Guild Wars 2

Nerf vigor to 50%, nerf protection to 10-15%, rework toughness (so light-medium-heavy will start mean something), make weakness affecting condi duration and dmg too. I guess thats all for a beginning.

Nikkle.4013:

Arheundel.6451:

Burning in a s/d burst battle build after 12 stacks of might would hit for 420 dmg for second..after 12 stacks of might mind you

Well if your only getting 12 stacks of might thats your problem. Even at 420 damage thats 1260 over 3 seconds. If the blind was changed to weakness I still don’t see why that’s bad. So now you have more damage mitigation. And if you bothered to read my posts, I don’t necessarily agree with phanta’s solution. I just hate when people like you post such terrible arguments that don’t address the point at all and then make snide remarks. But Phanta nailed it earlier.

Phantaram.1265:

I’d just ignore arheundal just based on my past experience. He just argues for the sake of it I think.

This is good advice, going to follow it from now on.

Burst ele = 13k HP
You need dmg and fast..or you die fast, not enough toughness or HP to wait for mediocre burning dmg to run its effect and hopefully put enough pressure on the enemy, for 12 stacks of might it means you have already gone through a full burst rotation and that 1260 burning dmg means nothing as in those 3s you can get killed .

Having a single blind every 20s+ is not OP at all..so why replace it with weakness?
Again..I use hard math, take the numbers and compare, then make my comments, the OP is suggesting to nerf dmg for an already squishy spec with not enough returns and for reasons that would benefit only a team as nobody run a double arcane ele outside organized matches.

And for the last time..the devs read the forums, I put down numbers for them to consider before any hasty decision is made, I don’t see how your consideration would benefit me in any way…so be my guest lol

I’m fine with how strong protection and vigor are, and maybe even weakness as well. It’s just the numbers that still need to be further adjusted.

I think the combat system is better when conditions and boons must be strictly used at the right time, than when you can spam them and fill your UI with icons. In GW1, this was less of a problem, because the energy system slowed down the pace of combat a bit, and added more weight to certain skills. But without an energy resource, GW2’s battle system heavily revolves around activating your skills as fast as possible the moment you think it’s the best time to use them. It’s a type of combat where you’re almost always activating skills over and over.

This is not a bad thing by itself, but it leads to some problems, when we consider that most changes made to underpowered skills and underpowered traits, in order to make them more interesting, revolves around adding conditions and boons into them. This creates the problem where boons and conditions are raining from everywhere, cluttering the UI screen, and giving almost no time or opportunity to strategically react to them, especially when you’re at the middle of combat and you do not have the time to observe each tiny icon while still watching the battlefield and reacting to it. And I’m not talking specifically to the problem with current Necromancers, but with a general issues that already existed before.

There are some solutions to this. One, and this is a rather vague solution, is for the devs to find more ways to improve underpowered skills and traits without relying so much on filling them with conditions/ boons. I’d say one direction to go is to further explore the movement and positional aspects of the combat system, and enhance underpowered options with position tactics in mind. Another, is to make conditions and boons stronger but having them last for a lot less time, so that there’s a lot less “rolling through keyboard” (hyperbole), and increase the number of situations where players will want to wait and hold to use some of their available skills.

There are many situations where extremely strong boons like stability, protection, retaliation and vigor are way too easily available (usually by low cooldowns, like the vigor’s trait or that guardian’s “stand your ground!” shout, or by being available from way too many sources at the same time) and/ or last a bit too much (like chaos armor, where 5s of protection compared to the much weaker 3s of swiftness is totally uneven; or Elemental Attunement’s ele trait). These are some of the examples of skills and traits that add protection for 5s, when they could very well add it for 3s only. 3s is enough to weaken a burst, having it last between 5s to 7-8s from boon duration is a bit overkill, especially the moment once stacked duo to different sources.

1)Make cond removal use lifo system or priority based on damage over time
2)Less passive cond application,less passive cond removal
3)Less instant attacks (including the boring double arcane ele)

Guardians only have 2 real viable condi removers; Sure we have access to skills that remove conditions but what guardian is going to take utility slots

1. Smite Condition — Cure a condition and damage nearby foes. More damage if a condition is cured. What guardian is going to use this in place of stand your ground or save yourself?

2. Purging Flames — Create a ring of fire that burns foes and cures conditions on allies.
Sure sounds neat, but without stability, protection, regen, what kind of guardian are you?

3. Bow of Truth — Summon an arcane bow to cure conditions on you and your allies.
"" ""….Oh and spirit weapon…nice, lol

4. Purifying Ribbon (Tome of Courage) — Release a ribbon of light that bounces to nearby allies, curing one condition on each ally hit and blinding each foe hit. 180 Second CD…for one condition removal…ok

5. Smite Condition — Cure a condition and damage nearby foes. More damage if a condition is cured. Nice, one condi remove, much preferred over stand your ground or save yourself or a signet.

Some just make no sense:

(Absolute Resolution – three conditions from self upon activating Virtue of Resolve )…activate my regen virue to loose 3 conditions, sure get some hp, loose it in another 2-3 seconds due to condi spammage now without regen.

(Inscribed Removal – one condition from self upon activating signets ), Sure activate my defensive signet to loose one condition, no im taking full 100% dmg for a full 30 seconds utill it comes up again.

These amount up to so little compared to condition spamming classes, moreso any guardian that builds for condition removal is not viable in any other form…

I have a lot of experience with elemental surge just so every knows. I think I used it for the first 4-5 months until I learned how the signet heal worked with evasive arcana. (which now doesn’t work but I still prefer evasive now that I’ve learned to use it)

So yeah I haven’t used ele surge in a long time but I’d like to think I have a grasp on how strong it would be and I don’t think its too strong after nerfing the arcane spell damage pretty hard, in fact I think it is quite the possibility that it would be weaker. The concern that condis are already all over the place is a completely valid concern though and I would also be afraid that this would just improve the crazy amount that currently exists. Definitely open to more suggestions to adjust ele burst and/or arcane spells!

For Elementalist: I would like to see the trait persisting flames moved from a grandmaster trait to a master trait and have the fury reduced to 7 seconds down from 10 and fire fields to 15% longer, this is a really cool trait and can add to team fighter support eles. A lot of people can’t warrant a 30 point investment in fire magic to use the trait. Also a lot of the other traits in fire magic line are just plain pointless in pvp. Maybe you can do a split, and make some of them not so worthless.

For Warriors: I would like to see frenzy reworked. Maybe have a stiffer penelty like 75% more damage taken, but on a shorter cool down. It was such a big part of warriors in gw1 and I would like to see they at that status again. Maybe some thing to help with condi cleanse.

There seems to be a lot of talk about offensive-ish guardians. Seeing as I played one for 5+ months and was one of the only ones NA (kaypud was the other that comes to mind) I have a pretty decent grasp on the subject.

There are 2 big issues with the specs that keep it from seeing competative play.

