Guild Wars 2

RusShiro.9241:

Well, I hope PvP gets more game modes where a warrior condi or not can play

Condition Warriors can be strong if used properly, but are still incredibly weak compared to the post-patch OP Necro.

I would rather ask why ANet is blind to ignore the fact that EVERY sPvP match is lined up like:
6 Thiefs
4 Mesmer
3 Necros
1 other random class
me
, ofc 85% are on full berserker gear! mostly having at least one X in their name too …

Honestly, close to unplayable on weekends lol

The most disturbing thing about the current meta is how closely it resembles exactly where the game was at in sPvP during the BETA weekends before launch and right after. It almost feels like we’ve taken a year to get back to exactly where we started, just a little less buggy.

I’d like to see if simply reducing the duration and increasing the cooldown of many condition skills would be a simple way to start trying to make the meta less condi based while still keeping them viable.

As a warrior I DO have ways to mitigate conditions, the problem is the conditions are reapplied so fast I eventually find myself overwhelmed by them. Cleanses would be a lot more useful if I knew using it means I have a bit of time to counterattack, but currently it just means I’ll be overwhelmed slightly slower.

I swear I saw a thief and an engineer using dual Maliwan corrosive and incendiary guns or something.

Conditions are getting out of hand.

In GW1 you could have a direct-damage-only build and you could do fine.

In GW2 conquest, you won’t get far unless you bring some dps conditions.

The main problem with them is how cheap and dumb they are. All you need to do is bring a ranged weapon, stay away, and spam them. And then you run around like a headless chicken.
Make sure you bring something to remove any immobilize, crippled or chilled you may get, and any melee player will not be able to do anything against you. They’ll just die while they try to reach you.

Make the rest o the team bring them too, and not even a team of anti-condition elementalists, guardians and engineers can keep up with all that condition spam, thanks to how easy is to reapply, and how many different conditions there are.
I’d much rather have longer condition duration but longer recharges for dps conditions, moving the DPS conditions toward utility skills and the 4 and 5 slots of the weapon.

The idea is making condition removal less pointless by reducing the rate at which dps conditions can be reapplied.

The problems with necros is that their conditons don’t behave like conditions, they behave like burst. Within a few seconds a necro can condition bomb you from 100% to 0% health no matter your spec because they ignore all defenses and nobody has enough cleanses to live through that (not even eles).

Funny how people complain about Condition Engineers.

Newsflash, theyve not really changed since launch. Pistol 1 had its bleed nerfed and explosion nerfed. Inc. Powder was nerfed. HgH was buffed. Confusion nerfed. But fundamentally these changes were only minor.
So you’ve basicly been fighting a condition engineer the same for the past 10months. But NOW its suddenly “zomfg conditions op, nerf necro/engineer/ranger”. Rangers dont even have a viable power build, you just had that nerfed last patch.

What you are seeing is people focussing to heavily on countering direct damage because burst builds was the problem first (and remained a problem for a while). And now condition builds are taking advantage of people not building and skilling for dealing with conditions.

And here people are already screaming to add new boons to nerf conditions!
1) There are already mechancis that let you avoid getting conditions. Its called Aegis, Blind, Block and Dodge. Because an attack actually has to land to apply a condition. And you want to add even more boons to avoid conditions being applied? What a joke.
2) There are already things you can gear for that reduces damage taken from conditions. Its called -condition duration runes.

What counts is the total. Matches are not 1vs1.

A similar engineer along other professions and other engineers with more conditions stack with each other, spreading a massive condition spam, as there’s no personal condition caps from a player and on a player. Instead, there’s caps on each condition.

If matches had a balanced number of direct-damage dealers, burst damage dealers and condition dealers it would not be that much of a problem.

But conditions are so effective that you often find enemy teams composed exclusively of mesmer, ranger, engineer and necromancer condition spammers, to mindlessly and constantly spam conditions, knowing that no enemy party will be able to keep up.

And aegis, blocks, blind and dodges can’t keep up with conditions.

Have you ever tried getting the daily condition applier achievement? The last times that one was around, I got them all on the same creature, in a single fight, so often you can apply conditions.

