Guild Wars 2

morbidillusion.2759:

Flanking strike evades for the entire activation time.

It doesn’t evade for entire activation time. There are non-evade frames right before hit. Very small window though.

morbidillusion.2759:

Engineering a way for it to hit thieves harder isn’t going to suddenly bring it into the meta.

Harder? PB doesn’t hit thieves at all. Even if it would – still underwhelming trait.

Mak.2657:

morbidillusion.2759:

Flanking strike evades for the entire activation time.

It doesn’t evade for entire activation time. There are non-evade frames right before hit. Very small window though.

morbidillusion.2759:

Engineering a way for it to hit thieves harder isn’t going to suddenly bring it into the meta.

Harder? PB doesn’t hit thieves at all. Even if it would – still underwhelming trait.

But the main point is I’d like to remind everyone is. Something is still > than nothing. Who knows, meta or not, atleast we got a little help in the diversity department.

Mak.2657:

It doesn’t evade for entire activation time. There are non-evade frames right before hit. Very small window though.

Evade duration = activation time in the tooltip, so this is a bug I guess.

Harder? PB doesn’t hit thieves at all. Even if it would – still underwhelming trait.

Yes it does. It just doesn’t hit any of the meta thief builds. Some people actually use HiS. Against a Thief with HiS, PB interrupt could be a death sentence.

Point being, the devs have already stated PB and interrupts are working as intended with Thieves, and to ask for compensation because a trait is bad against a certain class/build combination is basically nonsense. Many GM traits are total rubbish (Diamond Skin, Assassin’s Equilibrium) and other tiers have an abundance of useless traits.

Edit: I mean, before Power Block was added – Mesmers were still playing Kanye West builds and Thieves were still terrible targets for interrupt builds. No one is/was asking for regular interrupts to be valid against thieves; just this particular trait? Why? The trait still serves its purpose. It’s niche, like almost all traits.

The only real reason to ask for a power block specific buff against thieves is to improve the matchup against thieves. No one is running lock down mesmer to fight thieves in the first place – so if you think lock down mesmer is unfairly matched against Thieves, then make a thread about that.

StickerHappy.8052:

Who knows, meta or not, atleast we got a little help in the diversity department.

Would be good

morbidillusion.2759:

Evade duration = activation time in the tooltip, so this is a bug I guess.

Works as intended () ). Tooltip inaccuracy I think. Game hasn’t fractions lesser then 1/4 for tooltips at this moment. Those evade frames window lesser then 1/4 so we have what we have.

Yes it does. It just doesn’t hit any of the meta thief builds. Some people actually use HiS. Against a Thief with HiS, PB interrupt could be a death sentence.

No it doesn’t.
1. If = If. Now all are using withdraw (less than half of classes uses interruptible healing skills…)
2. PB doesn’t affect thief weapons skills. If you interrupt thief weapons skill – thief is loosing initiative spent for this skill (iniative is some type of substitute for usual weapon CDs – with global pool for all skills). PB should aggravate this punishment.

morbidillusion.2759:

so if you think lock down mesmer is unfairly matched against Thieves, then make a thread about that.

Emm? This thread about PB and I’m talking about PB.

I already did some suggestions to fix PB (in this thread I think). I think they will not hurt thief that much if you think about this.

Mak.2657:

morbidillusion.2759:

so if you think lock down mesmer is unfairly matched against Thieves, then make a thread about that.

Emm? This thread about PB and I’m talking about PB.

Yeah, that’s why I write my sentences in order. Go back, and try again.

Edit:

If you interrupt thief weapons skill – thief is loosing initiative spent for this skill

Only for heartseeker and unload. (and apparently Flanking Strike according to you). I explained earlier in the thread that for all practical purposes, Thieves are not punished for being interrupted unless they are using heartseeker. So there is actually no “punishment” to “aggravate”.

Dude, I’m talking about specific mesmer GM trait called Power Block in topic called “Power Block and Thieves”.

Edit: almost all thief weapon skills with cast time have a chance to be interrupted -> loose iniative -> should be punished more with PB (imo).
Edit2: there are obvious problems with lack of ability to interrupt thief skills, but this thread about PB and that is why we are talking about PB.

Mak.2657:

Dude, I’m talking about specific mesmer GM trait called Power Block in topic called “Power Block and Thieves”.
I show my politeness by explaining to you your gaps in thief and mesmer classes knowledge. Would you mind to explain me why I should stop to write about PB in this topic instead of “Go back, and try again.”

The preceding sentences to the one you quoted stated that the only valid reason to change PB in a thief specific way is to improve the matchup against thieves, since there are already many build choices players can make that are weak against certain matchups. Your response totally ignores this and responds to the sentence fragment as if it stands on its own.

Edit: almost all thief weapon skills with cast time have a chance to be interrupted -> loose iniative -> should be punished more with PB (imo).

