Guild Wars 2

MMm Body shot causing weakness I LOVE IT!!!! Excellent!!! For a P/D thief like myself I would be all over Body Shot causing weakness

I’m hoping for:

More combo fields
Removal of traps utilities entirely
Pistol/Pistol fix
Traits adjustment
More access to boons

Mug is an issue in WvW, particularly the Cloak&Dagger + Mug → Backstab combo. The burst is a bit too high when everything is stacked on top of it.

Since C&D and Backstab are essential components of other builds and play patterns, and are not particularly out of line on their own merits, Mug is clearly the place to target to pull some damage off. It is a pure burst damage trait that stacks seamlessly with other sources of burst damage, so pulling damage off if it will have the least collateral damage.

I’ve been thinking about it a bit today and I’m pretty much convinced that if you pull damage off it, it should just be a lowering of the ratio. Traits are better when they have a clear purpose, and this one’s is burst. It is all about getting a good Mug crit to apply a burst and finish someone off. Muddling that with further restrictions doesn’t lead to better play patterns, it just makes the skill awkward.

Mug should be designed and balanced for optimal use in crit-heavy burst builds; lower the ratio until the burst it provides in that capacity feels fair. I’d just pull 20% of the damage off it and see how it goes – compression is kind of important to deal with the tank trolls out there that are only becoming more numerous by the day.

Yes, Deadly Arts needs more general purpose DPS traits to compete with Mug burst, but that’s a long conversation about all the issues with the current trait set-up.

I really don’t see them nerfing mug. Thief burst is the bread and butter for them in tPvP. Without it they are useless. They aren’t going to touch it unless they do an entire overhaul unless they are willing to let the profession become useless at the high end.

Daecollo.9578:

Mug should just do 35% max health damage, percent based to any mob or player!

Thieves will be wanted in instances!

Deep wound stacking in intensity.

Stiv.1820:

I really don’t see them nerfing mug. Thief burst is the bread and butter for them in tPvP. Without it they are useless. They aren’t going to touch it unless they do an entire overhaul unless they are willing to let the profession become useless at the high end.

Well they won’t touch Mug for tPvP because they already nerfed Cloak and Dagger to accomplish the same thing in tPvP – which I consider to have been a big mistake, but that is neither here nor there.

Stiv.1820:

I really don’t see them nerfing mug. Thief burst is the bread and butter for them in tPvP. Without it they are useless.

ANet mistake #1: WvW uses the PvE ruleset/gear.

qqqqqqqqqq

My face hit my desk when I read about their decision in beta.

EasymodeX.4062:

Stiv.1820:

I really don’t see them nerfing mug. Thief burst is the bread and butter for them in tPvP. Without it they are useless.

ANet mistake #1: WvW uses the PvE ruleset/gear.

qqqqqqqqqq

My face hit my desk when I read about their decision in beta.

I honestly feel it works, for one reason. Fact is, WvW is one big free-for-all. The only issue is when some poor uplevelled noob in blues runs into a “proper” 80. Exotics out the anus, and all that. If anything, it’s arguably the pvp separation (while understandable) that throws the whole biz out the bloody windows.

My balancing wishlist:

Bad players lose forum posting privilege.

EasymodeX.4062:

ANet mistake #1: WvW uses the PvE ruleset/gear.

I’m glad they made that decision. It probably saved WvW from suffering the same fate as their sPvP.

I certainly don’t want the good parts of the game being balanced around a bad minigame.

Thieves are fine. They’ve been nerfed enough.

I’d love for some P/P love. They’re fine and all but still got no purpose which is kind of sad and I really love that set(been running it in dungeons lately).

I agree with every change in the OP but not the Mug nerf and here is why.

I play Warrior, Guard and Thief.
All of them have a way to jump in, down a person or more, and back away.
A Thief without Mug is not able to down any sentient being without being killed in the process.
It would give too much time to the other person to heal up, while now the other person should instead blow an anti-burst cooldown.

I.e. if a Thief charges my Warrior while unexpected and from behind with Mug chances are he’s getting the kill.
Without Mug I only get 4-5k from CnD, nullify BS with EP, and heal up to full with heal.
This leaves the Thief with no tools against a Warrior with full health.

