Guild Wars 2

Since goal of the backstab nerf (yet another) was most likely to promote less spamming and more “skilled”-cast then i think passives for other classes need to be nerfed(removed), since they promote total opposite and it simply doesn’t make sense why one class is forced consistently into active play (which is a good thing, imo) while other classes continue to get more and more passives(which is not a good thing).

They nerfed backstab? It didn’t hit that hard… The problem was how hard Thieves hit AFTER backstab.

Zenith.7301:

You’re such a joke. Other classes whiff a skill on aegis or a block and their skill goes on full cd. You whiff it and only need to wait 1 second to try again.

These thief crybabies.

actually it is 2 sec with aftercast, you can get 2 backstabs max in 1 stealth if you are really fast and precast bs while going stealth but normally just 1 which probably will get blocked or dodged or interrupted

my point is, enforcing active gameplay is fine but it doesn’t make sense that such balancing strategy is only applied to one class while other just ride passives on passives

also, personal attacks are hardly a good argument

Zintrothen.1056:

They nerfed backstab? It didn’t hit that hard… The problem was how hard Thieves hit AFTER backstab.

yeah, it has effectively 2 sec CD now, regardless whether you hit someone or not
that on top of reveal and all the CDs of the spells you need to cast to get stealth on first place

Zenith.7301:

You’re such a joke. Other classes whiff a skill on aegis or a block and their skill goes on full cd. You whiff it and only need to wait 1 second to try again.

These thief crybabies.

Haha the good old “thief op omg skill spam omg no cd initiative broken” QQ.

somebody get’s cranky without his passives

You really need to be more informative when you say “passives”.
What do you call passives?

Would you call an executioner trait passive as it activates instantly when targets are below 50% with no user interaction?

What about X on evade traits? There’s an active component in the requirement but sometimes it’s stupidly easy to hit that.

What about elixir S and other similar skills including mirror of anguish which have pretty high cooldowns? You’re not likely to bump into them more than once in a fight unless it really goes on for a long time though no user interaction is needed for it.

How about traits that grant boon X when you get boon Y or some other benefit from boon Y? Is that passive or is it active as you have to actively get boon Y.

Define what you mean as passive so the “balance” team can understand just what irks you.

apharma.3741:

You really need to be more informative when you say “passives”.
What do you call passives?

Would you call an executioner trait passive as it activates instantly when targets are below 50% with no user interaction?

What about X on evade traits? There’s an active component in the requirement but sometimes it’s stupidly easy to hit that.

What about elixir S and other similar skills including mirror of anguish which have pretty high cooldowns? You’re not likely to bump into them more than once in a fight unless it really goes on for a long time though no user interaction is needed for it.

How about traits that grant boon X when you get boon Y or some other benefit from boon Y? Is that passive or is it active as you have to actively get boon Y.

Define what you mean as passive so the “balance” team can understand just what irks you.

I would say mostly defensive passives that require close to no player action, mirror anguish or nightmare runes 6th bonus are good examples. I am ok with passives that require you to actually do something but not the ones that require close to nothing.

I’m with the removal of passives why should I have burst auto blocked?

All defensive passives need to go. You can boost up each classes active defenses in response.

I feel if someone gets the drop on me then I deserve to die. Having a trait that stuns them back so thier burst is wasted….lol stupid game design

Zenith.7301:

Cry more. Was about time you paid the price other classes pay when they miss a skill, instead of being a spammy mongoloid class who doesn’t care about blocks/blind.

Talk to me when you can’t use anything but auto-attacks and not even swapping weapons can fix it.

But first, talk to Anet about encouraging spam with the change to Lead Attacks.

apharma.3741:

You really need to be more informative when you say “passives”.
What do you call passives?

I would put those “passive” traits into two categories… (using Thief traits as examples)…

1. “Enhancements” enhance something. Stealing is enhanced by Mug, granting healing and outgoing damage. Stealth is enhanced by Resiliance of Shadows, granting 25% reduction of incoming damage. Both Stealing and (most) Stealth require active input from the player.

2. “Activations” are activated under certain conditions with no input from the player. Last Refuge grants Stealth when struck under 25% health. Instant Reflexes allows auto-evasion when struck under 50% health. Hard to Catch automatically breaks a stun and refills endurance when stunned. One thing to notice is that these “activations” usually (if not always) have a cooldown associated with them.

