Guild Wars 2

No…this is not a troll thread so don’t waste your time

It’s the first time that I find myself asking for huge buffs on other professions, but the situation requires it: conditions and one-shot builds are running rampant

So I find myself looking for solutions, factual solutions that would benefit the whole community on the long run and not only the classes I main; I will make this as concise as possible, but be ready for the wall of text, will give the reasons why warrior and thief are needed more than ever.

Warrior= The absence of shout warrior and the Hammer train is painful. Conditions builds that would otherwise be counterable with little coordination , become major obstacles for all but a small pool of players from the high end spectrum of PvP.
I don’t feel there is any build that offer a viable countermeasure to condi spam at teamplay levels; yes people will mention the tempest shout aura share but..I really don’t think the build is as survivable as old shoutwar.
What about the absence of hammer warrior?..Well many dominant builds like: condi reaper, mallyx/shiro rev, condi druid, scrapper are enjoying a real “no CC train paradise”; no current build comes close to the stunlock potential of the old hambow while being as hard to kill

Thief= The thief has always been a necessary evil to keep in check the real threat :mesmer as I always stated, months ago I made a thread explaining why necro and mesmer did not need sustain buffs…but I had fears this would happen in the end.
Now we have chronomancer and reaper which are basically the 2.0 version of mesmer and necro. With its natural enemy gone, the mesmer is now free to pray on the entirety of pvp. Another class that strongly benefit from the absence of zerk builds natural predator, it’s the revenant. Currently nothing can match this class in combat-mobility in pvp and bruiser like sustain; revenant is basically d/d ele 2.0.
My statement may appear too strong for many atm but..bare with me, when they will “nerf” herald and buff Jaris and Ventari..you will see the team potential of revs at full power, I mean already 1vs1 at high level only a reaper can match a mallyx/shiro rev, not much it’s missed to reach d/d ele 2.0

So these are my reasons why thief and warrior are needed and I have couple more observations to make, for the dev.

1) Why nerf thief boon strip, sustain and burst..then create a class that burst just as hard(if not harder ), strip more boons and faster ( mallyx rev) and can chain multiple blocks +insta heal that recover health based on damage received?

2) Why nerf warrior stunlock/adrenaline gain than create a class that can chain block/interrupts for days by pressing 2 buttons ( shield 5 and F5= chronomancer)?
Why nerf warrior damage on hammer ..when a reaper can deal 12k+ dmg with a spammable condition +stunlock? Why nerf warrior sustain ..when a scrapper is way harder to kill with tools shield, 2x elixir S, unblockable heal+water field, smoke field for stealth or walking shadow refuge drone?

Look…I’ll be blunt, you devs don’t balance the game at all, you simply buff/nerf things to shut down the forum

Just to give few more examples:

-You nerf might stacking on eles..then make scrappers that go around with perma 25 might
-You nerf traps on ranger..then make dragon hunter and unblockable damage, “invisible CC”, pull skills and more.

What did happen to the GW1 balance philosophy? Is there a philosophy at all?

You realize both your problems are relative, right?

“I dont like condis. Make condi cleansing shout war strong so condi’s classes/builds can be hard countered and unviable from PvP.”

“I feel Mesmer is strong and I don’t like the role it’s playing in the Meta at the moment. Please buff Thieves so they can return to their alpha predator status, eating every Mesmer alive without compromise.”

This one’s strong, that one’s strong, somebody else is weak, relative, relative, relative. Your personal tastes and preferences: subjective.

This isnt to say balance isnt an issue. Simply that your chosen reasons for adjustments are silly, and nitch. You risk adjusting two classes simply to become gimmicks -_-u

Ross Biddle.2367:

You realize both your problems are relative, right?

“I dont like condis. Make condi cleansing shout war strong so condi’s classes/builds can be hard countered and unviable from PvP.”

“I feel Mesmer is strong and I don’t like the role it’s playing in the Meta at the moment. Please buff Thieves so they can return to their alpha predator status, eating every Mesmer alive without compromise.”

This one’s strong, that one’s strong, somebody else is weak, relative, relative, relative. Your personal tastes and preferences: subjective.

This isnt to say balance isnt an issue. Simply that your chosen reasons for adjustments are silly, and nitch. You risk adjusting two classes simply to become gimmicks -_-u

The only difference between nonviable and viable classes in this meta is the number of gimmicks. 2x Elixir S isn’t a gimmick? Chrono F5 isn’t a gimmick? Hell I’d say the whole Rev class is a gimmick box. The hell kind of Marauder build (Shiro/Glint) allows passive might, swiftness, and fury stacking that used to require a Thief running Trickery and Pack Runes and a D/D ele to achieve? Literally, a Rev hits 4 buttons and the team has a minute of swiftness, fury, and over 15 might. All by standing around for 10 seconds before the match starts. DH’s gimmick is daze spam + spammable True Shot burst + insane AoE CC and damage. Reaper’s gimmick is outgoing damage increase and incoming damage decrease on chill.

As a Thief main, I would gladly become a gimmick class if it meant I could fight on equal footing as other elite specs. Stealth doesn’t count as a gimmick anymore, reveals are too prevalent. Evades are decent, but without the vigor that old acro provided they are short lived. OP does have a point in that Thief’s role used to involve controlling Mesmer power, because no other class can keep up with Mesmer blinks/stealth. But now, Thief counters no one and is hard countered by like half the classes in the game.

fyi, if they buff berserkers by giving them more sustain and trait/weapon polish what will come out of it isn’t a shoutbow… it will be a condition/hybrid abomination spamming burn on you.. idk how many people would be happy about that

oh and daredevil is already a gimmick, maybe just not gimmicky enough compared to scrapper druid and dragonhunter.

2 Problems with thief

1.) Their Elite spec is subpar compared to others.

2.) Even if you buff the class, its hard to find a good thief. A lot of the thieves just blame their class for being bad.

StickerHappy.8052:

2 Problems with thief

1.) Their Elite spec is subpar compared to others.

2.) Even if you buff the class, its hard to find a good thief. A lot of the thieves just blame their class for being bad.

P/P needs work, or I’m not interested in playing it.

If you can’t akimbo assassin without dragging your team down, the games broke.

StickerHappy.8052:

it’s hard to find a good thief. A lot of the thieves just blame their class for being bad.

LOOK AT THE TIME! IT’S RANT:30!

One problem with this is that thieves shouldn’t have to be “good” in order to match favourably against “average” players. In order to win half the time against average players, you should only have to be average. Right now, thief isn’t a high-risk high-reward class. Basically, it’s just a low-utility class with good single-target dps that has virtually all of its survivability in evasion, which makes it very risky – but other classes do very similar single-target dps while being easier/less risky AND while offering more utility.

So, blaming the class for being bad is reasonable. You can either solve the above problem by making the class easier and more forgiving, as the Herald is, you can solve the problem by giving the risk a good payoff by increasing either utility or damage, or you could solve the problem by making the other classes more difficult to play well.