1 – condi removal
2 – swiftness/passive speed buffs

On the topic of condi removal the guardian, like the warrior, is subject to massive amounts of condi cleave. As a melee class you have to focus on chill, cripple, and weakness to allow you do just do damage, but if you waste removals on those then you die to poision, bleed, burn. The way bunkers survive condi clear is via shout build + 20 into virtures wich force you into vit armor and 30 points into the vit tree. People have toyed with an “offensive” shout guardian, and it works good enough for hot join, but it lacks mobility and damage for tPvP. Then again shouts are much more of a team support-esq skill so they really shouldn’t be super offensive. There are 2 ways to fix this: remove shout runes from the game and make the extra condi clear part of teh t3 traits for warriors and guardians OR (and this is the better solution I feel) buff non-shout removal. Smite condi buff would be huge here, something like doubleish the recharge, remove up to 3 condi deal extra damage for each one. Try to keep the DPS about the same but make it so it can remove covered condis. While your at it, meditation traits need to be more compact so you don’t speed all 3 tiers just making medis worth while. Either move the instant cast in like with the 20% cd OR make instant cast base functionality of smite condi.

The other problem with guardian is that they are easily kited in team fights. While the class should not be a super roamer like thief or ele, it needs more access to swiftness and a passive 15-25% speed buff some how (when traited). This problem can be worked around(kinda) with runes like Pack or Speed… but they arn’t good enough, and again if you are forced into shouts you can not take them. Retreat has WAY to long of a CD. Aegis isn’t as strong as devs thought at launch, something like a 30sec CD with lower durration swiftness to compensate (15 sec? 20 sec?) would be good. As it is right now it just gets stripped. Staff is also the only other form of swiftness, the problem is, a guardian who is speced offensivly cant waste 10 sec in a staff to get this swiftness, to much damage is lost. An idea here would be to move the swiftness symbol to focus thus allowing for sword/sceptar and focus play so you can do damage even when u are in ur swiftness set.

Some other random concerns:
Too many traits that are not as compact i.e. symbol has 3 traits in 1 line and 2 in another, medi has 3 traits, spirit weapons have serveral traits across many lines. These need to be more compact.

Excellent points by Phantaram.

Here is my solution to stealth:

First 2 seconds of stealth the character remains fully invisible to its enemies. Then its transparency value begins to change (gradually becoming a bit visible). After staying 3-4 seconds in stealth it becomes semi-transparent, just like the stealthed person is rendered to its allies. You could not still target that semi-transparent stealthed opponent, but it would remove the guess work where the stealthed opponents are.

Pros:
+ no changes needed for skills or professions
+ minimal programming work
+ all stealth related traits (most thieves really rely on them) would still work exactly like before

Cons:
- landing a backstab from rear/sides after long period of stealth would be more difficult
- AoE easier to land against stealthed opponents

I also think damage over time (DoT) effects, including bleeding, should be rendered on stealthed opponents, so that enemy can see them. If you got multiple stacks of bleed, that should leave some particle animation even if you’re stealthed.

Putting internal cooldowns in between Elementalist spells would hurt the class immensely. It would also genuinely change the feel of gameplay — that is absolutely the wrong way to go about toning down Ele burst.

I think that Ele burst is strong but I definitely do not believe that it is gamebreaking nor a pressing issue. I like the suggestions about arcane utilities (actually make them feel like utilities instead of extra burst — maybe take away their guaranteed crit chance?) and I would rather see them targeted than any of the S/D spells (except Shatterstone, feel free to change that :P). That being said, I would hope any balance would be extremely careful. Taking an arcane as a utility is already a decent sacrifice and I don’t want to see them become completely unused/worthless.

An addition to Ele — I really think something about Lightning Flash needs to change. I use it and it is a terrific utility but the fact that we can use it while stunned makes for very disjointed gameplay. Getting stunned, LFing away only to be stunned in another spot feels the absolute opposite of fluid. I’d like to see it either get its stunbreak back (which I highly doubt will happen) or make it unusable when stunned. Or hell, maybe just change the way animation works? It just feels off.

If I had a crystal ball, I’d say the only major things we will see in the next balance patch will be necro nerfs and warrior buffs. I hope some of these other things will be touched (especially Mesmer and S/D thief) up but I doubt it with Pax coming up.

Arheundel.6451:

Nikkle.4013:

Arheundel.6451:

Burning in a s/d burst battle build after 12 stacks of might would hit for 420 dmg for second..after 12 stacks of might mind you

Well if your only getting 12 stacks of might thats your problem. Even at 420 damage thats 1260 over 3 seconds. If the blind was changed to weakness I still don’t see why that’s bad. So now you have more damage mitigation. And if you bothered to read my posts, I don’t necessarily agree with phanta’s solution. I just hate when people like you post such terrible arguments that don’t address the point at all and then make snide remarks. But Phanta nailed it earlier.

Phantaram.1265:

I’d just ignore arheundal just based on my past experience. He just argues for the sake of it I think.

This is good advice, going to follow it from now on.

Burst ele = 13k HP
You need dmg and fast..or you die fast, not enough toughness or HP to wait for mediocre burning dmg to run its effect and hopefully put enough pressure on the enemy, for 12 stacks of might it means you have already gone through a full burst rotation and that 1260 burning dmg means nothing as in those 3s you can get killed .

Having a single blind every 20s+ is not OP at all..so why replace it with weakness?
Again..I use hard math, take the numbers and compare, then make my comments, the OP is suggesting to nerf dmg for an already squishy spec with not enough returns and for reasons that would benefit only a team as nobody run a double arcane ele outside organized matches.

And for the last time..the devs read the forums, I put down numbers for them to consider before any hasty decision is made, I don’t see how your consideration would benefit me in any way…so be my guest lol

Firstly if your dying quickly as a valks amulet ele, then your playing it wrong; they have tons of survivability. They are loads more survivable then all the other glass canon specs save s/d thieves.
The burning isn’t anywhere close to being a joke, burning is one of the best conditions in the game, and its basically apply and forget, its also not effected by toughness so its a lot more potential damage on tankier targets, its also insanely good on mesmers who have no condition removal. The burn also means that targets who are trying to los or evade damage are constantly under pressure because of the burns that have been applied to them.
if you think that burning is a joke, because you can’t survive long enough to see it come to fruition then that’s an l2p issue, and has nothing to do with the effectiveness or burning even without condition damage.

Also replacing the blind with the weakness is a buff and not a nerf, it would mean that ele would have less blinds but be less prone to being bursted down, as weakness cuts burst damage substantially.

I also would like to point out, that this has nothing to do with a team scenario, why would it only be a viable option for an ele playing with a team and not a solo que ele ?
because as far as im concerned arcane spells have never been a team utility and I doubt they ever will be, so please help me understand where this farfetched argument is coming from.

Also, as for Stealth changes — a hard cap would be nice. I’d like to see that hard cap allow a team get past mid node on their way to far without stealth breaking, however. Using it tactically as a team is incredibly fun and exciting to watch. It is a bit long currently, as Phanta was referencing with “Let’s get Bob — nah, Jane, etc…” but keep in mind most players have to lose valuable cooldowns in order to gain long stealth. Stealth is a very tricky mechanic to balance.

