Guild Wars 2

SynfulChaot.3169:

liefbread.9513:

Isn’t there a ranger signet cooldown reduction in the first traitline?… 20% or something?

trait IV?

There is, but it only reduces the cooldown. Nothing more. Most classes signet cooldown reduction trait also gives an additional effect. Rangers don’t get that directly. We need to pick up an additional Grandmaster trait to get a secondary effect on our signets.

Elementalists have 5 separate Signet traits, plus 2 extra horrible shared ones. So 7 in total, including the 20% reduction only one you hate.

Actually, only the necro and thief have something extra added to their 20% cooldown reduction trait. No one has as many useless and spread traits as the Elementalist, though.

That ranger trait that gives 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds on Signet use is pretty weak, though, seeing as Necros get it tacked on to their cooldown reduction trait.

Genreninja.8516:

I’d like a shout that reveals. Maybe not completly, but if I use it it’ll give some indication of where the target is. Flash of light, whisp of sound waves bouncing off them, blurred faded unselectable image. it wouldn’t completely cancel their stealth, but give me a way to defend myself and think about positioning. give it a long cooldown if you want, I only wanna use it once per fight anyway.

New trait:
“Echolocation” -> your shouts ping nearby ennemies on the minimap
Awaken your bat sense!

JonathanSharp.7094:

Better fast cast ground targeting:
We split this into 3 different options; so that players can more easily cater how ground targeting works for them.

1. Double tap to cast
2. Press the button to cast
3. Release the button to cast
   SO GET YO CAST ON!

I would really like an option which is “Ground Target at Center of Current Target”. In other words an option to let me skip picking a place on the ground to drop the skill — instead it would put the skill reticule centered on my current target.

This would make my life so much easier as a grenade engineer.

juno.1840:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Better fast cast ground targeting:
We split this into 3 different options; so that players can more easily cater how ground targeting works for them.

1. Double tap to cast
2. Press the button to cast
3. Release the button to cast
   SO GET YO CAST ON!

I would really like an option which is “Ground Target at Center of Current Target”. In other words an option to let me skip picking a place on the ground to drop the skill — instead it would put the skill reticule centered on my current target.

This would make my life so much easier as a grenade engineer.

Yes. This. A ‘cast centered on current target’ would be truly awesome.

Further thoughts on Ranger traiting “issues”;

Having thought a little more on the traiting for rangers its become obvious to me that traits need moving around the trees.

For example “Spotter” trait adds precision to your allies. Why is this in the marksmanship tree? This should clearly be in the Skirmishing tree where the main stat addition is, ya know, precision.

Another example is “Beastmasters Bond”; Again wth is this doing in the marksmanship tree? The name, the skill effect and its usage are clearly designed for the beastmaster tree.

Two obvious and clear examples of bad traiting layout for Rangers.

juno.1840:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Better fast cast ground targeting:
We split this into 3 different options; so that players can more easily cater how ground targeting works for them.

1. Double tap to cast
2. Press the button to cast
3. Release the button to cast
   SO GET YO CAST ON!

I would really like an option which is “Ground Target at Center of Current Target”. In other words an option to let me skip picking a place on the ground to drop the skill — instead it would put the skill reticule centered on my current target.

This would make my life so much easier as a grenade engineer.

I mentioned about 13 pages ago that having an option/slider on the size/visibility of the mouse being added would be a brilliant option. However if they could implement this idea alone the whole patch would, to me, be a welcome one!

+1 to you.

Edit: having the skill be unusable when out of range would be fine too.

About cast ground targeting

• For example, if I want to cast a 1200 range 360 radius AoE on a target which may stay at 1550 range, it sometimes is inconvenient to place the targeting circle to the margin.

IF, the ground targeting can be simply improved to be able to automatically judge the farthest range and cast spells on the location — even if the targetet is out of the spell range — many things will become more convenient.

—

Since you’re doing balance issue …..

May I ask if we can have “chargeable” skills? There are so many skills/spells which have incredibly long animation times such as Dragon’s Tooth and Protector’s Strike. Their paper numbers may look powerful; however they are not that useful in PvE and are <beep!> in WvW and PvP. The key is simple: those skills are too slow. Why don’t you make some chargeable skills so players can tap them for instant usefulness or charge them for more powerful effectiveness.

—

Balance — about warrior

• When can we warriors decide how many bars of adrenaline to spend? Why not make F1 (spend 1 bar), F2 (spend 2 bars) and F3 (spend 3 bars)?

• Hundred Blades …. I seriously think it should be brust skill but not just a greatsword skill 2.

• Cleansing Ire (trait). People like longbow more recently becuase it always works on longbow brust. It won’t work on other brust skills when players miss or are interrupted.

• Imbalance between traits (This is actually a cross-profession issue. There are many similar situation within each profession)

ex1: Deep Cuts (50% bleeding duration) vs Hemophilia (20% bleeding duration)
While warriors’ sword provide basic 8s bleeding and nec’s dagger provide basic 4s bleeding, don’t you feel that these 2 adept traits (Deep Cuts and Hemophilia) are compeltely imbalanced? (especially nec are considered that they are good at applying conditions)

ex2: Slashing Power (increase 10% dmg for both greatsword and spear) vs Blademaster (increase 10% critical rate for sword skills). While Slashing Power can fully affect 12 skills (including brust), Blademaster can only affect 4 or 6 skills (offhand difference). Do you really think they are as valuable as each other (both are master traits)?

—

About Ele

• There is no trait for Focus and most focus skills are <beep!> (there are more suggestions and complaints in ele forum.

• About traits. Please don’t force players to invest 30 Arcana for basic survivability. Could you please mix them up? Change Arcana line to make it more focus on Attunement and attuning; and move some origin Arcana trait effects to elemental lines.

Really, please provide more multi-usefulness traits such as Two-Handed Mastery (Guardian) and Right-Hand Strength (Guardian), less arguments will exist.

Please let us necromancers benefit is some form from life-siphoning while in deathshroud. The whole life-siphoning is completely senseless as long as it doesn´t even synergize with our main class mechanic.

