It’s not the class that got gutted, it’s the whole combat system that got gutted by Anet’s ingnorance to take everythign about it into consideration about Class Balance.
Evwerythign what Naet knows about their Class balancing in GW2 seems to be reduced to only include
- Skill Changes
- Trait Changes
- Weapon Range Changes
Thats about all what ANet constantly did over the nearly 4 years, with some exceptions in between ..but thats by far not everything, what affects the combat system and the class balance.
I can repeat myself about this again and again and again and so more I must repeat this myself, so more does it show, that I’m right about this, as Anet keeps on making with every balance patch the same mistakes
- This Game needs a complete rework around the Base Health System first, because the current Base Health System is for the current Game Balance State absolutely OUTDATED, all Health Values and the whle System behind it were thought out and balanced for the game at its freakign RELEASE STATE of Class Balance, where tons of Class Chances, Trait Chances ect. pp all didn’t exist.
ANet freaking finally needs to adjust the Health System to the current Game Balance State by raising the Health Values more or less and give finalyl all Classes INDIVIDUAL Health Values, instead of Class Type based values, which force in this case Thieves to have same as much Base Health as like Elementalists and Guardians, when their Health Value under the current Game Balance State should be more similar to that of a Ranger, Mesmer or Revenant due to all Classes dishing out by now far more DPS, than what we were able to do at 2012, especiually in regard of Conditions which are totally out of control still since 23rd June of 2015!!
- Conditions and Boons together are absolutely out of control, they need all to be completely reworked, rebalanced and merged as good as possible, to reduce in both, Conditions as well as like in Boons the total amount of them to make them all more overviewable, while on the same go the game itselfs will profit from a performance boost by this change due to havign alot lesser crap to calculate secondly in a battle, what will mean also alot lesser LAG in the game in largescale combats
- The whole underwater gameplay system needs a redesign/rebalance including the introduction of own independent underwater traits to help making underwater combat balanced, while also redesigning weapon skills especially for the thief, because we lose over 50% of our whole combat efficiency and build diversity the moment we enter as thief water combat!! and this is totally UNACCEPTABLE!!
Somethign that can be solved only via completely redesignign all water skills for all classes, and giving for further detailed class balancing all classes also especially for underwater content their own underwater traits that are designed around the underwater combat and its mechanics. Add to this also more underwater build diversity by finalyl addign more useable weapons under water, its really pathetic that we can’t use under water daggers, swords, axes and maces for example.. that are all completely functional weapons one shold be able to wield..when you can wield underwater also somethinng heavy and impractical as like a 2handed SPEAR, giving you basically no room anymore to swim and dive normaly, while you hold it, unless you actually hold it in just one hand to perform that way thrust attacks or swings, what is exactly what our character models are doing..because actually is a spear a 1 hand weapon thats supposed to be THROWN.. underwater that name should be renamed actually to Harpoon and change the Harpoon Gun into a Crossbow and remove Tridents and merge their Skins into those of the Staff, so that Trident skins can be used on land as like underwater, while removing at the same time an complete obsolete weapon type from the game, but that all is a different topic…
- All Rune Sets and Weapon Upgrades need to be looked over and rebalanced more accordign to the changes that have been done to Skills, Traits and so on, because the upgrades heavily influence the overall class balance in regard of which build is played by the class. Certain rune and weapon upgrade effects do have heavy influence on it in this game, if a class build is absolute superior and due to this the meta, or if the same thing is suddenly absolutely too weak and not competitive/viable any,more when combined with specific class builds.
For my taste is doing way too less about Runes and Weapon Upgrades, they keep on adding only just more ancd ore of them, but ignore for my taste them too muich, when its about to balance them….a rune/weapon upgrade balance patch once every 2 years or so is bar far not enough to keep this game balanced, when you add constantly in between countless new runes ect. this needs to become more constantly looked on.
It speaks for itself, that it took Anet soo long to finally nerf the Rune of Perplexity …
- To brign especially the Thief forward and to make this class become in all game modes more viable again, there needs to happen some fundemental changes within this Class:
1) The Thief needs to become able finally to detect and neutralize safely Enemy Traps and, to make the Thief the naturaly Counter Class to 1) Dragonhunter, 2) Trapper Rangers and lastly 3) itself as Stealth Trapper. Thieves should have a biological inherent sixth sense to feel, when there are traps in their near and how they avoid them and sabotage them so that they hurt their enemies instead of them, or remove them, if for a sabotage is not enough time
2) The Thief is stealing way too less. Boon Stealing needs to become a thieves much strogner costant trademark ability thats all the time a thieves goal, a thief should always steal something whenever they get the chance and Thieves should have the unique ability to weaken foes, buy directly reducing their stats through disarming them, leading to temporal loss of either weapon skill access similar to being stunned, or loss to attributes when equipment got stripped off from a foe temporarely.
For this concent to understand and to realize, that this change needs to happen to make our Thief Class more trustworthy , one needs to have had played only Ragnarok Online and its Thief Class and its follow up Specializations there, the Rogue.
Our Thieves’s Stealing mechanic in GW2 is one of the lousiest Steal Interpretations ive ever seen, because all what we do it gettign a enemy class based skill, which is always the same thing, thus makes our stealign extremely predictable in combat, whilke it absolutely doesn’t weaken our foe, because our enemy actualyl lost absolutely NOTHING, its notbhing but a FAKE STEAL what we thieves do in combat, if our enemy doesn#t really lose somethign and is temporarely weakened by that loss, because thats the whole combat psychlogy of a thief to get stronger by takign something our enemy away to weaken them in combat this way… thats the thief mentality which I miss in this game, instead we get this silly “we fight fire with fire mentality” that absolutely doesn’t fit to a thief..