I only disagree about Weakness. I think it’s fine.

Also, 50 percent of 1700 is 850, not 360.

@Xeph

-While a valkyrie ele may have more sustain compared to a mesmer/thief , it’s also true that ele remain still more susceptible to burst and CC train lock compared to the them, with good positioning that extra sustain may come in handy but otherwise you die much faster

- I’m aware of the dmg potential of burning, one of the builds I use is a tank support with great condition dmg against which, s/d thieves normally die.
My point is why we should halve the dmg of arcane skills and add conditional condition dmg, taking arcane skills over other utilities already lower our sustain so why should we be punished further for using them?
The ele burst can be predicted and avoided, after that, a double arcane ele got little defense against full burst rotation, a mistake and they’re dead, there are cons to the spec, therefore the s/d burst ele build is not so OP that require such severe nerfs.

- I use blinds to secure stomps on most professions, I recognize the interrupt animation and blind them, I can use blind while KDed so to block at least one bust skill, I can use blind to block dangerous burst skills..blind can save my life.
Weakness..I still get hit, for less dmg, but still get hit…so weakness may not save my life like blind, therefore by replacing blind with weakness you would nerf me

-Using a double arcane build in soloq, it’s not really a great idea, you are more easily brought down while being in a team you can’t trust

DiogoSilva.7089:

I think the combat system is better when conditions and boons must be strictly used at the right time, than when you can spam them and fill your UI with icons.

Completely agree. ANet needs to do a pass on all the stronger boons and stronger conditions and adjust durations or possibly the effect.

Elementalist:
Move Cleansing wave from the offhand Dagger to the Focus. Revert the c/d change on Ride the Lightning.
This will help to push the focus to being the bunker weapon, whist allowing the offhand dagger to be the roaming / damage weapon.

Fix our bugs from release.

Arheundel.6451:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Phantaram.1265:

Elementalist Burst combo – You can chain many instant cast abilities together and affectively do what any dagger thief does and bring someone from 100-0 in split seconds, but as an elementalist you bring so much more to a team than a dagger thief. Arcane spells are to blame in my opinion. Weaken arcane spell damage drastically (100% – 125% less damage) but give them some kind of utility. Say… make elemental surge base line? Just reduce the burning to 3 seconds. 5 seconds would be too strong. And maybe make air spells 2 seconds of weakness because so much access to blinds is also pretty crazy. Yeah just tone down the base line elemental surge and all is well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MlXskSmfpI

Just to add in some practical evidence.

And yea, stealth can only be balanced by removing it.

A glass cannon ele “one-shotting” a glass cannon mesmer..who was sleeping and didn’t see a flashy dwarf with fire armor walking up the ramp …what kind of evidence is this?

this is one of the things phantaram already mentioned 1st the stealthduration : helseth didn’t saw mogow because he was in superlong stealth otherwise i am pretty sure helseth would have beaten mogow 1v1.
the burst of offele yea hits pretty hard: as offele u have to press 9 buttons in a certain row and u need positioning and timing u cannot compare it to a 3 pressing s/dthief but u can see the teleport and then dodge/mistform. a thief in stealth is harder too evade…

the other thing is my role as a support/rez/healbunkerelementalist got destroyed (me (mainele from mim), hyx (ele from denial/tcg ), epily, demo…) had to adapt onto offensivemode-ele or playing a completely different role/ class.

the best teams in europe already play a 4 roamer 1 guard setup .a bunkerele cant hold a point in 1v1 vs a necro, s/dthief or engineer, now it is even better: bunkerele just dies vs that classes except engi… to heal people and rez people it is atm absolutely impossible because of that kittening condition aoepressure.

imo necro (wins all 1v1 easily, best range 1200 aoe crowdcontrols, overconditioning)

& s/dthief (except vs necro one of best classes , mobility , pressuredamage and survivability( how many dodges , evasive skills, teleportskills and stealth u will give the thief in future ?? …) are too strong.

engi is near boarderline (the selfstealth is too long enemy team cant see where engi goes) but requires at least skill…

yea, an antistealthskill would be nice on a ranger maybe or another supporter….
and i wan a retaliationboon (mirror) for condis on my ele plox

@phantaram:
since xeph and teldo married.
would u bother to marry me ? :’D

so much theorycraftingwisdom!

hmmm, i didnt know that mesmer gs is so strong = i tested less mesmer than other classes; need to check that asap….

On the original topic:

I agree with most of the original post, unfortunately it seems to have gotten derailed into “omg don’t nerf me’s” but I’ll try to get it back on the tracks just the same. I agree with most of the things stated in the original topic, so I’ll just expand and add a little bit as I see it.

Mesmer Utility
No, I don’t think it needs a nerf, I think it’s great that a single player can have such a major impact on a game with a well timed skill. I think however that other classes should be brought up with their own ‘game changers’.

A good example would be warrior battle standard. At the moment it’s on a 240s CD with a 2s cast time. That’s a 4 minute cooldown, comparatively iLife is 130s (yes I understand battlestandard has other effects). An idea would be to reduce battle standards cooldown to 180s (allowing it to be traited for 144s) while cutting the duration down to 30-40s and perhaps reducing the cast by a half second or so. I realize this would be in every way superior to iLife, but for one it’s an elite, two mesmers would still have portal (and maybe would get to free up a utility slot if a warrior was in the team).

I use warrior as an example as that’s primarily what I play, so I don’t know as much about the lesser used skills on other classes. I’m sure there’s plenty of similar things that could be done with other classes utility to bring them on par.

Animations
In my eyes nothing offensive should be instant-cast. You covered this a bit with ele’s, but you should have a chance to react to any ability that can CC or do damage. This also goes for necro staff animations which are all identical. I would suggest different colored bolts that fired to the marks location or something of the sort during cast.

This also rolls into stealth, nobody would complain if you were revealed at the start of an attack from stealth instead of after (and only if) it hit. I would also suggest (for thieves sake) that if you missed and were taken out of stealth it would not apply the revealed debuff. I doubt thieves would have needed half of the damage nerfs they’ve been given if this was how it worked in the first place.

In short, you should be able to react to things. Guardians and warriors are designed really well in this respect.

give warrior more combo fields

surely my opinion is not on the same lvl than phantaram or ultima. but I gonna give my opinion about the ele. About the ele combo, I understand how frustating it is but the ppl is traing to nerfs instead os change the mechanic.

A combo that use the 3 utilities skills its just a mechanic problem, as an ele I must use all my utilities offensive it leave me vulnerable to the enemy brusters, another ele or a thief.

Acording what anet says in SoTG they try to divide stunsbreaks between all the diferents kinds of utilitys.

I think that if they remove arcane blast and they create a new defensive arcane utility or add breakstun to arcane shield the problem can be solved.

And ofcourse I’m agree that the bunker ele just disappeared and thats a great problem because all the eles are forced into one role

Sheslat.6750:

or add breakstun to arcane shield

They did

i wan my support/bunkerelementalist back .
for me it is much more fun to play a healing/boongiving/rezzing tank than a fragile rocket

Phantaram.1265:

Here’s a few things that I think are too strong at the moment.