(Sorry if this posted twice)

While we’re on this topic of balances and changes I felt I should put my two cents in about ranger pets. Mainly, their imbalance in skill sets.
Arenanet has already stated that they want to make support builds more viable, which I heartily applaud, and say that they are going to change support pets on rangers to make them more effective. While I feel this is long overdue, it also points out a huge dichotomy to me that has long been left unaddressed. The ratio between pets that have skills that are support, , like regeneration, protection, or condition removal, versus the amount of pets that we have access too that are entirely based on damage or condition application, is grossly disproportionate.

For people who aren’t familiar with ranger pets, (or what skills they actually have because they look at them as a friend of mine does, as a “Meat Shield” and “Bait”) I’ll break it down as I see it, in a list of pets and what they do. I will, though, be leaving out the Hall of Monuments pets and aquatic pets for the sake of conciseness, and because most pets are utilized terrestrially anyway.

“Combative” Pets:
-Bears (Black, Arctodus, Polar Murellow); bleed, weaken, poison, chill
-Birds (all); bleed, bleed, chill, blind
-Canine (Alpine Wolf, Hyena, Drakehound, Wolf); chill, summon ally, immobilize, fear
-Devourer (all); poison, bleed, poison
-Drake (all); chill, summon insect cloud for damage, lighting [bounces], burn
-Feline (Jaguar, Lynx, Snow Leopard); stealth [for the pet], bleed, chill
-Moa (Pink, White); daze, chill
-Porcine (all); find a random improvised weapon [similar to thief steal]
-Spider (all); vulnerability, poison, immobilize

“Support” Pets
-Brown Bear; Cure one condition on pet and nearby allies (range 600)
-Fern Hound; regeneration
-Jungle Stalker; grants might to nearby allies
-Moa (Blue, Red); grant protection to nearby allies, grant might to nearby allies

To wrap that up, rangers have 33 pets that are actively combative in their skill sets; 6 that bleed, 3 that apply vulnerability, 4 that poison, 6 that chill, 1 that blinds, 1 that confuses, ect.

Compare this to FIVE total pets that do anything to actively support allies. That’s a ratio that seems rather absurd to me. As a ranger, why do I need 6 pets that do basically the same thing, chill an enemy? Or four that poison? Comparing this to the number of pets that we have that do anything traditionally thought of as “supporty” in a party, it seems profoundly unbalanced.

So while I greatly appreciate Arenanet working on making more support builds, I feel that more needs to be done for ranger pets than addressing 5 pets out of 38. I don’t necessarily mean that we need MORE pets, but maybe we need to look at how many skills are re-used over and over and don’t need to be, like chill, and perhaps work towards giving rangers more options on pet skills that focus on TEAM support.

Moas are a great example of a team support pet that’s in desperate need of help. I’ve been growing fond of my Blue Moa’s protection, but all Moas have this little unloved skill that rangers can’t control called “Harmonic Cry”, which heals allies. This would be great for team play, except for a few factors. One, this skill only has an area of effect of 240. Two, Moas are melee attackers, so unless you’re on top of whatever the pet is attacking, you have no chance at this bonus. And finally, Moas, while being melee, aren’t really tanks like the brown bear, and they die fairly quickly, so if I want my pet to live long enough to grant protection to my party, I have to keep it out of combat, which means this skill gets lost and is useless.

This brings up my final point. We as rangers have five pets we can utilize to help support our party. However, every f2 skill, upon activation, sends the pet using it running out at our target, putting it into combat. This is even though the skills themselves, like “Protecting Screech” and “Shake it off” are more like shouts, and aren’t attacks at all. So why does it make sense that if I want my Brown Bear to use “Shake it off”, I have to send it running at something like a boss, where it will no doubt die very quickly, when the skill itself isn’t an attack? This makes me have to keep juggling my pet, even when set on “Peaceful”, between attacking something and using my f3 to recall it EVERY TIME I want it to use a skill and still stay where I can keep an eye on it and follow me out of danger like red circles.

That all said, I really love the concept of what Arenanet is doing with upping the viability of support, but I really think more could be done for ranger pets than just buffing five of them, and I really hope this gets some consideration. Thanks for putting up with my essay. Best of luck, and keep up the good work Anet.

Lexandro.1456:

Further thoughts on Ranger traiting “issues”;

Having thought a little more on the traiting for rangers its become obvious to me that traits need moving around the trees.

For example “Spotter” trait adds precision to your allies. Why is this in the marksmanship tree? This should clearly be in the Skirmishing tree where the main stat addition is, ya know, precision.

Another example is “Beastmasters Bond”; Again wth is this doing in the marksmanship tree? The name, the skill effect and its usage are clearly designed for the beastmaster tree.

Two obvious and clear examples of bad traiting layout for Rangers.

Spotter is in the Marksman tree because well…it’s what a Marskman does, it SPOTS things.

The Beastmaster one, I agree with. That’s a Beastmaster trait. I know they included it in the Ranger’s attack thing so zerker Rangers have some “get out of jail free” skills, but still…

ensoriki.5789:

Ummm Elementalist signet traits is 20%
So is Mesmers at just 20% and Guardian and Warrior.
The only onse with a multi function Signet reduction trait are thief and Necro
How is that “Most classes”?
Most classes only get 20% on a single trait.

Avatara.1042:

Elementalists have 5 separate Signet traits, plus 2 extra horrible shared ones. So 7 in total, including the 20% reduction only one you hate.

Actually, only the necro and thief have something extra added to their 20% cooldown reduction trait. No one has as many useless and spread traits as the Elementalist, though.

That ranger trait that gives 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds on Signet use is pretty weak, though, seeing as Necros get it tacked on to their cooldown reduction trait.

Someone already corrected me. Still would be nice for it to all be equal. For each of the classes to have one extra effect on their recharge reducing trait.

Holland.9351:

Too much focus on pets for the Ranger. Pets aren’t that capable of a platform to be given this much attention without first fixing its issues.

Pets are a handicap to the Ranger is many situations, which should never even be possible to happen.