How many fights do you need to get dodger? About 3-5 against karka. 10 or so against normal enemies.

How many to get condition remover? Over 15-60 enemies depending on the number of removals you have setting and the foes you face, given that all of them could apply conditions, like orrians and their poison spam.

That may be in PvE, but still reflects the issue.

Alkaholic.3875:

Early it was burst…“WORST META EVER”
then it was bunkers…“WORST META EVER”
now it’s condi’s…“WORST META EVER”

Prediction: new meta consists of supporters: many small heals/regen, (AoE?) cleansing conditions. (Also the WORST META EVER). Supporters are perfectly countered by … burst – the last and first WORST META EVER. Maybe then the playerbase learns to build balanced teams (at least one of each).

Ppl complaint a lot about players leaving solo queue tournaments, well wen you are facing a condi heavi team and are constantly bombarded with a wide verity of conditions, taking in consideration the VERY limited condi removing abilities available… It gets REEEELY frustrating because it is not a matter of who plays better, it is a matter of it is impossible to survive so yah ill keep rage quiting and I’m positive I will not be the only one!

Anet should contract some real balance devs and testers, the ones they have, have proven over and over and over again how incredably incompetent they are.

pmnt.4067:

Alkaholic.3875:

Early it was burst…“WORST META EVER”
then it was bunkers…“WORST META EVER”
now it’s condi’s…“WORST META EVER”

Prediction: new meta consists of supporters: many small heals/regen, (AoE?) cleansing conditions. (Also the WORST META EVER). Supporters are perfectly countered by … burst – the last and first WORST META EVER. Maybe then the playerbase learns to build balanced teams (at least one of each).

Ty for proving my point, there never was balance and devs have no clue how to achieve it.
They talk about baby steps and small adjustments but they keep “fixing” the game by braking it even more…

I play ele. I rolled a thief. A condition one lol. I don’t even use stealth (only stealth on steal for P/D stealth skill) and can live longer then my ele can, do more damage and look more shiny. In the words of Jayne: “Shiny lets go be bad guys” – Serenity

Still love my ele and play it the most, just wanted to get some ground on thief builds and how to counter them.

My ele, condition, not as good at it then my thief :/ but she gets the job done.

TGSlasher.1458:

I play ele. I rolled a thief. A condition one lol. I don’t even use stealth (only stealth on steal for P/D stealth skill) and can live longer then my ele can.

You’re doing something very, very wrong then…

Vena.8436:

TGSlasher.1458:

I play ele. I rolled a thief. A condition one lol. I don’t even use stealth (only stealth on steal for P/D stealth skill) and can live longer then my ele can.

You’re doing something very, very wrong then…

No, I just have 1 bazillion dodges on the thief. Dodge Dodge Heal (dodge heal) Dodge (adventures) change weapons to same set (energy), Dodge, Dodge

Where as my ele is all about the Imob, dragons tooth for 9k, phoenix fresh air burst and even tough I just about killed your thief, your stealth full heal backstab, instagibs me :/. That’s what I get for play GC ele I guess. My usual build is a lot strong, survives about the same (though doesn’t use a lot of dodges so I get more skills out), does more damage but has a focus so I get a lot of cds where I can’t do anything but auto attack.

TGSlasher.1458:

No, I just have 1 bazillion dodges on the thief. Dodge Dodge Heal (dodge heal) Dodge (adventures) change weapons to same set (energy), Dodge, Dodge

Without stealth, you have next to no condition removal outside of 20s(?) heal cooldown. You’d simply be DoA against any condition spec and dodging doesn’t prevent them from ticking, and you can’t dodge all their applications.

You have no way to disengage either, and since they nerfed main hand sword you can’t even bounce around anymore. One immob will sink you unless you’re running Withdrawl, but then you have no way of dropping the dot conditions.

Vena.8436:

TGSlasher.1458:

No, I just have 1 bazillion dodges on the thief. Dodge Dodge Heal (dodge heal) Dodge (adventures) change weapons to same set (energy), Dodge, Dodge

Without stealth, you have next to no condition removal outside of 20s(?) heal cooldown. You’d simply be DoA against any condition spec and dodging doesn’t prevent them from ticking, and you can’t dodge all their applications.

