Guild Wars 2

Substance E.4852:

There’s some extreme context denial on display in this thread.

DeceiverX.8361:

You can’t compare petless core ranger to SB with a selfish build. Rangers are taken as it is for their party-wide damage augmentation which is massive such that it makes up for their lower-than-thief-level damage.

Ya on druid, and that’s only when playing a healer role or condi spec.

Plain frost spotter is not enough to justify power ranger anymore. People will just insist you go cranger instead and do ~30% more damage.

And how many top-tier builds are there for most other professions?

It’s stupid to talk about optimization in the game for competitive speed clears when there’s only ever going to be only one optimum. Anything else is just downright wrong when you get technical.

OP’s testing methods and logic are still flawed at the end of the day, and when evaluating outgoing damage as far as DPS goes, you need to include any modifiers given party-wide to said profession.

Optimized group PvE is in fact a group effort where everyone partakes in a comp to complete the content… optimally. You don’t need an optimal comp to clear the content as people have proven time and time again.

Ranger is king in open-world, a strong pick in the PvE scene, and is one of the best small-scale PvP classes in all of GW2, with an emerging zerg presence via SB as well. You can’t say the class is overly-weak because it has low personal DPS. Every profession can argue something similar in some other context. Don’t like it? Either play a new profession in the role you like or don’t do the content if you don’t enjoy doing it in such a way.

To fix some of the issues with the ranger would require (like many professions) sweeping reworks of major systems, skills, and design principles. ANet is only willing to do shoddy balance patches three times a year as it is, so don’t get your hopes up.

Buffing the ranger to be so competitive as a selfish DPS option would invalidate the entire purpose of various other professions in their entirety in nearly all scenarios. SB as it is will help a lot more than people are recognizing.

Aomine.5012:

DeceiverX.8361:

Aomine.5012:

Or rather Anet can take this data and buff the coefficient of core ranger weapons so Soulbeast doesn’t has to be OP to bring us on par?

This is sort of a reminder post for Anet’s dev. It’s not like power ranger is OP in PVP anyway, so buffing the coefficient shouldn’t be a problem.

You just tested without using the pet’s damage for one, the other being that a loss of pet does also reduce available utility in a lot of encounters. If you make petless core ranger deal the same amount of damage from itself kitten you end up nullifying the purpose of SB.

Like every other spec, there is only going to be one or maybe two viable builds for any kind of content when optimized. Until ANet starts constantly changing balance and reworking things, it’s going to be this way. This is the same thing about the “berserker amulet OP” complaints which did nothing but shift the meta and give people to complain and hone in more on profession/build comps etc.

That’s a fact you just need to face when looking at optimization problems like raids. The problems lie more with higher-level problems than numerical balance.

Pet dps is like 3~3.5k max when grab nature magic (boon share), and 2~2.5k~ without nature magic (cuz boon application priority issue), so adding that doesn’t change much honestly.

Also, a serious note, Power ranger is NEVER strong in any of the game mode, be it open world, wvw, pvp, raid, anything, so abit dps buff really isn’t a big issue here.

I’m sorry, are you not just assuming your might is capped from other players like it should be when in environments where DPS matters?

The only time DPS matters is raids. Everything else is about burst and sustain presence, which the ranger comes close to topping the charts at in both for any given gear combination compared to a similarly-geared other class.

Power ranger is a strong small-scale/roaming option if you’re good. Not with full PvE berserker gear running all offensive utilities, but it can pump serious damage building just a little bit tanky and can sustain a lot better than a majority of builds as a consequence.

Aomine.5012:

Or rather Anet can take this data and buff the coefficient of core ranger weapons so Soulbeast doesn’t has to be OP to bring us on par?

This is sort of a reminder post for Anet’s dev. It’s not like power ranger is OP in PVP anyway, so buffing the coefficient shouldn’t be a problem.

You just tested without using the pet’s damage for one, the other being that a loss of pet does also reduce available utility in a lot of encounters. If you make petless core ranger deal the same amount of damage from itself kitten you end up nullifying the purpose of SB.

