Guild Wars 2

I guys, i made a post in the suggestion forum about this but would love to hear your opinions and diferent suggestions about this particular condition.

this is what I suggested:

First of all, this is how Blind is at the moment:

Blind: Next outgoing attack misses; stacks duration.

I would like to make a suggestion to change the blind condition, since at the moment it is the one condition that no one cares about… every one is looking out for every other condition so that they can remove it asap.

Conditions like Bleeding, Burning, chill, confusion, cripple, fear, immobilize, poison, vulnerability and weakness need to be removed because they directly have influence on battle in hand, they all can get you killed (along with retaliation on your opponent).

Blind make you miss the next attack, who cares?! you next one will hit and the next one and the one after that… Most people don’t even notice that they have been blinded…
Unless you are lucky enough (not skilled) to blind your target before he crowed control’s you, otherwise its just pointless to use blind, every class has they’re burst dmg spread throughout a rapid sequence of hits, missing 1 is irrelevant, dodging makes them miss a lot more that 1 hit.

My suggestion is, if instead of having your target miss the next attack, it would make them miss all attacks wile blinded.

Obviously this would also require that the blind duration throughout the professions be adjusted. (1,5sec to 2sec tops removable) also not stackable or stackable to a limit (like stealth) to a 3sec limit for example.

• Would (in my opinion) bring blind in line with all the other existing conditions.
• Would take skill to use it at the right time to avoid a burst or participially avoid it.
• Players would have to remove it or dodge away until it wares off instead of hitting “1” once to remove it.
• Would bring more variety to the table (since it’s just ignored at the moment).

I believe it is a realistic change and possibly not to hard to implement.

I didn’t expected to get this big but i tried to be as clear and detailed as possible.
I hope you enjoyed the read.

This is how blind worked in GW1, more or less (90% miss chance). GW1 had way, way, waaaaay more spammable condition-removal, though. So, I’m not really a fan of this proposed change. Blind is still plenty powerful if you’re actually applying it often — and thieves are pretty good at spamming it, at times — or timing it well, like SoSing in response to that big telegraphed attack.

Unrelated to that criticism, though:
It seems to me like instead of coming up with special rules for stacking with capped duration, you should just recommend changing “stacks durations” to “stacks intensity”: each attack pops 1 stack of blind, but you can multi-stack blindness.

ASP.8093:

This is how blind worked in GW1, more or less (90% miss chance). GW1 had way, way, waaaaay more spammable condition-removal, though. So, I’m not really a fan of this proposed change. Blind is still plenty powerful if you’re actually applying it often — and thieves are pretty good at spamming it, at times — or timing it well, like SoSing in response to that big telegraphed attack.

Unrelated to that criticism, though:
It seems to me like instead of coming up with special rules for stacking with capped duration, you should just recommend changing “stacks durations” to “stacks intensity”: each attack pops 1 stack of blind, but you can multi-stack blindness.

That would work too, well thought! But also some abilities/utilities should be tweaked to apply more that 1 stack, I like it!

Tks for your criticism and suggestion!

I agree that blind is usually not a big deal. It seem to be tricky in pve, since it’s very difficult to actually apply to bosses, etc. In PvP, attacks are so frequent, blind gets easily (and accidentally) wiped off by auto attacks, etc.

I don’t know that it’s actually weak, so much as it can be remarkably unreliable, and therefore nothing to be feared. I realize there are some situations where blind can be forced to shine, but it doesn’t always work out the way you want.

Seems like stacks of blind would be great, but it’d have to be normalized with a cooldown. Stacks limited to 1 per second, per target. Otherwise we could stack up 20 blinds in a few seconds, with a team.

While this might be fine for the prepared pvp’er, the general / average player, or just anyone without condition removals will suffer an unreasonable amount. Thieves would hear lots more cries for nerfs.

Interestingly, though, with a short application cooldown, it’s unlikely that Blind would feel much different than it does today. The difference might be that if you can keep an enemy from hitting anyone for a few seconds, you could build up a few stacks, buying you more time once they actually try to do some damage. That’s reasonably fair, I think.

Actually, now that I think about it, if there was a cap on the number of stacks, that might keep things in check.

Edit:
Actually, just consider everything I’ve said to be off the cuff and possibly uninformed. lol I’m in a HUGE rush, but I’m interested in the topic. Also, Volrath, your idea would probably be great, as long as we could stack up the durration to something meaningful.

I love the way blind works at the moment. I use a stealth build with the trait that causes aoe blind on stealth. Since I use d/d, I cause an aoe blind about every 4 sec with cloak and dagger, and an emergency blind with signet of shadows. The effect reminds me of my guardian’s aegis (blocks the next incoming attack), but blind is put on your enemies instead. This means that aoe blinds can be much more reliable mitigation if all mobs are attacking a single person.

