Guild Wars 2

Blinds are completely out of control. There are WAY too many blinds being tossed around by way too many classes. Blinds are slapped onto low cool down skills with no risk at all. Some classes can literally SPAM blinds. Thieves (can have) blind on stealth every 3 seconds Black powder shot (which can be used multiple times in a short period) blinding powder, shadow shot, tactical strike from the front, signet of shadows, infiltrators arrow… THIS IS JUST ONE CLASS.

Necros can spam blinds in plague form, well of darkness, dagger 4… Guardians have Tons of blinds they can spam blind 15 points in radiance and virtue of justice, sword 2 (10 second cool down) focus 4, greatsword 3. Engies now have even more blind with acid costed bullets and SO ON.

Most of these skills are on a insanely low cool down for a complete shut down, and to make things extremely worse the problem is SERIOUSLY Exemplified with Multiple classes or multiple people in a fight.

Blind completely shuts down warriors. Hammer and mace, is a joke against blinds, all of our class mechanic burst skills minus sword are a joke from blinds, eviscerate, earthshaker, skull crack, kill shot, arcing slice (lol) shut down. No one else’s class mechanic skills are shut down by blinds (shatters are multiple hits, and steal still gap closes), and the issue is Exemplified against multiple of these classes.

Blind hasn’t changed at all, why there is such a huge issue with it all of a sudden is surprising to me. (The patch notes about not having it removed by swinging at thin air has always been the case for most parts and has just been updated to never occur by accident.) Also blind shuts down all classes equally more or less and it only blocks 1 attack.

Most thief blinds activate only in melee range and can continue to apply if you don’t move away.
Don’t stand near plague form obviously.
Don’t waist critical skills when you’re blinded, notice that blind also affects the boarders of your screen to let you know that you’re blind.
And as a warrior, try a ranged weapon so 1. you can remove blinds at range 2. you will be less likely to be blinded by thieves or plague form.

Lastly, the idea behind the combat system is that certain builds will counter some while be weaker against others etc. So a full blind thief build will have an advantage against a melee warrior in most situations, but that thief will be venerable to condition orientated builds from others. It’s best not to try and solo a build that counters yours, pvp is a team game.

Neare.9703:

Blind hasn’t changed at all, why there is such a huge issue with it all of a sudden is surprising to me. (The patch notes about not having it removed by swinging at thin air has always been the case for most parts and has just been updated to never occur by accident.) Also blind shuts down all classes equally more or less and it only blocks 1 attack.

Most thief blinds activate only in melee range and can continue to apply if you don’t move away.
Don’t stand near plague form obviously.
Don’t waist critical skills when you’re blinded, notice that blind also affects the boarders of your screen to let you know that you’re blind.
And as a warrior, try a ranged weapon so 1. you can remove blinds at range 2. you will be less likely to be blinded by thieves or plague form.

Lastly, the idea behind the combat system is that certain builds will counter some while be weaker against others etc. So a full blind thief build will have an advantage against a melee warrior in most situations, but that thief will be venerable to condition orientated builds from others. It’s best not to try and solo a build that counters yours, pvp is a team game.

It looks good in writing, but in actual combat it is quite the opposite. I know how blind worked before the patch and it has change.

The chance was necessary to give a more strategic factor behind the usage of blind, now it’s actually useful…but again warriors suffer the most against conditions spam, I can manage on my ele…on my warrior it’s close to impossible

Arheundel.6451:

The chance was necessary to give a more strategic factor behind the usage of blind, now it’s actually useful…but again warriors suffer the most against conditions spam, I can manage on my ele…on my warrior it’s close to impossible

Tell me about it lol I had to switch on thief before I got frustrated. I mean it is usually a hit or miss on my warrior when I am blind finding the target, but why torture myself when sooner or later hopefully sooner this will be fixed.

Neare.9703:

Blind hasn’t changed at all, why there is such a huge issue with it all of a sudden is surprising to me. (The patch notes about not having it removed by swinging at thin air has always been the case for most parts and has just been updated to never occur by accident.) Also blind shuts down all classes equally more or less and it only blocks 1 attack.

Most thief blinds activate only in melee range and can continue to apply if you don’t move away.
Don’t stand near plague form obviously.
Don’t waist critical skills when you’re blinded, notice that blind also affects the boarders of your screen to let you know that you’re blind.
And as a warrior, try a ranged weapon so 1. you can remove blinds at range 2. you will be less likely to be blinded by thieves or plague form.