Not sure if this is a language barrier problem or what, but:

Black Powder
Dancing Dagger
Cluster Bomb
Choking Gas
Infiltrator’s Return
Cloak and Dagger
Body Shot

Do NOT use initiative when interrupted.

The rest of the abilities are:

• Evasions
• Instant, non-interruptable
• Heartseeker
• Unload

morbidillusion.2759:

Mak.2657:

Dude, I’m talking about specific mesmer GM trait called Power Block in topic called “Power Block and Thieves”.
I show my politeness by explaining to you your gaps in thief and mesmer classes knowledge. Would you mind to explain me why I should stop to write about PB in this topic instead of “Go back, and try again.”

The preceding sentences to the one you quoted stated that the only valid reason to change PB in a thief specific way is to improve the matchup against thieves, since there are already many build choices players can make that are weak against certain matchups. Your response totally ignores this and responds to the sentence fragment as if it stands on its own.

Edit: almost all thief weapon skills with cast time have a chance to be interrupted -> loose iniative -> should be punished more with PB (imo).

Not sure if this is a language barrier problem or what, but:

Black Powder
Dancing Dagger
Cluster Bomb
Choking Gas
Infiltrator’s Return
Cloak and Dagger
Body Shot

Do NOT use initiative when interrupted.

The rest of the abilities are:

• Evasions
• Instant, non-interruptable
• Heartseeker
• Unload

Since pb does not affect initiative, as a thief what would you suggest (to make our trait mean something) to compensate?

StickerHappy.8052:

Since pb does not affect initiative, as a thief what would you suggest to compensate?

On the basis of: “PB isn’t good against Thieves”? Nothing
On the basis of: “Lockdown mesmers need a buff vs. Thieves.”? No Idea, I wouldn’t even get involved in the conversation.

Can’t give thief skills a cd? Fine. PB eating init not fair? Ok. PB blocks all init regen for 5 seconds on interrupt. No ICD. Thief still gets to spam his skills either side of interrupt but has to manage his init vs a PB mesmer skilled enough to land his interrupts vs a thief. Most skilled player wins.

morbidillusion.2759:

Edit: almost all thief weapon skills with cast time have a chance to be interrupted -> loose iniative -> should be punished more with PB (imo).

Not sure if this is a language barrier problem or what, but:

Black Powder
Dancing Dagger
Cluster Bomb
Choking Gas
Infiltrator’s Return
Cloak and Dagger
Body Shot

Do NOT use initiative when interrupted.

The rest of the abilities are:

• Evasions
• Instant, non-interruptable
• Heartseeker
• Unload

Yeah, my bad, not clarified. I know about this, but decided not to mention this with goal not to overburden thread and not to derail it. I mean interrupted skills should always use ini imo, and as next step – PB should affect this more. But it’s for another topic.

morbidillusion.2759:

The preceding sentences to the one you quoted stated that the only valid reason to change PB in a thief specific way is to improve the matchup against thieves, since there are already many build choices players can make that are weak against certain matchups. Your response totally ignores this and responds to the sentence fragment as if it stands on its own.

Ok. I don’t think lockdown build utterly hopeless against thief. Lockdown with CI trait has some chances. But PB doesn’t bring anything worthwhile GM trait (from my current point of view) on the table. Neither against thief, nor against other classes. That is why I said I don’t consider PB to be GM trait worthy even if anet would fix it to work with thief. Ok, some traits can be useless against few class builds, but not against whole class (pls don’t remind HiS), while mediocre in general . Just rework trait to not exclude whole class from its field could give some help to this trait.

The only real reason to ask for a power block specific buff against thieves is to improve the matchup against thieves.

Imo mesmer users ask GM trait be worthy. Some ask to remove it at all and bring new. If thief players count Assassin’s Equilibrium as useless and ask for rework – I don’t think other class users would protest till it balanced.

cyyrix.6105:

Someone earlier in the thread hit the nail on the head. The first version of Power Block put CDs on rezzing and stomping. I’m guessing that whatever they did to fix that also ended up affecting the thief interaction, and Anet can’t be bothered to refactor the code.

Everyone talking tokens and new effects is wasting time. Because they’re so busy on HoT, the only balancing Anet does right now is number tweaking (think boon/condi duration, CDs, attack radius, etc.).

The upcoming stab change is the first technical addition/rework in over a year. If I had to guess, it was probably only implemented because of some road block with the Revenant.

Yup. They rolled out a version that (mistakenly?) hit EVERYTHING, including autos and non-skill stuff like rubbing downs, patched it immediately, and haven’t looked at the trait since.

