Guild Wars 2

- Perma Stealth Thieves
- Perma Stun Warriors
- -/+40% Condition Duration Food

Thats it already! 3 simple changes! Increase revealed to minimum 10 seconds, nerf mace stun to 1.5-2 seconds. Nerf the condition duration food to -/+15% maximum. There.. 90% of broken game mechanics eliminated.

You sound like a necro.

That would be an ecumenical matter.

I agree with the OP, but none of this is going to happen.

for the record, i am a warrior.

Won’t even start anything with the perma stealthing. But I can address couple things with the latter two.

Condi reduction should be dropped a little bit, to somewhere -25% or so, but then again, the condi increasing food should be reduced at same amount.

You know mace burst was pretty much useless back when it was 2 seconds because hammer burst was 2 seconds as well and it was AoE and did little bit more damage. Now if you want to compensate the stun duration on it by increasing the damage that would mean that the damage should be higher than hammers (atleast 1.5 times higher) making it pretty dam powerful. You would see 10+k mace bursts after that ;P

Steelo.4597:

1 – Perma Stealth Thieves
2 – Perma Stun Warriors
3 – -40% Condition Duration Food

Thats it already! 3 simple changes! Increase revealed to minimum 10 seconds, nerf mace stun to 1.5-2 seconds and make it do more damage scaling with adrenaline instead. Nerf the condition duration food to -15% maximum. There.. 90% of broken game mechanics eliminated.

1 – Yes, but increasing revealed duration doesn’t help with this at all. Fighting thieves will be easier then it already is. It’s the get out of jail free card that needs work. After nerfing perma-stealth, thieves need serious buffs.
2 – You can nerf this yourself by dodging, blind spamming (talking about broken mechanics), aegis, dodging some more, blocking, CCing, kiting, dodging even more, and finally stunbreaking. I’m forgetting stuff.
3 – Hell no

I don’t understand how people can advertise nerfing condition duration reduction food in a game that is dominated by (AoE) condition spam… Unless they play conditions off course.

If you reduce the effectiveness of this food by even 10%, you need to reduce the increasing food by twice as much, at least. Then we’re not even talking about the absurd condi duration increases most classes get out of traits.

I get the first 2 but why the food nerf?
I would agree with a previous poster that you must be a necro yo.
Considering the amount of conditions a necro can drop on you these days and the addition of the new runes -40% cond duration is fine.
If -cond food was nerfed I would want a similar nerf in +cond duration runes and traits.

why the food nerf? because you get -65% condition duration just from 6 runes and 1 piece of food? thats a joke. compare it with power damage.. there would need to be runes that give +3000 toughness and food that gives like +5000 toughness or something. i dont mind nerfs to +condition duration food aswell, i actually agree, also in the traits.

edit: i took out the thing about mace damage increase. first of all im not a mace user so i dont even have a good picture of how much damage it does. 2nd i dont want to get into the balance discussion, just get rid of broken crap which Anet cant seem to grasp.

the mace 2 second stun was before burst mastery, remember that when making that argument. i rather think the other skills suck (mainhand 1, 2, 3), not the burst one. also wouldnt mind a nerf on hammer burst damage or a rework/move of unsuspecting foe. but lets not get into warrior discussion too much, these 3 things are just ridiculous and need to go.

Leave the condition food alone. Just set a cap to how much condition duration can be reduced. This way players that don’t want the trait still have a food option. It’s only an issue because the food and trait stack.

Perma stealth is only an issue with blind field on pistol off-hand. Change leap finishers to an Aegis or to grant protection. Blast finishers are fine because they’re all AE and the thief runs the risk of hitting someone with it. The leap finisher can be changed with ease. Alternatively, fix the thief initiative regen as that’s the root cause of the problem.

Warrior stun duration is only an issue because of the sigils. I say change stuns in this game to have a max duration that way players can choose to go with the runes or sigils or go with the trait if they have access to it. Alternatively, introduce stun immunity == to 1.5 times the duration of the stun. So each time you’re stunned you gain stun and a boon that grants stun immunity. This way if you break the stun you can’t be restunned right away too.

