Guild Wars 2

I am back into gw2 for a month now after my 12 month break, which was right after pax. For those of you that don’t know me I am Jim, I played with get stomped, devils inside, iron and that’s so pish, every old school player knows me.

I will only talk here for mesmer/thief/warrior/ele, otherwise it will be tooooo big. This will be thief-centric for now, that’s because I didn’t had time to see it from other classes point of view yet since my break.

I want to talk about balance, but I only talk from a tournament match up point of view. So before I talk for the balancing that needs to be done I will explain to you how conquest works in a high tournament game. Firstly the only 1v1 on a tournament game you want to have on your team is the side point holder as we call it, which is the guy that goes on a point caps it and then he either assaults enemy point or defends home point or joins the team fight, then you want an offensive roamer which will decap enemy point when the enemy side point holder joins the team fight and then you have the rest three who are the team fighters and most likely there is going to be roamers there too.

To the topic title now, which class has never been out of the meta for 1 day? It is support guardian. Consider for a minute if the game does not have a support guardian for 1 day the meta will be extremely different and the game itself. The team fights will have 2 downed vs 2 downed and whoever risks to get the stomp first or does the most damage to the squishier downed will win the team fight at the point, this can back flip many times during the fight. What makes support guardian so good is the healing. condi cleanse, aegis and of course stability. Here comes the continuation of it, who can remove stability when your team-mate gets stomped? The first ones is thief with steal/ mesmer with shatter and necro with corrupt boon, but don’t forget best form of preventing the stomp is to down the enemy guardian on time, so burst damage prevents the stomp. Which classes have burst damage at the moment? Every class can have it due to 20+ might stacks but the most efficient ones due to the sigil changes(air and fire at the same time) are the ones playing berserker and are able to survive with it, the 2 most efficient classes that can do that is thief s/d and mesmer shatter, sigils are above 50% of s/d thief damage and mesmer burst is so high that sigils just add up when they sustain on the team fight from high ground. Also soldier amulet / celestial amulet elementalists and warriors do the same amount of dmg as the above mentioned because of the might stacks and how they are designed to work.

I main a thief, yes I pointed out thief already twice, obviously there is a problem with thief you will think, no the problem is, that people haven’t play air attunement arcane blast ele to compare the damage to a thief, people forgot the timed bursts we used to have back 1+ year ago, we used to go in and one shot the non-nerfed version of a guardian with mesmer-thief-ele, if you search for it you will see every guardian dying in the first 1-10seconds. Now this is even more likely to happen due to guardian nerf and sigil buffs.

What were the most major changes the last year? Double sigil on every weapon set to support it even more, intelligence sigil being 3 attacks instead of 1, celestial amulet buffed so every sustain class that can might stack or condi+power pressure can use it now.

Lets take a look at thief nerfs so far, cluster bomb range reduced, cluster bomb dmg reduced, trickshot not following, trickshot not bouncing on points, steal can’t crit but heals you instead, vigor nerfed, larcenous steals 1 boon and initiative cost increased, dancing dagger nerfed, backstab nerfed, daze on pistol nerfed. Which means dagger mainhand is unviable atm because you can’t fill the role of dps on a teamfight as good as a mesmer/ele/warrior(guardian is assumed there and pick 2 of the rest), they hit aoe and they can survive way longer!

Lets take a look at mesmer so far, might stacks buff, interrupt deals damage buff, sword #2 nerf so they switched to great-sword, phantasms now are way faster on attacking and they attack most of the times.

Continuation Bellow

Side point holder: Warrior/ ele / engi
Why they are the best side point holders? They can get celestial/soldier amulet, and they have a lot of sustain to stay on a point when someone is on the point.
I will explain this now, warriors and elementalists have fire fields that last long enough to might stack due to their blast finishers. They can get 20+ might stacks both of them which suddenly makes them hit like trucks. What a thief for example can do against them? Take a 2-3 minute fight till he steals the might stacks and then get a chance to kill them. But the intelligence sigil on warrior and the condi pressure from elementalist with celestial will most likely kill the thief, or any kind of thief that tries to attack.
Engi can be good too as condi/carrior, but when it comes to the AI turret spec, everyone can get killed just by the turrets… This needs to be nerfed you guys know that.