Sword/Dagger Thief – It just dodges too much. It is often the biggest threat on the enemy team but also the last thing you wanna focus because you will end up wasting all your spells on him while he’s dodging. Alternatively you could leave the thief himself really strong but reduce his utility. Shadow Refuge is just as strong of a rez utility as any other in my opinion if not stronger and is only on a 60 second cooldown. Lyssa runes are also pretty strong, reduce boon duration to 5 seconds instead of 10? Obviously nerfing all of this is way too much. Just choose 1 or 2. It’s also kind of odd that flanking strike aoe cleaves. That dagger has quite the wide range of attack!

Stealth – This is the biggest one for me and I talked about this a long time ago in the SOTG and it’s just gotten more and more out of control. If you have two sources of long stealths in your teams line up your options at any point in the game and especially at the beginning are limitless.

There HAS to be a limit on how much stealth you can get. 6-7 seconds sounds reasonable to me but even then with two sources of stealth that is 12-14 seconds which will still give you tons of options and advantages over the other team. Stealth is a REALLY tough one to balance. As it is now people are walking around the map all leisure like for 30 seconds just talking amongst themselves like “Well I dunno who do you wanna 1 shot? We’ll 1 shot jimmy, no… bob! Well actually lets not even attack this node, onward to the enemy close point! Okay we are all here? Roger Roger. 3 2 4.. I can’t count… go! success! that other team can’t counter our amazing strat lol!”

I am going to try and be as constructive as I can.

For S/D thieves it works great against basically everything, but it is not overpowered. What made this build, and this role, much strong is Shadow Trap. The fact that you can keep pressure on 1 side of the map (mostly being the enemies close point) a good 50-70% of the time during the game, is pretty noticeable and makes teams overreact.

Changing Lyssa runes boons would be fine, but I personally do not like this. Thieves have never been the class that should be stomping enemy players, but if they can do it, they should, and Lyssa’s stability helps a lot with that.

As far as too many dodges, rangers have “too” many dodges, they can get a lot of vigor as well, I would like to see something more specific.

Shadow Refuge is a great skill to be used for reviving it really is, But it is not an instant revive, say Illusion of Life, or Signet of Undeath or Warbanner. The thief or teammates still have to actually revive that downed player, and that is the difference.

Stealth, stealth openings are good, and borderline too strong against players who react incorrectly, or overreact to it. Even when you react correctly, its mostly true your back point should die. Changing something like this, did you think how it might effect thieves? I mean D/P Burst thieve of course.

I am going to agree with most of what you said for thieves and stealth. I just wanted to give some counter-arguments, and hear your thoughts.

rsq.3581:

Putting internal cooldowns in between Elementalist spells would hurt the class immensely. It would also genuinely change the feel of gameplay — that is absolutely the wrong way to go about toning down Ele burst.

Adding a 1 second cooldown to arcane blast/wave when the other is triggered wouldn’t significantly change the way an ele plays. It’s a mild shift to stretch instant burst damage into something that can realistically be reacted to.

Xeph.4513:

Firstly if your dying quickly as a valks amulet ele, then your playing it wrong; they have tons of survivability. They are loads more survivable then all the other glass canon specs save s/d thieves.

Valk ele is neither glass nor cannon. It’s a balanced build that tries to bring a decent amount of both. It has ~60% of the damage of a glass ele while having respectable survivability. Even then, a valk ele who burns double arcanes and lightning flash to try and burst people down is going to be a free kill if they fail to kill their target. Most offensive builds can burst through 2600 armor and 13k health in one 2 second stun. A true glass ele dies when people look at it cross eyed.

Jonwar.9205:

Animations
In my eyes nothing offensive should be instant-cast. You covered this a bit with ele’s, but you should have a chance to react to any ability that can CC or do damage. This also goes for necro staff animations which are all identical. I would suggest different colored bolts that fired to the marks location or something of the sort during cast.

Adding more visibility to strong skills would add a lot of opportunity for counter play and be a huge upgrade in terms of skilled gameplay. I like the idea of adding a bolt that fires while casting a mark or maybe have the mark fade in during the cast with different colors for different marks.

Great thread. I hope this can be productive.

This thread has a lot of very good ideas and arguments in it, I sure hope Anet is reading this.

Thought I’d post this here because this thread is great and constructive, and likely to get the attention of devs, and the other thread on this totally devolved.

For necro dhuumfire, and many other traits that give some powerful condition on some short invisible internal cooldown, please change the rules for the proccing of the burning to something VISIBLE and AVOIDABLE to promote counterplay. I find it supremely stupid that once dhuumfire is off cooldown it doesn’t matter how you dodge or play against the necro… the next crit is going to own you. Some ideas:

a) Apply burning when you chill a foe. Burning duration is half the chill duration.
-at least you can dodge the necro attacks that chill, would also be a neat buff to spinal shivers that works with the rest of the spite tree. Duration scaling would help prevent Sigil of Ice from being OP.

b) Apply 4 seconds of burning to nearby foes when leaving deathshroud
-people would be running from you while in deathshroud literally “fearing” the burn. You can counterplay using the claw gap closer or immobilize to ensure the burning lands. Encourages builds that spend more in Soul Reaping diversifying the builds a bit

c) Apply 6 seconds of burning to nearby foes (or maybe 8 seconds to single target?) when activating a signet
-creates new multi-signet builds that force hard choices over utilities. Most signets have cast time so would be dodgable (aside form plague signet). Plague signet becomes quite nice, but still balanced b/c of long cooldown

You could use these ideas to give a similar treatment to other similar traits that give some powerful proc on an attack that is currently unavoidable (i.e. incendiary powder- maybe it would apply burning when you use a control effect on an opponent pull, knockback, stun, etc, or maybe it does it to your opponent when they block a bomb or grenade!)

Kavia.8249:

something VISIBLE and AVOIDABLE to promote counterplay.

If the devs pick up one thing from this thread i hope its this. The common theme of quite a few posts here has been to make things visible and open to counterplay. Make things Active not automated whether it’s damage or condi cleanses.

Fjandi.2516:

papaganoosh.7908:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Guardian;
No swiftness apart from shouts.

Sorry to be pedantic but:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Symbol_of_Swiftness

Sorry to be pedantic but i will never pick a staff as a zerker dps guardian, so according to your comment every guardian has to take retreat or equip a staff in order to get swiftness. I know he forgot to mention the staff symbol, but the point is a dps guardian has no valid options for swiftness.
On a side note i totally agree with CntrlAltDefeat, good post.

Not trying to troll, but a dps guardian isn’t, as you put it, a valid option. That’s like me complaining my bunker warrior (which I don’t have because it is like a chocolate teapot) doesn’t have access to protection. Every class isn’t meant to be able to fulfill every role. If they were it would be boring as what class you choose would essentially just be a skin.