You have no way to disengage either, and since they nerfed main hand sword you can’t even bounce around anymore. One immob will sink you unless you’re running Withdrawl, but then you have no way of dropping the dot conditions.

I have less condition removal on my ele. 1 removal from phoenix and 3 from reflect (which I use as reflect not condition removal). Yet still I don’t melt against necros.

Ok,

I was thinking about posting my opinion in one of the current threads of this topic, but in most threads the OP started whining/flaming so I decided to start my own thread where we could actually discuss in a constructive way. While writing the incoming wall of text this thread was made and I think posting here could work too. I don’t like the title but it seems like some people actually try to argue in this thread. Whining isn’t helping very much, while being precise on what you think is too strong and how you think that should be changed could actually help the game getting better.

We know Arenanet reads the forums so when we have good ideas and point out where something is wrong we might actually see those changes in a future patch.

I am part of Team [ugly] from EU and we have been playing a burst lineup for most of the time on a pretty high level. Since 06/25/13 – lets call that Doomsday – glassy burstbuilds are not viable anymore. You can only play a powerlineup with a heavy conditioncleanse team like triple shout guardian and double elementalist. The reason for that is obvious.

In the following I write down mostly my experience and opinion but also what my team thinks of different skills. Some changes may sound too much, but I try to explain why we think this is needed. When you have another opinion on a topic it would be great when you could explain why and how you would change it.

On Doomsday Weakness and Blind got amazing Buffs and some classes have too much access to those conditions. Those two conditions are a direct counter to burstbuilds and pretty much remove them from competitive play as burstbuilds normally lack conditionremove or just don’t have enough to remove every condition before every burst. Right now for burstclasses it’s really hard. You have to burst at the time where you don’t have Weakness, the target has no protection and when it is not likely that the target will just randomly dodge. On the other hand you don’t have enough sustain to live that long and for those people saying that we just have to take more conditionremove: Then we don’t have enough burst to actually hurt someone or kill any bunker.

Weakness
Imo Weakness should be a counter to upcoming bursts you anticipate. It should work a bit like the “offensive” protection with a pretty good addition to it. But right now some classes can hold up weakness 100% of the time on multiple targets.

Here is a list of weakness sources that should be looked at (the weakness I list is always the baseduration, so your duration can be up to 50% longer when you spec for it):

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fierce_Blow
8s of weakness on a 12s cooldown is too much. Ok, this spell is melee and has a big animation, but it is AOE and you can trait for reduced Hammer CDs. In combination with conditionduration you can keep Weakness up 100% of the time on every melee you hit with it.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Winter%27s_Bite
The Weakness lasts 10s and the cooldown is 10s too. Its only single target, but this is still too much to hold weakness on a target for 100% of the time.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lightning_Touch
Here again 5s Weakness on a 10s cooldown. This skill can hit up to 3 targets.
Here again this Weakness is just too long.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stoning
3s Weakness on an autoattack (single target) is really hard. We all know Elementalist don’t autoattack much but this is still too much.
I would replace the Weakness with a short duration bleed.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Spite
This is just overall strong, I cant really say how to balance that, or if its ok. Its just too much right now and this seems to be worth looking at too. When you don’t have a skill that clears all conditions at hand with this much cover you will probably die.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Enfeebling_Blood
10s Weakness in a really big AOE on a 900unit range, 25s cd.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Weakening_Shroud
15 second internal cooldown, independent of Enfeebling Blood’s cooldown.
This is just huge and this trait is only on Adept level. I would say raise the internal cooldown and probably put that on a master level.

Those are the weakness sources that have really long durations on short cooldowns/easy to apply. In my opinion weakness from a single source should have a maximum uptime of 50% (while specced/traited for it) otherwise its damagemitigation is “too kitten high”. But you may want to look on the damage of glancing strikes too. Maybe a 30-40% damagereduction would be enough for glancing hits.