As it stands, the amount of effort you put into the thief puts out an inferior result compared to an equal amount of effort put into a Herald, or a Reaper, or a Chronomancer.

If you want to balance around the pro league, then reducing the skill floor by making thief survivability a bit easier might be the way to do things. In theory, it wouldn’t affect the pro scene much, especially not as much as making the currently-high risk more rewarding with more damage, but it would help average thieves avoid being irrelevant in most teamfights and duels.

So, are there bad thieves? Sure. But thieves of all skill levels are underperforming relative to their skill group. Bad thieves are less useful than bads from most other classes, and so on.

The alternative to blaming the class for being bad is to blame most other classes for being too strong. It’s basically the same thing with a different perspective plus the additional context of power creep.

I’d suggest nerfing most of the elite specs down instead of buffing thief/Daredevil – really, nothing should be tanky and do damage. You should have one or the other.

[/rant]

I do not agree with all the statements, but understand those.

Thief: I believe Thief is not as bad as people might suggest. It is still the fastest class to run around (unhindered combatant+pack runes= swiftness 24/7), can escape nearly everything and has more dodges than any other class. It’s problem is not necessarily the class itself but more tools from other classes, mostly AoE perma protection from tempests, the barrier-type abilitys from DH (Dragon’s Maw, LB5) and lots of short CD reveals (Rev/Scrapper).

Warrior is a different problem: The class has some nearly necessary traits spread out over at least 3 lines to make a build work. Like “Fast Hands” on discipline, “Cleansing Ire” on Defense or “Berserker’s Power” in Strenght. Any warrior build is “Defense/Discipline/X” while X is strenght for power builds, arms for hybrid/condi and tactics for shoutbow.
Now the problem: Warrior has no way to use Berserker effectively. Berserker is not too weak, it does some of the highest DPS in PVE, but Warrior cannot build enough adrenaline to use berserker without crippling his defenses or offenses. He has to give up too much to use berserker, that’s why the few remaining war players often play with core builds.

Conclusion:
Thief fine, nerf Scrapper/Herald
Warrior: Give him the same treatment as Anet did with mesmer at 6/23: Fast Hands and Cleansing Ire Baseline, overall improved adrenaline generation, some DPS buffs for axe mace and hammer.

I think all the broken elite specs should get nerfed instead; no need for even more power creep.

UBcktieDL.5318:

Warrior is a different problem: The class has some nearly necessary traits spread out over at least 3 lines to make a build work. Like “Fast Hands” on discipline, “Cleansing Ire” on Defense or “Berserker’s Power” in Strenght. Any warrior build is “Defense/Discipline/X” while X is strenght for power builds, arms for hybrid/condi and tactics for shoutbow.
Now the problem: Warrior has no way to use Berserker effectively. Berserker is not too weak, it does some of the highest DPS in PVE, but Warrior cannot build enough adrenaline to use berserker without crippling his defenses or offenses. He has to give up too much to use berserker, that’s why the few remaining war players often play with core builds.

Conclusion:
Warrior: Give him the same treatment as Anet did with mesmer at 6/23: Fast Hands and Cleansing Ire Baseline, overall improved adrenaline generation, some DPS buffs for axe mace and hammer.

Won’t solve anything at all.

Warriors will still be pigeonholed into stances, and auto endure pain.

If going double melee, with out warriors sprint, with out teleports and movement skills which are nerfed to the ground, warrior ll get kited by anyone who feels like it.

One of the issues with the Thief is that the whole idea behind the class has a pretty big limitation. Much like how Reapers have to be the most formidable in a straight up brawl, thieves have to be the weakest. Let me explain:

The Thief is a class that has countless escapes and the ability to approach in stealth, so they always have the first strike advantage and they have high burst. This makes them both evasive and aggressive, and changes much of the fight to be not about necessarily killing a thief, but fighting one off. Considering that, if there were a class that was overall weaker in a straight up fight (basically you both whipped out melee weapons and went right up into each others’ face), then that class could never be played. It would auto-lose to the thief, who would approach from stealth and kill the class on the Thief’s own terms.

The Thief class inherently “unfair”, in that sense. While it is fun to play Thieves, it is not fun to be killed by Thieves. So, to balance the theme of a “invisible high burst” class, they have to make everybody stronger. Strong enough that they can fight off a Thief even with their first move advantage. The ability for the Thief to pick and choose their fights mandates this kind of balance.

This puts Anet into a sticky wicket. Thief players want to be stronger, but thieves have to be the weakest. If you increase Thief damage or durability, you run the very real risk of making another class obsolete.

I wouldn’t mind more group buffs, myself. I don’t PVP anymore, so I wouldn’t be able to say what group buffs are needed, but as it stands thieves have to trait pretty heavily to get any sort of team support. An idea I heard once was to make the AoE effect of venoms baseline, and roll the recharge reduction into Leeching Venoms. Restoring some of the lost boon stealing and adding a few more methods of boon stealing is another.

UBcktieDL.5318:

Thief fine

No thief is not fine any class can move fast across the map, not as fast a thief, but be infinitely more useful in combat especially in team fights. Example any revenant with staff and shiro, or a ranger with sword/x greatsword and quickdraw, or a a engineer with elixir gun and rocket boots.

Further thief has utility skills that are balanced around having specific traits (venoms with v. aura and 5 ppl around you traps with 2 traits and a rune) to be any good. This is a horrid balancing decision, all skills should be bettered by traits not be useless if you do not trait for them.

Not to mention the acrobatics trait line which is total garbage now and critical strikes which is not as bad but also trash. On top of that no good range weapon with some weapon sets being disjointed (p/p d/d – power set with a condi skill 3 and a condi trait, sure you can make a condi build but ask yourself: is something wrong with a build/weapon set if all you do is spam one skill and nothing else??).

And to top it all of every thief always takes short bow because of skill 5, not the garbage skill 2 which is slower than a snail not the trash skill 4 which does nothing not the trash auto attack, thus further limiting build diversity.

But yeah sure teef is fine must be, as long as there are crusaders that say it is. In fact it is op by mechanics, isn’t that what one of the pro players said in a voice interview before a tournament mach? (i am genuinely asking not sure).

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This puts Anet into a sticky wicket. Thief players want to be stronger, but thieves have to be the weakest.
.

The same can be said for mesmers, they are stronger in a small fight/solo since their illusions do not get cleaved down. But do mesmers have a issue in team fights? Yes, unless they run a bunker spec, but are they otherwise totally useless? Not by a long shot, on any build. Thief is just a flawed class by design, nerf its mobility and buff something else (not damage).

I don’t know guys….

Yesterday a new guild member asked me to help him to get into PvP… So I gave him a warrior build and logged onto my warri to practice some together…

We did a few Stronghold games and I can tell you:

Warrior is useless now!

Sure I did not play the prof since ages but it feels so weak it’s beyond description….

Apart of the so-so mobility and the condi-cleanse it offers NOTHING!

I tried GS-LB-Mace-Hammer…

It’s a PoS right now…

I did not try the teef but it’s even more underpowered…

Please ANET give us some formidable opponent in warriors and thieves!