Not convinced this is enough to ‘balance’ things though. Burn is still excessively strong. SoR and Banner Regen are overpowered. Classes that can stack and maintain 25 might on their own is overpowered. Power builds for classes like Rangers, Necros, and Engineers are still woefully inadequate. And this doesn’t even touch on the obvious issues of WvW in general.

gain +40% life from food, or +5000 toughness.. that would be the same in terms of other stats. no its not ok to leave the condition duration food alone. cant comment on thief ideas as i have no experience, like your idea about stuns though.

these suggestions dont aim to “balance things out” in a final sense.. i just want to get rid of totally broken stuff. they are the first step that needs to be taken, balancing anything else is completely ridiculous in the face of these issues.

I disagree with the food and warrior, Stealth has been broken from the start and has need to be fixed for ALONG time.

Stealth needs to be a “at the right time” sort of deal, not all the time…

I like how you are blindly talking about “-” condition runes/food, but not mentioning a single word about “+” condition duration things: +30% condi from traits, +40% from food, +20% from giver weapons +X for specific or overall from runes and sigils. That’s way more “pluses” than “minuses”. In my opinion it’s pretty fair.

I do agree about perma stealth thieves or about reworking this class overall.

there, fixed that for you, it was also mentioned in responses if you cared to read those. also it depends on the math, if those durations are simply added and subtracted then the issues are somewhat related (although.. condi cleansing), however from what i remember it doesnt work out like that.

Condition duration > condition reduction by a long shot. I am talking about mechanics here, not gear.

care to share / link those mechanics? because from what i remember from hearsay its quite the other way around, condition duration reduction > condition duration. would be very interested in some hard facts here.

Hopefully I dont screw this up and make a fool of myself

Take for instance elementalist skill Eruption [info taken from the wiki].
Bleeding (six stacks): 12 s (3060 damage)

Lets assume the elementalist has no points in fire (and therefore no added condition duration) and the elementalist uses +40% duration food that would take the duration up from 12 seconds to 16.8 seconds (12×140%).

If you was to then hit someone who has -40% duration (16.8×60%). This would reduce the duration from 16.8 seconds to 10.1 seconds.

That’s why -condi duration food is better than +condi duration food.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Berserker_Stance
Look at this, it might help understanding -/+ condition duration.

It would seem that if one uses +40% condi duration and enemy uses -40 it is equal to unmodified, base duration.

bradderzh.2378:

Hopefully I dont screw this up and make a fool of myself

Take for instance elementalist skill Eruption [info taken from the wiki].
Bleeding (six stacks): 12 s (3060 damage)

Lets assume the elementalist has no points in fire (and therefore no added condition duration) and the elementalist uses +40% duration food that would take the duration up from 12 seconds to 16.8 seconds (12×140%).

If you was to then hit someone who has -40% duration (16.8×60%). This would reduce the duration from 16.8 seconds to 10.1 seconds.

That’s why -condi duration food is better than +condi duration food.

Did you run tests? According to this thread (featuring a video) the +/- durations approximately cancel each other out 1:1. This also explains why my warrior with 98% criple/immo/chill reduction (trait, melandru runes, food) can get these condtitions for several seconds every now and then. If it worked like you say, that would require skills which are able to criple about 100 seconds which I have not seen ingame yet.

Nope no tests lol, just what the math says.

None of these are real issues. There are more important things to apply resources to.

Learn to play
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Lert.6287:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Berserker_Stance
Look at this, it might help understanding -/+ condition duration.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Condition-duration-vs-Condition-duration this one seems to support that statement. but it doesnt even matter, you get -40% damage against any kind of condition damage and against soft CC from non +condition duration users. thats simply OP. if you dont see what i mean, just imagine how this kind of food would have to look against power-based damage or against hard CCs and compare it to the toughness food thats actually in game.

dunnberry.2964:

Learn to play
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Don´t write stupid posts

/24 chars

VOLKON.1290:

None of these are real issues. There are more important things to apply resources to.

THIS.
Dunno why but i smell rosik in this thread..

dunnberry.2964:

Learn to play
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QFT; L2P.

Become the thief. Learn the thief.

Destroy the thief.

I’m just saying it’s not a main problem. To sum my point of view I’d say the only problems are thieves and zerging. Thieves as completly broken class, out of ballance and zerging as the only profitable WvW playstyle (which quite much erases roaming).

About the warrior thingo: While it’s annoying, it’s completly useless against players with long-stability uptime or players with stunbreakers on short cooldowns (such as mesmer). It’s pain in the kitten for vs or situationally when you don’t have stunbreakers ready and not so high toughness. But nothing more than that. It’s one avoidable setup, not the same like with thieves – whole broken class.

