putting a crit-triggered buff in a Power-line Master tier outside of the Precision line is difficult for a trade-off in Power/Precision).
*Exploit Weakness – excellent change to health threshold as it makes this trait meaningfully synergistic with a Firearms-heavy build (ie, Modified Ammunition).

Proposed change to Explosives Grandmaster:
Grenadier – Grenadier adds a reduction to bomb fuse time from ~2s to instant. Explosives line should be a boon for bomb as well as grenade kits, and GM XI trait should reflect this. This would at least allow the Explosives build to be not as exclusionary and provide a GM support for bomb kits within the Power line.

Firearms:
Clarification on Modified Ammunition: the 2%/condition is applied to kits? I would also like to see a small condition-duration increase for all conditions applied by pistols/rifles added to this trait.
Proposed additional change to Firearms Master Tier:
*Juggernaut – Remove toughness increase, expand the might-tick for any wielded kits (expand tick from 3s to 5s). An overhaul of Juggernaut would allow it to more accurately fit into the Firearms line and have versatility with a number of builds while removing the constraint of having a Master tier trait benefiting a single utility skill/kit.

Inventions:
Interesting start on changes, but still makes Inventions a bizarre mixed-bag in the Master tier.
*Energized Armor – Excellent upgrade to the conversion. Thank you.
*Autotool Installation – Nice attempt to make a turret build durable, but does little to make the Engineer work with the turrets well. Would like to see something along the lines of a protection/aegis for the Engineer when the turrets reach a threshold (25%). This would make deploying turrets even in situations where they will be burned down viable for the Engineer.
*Elixir Infused bombs – Yay! Pure and simple love.

Proposed additional change to Invention Master Tier:
*Reinforced Shield – Would love to see this trait incorporate an increased toughness with not just shield but also wielding kits. This can be gained through removal of toughness on Juggernaut in Firearms (see above)

Please Anet stop to try to improve the engi you always destroy good engi build.

Elementalist:

Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.
Water VIII – Arcane Abatement. Moved to Adept tier

Why?
You tamper with perfectly balanced and really nice to play builds if you do that.
Plus:
You will not get a bigger build variety.
You will not ballance something otherwise unbalanced.
(its surely not unbalanced now, and i don’t see it being unbalanced with the new traits.)

DPS Guardian.
Well, i think you do not see DPS guardian for 2 reasons.
1) People just don’t know/realize how much DPS a guardian can do.
2) They are just not that easy to play on a decent level then e.g. Warrior.
(A DPS Guardian needs to work more to stay alive. they don’t have a high intrinsic survivablity due to passive effects like warriors.)

thought for the ele: make elementals last till death, like ranger spirits and necro minion stay alive i feel then elementals are kinda wasted to bring since they will die after an certain period anyway.

Wait wait wait. On the whole “Weakening Shroud is OP” idea. I just remembered a single thief with 15 points in Deadly Arts and a Shortbow can keep up Weakness indefinitely in AoE. Methinks this renders the whole argument for moving Weakening Shroud invalid…

Likes:

• Elementalist “Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.” I don’t play a condition build on my ele, but I feel this makes a player more willing to go deep into the earth line.

• Elementalist The base cooldown of the attunement changes from 16s to 13s. I feel this is a huge move in opening up build diversity.

Clarification on some skills:

• Engineer “Explosives VI – Exploit Weakness. Increased the health threshold from 25% to 50%” Is there an internal cooldown for this skill? How long does it last?

• Engineer “Firearms XI – Modified Ammunition. This trait now works regardless of equipped weapon.” Is this an increase in regular damage or condition damage?

Tman.6349:

NinjaEd.3946:

Traps

-Merge Master Trapper(V) into Corrosive traps(II). Mainly because the amount of trap related traits are very few on thief, and standing alone are rather weak for their long cd. Also traps don’t seem to have much attention aside from shadow and ambush. Add new trait in Acrobatics ,“Powder traps”, traps create a smoke field when triggered. Field duration 3 seconds, 3s blind per pulse (1.5 seconds per pulse resulting in a max of 2 hits miss).
-Swap Combined Training(X) with Potent Poison(V). Change Potent poison to “Diseased Traps”, Traps spread the conditions of the foe that triggers it to their allies. (occurs immediately after it is triggered, to apply the trap conditions as well). Along the lines of epidemic, the goal being to make aoe conditions on thief more rewarding, the bleed on sb is rather weak and caltrops can be avoided quite easily or even ignored in larger groups.