Lastly, the idea behind the combat system is that certain builds will counter some while be weaker against others etc. So a full blind thief build will have an advantage against a melee warrior in most situations, but that thief will be venerable to condition orientated builds from others. It’s best not to try and solo a build that counters yours, pvp is a team game.

Wow what am I even reading here. Blind has changed in such an amazingly significant way, I can’t believe anyone would claim that it “hadn’t changed at all”.

And since when is a thief NOT melee-ing you? When is an engineer not spamming grenades at you? When are the classes that can spam blinds not spamming blinds at you, it takes zero effort because it’s just built into the class abilities like that.

Just reading everyone claim it isn’t overpowered and telling warriors (which it shuts down exceptionally hard) due to needing to be in melee range to do anything as such, then telling them to use our extremely sub-par ranged options as a “solution” is driving me nuts.

Even worse is people telling us to run cleansing ire as a “solution” despite blind IRONICALLY shuts down every single burst skill except sword’s.

So much misinformation being spread around just

Gog

Daaaaaaaamn.

Necro’s have to give up a 3m CD to spam blind. Dagger 4 is hardly spam and Well of Darkness can be completely avoided by just not being dumb enough to stand in the big red circle.

But I will agree that blind is getting a bit crazy, at least on the Thief side of things. I haven’t seen a lot of Engi’s spamming it yet though.

Chesire.9043:

Necro’s have to give up a 3m CD to spam blind. Dagger 4 is hardly spam and Well of Darkness can be completely avoided by just not being dumb enough to stand in the big red circle.

I can guarantee people stood on it because they couldn’t move :P. Not because they were being dumb, but being locked down with lots of CC from other players.

Another melee hard counter. Let’s make burst skills remove conditions, then lets make a condition to hard counter this effect.

The change was needed and a step in the right direction. Blind was too easily negated before, there is no reason you should be able to auto off blinds while out of range of anything. Blinds were making little to no impace against good players.

On that note, this change has brought most blinds over the top. They are just too good now, and counter several builds/classes far harder than other. The change should 100% stay, but blind skills need to be re-evaluated. In particular ele’s blinding flash and thieves black poweder. I would say b-flash’s CD needs to be brought up and black poweder should only tick every 2 seconds or maybe a 1 second less duration.

The duration on blinds needs to be looked at.

I Main Warior, and I think Blind is fine the way it is.

It’s just a ‘reverse’ Aegis, and I’ve trained myself to always look for Aegis before I use any long cooldowns on my target… and Blind is even more noticeable because it actually has a visual indicator which borders your whole screen. C’mon people.

I guarentee you’ll see an improvement in your gaming if you just paid a little extra attention now and then. It’s not hard to look at your boons/conditions every few seconds.

PS: If I had to make a change to Blind though, I would make it so it doesnt affect ground targeted abilities, that is all.

I bet 1 gold that from the OPs post all blind abilities on Elementalists (negligible) will get nerfed, maybe together with the necro ones, while all else will be left the same…

Brutalistik.6473:

Chesire.9043:

Necro’s have to give up a 3m CD to spam blind. Dagger 4 is hardly spam and Well of Darkness can be completely avoided by just not being dumb enough to stand in the big red circle.

I can guarantee people stood on it because they couldn’t move :P. Not because they were being dumb, but being locked down with lots of CC from other players.

You’re probably right. Lol.

blinds have always been there, they just never really mattered before because 1 spamming at nothing would clear it. blind now functions the way it should have in the first place. nothing OP about it. it’s just like aegis, gotta knock it off with an AA before unloading the show.

Kreedz.8127:

I Main Warior, and I think Blind is fine the way it is.

It’s just a ‘reverse’ Aegis, and I’ve trained myself to always look for Aegis before I use any long cooldowns on my target… and Blind is even more noticeable because it actually has a visual indicator which borders your whole screen. C’mon people.

I guarentee you’ll see an improvement in your gaming if you just paid a little extra attention now and then. It’s not hard to look at your boons/conditions every few seconds.

PS: If I had to make a change to Blind though, I would make it so it doesnt affect ground targeted abilities, that is all.

