Guild Wars 2

Looks fun, but not OP at all. Mesmer Powerblock does everything Pulmonary does, but with the ability to crit… let’s not encourage them to tone things down even MORE.

Aorin.9168:

welcome to Karl McLain classes.

Dragon Hunter – crap, terrible name
Edit: from the latest post,it’s clear he has no idea what to do with the traits, just keeps digging himself a deeper hole with Guardian players. We need an intervention. Robert Gee, please help Karl.
Tempest – crap, terrible weapon
Edit: more support and aoe to the support and aoe King class. GG Karl.
Daredevil – another terrible name, and the leaked information made me laugh
Edit: if you were gonna go with staff, it should have been towards a support role, as the thief severely needs a tanky option. Staff + Meditations that cleanse condi and strip boons, heal, grant boons to self/allies.

have you ever even used signet of malice? combine that kitten with pistol whip and cleric armor and you have a kitten near unkillable class for PVE

The point is, why I think the design needs changes are the following points.
I beliebe, when peopel see these points, then they can better understand, why the design needs changes, because yes, Elite Specializations aren’t only there to give us more Build Diversity, they are also there to provide Builds, that can counter some of the obvious Weaknesses of a Class to to provide with the increased Build Diversity the Number of Roles you can play with a class, when before of an Elite-Specialization a Class wasn’t able to do specific things very good or not at all even.

And the problem with the Design from Anet lies directly on the hand on first sight…
They gave nothing the class, with that you become better to stand your ground and hold a point!!
And thats the most important thign and currently since 3 years the biggest design flaw of the thief Class and at the same time their biggest weakness also, that Thieves are practically everybody’s football to kick away, because Thieves have nearly no Stability at all, and with all the increased Hard CCs lately it feels just only, as if people are playing Ping Pong with you, if they don’t just stun or knockdown you permanently first, which is another game balance topic in itself, that gettign Hard CC’d should get like Stealth a Cooldown to protect you from getting perma Stunned or perma Knockdowned – so after Stun/Knockdown you can be first stunned or knockdowned again after 4+ seconds..thats somethign what GW2 desperately needs for better Game Balance.

But this aside for now, this are the points, which lead me to make this thread and what are points, I hope that Anet changes them over the tiem after the Beta Weekends, like they made changes to all other Professions so far after BWE’s too:

• Give the Class a unique new Gameplay Mechanic, which replaces Steal!!
  Not giving the class a new mechanic feels lame and really lazy/uncreative.
  The Skirmisher, as a much better fitting synonym for Daredevil as a class, who fights recklessly is somethign, that directly made me think about the old PS1 Game Vagrant Story, im pretty sure many will know it, and it was for me the inspiration to come up with the idea of Risk Sense and Risk Breakers, cause Risk Breakers were called in that game some special skills, that become more powerful, so longer you risk yourself getting into danger and thats exactly the kind of Gameplay, which i envision with this Elite-Specializat, that thieves become with this Spec a Class, which gets more and more dangerous for an enemy, so longer they risk self to get damaged and stay in melee range or in AoE fields, so that their Risk Sense increases.
  It would basically work then like a little mixture between Adrenaline and Initiative, only that it doesn’t build up automatically or from attacking self, but instead from being attacked and staying recklessly in dangerous places

• Put most of the new Acrobatics 2.0 Traits actually into Acrobatics, because there they make alot more sense, there they would make Acrobatics actualyl again a viable and useful Traitline, especially also for everyone, who stays at beign a Vanilla Thief.

• The created gaps can easily be filled then with new effects, which should give the Elite Specialization more unique effects, that are worth it to take that Trait Line over an Vanilla Game Traitline and it should offer effects, that are based also onto the Elite specs new different gameplay mechanic.
  To make the new Elite Spec traitline feel like a much better Acrobatics 2.0 line is the absolute most worst design decision ever and simply doesn’t feel right.
  No Traitline, regardless if now Elite Spec line or not,, should make other Traitline look like beign completely obsolete traitlines, because there beign an other line, that offers practically the same things, but much much better and more universally useful in the competitive gameplay modes of PvP and WvW

• The Design of Anet is for me personally way too heavy Perma Evade and it offers in my opinion too less Martial Arts as from what you would expect from an Martial artistic Staff Fighter, the Physicals feel disappointing at that, which is the reason, why i think, all of the Elite Specializations Heal, utilities and Elite Skill should share the exact same Skill Design and should be 3 Part Chained Skills, which should be linked somehow to the unique Gameplay Mechanic of the Elite Söec, what I did by making the chained Skilsl useable after the Initive Move, while its recharging, if you have a strong enough Risk Sense for them and making the 3rd Skill the most impressive, but only useable in a short time window.
  Also this Perma Evave makes it possible to hold a place, yes, but you do while doing it NO DAMAGE and you are still absoliutely weak agaisnt all kinds of Hard CCS that need to hit you only once in a moment where you are not evading and its over with you and holding the place, because a launch will follow for sure kicking you out of your place for sure.
  Thats why I think anet should tone done a bit all this evading, increased endurance is nice, but should focus a bit more (relatio 50/50) on direct aggressive defense in form of blocks and reflects, which turn the force of the enemy against them self due to you doing with these blocks then also counterattacks, while gaining helpful defensive boons like Stability, Resiostance and Protection, with that you can hold a place, while dishing out also good damage when you use skillfuly your blocks at the right moments to counterattack.
  Its a gameplay, that is totally different from what the Thief has right now, playing like a scorpion who waits on the right moment to place the deadly stinger, instead of attacking the enemy fast out of stealth by surprise and overwehlming it with simple DPS. The thief currently provides no defensive gameply and thats what the Elite-Spec with the Staff should change, because the Staff is a DEFENSE WEAPON, it has no sharp blades ect. its not actually made to kill people, its made for self defense mainly in mind and that should be also observable in the gameplay of this Elite Specialization in my opinion to a well ration of evades, and blocks/counterattacks that help you to stand your ground better in PvP and WvW to be not anymore everybodies free ping pong ball you can bash around so easily…

Dorian.8542:

have you ever even used signet of malice? combine that kitten with pistol whip and cleric armor and you have a kitten near unkillable class for PVE

But then your problem is that you are stuck with a cleric equipped thief.