Others
-Slowed pulse, change to apply 10s regeneration if you take 10% of your max health in condition damage. ICD of 15 seconds.
-Improvisation, transfer 1 condition you are suffering from to your foe when you steal along with its current effects. Take away the full rng effect of this skill, and thief doesn’t use bundles.. so sorry to break it to you.
-Power shots, also add increased range to sb and Harpoon gun. 100 just so we can spec to be long range, closer to being on par with other professions, who get 1200 range on land.
-Merge Fleet shadow (VI) into Fleet of Foot(VII). Change Fleet of foot to remove 1 condition when you evade an attack with an ICD of 8 seconds. More options to remove conditions outside of stealth using the next best tool thief has to survive, dodging. Perhaps it can have no ICD but swap places with Hard to catch (useless skill atm). It would be rather strong at that point and Should require a heavy investment but pay off for non-stealth builds.
-Hard to catch, change to break stun and grant stability for 1 second on incoming disable. Same ICD. Whether it moves down or stays in grandmaster, the random teleport WHICH btw proc’s even if you have stability, is just horrendous considering the errors shadow stepping runs into across uneven terrain.
-Merge Long reach (VI) into Bountiful Theft (VII). Long reach is NEVER taken over the numerous other major traits that by far exceed its use.
-New trait “Refreshing signet” signet’s maintain their passive effects for a short while after being used. (5 seconds?). This mainly ties into SoM, and justifying its active but also works well on Assassin’s signet, since 15% bonus dmg is actually incorrect in its own way, because you lose the power it grants.

yes the pistol MH is kinda garbage and PP thieves don’t use it for damage, we use unload and only auto while we wait for our HUGE ini. expenditure to regenerate. ALL pistol skills have crazy ini. costs in comparison to the damage that they do but that’s exactly the thing i’m worried about with this patch is stealing and meld with shadows are my main two ways of being able to keep up with the redic amount of ini. that pistols drain. with this nerf i will be able to attack 4 times LESS a minute and i’m not OP by any means already. i guess we can just throw the baby out with the bathwater and hopefully one day we’ll just scrap PP altogether

Kinda bummed me out when they decided to continuously nerf #2 on pistol mh. I mean immobilize is fine, but you put it on a “spammable” skill, nerf the vuln stacks, and bump the initiative cost. It’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. That is no way to rework a weapon set, pistol is just plain weak.

P/p thieves have to rely on 1 skill basically, unload. The aa is slow and condi based not DD, #4 is fine and #5 really costs a ton of initative for little gain to a p/p thief. Thief has very few weapon choices, dual skills and stealth attacks are the only real diversity between them, but Anet can’t seem to settle on their balance so they keep nerfing them until they all suck. Sorry, but from a thief day 1 and watching the meta shift over and over all I see is less reward to playing thief.

I think it’s implementing too many Hammer Warrior nerfs at one time. Hammer’s gonna be near useless in solo PvE if you’re not specced to damage. Just implement the Unsuspecting Foe and Burst Mastery nerfs and leave the hammer skills alone, that way the bursty PvP Hammer warrs still get nerfed while not affecting PvE Hammer users as much.

I don’t know if that is something that other thiefs want also but i think it would be great if you keep nerfing the invisibility skills that you might put some focus on the other mechanics the thief has in his repatoir. I would like to see more use of the shadowsteps in an offensive way (and i don’t mean the 2nd swordskill) so i would be nice if you can use him on target also to make him more effective in attacks, i also would recommand if you will be hasted for a short time after the step so you can chase better and more which is very crucial for the playstyle of the thief.

It might be also an solution if you gave thief the oportunity to attack their targets with the “stealthskill” in a short periode after those shadowsteps to make invis less important for attacking, so that the focus of the invisskills is for scouting and escaping.

