Guild Wars 2

so we did away with the bunker ele. now theres just less bunker variety. the main culprits still remain.

thieves still do 16k burst on 1400 toughness targets. you guys nerfed the wrong skills

portals largely unaffected.

therefore, tpvp meta will not be seeing any changes, and overall thief silliness remains in spvp and WvW (thanks for the culling fix in spvp though).

It may be a little too soon to give quality feedback but on paper it reads like they just changed some random things and went with it.

Maybe the Rune changes were supposed to fix Bunker Guardians, idk.

Im really surprised they didnt change thieves, they lowered the damage on abilities that didnt bother me at all as the victim.

Haste/quickness needs to be 30% attack speed, not 50%… they changed that in the other popular MMO as it was too game breaking, its not late to do it here

Thieves are doing same things that they did pre-patch, INSTA killing players. Personally I am not affected by their burst that much (guardian) but I’m tired to rez the entire team. IMO this will never change because as in Mesmer case there are core flaws.

I’m also all for nerfing the PvP bunker guardian builds, it’s just annoying to fight them, and also skilless to use such build., and yes I’m a guardian, saying this.

But they did nerf both of these things did you not read the patch notes?

fixed the guardian block bug
nerfed svanir and boon duration runes
nerfed protection duration on shield

CnD and dancing dagger damage nerfed as well as cluster “bomb”?
fixed stealth bug
Dazelock nerfed aswell

What did you want lol 85% of backstabs damage nerfed or toughness on guardians nerfed by 60% these nerfs are a great start and might be plenty on their own wait and see.

Guard bunker got nerfed fairly hard. Selfless daring now heals for ~650, where it used to heal for 1500+ per dodge roll. A 4 dodge roll burst now only heals 2600 instead of 6000

For those testers out there, only part of the nerf took effect in HoM, the 50% reduction is only visible in actual spvp maps

hmm glad to hear confirmation on nerf to ele and guard bunkers. Might allow some more viable builds in opposition. Happy CnD got a nerf for thieves, not sure if it is enough, but gotta help a bit? Keen to play again 2nite see how it feels.

Guardian and Elementalist got a sizeable healing nerf in their bunker specs which is a very good thing.

General nerf to various bunker runes and exploits like the Mace bug, Svanir Rune bug, Elementalist stability from Elite bug.

Rune boon duration nerfs and a few Protection duration reductions, should see a good effect.

Seriously guys, small changes are good. If devs really implemented changes like you want with huge 50% reductions all over the place then you have a game like Rift where the balance of power and FOTM would massively change from one patch to the next and stay like that for ages completely dominating everything else.

GW2 has various viable specs for each profession and various counters for each.

You can’t make an omni build and be viable against everyone though, that’s the idea.

People need to accept some responsibility for their choices of build, their function, how they play and accept that sometimes they were outbuilt or outplayed.
But most PvPers seem to be from the expectation generation and feel they should win everything. This is not possible.

Pro-tip: For you to win, someone has to lose.
50% of the players are losers in every fight, every match etc.

aaron.7850:

Im really surprised they didnt change thieves, they lowered the damage on abilities that didnt bother me at all as the victim.

Haste/quickness needs to be 30% attack speed, not 50%… they changed that in the other popular MMO as it was too game breaking, its not late to do it here

FYI, quickness is 100% attack speed, not 50%. So yea, it’s worse than you claim it to be :P

Only viable build for Thieves is GC Backstab and maybe condition damage. They nerfed everything that shouldn’t have been nerfed (except maybe DD, but 50%, that’s way over the top). Backstab burst wasn’t even touched.

Really disappointed in you ANet.

Zunhar.4079:

Only viable build for Thieves is GC Backstab and maybe condition damage. They nerfed everything that shouldn’t have been nerfed (except maybe DD, but 50%, that’s way over the top). Backstab burst wasn’t even touched.

Really disappointed in you ANet.