Orpheal.8263:

And the problem with the Design from Anet lies directly on the hand on first sight…
They gave nothing the class, with that you become better to stand your ground and hold a point!!

Except for a lot more dodges, more endurance, more condition clear, more heals, more ways to refill endurance, a 8s cooldown stunbreak, a 8s cooldown channelled block and loads of control options.

^

People just want to play a stealthing Ele/Warrior. That’s why.

@ stoff:

As said, all the Perma Stealthing helps you nothing in PvP, if you just need to get hit once only with a Hard CC, against with it also gives currently no protection like a 4s immunity after being hard ccs to prevent getting way too easily perma hard cc’ed.

When you permanently dodge only, you defend not yourself..all you do with perma dodgign is only buying time and annoying your enemy…
But +1ing is NO ROLE.. a thief should be able with his defensive counterattacks to stand their ground alone in Pvp/WvW without that they need to fear getting the next second perma stunne,d perma knockdown, perma launche, perma feared, because of the class having only 1 single freaking way to get for some seconds Stability at the moment through using Dagger Storm.

NOTHING, absolutely nothing under the new traits, or skilsl of the Elite Spec gives you any access to helpful defensive boons and thats what my problem is. Its current day is for a defensive gameplay way too much focused on perma evasion, while makign at the same time the original trait line, that was responsible mostly for evasion look like a completter utterly crap, that is absolutely obsolete in every thingle point, cause of the elite specializatino traits actually offereing now all of the things, what the Acrobatics line would have needed for the last 3 years!!!

And I’m here not the only person, who see that so, that Acrobatics got death nerfed, just so that they can recycle it now for the Elite Specialization! Thats what I absolutely don’t find right.

The thief Elite Specialization should provide same as like the Chronomancer or the Reaper a change to their gameplay, so that playing the Elite Spec of the Thief gives you actually also really the feeling, of the Elite Spec beign really a Gameplay Changer for you and not like beign only a lazy, uninspired cheap Power UP/Upgrade from the Thief of what thieves already were in the past, before Anet nerfed Acrobatics to death, bringign its old Gameplay now only bakc, due to the thief community being loud and agaisnt it, that Anet nerfed Acrobatics to death – so we wantign back that old gameplay and Anet makign it look now, as if they would have reinvented the wheel new, instead of giving the Elite Specialization actually somethign really new, what you weren’t able to do currently actually and that would have been defensive counterattacks, because currently has the thief only 1 skill ,which provides essentially this mechanic – Ninetails Strike..but oh wait, sadly its an underwater skill …/facepalm.. darn and underwater is currently a completely neglected and ignored part of this game since years …!

You say thieves have no access to defensive boons then go on to say you want the old Acrobatics back which was evasion oriented but at the same time complain that the new evasive abilities of Daredevil aren’t enough for a Thief in PvP…

As I said… people just want to play a stealthing Ele/Warrior….

The fact that we have a 10 second stun break and the ability to strip stability and annihilate enemies with CC’s now apparently doesn’t count for anything with all you guys complaining about Daredevil.

Thief is a glass canon. Defensive boons aren’t really our thing.

8s cooldown stunbreak that instantly chains into a channelled block.

How can you perma CC a thief that uses this utility in the first place?

Between spec and this thread I think the latter is a joke.

1.5s block is the most powerful difensive skill thieves have ever seen.

What bothers me here is not that they butchered acrobatics only to re implement it back as a elite spec, but that in doing so they render shadow arts and acrobatics pointless.
Who is going to spec to shadow arts which is underwhelming or acrobatics which is complete kitten, when you can get much more with daredevil.

They needed to make sa and acro not terabad to justify basically giving us a pre nerf line as our elite.

Also is anyone bothered by the fact that the staff looks a lot like s/p. Lets break them down:
the aa on both sets cleaves for 3, both sets have access to weakness, blind, a cc on the stealth skill they both have a channel skill that deals solid dmg (pistol whip vs weakening charge).
So instead of making the weak and useless weapon sets viable, which by the way as of now is everything but d/p, they just made an alternative s/p set…. ingenious design.

p.s.
an alternative but slightly different version of a weapon set we already have is not a bad thing but if AND ONLY IF our other set is good already, not when we have only 1 set viable. We do not need functional copies of broken sets, we need our broken sets made good.

I can’t believe anyone is complaining about this. This is the first specialization that is making me want to buy the expansion.

How can a person complain of the coolest spec already shown? omg guys

Markin.9167:

How can a person complain of the coolest spec already shown? omg guys

Welcome to the Profession boards.

OP, let’s agree to disagree.

I do not main a thief and only play the class occasionally, but kitten , I look forward to playing this. It should be quite useful for the Stronghold mode with its extreme mobility and the ability to execute the enemy lord with the elite.