Yes there is a lot of focus on pets for the ranger. Because it is our class mechanic and it is pretty broken. ANet has made it clear that ranger = pet. So until they decide to change our core mechanic, which is highly doubtful, we will remain attached to our pets.

Lexandro.1456:

Further thoughts on Ranger traiting “issues”;

Having thought a little more on the traiting for rangers its become obvious to me that traits need moving around the trees.

For example “Spotter” trait adds precision to your allies. Why is this in the marksmanship tree? This should clearly be in the Skirmishing tree where the main stat addition is, ya know, precision.

Another example is “Beastmasters Bond”; Again wth is this doing in the marksmanship tree? The name, the skill effect and its usage are clearly designed for the beastmaster tree.

Two obvious and clear examples of bad traiting layout for Rangers.

Or the fact that it is fully impossible to take all longbow traits. I’m counting remorseless as a longbow trait as it now has stealth as a trigger, and only the longbow is capable of self-applying stealth. That’s one grandmaster and two master longbow traits, all in the same tree.

That’s not even getting into any other tree or weapon…

Lithril Ashwalker.6230:

Orpheal.8263:

Posting 6:

*New V trait: Shadow Clones
If you get hit by attacks that deal with 1 hit more than 10% of your maximum health, you’ll create a Shadow Clone of your self that will aid in battle for 20 seconds. (up to maximum 3) They are weaker than the original and have lesser health, but they shoud provide a nice distraction and increase in temporal dps…. (internal cooldown of 5 seconds) Shadow Clones look clearly different than normal players, similar like phantasms, but just a dark bluish/black like transparance instead of that pink from phantasms and theirmake a dark smoke trail when they move that blinds if you cross those trails as foe.

Link

That was just 1 source of inspiration…
And no, thread is no single “let us nerf the thief into the ground” thread because I’m standing strongly to buff certain aspects clearly for them to make their whole gameplay alot more fun to play so that thiefs should become much better in group support and get more skilll variability through a much better integrated interacting venom system that replaces steal as main special class mechanic together with changings to the the overall steal mechanic making it an automatism instead of an “on button click reaction feature” and increasign the amount of how many items they can steal to make stealiong a more important integrated part of the whole thief gameplay, because currently the whole steal mechanic is nothing more than a lame boring shadow step skill and shadow stepping itself is nothing more than a lame boring instant warp mechanic, that could be (also visualy especially9 alot more cooler and nice to use as a kind of “sub mode” that changes for a short time the gameplay of the thief, similar like stealth does, only that shadow stepping should be based around dodging attacks automatically like a kind of short time based damage immunity/block mechanic like the other classes have those mechanics too to negate for a short moment all damage without having to dodge by button press and waste endurance..
Thiefs should be the fastet class of all, they should let us make to fell that also by basically “running so fast, that they can avoid damage just by running fast that you can just see only their shadows’s stepping”

Look at the shadow stepping animation of assassins in Blades & Soul and you’ll grasp surely what I mean with that and try here to express with my words. Such animations do look epic and cool and aren’t just a lame instant warp. They make your characters look very swift and agile and thats the thing, that thiefs in GW2 should let their players feel to. Currently in regard of animations, thiefs feel like slow slugs when it comes down to movements and their animations.

Sanduskel.1850:

Black Teagan.9215:

Sanduskel.1850:

My thief fully heals while stealthed…

…and your heal stay even so under the heal from the warriorsignet, and stealth is not permanent

What are you trying to communicate?

I think these changes are a big buff to thieves. Thank you anet!

I think what he’s trying to say is that yes a thief can heal good while staying in stealth (assuming 30 pts in SA) and doing no damage, accomplishing nothing. Whereas a warrior can also heal to full, without stealth, while maintaining full dps. As for this buff to thieves… I think you read the wrong patch notes, there is no improvement to thief at all, while its not as kittenome claim, there is certainly no positive. Care to share what your smoking?

No need for petty insults. The stealth counter will make the game fun again. It’s really not fun being able to perma stealth without consequences. You also missed the several improvements that anet is giving us. From a WvWvW thief, thank yo Anet!

juno.1840:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Better fast cast ground targeting:
We split this into 3 different options; so that players can more easily cater how ground targeting works for them.

1. Double tap to cast
2. Press the button to cast
3. Release the button to cast
   SO GET YO CAST ON!

I would really like an option which is “Ground Target at Center of Current Target”. In other words an option to let me skip picking a place on the ground to drop the skill — instead it would put the skill reticule centered on my current target.

This would make my life so much easier as a grenade engineer.

+1 please!!! This would be incredible

Sanduskel.1850:

No need for petty insults. The stealth counter will make the game fun again. It’s really not fun being able to perma stealth without consequences. You also missed the several improvements that anet is giving us. From a WvWvW thief, thank yo Anet!

I was speaking specifically to thief related changed, other improvements aside, I dont see anything positive that relates to thief. As for perma-stealth without consequences, I agree entirely, however this rock/paper/scissors nonsense is not the answer. Its actually very very simple to fix, put a 3 second ICD on infusion of shadow, no more perma stealth build and it doesnt hurt any legitimate stealth build/use. But giving other classes a literal I Win button against thief is just terrible design

juno.1840:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Better fast cast ground targeting:
We split this into 3 different options; so that players can more easily cater how ground targeting works for them.

1. Double tap to cast
2. Press the button to cast
3. Release the button to cast
   SO GET YO CAST ON!

I would really like an option which is “Ground Target at Center of Current Target”. In other words an option to let me skip picking a place on the ground to drop the skill — instead it would put the skill reticule centered on my current target.

This would make my life so much easier as a grenade engineer.

Not going to happen imo, i mean, if it’s centered on your target, it’s no more a Ground Targeted Spell…

That said, i 100% agree that a rework/QoL change to grenade auto (just that, 2-5 are ok GtAoE) is in order.

The majority of your posts on the thief boils down to: ‘Because other classes can now do some of what the thief can do, the thief should give even less opportunities for counterplay to compensate.’