Ok,

my first thought was “wow, nerf thief further and he is the new warrior” but when you take all changes into account it might be ok. the biggest problem for a thief right now is condiremoval and the strength of conditions. first place probably going to weakness as it negates most of the damage a thief is dealing, the other conditions are only a pain that eat through my small HP-Pool. Before 6/25 it was a race who will die faster but with the state of weakness/blind it feels like i got no wheels.

long text short, when you tone down weakness you might want to look at thief damagenumbers again but without that i dont feel a thief can get many more nerfs before he disapears from competitive pvp (again).

always consider a thief has low hp/selfheal and has to be melee (so survive this aoespam) to deal his damage. especially as a s/d you are mostly dealing “sustained” damage and dont burst someone in 1-2 seconds like for example the ele can do right now. so you need many evades to sustain yourself.

to get on another topic that was discussed here.. people talked about how they think rangers, thiefs and GS mesmers have too much access to vigor/evades and how strong those specs are. I feel the same way, but when you list those you might wanna list another class as well.

People might already know, but imho engi is too strong.

He has:
- 100% Vigor and Swiftness uptime through 2 adepttraits
- the three strongest combofields (fire, water, smoke) and on himself at least 3 (4 with rocketboots) blastfinisher on a very short CD (max 30sec)
- multiple CCs (Flamethrower #3, Shield #4, Gluebomb into Bigbomb, 2sec AOE Stun); Flamethrower #3 and Shield #4 being undodgable; Flamethrower #3 only having 15sec CD
- the possibilty to selfrezz in most 1on1 situations (not every class has access to knockbacks to kick him out of this zone)
- an extrem access to burning with incendiary ammo (FT Toolbelt) and incendiary powder (trait) plus Fire Bomb and the FT; Fire Bomb and the rest of the FT skills arent great and easily avoidable but in addition to the first mentioned still noticable
- a good amount of other conditions to cover the burning

and those are only the things that are over the top.

- I would move invigorating Speed to the Mastertier and give it an uptime of 50% (every 10second for 5seconds)
- Remove the Waterfield on Regenerating Mist (Healtower toolbelt); wont do much, but having two waterfields on those short CDs are too much.
- Remove the Blastfinisher from Magnetic Inversion (Shield #4)
- Increase the Flamethrower #3 CD to 30seconds and give it a .5 second casttime. Shield #4 being undodgable is good as you sacrifice your projectile reflection when you instantpop it.
- change Elixir R back to having a Stunbreak and no casttime, increasing the CD to 40s;
- Toss Elixir R: reducing the revive per tick to 15%, reducing the duration to 4seconds and adding a .75sec casttime
- reduce a) the burningduration an engineer can apply or b) reducing the conditions he can apply to cover the burning; i think b) would be better because then he is still good in groupfights where his conditions are covered by other players but he isnt that much of a monster in 1on1 situations when you actually bring condiremoval with you.

The next thing is my teams most beloved skill. Spirit of Nature \o/ As im getting lazy writing it all over again i just copy my old post:

“We have two big problems with this skill. The first one is that you can put it anywhere on the map and activate Nature’s Renewal (NR) from an infinite range. For Example on Forest of Niflhel you can set the Spirit of Nature (SoN) behind the Keep and rush back to Henge to defend it and just trigger NR while you are defending that point. In our opinion the activation of FN should have a range. Say you need to be in a 900 – 1.500 unit range to the Spirit to be able to cast it.
The second problem is that FN has no Line of Sight (LoS) check. You actually can place it behind the Keep (bottom of the stairs) and resurrect downed Players at the Cappoint while the other team can’t do anything about it. It would mean that for the duration of the Spirit you can’t attack this point and that’s huge. On Battle of Khylo SoN is at least as bad as on Forest of Niflhel. In the “old” Meta Ranger was defending close or attacking far, so in most cases you don’t have someone on him all the time and you cant afford that someone is spirithunting all the time either. He can just set the spirit below the Clocktower and resurrect people that are downed inside it. Give FN a LoS Check (Spirit to downed Player, not Spirit to Ranger) to fix this, in our opinion, broken spell.”

One possible solution for arcane utilities is to take out the instant cast. Cantrips already follow the instant-cast design, and in my opinion, conjures should be instant-cast down the road too (simulating the weapon swap/ kit mechanic – I can’t see how conjure shield is ever going to be useful otherwise). If this were ever to happen, it would overload elementalists with instant-cast effects, and arcanes already fill several niches (combo finishers and burst support). So they could have a fast activation time, something like 3/4 of a second or even less. This would force air elementalists to interrupt arc lightning, or wait until the auto-attack is finished, stretching their dps for a few seconds. To compensate for the nerf, arcanes could have a slightly lower cooldown.

Another solution, still without completely revamping them, is to add a delay between activating the skill and the damage kicking in, especially with a visible animation. Something like a timed bomb. Maybe Arcane Blast can have its speed decreased to something more like the Guardian’s scepter auto-attack, and maybe Arcane Wave can have a pre-damage animation indicating that it’s about to explode. This would probably synergy poorly with Elemental Surge, but I wouldn’t priotize this trait over more serious issues: the trait can always be tweaked. Meanwhile, it wouldn’t interrupt an elementalist’s skill activation follow, while making them way more predictable. The damage could increase and/ or the cooldowns could decrease to compensate for the predictability.

I’ll take this opportunity to talk about the remaining arcane skills too:

- Add projectile reflection to Arcane Shield’s effect. Why? AS is a weaker Mist Form with the niche of punishing the opponent with damage. Currently, its extra effect is barely worth taking the skill over the far more reliable MF. By adding projectile reflection, the damage input can potentially be even higher, and it’ll allow your opponent to activate your combo fields for you. This change would be consistent with the other two arcane skills, because they too are combo finishers that highly specialized at damage. This would make AS the third combo finisher of the line, even though it would do so in a more indirect way.

Arcane Power: I have no ideas for this at the moment. :P

Also, Phantaram’s idea for a Elemental Surge utility skill is within a Glyph’s design space. :P Maybe Glyph of Elemental Power could be revamped to add an instant-cast, one-time effect mirroring Elemental Surge’s? Then just add the appropriate amount of damage and cooldown. Although for a sunbreaker glyph, I would much prefer a complete revamp to Glyph of Elemental Auras.

papaganoosh.7908:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Guardian;
No swiftness apart from shouts.

Sorry to be pedantic but:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Symbol_of_Swiftness

Fair call. Again..the symbol requires you to stand in it and not for it to be targeted at the opponent. Unless of course you can get the opponent to stand in it with you. Again too many assigned passive speed buffs. Movement speed is a sound counter to many possible situations, either for chasing or evading….It should therefore by reason be an equipped skill. You either sacrifice to bring it with you, or you stand your ground. This principle was discovered at least 7 years in a game called guild wars.