Like every other spec, there is only going to be one or maybe two viable builds for any kind of content when optimized. Until ANet starts constantly changing balance and reworking things, it’s going to be this way. This is the same thing about the “berserker amulet OP” complaints which did nothing but shift the meta and give people to complain and hone in more on profession/build comps etc.

That’s a fact you just need to face when looking at optimization problems like raids. The problems lie more with higher-level problems than numerical balance.

Threather.9354:

Guys guys, theres only 1 shout that removes boons and its unblockable and make his following attacks unblockable. The op is just bad and doesnt know how his skills/traits work

To be fair, since the last patch a power reaper really can’t afford to take NCSY anymore without huge sacrifices and gaping holes elsewhere in its build.

Condi OTOH… not much to say.

Still doesn’t make it implicitly overpowered. I think the better term is “frustrating,” more than anything.

M/S Guard or Sw/Sh chronomancer if you want to run with the zerg. The guard qualifies for everything you said except the sword part. The chrono is skill-intensive and can be a game-changer, but doesn’t fit in much stylistically.

Otherwise you’re pretty restricted to roaming/small-scale. Sw/Sh rev and chrono are good for this, but you’re better off playing them both as damage dealers with some degree of supportive elements.

Scourge + Soulbeast + Ventari rev. Too much corruption for guardians and major unblockable attack/burst uptime from SB/Soul Marks will shred them to pieces and will create way too dangerous of a ranged game to push a melee train effectively with Spellbreaker due to the boon hate + condition + poke. Power soulbeast can generate a lot of poke in what will definitely become be a pirate ship meta, and I don’t think the condition build will be as good because the Scourge will mostly be condi which means free transfers onto high cooldowns. Ventari rev is just strong as a backline healer and support if barriers do indeed drop.

You can’t compare petless core ranger to SB with a selfish build. Rangers are taken as it is for their party-wide damage augmentation which is massive such that it makes up for their lower-than-thief-level damage. SB also brings so much extra damage from stats alone it’s bonkers, invalidating most of the numbers as they are.

Test after SB releases, then complain.

Substance E.4852:

DeceiverX.8361:

So you want to be able to tank and nuke and hit through blocks at the same time?

There’s barely any real investment away from durability compared to most professions when taking these options. This is especially going to be true with Soulbeast which will have 500+ more baseline armor/vit and can spec into another invuln effect as well to compensate.

A: Wanting to be able to not be completely shutdown by perpetual walls of reflection and feedback bubbles is not the same thing as “always unblockable”.

B: Go look at what kind of damage a frontline ele can crank out while being tanked up in minstrals. Hell, go see what a Rev can do in full zerk spamming CoR which isn’t a projectile.

Literally the only thing that will earn Soulbeast a slot is stab share and even that probably won’t be worth much with Scourge and Spellbreaker obliterating boons left and right.

I don’t want to be able to blow up people with no way for them to deal with it but I also don’t want ALL our ranged to be projectiles when classes that put out massively more damage than we do aren’t held back by this mechanic.

It’s why our damage is bottom tier in a zerg (probably only above mesmer) and nothing is going to change until the issue is addressed.

Do you not realize that unblockable attacks ignore reflects? You can do 13s of unblockable attacks with massive damage and have 6s of all power damage negated with two solid condition removal skills every 40s or less, or split it 9/9 which is insane compared to what most other classes can do.

Comparing ranger to Guardian is ridiculous because the Guard is designed for this kind of play with a substantially lower viability in anything small-scale.

Aomine.5012:

DeceiverX.8361:

So you want to be able to tank and nuke and hit through blocks at the same time?

There’s barely any real investment away from durability compared to most professions when taking these options. This is especially going to be true with Soulbeast which will have 500+ more baseline armor/vit and can spec into another invuln effect as well to compensate.

Yep, the reason why Guardian and Revenants are meta in wvw right now is cuz they can tank AND spam high damage aoe at the same time.

CoR ignores all reflective walls and do high BURST damage, while having anti-burst in forms of Glint and Resistance spam in terms of Mallyx.

