Guild Wars 2

Torment is a cool condition. Really, it brings an interesting mechanic to the table and allows to an extent a form of bypassing the condition stack cap.

There is, however, a massive problem with torment: Its implementation, coming out after the game’s release, has allowed for some intended functionality of certain condition cleanses to be effectively made less effective than they need to be, or how they were intended and designed to function. This is no more apparent than on the thief class – which aside from Shadowtep – has very strict condition removal utility skills, and with the game pushing even more torment, makes the thief even more dependent on certain and specific setups. Most people will agrue that Shadowstep is almost required due to its condition removal, sword’s infiltrator’s strike’s condition cleanse makes the weapon gain a lot of utility otherwise missing from the class, and that Shadow Arts is almost necessary for any thief using dagger mainhand.

The problem with torment is that the thief class is dependent on moving constantly – and this is an intended design principle of the class according to ANet. So it is almost guaranteed that the target, if a thief, will eat the maximum applied damage, which is a substantial number due to thief’s inherently low base HP. Torment is also not easily cleansed by the default heals of the thief class, and has arguably the best condition damage scaling with the highest reliability, as confusion can be negated by not attacking, which any other class which may lack substantial removal can succeed in doing.

So what is the proposed solution? It’s relatively simple: Allow for the Hide in Shadows and Withdraw heal skills to also cure torment, while removing the condition cleansing on the second half of Shadowstep, and reducing the condition cleansing on Shadow’s Embrace to apply once every 4 seconds instead of 3.

Why? Because it follows the design principles of the skills themselves. Hide and Shadows, before Torment was released, was designed to remove all DoT conditions. Torment is a DoT effect, so I see no reason why it wasn’t added to this list. Doing so allows for thieves to spec into HiS for a condition cleanse which is important on low-health classes as many other heals offer, while taking other utilies, weapons, or traits.

With Withdraw, the skill is designed to recover mobility by removing mobility-impairing conditons and allow for the thief to keep moving. As it stands, torment stays in effect, therefore making movement painful. The “counter” to torment is standing still, and this utility is supposed to counter conditions designed at impairing mobility.

EDIT: The following about Shadowstep has been removed from the suggestion (I was using an out-dated skill fact as the basis for the assertion as I personally do not run Shadowstep).

And for Shadowstep? Remove the condition cleanse on return. Shadowstep is just too good and fills all of the holes of the class’s defense. It’s too good because it blinks once for gap-close, twice as an avoidance mechanic, enables resets, breaks stuns twice, and cures six conditions on a 50 second cooldown (Was referencing an outdated skill fact). These effects are mandatory for functional classes in PvP environments, but many other classes boast utilities which offer these effects and others throughout an array of skills which are all each individually condusive to a given build. Reducing the dependency on Shadowstep and buffing the class where it needs it elsewhere in order to nerf it increases diversity within the classes and enables more widespread use of skills without just needing to buff numbers.

For Shadow’s Embrace, I understand that stealth only has a base duration of three seconds. But that’s the point. Being able to maintain condition removal via stealth should be more than a 2pt investment, especially when removal by heals is being increased. There are plenty of other good 2pt traits in SA anyways, further increasing diversity. This can make Shadow Arts a real defensive line with real trait decisions, but not making it necessary for good removal on stealth-attack builds, opening the doors to more alternaties like venoms, signets, tricks, traps, and so on.

DeceiverX.8361:

Allow for the Hide in Shadows and Withdraw heal skills to also cure torment, while removing the condition cleansing on the second half of Shadowstep, and reducing the condition cleansing on Shadow’s Embrace to apply once every 4 seconds instead of 3.

And for Shadowstep? Remove the condition cleanse on return. Shadowstep is just too good and fills all of the holes of the class’s defense.

Not sure if trolling.
If you aren’t:
So, you’re suggesting to add one extra removal of a specific condition (torment) to heal skills at the cost of nerfing shadowstep and shadows embrace which are able to clear ANY condition?

How many classes are able to land huge stacks of torment and cover it with enough conditions that you would need a skill that targets torment directly to ensure it is removed every time?

How many even have access to the torment condition?

DeceiverX.8361:

Reduce the dependency on shadowstep. It’s too good because it blinks once for gap-close, twice as an avoidance mechanic, enables resets, breaks stuns twice, and cures six conditions on a 50 second cooldown. T

Six conditions? Don’t ask for changes to a class you don’t know.
Shadowstep removes 3.

DeceiverX.8361:

Being able to maintain condition removal via stealth should be more than a 2pt investment, especially when removal by heals is being increased.

There are plenty of other good 2pt traits in SA anyways, further increasing diversity.

This is the same logic as anet’s “reducing dependency on sword”. Contrary to what they/you think, nerfing something that everybody takes doesn’t balance things. It just completely cuts off a UP class hanging onto the meta via a string of a good trait or skill.
If everybody is using slotting X skill because they would be very weak without it, the correct way to reduce dependency would be to buff the other skills so that they can get what they need without using this skill.

Last summer, you could play X/6/X/6/X because sword dagger could take boons efficiently if you landed larcenous strike a lot. But by doing nerfs aimed at “reducing dependency on sword” they’ve made almost all spvp thieves have a new dependency on 4-6 Trickery for bountiful theft (and sleight of hand.)

Just run 2 in shadow arts if you think torment is a huge problem. If you’ve duelled using thief for a long time you’d know that to fight a skilled condition spammer you don’t need to declare that you’re being hard countered, but you do need 2 SA. It’s only two points and doesn’t disrupt most builds, be happy for that.

At the rate that we’re seeing torment increase in application, yes. When pairing SE and Shadowstep with HiS, there is a lot of condition cleansing going on, but these are the only available ways to remove torment. Also, my apologies. I was working with an out-dated tooltip (I do main thief but to not use Shadowstep), which stated that stuns are broken and three conditions are cured on both parts of the skill. Since it only cures three as it stands, it doesn’t need a rework. Edited/Fixed original post.

The fact that torment in general cannot be removed except from SE and Shadowstep (I proposed no changes to sword since it doesn’t deserve any changes as the removal is part of the benefit of using sword and is not build-restrictive) is in itself a problem. Mechanisms used to negate damage sources should negate damage sources. With access to torment on the rise, there is little reason to consider adapting the heals to accommodate for this. It also prevents thieves from gaining access to far too much condition removal if the access is just increased. I’m not sure if you looked at the incoming changes, but mesmers will now be able to apply a near constant twelve stacks of torment without trying, or if you’re really crazy, a near-constant 20+. Effectively what you’re saying is that you need to use Shadow Arts or Shadowstep to have even some kind of hope to kill a good one.

By saying “just invest two points in SA” you’re effectively saying that if the thief only had access to one dodge, it would be okay if you had to invest two points into a specific trait line that offers no use beyond giving the player a second dodge to make them comparable to other classes, while also having the 1 pt trait be uncontrollable and that counteracts the design philosophy of the trait/can kill the user.