A. Buffs to other class in areas previously exclusive to the thief, are not thief nerfs, and therefore do not warrant buffs to compensate.

No, this isn’t true.. my suggestions I made try to aim only for the goal to make out of the thief that, what they should be – the true and only real masters of stealth.
This alone isn’t being done only by having 1 single skill with the most longest stealth duration that is coming by an utility skill or having easy access to it by one single weapon skill that basically costs directly half of all your initiative for that.

Its done by the fact, that a thief’s stealth should be in any objective, in any situation superior or at least same as powerful to any stealth that other classes have.
Theres currently way more than enough of counterplay to specific overpowered class builds to easily destroy thiefs into the ground without any great risks or effort, like those super annoying bunker build eles that absolutely eat no damage in 1v1 situations, nor 1v2…

Alot of people are so feared of stealth ganking, that they absolutely are overseeing how absolutely overpowered alot of the other class builds are as they are mostly so self beloved in their own “main classes”, that their views aren’t objective.
Thats also why I don’t say, just nerf simply everything down, only so that thiefs can become same as epicly OP like all other classes.

Thats why I focused my nerf suggestions only into very specific builds of very specific classes that in my view destroy the overall balance of the game and that is in my humble opinion every single “bunker build”

GW2’s key philosophy was not to have the holy trinity. To the holy trinity belongs not only the healer, but ALSO the TANKER and nothing else are these bunker builds, they are TANKS, made for 100% pure survival and in that they are in GW2 by far way too superior in that due to way too good automatic self heal abilities that auto regen and especially to the next point that I strongly suggest should get the thief improved in alot – due to the heavy lack of boon stripping skills!
The thief class is in its whole class design so much predestined to be the main boon stripper for this game (stealing boons), yet this class has nearly no skills that have the ability to strip off boons or at least the chance to do that. No traits that support that and could improve the thief alot more as a , you guess it GROUP SUPPORTER >.>

The thief is a class, that uses basically currently only like 30% of all the potential this class has to be a good class, because of lots of too week traits, the loss of half our skill/traits when entiring water, whats totally ridiculous and so halfheartedly implemented class mechanics like steal, venoms and shadow steps which could be all massively improved in their ways of how these mechanics work to increase the fun of playing that class in a group.
The Shortbow especially would be such a perfect choice for better group play as a thief, if they would improve just the effects/traits based around such skills like Trick Shot or Splitter Bomb like my example suggestings show, what could be done with these skills, especially Trick Shot… due to its very helpful ricochet effect that could be useful in stipping off boons or curing conditions of multiple foes/allies in the near of the targeted foe where the ricocheting arrow bounces around or where the next splitter bomb is close to explode.
I mean, the ricocheting staff auto attack of a mesmer even has the group support of giving nearby allies per every shot a randomous boon.
Why the heck can’t they give then not the thief’s Trick Shot the ability to cure randomous conditions on nearby allies when traited for that or stripping off boons at a certain chance if they hit critical, when traited for that…
The mesmer doesn’t even have to trait something to let the staff auto attack be a very good group support that gives every ally in a matter of seconds multiple boons.
Especially again in that cases its a horrible game balance desaster, that there are no thiefs, that can easily strip of that massive amount of boons as a counter balance what could be a great thing for thief group play to shine in stealing of boons from their enemies and by that making the lifes for their enemies alot harder to stack up massive amounts of boons too easily.

Well I’m pretty bummed… I have been using a P/P thief since launch and have felt I have always been at a disadvantage due to numerous factors.

1) P/P doesn’t have any stealth attacks like all the other thief weapon combos…
2) Weak auto attack
3) Unload costs a ton of initiative.
4) There are no skills for a P/P thief that increase mobility besides stealth and the trait that increases movement speed when stealthed.
5) Stealth is very difficult to incorporate into a thief using P/P eliminating its best advantage

Whatever maybe ill wait another year to see some improvement on this forgotten class.

Adding more stealth to engineers has me a bit worried. Bunker engineers are already becoming problematic in sPvP and WvW. I would prefer to see an improvement to their weapon skills and/or single target damage rather than giving them even more survival options to use while they drop heavy AoE.

Aza.2105:

Mr. Sharp,

One really underused guardian skill that comes to mind is bow of truth. No one really uses it, its very ineffective and clunky. The heal is weak and doesn’t scale with healing power. The condition removal is not under your control. There is no reason to ever take the weapon what so ever.

What if bow of truth was reworked into something different? Maybe a spirit weapon that provides cc and other unique effects.

Maybe it can do damage and chill and blind the target for each hit. Its command skill could be a damaging aoe, aoe chill and gives targets the reveal debuff. Making it a anti stealth tool.

I also feel that its still a bit too punishing to be a spirit weapon user. The durations are very short, compared to the other summon classes. And without the trait they die on command. Could their durations be increased to actually last a while? In pve the duration should be indefinite.

They die easily and have a long cooldown, so there already exists a window to punish the summoner.

your a guardian, if your experienced in your class thieves shouldnt really be able to take you out anyway…i disagree with your request.

Conncept.7638:

Black Teagan.9215:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Conncept.7638:

Black Teagan.9215:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Fade.7658:

This thread has essentially become a forum for suggestions on how to nerf thieves into the ground.

i didn’t read the whole thing and haven’t seen a single post about thieves but all stealth related skills must be toned tone. A game trying to become esports has no counter for the stealth mechanic is laughable.

Stealth have enough counter, but this isnt the reason for my reply.

The thiefbalance (his low hp and no exist deff), was build around the fact that stealth has direct counter. That mean if all class a stealthcounter skill and the thief dont a buff in health, heal or dmg, to equalizes this, will this result in a nerf.

A counter is not a counter when it is solely in the hands of the person who needs to be countered. In it’s current state, being entirely in the hands of the thief, revealed is a control mechanism, not a counter. When it is available to others, then it’s a counter.