Personally, my problem is specifically with the latter, the “activations.” Not all of them are bad. Many of them are great things that make sense. To specify even further, it is the passive “activations” that boost a player’s defenses to absurd levels that I have no love for. These include traits such as…

Thief: Instant Reflexes
Warrior: Defy Pain
Engineer: Self-Regulating Defenses
Revenant: Soothing Bastion
Guardian: Virtuous Solace

On top of those, the CC-reflect traits are also terrible, and should be changed just as the Nightmare runes were changed. Such traits included…

Mesmer: Mirror of Anguish
Necromancer: Reaper’s Protection
Revenant: Eye for an Eye

If active defenses have to be added or buffed to make up for the loss of passive defenses, that’s fine. Or if the passives are merely changed to reduce damage taken instead of nullifying it (or a specific type) altogether, that’s at least better than it is now.

I don’t know anybody who uses Last Refuge, but at least it doesn’t make a Thief invulnerable to anything. Hard to Catch may save a Thief, but at least it doesn’t reflect the stun back to the attacker… it’s like an Aegis for CC. The game would be better without them and their types, but at least they don’t make the Thief immune to any type of damage.

But that’s just my opinion. I can only speak for myself.

EDIT:
I run glass cannon builds a lot. Sometimes Berserker Thief (DA/CS/T). I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter how hard or fast I hit someone, if they have passives traited, I’m in for a very difficult fight. I don’t mind dying in 2-3 hits, but when I pound on somebody for 5+ seconds straight with my power/crit levels, and passives are the only thing keeping them alive, the game begins to feel pointless. I have to make zero mistakes, and my opponent only has to get lucky once.

Backstab didn’t even hit that hard lol

Correct me if i’m wrong… but this sounds more like a bug fix than a nerf seeing as the point of reveal is to prevent the thief from using multiple stealth attacks in a short period of time. Seeing as it hits hard as balls and has no real cost even when it fails it’s not hard to see why you might want it to have some limitations.

Bossun.2046:

Backstab didn’t even hit that hard lol

Well, devs were never really aware what is really going on in pvp, ofc they wouldn’t know that backstab hits on average for 3k, if even, and involves too much effort/risk to be worth it compared to… lol auto attack.

I am just surprised that they effectively added 2 sec CD on failed backstab (made it require even more skill to land considering all the passive defensives; by all means, i am all up for “skilled gameplay”) but still continue with their “passives ftw” politics for other classes. All classes should be treated equally.

Worst part, many defensive passives don’t even have a tell so you actually have no way to tell whether your attack is going to land or not.

CynicalFred.9135:

Correct me if i’m wrong… but this sounds more like a bug fix than a nerf seeing as the point of reveal is to prevent the thief from using multiple stealth attacks in a short period of time. Seeing as it hits hard as balls and has no real cost even when it fails it’s not hard to see why you might want it to have some limitations.

- “hits hard as balls” – no it doesn’t actually, on average backstab hits for 3k in pvp matches, not to mention the patch affected ALL stealth attacks so even sb one, which does close to 0 dmg

- “has no real costs” – yes it does have costs, which is stealth and stealth has relative high costs, it is acquired either via high ini combos or high CDs…..and melee stealth attacks require you to be close to target and preferably behind it, which puts technically naked thief at HUGE risk. Not to mention successful hit applies revealed debuff which locks thief out of main defensive.

Zenith.7301:

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Zenith.7301:

You’re such a joke. Other classes whiff a skill on aegis or a block and their skill goes on full cd. You whiff it and only need to wait 1 second to try again.

These thief crybabies.

Haha the good old “thief op omg skill spam omg no cd initiative broken” QQ.

Cry more. Was about time you paid the price other classes pay when they miss a skill, instead of being a spammy mongoloid class who doesn’t care about blocks/blind.

No thanks I stopped crying and moved on from thief. Now I play 5 other classes and have a far easier time :^)

CynicalFred.9135:

Correct me if i’m wrong… but this sounds more like a bug fix than a nerf seeing as the point of reveal is to prevent the thief from using multiple stealth attacks in a short period of time. Seeing as it hits hard as balls and has no real cost even when it fails it’s not hard to see why you might want it to have some limitations.

misssing a backtstab didnt reveal you landing a backstab on a aegis didnt reveal you , now it goes on 2 sec cooldown so if you miss the backstab ur done need to re stealth to try again

Cynz.9437:

apharma.3741:

You really need to be more informative when you say “passives”.
What do you call passives?