So what causes the current meta is might stacking on personal level, celestial amulet too strong on ele/warrior, ele has a lot of condies with d/d and warrior with bow has a decent amount but he doesnt need it cause its a lock-down spec that crits every time you switch to hammer, eventually everyone will get hit once.

What makes thief being viable atm? Is that other people might stack, so you have to invest heavy on trickery for bountiful theft and if you invest so much you go for the daze/extra dmg too cause is your best option. And the fact you can decap enemy point if he engages the team fight, unless its an ele with his fiery sword.

Continuation Bellow

Upcoming changes to thief, the viable weapon-set that thief has atm and gives you a chance to 1v1 and team fight the above is getting not viable. It might look that flanking hit for larcenous and initiative on both rewards skill over random 3 spam is good, but that’s not the case, when I duel the above my flanking is the means to remove blind/dodge a big attack and larcenous is the attack I aim to hit with so I steal the boon I want to and do most damage. My suggestion is punish larcenous miss instead of you fill like nerfing it, than remove the precast of it. I dueled enough warrior/ele/engi lately to know that this will make it unbearable for thief even on the team fight. Also you will get more spam that thief evades 24/7 because if flanking misses you re-flanking then and that’s more dodge time.

Dagger viable after dual target? No, simply because you will be too open to the 25 might stack lock-down which is ele updraft/earthquake warrior hammer and mesmer daze/knock, plus the damage is too low due to the celestial/soldier and hp pool and toughness. It will go in a better state for sure, but still not viable. Whatever I write here goes for the tournament games, I don’t think of hotjoin or anything else.

Pistol buff? Its still a no, because elementalist is better, shatter mesmer is better and warrior is better on the team fight. More specifically elementalist celestial has more sustain healing than the pistol thief damage, to start of. Then the mesmer has high damage with boon removal and can defend abit with defensive shatters plus support from the other 2. The warrior has way too high damage on point because every attack of a ham/bow warrior is AoE almost and deals a lot of damage too due to the might stacking and intelligence sigil on hammer.

Panic strike: Panic strike you have to be glass cannon to take and the change makes it more appealing than what it was to be honest. Because you can proc it on a pet or an illusion so that makes it better for dagger mainhands mainly.

Chocking gas: Small buff instead of being revealed punished, your role is not to stay in stealth and poison the downed or alive but kill them as a thief of power spec sustain or burst.

Venomous Aura: Might get venomshare/condi-carrion thief into the meta.
Ricochet along with venomshare might make venomshare look better, but then you have to replace one of the 3 team fighters which atm is mesmer/ele/guardian and I really really doubt it.

Invigorating precision: More heal when you crit? You have to go 30 critical strikes which makes you a squishy glass cannon and you don’t want to sustain then so its useless.

If thief s/d gets this nerf thief is most likely out unless we play short bow on the team fight, because of the decap on enemy base.

Thief used to be one of the 3 team fighters before the backstab/steal/trickshot/cluster nerfs, now its just an offensive roamer that doesn’t even take the duel due to the side point holders I mentioned above.The best team fight at those times were, thief-necro-guardian mesmer was on side with portal and elementalist or engineer being the decap role(offensive roamer).
Continuation Bellow

Conclusion plus some thought for the rest of the classes because its combined here, the celestial might stack or soldier warrior might stack has way too high sustain on a point and too much CC to let a condi necro which is pretty tanky right now to be viable. So don’t change necro/ranger condi yet unless you fix the tanky might stacking sustain specs somehow.

Sorry its big, if you don’t like it don’t read it

Basically, certain classes have too much of everything, these being for the most part eles, warriors and thieves? That’s what I got from quickly skim reading this.

I can’t really simplify it in my head like that, this is why I wrote this massive wall of text, but in terms of who has too much of everything is ele warrior. No matter what I reply here I will just undermine the rest of my post so I won’t post anything for a few days here myself