And if you say or even think ‘AoE Spam’, your opinion is void. AoE spam works in most other games because they have resource control and much more limited movement. Resource control allows the developers to make low CD AoEs and rely on ‘mana’ to balance their use. More limited movement sets a a clear range where the stealthed player could be. Excepting thieves, GW2 has no resource control and almost no spammable AoEs, and the distance a thief is able to cover is not only huge compared to most games, is by far the most of any class in the game itself.

Furthermore, in case you haven’t noticed, the same pool of stats are available to everyone in the game, thieves can build any stat just as well as any other class The difference is, because of zero counterplay defensive mechanics, they don’t even need certain stats. You don’t ‘balance’ something by sacrificing something that wasn’t needed in the first place.

perfectly well explained and ppl that play thief and defend it to death so their little stealth never gets a counter should think for a sec.

Nope, what liefbread wrote is “perfectly explained”.

And pls dont write anything about the thief or his mechanics, if you have no clue.

“i play mesmer, thief is all i find during solo roams, i know how it works thank you…”

Fighting against a class is not the same, like to play the class

I have played a thief, it garners no challenge and frankly, requires little if any brainpower. It is the easiest to class to play in the game, with the least amount of risk for the greatest amount of reward.

Now if you are capable of addressing anything I wrote, or defending anything you wrote, with a stronger argument than ‘pls dont write anything’, I would love to hear it. Because, the answer to your completely unjustified request, is no. And if you are incapable of defending your stance, then either your stance is wrong, or you are not familiar enough with the subject to be addressing it in the first place.

do so sir, please show me your “god build” that doesnt use any “brainpower” that is op, and can solo any class any build…record and post the build on youtube. share to all, then maybe well side with you…if not kitten.

Don’t provide a counter to stealth. Please don’t. Thieves are squishy and when they cloak is because their health is very low. If you do, what is the point of stealth?

Stealth isn’t made worthless by having counters. The problem a lot of people have is they seem to believe stealth is balanced among other strategies and thus doesn’t deserve a counter because “Mechanic X” doesn’t have one.

Please add hard counters to stealth! My thief needs a challenge.

liefbread.9513:

Part 1

Now, I run 6 different level 80’s. My first was Thief, and my main is Thief. Some people have seen to argue with my initial points about the recent patches killing build diversity and I’ve sat down and discussed this with a few individuals I know who do not primarily play a thief but HAVE played a thief, and I think this is where there’s a large break in the discussion of this thread.

First, I’d like to talk about why I have 6 level 80’s. As a person who wanted to “main” a thief I found that I wasn’t very effective at level 80, I don’t have enough range to stay at a “safe distance” for most group fights, I don’t bring much to a dungeon group outside of damage, and an “oh kitten button” when someone gets downed. On the PVE side of things, generally we’re a one of class in a group because if there isn’t already 2 warriors, it’s better to have a warrior than a thief (for DPS maxing etc…).

That said, we bring a lot of utility to the part through our stealth skills, allowing people to skip sections or better position to deal with sections of dungeons/fractals/what have you.

Learning the other classes showed me what I could bring to a party to act as a stopgap for what we were missing in our team comp, while I’m not trying to say that thieves aren’t a “good class” we severely lack build diversity in PvE environments right now (honestly I think most classes do at the moment). But Sword Dagger is one of my favorite weapon sets for certain fractals and many dungeons as the boon stripping allows me to contribute something to my party that only one other class can do “almost” as effectively. (mesmers)

That said, I’m going to move on to the PvP side of things, where all the other classes can start rolling their eyes at me.

I played my other 5 classes (warrior, guardian, elementalist, necro, and engineer) to get a feel for how they worked in a WvW/PvP scenario, to get an idea of what it’s like to play one to best learn the mechanics of shutting one down. I found that I was getting STOMPED in PvP and WvW on a regular basis and until I learned how to best position to deal with the meta builds I could not reach an effective level of gameplay. This took WORK on my part, in addition it took a significant amount of practice to learn how to chain cloak and daggers when I was put in an out of position fight, when I’m on my thief chaining cloak and daggers, getting in and out with evasive backstabs, that is my survival utility.

When I’m on my warrior, I can jump in with my sword, block incoming attacks, hundred blades, and keep on going, I run a regen build that several classes have a hard time even denting… I can survive in a 3v1 fight for an extended period of time by timing my dodges and blocks.

What I’d like you all to recognize is that as a thief, those blocks that I have on my warrior, are stealths and blinds for a thief. Not only that, but you CAN still hit us when we are stealthed, and it doesn’t take much thinking to know where a thief is when they are in stealth (they’re trying to get behind you).

Our style of “abusing the stealth mechanic” comes from a lack of viability of other builds, we will NEVER be as good at conditions as a ranger, engineer, mesmer, or necromancer. There’s literally 0 reason to run conditions on a thief because literally half the classes do it better…. That removes an entire “mechanic” of our class (venoms) they’re just “not that great”.

ive been saying this for a long time, we need more team work besides a few skills and traits….check my posts in this thread, i explained all we have as team play, its not much at all.

liefbread.9513:

Part 2

That effectively rules out P/P builds (this weapon sets primary attack has a focus on stacking bleed). So then we look at other weapon sets, short bow is a great weapon with amazing base damage and trick shot is really neat when you’re in a 2v1, but the range is 900 and most other classes with ranged attacks not only have better range on their attacks, but better damage as well, so short bow is out as a primary mode of damage dealing.

This leaves us with sword and dagger main hand, both of which are run! Dagger becomes a condition build if not used with stealth, which means we need to focus on what our other offhands offer, running a dagger means we’re playing with cloak and dagger shenanigans, stealthing, backstabbing etc… with a pistol offhand we’re focusing on permastealth and blind shenanigans (heartseeker at you through a blind field we force you to fight in, then get behind you and backstab you).

I’m not saying either of those play styles are bad in any way, they’re really effective if you can get past the skill gap to use them! But there is a skill gap to use them and other classes do find them “unfair”… I think a lot of this sentiment comes from the fact that it’s what MOST thieves run, but what I want you to take from this is that we run that because we lack viability in other builds.