If you’ve played mesmer for any length of time or pay attention to the patch notes, you’ll know this is a fairly typical cycle for mesmer abilities: stuff that gets emergency-nerfed spends forever languishing in uselessness before they have the resources to take a deeper look and make it work as intended. It’s understandable, really: Mesmer is a niche profession with a lot of rather complicated mechanics — making changes to Mesmer skills and traits probably involves more mucking with AI, animations, pathing, and special exceptions than any other profession.

But note this! HoT is giving us a profession with spammable Energy-based utilities. The time to fix Power Block is now.

On paper, Power Block is an excellent trait specifically because it’s a niche ability that soft-counters a potential skill-spam meta. It’s not so powerful that it would be in every Mesmer build, or even every interrupt-focused build (since it’s very hard to take Power Block and Chaotic Interruption without gutting other stuff you need more).

In practice, it’s trash because it doesn’t actually work in a critical situation.

~

I mean, here’s a thought:

You know how the most common rejoinder to getting rolled by Backstab is (justifiably, usually) “l2play?”

Well, all you folks who have no idea what to do when you’re locked out of C&D for five seconds? Maybe this’ll be your opportunity to learn to play?

(Hey, Anet even gazed into the future and gave you a way to cover your important plz-don’t-Power-Block this skills with de-facto un-rippable Stability in the form of Consume Plasma! You’ll be fine unless you’re, like, absolutely married to your rotation!)

Buff to power block-
makes interrupts (not the damage) unblock/dogeable

When targets cooldown is 0 apply 5s of reveal.

Bam viable!

Only affects certain matchups that are problematic and makes them more even 1v1, gives a place in the Meta as a support role (being able to interrupt protected stomps), and gives mes diversity.

I would like to hear from some so called pro and pro thieves, hoping to engage in a constructive discussion.

Bump.

Daishi.6027:

When targets cooldown is 0 apply 5s of reveal.

I like the idea, but too OP against thieves. It would start next cycle thieves asking for nerf
edit: screw them let anet implement this! ))

StickerHappy.8052:

I would like to hear from some so called pro and pro thieves, hoping to engage in a constructive discussion.

Bump.

+1

Didn’t Anet mention that this trait is working as intended? Why is that not good enough some of you? The people who make this game think that it is just fine. Pretty sure they know waaaaay more about this subject and have access to a lot more data than you do.

If you still disagree with a working-as-intended ability/trait, then stop playing. Make your own game. See how that works out.

Turk.5460:

Didn’t Anet mention that this trait is working as intended? Why is that not good enough some of you? The people who make this game think that it is just fine. Pretty sure they know waaaaay more about this subject and have access to a lot more data than you do.

If you still disagree with a working-as-intended ability/trait, then stop playing. Make your own game. See how that works out.

Im guessing youre a thief? That explains the defense mechanism youre displaying.please be constructive.

I scoured the thread and found three examples where a solution was actually discussed (albeit very briefly) in a constructive manner. So let’s talk more about these (underlined to highlight):

The first actual suggestion to a fix from a thief:

Leadfoot.9071:

I main thief – I think the argument against OP that since there is “no cooldown on thief weapon skills this is working as designed and /thread” is simply a strawman argument. The point OP is making is that mesmer have a GM trait that does not work effectively against a class because of the way the trait and thief class mechanics are designed. I think it’s a valid complaint and I would argue that the trait (and chill) should have some kind of impact on initiative (trait eats some, chill slows generation of).

While it sounded good on paper, someone in this next quote brought up a good point about a high initiative skill getting interrupted, burning further initiative and potentially depleting a thief’s initiative with one interrupt. That would indeed be too heavy. So pursuant to that, we have this suggestion:

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Bojoo.7819:

That would be fine if every thief weapon would have its own initiative pool.
Right now, it would brokenly broken thieves. Lets say you interrupt 5/6 initiative skill and thief loses 10/12 initiative because power block. You do what then as a thief? Die because someone used 1 skill?

If you interrupt not thief class skill it goes on double cd, he can use other skill who are not on cd, he can wep swap and still try to do something.

As a thief you would be left with nothing. Cant use most of skills because no initiative. Weapon swap and then what, AA? It’s stupid and it wouldn’t work.

Also, guess what? Initiative is not a cooldown. It’s a pool.

Hence I think interrupt causes a 5 seconds CD on thief skill is more reasonable than burning initiative. This makes thieves suffer the same consequences as other classes, no more, no less. But apparently some thieves can’t survive when one or two skills are disabled for 5 seconds, their defensive responses and play on words are hilarious to watch tbh. I can go into chill but our focus is on power block.

This is not unreasonable to me. Even if maybe a 3 second CD?

And finally, the interrupt/token idea:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

StickerHappy.8052:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

StickerHappy.8052:

I told you, forum thieves are incapable of constructive talks.
Appeals for talks are considered as threats to their class

Well, this subject only targets thieves by circumventing the normal operation of their class skills for the sake of one trait’s perceived inconsistency, so it is a threat to some people.