Would you call an executioner trait passive as it activates instantly when targets are below 50% with no user interaction?

What about X on evade traits? There’s an active component in the requirement but sometimes it’s stupidly easy to hit that.

What about elixir S and other similar skills including mirror of anguish which have pretty high cooldowns? You’re not likely to bump into them more than once in a fight unless it really goes on for a long time though no user interaction is needed for it.

How about traits that grant boon X when you get boon Y or some other benefit from boon Y? Is that passive or is it active as you have to actively get boon Y.

Define what you mean as passive so the “balance” team can understand just what irks you.

I would say mostly defensive passives that require close to no player action, mirror anguish or nightmare runes 6th bonus are good examples. I am ok with passives that require you to actually do something but not the ones that require close to nothing.

What about things like panic strikes then? It’s realistically got close to no player action and is in many cases the icing of the death sentence when a thief jumps you mid fight if for some reason the burst didn’t kill you. Other traits for thief would be weakness when applying poison (lotus poison) with poison being on auto attacks and steal as minors.

Things like illusionary membrane would also fit in this category, protection on gaining regen but having regen while hit under 75% HP as a minor trait means realistically it has close to no player action.

Personally I think they need to reduce the amount of auto activated abilities possible per class per trait line to 1. This means you can have only 3 automatically activated abilities per build and if done intelligently you can make it so it’s no more than 2 defensive (with regulation of strength of defensive proc) at a time.

There’s many classes that would be eaten alive by thieves without some of these auto procs in WvW where backstabs regularly hit for 7-10k and no that’s not in a blow all signets for might build. With the full auto chain doing 6k and basi venom being a 1.5s stun a lot of the time allowing you to get at least the first part in for about 4K it would make no classes outside of thief able to run zerk in WvW.

Course you can get 3k power very easily in WvW even with 15-16k health on a thief with much better crits than in PvP.

apharma.3741:

What about things like panic strikes then? It’s realistically got close to no player action and is in many cases the icing of the death sentence when a thief jumps you mid fight if for some reason the burst didn’t kill you. Other traits for thief would be weakness when applying poison (lotus poison) with poison being on auto attacks and steal as minors.

Lotus Poison and Dagger Training both fit into the “enhancement” category I mentioned in my previous post. Lotus Poison enhances the Poison condition. Dagger Training enhances Dagger skills. Personally, I do not like weapon-specific traits. I would prefer every trait to be useful for every weapon.

Panic Strike is an “activation” trait, though it isn’t really passive in itself just as Resilience of Shadows is not passive. It requires a player to actually do something such as successfully strike an enemy or enter into Stealth, respectively. Yes, Panic Strike can be quite a problem for the opponents, but it only activates if the Thief earns it by striking its target. And yes, Thieves do look for weakened targets in the middle of fights… because the Thief has literally become a vulture. It can’t hold its own in 1v1 combat, but that’s another story altogether.

Traits like Mirror of Anguish and Defy Pain are truly passive. They are literally 100% effective even when a player is AFK.

Fortunately, perhaps the worst trait I can remember was changed… the old version of the Elementalist’s Diamond Skin. 100% immunity to conditions until enough actual direct damage was done. Dedicated condition builds didn’t have enough power to out-damage the Elementalist’s healing, so conditions would never be effective. I’ve had Elementalists literally stand there /laughing at me while I was giving it everything I had in WvW.

Kageseigi.2150:

apharma.3741:

What about things like panic strikes then? It’s realistically got close to no player action and is in many cases the icing of the death sentence when a thief jumps you mid fight if for some reason the burst didn’t kill you. Other traits for thief would be weakness when applying poison (lotus poison) with poison being on auto attacks and steal as minors.

Lotus Poison and Dagger Training both fit into the “enhancement” category I mentioned in my previous post. Lotus Poison enhances the Poison condition. Dagger Training enhances Dagger skills. Personally, I do not like weapon-specific traits. I would prefer every trait to be useful for every weapon.

Panic Strike is an “activation” trait, though it isn’t really passive in itself just as Resilience of Shadows is not passive. It requires a player to actually do something such as successfully strike an enemy or enter into Stealth, respectively. Yes, Panic Strike can be quite a problem for the opponents, but it only activates if the Thief earns it by striking its target. And yes, Thieves do look for weakened targets in the middle of fights… because the Thief has literally become a vulture. It can’t hold its own in 1v1 combat, but that’s another story altogether.

