Hey guys first of all I have been participating in tournaments, and in every beta weekend. I have roughly 85% W/L ratio and I do know quite a bit about builds. So the feedback that I will be giving will be based on my experience.
First of all:
Thieves: Class looks great. No issues with their stealth whatsoever, I think it is the right step in making thieves stealth more frequently and make their openers not as devastating.
However there are a few issues with the class:
Heart Seeker / Pistolwhip / Unload – all 3 of those skills do not take a lot of set up and can get away with just spamming them until they run out of initiative. Granted there are a few utility skills that fill back the initiative, and trait that lets rogue gain initiative back on a crit – we have a plethora of thiefs both in tournaments and random warzones spamming 1 button. There were numerous times where thiefs tried to kill me with out those abilities and at the end they were resorted to just spam them because they are over buffed.
Heartseeker – is the gap closer, main damage dealing ability, and execute all 3 functions rolled into 1. I honestly cannot see how ability got overlooked in beta. I am ok with 2 functions but all 3 creates a big problem and heavily promotes its spamming. Increase the initiative cost to 5, or remove damage above 33% or a gap closer should suffice.
Pistolwhip – 0 set up to do great. Most of the channel skills require set up (100 blades – stun then channel). However pistolwhip stuns automatically and then starts channel. Not only this ability is great for disabling the enemy it also does too much damage. Either stun needs to be removed or the damage needs to be nerfed.
Unload – too much ranged damage.
I understand that nobody likes the nerfs therefore I promose buff the other rogues abilities to compensate the nerf to HS, PW, Unload. I do not think Thiefs are overpowered I just think it is very easy to deal damage as a thief with 3 overused abilities therefore limiting the true difference between skilled veteran and a new player that just googled the build.
Warriors:
Condition build is none existent. Very week compared to other classes, mainly due to the bleed duration. I think buff the heal to remove 3 conditions, increase bleed duration by 30%, also maybe add some traits that work based off Thoughness – 20% of toughness and power becomes a condition damage.
General skills – I think warriors damage is a bit low overall and 100 blades is over buffed. Increase damage on other sources for basically most of the weapons and nerf 100 blades damage by 40% or increase its cooldown to 35 seconds. I believe in versatility rather than based the whole class / build of 1 weapon ability (17 skills including 2 raged and all warriors balance is 100 blades)
Buff Warrior’s bow it seems a bit on a lower end. I think it can go well with condition build granted the bow can apply some more conditions besides ignite.
Mesmers:
Great overall but their passive damage from berserker, illusionary unload is too high. Mesmers are balanced around the enemy being able to differentiate the true mesmer from clones, thus making swaps to hard hitting illusions not very viable. I cant tell how many times I would win vs mesmer at 9k hit points I would still get to downed state due to the high illusion damage.
Nerf illusionary unload damage (literally could be 50% of total mesmers damage) since its just a passive damage. and increase their active damage that they have to work for. Good place would be increase shatter damage / combo if it hits just 1 enemy.
*Necromancer *
love my necro to death I think we are fairly balanced. I have 1 issue – feast of corruption does 500 damge and it is in our scepter build that is condition based build. The ability needs a rework. I think instead of doing damage based on how many conditions the enemy has it should either apply bleed / burning based on how many conditions enemy has (2 stacks of bleed for every condition, or 1 second of burning for every condition) increase its cooldown to 20 seconds.
Downed State – a few classes benefit too much and a few too little. Classes with pets (rangers, mesmers, minion necros) benefit too much from it and classes like necros, guardians elementalists – too little. Classes like theif and warriors are in a good place i think.
For necros I have a suggestion for #3 – instead of posion give us shrouded form to buff our HP levels through life force and make us un executabe for 4 seconds. For Guardians Ele’s – its up to the community as I am not sure exactly how to balance them.
I hope this helps. I do not want to nerf the classes but rather transform damage from overused abilities into others so the classes will be more complex yet fun to play.
Thanks!