Currently a Lesser Elemental proposes more threat than a warrior!

Aggrostemma.1703:

I don’t know guys….

Yesterday a new guild member asked me to help him to get into PvP… So I gave him a warrior build and logged onto my warri to practice some together…

We did a few Stronghold games and I can tell you:

Warrior is useless now!

Sure I did not play the prof since ages but it feels so weak it’s beyond description….

Apart of the so-so mobility and the condi-cleanse it offers NOTHING!

I tried GS-LB-Mace-Hammer…

It’s a PoS right now…

I did not try the teef but it’s even more underpowered…

Please ANET give us some formidable opponent in warriors and thieves!

Currently a Lesser Elemental proposes more threat than a warrior!

You ran a War in stronghold and found it to be useless? I’m sure you were running some godawful build.

Done right you should have been game altering. Berserker that is, I don’t put stock in core warrior specs. Though I’m sure there are those who could.

Lets just face it for warrior. Its a old dog and it cant be fixed without a huge overhaul. Longest CD in the game with some of the worst weapons in the game. Over half of its weapons range are 170 and 300. Atm every single warrior build would lose in a 1 vs 1 to the elite builds and in every team fight if the players are of equal level.

The thief thing is tricky since thief was the counter to mesmer. Mesmer was good for team play but struggled to hold its own vs thief so thief became the Apex. I dont think its about making balancing thief but about making it the counter to a build. If Anet buffs thief it might be to the point where it counters mesmer and rev which then just forces for druids/dh and the new thief.

In all honesty everyone keeps posting about balance patches but too many times they nerf stuff that shouldnt be nerfed. For instance if they knew the HOT expansion was gonna change the meta then why change d/d ele 1 month before release? At this point it becomes more questions for me about what they want rather then what they will balance.

Well, buffing Warrior and Thief is kinda a no-brainer, I’m pretty sure we’ll see some buffs on December 1st.

Condi-Cleanse is no Problem though, there are some Tempest builds that have more than enough to fill the role of a Shoutwar.

Also, Thief is still decent against Rev, likely one of the best counters. But you’re right, Rev kinda replaced the thief to a certain extent and does almost everything better, so you won’t run a thief just to have a somewhat decent counter to the rev (counter is probably too strong of a word, it’s more or less one of a few builds that isn’t heavily unfavoured in the MU against Shiro/Mallyx). ^^

I’d love to see a DMG-boost to S/D-Thief and generally a bit better utility for Thief (since there are much more counters to stealth, this is a necessity IMHO). Also, I’d love the traitline for berserker to have some good options for sustain/support/utility, it can’t compete with the usual traitlines when you want to go for a support/bunkery build.

Ross Biddle:

I/we run the metabattle builds, Which is not a good answer but since I’m a sheit warrior player I had to start somewhere….

I’m 100% sure that a more skilled warri player has better experiences.

We did not run Berserker since my guildy has no access to it. I just wanted to show her that Warrior can be played in sPvP… I was wrong!

As I said:

It might be just me! That I’m a crap player who did not get the concept of a warrior at all!

But after a few matches we both played traditional staff ele and did just well!

I’m not saying you are wrong… I just told you my experiences.

Happy Guardin’!

Aggrostemma.1703:

Ross Biddle:

I/we run the metabattle builds, Which is not a good answer but since I’m a sheit warrior player I had to start somewhere….

I’m 100% sure that a more skilled warri player has better experiences.

We did not run Berserker since my guildy has no access to it. I just wanted to show her that Warrior can be played in sPvP… I was wrong!

As I said:

It might be just me! That I’m a crap player who did not get the concept of a warrior at all!

But after a few matches we both played traditional staff ele and did just well!

I’m not saying you are wrong… I just told you my experiences.

Happy Guardin’!

Metabattle is not everything. There is no berserker build for pvp and 2 rushed daredevil builds which are really suboptimal. Now ask yourself why people complain about Thief and Warrior (okay war really needs help, berserker needs like 4 specilisation lines to work properly)

Saying that thief was only useful because it countered mesmer isn’t true…it was always meta when mesmer wasn’t. You could say that it kept the mesmer out of the meta, but thief has always been useful in the match itself (where it matters), even in the absence of mesmers.

People are upset when classes have no defined roles, and they are upset when classes do have defined roles (thief)…daredevil is a great spec with a defined role. What is wrong with that?

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

One of the issues with the Thief is that the whole idea behind the class has a pretty big limitation. Much like how Reapers have to be the most formidable in a straight up brawl, thieves have to be the weakest. Let me explain:

The Thief is a class that has countless escapes and the ability to approach in stealth, so they always have the first strike advantage and they have high burst. This makes them both evasive and aggressive, and changes much of the fight to be not about necessarily killing a thief, but fighting one off. Considering that, if there were a class that was overall weaker in a straight up fight (basically you both whipped out melee weapons and went right up into each others’ face), then that class could never be played. It would auto-lose to the thief, who would approach from stealth and kill the class on the Thief’s own terms.

The Thief class inherently “unfair”, in that sense. While it is fun to play Thieves, it is not fun to be killed by Thieves. So, to balance the theme of a “invisible high burst” class, they have to make everybody stronger. Strong enough that they can fight off a Thief even with their first move advantage. The ability for the Thief to pick and choose their fights mandates this kind of balance.

This puts Anet into a sticky wicket. Thief players want to be stronger, but thieves have to be the weakest. If you increase Thief damage or durability, you run the very real risk of making another class obsolete.

I wouldn’t mind more group buffs, myself. I don’t PVP anymore, so I wouldn’t be able to say what group buffs are needed, but as it stands thieves have to trait pretty heavily to get any sort of team support. An idea I heard once was to make the AoE effect of venoms baseline, and roll the recharge reduction into Leeching Venoms. Restoring some of the lost boon stealing and adding a few more methods of boon stealing is another.

I strongly disagree because every class has something it can bring to the table: Ele has lots of mobility and AoE with great burning, Guardian while lacking mobility gives lots of support as well as DPS and burning, Necro lots of conditions and boon steals, engineers lots of great utility and conditions, ranger healing and outrageous single target ranged damage, and thief…just really has mobility and stealth. Since reveal is around thief needs a buff to make up for stealth’s lost utility. The problem with reveal is if I didn’t want to stealth I wouldn’t and six seconds is more than enough time to kill a thief, thus fake casting with cloak and dagger or black powder isn’t an option and even if it were someone else could just reveal after shadow refuge or some other skill gets casted. This makes stealth unviable and something needs to be given to thief to make up for that.

“Strong enough that they can fight off a Thief even with their first move advantage. "

But it should have to be an uphill battle for whoever the thief hit while it should be the thief’s job to keep that advantage then disengage if he somehow loses it. The problem with thief being weak is its only viable source of damage is melee with big damage or daze being available from stealth and from behind, which means if you try fighting with shortbow someone could type /laugh and still have enough time to kill you the damage is so weak so shortbow is only viable for its 5 ability which doesn’t even damage and cost initiative. Thus, due to the situational and positional nature of the damage it needs to be high to compensate for the skill required. You don’t have the range or healing of a ranger, utility, AoE, or versaility of an elementalist (who always has something off cooldown), etc., so where does one make up the difference? Thief is simply underpowered and was even before reveal came about.