Except the BS combo was nerfed. The second biggest hit in the combo is now at 67% of it’s original damage. So overall it’s around 87% as strong as it’s former self. And “only viable build” you say. Have we as a community really mastered the game exploring every build and style in 3 and a half months? Really? I took use about two months to discover Ele could be anything but weak and glassy.

@Dual
By all means, come up with a build that does not rely on burst or condition damage and is viable at high level play. I’m not talking about WvW.
The Backstab build was not nerfed in the right place (Mug and actual BS damage). Instead, they stifled build options by ruining S/D, not fixing P/P (weakest Thief set), and forcing Thieves to go GC or condition. There is no middle ground.

Dual.8953:

Have we as a community really mastered the game exploring every build and style in 3 and a half months?

Yes.
Dude, there’s not really that many traits, skills or weapons. Seriously. Combine them all together and it’s barely more than what most MMO’s have as an ability list for one class.

Braxxus.2904:

Dual.8953:

Have we as a community really mastered the game exploring every build and style in 3 and a half months?

Yes.
Dude, there’s not really that many traits, skills or weapons. Seriously. Combine them all together and it’s barely more than what most MMO’s have as an ability list for one class.

Thief alone has about 6253 total combinations of skills, weapons and traits. Not factoring equipment stats, runes, and the multitudes of different ways a player handle given situations. If you think 6253 is small, consider this. All the rune combinations and upgrade combinations would be multiplied with the 6253, boosting the possible combinations to an insane degree.

“I replaced shadow step with infiltrator’s signit. Now my build plays completely differently, and is not comparable at all.”

6253 variants, not builds.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

“I replaced shadow step with infiltrator’s signit. Now my build plays completely differently, and is not comparable at all.”

6253 variants, not builds.

Okay I calculated all the combinations for Thief minus possible stat points. 1.8029 × 10^15 varients.

Dual.8953:

Okay I calculated all the combinations for Thief minus possible stat points. 1.8029 × 10^15 varients.

Big, meaningless numbers are still big and meaningless.

Please do explain to me what all these viable specs are for my Ele. Clearly I must just be doing something wrong by wanting to survive for more than two hits.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Dual.8953:

Okay I calculated all the combinations for Thief minus possible stat points. 1.8029 × 10^15 varients.

Big, meaningless numbers are still big and meaningless.

Now that there is a cop out answer. There are certainly more builds in that mass then players have discovered. In truth, thief probably is the low end of combinations only sporting only 5 main hand and 2 off hand weapons.

Korath.7402:

Please do explain to me what all these viable specs are for my Ele. Clearly I must just be doing something wrong by wanting to survive for more than two hits.

Find them yourself. It’s humanly impossible to try them all.

Dual.8953:

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Dual.8953:

Okay I calculated all the combinations for Thief minus possible stat points. 1.8029 × 10^15 varients.

Big, meaningless numbers are still big and meaningless.

Now that there is a cop out answer. There are certainly more builds in that mass then players have discovered. In truth, thief probably is the low end of combinations only sporting only 5 main hand and 2 off hand weapons.

Korath.7402:

Please do explain to me what all these viable specs are for my Ele. Clearly I must just be doing something wrong by wanting to survive for more than two hits.

Find them yourself. It’s humanly impossible to try them all.

It’s not a cop out answer. You can say there are 2 billion builds but the truth is that players can quickly identify what does and does not work. In your number of builds there are builds using pistol traits that aren’t using pistols, venom traits and they havn’t slotted any venoms, trap traits with no traps, etc.

If you rule out skills that are largely considered UP(like thief traps), traits dealing with those skills, and traits that do not impact a build at all(pistol traits on a DD/SB build); the total number of builds per class is much smaller. Now you can spend time coming up with an algorithm to do the actual math, but that is a waste of time because the human brain already does it when people are speccing.

I added 26/14/0/20/10, totally viable and new build like 14/16/0/21/9. I love the 6253 variants of builds in this game!