For ranger, please consider merging piercing arrows and quick draw. It is absolutely ridiculous that ranger longbow needs 50 trait points for maximum effectiveness and shortbow needs 40.

Also consider adding good condition removal into the Nature Magic traitline, that way we can have viable builds without having to invest 30 points into WS for Empathetic Bond.

Please, please consider this.

What I’d like to see in general, for all classes, is traits that apply in both land and water. As is, if I want to be effective, I have to make sure I’m not equipping a trait for a weapon or skill I can’t even use underwater. Makes combat feel much less natural.

Phenn.5167:

Wait wait wait. On the whole “Weakening Shroud is OP” idea. I just remembered a single thief with 15 points in Deadly Arts and a Shortbow can keep up Weakness indefinitely in AoE. Methinks this renders the whole argument for moving Weakening Shroud invalid…

Hah. Haha. No.

You can get about 1/3 uptime, 5s with 15 DA, 15s cooldown per target.

On another note, are we going to get a wall-of-text response for Thief any time soon, or are we just going to be left with Tyler’s “MASSSSSSSSIIIIIIIVE buff” post, basically ignoring all of our concerns?

From my point of view of engineer rebalance:

Explosives V – Incendiary Powder. Moved to Master tier.
Appreciable nerf for condi\hybrid builds.

Alchemy 15 – Transmute. Increased % chance from 8% to 100%. This effect can now only trigger once every 15 seconds.
You trying to dispose of random factor. But as i can see it will make trait much useless. Cause many classes\weapons have condition on autoattack. So if they knows new mechanic of trait, they prefer to start atack with auto (or other cheap attack) to set trait on CD.

Suggest to ponder on these nerfs.

Note: Skip to bold section for the potential of this ranger build

I had an idea for the Ranger not long ago, this patch will (I think) make it pretty much OP, and I’m going to be very honest and come out with it.

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

I like the idea behind this change of giving viable support/damage options, its a great direction to be heading in, but its opened up a whole new kind of support ranger (I’m doing that I expect this change to accomplish A, but I think it will actually accomplish B thing, you’re welcome!)

Before I list this builds qualities, I’d like to note that, to achieve all of this, I have only spent 40 trait points, picked utility skills and chosen 2 runes! I could go very bunkery with my other 30 points against conditions or physical damage, take some more damage, could be using warhorn for blast finishers, lots of possibilities for more support/damage/bunkering from the rest of this build.

You’ve talked about wanting to improve support lately, rangers were already top dog, this build would have:
1. Perma Regen/Swiftness uptime for allies in a 600 radius (regen based off likely settlers amulet healing power too!)
2. One of the best sources of AoE protection there is
3. Perma Burning on the target in most team fight situations (even with the reduction, you only need 3 more individuals or any off the “petting zoo” specs to get very high burn duration)
4. Longest water field in the game (still)
5. An AoE res, albeit a small one

It might seem that all thats been added is perma regen, but Spirit Rangers are already pretty firmly implanted in the meta, though Warriors took us out of it somewhat. With the changes to other traits, and the potential mobility (think Greatsword + Swiftness + Sword 2) of this very supporty class, which has the potential for good damage or bunkering as well I think this could be dangerously OP, to the point that it becomes essential to have one.

I hope you appreciate the honesty, and look forward to hearing anything you have to say on this build

Auesis.7301:

Phenn.5167:

Wait wait wait. On the whole “Weakening Shroud is OP” idea. I just remembered a single thief with 15 points in Deadly Arts and a Shortbow can keep up Weakness indefinitely in AoE. Methinks this renders the whole argument for moving Weakening Shroud invalid…

Hah. Haha. No.

You can get about 1/3 uptime, 5s with 15 DA, 15s cooldown per target.

On another note, are we going to get a wall-of-text response for Thief any time soon, or are we just going to be left with Tyler’s “MASSSSSSSSIIIIIIIVE buff” post, basically ignoring all of our concerns?

No, he’s right. Shortbow 4 is a poison field lasting 4 seconds, and shortbow 2 is a blast finisher. A blast finisher in a poison field is AoE weakness for 5 seconds.