Please just stop. Blind does function as a reverse aegis, but please, please look at the application of aegis. An almost EXCLUSIVELY guardian ability that pops up only OCCASIONALLY during a fight to block big hits like eviscerate.
Now look at the application of blinds in this game and TELL me again with a straight face how it’s even remotely at the same level.

If blind was TRULY as balanced as you claim then I should only be seeing it a maximum of 3 times in a fight just like aegis except that’s CLEARLY not happening here.

Just bumping this untill arenanet realizes how amazingly stupid this change was.

Jzaku.9765:

Kreedz.8127:

I Main Warior, and I think Blind is fine the way it is.

It’s just a ‘reverse’ Aegis, and I’ve trained myself to always look for Aegis before I use any long cooldowns on my target… and Blind is even more noticeable because it actually has a visual indicator which borders your whole screen. C’mon people.

I guarentee you’ll see an improvement in your gaming if you just paid a little extra attention now and then. It’s not hard to look at your boons/conditions every few seconds.

PS: If I had to make a change to Blind though, I would make it so it doesnt affect ground targeted abilities, that is all.

Please just stop. Blind does function as a reverse aegis, but please, please look at the application of aegis. An almost EXCLUSIVELY guardian ability that pops up only OCCASIONALLY during a fight to block big hits like eviscerate.
Now look at the application of blinds in this game and TELL me again with a straight face how it’s even remotely at the same level.

If blind was TRULY as balanced as you claim then I should only be seeing it a maximum of 3 times in a fight just like aegis except that’s CLEARLY not happening here.

Well…in GW1 I could keep the entire enemy team front line perma blinded if I wanted, the blind in GW2 is still nowhere as OP as it was in GW1, even though I’m not a warrior expert I do sometimes play mine with rather good success rate, which just farther improved after switching to this build : 0/30/30/0/10 with valkyrie amulet bow/axe/shield and I’m not having problems in killing people with 5k+ eviscerate and perma burning, I can also cleanse conditions rather easily with cleansing ire while both bow and axe burst are useful ( one as defensive/offensive tool the other as pure mega burst attack)

Kreedz.8127:

I Main Warior, and I think Blind is fine the way it is.

It’s just a ‘reverse’ Aegis, and I’ve trained myself to always look for Aegis before I use any long cooldowns on my target… and Blind is even more noticeable because it actually has a visual indicator which borders your whole screen. C’mon people.

I guarentee you’ll see an improvement in your gaming if you just paid a little extra attention now and then. It’s not hard to look at your boons/conditions every few seconds.

PS: If I had to make a change to Blind though, I would make it so it doesnt affect ground targeted abilities, that is all.

Mate it doesn’t matter if you look for and clear blinds before using big attacks, the point of my post is that Blinds are slapped onto multiple low cool down abilities with no thought or skill needed. It’s to the point that if you clear a blind purposely then attack, the chances of you getting re-blinded by errant skill spam without thought is high.

I was in no way trying to get any class directly nerfed by listing blinds, I was just using it to illustrate a point.

Arheundel.6451:

Well…in GW1 I could keep the entire enemy team front line perma blinded if I wanted, the blind in GW2 is still nowhere as OP as it was in GW1, even though I’m not a warrior expert I do sometimes play mine with rather good success rate, which just farther improved after switching to this build : 0/30/30/0/10 with valkyrie amulet bow/axe/shield and I’m not having problems in killing people with 5k+ eviscerate and perma burning, I can also cleanse conditions rather easily with cleansing ire while both bow and axe burst are useful ( one as defensive/offensive tool the other as pure mega burst attack)

A kind request to also stop bringing up gw1 because it’s a completely different game with completely different rules. Do you have a backline in gw2 clearing your conditions for you? Do you have skills that specifically cleanse blinds?

Also cleansing ire does absolutely nothing against blinds. In fact it’s a hard counter for the entire basis of the trait.

Jzaku.9765:

Arheundel.6451:

Well…in GW1 I could keep the entire enemy team front line perma blinded if I wanted, the blind in GW2 is still nowhere as OP as it was in GW1, even though I’m not a warrior expert I do sometimes play mine with rather good success rate, which just farther improved after switching to this build : 0/30/30/0/10 with valkyrie amulet bow/axe/shield and I’m not having problems in killing people with 5k+ eviscerate and perma burning, I can also cleanse conditions rather easily with cleansing ire while both bow and axe burst are useful ( one as defensive/offensive tool the other as pure mega burst attack)

A kind request to also stop bringing up gw1 because it’s a completely different game with completely different rules. Do you have a backline in gw2 clearing your conditions for you? Do you have skills that specifically cleanse blinds?

