Guild Wars 2

Together with the IC change and from posts on here I assume that a number of players will be shifting to 30 in chaos.

Now I have no problem with how anyone likes to play – in my opinion taking into account the number of players in the game, there are no unique builds at all (disregarding minor gear/consumable differences), so for anyone to claim personal ownership/creation of any build is silly.

No, my concern is that I don’t want it to give them an excuse to nerf our stealth, or stealth in general. Ok sure, for those using PU now we have to make do with a 40s decoy cooldown (unless you want to spec x/x/30/x/25), and other stealth skills have high cooldowns anyway, unless you want to also spec 20 domination for the torch cooldown.

I imagine this PU buff will not remain unchanged, so before anything is changed I felt it necessary to have a transparent discussion on the topic to avoid disappointment in a future patch – I just hope the boons remain largely the same; protection, regen and aegis are preferable over all other boons available – perhaps they could find a balance with a boon every 1.5-2 seconds?

I’m inclined to agree with Trahearne here – this won’t end well… I hope I’m (he’s) wrong!

I predict it’ll become a tad slower again. Maybe they’ll try 2s or 1,5s.

Still, nice change. Alternatively, give me every 3s but only apply them when I drop out of stealth again. It “collects” buffs and puts them on at the end.

There are changes every month, i think the best we can do is enjoy the good ones.
PU is an example, it was good before the patch and now is stronger.
If they change it (and with change i mean ruin it), we’ll find something new but for the moment is a good source of fun.

I still don’t think PU compares to the number of stealth bonuses a thief can get. A thief can also enter stealth at a much higher frequency than a memser, so their bonuses are more utilized. Example, they can regen and remove conditions by entering stealth.

Remember that “stealth” is not the thief mechanic — “stealing” is.

Lastly this is a grand master trait in a trait line that does not reward stealth in any other way. Putting 30 points into Chaos is not desirable for some builds.

I hope it does not get the nerf-bat because it’s actually a nice trait now (as in worth spending 30pts to get it). I think the “abuse” comes from the extreme builds where players stack tons of “boon duration” gear and food (and yeah 30 in Chaos gives +30% boon duration as well).

Maybe the “nerf” should be to remove certain food and rune items. Eliminate the “extremes” of the build spectrum so ANet doesn’t have to balance for them (because they don’t exist anymore).

Admittedly, it IS fun to stealth and see “Block, Block, Block” and convert all if those to retribution :P

Maybe I’m worrying for no reason – just from this patch it and what has happened to other traits/skills, this looks too good to be true – almost as if they were giving something to placate us for the other changes.

At least as a mesmer compared to thief, stealthing among illusions means we can get away with more infrequent uses of stealth, and chaining it is unnecessary.

I agree that as a 30pt GM trait, it should be powerful, so perhaps it is balanced in the current form.

iMage is still bleh so that evens it out.

Maybe it will be: get a random boon every 2 seconds in stealth, stealth skills last 1 second longer. Gain a random boon each time you take damage (1 second cooldown). Id still like it.

I was shocked at this buff to PU as i was running a perma prot build in pve and 80% uptime in pvp… Now it is easy to maintain it and it gives more flexibility for people trying to run a perma protection build. It is 30pts it should be worth something this is no different of an argument than HGH engis saying “it comes from rune stacking and we sacrifice a lot to get that much might.” The same could be said for mesmer builds that run 30 to get full uptime on regen/protection (getting it on aegis well is impossible.) My build sacrifices all power and most condi damage to get permanent protection with good healing… And with the new over the top necro/engi meta running around everywhere mesmers needed a good defensive trait.

So no i don’t think PU should get nerfed (or changed at all now) I actually think it was meant to tick every second we were in stealth and maybe ANET made it tick every second this patch to open up more builds and try to get us to not worry about the myriad of other nerfs the smacked us with this patch…