Vuh.1328:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Far point/bomb engis – Just way too strong. The only counter to it is a necromancer (which we know will be nerfed). And even then the necromancer cannot stay on the point so it will get decapped anyway. This build beats everything else 1 on 1 with extreme ease AND, further to this, even if they cant kill the other person 1 on 1 then all their knockbacks will still decap the point. Being able to res yourself is just broken. The amount of spam is ridiculous. They can get so many conditions on someone by just pew-pew ing. The burning is too much I think.

it doesn’t beat my warrior with extreme ease at all, probably the other way around. But it has less team utility than a BM ranger beside some cc and more selfish stability than a guardian

This is pretty off too. Most bomb Engis don’t take OH pistol meaning they can’t ridiculously stack you just by pew pewing.

They have a 2s(lol) bleed on auto attack, a 10s CD poison volley, and a 15s CD shot that does blind/confusion. Both the poison volley and the static shot confusion/blind have very very obvious projectile tells.

This means people are standing in bombs.

The problem is tiny nodes, not bomb Engi.

If every node were the size of Foefire middle node there would be much less issue with AOE spam in general – because you could actually be intelligent and move out of it. Currently you’re forced to basically make complete idiot mistakes of standing in people’s AOEs IF you want to maintain holding a point.

He probably means Incendiary Ammo, Incendiary Powder, Sharpshooter, (Shrapnel,) Steam-Packed Powder and the Weaponsigils too.

And lets be honest, an Engineer has too many spells that you should dodge, so you cant save all your evades for pistol 2/3.

Unless your current team comp is GS mes, s/d thief, necro, fresh air ele, and another one of those builds in the 5th spot, you’re off target. Is that the comp you’re practicing on for PAX right now?

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

(I really like that in the condition-meta nowadays).

Fixed that for you
No problem!

Marduh.4603:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Epidemic
Why then all the other professions do not have skills that would remove everything from all the dots with such a cooldown?
Why necromancer can kill your entire team opponents pressing one button?

Because you need to combo it with at least another skill to make it effective aka Corrupt Boon (40s) or Signet of Spite (48s). Then the cd is actually dependent on those skills otherwise it’s basically give yourself 3 stacks (is it 3?) of vulnerability every 15s.

papaganoosh.7908:

Fjandi.2516:

papaganoosh.7908:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Guardian;
No swiftness apart from shouts.

Sorry to be pedantic but:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Symbol_of_Swiftness

Sorry to be pedantic but i will never pick a staff as a zerker dps guardian, so according to your comment every guardian has to take retreat or equip a staff in order to get swiftness. I know he forgot to mention the staff symbol, but the point is a dps guardian has no valid options for swiftness.
On a side note i totally agree with CntrlAltDefeat, good post.

Not trying to troll, but a dps guardian isn’t, as you put it, a valid option. That’s like me complaining my bunker warrior (which I don’t have because it is like a chocolate teapot) doesn’t have access to protection. Every class isn’t meant to be able to fulfill every role. If they were it would be boring as what class you choose would essentially just be a skin.

On a side note, Stunning came out with a semi-dps build that’s pretty effective (it’s up in the guard forums) and it uses staff.

KrisHQ.4719:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

(I really like that in the condition-meta nowadays).

Fixed that for you
No problem!

hmmm… In my context it was about stealth play and the surprising moment, which is very effective against bunker-speccs. Well, bunker-meta was the false word for it anyway, so thanks for the advice

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vitality

If people stack more of this nearly every single issue described becomes less of a problem.

jmatb.6307:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vitality

If people stack more of this nearly every single issue described becomes less of a problem.

So vital makes your enemies drop stealth sooner? Makes S/D evade less? Yes vital is more useful in a condi-meta but you sacrifice damage or sustain for it. It’s not free. Vital doesn’t fix imbalances. Everyone getting more vital will just mean longer fights, not more balanced ones.

Siric.3589:

Phantaram.1265:

Stealth – This is the biggest one for me and I talked about this a long time ago in the SOTG and it’s just gotten more and more out of control. If you have two sources of long stealths in your teams line up your options at any point in the game and especially at the beginning are limitless.

There HAS to be a limit on how much stealth you can get. 6-7 seconds sounds reasonable to me but even then with two sources of stealth that is 12-14 seconds which will still give you tons of options and advantages over the other team. Stealth is a REALLY tough one to balance. As it is now people are walking around the map all leisure like for 30 seconds just talking amongst themselves like “Well I dunno who do you wanna 1 shot? We’ll 1 shot jimmy, no… bob! Well actually lets not even attack this node, onward to the enemy close point! Okay we are all here? Roger Roger. 3 2 4.. I can’t count… go! success! that other team can’t counter our amazing strat lol!”

Another solution is to give stealth some sort of counter.

I agree with this in its entirety. There needs to be some kind of heavy diminishing returns on chained stealths. Some sort of stacking reveal debuff would be good – every time you restealth within 10(?) seconds of your last stealth that stealth last 33% less, stacks until 100% so you are forced to not stealth for 10 seconds. Its a rough idea, but something that should be looked at.

Now, before every thief gets out their keyboards and start to send me death threats let me say this. The thief class needs to be moved away from stealth abusing and given alternate forms of utility and survivability. Most of the recent changes have been good, even the broken shadow trap was a good start at giving thieves more utility as they get nerfed. Stealth is hard to balance in nearly every game, and GW2 has one of the strongest stealths yet (doesn’t break on damage, is a true stealth, can’t see outline ala Sc2, instant stealth, doesn’t fade to stealth). I think changing stealth to anything I listed above (particularly a fade to stealth and non-perfect stealth so you can see someone standing next to you in it to dodge burst) would be a great start. On top of that, missing a backstab shouldn’t keep you stealthed and a heart seaker that hits SOULDN’T stealth you when using out of a smoke field… they just did damage to you kitten .

Shadow refuge is elite status good. This post is getting longer that I expected so I won’t go into a lot of details but the duration it last should be less, the CD should be longer, and it shouldn’t give nearly as long of an AoE stealth… or make it an elite (the better option IMO) to make thieves chose between utility and offense (basilisk venom).

Sorry this got a big longer than I expected so I will wrap it up with 1 last thought.

Many of this builds have counters and builds that work well at countering how they play. The problem is that these counters are not strong enough to be viable when put up against other builds. The only things I feel need to be nerfed are necromancers and stealth mechanics – other things are manageable with continued buffs to weaker builds. To list some off: offensive guardians, warriors, mantra mesmers, non-stealth thief builds, engis (make elixer C a break stun for the love of god); I could go on and on.

Sorry for the long posts. Ill add more after some more talk happens

I’m against this because it ruins S/D Control completely. S/D Control and P/D Condi thrive off spamming thier stealth skill as often as possible, so any nerf to the frequency they can stealth at ruins their viability at their role, along with nerfing their survivability.

(Also, Shadow Refuge would be way more useful as an elite. Moving SR to the elite slot would leave thieves free to carry an extra utility.)

Dual.8953:

Siric.3589:

Phantaram.1265:

Stealth – This is the biggest one for me and I talked about this a long time ago in the SOTG and it’s just gotten more and more out of control. If you have two sources of long stealths in your teams line up your options at any point in the game and especially at the beginning are limitless.