Revenant can also keep up perma fury and swiftness and high stack of might to their party members before even engaging too, which is a big help to many classes that lack those boons.

Guardian has more cleanse/ block and invulnerable too in frontline too while doing abnormal aoe damage.

Oh, and they’re both heavy armor.

Guard can’t tank/block and attack against a ranger at the same time if it’s built like the above. Again, unblockable everything for many seconds is insane. The only true invuln they have would then be RF, but guard loses all ability to cast when doing so, so what you said just isn’t true.

Comparing ranger to power hammer rev is stupid because power hammer rev over-performs in WvW zergs. This isn’t anything new. Getting rangers on that level will immediately get them gutted because the rest of the ranger is way more robust on its own. Rev is a broken class in design made good in a few environments with a few blatantly overtuned abilties lke CoR in ZvZ’s. You don’t want ranger to be that way.

Guardian runs 2/3 of the base health of ranger and is tied for lowest in the game, which justifies the heavy armor. You have baseline 50% better condition durability than a guard. Ranger has better potential sustained mitigation and heals than guardian has as well, and reaches better time-based damage mitigation when it tries via GS than what Guard can do. In Druid, a ranger also has way better resilience against condi bombs than guards since it can remove all 13 at a time.

Outside of hammer, most of rev in terms of its zreg build is absolute trash, and even still, it lacks unblockable attacks, and this can only CoR through reflects, which while still overpowered, is completely different than being able to ignore all blocks and all reflects. Forcing a panic block early from an enemy commander into a response invuln which makes the blob unable to push can single-handedly win a fight.

Guard AoE damage isn’t abnormal. In WvW frontline builds it’s abysmally bad, actually. There’s a reason necromancers and eles have been brought historically in large raids.

Most boonsharing is done from replication effects on defensive boons from other classes like the mesmer, anyways. Nobody really cares too much about sustained fury/might/swiftness when it’s super easy to cap from a ton of different professions. The shared resistance from Mallyx was what made the boonshare meta OP and is what made boonsharing what it is even still.

Everything you’re arguing is either irrelevant or just downright untrue. Ranger’s in a way better spot than you think.

YuiRS.8129:

DeceiverX.8361:

It’s a damage loss. AA is better unless you’re trying to bypass some kind of hp-based proc trait or enemy proc that depends on them being hit (repeatedly). On D/P especially, it’s usually wiser to just Shadow Shot to end stealth and deal some good damage + blind + gap close and follow up with AA.

Huh? How is just Shadow Shot into AA better than stowing Shadow Shot melee hit and going into Backstab?

Because the Shadow Shot’s damage doesn’t land if you do this (just the blind/teleport), and the aftercast delay from backstab into a follow-up hit is greater than the timing between Shadow Shot into the AA chain, which in terms of damage-per-time deals more.

The only case for Backstab on D/P given the huge powercreep to the thief’s dagger AA chain (due to the rest of the HoT powercreep) is to get around hit-or-health-based procs if it has the damage to slip around them. You won’t proc Defy Pain, for example, if you kill the target from 51% hp to 0. Shadow Shot into AA otherwise does more damage, faster, with more consistency, and doesn’t cause your AA chain to go on cooldown if you whiff (based on any number of things like blinds/blocks/invulns/etc.), which either forces extra initiative use for a the reveal to keep applying pressure, cuts your intended burst altogether, or causes you to get nuked from not securing said kill and letting the opponent react.

Sarrs.4831:

3. Many traits are passive, do very little, or both. Putrid Defense and Deadly Strength have no active effect or active play. Shrouded Removal is okay but does not have throughput.

Gold star to Corruptor’s Fervor and Reaper’s Protection, you guys are actually good traits. Beyond the Veil isn’t horrible either.

What are you talking about? Procs are the worst trait designs out there. They trivialize fights so much with unpredictability and high-impact with no tells.

The others may not be super strong, but their design is way better than most of the others.