Add that to the fact that thieves get hit with the nerf stick constantly and you better be prepared to defend anything that cripples them further.

This is hardly a constructive topic, the main point of the whole thing is “I’m confused as to why a class that has its skills not centered around cooldowns don’t get a cooldown Specifically for my classes trait when I interrupt them. The trait is broken because thief (and only thief) weapon skills don’t get a cooldown introduced when I interrupt them, fix it. (even though the utility skills -and- healing skill does)”

Exactly the point. Then why dont you guys suggest another alternative? Since you guys are right, you dont have cds, then cant you suggest any other way for this trait then?

Just have power block initiate a short daze on a small internal cooldown (15-25) when interrupted (consideration given to the animation length of interrupts such as cc)

Then everyone gets the (cooldown) thing without having to rewire stuff.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

StickerHappy.8052:

Thank you azure. How long is the daze tho?

No idea. As long as it doesn’t allow stunlocking, it’s fine. I’m partial to ChaosAngel’s idea.

Interrupts can place a token on your opponents bar (like Sigil of Doom) that expires in 5-10 or so seconds, and causes a [x] daze if a skill is used while the token is applied.

I don’t need muscle memory getting in the way of my rotations because suddenly my shadow shot has a CD. If there’s a daze, I can accept that since I can react to that more reliably.

This is also a nice way to introduce counterplay to the interrupt and not flat out burn initiative or inflict a daze. What do you all think of these ideas? Do you have others?

Anomaly.7612:

Zenith.7301:

God forbid thieves were beholden to the rules of chill and interrupts just like anybody else. But nope.
Thieves are the very reason most classes run bunker builds, because other than mediguard and maybe a well played berk warrior, thief hunts all others out of the meta.

And that’s the only thing that Thieves counter.
/thread

And the other berk classes counter nothing. So I’ll take the thief any day. And who says s/d thief doesn’t counter bunker guardians or many cele specs lol.

Gosh. This is such a simple fix. I don’t know why everyone is even discussing this. Just add 5-10 secs CD to any CD ability that is interrupted. /thread

Gabriell.4856:

Gosh. This is such a simple fix. I don’t know why everyone is even discussing this. Just add 5-10 secs CD to any CD ability that is interrupted. /thread

The mesmers are not satisfied with this because the one class that happens to be in many aspects their hard counter is unaffected by that.

That’s why the thread is so long.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Gabriell.4856:

Gosh. This is such a simple fix. I don’t know why everyone is even discussing this. Just add 5-10 secs CD to any CD ability that is interrupted. /thread

The mesmers are not satisfied with this because the one class that happens to be in many aspects their hard counter is unaffected by that.

That’s why the thread is so long.

Oh so Mesmers want a buff to a skill that is, by the Devs, working as intended.

If they want a skill to go above and beyond the original intent, what are they willing to give up in exchange for the buff? All I hear is I want this and I want that.

Lets start off with 10 sec CD on DE shall we?

Bojoo.7819:

That would be fine if every thief weapon would have its own initiative pool.
Right now, it would brokenly broken thieves. Lets say you interrupt 5/6 initiative skill and thief loses 10/12 initiative because power block. You do what then as a thief? Die because someone used 1 skill?

If you interrupt not thief class skill it goes on double cd, he can use other skill who are not on cd, he can wep swap and still try to do something.

As a thief you would be left with nothing. Cant use most of skills because no initiative. Weapon swap and then what, AA? It’s stupid and it wouldn’t work.

Also, guess what? Initiative is not a cooldown. It’s a pool.

Also someone mention Chill, because someone always mentions Chill. It effects thieves speed, steel and utility/elite. It’s also, let me quote wiki “Movement speed decreased by 66%; skill cooldown increased by 66%; stacks duration.”

Initiative is not a cooldown. It’s a pool.

Stop comparing class mechanics.

aww poor teef spilling massive amounts of salt all because the potiental to be killed or crippled by one skill – we mesmers wouldn’t know about that though, we’ve only been having to randomly predict when an 8k attack was going to happen resulting in death or on the very verge of death since game launch — no biggie though.

The orignal release of pb was fine except for the stomp interrupt. The reason for including rez is that there outside skills like war banner and exilir R but there isn’t an instant kill skill.

The main issue for pb’s decline was the removal of the effects on AA. Anet’s flawless logic was " we find it perfectly fine for classes to be able to chain stunlock and fear on relativly short cd skills is perfectly balanced, however having AA on cd while being fully mobile is completely broken – nerf!! " even though the majority of teef damage comes from skill 1, even though when sprit rangers were a thing the damage came from the bleeds caused by skill 1…..