There HAS to be a limit on how much stealth you can get. 6-7 seconds sounds reasonable to me but even then with two sources of stealth that is 12-14 seconds which will still give you tons of options and advantages over the other team. Stealth is a REALLY tough one to balance. As it is now people are walking around the map all leisure like for 30 seconds just talking amongst themselves like “Well I dunno who do you wanna 1 shot? We’ll 1 shot jimmy, no… bob! Well actually lets not even attack this node, onward to the enemy close point! Okay we are all here? Roger Roger. 3 2 4.. I can’t count… go! success! that other team can’t counter our amazing strat lol!”

Another solution is to give stealth some sort of counter.

I agree with this in its entirety. There needs to be some kind of heavy diminishing returns on chained stealths. Some sort of stacking reveal debuff would be good – every time you restealth within 10(?) seconds of your last stealth that stealth last 33% less, stacks until 100% so you are forced to not stealth for 10 seconds. Its a rough idea, but something that should be looked at.

Now, before every thief gets out their keyboards and start to send me death threats let me say this. The thief class needs to be moved away from stealth abusing and given alternate forms of utility and survivability. Most of the recent changes have been good, even the broken shadow trap was a good start at giving thieves more utility as they get nerfed. Stealth is hard to balance in nearly every game, and GW2 has one of the strongest stealths yet (doesn’t break on damage, is a true stealth, can’t see outline ala Sc2, instant stealth, doesn’t fade to stealth). I think changing stealth to anything I listed above (particularly a fade to stealth and non-perfect stealth so you can see someone standing next to you in it to dodge burst) would be a great start. On top of that, missing a backstab shouldn’t keep you stealthed and a heart seaker that hits SOULDN’T stealth you when using out of a smoke field… they just did damage to you kitten .

Shadow refuge is elite status good. This post is getting longer that I expected so I won’t go into a lot of details but the duration it last should be less, the CD should be longer, and it shouldn’t give nearly as long of an AoE stealth… or make it an elite (the better option IMO) to make thieves chose between utility and offense (basilisk venom).

Sorry this got a big longer than I expected so I will wrap it up with 1 last thought.

Many of this builds have counters and builds that work well at countering how they play. The problem is that these counters are not strong enough to be viable when put up against other builds. The only things I feel need to be nerfed are necromancers and stealth mechanics – other things are manageable with continued buffs to weaker builds. To list some off: offensive guardians, warriors, mantra mesmers, non-stealth thief builds, engis (make elixer C a break stun for the love of god); I could go on and on.

Sorry for the long posts. Ill add more after some more talk happens

I’m against this because it ruins S/D Control completely. S/D Control and P/D Condi thrive off spamming thier stealth skill as often as possible, so any nerf to the frequency they can stealth at ruins their viability at their role, along with nerfing their survivability.

(Also, Shadow Refuge would be way more useful as an elite. Moving SR to the elite slot would leave thieves free to carry an extra utility.)

S/D Control? Could’ve sworn that ceased to exist in tpvp in December. Can’t ruin whats dead. But would crush it in WvW. Oh and P/D is mentally kittened and needs to get revisited anyways.

Anyways suggestion is weird for nothing.
Stealth shouldn’t stack in Duration it is simple as hell.

My solutions(tweaks) will be on the bottom.

I was just going to reiterate what CntrlAltDefeat.1465 posted on the first page about Guardians. The profession is pigeonholed into a specific playstyle(standing on a point to be effective). This, to me is counterintuitive to the combat systems design of constantly moving. Symbols are completely against this since it not only requires you to stand in it but also your opponent for full effect.

Another issue(or not) that I find with this profession is when compared to others, the Guardian has very little automation attached to it. What I mean by this is there are terrible traits given to this profession assist it automatically under certain circumstances. A good example would be there Engineers Protection Injection, 3 seconds of protection(5s ICD) when you get cced. This to me, is a solid trait to help against being bursted when you need it most. Guardians don’t have anything like this to help.

Ranged weaponry: Even with the recent buff to scepters AA speed, it is still easily avoidable through side-strafing. I know this skill hits particularly hard but if it almost never hits, what’s the point? Staff seems to suffer from another problem which is if your target is above(or below) you, it will not hit.

Animations: This profession has the most obvious of animations when it comes to their skills. Warrior comes to a close second in this regard. Not much else to say in this topic.

Mobility: Once again, this profession lacks any real mobility to it(unless you’re using staff).

Conditions: Lack of any real condition application, burning is the only real condition a guardian can really utilize and that’s easily cleansed through the very little variety of conditions that can be applied with it.

I’m sure there’s more that i’m missing but this seems to be what comes to mind at the moment. I’m trying not to sound biased towards my own profession but these are the issues that I see.

Solutions:
1.(Static skills): I honestly believe symbols should either be replaced with auras that follow you, or the damage frontloaded. As it stands, the benefits from these skills are very minimal and the AoE is too small.

2.(Automation): Other than retaliation, I think there should be a variety of more trait choices given to allow for more automation or maybe less for other professions. I think it promotes little skill to allow for such traits to exist. Either allow everyone to have something similar, or get rid of it.

3.(Ranged weaponry): Either speed up the scepter again(reduce the damage to compensate) or give a new weapon for ranged combat. I think most would agree a Longbow would be fitting for the Guardian.

4.(Animations): This has been discussed about other professions and I believe instant skills should have a dramatic reduction in damage/effectiveness. If it’s significantly more obvious for me to hit you with a skill, it should also do significantly more damage if it hits.

5.(Mobility): I believe putting in another virtue for running speed would help resolve this issue. Either that or more options for swiftness outside of staff. As it stands, being kited can be a bit of a pain.

6.(Condition application): Allow for a more variety of conditions. As it stands, no guardian will spec into conditions since there isn’t any to strengthen. If this profession was meant not to be a “condition” class, I think strengthening direct damage instead of having a 90/10 split would be better for it.

I’m sure that every profession has their own problems that those who’ve played them for a significant amount of time can put forth. These are what I see to be an issue. There’s a few more but again, this is what comes to mind right away.

Maybe I don’t do as much tPvP as some of the folks in here, but I’ll go ahead and offer my view on some things.

- Retaliation needs an internal CD or scale with % of damage. It is simply too strong sometimes and can lead to a hard counter to some builds like FT Engi or PW Thief. If not an ICD, then it needs to not be 100% uptime.

- Thieves need some help outside the gimmicky builds (See: S/D and D/P). Revealed in particular needs to trigger on destealth, attack or not, as originally intended. Stealth needs a hard cap in duration, blast finisher or not. Maybe 6-7s, like some people here are saying. I agree completely, as a Thief myself. In general, we just need some roles outside of glass cannon to fill.

- This might be a bit out there, but I really think the game as a whole would benefit from removing boon duration and condition duration as stats from the game completely, and the base durations increased slightly to compensate. Balancing would be much easier then, in my opinion. These are just two stats that can fluctuate too wildly, leading to them being too strong or too weak, depending.

I might think of some stuff later, but I guess this is a good start.