If they just made minions tankier baseline and got rid of FoTM, made PD not depend on poison but apply in shroud, put in some kind of LF trait, buffed US’s base heal, made it scale better with healing power and got rid of the passive proc on it, and did a few numbers tweaks to a few traits like DS, the line would be fine.

Yup, you’ll stay in Kneel.

Right, and aside from the situations which I already mentioned, SS-> AA is more reliable and does more damage in the same time frame outside of PvE which is dependent on maximizing 15 stacks of LA which CnD does better per unit of time (and D/D’s AA hits slightly harder from higher weapon damage in the offhand). But the OP talks about D/P, anyways.

So you want to be able to tank and nuke and hit through blocks at the same time?

There’s barely any real investment away from durability compared to most professions when taking these options. This is especially going to be true with Soulbeast which will have 500+ more baseline armor/vit and can spec into another invuln effect as well to compensate.

Zenith.7301:

DeceiverX.8361:

It’s a damage loss. AA is better unless you’re trying to bypass some kind of hp-based proc trait or enemy proc that depends on them being hit (repeatedly). On D/P especially, it’s usually wiser to just Shadow Shot to end stealth and deal some good damage + blind + gap close and follow up with AA.

It’s never a damage loss, WTF are you on. Do you even bother to check coefficients on the wiki?

Per unit of time when factoring in the long pre-cast and aftercast delays, backstab deals less damage than the AA chain does alone. One cast of SS and the AA chain thereafter will deal more damage faster than using backstab assuming subsequent hits are necessary, which since signets (namely Assassin’s Signet) is nerfed, there isn’t a OHKO backstab build in the game against most builds without depending on substantial attacking uptime prior… in which case the target is quite likely to already be dead.

With the ICD on stealth attacks, it’s often downright unfavorable to bother unless you have the assurance it’ll land, as well as having a reason to use it over the AA chain (like skipping a proc passive etc.)

Substance E.4852:

The main problem with Longbow will always be the immense amount of cheap projectile blocks and reflects in the game.

Any good guild will roll with at least 30% guardians and even just 3-4 of them using wall of reflection is enough to make the weapon nearly worthless in the actual fight.

I can’t even spike down Ele’s in the middle of a fight because nearly all of them run magnetic aura.

Longbow is basically only good for mopping up when you’ve already won the fight and the enemy is routed or picking people who strayed from the herd which isn’t often if you’re fighting a good group.

The only way for the bow to become as good as it was for the 2-3 weeks after they buffed rapid fire is for us to get cheap/perpetual “arrows can’t be reflected” which I doubt is even possible.

I have a feeling that the game treats all blocks the same and reflects are just blocks with an added effect. I can’t see anet going in and rewiring a major chunk of the game code just to make longbow work in zergs when they haven’t cared that Rangers suck in WvW for 5 years now.

You can currently build into 13 straight seconds of unblockable attacks every 40s…

It’s a damage loss. AA is better unless you’re trying to bypass some kind of hp-based proc trait or enemy proc that depends on them being hit (repeatedly). On D/P especially, it’s usually wiser to just Shadow Shot to end stealth and deal some good damage + blind + gap close and follow up with AA.

As you can tell I don’t run the signet (as it often gets me killed), so I just assumed it worked like the other transfers. TIL, though.

apharma.3741:

I mean core warrior doesn’t even have a decent CC anymore

Woah woah woah, hold on.

Have you played warrior since the Bull’s Charge changes? That skill is INSANE. I’d fill all ten of my skills with that if I could. Hammer got massively buffed and it is also seeing some substantial use now as well.

I think we should clear any potential confusion between overbearing CC in mass quantities which most HoT elites bring as a requirement to deal with all the rest of the powercreep versus what can be defined as having relatively decent access to good CC skills on the profession-level. Core warrior has great CC and has always had it, but there is too much going against it to make it as strong as other options.

I’d put blame on failures elsewhere, though.