Traits like Mirror of Anguish and Defy Pain are truly passive. They are literally 100% effective even when a player is AFK.

Fortunately, perhaps the worst trait I can remember was changed… the old version of the Elementalist’s Diamond Skin. 100% immunity to conditions until enough actual direct damage was done. Dedicated condition builds didn’t have enough power to out-damage the Elementalist’s healing, so conditions would never be effective. I’ve had Elementalists literally stand there /laughing at me while I was giving it everything I had in WvW.

The thing about defy pain and elixir S (certainly the latter now it’s 75s ICD) and to some respects mirror of anguish is they all have hefty cool downs. I don’t see how you can say that the requirement to simply hit a target, is any better to a trait with 3 times the cool down that requires you to be hit by a specific thing like CC or that have an in built weakness like offering no protection vs conditions.

To me things like Lotus poison (nearly 50% weakness up time realistically) and panic strikes which are so insanely easy to proc are just as much of a problem as these elixir S, defy pain, mirror of anguish procs. They’re not true enhancements in my eyes either otherwise they would always happen with every hit and not have a cool down.

To me a true enhancement is something you know will happen at all times under a certain circumstance. This is things like executioner bonus’, exposed weakness, fresh air, lightening rod, power block, rousing resilience, cleansing ire etc. Traits that have no cool down and always do something when the condition is filled which allows you to play around it knowing what will happen rather than trying to keep count of invisible numbers essentially.

I don’t want a game devoid of defensive traits/skills that automatically activate that also has the number of automatically activating offensive skills left in.

Please don’t forget that those with passives also have “enchancement” traits and usually hit harder than a backstab.

Jana.6831:

Please don’t forget that those with passives also have “enchancement” traits and usually hit harder than a backstab.

Can you be a bit more specific?

I know the current scrapper build with protection on CC with a five second ICD, stab on evade, gyro, high regen uptime etc etc. That’s a royal pita on my power shatter and makes power block worthless.

Are there others? Do all classes that have enhancements and passives pose a problem or is it just specific builds/combinations of traits?

Warrior: Peak Performance, Forceful Greatsword, Stick and Move and more
Defense: Spiked armor, Defy Pain, Dead or alive and so on.

Every class has got similar traits, which is basically ok, as otherwise we wouldn’t need traits at all, just that it’s too much and something is off with the damage calculation anyway and has been since June (last year).
And “builds” don’t really matter as you’re free to chose from 6 lines – so why do you need a premade build to have defensive and offensive traits?

ETA: I’m not using DA in wvw (I do so in PvE) – so this trait doesn’t “enhance my performance” as well – you make it seem as if every thief has got access to it and uses it wheras every other class needs a build to have defense against this extraordinary mean trait.

I’m going to skip ahead a bit, but i pretty much agree with what kageseigi wrote.

That’s one of the problems with “Enhancement types” some skills get to many effects. and while noone in there right mind would pick every option there are still far to many.

Let’s look at steal:

Deadly Arts Serpent’s Touch — Stealing inflicts poison. While in the downed state, your attacks apply poison.
Deadly Arts Mug — Deal damage and gain life when stealing. This attack cannot critically hit enemies.
Deadly Arts Improvisation — You can use stolen items twice. One random skill category is immediately recharged when you steal
Shadow Arts Hidden Thief — Stealing grants you stealth.

trickery Kleptomaniac — Stealing gives you initiative.
Trickery Thrill of the Crime — When you Steal, you and all nearby allies gain fury, might, and swiftness for 10 seconds.
Trickery Bountiful Theft — Stealing grants you and all nearby allies vigor. You rip boons from your target and grant them to nearby allies.
Trickery Lead Attacks — Increases damage and condition damage per initiative spent. Steal recharges faster.
Trickery Bewildering Ambush — Stealing also applies confusion.
Trickery Sleight of Hand — Stealing also dazes the target. Reduces the recharge of Steal

That is far to many enhancements.