I’d say that a 8-10k up-front damage is mandatory, especially since no person with decent skills will get hit by BS.

Heartseeker on the other hand needs init cost raised because I’m tired of seeing fellow thieves spamming 2. This would force them to l2p.

I don’t think increasing Heartseeker to 4 ini is the right solution imo, that’s a fairly large pve nerf to both D/D and D/P. In fact, I don’t even think D/D would use Heartseeker at all at that point aside from being a gap closer (at which point, why not just make it a real gap closer?).

I they should probably just nerf the values again, in PVP only. Or maybe break Heartseeker down to just 2 ranges:

100-34% = current 100-50% damage
33% and under = current 25% and under damage.

From a general game standpoint, I’d like to see initiative operate on a sliding scale of regeneration: the less initiative you have, the slower it naturally regenerates. I think this would help curb general spamming, without terribly affecting players who play from a steady damage standpoint and already manage their initiative use. However, that’s just my opinion.

As others have stated, I’d like to see a 2% Steal recharge reduction instead of 1%. Also, I think Mug damage nerf (20-30%) is appropriate, or make it never crit but give it a higher damage ratio. I would prefer this over adding bleeds, since that would reduce Mug’s effectiveness in PvE (at least to me), specifically dungeons where you see a lot of conditions capping.

I also think Basilisk Venom should not activate with Mug, and should be reverted back to it’s previous version of being an unbreakable stun (considering it’s only 1.5 seconds).

I’d like to see Dancing Dagger’s initiative cost dropped to 3, since the damage was cut by half in previous nerfs. I also agree that Heartseeker’s initiative should be upped to 4, and perhaps make it an evade as well (since it already looks like an evading animation). This would put it about on par with Disabling Shot.

Rusc.4978:

From a general game standpoint, I’d like to see initiative operate on a sliding scale of regeneration: the less initiative you have, the slower it naturally regenerates. I think this would help curb general spamming, without terribly affecting players who play from a steady damage standpoint and already manage their initiative use. However, that’s just my opinion.

that would punish heavy initiative usage builds and force everyone to go auto
since dagger auto does more than anything else (other than an axe) it would force everybody to mainhand dagger.

I heard a rumor about a revealed buff increase. I hope that it is heavily compensated for… my expectations from what I heard then:

Revealed increased from 3 to 4 seconds.
Dancing Dagger initiative cost reduced to 3, projectile speed increased by 100%.
Death blossom initiative cost reduced to 4.

That’s it really from what i think they’ll change. What i would want to see is below. Changes assume a 4 second revealed buff rather than the current 3 second one.
Black power: lasts 1 second longer or bigger combo field.
- This is really for tanking mobs in pve. It doesn’t change much in pvp.

Infiltrator’s arrow (shortbow 5) causes 3 seconds stealth. No longer causes blind.
- Shortbow really lacks options for stealthing other than your utility slots and it has one of the strongest stealth #1s on a thief in Surprise Shot. What I’m looking at here is more access to that ability especially considering other classes access to Immobilize on short cooldowns. The shadowstep component would still work during Revealed. The blind component IMO seems useless on a weapon skill 5 slot especially at the cost this skill has. This could potentially make a better gap closer this way as well with the thief swapping to another weapon to use the stealth.

Signet of malice: Attacks remove 1 condition once every 5 seconds instead of healing on attack.
- My thief doesn’t use this much at all simply because it’s not as attractive as Hide in Shadows. This one would trade it’s passive healing for condition removal. Shortbow thieves would benefit most from this rather than having a really low passive heal.

Withdraw: The thief gains 2 initiative when activating this skill.
- Also not as attractive as Hide in Shadows this one could use a little help. It would slightly mirror Roll for Initiative and make this more useful for dodge build thieves (as an alternative to stealthing).

Utilities:
Signet of Shadows: Activate effect causes stealth instead of blinding foes.
- With the nerf to revealed accessiblity to stealth can be increased without breaking stealth balance. Signet of Shadows currently takes a permanent spot on my thief’s bar because of the speed boost it’s passive effect provides. The current blind activate is lackluster at best. I’ve found situations where it’s useful but a stealth activate would be more useful. I know, i want swap it out but the ability to close gaps on fleeing enemies is too valuable to leave it off.