There was 1 thing that were slightly on track about at the end – pvp balance isn’t suppose to be class vs class but rather the strength and weakness of specific builds vs other builds. Case and point- you make the passive claim that if pb were to remove intitive then itd make mesmers godly against teefs – yet you conviently leave out the fact that mesmer vs teef match ups are pretty much decided within the teefs 1st opening attack based about the mesmers luck and/or quick reaction. During that first attack, how much of an issue is inititive? its not, so shouldn’t a teef be punished for allowing a fight to persist espically with that advantage?

Gabriell.4856:

Lets start off with 10 sec CD on DE shall we?

im game !!!!

In exchange for that cd on de, reveal will be extended to 10 secs.

echo.2053:

Bojoo.7819:

That would be fine if every thief weapon would have its own initiative pool.
Right now, it would brokenly broken thieves. Lets say you interrupt 5/6 initiative skill and thief loses 10/12 initiative because power block. You do what then as a thief? Die because someone used 1 skill?

If you interrupt not thief class skill it goes on double cd, he can use other skill who are not on cd, he can wep swap and still try to do something.

As a thief you would be left with nothing. Cant use most of skills because no initiative. Weapon swap and then what, AA? It’s stupid and it wouldn’t work.

Also, guess what? Initiative is not a cooldown. It’s a pool.

Also someone mention Chill, because someone always mentions Chill. It effects thieves speed, steel and utility/elite. It’s also, let me quote wiki “Movement speed decreased by 66%; skill cooldown increased by 66%; stacks duration.”

Initiative is not a cooldown. It’s a pool.

Stop comparing class mechanics.

aww poor teef spilling massive amounts of salt all because the potiental to be killed or crippled by one skill – we mesmers wouldn’t know about that though, we’ve only been having to randomly predict when an 8k attack was going to happen resulting in death or on the very verge of death since game launch — no biggie though.

The orignal release of pb was fine except for the stomp interrupt. The reason for including rez is that there outside skills like war banner and exilir R but there isn’t an instant kill skill.

The main issue for pb’s decline was the removal of the effects on AA. Anet’s flawless logic was " we find it perfectly fine for classes to be able to chain stunlock and fear on relativly short cd skills is perfectly balanced, however having AA on cd while being fully mobile is completely broken – nerf!! " even though the majority of teef damage comes from skill 1, even though when sprit rangers were a thing the damage came from the bleeds caused by skill 1…..

There was 1 thing that were slightly on track about at the end – pvp balance isn’t suppose to be class vs class but rather the strength and weakness of specific builds vs other builds. Case and point- you make the passive claim that if pb were to remove intitive then itd make mesmers godly against teefs – yet you conviently leave out the fact that mesmer vs teef match ups are pretty much decided within the teefs 1st opening attack based about the mesmers luck and/or quick reaction. During that first attack, how much of an issue is inititive? its not, so shouldn’t a teef be punished for allowing a fight to persist espically with that advantage?

^That pretty much sums everything up. I wouldn’t complain as much if I was at least allowed to create clones without having to target something.

Gabriell.4856:

Gosh. This is such a simple fix. I don’t know why everyone is even discussing this. Just add 5-10 secs CD to any CD ability that is interrupted. /thread

We’d be fine with this. Give us this. It is all we wanted, for this trait to proc its effect on any skill that’s interrupted, not excluding thieves[but, of course, excluding AA’s].

Gabriell.4856:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Gabriell.4856:

Gosh. This is such a simple fix. I don’t know why everyone is even discussing this. Just add 5-10 secs CD to any CD ability that is interrupted. /thread

The mesmers are not satisfied with this because the one class that happens to be in many aspects their hard counter is unaffected by that.

That’s why the thread is so long.

Oh so Mesmers want a buff to a skill that is, by the Devs, working as intended.

If they want a skill to go above and beyond the original intent, what are they willing to give up in exchange for the buff? All I hear is I want this and I want that.

Lets start off with 10 sec CD on DE shall we?

Is it so much to ask for an underpowered trait to be less underpowered? It’ll still be underpowered, undoubtedly. It’d be a whole other issue if we were asking for a buff of an already good viable trait.

And isn’kitten fact that the Dev’s aren’t perfect? They’ve over nerfed things, created plain out bad traits/skills[Looking at you, Disrupter’s Sustainment and Mimic], and so on. So asking for a buff to a bad trait/skill shouldn’t require us to nerf something good/viable. That’s like admitting all the traits weren’t meant to be viable or good, and that many traits were designed to be useless.

Plus, even with this buff, thieves will be mostly immune to interrupts on their weapon skills in the first place because of instant-casts, short casts, and evasion/stealth. They’ll still be in a very advantageous position against the trait.

Given this, I don’t understand why people assume this will break thieves or think this will over buff mesmers. It isn’t like we’re asking for how it was originally released.