As for activation’s:
-Anything that directly takes control from target player (like panic strikes,) should not exist. all forms of passive CC should be locked onto abilities only.
-Auto immunities. these should not exist. they are a destroyer of diversity. they are also creating powercreep (the unblock able on b/v was no doubt a direct result of these)

See, the problem with this: Thief is already the class with fewest of these traits, yet you guys make it appear as if thief is the problem.

because half the people posting in thread are thief mains. so there examples are the first we think off.

Jana.6831:

See, the problem with this: Thief is already the class with fewest of these traits, yet you guys make it appear as if thief is the problem.

Well it would probably help if some people didn’t keep going around saying things like thief has no passives

However there are many classes that have passive stuff it isn’t just thief. I think it’s engy that currently has the biggest list atm with thief, mesmer and possibly necro (base necro) as the lowest offenders.

apharma.3741:

Well it would probably help if some people didn’t keep going around saying things like thief has no passives

Can you quote me where I did this in this thread?
You can also list the passives of thief in comparison to all passives of other classes if you like though – the problem still says the same: there’s too many passive blocks in this game.

apharma.3741:

However there are many classes that have passive stuff it isn’t just thief. I think it’s engy that currently has the biggest list atm with thief, mesmer and possibly necro (base necro) as the lowest offenders.

And now I’d like you to list the passives of thief in comparison to any other class.
With that I mean true passives and not “enhancement traits”.
You can however make a list of true passive and enhancement traits – comparison of 2 classes.

As a necromancer who does not lik getting ganked by Thieves all day

I find this change to be total BS considering all the requirement for Dagger and Sword stealth attacks to be worth it is that they need to strike from side/back and on stealth timer and aftercast of the stealth attacks also count towards the cooldown enforced.

Revert this kitteny BS or show us dear balance team how do you make it work yourselves on something other than a golem dummy?

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

As a necromancer who does not lik getting ganked by Thieves all day

I find this change to be total BS considering all the requirement for Dagger and Sword stealth attacks to be worth it is that they need to strike from side/back and on stealth timer and aftercast of the stealth attacks also count towards the cooldown enforced.

Revert this kitteny BS or show us dear balance team how do you make it work yourselves on something other than a golem dummy?

Well, they expect thief players to keep track of all passives of all 5 enemies in match while many of those passives don’t even have a tell icon. I don’t see how it is possible unless you are some kind of genius or use… illegal 3rd party software. In wow raids are designed around 3rd party add-ons, without those doing raids is humanly impossible now. Anet devs went same direction except add-ons are forbidden in GW2 lol.

That being said, CD on stealth attacks would be ok if there were less defensive passives and more tells (e.g. aura, icon etc.) for them.

apharma.3741:

To me things like Lotus poison (nearly 50% weakness up time realistically) and panic strikes which are so insanely easy to proc are just as much of a problem as these elixir S, defy pain, mirror of anguish procs. They’re not true enhancements in my eyes either otherwise they would always happen with every hit and not have a cool down.

Indeed, that was my mistake with Lotus Poison. It could be considered an “activation” due to the cooldown, though that is the only thing keeping it from being a true “enhancement,” unlike Panic Strike which requires a health threshold as well.

I’m not saying Panic Strike is a truly acceptable trait. But striking an opponent is much less passive than being struck, which is why it doesn’t draw my ire. The only reason I even run it is because the other choices don’t benefit me (I don’t run traps or enter Stealth much).

The other difference I can see between a Panic Strike or Lotus Poison and a Defy Pain is that the results of the offensive traits can be immediately cleansed and mitigated. When immunities and invulnerabilitiess activate, there is no other recourse than to wait them out. At least Aegis and Blinds can be quickly countered.

If a trait just added Protection boons or added Toughness, that would be fine. It would be harder to break though, but at least it would not completely shut down a burst. And that’s where my personal problem arises… glass cannons have become effective only until the target reaches 25-50% health. After that, there’s nothing that can be done except run away and hide. It doesn’t matter powerful I build, I cannot break through an immunity.

As for the reflect-CC traits, I suppose that I find them to just be absurd. I have no way to know if the target has it traited or on cooldown. And it affects a Thief’s success more so than other professions because Thieves rely on surprise openers to catch a target off guard because they are very fragile. Once an opponent knows a Thief is there, the Thief is at a severe disadvantage in today’s game.

I’d much prefer if anti-CC traits would model Hard to Catch. They can break stuns and give boosts to the player, but there’s no reason that an attacker should ever stun itself for landing a successful attack… especially with no warning. At least projectile reflects have visual aids.