Blind
The change to blind was really needed, as a thief I wasn’t caring much about blinds. right now I think that blind is good and to balance it, it should have a fixed duration for every application so you have the option to wait out the blind instead of removing the condition or to miss an attack. I think a duration of 2, maybe 3 seconds should be enough for that. When you take 3 seconds you can still savestomp 5 out of 8 classes.

Those two big changes really changed the game pretty much for us, but that wasn’t all what happened on our doomsday.

Conditionlineups popped up all over the place with a now pretty strong necro and the synergy with engineers. Before the patch you could counter conditions (what should be more sustained DPS) with coordinated bursts, but with the recent buffs to conditions and conditionclasses you cant really counter them anymore and the damage they deal feels pretty bursty too.

On a sidenote: Torment is fine. Its a good condition but probably better for meleeclasses like warrior or thief and not for necromancers. As a melee you want to punish someone for moving/kiting you and try to keep him at your place. A necromancer has already more than enough tools to kite enemys and deal damage to them. They shouldn’t have a condition that deals even more damage when you try to stick to them.

On top of the mentioned changes Ranger got deleted from competitive tPvP because the only viable spec (BM/Bunker) cant deal enough damage anymore to actually win 1on1 fights. The always strong Engineer on the other hand wasn’t touched too much (expect the R change) and the Necromancer rose to the new QQ target, but that for obvious reasons.

Here i am listing skills that are in our opinion too strong or not working correctly, i considered talking about skills that are too weak but i think that would be too much and even without those most people will fear the wall of text im writing:

Ranger
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spirit_of_Nature
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nature%27s_Renewal

We have two big problems with this skill. The first one is that you can put it anywhere on the map and activate Nature’s Renewal (NR) from an infinite range. For Example on Forest of Niflhel you can set the Spirit of Nature (SoN) behind the Keep and rush back to Henge to defend it and just trigger NR while you are defending that point. In our opinion the activation of FN should have a range. Say you need to be in a 900 – 1.500 unit range to the Spirit to be able to cast it.
The second problem is that FN has no Line of Sight (LoS) check. You actually can place it behind the Keep (bottom of the stairs) and resurrect downed Players at the Cappoint while the other team can’t do anything about it. It would mean that for the duration of the Spirit you can’t attack this point and that’s huge. On Battle of Khylo SoN is at least as bad as on Forest of Niflhel. In the “old” Meta Ranger was defending close or attacking far, so in most cases you don’t have someone on him all the time and you cant afford that someone is spirithunting all the time either. He can just set the spirit below the Clocktower and resurrect people that are downed inside it. Give FN a LoS Check (Spirit to downed Player, not Spirit to Ranger) to fix this, in our opinion, broken spell.

Engineer
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flamethrower

Flamethrower period, even when I don’t like it, I just call this Utility kittening OP, yes OP.
But lets go back to a mannered discussion and explain why we think it is. The biggest problem we have with this skill is, that Airblast (#3 Skill) is an AOE-Knockback on a 15s CD that has no casttime so you can practically not dodge it.
We think this skill should at least have a 25s CD and probably should have half a second casttime with an animation that you can see in 1on1 situations.
On top of that the flamethrower has a savestomp for 5/8 of the classes with #5 that can be casted while stomping, a long duration firefield for might stacking and still an amazing toolbelt skill.

Engineers in general can neutralize points in 1on1 situations so fast when the other player has no stability up that you want to bring them just for that. But on top of that they are pretty strong in 1on1 situations and if positioned right/protected by the necro (by stuff like weakness or fear) and/or team pretty good in teamfights especially when they use their CC defensively. They have great mobility and if played correctly an incredible amount of dodges.

I feel engineer is one of the hardest classes to play, but when you know your kittens you are a monster. And with that I mean too strong. When you want engineers to be an allround class with tools for every situation you cant give them tools for everything that are as good as those from other classes. In some cases (flamethrower or elixir R even after the change) you even give them better things.

Imo the Traits Speedy Kits and Invigorating Speed should be looked at. Getting a 100% Swiftness and Vigor uptime with 2 Adepttraits seems too strong. Those should be Masertraits or have a 50% uptime.