To address some popular but arguments…

“But just think about all the initiative you lose when you get interrupted already!”
1. Not always.
2. You have stealth utilities, too!
3. Therefore, you don’t need gobs of initiative to stealth (or to burst), really.
4. Not every thief is playing a Backstab build with poor overall initiative management.
5. Srsly, how many Backstabs do you need to kill a dude.

“But thieves were designed without cooldowns!”
1. This game is going through a slow but constant process of revision and expansion. Remember when they gave each trait line a new GM skill? Power Block was actually one of those skills.
2. You know what’s great about forcing a cooldown on one — ONE — of your weapon skills? You’ll have to play differently.
3. Don’t you… want to play differently? Sometimes? Doesn’t adapting to your opponents sound, I dunno, maybe kinda fun?
4. Thanks to multiple shadow steps, multiple sources of stealth, and great damage output from just regular autos, thief skills already have enough redundancy to allow you to compensate for losing one for a short while. Thieves are resourceful like that.
5. If you’ve spent — YEARS! — rapidly tapping the same combination of keys to gank folks, and now you’re really worried that 2% of your victims who outplay you might force you to play slightly differently for five seconds… Uh, maybe this’ll be the swift kick in the pants you need to learn how to truly adapt.
6. If it turns out that you, personally, are rather stuck in your ways and abjectly can’t play around having a skill Power Blocked, good news! You can just Consume some dang Plasma.

Wow, reading this thread has given me a headache.

How many mesmers actually use Power Block anymore since it was “fixed”?

No, just like Disruptor’s Sustainment, I’m willing to bet no sane Mesmer uses this anymore, especially over Confounding Suggestions.

Therefore all this discussion of “working as intended” is stupid – because if no one is using the trait then Anet may as well delete it and give us something useful.

How is there even a counter argument to this? Oh the horror of thieves having to actually think and plan their skills when fighting a lockdown/interrupt Mesmer…

Gabriell.4856

Oh so Mesmers want a buff to a skill that is, by the Devs, working as intended.

If they want a skill to go above and beyond the original intent, what are they willing to give up in exchange for the buff? All I hear is I want this and I want that.

Lets start off with 10 sec CD on DE shall we?

Pretty much this.

That’s already in game, it’s called endurance.

At that point, the trait may as well be completely removed, along with a bunch of other traits. I’ve never met a single mesmer that uses it, because it does nothing against the only class where it could be useful.

If i manage to daze you in that 0.25s non-evade frame at the end of Flanking Strike against a build that hard counters >90% of all mesmer builds and spend 6 trait points for a trait, i should be rewarded for it, no?

CI can wreck you in that situation, PB does nothing.

Can we fix inner profession problems like DE before stuff like this? Also about mesmer complaining of thieves’ complaints I don’t see a issue for suggestions on how PB should affect thieves except in pvp… The effect in team fights will push thieves more into the decap role and less present in team fights it will be like condition terromancer necro doing fine vs cele ele or engi solo but becomes the prey in team fights in short you don’t make the cut anymore.

WvW sure I am all for it since both are duel focused professions PvP with the team focus nah reduce initiative cost on SB#5 to compensate at least!!! Hopefully something other than conquest becomes the main focus. Also thief counters only zerker shatter mesmer even 4 4 6 lockdown does fine vs thief.

Compensate what? Fix to mesmer trait? Let’s be honest, even fixed (in way to put thief weapon skills on 5s CD) it doesn’t break thieves and still mediocre. Right now it merely wasted GM trait against thief and somewhat useful against others.
And good CI mesmer isn’t fine against good (sic!) meta thief imo. Have chances, but not fine. There are not too much good thieves though.

Im pretty sure im missing something, whats this whole whine and moan about the DE trait?

Mesmers can use that trait on other classes but this thread seems to directed by 1v1/duel heroes mesmers. To me it’s more likely that DE gets change before PB and it’s importance is greater anyway, it’s seems more gimmicky to me something specially made to hinder thieves in team fights. It’s not going to make zerker mesmer less vulnerable to thief all zerkers are/should be more vulnerable to thieves and that’s why I can’t really support this. I would rather see MtD or new specs make their way in high level play through change of DE, if you are going power burst thief will outdo you if you go anything else you will most likely win or last until reinforcements.

What build ever used PB before patch,was it ever worth it? Since this seems to be thief vs mesmer , a zerker thief by design should have advantage vs other zerkers even guard if you play right you will see all his doing is delaying the fight I play both I rather support non power focus builds. Fix mesmer diversity even if off-topic.

I think many asks to make clone-on-dodge inherent mesmer mechanic without DE

Edited

echo.2053:

Im pretty sure im missing something, whats this whole whine and moan about the DE trait?

It hinders mesmer diversity, you can’t reliable play without it ,mesmer is balanced around it thus impairing many combinations some traits never got any use because we ran out of points 4/20 being taken by DE. I see it as bigger controversy than PB because other builds than shatter for 3 years and emerging MtD could have been created, I don’t consider lockdown completely real but it’s still there.