This fits maybe much better to a Mesmer, who tricks his foes, by fighting fire with fire through arcane thievery copying the skills via illusions of the enemy to use them against themself…but not to a traditional classic thief….that shadowsteps like an assasin over the whole battlefield to kill quickly foes and whose sole purpose is it to become stronger by weakening their foes and to support others through stealth, venoms, sabotages, boon sharing/stealing and especially trap control! to remove all the thigns, that all others can’t see or sense out of their way so that they don’t run into their deadly ends without beign first warned by their thief ally, where they shouldn’t go to, before they were there first
by merking skilsl and traits for the thief, Anet could create the needed space for the thief for new skilsl and trait,s that could be functionally so useful, that they bring back the thief class in all game mode to be more useful, viable and a threat to fear also again in 1v1’s
- Another neccedssary step for the overall game balance of GW2 is an overwork of the Attribute System, changing it into an Dual Effect System where every Attribute should provide instead of 1 effect only 2 ones, to make each Attribute more important and to have each attribute have a bit more meaningful impact on the class balancing and the overall combat system balance.
Changing Attributes to Dual Effects would allow Naet also to add more necessary defense mechanic synergies into the attribute System, which currently provides only a snygy effect for the offensive attributes.
- Damage Types need to get merged, there shouldn’t be Condition Damage… Conditions are meant to influence the combat, they should’t replace the job of direct damage for. We also din’t have Condition Damage back in GW1, so what should this Condition Damage nonsense in GW2???
In GW1 it was all just damage between weapon types among Slash, Blunt and Piercing Damage and Elemental Damage based upon the games magical elements
GW2 woudl be alot easier to balance, if we could reduce this all down to just only Damage, this would solve also the problem, that Conditions are totally out of control right now.
In regard of multiple Condition Build players playing together, they should synergzy in regard of “Condition-Intensity”.
As Individually all Conditions should be Duration Based, but when multiple Condi players come together, they should synergize in regard of their total intensity simply
Example PvE. 1 Condi Necro fights agaisnt Tequatl, his Skilsl can deal only Conditions over X seconds of Duration, which don’t deal high damage, they have only influence major influences on the combat efficiency of the enemy.
50 condi Necros fight agaisnt Tequatl, now the intensity of the shared conditions is intensified x50 if they can sychronize to keep up condition x within its duration, before it exprises, and over the duration the intensity builds up, so more necros keep on using skills over tiem that produce condition X, before the condition could run out raisign this way together over tiem the stacks of a condition.
Necro 1 casts Bleeding = 1 Stack of Bleeding
Necro 2 casts Bleeding = 2 Stacks of Bleeding as long its duration hasn#t expired.
Necro 3 casts Bleeding = 3 Stackks of Bleeding now
and so on …
This way can every Condi do something in a mass scale combat to do, while still dishing out normal damage, but that much weaker, than a power poil,d thats focused on raw damage, with less to no conditions at all in their build and instead therefore more hard crowd control skills which stun, knowdown, launch ect.
With the change to Dual Effect Attributres could receive GW2 finally defensive Combat System mechanics, that would significantly helpt to reduce this games power creep to bring it basck to normal by adding defensive asttribute effetcs that reduce the chance to receive critical hits, that increase the endurance regeneration speed and reduce effectively for you the duration time of conditions you suffer on.
by Merging damage types it woudl be also possible to let the few remaing conditons that can deal damage over tiem become able to deal critical hits as well, due to Cindi builds having then also finally to put more emphasis into their attributes they use, instead of focusing everything only onto Condition Damage and the rest is only nice bonus for them, while power builds need more attributes than just 1 maxed out one to get viable results to be ready for meta play competition…
I#d wish to have a Thief Class, thats far more unpredictable in combat and dangerous, due to their constant stealing of boons with that they empower themself and their ability to actually really weaken foes by taking them really somethign away in the middle of the battle, instead of doing these stupid fake steals where the enemy loses nothign at all.
Disarming/Stripping needs to become a thieves most vital combat strategy by becoming stronmger by actually taking the foe somethign away that they need to fight effectively agaisnt you, while you are constantly in alert and looking for hidden traps that you can avoid and remove if neccesary to help your allies this way out as a part of group support that could be unique for the thief. The thief needs this counter gameplay mechanic to make them more trustworthy asthieves
How trustworthy is please a thief, which can’t even perform in combat the absolute most simply thief basic skills – detecting traps and actually taking your target victims somethign really away without that they can’t fight agaisnt you as effectively anymore, as long the enemy couldn’t retrieve the stolen item back from you????
How owesomewoudl it be to prform the finishing move agaisnt an enemy with the enemies stolen weapon in hands, killing them with their own weapons, if you wwre able to disarm your enemy shortly before you could down them to prform then the finishing move with the disarmed enemy weapon in your hands? That woudl be cool ,that would unique, that would be really innovative!! and that woudl be fitting for a thief how they would kill their enemies by degrading them by beign killed with their own weapons!!
Personally I like the idea behind sub classes ~ quoted from Chris Whiteside