Now lets get back to the sword mainhand, what does this bring to the fight that we wouldn’t want to just go permastealth, avoiding getting hit and delivering (someone in this topic earlier said 15k backstabs, for what it’s worth the most I’ve ever backstabbed for was 13k and that was against the aetherblade loot bag runners in a PURE glass 100% damage focused build with sigil of night, sigil of justice, crit damage food, and a potion of outlaw slaying) so for arguments sake lets say a more realistic 8-9k crits? (which are still exciting for me, they don’t happen often and are usually only against really glassy builds in WvW). This weapon set offers positioning, and either an evasive attack/daze that’s hard to land and kills our creed of “always be moving, never get hit” (pistol whip) with blinds, or boon stripping and stealth (offhand dagger) which also gets us another daze attack (from stealth, when we’re behind you, why we need to be so mobile).

These skills are great as well, the sword 2 allows us to pull out of fights when we’re knocked down, or generally out of commission (if we just sat there we would die very quickly, we’re in medium armor… please realize this, engineers don’t do melee combat, rangers generally stick to ranged weapons, and those that don’t are often complaining as well, I want you to keep this in mind, that said I can’t speak about rangers because I don’t play one, so consider anything I say about them anecdotal!).

Permablind is awesome, but doesn’t contribute much if we can’t keep our opponents in it, so lets get back to the stealth and boon stripping, the most frequently run sPvP build. Where is boon stripping good? Well, against bunker builds that load up boons!

In a fight of a very good thief versus a very good guardian, the guardian will win EVERY time. We can’t ignore their aegis and their blind throws off our stealth, and I’m ok with that, I’m ok with having a class that just “wins” against us, because we get a pass against mesmers. But being able to boon strip and then pull out is our “contribution” to our team against these bunker builds. I find that guardians are the most sympathetic (of people who have never played a thief) to thieves when it comes to us saying "our class really lacks build diversity in WvW/PvP because they know they usually get to take our lunch money (rangers of course being the least sympathetic because they also get hit with the nerf stick just as regularly, mesmers the most biased because they are our top target). So, there you have it, that’s why “EVERY THIEF ABUSES STEALTH AND STRIPS ALL OUR BOONS ARE ITS SO UNFAIR.” we do it because it’s what’s left of our class, and when you take away our ability to strip boons, we’ll resort to running d/d or d/p backstab builds, because that’s what will be left.

im fine with it if its for wvw and spvp, leave it alone in PvE so we can soften up dungeon runs or fractal run buffed bosses.

Oh one more thing, please leave overcharge on rifle turret as it is, don’t change it from bleed to vulnerability! >.<

Bardes.1870:

About cast ground targeting

• For example, if I want to cast a 1200 range 360 radius AoE on a target which may stay at 1550 range, it sometimes is inconvenient to place the targeting circle to the margin.

IF, the ground targeting can be simply improved to be able to automatically judge the farthest range and cast spells on the location — even if the targetet is out of the spell range — many things will become more convenient.

This would be amazing for ground targeted mobility skills, but for everything else that’s intended to do damage, I can imagine it could result in a lot of wasted cooldowns. Having this as a per-skill toggle like auto-casting would be nice though.

Jon, thankyou for an excellent list. I have been asking for a list like this for months on the forums and finally you post one.

I think there should be more transparency like this. This could prevent some unintended over buffs and things as players can discuss about things.

For players, please use the suggestions forum for suggestions.

Engineer Grenade kit 1 attack having an auto-attack toggle would make me play the profession. As it stands now, I actually want to use my left hand in the future.

Conncept.7638:

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Glyph of Elemental Power.

Glyph of Renewal.

Focus..

Focus..

Focus..

Focus improvements, yes please.

Glyph of renewal, not my thing, do with it as you want.

Glyph of elemental power is one of my favorite abilities, do not ruin it Forty five seconds of cripple is amazing especially when combo’d with glyph of storms. The only change it needs is to apply a different (more useful) condition in air, vulnerability would be great.

Um, no. Weakness >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Vulnerability, especially with the ICD of that glyph.

Also making a Glyph build actually viable would be a good start for Anet.

ranger gonna be unkillable in pvp again 0.0
ranger now even can troll kitten thief

Avatara.1042:

Engineer Grenade kit 1 attack having an auto-attack toggle would make me play the profession. As it stands now, I actually want to use my left hand in the future.

This. A thousand times this. PLEASE, add an auto attack for the grenade kit. Make the kit throw one large grenade that deals the damage of 2.5 grenades for all I care. Currently, I feel that the lack of an auto-attack is the only flaw of the grenade kit and nothing else.

while we’re at it, can racial skills particularly norn elites not be so useless? maybe nerf the bear and snow leopard rush skills but make them have a 30 sec cooldown so you can have them up 100% of the time since the skills are incredibly underwhelming anyway.

Guaranteed, the anti-stealth buff to rangers is just the beginning. Anet will eventually add the ability to other professions, eventually making stealth not worth bothering with, with no sort of balancing to compensate.

Barret.4095:

while we’re at it, can racial skills particularly norn elites not be so useless? maybe nerf the bear and snow leopard rush skills but make them have a 30 sec cooldown so you can have them up 100% of the time since the skills are incredibly underwhelming anyway.

As a silvari necro, I would give my left ball for the rush ability of those forms.; just sayin. Having the rush being able to be used perpetually would just be icing on the cake.

Might just have to make me a norn necro now.

why cant gain the ranger control of the pets skills when stoved? example: stove the moa and we use with f1-2-etc the heal, the shout… in wvw fights (zerg, siege or defense towers) the pets will never be good. they run up and down or die. if we use the pet skills that will be good. a knock down leap in the middle to the enemy on the wall and shout a fear. nothing what a necro or warrior or guardian with bubbles cant do. a heal with a stoved moa and a furry when and where i need. i think this is a real one with nature thing.

A little range on Dag1 for Necro.

Fortus.6175:

EDIT:

Elementalist: We still havnt addressed the core problem of them. While conjurer are a nice gimmick and fun in LA, can have some good damage potential, this is not what has been asked by the ele community.