Something needs to be done about that, as for PB some are trying to make it a thief bane which won’t happen anyway.

The issue with power block was that for about three magical days mesmer lockdown spec had something other than CI to build around. Power block was a trait that could cause mass confusion when it triggered, that ranger with that longbow spam, oh suddenly he needs to weapon swap to continue auto attacking, or you know kite for a bit. Then came the overhanded nerf.

Why does a trait, a grandmaster trait, not affect an entire profession? What the hell does this represent, an idea that the mesmer is not supposed to be able to force punishment on that class when built entirely around punishing… It seems counter intuitive… To be honest, what I found that killed this skill is the way it applied to channels and to auto attacks. As channels are not effected by the skill, and as auto attacks are not effected, then we have lost our major punishing points on other classes. Furthermore, with the trait doing nothing to thieves, the class that tends to tear mesmers to shreds you are left asking yourself why, why even bother. At least CS adds an extra half a second or so to most of our dazes, or indeed it turns them into a hard cc. This at least is useful. Power block, now what does this do again, is useless on about 2 of the five weaponskills on every class, and is useless against thieves entirely. And now we have revenant on the way with its lack of cooldowns on its elites, isn’t that going to be nice for the trait.

Now, for those of you who talk about adding a cooldown to DE, anet would do so at their peril, it would be a public relations nightmare which would likely see what remains of the mesmer players leave the game and do a very loud dummy spit that would cause a reputation hit. It would be akin to doing a NGE overhaul on one of the classes, due to how it would affect most mesmer build viability, and I am not sure you guys should agitate towards that, as you just know, that anet, in their panic would buff the mesmer massively to try and stop the bleeding that might just turn the disgruntled mesmers into rioting mesmers.

Sagat.3285:

echo.2053:

Im pretty sure im missing something, whats this whole whine and moan about the DE trait?

It hinders mesmer diversity, you can’t reliable play without it ,mesmer is balanced around it thus impairing many combinations some traits never got any use because we ran out of points 4/20 being taken by DE. I see it as bigger controversy than PB because other builds than shatter for 3 years and emerging MtD could have been created, I don’t consider lockdown completely real but it’s still there.

Something needs to be done about that, as for PB some are trying to make it a thief bane which won’t happen anyway.

Exactly. I’m just unsatisfied with how ANet designed this trait, if I wanted to make a bane of thieves I’d have asked for more reveal or anti-blind thingies. I even stated at the beginning and numerous times this has nothing to do with the mesmer-thief relationship. This change’ll probably be about as significant as the .25 second condition damage that now procs. In fact, that’s a great metaphor[right word or no?]. The buff to condi damage to have percentage of seconds proc damage is very insignificant, but it’s at least something compared to when that half a second just did nothing, right?

Also, we’d love either DE to be a mechanic[maybe with an ICD, there’re many opinions] or some other way to make clones, ‘cause we’re pretty bottlenecked right now, but that’s for another thread. Try to keep on topic, please~

While I don’t trust them with balance, one special case with thief is the incoming hit window, a disabled thief is dead no matter what pvp wise condi or cc as long as it hinders their burst they take it terrible and foes capitalized on that if one is to be downed let it be thief.

I never bothered using PB but what the purpose other than delaying a rotation solo wise? To me it’s the team aspect that let me believe this trait is fine vs thief right now in WvW I would be glad for some things mentioned in this thread even chill but PvP no way conquest or TDM. It sounds great solo wise but not team wise remember thief and mesmer are both duel and mobility focused you hinder one they become easy prey cc works on them better than necro and conditions are close to being a bane again PvP wise.

For DE where are those specialists because I will wonder what’s the excuse after HoT…

Aaah I see I was getting confused between that aspect and the people prior who wanted DE to get nerfed as some sort of trade off because they know that DE is a main staple of virtually every mesmer build. Im rather shocked at my own lack of reaction – gee it would take nerfing multiple mesmer builds to bring 1 subpar gm trait up to potentially having some maybe use —- mmmm seems about right.

thatd be a nice change as long as they keep the change to clone death the same. I hate passive gameplay as much as many others.

“Fix DE first.”
That’s an entire profession mechanic overhaul. Good luck getting that to happen anytime soon. Moreover, I honestly don’t think getting rid of the dependence on DE will have the effect folks think it will. We can go into that in another thread, though.

“Add a cooldown to DE.”
As Lavra said upthread, “It’s called endurance.” Also, there are cooldowns on shatter skills. Also, burning all your dodges to make clones is a great way to get killed.