Distaste.4801:

Dual.8953:

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Dual.8953:

Okay I calculated all the combinations for Thief minus possible stat points. 1.8029 × 10^15 varients.

Big, meaningless numbers are still big and meaningless.

Now that there is a cop out answer. There are certainly more builds in that mass then players have discovered. In truth, thief probably is the low end of combinations only sporting only 5 main hand and 2 off hand weapons.

Korath.7402:

Please do explain to me what all these viable specs are for my Ele. Clearly I must just be doing something wrong by wanting to survive for more than two hits.

Find them yourself. It’s humanly impossible to try them all.

It’s not a cop out answer. You can say there are 2 billion builds but the truth is that players can quickly identify what does and does not work. In your number of builds there are builds using pistol traits that aren’t using pistols, venom traits and they havn’t slotted any venoms, trap traits with no traps, etc.

If you rule out skills that are largely considered UP(like thief traps), traits dealing with those skills, and traits that do not impact a build at all(pistol traits on a DD/SB build); the total number of builds per class is much smaller. Now you can spend time coming up with an algorithm to do the actual math, but that is a waste of time because the human brain already does it when people are speccing.

Quickly identify? ROFL
It took Ele’s two months to discover they could Bunker.

I tire or your narrow mindedness. I bid thee Adieu.

Kid Taylor.5479:

I added 26/14/0/20/10, totally viable and new build like 14/16/0/21/9. I love the 6253 variants of builds in this game!

Actually single points in trait lines are useful in some condition specs.

Floryn.6307:

Thieves are doing same things that they did pre-patch, INSTA killing players. Personally I am not affected by their burst that much (guardian) but I’m tired to rez the entire team. IMO this will never change because as in Mesmer case there are core flaws.

I’m also all for nerfing the PvP bunker guardian builds, it’s just annoying to fight them, and also skilless to use such build., and yes I’m a guardian, saying this.

You mean INSTA kill noobs? Yes, but this would still happen no matter what they nerf…they didn’t nerf BS because, as i always said…BS it’s a really laughable burst to avoid…instead they nerfed dazelock, so they nerfed my actual build…time to find something even better

Pretty much agree with OP. As an ele i will wait and see but the first impressions are horrible.

aaron.7850:

Haste/quickness needs to be 30% attack speed, not 50%…

It’s actually 100%, “twice as fast”.

aaron.7850:

Im really surprised they didnt change thieves, they lowered the damage on abilities that didnt bother me at all as the victim.

Haste/quickness needs to be 30% attack speed, not 50%… they changed that in the other popular MMO as it was too game breaking, its not late to do it here

it’s actually 100% attack speed

the more you know

aaron.7850:

Im really surprised they didnt change thieves, they lowered the damage on abilities that didnt bother me at all as the victim.

If the damage from dancing dagger didn’t bother you you weren’t paying close enough attention or you only ever fought thieves 1v1.

why dont give thieves insta kill button, i dont wanna fight them for like min or 2 and lose because you buffed them again

so no spvp for me again thx

Guardians w/o mace bug + svanir runes can be taken down 100 x faster than it was before so now guardians will be harder to kill than other proffesions, but calling them bunkers… nah bros. (They have got the lowest HP base in game)

Elementalist bunker staff, finally nerfed. Now those randomly using skills ele’s will have to l2p actually. Treb cant be takend down with meteor shower on tanky builds that’s good.

Thiefs: -50% dancing daggers, guys open your eyes.
That skill could hit 3 times and hit 2/3 of backstab dmg, lets count: it used to hit twice backstab dmg. If you play w/o using any defensive strategy, or escape mechanism, dont be suprised that theif can take you out. You just play bad.

The bad thing is QP ranking, because u never lose your QP, so the player who plays more, can earn more.
My team is casual, we still got 15 QP, because we play good, but we can’t play every day for 4h+ so we will never catch up even if we beat the top teams.