Right now we are sitting on the lowest hp pool of all classes. Without access to stealth (thieves) or clones/stealth(mesmers) nor aegis/protection(mesmer guardians) constantly being reapplying itself, we are FORCED (yes, you read that right, forced) to go with cantrips, water, some earth and 30 point arcana.

When you do the math thats pretty much all your traits, leaving us in a really bad spot.

Variation from this build usually means a hit/[mostly] miss play where yo unload all your arcanes in the hopes that it will kill the 27k hp warrior over there which used one dodge and cancelled all our damage, leaving us with 11k hp and no utilities, running around like a naked chicken.

Staff coire issues comes from the lack of reliable damage, sure golems are scary and stand still because thy are that bada[ss but the rest of the players dont and that has to be taken in consideration. Gust misses all the time even if the person literally just strafed. Risk/reward is just not there.

this is what I would recommend:

Increase base HP to 18-20k like mesmers. We dont have clones nor aegis nor protection nor stealth as often as they do yet they are allowed to be that beefy. Sure some consideration with bunkers would have to be taken, a good solution is; decrease healing coefficient of skills, increase base heal.

Lava Font, (fire 2) still very underwhelming, high delay for the avergae damage it does. Possible solutions is increase radius or make the first tick instant. Right now it is too telegraphed, too easy to avoid, and even when landed it does not have a good result

Lighting surge (lighting 2) Same as fire too, delay for average damage.

Gust (Air 3) Incredible hard to land, to the point that might as well not have it. PLease make it follow the target (lock on) or make it a PBAoE cone.

Overall increase a little the damage for non-fire elements, auto attacks ned to be more responsive and faster.

Support is a great start but we are very far from making the class viable
Let me copy/pasta some very wise words:

“Whats the point of CC if Defiant/AoE cap negates it completely?

Whats the point of healing if it has long CD, usually does not heal more than 5-10% of the targets health and most people can heal themselves?

Whats the point of buffing support skills (Oct 15 patch) if it is just not worth it, it usually carries low damage and you cant outlast damage dealers nor conditions, just delay them?

Anet, while buffs sure are welcome, whats the point of wanting support in the game if you keep making content easy for Zerker to faceroll, for Zergs to overcome, for damage dealers to ignore.

Perhaps I have been playing the wrong game, perhaps staff ele is supposed to be a God. But, given how most of us would love to have a viable damage dealer staff, I cant see whats the point of keep gutting it into this “support” role which nobody reall wants/needs to roll."

I agree with you a lot on Ele. I like mine with a staff. heavy fire/earth and the rest in air for traits. I felt more or less hearded into that build because we aren’t hearty enough. I basically just stay fire all the time. Switching seems like a waste of time, considering trait and weapon limitations.

While I function ok in PVE I feel underwhelming unless I have cover from other players so I can AOE. Was this how it was supposed to be?

Fortus.6175:

Increase base HP to 18-20k like mesmers.

Our base HP is not 18-20k. It’s around 15k. If we want more, it comes from gear and traiting into likes just like eles trait into earth.

Copestetic.5174:

A little range on Dag1 for Necro.

I’d prefer making it cleave.

Adding more anti-stealth is an improvement. And good to hear it implied that more is on the way.

It seems like this is always case with any MMO that has used instant invisibility cloaking as their stealth mechanic. The mechanic gets put in and then the game sees a constant series of necessary nerfs in an endless effort to balance it.

GW2 is not as badly off as some MMOs with stealth mechanics but it still has issues, as this mechanic will always have. Inviso-stealth is in the game so ArenaNet might as well try and deal with it as best as they can. Hopefully this will be yet another lesson to developers who think about continuing the tradition of this lamentable mechanic. I just wish this was another one of those MMO traditions that GW2 would have left behind.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Adding more anti-stealth is an improvement. And good to hear it implied that more is on the way.

It seems like this is always case with any MMO that has used instant invisibility cloaking as their stealth mechanic. The mechanic gets put in and then the game sees a constant series of necessary nerfs in an endless effort to balance it.

GW2 is not as badly off as some MMOs with stealth mechanics but it still has issues, as this mechanic will always have. Inviso-stealth is in the game so ArenaNet might as well try and deal with it as best as they can. Hopefully this will be yet another lesson to developers who think about continuing the tradition of this lamentable mechanic. I just wish this was another one of those MMO traditions that GW2 would have left behind.

Mind explaining how thieves and some mesmer would feel? Any buff’s for them to counter-act over-nerfing? or just beat on one class, without much explanation or re-balancing?

Please please please review the condition cap.

Pretty much the whole Necro class is based around condition damage and we are massively kitten in PVE by the limit.

Right now Necros have to fight and beg like crazy to participate in dungeons due to the cap!

Some comments have suggested balance would be affected if the condition cap was raised, but right now Necros can be prevented from doing any damage at all by other classes applying incidental conditions with minuscule amounts of damage that knock our high-damage conditions off the target entirely!

Is it balanced that when Necros are solo they can do full damage, whereas in groups they can’t?

Ghostextechnica.3270:

Please please please review the condition cap.

Pretty much the whole Necro class is based around condition damage and we are massively kitten in PVE by the limit.

Right now Necros have to fight and beg like crazy to participate in dungeons due to the cap!

Some comments have suggested balance would be affected if the condition cap was raised, but right now Necros can be prevented from doing any damage at all by other classes applying incidental conditions with minuscule amounts of damage that knock our high-damage conditions off the target entirely!

Is it balanced that when Necros are solo they can do full damage, whereas in groups they can’t?

“Right now Necros have to fight and beg like crazy to participate in dungeons due to the cap!”

its not due to the cap, its because you conditionnecros dont know how to play your class in pve. get berserker gear and scholar runes. when you see your damage numbers for the first time you will understand.

even with higher condition cap a berserker necro would laugh about your condition damage.

just an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ckhmyUfC2Q&feature=youtu.be&t=2m29s

+ if u think necro is built around conditions you are simply wrong.