Thief
Yes, Thief got the nerfhammer pretty straight in their face and most of the things were necessary, but right now i feel pretty weak. I wont say thief is broken or underpowered, its just that other classes/specs got more love from Arenanet. Stunbreak without cooldown was huge and I loved it, but I knew myself that this wont stay like that.

Still something with the Thief (probably for other classes too, but I list it for thief because I experienced it here) is broken.

When you are leaping through Black Powder (Pistol #5) with Heartseeker (Dagger #2) and deal damage with the Heartseeker you wont get revealed and don’t get the debuff. Same goes for the Steal you can actually press while leaping with Heartseeker.

Is that intended? It feels broken for me.

Shadowtrap was already mentioned in the SotG and will be nerfed maybe tomorrow and well, its understandable.

General thoughts of the current Meta:

Since doomsday Necromancers and Engineers synergize so well that most top tier tPvP Teams bring both. Actually most Teams look like that: Guardian(Bunker, Mesmer(GS+Sw/Fo), Ele(Burst), Necro(Condi), Engi(Bomb/Flametrower/X) and at that state of the game i havent seen a team that could counter that. You cant beat them with mobility and even when you split them they have extremely strong 1on1 classes with engi and necro.

I wanted to write about other classes as well, but right now im busy and just don’t have the time to. So I will post part 1 right now and maybe add another part when I got the time to.

The only thing I want to add today is that it would be nice when some classes that got constant nerfs would get some love again. You wont be able to play every class on a competitive level when some get buffs and new toys and others get nerfs or only get new toys to have them nerfed in the next patch.

Fenrir.5493:

The problem is this games rely too much on bunker builds and the only thing that a bunker cant bunker is conditions.

This game is messed up since they decide armor dosent matter at all, so any light armor medium armor will have nearly the same damage mitigation than a heavy armor wearer, then they maked protection, aegis, regen and let light armor classes to bunker better than any heavy armor user wich has no sense, then people are runing bunkers because the game mode is to hold points, how do you hold points? with a bunker.

Armor should be important again and thoughness should reduce condition damage, also thougness should reduce the crit damage/crit chance then nerf protection maybe, or nerf all the bunker specs so they dont rely on boons to bunker, this changes will reduce and tone down condition damage and burst damage that needs to be toned down too.

Won’t this also adversely effect PvE dungeons? Do we really want to tone down all toons against dungeon bosses that have larger health pools and toughness than our entire team combined?

LeGi.3921:

Blind
The change to blind was really needed, as a thief I wasn’t caring much about blinds. right now I think that blind is good and to balance it, it should have a fixed duration for every application so you have the option to wait out the blind instead of removing the condition or to miss an attack. I think a duration of 2, maybe 3 seconds should be enough for that. When you take 3 seconds you can still savestomp 5 out of 8 classes.

Those two big changes really changed the game pretty much for us, but that wasn’t all what happened on our doomsday.

Conditionlineups popped up all over the place with a now pretty strong necro and the synergy with engineers. Before the patch you could counter conditions (what should be more sustained DPS) with coordinated bursts, but with the recent buffs to conditions and conditionclasses you cant really counter them anymore and the damage they deal feels pretty bursty too.

On a sidenote: Torment is fine. Its a good condition but probably better for meleeclasses like warrior or thief and not for necromancers. As a melee you want to punish someone for moving/kiting you and try to keep him at your place. A necromancer has already more than enough tools to kite enemys and deal damage to them. They shouldn’t have a condition that deals even more damage when you try to stick to them.

On top of the mentioned changes Ranger got deleted from competitive tPvP because the only viable spec (BM/Bunker) cant deal enough damage anymore to actually win 1on1 fights. The always strong Engineer on the other hand wasn’t touched too much (expect the R change) and the Necromancer rose to the new QQ target, but that for obvious reasons.