Agemnon.4608:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

One of the issues with the Thief is that the whole idea behind the class has a pretty big limitation. Much like how Reapers have to be the most formidable in a straight up brawl, thieves have to be the weakest. Let me explain:

The Thief is a class that has countless escapes and the ability to approach in stealth, so they always have the first strike advantage and they have high burst. This makes them both evasive and aggressive, and changes much of the fight to be not about necessarily killing a thief, but fighting one off. Considering that, if there were a class that was overall weaker in a straight up fight (basically you both whipped out melee weapons and went right up into each others’ face), then that class could never be played. It would auto-lose to the thief, who would approach from stealth and kill the class on the Thief’s own terms.

The Thief class inherently “unfair”, in that sense. While it is fun to play Thieves, it is not fun to be killed by Thieves. So, to balance the theme of a “invisible high burst” class, they have to make everybody stronger. Strong enough that they can fight off a Thief even with their first move advantage. The ability for the Thief to pick and choose their fights mandates this kind of balance.

This puts Anet into a sticky wicket. Thief players want to be stronger, but thieves have to be the weakest. If you increase Thief damage or durability, you run the very real risk of making another class obsolete.

I wouldn’t mind more group buffs, myself. I don’t PVP anymore, so I wouldn’t be able to say what group buffs are needed, but as it stands thieves have to trait pretty heavily to get any sort of team support. An idea I heard once was to make the AoE effect of venoms baseline, and roll the recharge reduction into Leeching Venoms. Restoring some of the lost boon stealing and adding a few more methods of boon stealing is another.

I strongly disagree because every class has something it can bring to the table: Ele has lots of mobility and AoE with great burning, Guardian while lacking mobility gives lots of support as well as DPS and burning, Necro lots of conditions and boon steals, engineers lots of great utility and conditions, ranger healing and outrageous single target ranged damage, and thief…just really has mobility and stealth. Since reveal is around thief needs a buff to make up for stealth’s lost utility. The problem with reveal is if I didn’t want to stealth I wouldn’t and six seconds is more than enough time to kill a thief, thus fake casting with cloak and dagger or black powder isn’t an option and even if it were someone else could just reveal after shadow refuge or some other skill gets casted. This makes stealth unviable and something needs to be given to thief to make up for that.

“Strong enough that they can fight off a Thief even with their first move advantage. "

But it should have to be an uphill battle for whoever the thief hit while it should be the thief’s job to keep that advantage then disengage if he somehow loses it. The problem with thief being weak is its only viable source of damage is melee with big damage or daze being available from stealth and from behind, which means if you try fighting with shortbow someone could type /laugh and still have enough time to kill you the damage is so weak so shortbow is only viable for its 5 ability which doesn’t even damage and cost initiative. Thus, due to the situational and positional nature of the damage it needs to be high to compensate for the skill required. You don’t have the range or healing of a ranger, utility, AoE, or versaility of an elementalist (who always has something off cooldown), etc., so where does one make up the difference? Thief is simply underpowered and was even before reveal came about.

Why are you trying to DPS someone down with shortbow?

I do agree with the sentiment that full on AoE cleanse builds like shoutbow should never be able to come back into the game. Condition builds finally have a place in the meta, and while some of them may come off as too strong, individual condition cleansing on certain professions rather than group condition cleansing should be brought up to compensate instead of nerfing condi output or putting massive teamwide AoE condi cleanse back into viable builds again..

kdaddy.5431:

Lets just face it for warrior. Its a old dog and it cant be fixed without a huge overhaul. Longest CD in the game with some of the worst weapons in the game. Over half of its weapons range are 170 and 300. Atm every single warrior build would lose in a 1 vs 1 to the elite builds and in every team fight if the players are of equal level.

The thief thing is tricky since thief was the counter to mesmer. Mesmer was good for team play but struggled to hold its own vs thief so thief became the Apex. I dont think its about making balancing thief but about making it the counter to a build. If Anet buffs thief it might be to the point where it counters mesmer and rev which then just forces for druids/dh and the new thief.

In all honesty everyone keeps posting about balance patches but too many times they nerf stuff that shouldnt be nerfed. For instance if they knew the HOT expansion was gonna change the meta then why change d/d ele 1 month before release? At this point it becomes more questions for me about what they want rather then what they will balance.

Warrior has some great skills, it’s just underpowered. Shield bash is an excellent interrupt while sword gives a decent gap closer. Hammer offers some good crowd control and hammer 5 while a big telegraph (fighting certain PvE risen mobs teaches us when to dodge or interrupt these) nevertheless is good with a proper setup. Then you have kick which launches back, so they’ll get up by the time you’re in melee range again. A possible solution here is raising overall warrior DPS while making king knockdown only with no launch back.

I think ultimately Anet intends certain specs and weapons to be optimal for PvP and others for PvE like how World of Warcraft traditionally had frost and fire mages as a PvP spec (one for CC other for burst damage) but wanted arcane mages as a PvE spec. The need for separate balancing of PvP and PvE is obvious because if something who can two or one shot a player is immune to CC it clearly demands a completely different stat and skillset than playable characters who don’t rely on AI scripts.

Salamander.2504:

Agemnon.4608:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

One of the issues with the Thief is that the whole idea behind the class has a pretty big limitation. Much like how Reapers have to be the most formidable in a straight up brawl, thieves have to be the weakest. Let me explain:

The Thief is a class that has countless escapes and the ability to approach in stealth, so they always have the first strike advantage and they have high burst. This makes them both evasive and aggressive, and changes much of the fight to be not about necessarily killing a thief, but fighting one off. Considering that, if there were a class that was overall weaker in a straight up fight (basically you both whipped out melee weapons and went right up into each others’ face), then that class could never be played. It would auto-lose to the thief, who would approach from stealth and kill the class on the Thief’s own terms.

The Thief class inherently “unfair”, in that sense. While it is fun to play Thieves, it is not fun to be killed by Thieves. So, to balance the theme of a “invisible high burst” class, they have to make everybody stronger. Strong enough that they can fight off a Thief even with their first move advantage. The ability for the Thief to pick and choose their fights mandates this kind of balance.

This puts Anet into a sticky wicket. Thief players want to be stronger, but thieves have to be the weakest. If you increase Thief damage or durability, you run the very real risk of making another class obsolete.

I wouldn’t mind more group buffs, myself. I don’t PVP anymore, so I wouldn’t be able to say what group buffs are needed, but as it stands thieves have to trait pretty heavily to get any sort of team support. An idea I heard once was to make the AoE effect of venoms baseline, and roll the recharge reduction into Leeching Venoms. Restoring some of the lost boon stealing and adding a few more methods of boon stealing is another.