Lithril Ashwalker.6230:

Conncept.7638:

Black Teagan.9215:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Conncept.7638:

Black Teagan.9215:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Fade.7658:

This thread has essentially become a forum for suggestions on how to nerf thieves into the ground.

i didn’t read the whole thing and haven’t seen a single post about thieves but all stealth related skills must be toned tone. A game trying to become esports has no counter for the stealth mechanic is laughable.

Stealth have enough counter, but this isnt the reason for my reply.

The thiefbalance (his low hp and no exist deff), was build around the fact that stealth has direct counter. That mean if all class a stealthcounter skill and the thief dont a buff in health, heal or dmg, to equalizes this, will this result in a nerf.

A counter is not a counter when it is solely in the hands of the person who needs to be countered. In it’s current state, being entirely in the hands of the thief, revealed is a control mechanism, not a counter. When it is available to others, then it’s a counter.

And if you say or even think ‘AoE Spam’, your opinion is void. AoE spam works in most other games because they have resource control and much more limited movement. Resource control allows the developers to make low CD AoEs and rely on ‘mana’ to balance their use. More limited movement sets a a clear range where the stealthed player could be. Excepting thieves, GW2 has no resource control and almost no spammable AoEs, and the distance a thief is able to cover is not only huge compared to most games, is by far the most of any class in the game itself.

Furthermore, in case you haven’t noticed, the same pool of stats are available to everyone in the game, thieves can build any stat just as well as any other class The difference is, because of zero counterplay defensive mechanics, they don’t even need certain stats. You don’t ‘balance’ something by sacrificing something that wasn’t needed in the first place.

perfectly well explained and ppl that play thief and defend it to death so their little stealth never gets a counter should think for a sec.

Nope, what liefbread wrote is “perfectly explained”.

And pls dont write anything about the thief or his mechanics, if you have no clue.

“i play mesmer, thief is all i find during solo roams, i know how it works thank you…”

Fighting against a class is not the same, like to play the class

I have played a thief, it garners no challenge and frankly, requires little if any brainpower. It is the easiest to class to play in the game, with the least amount of risk for the greatest amount of reward.

Now if you are capable of addressing anything I wrote, or defending anything you wrote, with a stronger argument than ‘pls dont write anything’, I would love to hear it. Because, the answer to your completely unjustified request, is no. And if you are incapable of defending your stance, then either your stance is wrong, or you are not familiar enough with the subject to be addressing it in the first place.

do so sir, please show me your “god build” that doesnt use any “brainpower” that is op, and can solo any class any build…record and post the build on youtube. share to all, then maybe well side with you…if not kitten.

• Things I actually said which you included in your post
  Theives have builds which have great output without any thought or effort on part of the player.

• Nonsense you made up and claim I said
  Thieves can solo anyone
  I have a ‘god mode’ thief build
  That there is a ‘god mode’ thief build at all
  Thieves are Op

And the practically illegible nonsense you spew is not worth any more of my time than that.

EDIT: How do I always end up at the top of the page in this thread!?
EDIT EDIT: Apparently somebody decided to delete a few posts. Thank-you whoever you are.

NoTrigger.8396:

Ghostextechnica.3270:

Please please please review the condition cap.

Pretty much the whole Necro class is based around condition damage and we are massively kitten in PVE by the limit.

Right now Necros have to fight and beg like crazy to participate in dungeons due to the cap!

Some comments have suggested balance would be affected if the condition cap was raised, but right now Necros can be prevented from doing any damage at all by other classes applying incidental conditions with minuscule amounts of damage that knock our high-damage conditions off the target entirely!

Is it balanced that when Necros are solo they can do full damage, whereas in groups they can’t?

“Right now Necros have to fight and beg like crazy to participate in dungeons due to the cap!”

its not due to the cap, its because you conditionnecros dont know how to play your class in pve. get berserker gear and scholar runes. when you see your damage numbers for the first time you will understand.

even with higher condition cap a berserker necro would laugh about your condition damage.

just an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ckhmyUfC2Q&feature=youtu.be&t=2m29s

+ if u think necro is built around conditions you are simply wrong.

You are proving my point. Conditionmancers can’t do any damage because of the cap (epic-damage conditions still do zero damage if they can’t go on the target) and Necro’s have to spec into power builds to join dungeons.

However, if you actually read and watch all the GW2 dev and design media, Necro’s are in theory SUPPOSED to be based around conditions.

They aren’t IN PRACTICE because noone can play them as designed due to the cap.

Elementalists are supposed to be the power direct damage casters, whereas Necro’s are supposed to be condition-based caster class. However, to do well in PvE, Necros have to pretend to be Ele’s.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Elementalist
We’re working on the staff in an effort to make it a stronger support weapon, and we also improved the conjure weapons so that they’re stronger for support. You’ll see improvements to all 4 of the conjure weapons to make them stronger and better for support.

If you change my Fiery Greatsword 4-th ability, I will use swearing vengeance and immediately get rid of this game.

Regarding Thief MH Pistol:

MH Pistol isn’t bad because of Body Shot, it’s bad because an Initiative-sucking skill (Unload) functions as the primary attack skill, which breaks the whole set. I sincerely hope the devs think about this before they make changes. The reason Body Shot sucks (other than Vuln being ho-hum) is because it siphons resources Thieves need to do basic DPS through Unload, which Thieves are reliant on because Vital Shot is too weak to function as the primary source of damage like it should.

The whole balance is skewed and Body Shot is caught in the middle, literally and figuratively. Unload will out-compete Body Shot every time because it’s an uneven battle- damage vs. utility, when it should be utility vs utility. In addition to screwing up Body Shot, it screws up #4 and #5 as well as your mobility by holding you in place and draining all your Initiative. It’s the only weapon set in the game that has this problem and, whether they realize it or not, is 75% of the reason why people complain about it feeling weak and just off in general.

Vital Shot needs to be strong enough to be the primary attack skill so that Unload can function in a utilitarian role (rework it in some way) and then #2-#5 can all compete on the same playing field without requiring a massive DPS loss to get any mobility or utility.