Here i am listing skills that are in our opinion too strong or not working correctly, i considered talking about skills that are too weak but i think that would be too much and even without those most people will fear the wall of text im writing:

Ranger
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spirit_of_Nature
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nature%27s_Renewal

We have two big problems with this skill. The first one is that you can put it anywhere on the map and activate Nature’s Renewal (NR) from an infinite range. For Example on Forest of Niflhel you can set the Spirit of Nature (SoN) behind the Keep and rush back to Henge to defend it and just trigger NR while you are defending that point. In our opinion the activation of FN should have a range. Say you need to be in a 900 – 1.500 unit range to the Spirit to be able to cast it.
The second problem is that FN has no Line of Sight (LoS) check. You actually can place it behind the Keep (bottom of the stairs) and resurrect downed Players at the Cappoint while the other team can’t do anything about it. It would mean that for the duration of the Spirit you can’t attack this point and that’s huge. On Battle of Khylo SoN is at least as bad as on Forest of Niflhel. In the “old” Meta Ranger was defending close or attacking far, so in most cases you don’t have someone on him all the time and you cant afford that someone is spirithunting all the time either. He can just set the spirit below the Clocktower and resurrect people that are downed inside it. Give FN a LoS Check (Spirit to downed Player, not Spirit to Ranger) to fix this, in our opinion, broken spell.

I’ll play thief..you play heavy melee. Your choice of any of the guardian and/or warrior builds you like. I will only play blinding thief. You tell me afterwards that you think blind is currently in a good place afterwards and it should be extended.

Terrahero.9358:

And here people are already screaming to add new boons to nerf conditions!
1) There are already mechancis that let you avoid getting conditions. Its called Aegis, Blind, Block and Dodge. Because an attack actually has to land to apply a condition. And you want to add even more boons to avoid conditions being applied? What a joke.

The problem is, that you have more boons/conditions that reduce incoming direct damage than sources that reduce conditiondamage. I dont know if you have realized but the things you listed let you avoid direct damage as well.

LeGi.3921:

Terrahero.9358:

And here people are already screaming to add new boons to nerf conditions!
1) There are already mechancis that let you avoid getting conditions. Its called Aegis, Blind, Block and Dodge. Because an attack actually has to land to apply a condition. And you want to add even more boons to avoid conditions being applied? What a joke.

The problem is, that you have more boons/conditions that reduce incoming direct damage than sources that reduce conditiondamage. I dont know if you have realized but the things you listed let you avoid direct damage as well.

I’ll also remind people that aegis and block do not stop necro marks. And aegis or single blocks only affect 1/3 of an engineer grenade skill.

Blinds also are unpractical since they are hard to apply at range in a meaningful way.

Chaith.8256:

Necro, Engi, Ranger vs. Guardian, Ele, Mesmer, Thief, Warrior

It’s about the meta. Not about what classes do. It’s about what class is currently in the meta and what they play in the meta.
Do you see a dps guard in meta? do you see warrior in meta? No.
But you do see 2 necros + 1 engi in meta. One mesmer for portal and iol and a bunker.

Kravick.4906:

Why all the complaining about conditions all of a sudden. They haven’t changed. They do the same damage they’ve always done.

Yes but in the previous patch Anet shifted the meta towards cond classes a huge step.
The conds did not really change (oh wait – there just happen to be a new cond – it’s called torment, and since there are 1-2 necros on almost each serious team comp atm, 20-40% of the team members have access to it).
But nevertheless – it’s not about torment, it’s about cond dmg being >>> power dmg and conds being “overused” in the meta atm which makes skills like epidemic even stronger.
So no, besides of torment (and maybe blind) there wasn’t a big change on conds but what did change was the meta towards cond specced classes thanks to the previous patch.

A thief’s blind can’t compare to other professions’.

Thieves can spam blind like crazy, specially with an offhand pistol.

Blind itself is not that much of a problem. Blind in the hands of a thief can keep a warrior as useless as a human baby as they can save their initiative so they can throw again another dark field. And while they have no initiative, they still can have quite some blindness in utility skills that are quite useful in general.
They can even throw one of those thief support elites to put even more blinds on you with the gunner summon while they do other stuff.

The thief’s initiative is one of those things that sounded neat in theory but they should not have done as they make balancing and adding more weapons to the profession way harder than it should.

Even if they still were way shorter, thieves should still get some recharge in their weapon skills, at least when their enemies do not dodge them and get hit.