Lert.6287:

I’m just saying it’s not a main problem. To sum my point of view I’d say the only problems are thieves and zerging. Thieves as completly broken class, out of ballance and zerging as the only profitable WvW playstyle (which quite much erases roaming).

Totally agree. What they need is more defense, less stealth and less evade – some some insane high evade builds as well. So more traits and skills used for defense rather then what seems to be pure damage and burst.

Steelo.4597:

Increase revealed to minimum 10 seconds

I’m not even a thief and this made me laugh.

Shanks R Us.2489:

Steelo.4597:

Increase revealed to minimum 10 seconds

I’m not even a thief and this made me laugh.

To me what needs to be done for Thief;

- Less Stealth, duration and number of skills that give it need to be reduced
+ Increase traits and skills that have a defensive (non stealth!) defensive option

To me, 90% of thieves defensive options are tied to stealth, the problem is to much of there attack is as well, with traits for increasing crit to 100%, increasing damage, speed and everything else.

In my opinion, Stealth should be more of a well timed skill rather then being spammable and being nearly Perma-stealth.

The number one problem with Thief (2nd being damage) is just how much stealth they have, how easily accessed it is and how long it lasts. Unless you have plenty of stuns/dazes available right at the moment the revealed buff is about to end you will not get a thief down before they go into stealth again/

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Shanks R Us.2489:

Steelo.4597:

Increase revealed to minimum 10 seconds

I’m not even a thief and this made me laugh.

To me what needs to be done for Thief;

- Less Stealth, duration and number of skills that give it need to be reduced
+ Increase traits and skills that have a defensive (non stealth!) defensive option

To me, 90% of thieves defensive options are tied to stealth, the problem is to much of there attack is as well, with traits for increasing crit to 100%, increasing damage, speed and everything else.

In my opinion, Stealth should be more of a well timed skill rather then being spammable and being nearly Perma-stealth.

The number one problem with Thief (2nd being damage) is just how much stealth they have, how easily accessed it is and how long it lasts. Unless you have plenty of stuns/dazes available right at the moment the revealed buff is about to end you will not get a thief down before they go into stealth again/

They don’t have any real traits to give them stuff though. The only way a Thief could function in this game without stealth working exactly as it does now would be to give them protection for 5 seconds every time they crit with a stacking duration. They’re that dependent on it.

When all is said and done, the only thing that’s really abusing stealth right now is the kitten tol offhand with leap finishers.

A better solution would be to just introduce a way to reveal stealthed targets. For example… reduce the damage on burning and make it so burning will put a revealed debuff while they’re also burning.

Solves part of the condi imbalance and makes a realistic counter to stealth available to quite a few classes. Thieves may end up overnerfed with this change, but it’s probably easier to buff them from a nerfed state than nerf them from their current state.

If you remove stealth from the thief the class will just devolve into a less viable version of the warrior or guardian. Stealth is easy to counter I really don’t understand why people are still complaining about it. The best strategy is to deny the thief stealth. People have already learned how to do this with CnD (long, telegraphed animation) and it can be done against d/p as well by standing inside the blind AoE (limiting the amount of stealth and costing the thief a lot of initiative). If the thief does manage to attain stealth your auto-attack or any AoEs work wonders to prevent the incoming backstab. I suggest playing a thief to understand the mechanics/mindset, after I did that I rarely die to a thief when playing mesmer/guardian/warrior/engie (can’t speak for other classes as I don’t play them). In fact it becomes one of the most predictable and easy to counter classes in the game.

Bacon.4918:

If you remove stealth from the thief the class will just devolve into a less viable version of the warrior or guardian. Stealth is easy to counter I really don’t understand why people are still complaining about it. The best strategy is to deny the thief stealth. People have already learned how to do this with CnD (long, telegraphed animation) and it can be done against d/p as well by standing inside the blind AoE (limiting the amount of stealth and costing the thief a lot of initiative). If the thief does manage to attain stealth your auto-attack or any AoEs work wonders to prevent the incoming backstab. I suggest playing a thief to understand the mechanics/mindset, after I did that I rarely die to a thief when playing mesmer/guardian/warrior/engie (can’t speak for other classes as I don’t play them). In fact it becomes one of the most predictable and easy to counter classes in the game.