I strongly disagree because every class has something it can bring to the table: Ele has lots of mobility and AoE with great burning, Guardian while lacking mobility gives lots of support as well as DPS and burning, Necro lots of conditions and boon steals, engineers lots of great utility and conditions, ranger healing and outrageous single target ranged damage, and thief…just really has mobility and stealth. Since reveal is around thief needs a buff to make up for stealth’s lost utility. The problem with reveal is if I didn’t want to stealth I wouldn’t and six seconds is more than enough time to kill a thief, thus fake casting with cloak and dagger or black powder isn’t an option and even if it were someone else could just reveal after shadow refuge or some other skill gets casted. This makes stealth unviable and something needs to be given to thief to make up for that.

“Strong enough that they can fight off a Thief even with their first move advantage. "

But it should have to be an uphill battle for whoever the thief hit while it should be the thief’s job to keep that advantage then disengage if he somehow loses it. The problem with thief being weak is its only viable source of damage is melee with big damage or daze being available from stealth and from behind, which means if you try fighting with shortbow someone could type /laugh and still have enough time to kill you the damage is so weak so shortbow is only viable for its 5 ability which doesn’t even damage and cost initiative. Thus, due to the situational and positional nature of the damage it needs to be high to compensate for the skill required. You don’t have the range or healing of a ranger, utility, AoE, or versaility of an elementalist (who always has something off cooldown), etc., so where does one make up the difference? Thief is simply underpowered and was even before reveal came about.

Why are you trying to DPS someone down with shortbow?

I’m not…and that’s the problem and considering how slow shortbow 1 fires it needs a damage buff. I simply don’t have that option because shortbow is very underpowered. The point is meleeing is mandatory if you want decent damage and I abandoned thief in PvP sometime ago. Elementalist simply has better survivability options as reveal skills don’t strip mist form of its immunity and lightning flash is a good disengage. Elementalist also has better CC and AoE healing but with the elite specs elementalist has been leveled off. Staff ele is too telegraphy but dagger/dagger gives lots of good use. Water autoattack needs a buff though.

I just hope that ANet decides to nerf the stronger classes, rather than buff the weaker ones. The power creep has required a defense creep, and the very strong classes right now are the ones with insane elite-spec defenses – Chronomancer, and Herald with their active blocks stand out. Next we have the Reaper and Druid, who have ridiculous sustain compared to most pre-HoT specs. Thief and Warrior may be weak, but it’s just a numbers game – you can make them capable of teamfights or duels just by nerfing the other elite specs.

Obviously, nobody likes getting weaker, so the playerbase demands buffs rather than nerfs, but power creep creates an overdependence on active defenses – evades and blocks – and classes have to be redesigned for more of those in order to compensate. Berserkers and Daredevils didn’t receive as much as other classes did with their elite specs in that regard.

This creates a very dynamic duelling environment, and it would be more balanced if Berserker and Daredevil acquired better and more active defenses, but it also makes pvp extremely unforgiving and unfriendly to spectators. If this game wants to be an esport, making pvp more spectator-friendly is about making fights more interesting to watch as well as enhancing clarity and commentary, which means making skills more overt.

tl;dr Numbers are getting too high, thieves and warriors didn’t get enough invulnerability to compensate, power creep is one way to balance things, but it makes the game less interesting to spectators despite making it more interesting to players

“I just hope that ANet decides to nerf the stronger classes, rather than buff the weaker ones.”

The problem there is PvE mobs would take longer to kill, and sometimes I’ll spend a full six seconds killing something while wearing full ascended. I’m not even talking about vet mobs either. In HoT zones it takes even longer because you have to account for different factors and overall be more careful.

The obvious solution is simply to completely segregate PvP and PvE skill power so nerfs can be reasonable without effecting the PvE game.

Agemnon.4608:

The problem there is PvE mobs would take longer to kill, and sometimes I’ll spend a full six seconds killing something while wearing full ascended.

Omg, the whole 6 seconds ? No jokes ?..

Agemnon.4608:

“I just hope that ANet decides to nerf the stronger classes, rather than buff the weaker ones.”

The problem there is PvE mobs would take longer to kill, and sometimes I’ll spend a full six seconds killing something while wearing full ascended. I’m not even talking about vet mobs either. In HoT zones it takes even longer because you have to account for different factors and overall be more careful.

The obvious solution is simply to completely segregate PvP and PvE skill power so nerfs can be reasonable without effecting the PvE game.

They tried that. It failed. They just recently merged a lot of skills. They also dropped underwater balancing FOR the reason its too difficult.

Supreme.3164:

No…this is not a troll thread so don’t waste your time

It’s the first time that I find myself asking for huge buffs on other professions, but the situation requires it: conditions and one-shot builds are running rampant

So I find myself looking for solutions, factual solutions that would benefit the whole community on the long run and not only the classes I main; I will make this as concise as possible, but be ready for the wall of text, will give the reasons why warrior and thief are needed more than ever.

Warrior= The absence of shout warrior and the Hammer train is painful. Conditions builds that would otherwise be counterable with little coordination , become major obstacles for all but a small pool of players from the high end spectrum of PvP.
I don’t feel there is any build that offer a viable countermeasure to condi spam at teamplay levels; yes people will mention the tempest shout aura share but..I really don’t think the build is as survivable as old shoutwar.
What about the absence of hammer warrior?..Well many dominant builds like: condi reaper, mallyx/shiro rev, condi druid, scrapper are enjoying a real “no CC train paradise”; no current build comes close to the stunlock potential of the old hambow while being as hard to kill

Thief= The thief has always been a necessary evil to keep in check the real threat :mesmer as I always stated, months ago I made a thread explaining why necro and mesmer did not need sustain buffs…but I had fears this would happen in the end.
Now we have chronomancer and reaper which are basically the 2.0 version of mesmer and necro. With its natural enemy gone, the mesmer is now free to pray on the entirety of pvp. Another class that strongly benefit from the absence of zerk builds natural predator, it’s the revenant. Currently nothing can match this class in combat-mobility in pvp and bruiser like sustain; revenant is basically d/d ele 2.0.
My statement may appear too strong for many atm but..bare with me, when they will “nerf” herald and buff Jaris and Ventari..you will see the team potential of revs at full power, I mean already 1vs1 at high level only a reaper can match a mallyx/shiro rev, not much it’s missed to reach d/d ele 2.0

So these are my reasons why thief and warrior are needed and I have couple more observations to make, for the dev.

1) Why nerf thief boon strip, sustain and burst..then create a class that burst just as hard(if not harder ), strip more boons and faster ( mallyx rev) and can chain multiple blocks +insta heal that recover health based on damage received?

2) Why nerf warrior stunlock/adrenaline gain than create a class that can chain block/interrupts for days by pressing 2 buttons ( shield 5 and F5= chronomancer)?
Why nerf warrior damage on hammer ..when a reaper can deal 12k+ dmg with a spammable condition +stunlock? Why nerf warrior sustain ..when a scrapper is way harder to kill with tools shield, 2x elixir S, unblockable heal+water field, smoke field for stealth or walking shadow refuge drone?

