Mist form. Multiple area’s on maps have safe zones that the ele can mist form from down state and ‘jump’ into. Once they’re there they can’t be stomped. One map has 3 such zones. Any developer can talk to me personally about it, I don’t want to mention the spaces out loud.
Smoke fields on thieve’s are win-win-win. Drop it. You stand in it blind. Range through it and your blind. Melee in it and your blind. AoE on it and your blind. Return the blindness back to thief, your blinded again. If, berserker stance is used use leap finisher for stealth. If you have waste too much initiative. Use any evade. Only mesmer focus pull can rip you out of it. Sorted. I used to give thieve’s credit that their squish factor meant little errors can be made. After exploring this insane blind spam my opinion of the words ‘skill’ and ‘thief’ have dramatically lowered. The pre cast and after cast need to be extended and the initiative lowered to compensate or the blindness pulses slowed down to allow in between strikes so the thief can’t stand in it with impudence. It truly is a win button when used by reasonable players. Even after not playing my thief for months I felt my heart drop at just how easy this skill makes engaging someone. Due to their lack of diversity they don’t have the most options..hence why this little gem is now the go to for any thief that wants to roam. It hard counters 99% of all skills apart from a few pulls.
Ele water line. After dealing a tidy 9.4K eviscerate on a ele and leaving them with 3% health, they return to full health in 4 seconds from water line. Albeit they have traited for this throughout the entire water line there was no need to use any form of skill slotted skill. Weapon skills were more than enough. The healing scaling is impressive. Impressive enough to not even worry about using a heal skill at all..just use your weapon. The obvious choice..just rapid fire three weapon skills for full red bar. The healing scaling should be examined.
Life blast. All necro’s love a full life force bar. Whats not to like when dealing 2.5-4.5K per life blast that pierces and cause vulnerability and being able to do it from range with decreased life blast skills? Jesus only know with full adrenaline specc’ed to 6-0-2-0-6 with rifle I can achieve the same results..out wait, no I can’t..because warriors that can deal that sort of damage from range would be over the top.
Pirate runes. Anyone care for a tropical bird with 16K health that evades every 3rd attack, is notoriously hard to target, or gets right in front of your target and deal 2.5K crit hits. The only thing that could make that better is a 50% spawn rate.
Hotjoin. May the better unorganized team win..or the better team at entering and exiting spectate mode. Getting sick of that?..go soloQ with 4 vs 5 and rage quitters and no resign function is the trade off for not having to deal with spectate swappers. At least there is tpvp where your newly formed team gets 3 wins in a row and your now in the big leagues and the test group for those practicing for ToL..but you don’t get 4 vs 5 or spectate swappers. Pick your poison.
PU mesmer. At least the thief has a 2 part combo move to stealth, or actually has to melee strike someone 90% of the time. If you find that annoying, then PU yourself to stealth heaven. In a 60 second engagement you can comfortably afford to stealth 9 times. Time to set a disincentive to stealth junkies. You stealth and they lose target, so do you. They have to acquire you each time upon reveal..you also now have to reacquire them. Stealth should be a tactic, not a way of life or a family motto.
Pistol condition thieve’s. So wonderfully easy, don’t wear armour. I seriously put it forth. Load up the build, remove armor and you WILL still win duels. It has a about a 2 match learning curve but after that you don’t even need armour.
This is your current meta. Now how long does it need to settle?