None of this is true but the first line where you said the class is dependent on stealth. And I play a thief…

A Thief is fragile… but not to the point they wouldn’t just lunge at you if you’re AEing or not to get a backstab on you. There’s also no way to stop a thief from leaping through their field to gain stealth short of knocking them down. And we already have thieves who can perma stealth the entire length of the battlefield. This is because iniatiave regen is so insanely out of whack they don’t care about how inefficient blackpowder+heartseeker is. 9 vs 6, 2 of which is refunded anyway due to Infusion so it’s only 1 extra initiative.

Nothing you have listed has any need to be removed.

I agree 100% with the food issue. It makes certain classes able to completely ignore all control effects, making them nigh-unkillable in WvW. For instance, a warr or engie (even ele, but they are squishies) can have -33% reduction on chill, cripple, immob from trait, -25 % from melandru, and -40% from food, meaning -98% reduction on these condis. Add that to a tanky build with mobility and good dps and you have a build that will only die when they want to/over-extend.

Also, the +condi food is only worthwhile on a condi class, and thus every non-condi class loses access to all soft-cc against these builds.

Without this food, the stun-warrior is much weaker and doesn’t need as much, or even any adjustment in wvw.

Steelo.4597:

- Perma Stealth Thieves
- Perma Stun Warriors
- -/+40% Condition Duration Food

Thats it already! 3 simple changes! Increase revealed to minimum 10 seconds, nerf mace stun to 1.5-2 seconds. Nerf the condition duration food to -/+15% maximum. There.. 90% of broken game mechanics eliminated.

Instead of nerfing the living crap out of stealth, make leap finishers through smoke fields not stack (like mesmer haste). That would eliminate ‘perma stealth thieves’…which is just a gimic build anyway. If you are talking about stealthing every 3 secs…no. MAYBE bump it to 4 but no where close to 10….

VOLKON.1290:

None of these are real issues. There are more important things to apply resources to.

Curse the day I agree with Volkon… but yes, none of these are anywhere close to the top 10 issues currently plaguing WvW.

BlackBeard.2873:

I agree 100% with the food issue. It makes certain classes able to completely ignore all control effects, making them nigh-unkillable in WvW. For instance, a warr or engie (even ele, but they are squishies) can have -33% reduction on chill, cripple, immob from trait, -25 % from melandru, and -40% from food, meaning -98% reduction on these condis. Add that to a tanky build with mobility and good dps and you have a build that will only die when they want to/over-extend.

Also, the +condi food is only worthwhile on a condi class, and thus every non-condi class loses access to all soft-cc against these builds.

Without this food, the stun-warrior is much weaker and doesn’t need as much, or even any adjustment in wvw.

Just a quick note about this, you didn’t mention our most devastating trait re: conditions, but you seem to be under the impression that we can be very high DPS while being tanky. This is not the case, I assure you.

We can bring reasonable condition DPS to the table while maintaining higher toughness and a bit of tankiness, but we must choose among limited options for build strength.

If we use the runes, food and traits, our condition duration goes WAY below -100% under certain circumstances, but for this, we sacrifice at least half of our condition DPS.

I do use the Mel. runes, but for the food, I use the +40% condition duration, and for traits, I am just trying to keep myself alive and mobile.

The sky isn’t falling due to Engineers being OP, believe me.

Steelo.4597:

gain +40% life from food, or +5000 toughness.. that would be the same in terms of other stats. no its not ok to leave the condition duration food alone. cant comment on thief ideas as i have no experience, like your idea about stuns though.

these suggestions dont aim to “balance things out” in a final sense.. i just want to get rid of totally broken stuff. they are the first step that needs to be taken, balancing anything else is completely ridiculous in the face of these issues.

Where is my +5000 power food then? Your argument is broken.

i find those comments “i have other issues in mind, those are not the most important” very … hmm what word can i put there without getting infracted? unintelligent maybe?
like anyone cares if you merely state that and dont list them. its like you think we are at a majority vote here or something… make your own list then, but spare the rest of us those useless posts, thank you very much… same goes for L2P btw, thats just the same sort of “i matter!” talk without any content. bring arguments (issues, counters) instead of your VIP status..

dank… /facepalm.

Bacon.4918:

If you remove stealth from the thief the class will just devolve into a less viable version of the warrior or guardian. Stealth is easy to counter I really don’t understand why people are still complaining about it. The best strategy is to deny the thief stealth. People have already learned how to do this with CnD (long, telegraphed animation) and it can be done against d/p as well by standing inside the blind AoE (limiting the amount of stealth and costing the thief a lot of initiative). If the thief does manage to attain stealth your auto-attack or any AoEs work wonders to prevent the incoming backstab. I suggest playing a thief to understand the mechanics/mindset, after I did that I rarely die to a thief when playing mesmer/guardian/warrior/engie (can’t speak for other classes as I don’t play them). In fact it becomes one of the most predictable and easy to counter classes in the game.