Look…I’ll be blunt, you devs don’t balance the game at all, you simply buff/nerf things to shut down the forum

Just to give few more examples:

-You nerf might stacking on eles..then make scrappers that go around with perma 25 might
-You nerf traps on ranger..then make dragon hunter and unblockable damage, “invisible CC”, pull skills and more.

What did happen to the GW1 balance philosophy? Is there a philosophy at all?

Your suggestions ask for too much powercreep. The bunker mesmer build, for example, is strong because it has a high uptime of chaos armor (protection + random blind procs on enemy), chaos storm (dazes + aegis on mes), blocks, evasions, condi clear, and healing. If you buff warriors or thieves to be a “counter” to this build, then those two classes would be the new “one-shot” builds that you complained about earlier.

The better decision is to tone down the overperforming builds and make reasonable buffs to warriors/thieves so that they have a place in the meta. For example, by making it so trickery isn’t a required for steal to be worthwhile, and by giving thieves build options to survive on point at the cost of some mobility.

Keeping the overperforming builds as-is and then buffing thieves and warriors to hardcounter them would bring powercreep to a whole new level of craziness.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

As a Thief main, I would gladly become a gimmick class if it meant I could fight on equal footing as other elite specs. Stealth doesn’t count as a gimmick anymore, reveals are too prevalent. Evades are decent, but without the vigor that old acro provided they are short lived. OP does have a point in that Thief’s role used to involve controlling Mesmer power, because no other class can keep up with Mesmer blinks/stealth. But now, Thief counters no one and is hard countered by like half the classes in the game.

There’s gimmicky and then there’s OP/cheesy.

A full-damage D/D backstab thief is gimmicky; its primary source of damage is through the use of one combo. But it’s not cheesy to play against; it has massive weaknesses and can be taken advantage of easily. It’s also not even close to strong, let alone OP.

Vault spam is gimmicky. Hell, it’s objectively better than backstab from DPS, burst, and damage per initiative over every other skill by a massive margin. It’s still relatively weak, though.

The thief is weak not because of gimmicks, but because of blatant power disparities between the classes. It’s also the same reason the warrior is weak; it’s a well-balanced class. And being well-balanced in this environment means weak, especially with sPvP’s stat systems. WvW, the balancing is much tighter despite a few odd cases in roaming.

It shouldn’t be a matter of rock-paper-scissors of classes but of builds, and frankly, gimmicks need to have major sacrifices. Yes, I can take a backstab to 17k in sPvP on my thief. But that also means I have no defense, utility skills, condition cleanses, or very little map movement, and will be a sitting duck if my opponent plays in a way to counter a backstab-built thief, or simply gets the jump on me.

There are too many immunity effects, conditions are in fact scaling rampantly, and not enough ways for making a build to counter others rather than entire classes getting massive power boosts for no real reason in the false assumption buffs and tweaking numbers make for more diverse environments. If the changes were rapid, maybe we’d see more diverse play, but balancing efforts come way too slowly, so optimal strategies establish well-before the next balance cycle.

The warrior is out-paced right now, and is best off with other classes being toned down, or some of its skills and abilities tweaked up. I see this as a two-way street for some classes being over-tuned and blatant disparity for some of the warrior’s abilities requiring numbers increases. That said, overdoing this would easily put the warrior into a position of being overpowered due to its relative ease to master and rather simple combat mechanics. Overtuning this would put us back in the first-iteration of healing signet-land or worse.

The thief is dependent largely on its style/build and the actions and build of the opponent. To compensate, thieves need more of a spread of abilities to cover all of their bases throughout all of their traits, and a lot of “functionally necessary” traits and abilities reworked and merged to create a more streamlined and holistic play experience rather than deep specialization and even deeper sacrifices made with wild variable extremes to become competitive or slightly better than other classes at one particular thing. Either we need to start seeing this occurring on other classes through the reduction of boon access, lowered base stats and improved scaling potential in conflicting-interest traits, and a change in the mechanics of trapper runes. stealth, and revealed for other classes, or the thief needs substantial changes design-wise to be competitive.

As such, I expect nothing to change; the developers are fixated on not making sweeping changes to classes nor are they willing to constantly push out changes to numbers in attempts to destabilize the meta and find a common ground. As CJ once said, they prefer to work on “low-hanging fruit” adjustments to balance. It’s unfortunate when the end goal of satisfying the hunger resides only some branches above.

People who compare thief to warrior level have some serious L2P issues
and i’m very happy to teach you how to play a thief properly in game.

lighter.2708:

People who compare thief to warrior level have some serious L2P issues
and i’m very happy to teach you how to play a thief properly in game.

Can you post a video of you playing thief? I think it would be absolutely the most wonderful thing to watch seeing as you are wrecking faces on thief in today’s meta.

Thanks in advance

foste.3098:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This puts Anet into a sticky wicket. Thief players want to be stronger, but thieves have to be the weakest.
.

The same can be said for mesmers, they are stronger in a small fight/solo since their illusions do not get cleaved down. But do mesmers have a issue in team fights? Yes, unless they run a bunker spec, but are they otherwise totally useless? Not by a long shot, on any build. Thief is just a flawed class by design, nerf its mobility and buff something else (not damage).

It really can’t. Two classes can’t be the weakest. Only one class can be the weakest. Likewise, mesmers don’t have as much mobility and easy access to stealth. The mesmer doesn’t always have first move advantage.

Likewise, I wouldn’t call thieves useless, either. Regardless, there’s a bit of history here. For awhile, there was a gigantic “mesmers are useless” campaign going around. It was so pervasive that Helseth made a video about quitting mesmers because “thief was just so much better”. While no one can deny that mesmer has unique utilities and group support, it didn’t matter because in a straight up fight, thief would beat mesmer. Mesmers were walking bait for thieves: unable to escape, unable to defend themselves.

Agemnon.4608:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

One of the issues with the Thief is that the whole idea behind the class has a pretty big limitation. Much like how Reapers have to be the most formidable in a straight up brawl, thieves have to be the weakest. Let me explain:

The Thief is a class that has countless escapes and the ability to approach in stealth, so they always have the first strike advantage and they have high burst. This makes them both evasive and aggressive, and changes much of the fight to be not about necessarily killing a thief, but fighting one off. Considering that, if there were a class that was overall weaker in a straight up fight (basically you both whipped out melee weapons and went right up into each others’ face), then that class could never be played. It would auto-lose to the thief, who would approach from stealth and kill the class on the Thief’s own terms.

The Thief class inherently “unfair”, in that sense. While it is fun to play Thieves, it is not fun to be killed by Thieves. So, to balance the theme of a “invisible high burst” class, they have to make everybody stronger. Strong enough that they can fight off a Thief even with their first move advantage. The ability for the Thief to pick and choose their fights mandates this kind of balance.

This puts Anet into a sticky wicket. Thief players want to be stronger, but thieves have to be the weakest. If you increase Thief damage or durability, you run the very real risk of making another class obsolete.

