Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone,

When I was active, I’d get the changes and updates as I was playing and looking through the patch notes. I’ve been away for a few months and I’ve returned to what appears to be a different game entirely. I run a S/D+SB build wearing a mix of Berserker/Knight with Melandru and food aimed at reduction of condition damage, and traits aimed at health regeneration and stealth abilities. I didn’t do a lot of damage before (wear-em-down over-time), but now I feel like I hit like a wet noodle.

Furthermore, conditions punch right through all the defense I build against it. It doesn’t help that seemingly I can’t even cleanse conditions without burning either my total initiative or relying on random luck the 10s counter hits while I’m in stealth (that is new…). Warriors seem to be able to auto-regenerate as much as I can deal damage, if combined with their pesky usage of blocking, and I need to keep all teleport abilities to get out of the spamming C.C they apparently now have (what changed there!? Warrior was under-powered, but now they are gods?).

So, without further ado, what the hell happened? How did ‘balance’ fall over? What is still viable?

The tooltip on Shadow’s Embrace is just a typo from the patch on the 15th that reworked tooltips; it still removes a condition every 3 seconds while stealthed. That remains one of our best ways to deal with condition spam.

I don’t know much about S/D builds. You missed the window where S/D was good; they just nerfed your #3 chain last patch to only remove one boon instead of two. I run S/P with Perplexity runes and a Carrion/PVT mix for gear, but it’s nerfed a bit right now due to the stun “fix”. Common Thief builds I tend to see are P/D (condition based), D/D (backstab based), and D/P (Heartseeker Black Powder spamming kittens). Shortbow retains its amazing utility for us.

Warriors are kind of ridiculous, it’s true. I don’t bother fighting them unless I have to (or unless they are uplevels/glass).

Pretty much the same story its always been for anyone looking to start back up.

Most things are just a little worse, some things are a lot worse. Nothing got better.

S/D is still good just a little worse, the loss of 1 boon removal is a hit to its utility/support role but most still use it for the evade/mobility in group fights. (ironically it was the patch that was supposed to focus on group support, OH WAIT venomshare got buffed nvm we cool)

rmBossa.4621:

Pretty much the same story its always been for anyone looking to start back up.

Most things are just a little worse, some things are a lot worse. Nothing got better.

S/D is still good just a little worse, the loss of 1 boon removal is a hit to its utility/support role but most still use it for the evade/mobility in group fights. (ironically it was the patch that was supposed to focus on group support, OH WAIT venomshare got buffed nvm we cool)

AND let us not forget that withdraw and RFI remove immobilize before the roll now. What more could you ask for?

Thanks for the feedback. I’ll tweak around a little to see if I can make this viable again.

Warrior received a bunch of buffs (cleansing ire, berserker stance, healing signet, 25% passive movement increase trait w/ melee weapons, dogged march -33% condition duration on yourself and regen)
Thief received a bunch of nerfs (larcenous strike only steal 1 boon, larcenous strike ini increase, cluster bomb range reduction, shortbow AA no longer homing, lotus poison nerf)

Just use your warrior for everything now. It is strictly better in everything from PvE, to WvW, to PvP, to roaming.

Thieves really haven’t been nerfed that much, certainly no more than other classes. Welcome back!

Excalibur.9748:

Warrior received a bunch of buffs (cleansing ire, berserker stance, healing signet, 25% passive movement increase trait w/ melee weapons, dogged march -33% condition duration on yourself and regen)
Thief received a bunch of nerfs (larcenous strike only steal 1 boon, larcenous strike ini increase, cluster bomb range reduction, shortbow AA no longer homing, lotus poison nerf)

Just use your warrior for everything now. It is strictly better in everything from PvE, to WvW, to PvP, to roaming.

Warrior was also indirectly buffed by making immob stack. Leg specialist + Sword main hand auto attack = wtf.

Here’s a break-down of my findings thus far:

- Warriors have too much crowd control, too much healing, too little counters (if any).
- Guardians are as still tough; removing protection/regeneration is too slow/costly now.
- Ranger in stealth is weird! Regular rangers are simple, Beast Master still heals too much.
- Thief is as epic as ever – if they don’t use D/P for a lame powder-stealth-repeat routine.
- Mesmer seems the same as before. Tough, annoying, but identification is their bane.
- Elementalist either die quickly, or can’t die (and do no damage either).
- Necromancer new hurting conditions, tougher than ever. Lot of utility to walk away.
- Engineer spiking is popular; avoid burst makes it simple. Condition-build impossible as ever.

Seeing as how S/D and D/D are both quite ineffective against the sheer pressure the rampant condition and cleric builds output, I don’t really see how I can come on equal terms at this point (without giving up the profession). I have a decent amount of defense and usually can avoid getting pinned/killed, but my damage output is not sufficient. If I switch some items for the best min/max damage with a little less defense, I still hit like a wet noodle while getting slaughtered only faster.

I have to ponder about my choice to use a sword..

Came to see how thieves were doing after a good bunch of months, see its mostly the same thieves getting kicked in the balls plus even some “anti stealth” stuff, and warriors with even more faceroll buffs.

Gone again.

Just to add on to what I wrote before. After playing my thief more today, it’s not so much the nerfs we’ve recieved as much as the buffs others have received. If everything were where it was when you left we’d probably be in the same place, but there has been a substantial amount of power creep that we’ve been excluded from.

I disagree. I have fun and succeed on my thief. don’t listen to all the doomsayer victims.

Sanduskel I’m completely open to suggestions that I can try and be more successful

I changed two things that made me significantly more successful. The first change was from the dueling-orientated trait configuration 0/10/30/30 to 0/30/20/20 for the additional critical strike, critical damage and the executioner trait. As a result, I do a lot much more damage but my survivability has taken a beating. I need to think about dropping more initiative regeneration in favor of healing in stealth (so that would be 0/30/30/10 instead of the popular 10/30/30 for vigor), but this interferes with the ability to use the sword effectively for boon stripping (due to the absurd cost) and crowd control.

The second change I made was to swap out my off-hand weapon, the Shortbow, for an additional dagger so I now have D/D on off-hand (don’t do this if you’re in a Zerg or flipping camps, you want the bow there). The main point for me is not to rely on D/D as anything I consider a primary weapon, it doesn’t feel suited for it anymore. I usually engage with the S/D to wear down an opponent and deal with the boons, until I get fury and executioner kicks in, then attempt finish the job with D/D. Of course, Guardians (and some rare other builds) can burst heal so I have to repeat the process several times on those fights. The major downside of not having a Shortbow on the switch is creating gaps using clever teleportation and not being able to deal with the one-trick wonder Necromancer ability to turn into a cloud that spreads blind and conditions, or the very annoying D/P thieves.

I still use Melandru and Berserker/Knight with condition reduction food. It still bothers me that I am so much more effective on my Healaway Guardian or BM Ranger without investing any time in learning how these classes really work, but alas, thus is the life of a thief I suppose. I’ll drop for more feedback at some point if someone has something cool to try or I find something worthwhile.