This kind of support in a group usually goes unnoticed, so be sure to remind your guardian tanks that you are keeping that crowd of enemies blinded—they might be able to take more offensive utilities to keep control over mobs.

Volrath.1473:

My suggestion is, if instead of having your target miss the next attack, it would make them miss all attacks wile blinded.

First thing that comes to my mind is Pistol offhand Black Powder Perma-Blind-Lock!!!

Yeah I have been having these same thoughts, at first when I saw blind, I thought by stacking it meant like having 5 blinds on you (next 5 outgoing attacks miss) but the whole duration thing is pointless. What is the difference between a 3 second blind and a 10 second blind, who takes more then 3 seconds between each attack? <- Rhetorical question, don’t bombard me with situations which take more then 3 seconds between each attack.

Minibiskit.6158:

I love the way blind works at the moment. I use a stealth build with the trait that causes aoe blind on stealth. Since I use d/d, I cause an aoe blind about every 4 sec with cloak and dagger, and an emergency blind with signet of shadows. The effect reminds me of my guardian’s aegis (blocks the next incoming attack), but blind is put on your enemies instead. This means that aoe blinds can be much more reliable mitigation if all mobs are attacking a single person.

This kind of support in a group usually goes unnoticed, so be sure to remind your guardian tanks that you are keeping that crowd of enemies blinded—they might be able to take more offensive utilities to keep control over mobs.

This. Blind is perfectly fine the way it is. And it does take skill to use at the right time, and I totally agree to it being basically the same as Aegis except Aegis usually has longer duration and blocks from any source. Though nobody has the access to spam-able Aegis to the extent Thieves can spam blind.

With your proposal I can see it being completely broken. Lets take this scenario.
Say a Thief has the blind on stealth trait. He steal-cnd-blinding powder-shadow signet-hide in shadows-refuge chains. With a 1.5 second duration per stack, you have now 9 seconds of not being able to land any attack? This is not the only example that could be used to stack a broken amount of blind with your idea.

If it had a cap on the other hand, it would be less useful then it is now..

I love blind how it works, and use it quite a bit. It’s great in so many situations from making a thief fail his backstab to making a another class fail their obviously incoming knockback since I stealthed in close range to now making a mesmer fail his phantasm.

Yeah agree, blind now is kinda useless.

ZLE.8293:

Volrath.1473:

My suggestion is, if instead of having your target miss the next attack, it would make them miss all attacks wile blinded.

First thing that comes to my mind is Pistol offhand Black Powder Perma-Blind-Lock!!!

true, and i thought of that as well that’s way i added right after the sentence you quoted “Obviously this would also require that the blind duration throughout the professions be adjusted. (1,5sec to 2sec tops removable) also not stackable or stackable to a limit (like stealth) to a 3sec limit for example.” but thanks for pointing that specific skill up

Minibiskit.6158:

With your proposal I can see it being completely broken. Lets take this scenario.
Say a Thief has the blind on stealth trait. He steal-cnd-blinding powder-shadow signet-hide in shadows-refuge chains. With a 1.5 second duration per stack, you have now 9 seconds of not being able to land any attack? This is not the only example that could be used to stack a broken amount of blind with your idea.

If it had a cap on the other hand, it would be less useful then it is now..

As you well know there is reveled mechanic, that wont allow you to stealth again in the next 3 seconds if you attack from stealth and you wouldn’t be able to stack that much blindness since you cannot use all the abilities you mention at the same time, and since the stacks have a very small duration they will ware off before you are able to re-apply it again, also due to cap you would not be able stack more than 3 sec,

If the blind applied via the trait lasts 1 second you will be in stealth during that second, it will save you from being wile in stealth.

Now that I think of it, it would “fix” the channeled abilities following us though stealth since we could prevent part of the dmg for 1 second after entering stealth. (if traited obviously)

It would never be less effective than now… it would make the target miss 2-4 attacks instead of 1, how is that less effective!?

I think if blind’s mechanics were changed, aegis would have to get a similar change. Blind is basically just “offensive aegis” mechanically and works exactly as well as aegis does in every situation you would use it.

Personally I get a lot of use out of blind, but, like aegis, you have to time it right or be able to spam it to make it really effective. One stealth thief with the blinding trait can effectively mitigate more attacks for his group than a guardian if done properly, because he’s effectively applying a miss to every enemy blinded, which mitigates up to five attacks on a single target.

AoE aegis mitigates five attacks, but only if those five attacks hit five different targets. Often you’ll end up with one or two people who just plain don’t get attacked, wasting the aegis whereas five blinded enemies can target anyone and the mitigation is never wasted unless the enemies stop attacking, which pretty much never happens.