I wouldn’t mind more group buffs, myself. I don’t PVP anymore, so I wouldn’t be able to say what group buffs are needed, but as it stands thieves have to trait pretty heavily to get any sort of team support. An idea I heard once was to make the AoE effect of venoms baseline, and roll the recharge reduction into Leeching Venoms. Restoring some of the lost boon stealing and adding a few more methods of boon stealing is another.

I strongly disagree because every class has something it can bring to the table: Ele has lots of mobility and AoE with great burning, Guardian while lacking mobility gives lots of support as well as DPS and burning, Necro lots of conditions and boon steals, engineers lots of great utility and conditions, ranger healing and outrageous single target ranged damage, and thief…just really has mobility and stealth. Since reveal is around thief needs a buff to make up for stealth’s lost utility. The problem with reveal is if I didn’t want to stealth I wouldn’t and six seconds is more than enough time to kill a thief, thus fake casting with cloak and dagger or black powder isn’t an option and even if it were someone else could just reveal after shadow refuge or some other skill gets casted. This makes stealth unviable and something needs to be given to thief to make up for that.

“Strong enough that they can fight off a Thief even with their first move advantage. "

But it should have to be an uphill battle for whoever the thief hit while it should be the thief’s job to keep that advantage then disengage if he somehow loses it. The problem with thief being weak is its only viable source of damage is melee with big damage or daze being available from stealth and from behind, which means if you try fighting with shortbow someone could type /laugh and still have enough time to kill you the damage is so weak so shortbow is only viable for its 5 ability which doesn’t even damage and cost initiative. Thus, due to the situational and positional nature of the damage it needs to be high to compensate for the skill required. You don’t have the range or healing of a ranger, utility, AoE, or versaility of an elementalist (who always has something off cooldown), etc., so where does one make up the difference? Thief is simply underpowered and was even before reveal came about.

You have completely missed the point. I ended my post saying I wouldn’t mind more group buffs for thieves, then you say you disagree and your whole point is that you want more group buffs for thieves.

Allow me to elaborate: a “straight up fight” means that two players engage each other without any gimmicks or tricks. Basically, it is the product of a character’s DPS and their effective HP, with a few class mechanics thrown in. Whomever is highest will win a “straight up fight”. The Reaper, being the slowest class, must be the most formidable, or else the Reaper could never see play, because everyone would beat the class that happens to be faster and also stronger than the Reaper. This can be extrapolated a bit: If one class is more mobile and evasive than another class, then it also has to be less formidable than the less mobile class. Or else you’ve got a big paper-rock-scissors problem, wherein one class just beats another.

Thus Thieves, being the most mobile and the most evasive, must be the least formidable. The important thing to note here is that this has nothing to do with group utility. Sure, group utility can alleviate some of the pressure, but group utility doesn’t mean squat of class X pummels you every time it walks by, and you can neither fight it off or get away. The dead provide no utility.

The second important thing to note is that this does not mean the thief should never beat another class. What it does mean is that the victory of the thief must be due to trickery and exploiting weaknesses particular to the class they are fighting. If the thief can win just by following you around auto attacking, then we’ve got a big problem.

And this is the dilemma: how do you buff the thief, without making it more formidable than another class in a straight up fight? If you cross that line, then suddenly elementalists or mesmers end up being horrible. As it happens, better group buffs is one such way to do that.

The thief is good for more than mobility and stealth. It is just that this is how everyone plays them. Thieves are potent debuffers, capable of inflicting plenty of poison, weakness, and blind (which cuts healing, cuts damage, cuts endurance regen, and outright avoids attacks). Thieves are also good at control, having multiple sources for immobilize and stun/knockdown. I would like to see these strengths, along with boon stealing, more emphasized, as well a few reworks to traits/skills to give them more group utility.

Agemnon.4608:

kdaddy.5431:

Lets just face it for warrior. Its a old dog and it cant be fixed without a huge overhaul. Longest CD in the game with some of the worst weapons in the game. Over half of its weapons range are 170 and 300. Atm every single warrior build would lose in a 1 vs 1 to the elite builds and in every team fight if the players are of equal level.

The thief thing is tricky since thief was the counter to mesmer. Mesmer was good for team play but struggled to hold its own vs thief so thief became the Apex. I dont think its about making balancing thief but about making it the counter to a build. If Anet buffs thief it might be to the point where it counters mesmer and rev which then just forces for druids/dh and the new thief.

In all honesty everyone keeps posting about balance patches but too many times they nerf stuff that shouldnt be nerfed. For instance if they knew the HOT expansion was gonna change the meta then why change d/d ele 1 month before release? At this point it becomes more questions for me about what they want rather then what they will balance.

Warrior has some great skills, it’s just underpowered. Shield bash is an excellent interrupt while sword gives a decent gap closer. Hammer offers some good crowd control and hammer 5 while a big telegraph (fighting certain PvE risen mobs teaches us when to dodge or interrupt these) nevertheless is good with a proper setup. Then you have kick which launches back, so they’ll get up by the time you’re in melee range again. A possible solution here is raising overall warrior DPS while making king knockdown only with no launch back.

I think ultimately Anet intends certain specs and weapons to be optimal for PvP and others for PvE like how World of Warcraft traditionally had frost and fire mages as a PvP spec (one for CC other for burst damage) but wanted arcane mages as a PvE spec. The need for separate balancing of PvP and PvE is obvious because if something who can two or one shot a player is immune to CC it clearly demands a completely different stat and skillset than playable characters who don’t rely on AI scripts.

The word you were looking for in your PvP argument for warrior is had. The Dps is still good, i still do 5k damage on hammer 5 and 14k on Greatsword 2. The Probelm is when playing good players they no that what im trying to set up. The set up for these attacks are near impossible and heres why.

Necros new stability. There new chill dmg now makes warrior slow and you cant stun them which is great for necros.

Thieves shadowstep make them already difficult in 1 vs 1 but the extra dodge and constant dodge skills that come with staff means your timing has to be near perfect.

Revs get 2 of everything and if they trait for champion stun break you cant catch them. Glints heal if i catch you one and if i catch you twice dont worry hit F1 for access to your 2nd heal and stun break.

Druids heals and pets make them impossible to beat for a warrior. The pet takes a stun and condi dmg so hambow is out and if you go mace/shield with greatsword you have to pray they trait wrong. When you get them low on health they can hit F5 and get all the way back up and warrior who plays dps doesnt have any sustain outside the stances.

Mesmers are a nightmare. If i dont have stability boom well, if i catch them with a bulls charge,shield bash,skull crack they have blink, distortion and staff 2, sword 2 to get away after a stun break. Plus with a hammer they have shield now so catching them is impossible if they are of a high skill level.

DH are actually the only class the old Dps warrior in my opinion can beat. Even then though the warrior has to do everything right. One missed dodge or popping a stance to early or late means you will lose in this case vs a DH.