Weakness
Imo Weakness should be a counter to upcoming bursts you anticipate. It should work a bit like the “offensive” protection with a pretty good addition to it. But right now some classes can hold up weakness 100% of the time on multiple targets.

Here is a list of weakness sources that should be looked at (the weakness I list is always the baseduration, so your duration can be up to 50% longer when you spec for it):

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fierce_Blow
8s of weakness on a 12s cooldown is too much. Ok, this spell is melee and has a big animation, but it is AOE and you can trait for reduced Hammer CDs. In combination with conditionduration you can keep Weakness up 100% of the time on every melee you hit with it.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Winter%27s_Bite
The Weakness lasts 10s and the cooldown is 10s too. Its only single target, but this is still too much to hold weakness on a target for 100% of the time.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lightning_Touch
Here again 5s Weakness on a 10s cooldown. This skill can hit up to 3 targets.
Here again this Weakness is just too long.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stoning
3s Weakness on an autoattack (single target) is really hard. We all know Elementalist don’t autoattack much but this is still too much.
I would replace the Weakness with a short duration bleed.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Spite
This is just overall strong, I cant really say how to balance that, or if its ok. Its just too much right now and this seems to be worth looking at too. When you don’t have a skill that clears all conditions at hand with this much cover you will probably die.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Enfeebling_Blood
10s Weakness in a really big AOE on a 900unit range, 25s cd.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Weakening_Shroud
15 second internal cooldown, independent of Enfeebling Blood’s cooldown.
This is just huge and this trait is only on Adept level. I would say raise the internal cooldown and probably put that on a master level.

Those are the weakness sources that have really long durations on short cooldowns/easy to apply. In my opinion weakness from a single source should have a maximum uptime of 50% (while specced/traited for it) otherwise its damagemitigation is “too kitten high”. But you may want to look on the damage of glancing strikes too. Maybe a 30-40% damagereduction would be enough for glancing hits.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Phantaram.1265:

Here’s a few things that I think are too strong at the moment.

Sword/Dagger Thief – It just dodges too much. It is often the biggest threat on the enemy team but also the last thing you wanna focus because you will end up wasting all your spells on him while he’s dodging. Alternatively you could leave the thief himself really strong but reduce his utility. Shadow Refuge is just as strong of a rez utility as any other in my opinion if not stronger and is only on a 60 second cooldown. Lyssa runes are also pretty strong, reduce boon duration to 5 seconds instead of 10? Obviously nerfing all of this is way too much. Just choose 1 or 2. It’s also kind of odd that flanking strike aoe cleaves. That dagger has quite the wide range of attack!

Stealth – This is the biggest one for me and I talked about this a long time ago in the SOTG and it’s just gotten more and more out of control. If you have two sources of long stealths in your teams line up your options at any point in the game and especially at the beginning are limitless.

There HAS to be a limit on how much stealth you can get. 6-7 seconds sounds reasonable to me but even then with two sources of stealth that is 12-14 seconds which will still give you tons of options and advantages over the other team. Stealth is a REALLY tough one to balance. As it is now people are walking around the map all leisure like for 30 seconds just talking amongst themselves like “Well I dunno who do you wanna 1 shot? We’ll 1 shot jimmy, no… bob! Well actually lets not even attack this node, onward to the enemy close point! Okay we are all here? Roger Roger. 3 2 4.. I can’t count… go! success! that other team can’t counter our amazing strat lol!”

I am going to try and be as constructive as I can.

For S/D thieves it works great against basically everything, but it is not overpowered. What made this build, and this role, much strong is Shadow Trap. The fact that you can keep pressure on 1 side of the map (mostly being the enemies close point) a good 50-70% of the time during the game, is pretty noticeable and makes teams overreact.

Changing Lyssa runes boons would be fine, but I personally do not like this. Thieves have never been the class that should be stomping enemy players, but if they can do it, they should, and Lyssa’s stability helps a lot with that.

As far as too many dodges, rangers have “too” many dodges, they can get a lot of vigor as well, I would like to see something more specific.

Shadow Refuge is a great skill to be used for reviving it really is, But it is not an instant revive, say Illusion of Life, or Signet of Undeath or Warbanner. The thief or teammates still have to actually revive that downed player, and that is the difference.

Stealth, stealth openings are good, and borderline too strong against players who react incorrectly, or overreact to it. Even when you react correctly, its mostly true your back point should die. Changing something like this, did you think how it might effect thieves? I mean D/P Burst thieve of course.

I am going to agree with most of what you said for thieves and stealth. I just wanted to give some counter-arguments, and hear your thoughts.

No S/D thieves I know of even use shadow trap nor do they assault far point solo. Shadow refuge stealths everyone rezzing so the enemy doesn’t even know if they have successfully stopped the rezzing and are blowing all there spells into the shadow refuge to prevent it. If they don’t succeed they just wasted every one of there cooldowns and the whole enemy team can initiate on you from stealth, it’s practically a won team fight at that point. Rezzing with illusion of life is far from a won team fight, the enemy can play defensive and save cooldowns for 15 seconds later when the illusioned guy goes down.

So while I appreciate the counter argument I’m afraid you don’t have enough experience to comment correctly on this because the way you describe S/D thieves play is not how they play.

And if they didn’t want the stealth changes to affect dagger thieves very much that is a very easy solution, just give them some kind of trait that allows them to stealth themselves longer.

So you’re running all those since they’re the strongest builds atm right?

Mammoth.1975:

So you’re running all those since they’re the strongest builds atm right?

Imho the biggest balance issue is the various easy to play builds. It’s ridiculous that some guys pick up a necro or a spirit ranger, roll their face over the keyboard and are able to win vs. others who play their class near perfect. The kitteny thing is, that those guys dont get punished if a neff comes in, they just switch to the next flavor of the month op build.

When BM ranger came up (the old one) a lot of ppls switched on it and they easily won most 1v1 just because its face rolling. Same thing for Mesmers 8 months ago. Its a easy to pick up class. You can play an effective Mesmer after 5h of practice. As soon as you play vs. better opponents you need do adapt, because every1 dodges your spikes. Thats the point where you can actually spot good mesmers because they can set gheir spike properly and close to instant, but that needs a lot of time. I mean there are not many mesmers left, afaik even xeph switche on thief

This just happens to many classes. They get a cookie-cutter build, it gets nerfed – ohh just pick up the next one, np. So bring up some builds which are harder to learn but in the end are more effective than all those cookie-cutters. Engi is probably a good example for a hard to pick up class (except hgh)

The only teamcomp a S/D Thief should/would run Shadow Trap is when the team has no engineer.

I tested Shadow Trap a lot and it is an amazing utility but in the current game it doesnt help you that much. As Engineer is the god of farpoint you could only use it as a defensive port for your close and then you would have to fight a 1on1 with probably blown cooldowns vs the enemy Engineer. That would be a quick death for you.

So yes, i love shadowtrap, but right now its pretty much crap. Or to be less destructive there are better utilitys to bring as your job is hunting glassy eles/mesmers in teamfights.