Air rune -25% sure sir: it will hit now much less in whole game. Every 10 seconds you lose 25% of burst you used to have. Whole game is 15 min, do the math.

Arena.net cant buff you guys they strive for perfect balance. I’m former closed beta player of league of legends, there was “jax” then “mr. yi” OP, but they did the nerfs, not instantly, but after long time this game came up to something. So will GW 2 do, because I like this game much more than i used to like League of Legends.

Won’t an easy fix to portal be making everyone unable to use it if they hold a treb repair kit?

@Sakulos

Guardians bunker fine, they weren’t affected too much with this patch. Elementalists can still do a decent job as bunkers and are useful treb killers.

Thief’s can still kill people very fast, just need that one heart seeker to finish off the prey. Along with their mobility they are a pretty solid pick.

The meta has no changed at all post patch. Most teams are now actually focusing more on bunkering down rather then playing offensively. It is not an uncommon sight to see two guardians or a guardian and an ele on a team. Thief’s still seem to be on every team and mesmers are playing the usual back point holder. Oh yeah rangers are still shunned.

Balance patch over and all is still the same.

With the thief situation (yes its a little early to be judging A-nets choices.) I believe they should have done things a little differently. In my opinion the Mug trait is too strong for tier 1, so that should have received the -50% damage nerf. Dancing Dagger should have taken the -33% damage nerf and leave Cloak n’ Dagger untouched. i think this would have been a more fitting solution.

Sakulos.7963:

Guardians w/o mace bug + svanir runes can be taken down 100 x faster than it was before so now guardians will be harder to kill than other proffesions, but calling them bunkers… nah bros. (They have got the lowest HP base in game)

Elementalist bunker staff, finally nerfed. Now those randomly using skills ele’s will have to l2p actually. Treb cant be takend down with meteor shower on tanky builds that’s good.

Thiefs: -50% dancing daggers, guys open your eyes.
That skill could hit 3 times and hit 2/3 of backstab dmg, lets count: it used to hit twice backstab dmg. If you play w/o using any defensive strategy, or escape mechanism, dont be suprised that theif can take you out. You just play bad.

The bad thing is QP ranking, because u never lose your QP, so the player who plays more, can earn more.
My team is casual, we still got 15 QP, because we play good, but we can’t play every day for 4h+ so we will never catch up even if we beat the top teams.

Air rune -25% sure sir: it will hit now much less in whole game. Every 10 seconds you lose 25% of burst you used to have. Whole game is 15 min, do the math.

Arena.net cant buff you guys they strive for perfect balance. I’m former closed beta player of league of legends, there was “jax” then “mr. yi” OP, but they did the nerfs, not instantly, but after long time this game came up to something. So will GW 2 do, because I like this game much more than i used to like League of Legends.

a wonderfully uplifting post. after more testing, i gotta say things are actually pretty good!

Sakulos.7963:

Guardians w/o mace bug + svanir runes can be taken down 100 x faster than it was before so now guardians will be harder to kill than other proffesions, but calling them bunkers… nah bros. (They have got the lowest HP base in game)

Elementalist bunker staff, finally nerfed. Now those randomly using skills ele’s will have to l2p actually. Treb cant be takend down with meteor shower on tanky builds that’s good.

Thiefs: -50% dancing daggers, guys open your eyes.
That skill could hit 3 times and hit 2/3 of backstab dmg, lets count: it used to hit twice backstab dmg. If you play w/o using any defensive strategy, or escape mechanism, dont be suprised that theif can take you out. You just play bad.

The bad thing is QP ranking, because u never lose your QP, so the player who plays more, can earn more.
My team is casual, we still got 15 QP, because we play good, but we can’t play every day for 4h+ so we will never catch up even if we beat the top teams.

Air rune -25% sure sir: it will hit now much less in whole game. Every 10 seconds you lose 25% of burst you used to have. Whole game is 15 min, do the math.