TGSlasher.1458:

[…]“Shiny lets go be bad guys” – Serenity
[…]

Heh.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

LeGi.3921:

Blind
The change to blind was really needed, as a thief I wasn’t caring much about blinds. right now I think that blind is good and to balance it, it should have a fixed duration for every application so you have the option to wait out the blind instead of removing the condition or to miss an attack. I think a duration of 2, maybe 3 seconds should be enough for that. When you take 3 seconds you can still savestomp 5 out of 8 classes.

I’ll play thief..you play heavy melee. Your choice of any of the guardian and/or warrior builds you like. I will only play blinding thief. You tell me afterwards that you think blind is currently in a good place afterwards and it should be extended.

MithranArkanere.8957:

A thief’s blind can’t compare to other professions’.

Thieves can spam blind like crazy, specially with an offhand pistol.

Blind itself is not that much of a problem. Blind in the hands of a thief can keep a warrior as useless as a human baby as they can save their initiative so they can throw again another dark field. And while they have no initiative, they still can have quite some blindness in utility skills that are quite useful in general.
They can even throw one of those thief support elites to put even more blinds on you with the gunner summon while they do other stuff.

And here is why people still think thief is OP, they dont know how to handle them. Sun Tzu -> know your enemy, know their weakness, know how to take advantage of thakittens hard to discuss balance when even this is not given.

I am playing a S/D Thief (so a melee that relies on autoattacking) and when you see Blackpowder (Pistol #5) on the floor just dont stand in it. You can stand outside of the circle and outattack into the whole circle. You can even dodge through the circle when the Thief decides to run.

Vs Thieves Guild (those thief support elites) you have to AOE the thiefs or disengage until they despawn (30seconds duration) and come back after that.

As i stated above, blind is strong right now, but when you complain about blackpowder you just handle that skill wrong.

The problem with Blackpowder is not the standing in the field.

I think everyone knows already “Red circle bad, do not stand inside red circle”.

It’s the blindness from combos. Even a 20% finisher is enough to deal quite some blindness. And pistol bullets can’t be dodged as easily as projectiles, as they are way faster, more affected by lag and you have to dodge preemptively much more with them.
And you can’t dodge preemptively when a it’s a tiny asura thief hiding among an army of minions, as you can’t see the attack animation starting.
There should be an option in PvP to make all enemies look like one of those WvW generic norn models, just with all animations instead a reduced animation set.

They also have another utility dark field and other spammable blindnesses.

Oh,

you are having problems with double pistol thiefs?

i cant even explain where you can improve, because i dont know how they can actually kill something. their damage is low when you dodge unload and their kiting is pretty bad imo. so where do you have problems? Only the blinds?

when you have problems with the blinds you probably dont get enough attacks per second onto him and should improve that.

but again: blind needed a buff, but the buff it got was too much so the duration should be lowered and maybe the access of some classes to it.

I don’t see any problem with duration of blindness. You just do an autoattack and lose it. Like against a scepter-focus elementalist. Or a grenade-pistols engineer. Or a sword guardian.

It’s when it’s spammable when it’s a problem.

It doesn’t matter how low their damage is if they can spam blindness so much and so often that you will never have a window to attack.

And only thieves can spam it so mindlessly like that.

All you can do is /shrug and leave to find someone else to attack.

Well seems like i havent encountered a decent blind spamming thief or its just no thread to my spec/ i outplayed it.

Still i dont see the problem when you stand outside the zone and only get 1 blind from every fifth autoattack while dodging unload. when he is using other skills too he will run out of initiative in no time.

Conditions have a cap right?.

I have only played hotjoin so far and I think the problem is unlike LoL for example it seems to me that my team doesn’t have a clear idea of what to do.(simple right?, just capture points) but more often than not I find myself involved in some kind of a deathmatch arena.

thats hotjoin for you, brainless rankfarming.

what is discussed here is the higher tier of tPvP and casted tournaments.