Impact.2780:

Auesis.7301:

Phenn.5167:

Wait wait wait. On the whole “Weakening Shroud is OP” idea. I just remembered a single thief with 15 points in Deadly Arts and a Shortbow can keep up Weakness indefinitely in AoE. Methinks this renders the whole argument for moving Weakening Shroud invalid…

Hah. Haha. No.

You can get about 1/3 uptime, 5s with 15 DA, 15s cooldown per target.

On another note, are we going to get a wall-of-text response for Thief any time soon, or are we just going to be left with Tyler’s “MASSSSSSSSIIIIIIIVE buff” post, basically ignoring all of our concerns?

No, he’s right. Shortbow 4 is a poison field lasting 4 seconds, and shortbow 2 is a blast finisher. A blast finisher in a poison field is AoE weakness for 5 seconds.

Right, but that’s not indefinitely. You’ll run out of initiative within 2 fields + 4 blasts and will have served no other purpose other than putting down the poison and weakness which will be removed fairly soon after, especially after Opportunist gets nerfed to complete uselessness. Someone doing that with Shortbow instead of just hitting hard with continuous CBs or simply running melee is a waste of a tourney spot.

haviz.1340:

Clark Skinner.4902:

Elemental Attunement moved to Master tier.

Most eles use this trait. You said you wanted to discourage putting points into arcane, but every ele who only had 10 points will now have to jump up to 20.

Every ele player I know that has just 10 points in arcana use renewing stamina, not elemental attunement.

I use 10 in arcana and I have elemental attunement.

If I could make a request I’v love to see arcane fury buffed up just a little. Considering how easy it is for alot of other classes to keep up high fury without even having to try while we get 2 seconds after switching to maybe get a crit in and be forced to waste attunement cooldowns to try for fury seems a bit much.

Sanduskel.1850:

ANET – I love the thief changes. HOwever, please consider improving ability to create better non stealth builds by thinking through how we can support groups in wvw. thank you.

There’s already a build setup to do that, and I’ve been doing it since the game was released.

Stop relying on a Dagger in your hand

I’m just curious why you would think of nerfing Gaurdian staff 3 “Symbol of Swiftness” from 8 seconds to a 4 second swiftness. If this is a case the 1 second W/Swiftness per pulse should be removed and have a continuous +4 seconds; I find myself using this skill when traveling long distances. The cool down time already makes it difficult to sustain swiftness w.o outside sources +boon duration “Retreat” “Safe Your Selves”. They also have long cool down. I don’t say i want to be able to perma swiftness, this wasn’t the case before. 15 seconds (12 traited) for a 4 second swiftness surge is completely useless unless i need to block something with Staff 5 “Line of Warding” that is chasing me, maybe while in AC final stretch to the boss, i wouldn’t even consider using the staff much. It would also be a waste if I cast “Symbol of Swiftness” while currently having any amount of swiftness already, casting to soon and running over my symbol for +1 second -_-". heh ive done that a few times and was stuck walking my normal pace until all my skills have finish cooling down. I find it ok if it is a +8 second swiftness boost and miss it. but for something as small as a 4 seconds would be, annoying.

Kromium, they have changed it to apply 4 seconds of swiftness regardless of whether or not you already have swiftness. Each pulse now applies 4 seconds of swiftness. Its far better support for the start of a tPvP match, but its probably a pretty lackluster change for WvW. Then again, troops of people could run over them in WvW I imagine

Nice improvements with the 400 to 600 toughness (dmg reduction of about 30% while casting really nice)

The change from adapt to master and the cool down to adapt is also nice it can give you a good defensive interrupt build I`ll try it out

But in my opinion you don’t get players to mantras because of these changes. I like playing them because they are instant and you can also play when you’re disabled.

What they really need is a bit more gameplay bit less casting bot.

What i`d lile to see:
effect after reload the mantra(aoe) based on mantra and 2 normal casts for yourself or opponent.

more range for stability and condition remove

more group healing with Inspration X but with cooldown

i also want to see how much 4% dmg for XI duelling is in real

elite mantra (could be TW or Mass Invis…) eg. 2 cast 3or4 seconds tw =9 or 12 seconds with traid