Also cleansing ire does absolutely nothing against blinds. In fact it’s a hard counter for the entire basis of the trait.

If you play against a competent opponent then the blinds will come in timely manner and you’ll win only if you’ll play better, if you lose against somebody who just throwing around blinds then you need to recognize their pattern of attacks in order to land your burst.

I’m worst warrior than you I’m sure, but was still able to beat easily this spamming blind ele and couple more blind spammers with the build I’ve posted before, this because the ele was a bad player, this means that as long as the opponent is bad , a blind spamming should pose no major threat because you can save your burst for when you’re guaranteed to land it

BlueprintLFE.2358:

Kreedz.8127:

I Main Warior, and I think Blind is fine the way it is.

It’s just a ‘reverse’ Aegis, and I’ve trained myself to always look for Aegis before I use any long cooldowns on my target… and Blind is even more noticeable because it actually has a visual indicator which borders your whole screen. C’mon people.

I guarentee you’ll see an improvement in your gaming if you just paid a little extra attention now and then. It’s not hard to look at your boons/conditions every few seconds.

PS: If I had to make a change to Blind though, I would make it so it doesnt affect ground targeted abilities, that is all.

Mate it doesn’t matter if you look for and clear blinds before using big attacks, the point of my post is that Blinds are slapped onto multiple low cool down abilities with no thought or skill needed. It’s to the point that if you clear a blind purposely then attack, the chances of you getting re-blinded by errant skill spam without thought is high.

I was in no way trying to get any class directly nerfed by listing blinds, I was just using it to illustrate a point.

But you can still use shield bash and eviscerate or use any other CC, it depends how you wanna play it.
Don’t take me wrong, I’m not trying to defend any skill, even if perceived as OP, all I’m doing is to protect that layer of skill the game has just acquired, you can double/triple the CD of blind skills but not remove the current effect which makes blind really something to watch for and not something to simply ignore as before

>I win fights but only because they are bad
I’m pretty sure that’s what you just said. And yes, a skilled player will “use blinds in a timely manner”, except now “a timely manner” has just extended to “any time I’m not in range” (this is why the melee warrior is hit exceptionally hard btw) instead of “right before a big burst lands” thus lowering the skill cap on using blinds appropriately EXTREMELY SIGNIFICANTLY. And THAT is the core problem here.

Explanation of why new blind is hard counter for those defending it.
Old Blind
Reckless dodge could be used to clear my blinds.
Swiping before the skill I intended to use could clear my blind.
Swapping to hydromancy would clear my blind.

New blind
reckless dodge useless unless ure in melee range at end of dodge
cleansing ire does nothing except with sword since blinds make burst miss
auto attack does nothing if we are out of range. key words range for melee
hydromancy useless against it out of melee range
Most blinds come around 5 secs. if your melee and your being kited, you basically can’t clear the blind its duration.

Solution, tone down blind durations to like 3 secs max. Still will cause next miss. Promotes timely use of blind.
Why this is preferred solution? Ranged classes can still hit from range so random blind just stops one attack and does not hard counter entire class mechanics.

Examples:
Blind ranger, pet still chasing you.
Blind mesmer, clones still shatter on you
Blind guardian, probably doesn’t matter
Blind engineer, rest of the grenades still hit you
Blind elementalist, fields still appear on the ground
Blind necromancer, they just scepter auto it off 900 range

Blind Thief, probably has some trouble, but blinding powder will still make its field
Blind Warrior, sad panda, cause cleansing ire does nothing.

Exactly blinds destroy the warrior. Shield bash eviscerate anything we have has huge wind-ups that in that time someone is going to skill spam a blind without even realizing it.

Hammer lol GG weapon is non functional against a team.

Yes, the reason why nobody cares is because they are not Warriors and this bs doesn’t affect them that much at all.

Kreedz.8127:

PS: If I had to make a change to Blind though, I would make it so it doesnt affect ground targeted abilities, that is all.

^ This, right here, actually sounds really good. It’s hard to imagine that being blinded would make an area of effect attack miss completely. That type of avoidance should be entirely up to the player, at least, that’s my opinion on the matter.