Dps does not fix any of this unless they buff warriors dmg 3X. You cant fix dps on warrior and say all better cause they already tried that with the 2nd zerker trait line. I actually thanked them for making a quick change to the zerker trait line thinking the dps output would be enough since its 17% in zerker form.

Like i said the trait system for the class needs a huge overhaul for it to be at the level. If you want to make it a gimmick class like thief. Ok but that only 1 level up and the have destroyed ele into a bunker class only. Im sorry if i went on a bit but no, without major nerfs to other classes warrior will remain a terrible class without major trait line changes. The other option is to have it be a 1 type of class like ele or theif and say this is the only role you can be at a elite level with the zerker trait line.

Agemnon.4608:

The problem there is PvE mobs would take longer to kill,

Your argument is based on… open-world pve? What?

Anyway, another point on thief is really just that mesmers are better at being the stealthy-mobile-assassin type than thieves are. I’ve tried getting into mesmer, and it’s okay, but I just don’t really enjoy the playstyle even though all the tools are there.

Mesmers can have a decent amount of stealth, and they do get deceptiveness and evasion, incredible burst, and arguably insane mobility – not personal mobility quite as much as being able to move their group from place to place, but I’d put it on the same level as the thief’s mobility regarding map control. They get these things that thieves covet while being far tankier and bringing way more utility. It doesn’t really feel like thief offers much that wouldn’t be offered better by a mesmer, in either pvp or wvw (or even pve, for that matter).

Elite specs fixed a lot of problems for a lot of classes, but unfortunately, they made more than a few classes a little too perfect. Mobility, utility, burst damage, and mitigation shouldn’t all belong in the same package for any class – weaknesses are important.

The meta is definitely interesting right now, but it could always be better.

Not reading the whole thread…just save your breath.

Anet isn’t interested in achieving balance. Suffer being weak/useless for 3-6 months (or quit the game as many are inclined to do when they can’t play their favorite class reasonably), then they will buff you up to high heaven as the cycle of power-creep continues.

They have even hinted that balance isn’t something they want. They just want to make different metas every 3-6 months, even if they all are terribly spammy and unfun to play in. This is their answer the fact that they have never been able to achieve true complexity that supports evolving metas instead of metas dominated firmly by established OP builds after a couple months. The fun of pvp is on a strong downward trend in this game.

This thread is interesting so I will post my thoughts on warrior situation (can’t speak much for thief).

Even before looking at adrenaline decay, base fast hand and such. I would go back to even more basic things.

-Basic skill behavior

(1) : Warrior’s gap closer need to be more accurate. As an exemple [Rush] and [Bull rush] would need to get us on our target on a near 100% basis (see here terrain bug that could be the only non-player related reason for the skill not getting us on top of an ennemy). Those skills often get us behind our target, still a few steps away from them simply because the skill failed to identify where the person was walking to (see here simply walking and not actually blinking or dodging).

(2) : Gap closer skills should land their hit on a near 100% basis. Warrior’s gap closer skill have a hard time actually landing their hit. Taking [Savage leap] as an exemple (even if the skills cited as point 1 automatically result in a problem on landing the hit since you are not where your target is). As for [Savage leap], the movement part of the skill is pretty fine, it will get you to your target, sadly the animation when the warrior land and try to hit the target will sometimes bug and the warrior will swing the sword where the ennemy is not, resulting in a miss simply because the ennemy was moving (see here simply moving and not dodging or blinking away).

(3) : Warrior’s gap closer should not be affected by minus % movement speed. Since the 23rd of june patch, warrior movement skills have been made baseline and +% movement speed doesn’t affect them anymore, so why should -% movement speed affect them? Take [Evsicerate] as an exemple. This skill will travel about 200 range only when affected by [Chill]. This behavior is also true for [Shield Bash]. Especially since chill is now even more present with the new specialisation (Reaper). [Chill] could still make the skill behave slower than intended, but the distance traveled should still be what is written, a simple spammable condition should not punish a warrior mobility to that extent. Warriors needs to get back their mobility.

Once such basic behavior are corrected, we can then re-evaluate the situation in order to bring balance to the scene. Balancing should be done around mechanics that are working as intended.

foste.3098:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This puts Anet into a sticky wicket. Thief players want to be stronger, but thieves have to be the weakest.
.

The same can be said for mesmers, they are stronger in a small fight/solo since their illusions do not get cleaved down. But do mesmers have a issue in team fights? Yes, unless they run a bunker spec, but are they otherwise totally useless? Not by a long shot, on any build. Thief is just a flawed class by design, nerf its mobility and buff something else (not damage).

Mesmer meta has been Shatter throughout the game, except for the very most recent month, Shatter does not excel in 1v1, despite how many times people on forums try to tell you, despite clones gettings cleaved in teamfights. It never has, never will. The new bunker mesmer can 1v1 on the other hand. It will usually not kill, but it can hold.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

If one class is more mobile and evasive than another class, then it also has to be less formidable than the less mobile class. Or else you’ve got a big paper-rock-scissors problem, wherein one class just beats another.

Thus Thieves, being the most mobile and the most evasive, must be the least formidable.

There is more than one way to balance a cat. Just because a class or spec in any game has high mobility doesn’t mean it has to hit like a wet noodle or crumble like paper if its looked at. Storm Spirit from dota 2 is precisely balanced as a highly mobile hero (arguably the most mobile hero in the game) that has high burst damage with his auto attacks.

You play him by alternating between using his spells to give his auto attack a damage buff and his right-click (auto attack). The point is he has incredibly high BURST damage (this is important) and one of the fastest – if not THE fastest – hero in the game. He focuses on being able to fly anywhere on the map to gank someone – and he can do it solo. The thief plays a similar role. Their “stealth advantage” is countered by the fact that they can’t stay in a fight for more than a very short amount of time – their initiative dictates this. Storm Spirit is squishy but can easily blow anyone up. However, the hero is balanced by high opportunity costs. You can be anywhere on the map, but you can only be at one place at one time. Long duration disables, like silence in dota 2, are a real threat to storm spirit. Physical damage invulnerability, like through ghost sceptre, is one of the BEST ways to stay alive against a storm spirit gank. The opportunity costs are what dictate the balance of Storm Spirit.

The thief should be balanced the same way. As a HUGE example: A thief shouldn’t feel it necessary for survival to have sleight of hand, but sleight of hand’s cooldown shouldn’t be so obscenely short. The spec makes steal do everything and should be balanced by the fact that it DOES everything. They could revert the changes to pistol 5, but make it so the thief can only get 1 “stack” of stealth from it (similar to how a mesmer could only get 1 stack of swiftness from focus 5). This would force more cooldowns, via utility and heal skills, to get stacked stealth. Reveal mechanics simply should not exist in this game, instead the devs should be forcing and rewarding properly timed cc’s right when the thief tries to go for stealth. There are many things that can be done without “they have shortbow 5, so they cannot be able to take someone down.”

Thieves SHOULD be weak in teamplay, and they shouldn’t be able to hold a point for crap – or be resbots (what anet?). They shouldn’t be weak in taking someone down though.