Why not give EVERY class a new heal, one that heals ALL conditions and makes the user immune from ALL conditions being applied for X number of seconds? Of course this would be done in different ways for each character (except Necro, they just get the X seconds of immunity added to Consume conditions, cool down increased)

For example, Mesmers heal could be that it heals and sends all the conditions to a clone, or maybe the heal creates a clone that takes all of the conditions an what conditions it has on it will be given to anyone in its AoE when its killed/replaced?

Of course this would take work to make the heal “fit” all of the classes but this would help with the Condition builds. Could even make it so that the immunity (would be a boon and ONLY applicable from the heal and cant be spread to allies) increases the more Conditions that you have?

This way it wont be so limited on who actually gets condition removal. Thus it will be like a battle of wits between the condition user and the target, does the Condition user burst all conditions fast or slowly build them and risk it not being enough

How long does the target wait before they use the condition removal heal? to soon and it will be wasted, to late and it could still mean dying.

LeGi.3921:

Blind
The change to blind was really needed, as a thief I wasn’t caring much about blinds. right now I think that blind is good and to balance it, it should have a fixed duration for every application so you have the option to wait out the blind instead of removing the condition or to miss an attack. I think a duration of 2, maybe 3 seconds should be enough for that. When you take 3 seconds you can still savestomp 5 out of 8 classes.

Those two big changes really changed the game pretty much for us, but that wasn’t all what happened on our doomsday.

Conditionlineups popped up all over the place with a now pretty strong necro and the synergy with engineers. Before the patch you could counter conditions (what should be more sustained DPS) with coordinated bursts, but with the recent buffs to conditions and conditionclasses you cant really counter them anymore and the damage they deal feels pretty bursty too.

On a sidenote: Torment is fine. Its a good condition but probably better for meleeclasses like warrior or thief and not for necromancers. As a melee you want to punish someone for moving/kiting you and try to keep him at your place. A necromancer has already more than enough tools to kite enemys and deal damage to them. They shouldn’t have a condition that deals even more damage when you try to stick to them.

On top of the mentioned changes Ranger got deleted from competitive tPvP because the only viable spec (BM/Bunker) cant deal enough damage anymore to actually win 1on1 fights. The always strong Engineer on the other hand wasn’t touched too much (expect the R change) and the Necromancer rose to the new QQ target, but that for obvious reasons.

Here i am listing skills that are in our opinion too strong or not working correctly, i considered talking about skills that are too weak but i think that would be too much and even without those most people will fear the wall of text im writing:

Ranger
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spirit_of_Nature
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nature%27s_Renewal

We have two big problems with this skill. The first one is that you can put it anywhere on the map and activate Nature’s Renewal (NR) from an infinite range. For Example on Forest of Niflhel you can set the Spirit of Nature (SoN) behind the Keep and rush back to Henge to defend it and just trigger NR while you are defending that point. In our opinion the activation of FN should have a range. Say you need to be in a 900 – 1.500 unit range to the Spirit to be able to cast it.
The second problem is that FN has no Line of Sight (LoS) check. You actually can place it behind the Keep (bottom of the stairs) and resurrect downed Players at the Cappoint while the other team can’t do anything about it. It would mean that for the duration of the Spirit you can’t attack this point and that’s huge. On Battle of Khylo SoN is at least as bad as on Forest of Niflhel. In the “old” Meta Ranger was defending close or attacking far, so in most cases you don’t have someone on him all the time and you cant afford that someone is spirithunting all the time either. He can just set the spirit below the Clocktower and resurrect people that are downed inside it. Give FN a LoS Check (Spirit to downed Player, not Spirit to Ranger) to fix this, in our opinion, broken spell.

if u have seen my pyramidthingy :
ranger is strong with spirits (survivability and damage) and that op rezelite and the dodging/healing/condicleaningability…. especially in small fights 1v1 2v2 3v3 if anet fixes necro it will be able to hold close and push far… the same with bunkerele, a bunkerele has no chance vs a wellplayed necro with corrupt boon….. impossible to hold….

s/d thief is strong (high constantdamage, good survivability, great mobility, can kill bunkers solo) ! d/d maybe a small buff (lacks survivability)…

i want a perfect balanced meta :
bunker, support, 3 roamer (power, or condis)
i dont want 5 necros/engis :/