“Thieves should counter other zerk classes.”
If they “counter” them so hard they push them out of the meta entirely, that’s busted. There’s no way that’s a core principle of SPvP balance for the team. If a thief wants to steamroll another zerk character, they should maybe put half a second of thought into how they engage? And if they can’t or won’t, welp, why is it wrong that they’ll actually have a fair fight on their hands?
Also, a mesmer taking Power Block obviously isn’t rolling a pure-burst shatter spec. Being able to force a glassy aggressive character to stop spamming for a few seconds in a team fight is a perfectly fine role for an interrupt mesmer. What else is Power Block for in the first place, really?

And, again: put the framework into place now so it’s there to deal with Revenant skills once HoT comes out.

PvP talk here, zerker thief offensive power is hold back point holder,non glass comps, team pressure and conquest. Other classes don’t have to go zerker that’s the point while thief pretty much has to the other option is carrion I do see them more often now but both have the same limitations. Meta is pretty strict there are builds purely dedicated to counter them but it’s usually what’s more popular, suits conquest best and can be picked up easily that becomes meta.

I am not worried about thief dying vs PB it will just remove the glass aspect and force them into their last string in meta mobility. That’s the only reason we are not with necro and ranger. They did say they will rebalance as always so we’ll see how they see it, I’m fine with PvP roles but being a decap/cap both and restricted from action is pretty boring , I don’t want to just win at any costs, main reason I ended liking TDM over conquest. The kitten roles are horrible and stagnant. Endurance didn’t stop the devs from balancing around DE, never mentioned an ICD is needed.

Sagat.3285:

Other classes don’t have to go zerker that’s the point

Uhhhh, mesmers.

ASP.8093:

Sagat.3285:

Other classes don’t have to go zerker that’s the point

Uhhhh, mesmers.

Many combinations hold back by DE, off-topic but related, yes it might not make a difference instantly but we didn’t get to try and most current specs had 3 years to develop. Mesmer is picked for the same reason as thief while thief design doesn’t make him superior in result he’s a mesmer’s predator. I see less meta thieves now, more venom share,s/p,Panic Strike and carrion p/d. A couple patches and zerkers could be subpar.

On topic, the topic seems tied to another.

Back to the topic. What I see is one player with one build complaining that specific build doesn’t work well against thieves.

As one who plays Thief, ( and Mesmer, ) often, I find the paranoia about this class amusing. My attitude is that thieves are already long time witchhunt targets and have been nerfed to the point that there are few combat approaches that are effective.

I’d like to hear the kind of “l2p” kittening that people trot out when anyone complains about ranger.

There is no reason a change that specifically targets thieves,( a.k.a a nerf,) needs to be made because one Mesmer build, ( which isn’t very good anyway imo, ) doesn’t work well against it.

Ithilwen.1529:

Back to the topic. What I see is one player with one build complaining that specific build doesn’t work well against thieves.

… That it doesn’t work well at all for a silly reason based on a trait being implemented wrong, patches ASAP, and then never looked at again.

CI builds are, in almost all ways, stronger than thieves than a Fixed PB would be. But this is an annoying oversight that pretty much kills one of the more subtle and interesting interrupt builds potentially available to mesmers.

Plus, Revenants are coming. With zero-cooldown utilities. So all these problems are gonna get worse.

If by “subtle” you mean “works occasionally in specific circumstances” perhaps. I doubt that it is an oversight. Power Block was introduced then almost immediately nerfed.

I think it’s deliberate and appropriate. A power blocked thief would almost certainly die rapidly without a reasonable chance to defend herself.

Ithilwen.1529:

If by “subtle” you mean “works occasionally in specific circumstances” perhaps. I doubt that it is an oversight. Power Block was introduced then almost immediately nerfed.

It was emergency-nerfed because it affected auto-attacks and rezzing, and then, as best we can tell, never looked at again.

Which, if you’ve played the class at all or looked at patch notes carefully, is basically the story of why lots and lots of mesmer abilities just don’t do much at all for long stretches of time. (At least the devs were super-quick to fix Diversion when it was accidentally replaced with a “Blur” effect. I appreciate that.)

Ithilwen.1529:

I think it’s deliberate and appropriate. A power blocked thief would almost certainly die rapidly without a reasonable chance to defend herself.

What’s the worst case here, really? Can’t use C&D or BP+HS? Good thing you have all those other skills! Which usually includes two shadow steps and two other stealth skills.

Or is it Heartseeker or Infiltrator’s Strike being interrupted? Okay, oh no, you’ll have to use autos for pressure, maybe even use a cooldown to stay perpetually in melee range. Quel dommage!

And if it’s Flanking Strike getting interrupted through its evade frames, give that mesmer a medal! They deserve to roll you. (They likely won’t without quite a fight, though, because you still have access to everything else on your bar.)

This is all on top of the fact that you can use Consume Plasma to completely “cover” any super-vital skill you want to make interrupt-proof.