Arena.net cant buff you guys they strive for perfect balance. I’m former closed beta player of league of legends, there was “jax” then “mr. yi” OP, but they did the nerfs, not instantly, but after long time this game came up to something. So will GW 2 do, because I like this game much more than i used to like League of Legends.

I cannot agree more, thank you for pointing those things out this precisely.

They obviously want Thieves to be doing high single target burst. The nerfed their ability to do insane AoE at the same time. They also got out ahead of the QQ and nerfed Dazelock and P/D a bit which were both more powerful than the standard burst build anyway.

the nerf to selfless daring on the guardian is gonna be a pretty rough one for bunkers. it was pretty much half the healing we had, and its been hit pretty hard.

did anyone test out what the % of healing we lost with that ?

What about the awesome underwater Ranger?How do you like that?Raid of Capricorn here i come…
Oh..Wait…Why noone is paying attention?…..What?Only one underwater PvP map?….Wait,but the buff spirits to have more change to proc…What?theres a secret cd that dont allow you to have constant buff…
I geuss ill wait when the Raid of Capricorn enters Tournament Rotation so i can join too….
What?
It never will?
So whats the point in Rangers?Why they exist?

Archaon.6245:

Floryn.6307:

Thieves are doing same things that they did pre-patch, INSTA killing players. Personally I am not affected by their burst that much (guardian) but I’m tired to rez the entire team. IMO this will never change because as in Mesmer case there are core flaws.

I’m also all for nerfing the PvP bunker guardian builds, it’s just annoying to fight them, and also skilless to use such build., and yes I’m a guardian, saying this.

You mean INSTA kill noobs? Yes, but this would still happen no matter what they nerf…they didn’t nerf BS because, as i always said…BS it’s a really laughable burst to avoid…instead they nerfed dazelock, so they nerfed my actual build…time to find something even better

I often joke saying that the scripted mobs are smarter than 75% of the PvP players in this game. That’s a sad fact, unfortunately thieves didn’t got “fixed” where they should, so I doubt anything will change, in terms of raw sPvP…combat medic should be made an sPvP achievement if this continues (I know that there is one for PvE as well).

As for my fellow bunker guardians, what they were doing was just abusing mechanics and not skillfully playing. Although instead of tweaking skills I would have just forbid/add sPvP restrictions to certain runes and sigils that allowed such OPness combination to occur…that would have hurt the abusers and still let the rest of us who chose not to play like that, unaffected.

Immo.9217:

But they did nerf both of these things did you not read the patch notes?

fixed the guardian block bug
nerfed svanir and boon duration runes
nerfed protection duration on shield

CnD and dancing dagger damage nerfed as well as cluster “bomb”?
fixed stealth bug
Dazelock nerfed aswell

What did you want lol 85% of backstabs damage nerfed or toughness on guardians nerfed by 60% these nerfs are a great start and might be plenty on their own wait and see.

Actually stealth bug is still in

Immo.9217:

But they did nerf both of these things did you not read the patch notes?

fixed the guardian block bug
nerfed svanir and boon duration runes
nerfed protection duration on shield

CnD and dancing dagger damage nerfed as well as cluster “bomb”?
fixed stealth bug
Dazelock nerfed aswell

What did you want lol 85% of backstabs damage nerfed or toughness on guardians nerfed by 60% these nerfs are a great start and might be plenty on their own wait and see.

I am sure people complaining about a thief has never played 1..

I am a big fan of the adjustments. BS did a lot of damage because you would go below 50%hp and the trait would kick in that makes thieves deal more damage when your below 50%. So by removing the ability to get you below 50% health b4 you can react, they have effectively nerfed BS damage as well.

Sakulos.7963:

If you play w/o using any defensive strategy, or Escape Mechanic , dont be suprised that theif can take you out. You just play bad.

Oh yeah the poor Theifs dont have mobility ….
Wait a sec !