My vote ISNT to remove it, but to make it what in my opinion it should have been from the start. A utility that is used at the right time.

This would of course mean changes to SOME weapons, traits and utilities they would need increased defenses from traits and such, maybe a few skills changed to blocks or dodges and such to counter the stealth lose.

Stealth should NOT be a defensive AND offensive bonus. It can currently be used to:

- burst at the start of a fight from stealth
- Reset a fight you are losing
- moving around unnoticed 100% of the time with the right traits and skills

Fix these, make Stealth a utility that you use at the RIGHT time rather then all the time and i think all the hate for Thief would disappear, currently it takes next to no skill to play a thief and do well (be honest, it doesnt) upping the skill requirement make it bit more of a challenge without removing the “fun”

RE: 40% food

The calculations make reduction food strictly better than duration food because of how they do their math. A reduction on minus duration food would only be with the intention of making it balanced compared to plus duration food.

I only bring this up because a lot of people aren’t aware how much stronger minus duration is than plus duration. It’s kind of silly when you get to warrior with melandru, dogged march, lemongrass effectively ignoring soft cc’s.

The thieves that trait for perma stealth are completely useless without it though. Actually, most thieves are. If you pop a stealth trap in WvW on a thief they will run around like a chicken with their head cut off while you obliterate them. Or they will just run away.

What kind of noob warrior use mace in www anyways?

Pinko.2076:

RE: 40% food

The calculations make reduction food strictly better than duration food because of how they do their math. A reduction on minus duration food would only be with the intention of making it balanced compared to plus duration food.

I only bring this up because a lot of people aren’t aware how much stronger minus duration is than plus duration. It’s kind of silly when you get to warrior with melandru, dogged march, lemongrass effectively ignoring soft cc’s.

See my previous post and the linked thread. Essentially, minus and plus duration negate each other.

Steelo.4597:

- Perma Stealth Thieves
- Perma Stun Warriors
- -/+40% Condition Duration Food

Thats it already! 3 simple changes! Increase revealed to minimum 10 seconds, nerf mace stun to 1.5-2 seconds. Nerf the condition duration food to -/+15% maximum. There.. 90% of broken game mechanics eliminated.

Op. I totally Agree with you 100%.

Yes . condition duration food to -/+15% maximum, would be a great as well.

These things you mentioned are majoiity of the Ironies that’s negatively severely Inpacting the game and def. need to be resolved a.s.a.p

Arena net is aware of them all; believe me, nothing slips Arena net eyes.

So the question is, should they just look at those problems and just continually look or look at those problems and do something about them.

The next Question is, Will care to do anything? or not Care-less at all.?
-As in ’Business as usual"-

?

Atherakhia.4086:

None of this is true but the first line where you said the class is dependent on stealth. And I play a thief…

Oh so I’m lying? What isn’t true? If it was up to you Anet would just dumb their game down endlessly. This is why the meta is in such a bad spot as it is; uninformed QQ. I’d gladly duel you on any class I listed and we’ll see if you still think your d/p thief is OP. PM me.

lunyboy.8672:

Just a quick note about this, you didn’t mention our most devastating trait re: conditions, but you seem to be under the impression that we can be very high DPS while being tanky. This is not the case, I assure you.

We can bring reasonable condition DPS to the table while maintaining higher toughness and a bit of tankiness, but we must choose among limited options for build strength.

If we use the runes, food and traits, our condition duration goes WAY below -100% under certain circumstances, but for this, we sacrifice at least half of our condition DPS.

I do use the Mel. runes, but for the food, I use the +40% condition duration, and for traits, I am just trying to keep myself alive and mobile.

The sky isn’t falling due to Engineers being OP, believe me.

I was actually talking about warrior builds that are tanky with pretty good dps (0/10/30/0/30 knight’s warrior, maybe with a little zerkers, can stick and move while outhealing most damage unless you can condi-burst 2x due to zerker’s stance). Engie is pretty balanced, and I enjoy mine. I don’t even see any engies take that utility, although it might be helpful in my freezing-bombs/nades build.

I still think the food is over the top though, and it creates situations that can be abused with the right spec.

Why isn’t rally on this list?

dunnberry.2964:

Learn to play
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