If you begin to cast an AA before entering stealth it doesn’t matter when you gain stealth; you’re locked into the animation if you let the hit through. You’ll be revealed because you dealt damage from stealth, even if immediately upon gaining it or if you pre-casted in hopes to slip it in before the proc. The stealth gain from HT is immediate and gains priority over your precasted attack, and will make you revealed upon impact. If you want to stealth attack, you must first wait to gain stealth fully before attacking.

The same as how you can begin a backstab at the very end of stealth, lose stealth before the hit lands, and still get the backstab and self-reveal skill while not gaining stealth-based benefits such as Hidden Killer because you’re no longer in stealth at the time of damage.

Mug and HT no longer conflict so I’m not really sure what you’re on about. Steal Order will be Mug -> HT stealth all the time. Odds are a precasted AA is revealing you as it’ll get placed at the end of the attack queue.

Ultimately it just comes down to learning this and dealing with it.

I’m sorry flow, but you can’t just claim the movespeed bonus’s importance while in melee range as arbitrary when a substantive portion of the argument hinges on that very purpose. Like that straight up doesn’t make sense. If you’re not fast enough, you’re not landing hits. Period.

Would love to know a breakdown on why any kind of rotation under any circumstance without context would “never have worked against anyone decent.” I gave a simple example to show some shortcomings. You asked for some. You can’t be serious right now by saying nothing would ever work without providing reasoning lol.

Hey guys, apparently the only weapon and only way to have a necromancer ever kill anyone ever regardless of skill level is to just “use staff,” whatever that means.

Aggressive = Going all-in and applying lots of hard-hitting pressure very quickly, and continuing to apply said pressure until the target dies. I don’t run a PvE build; Marauder amulet in sPvP is nothing unusual because out-of-shroud critting still matters and bumps consistency because it doesn’t depend on other factors like stacking 25 vuln to crit GClaws, and in WvW I’m tankier than anyone in Marauder with over 600 more power, and have just as much health as people in Valkyrie, but have 50% more baseline crit chance so I can utilize CV to apply my highest pressure quicker from stacking might while also being able to tank better in shroud for longer from the LF gain.

I’m not the only one running RP, either. Augury is whatever and CoD is crap for power. Again, movespeed. Again, you fail to understand you can be applied immob/cripple/chill while already in shroud, and the new SoS does literally nothing to help you.

And you’re just using irrelevant factoids about the build with miscellaneous and out-of-context quotes like the following:

“from a defensive standpoint, [Power reaper is(n’t) much more shroud-heavy]”

No duh. It uses shroud for both its offensive and defensive capabilities. The point is to be aggressive and not rely on using it to strictly mitigate damage but to get into a fight and create downs quickly, which it does. If you’re just popping shroud to stay alive, there’s no sense in playing reaper whatsoever since core necro will be tankier and capable of dealing more damage outside of shroud in every way.

I run “absurd collection of traits” because the gains are mandatory. Without movespeed necromancer has so many bad matchups. It’s probably why people think the necro/reaper is weak; they aren’t willing to try to invest in what is completely and totally essential mobility and actually experiment in how to make all those hard matchups pretty trivial.

You still have made no mentioning about the cooldown reduction component aside from yet again another dismissal with no basis of argument.

I don’t think you’re capable of elaborating. Honestly you’ve never elaborated on anything since the start of this thread, but have just dismissed peoples’ arguments because they’re bad players for having a different opinion on a build you don’t play that got affected by a trait you don’t use. Most of what you’ve said has been out of context and partial-truths to spin a favorable argument despite not actually getting into any real details.

Unless you want to bring a real discussion, I think I’m done arguing. Even if I transferred to EU to fight you, there’d be no sense in doing it since if trashed you, you’d argue that my point is moot having won so all must be fine, and if I lost, there would be no definitive way to prove my point because the old traits are no longer available for use to demonstrate why I’m right.

Because that constant, non-removable movespeed allows for the melee shroud skills to land much more consistently against foes which may not have been soft-CC’ed at all. The mobility portion of the skill was pretty huge in keeping pressure and not just being kited. It also give big consistency against other necromancers, which as I mentioned, could not corrupt the movespeed, either, which meant Relentless Pursuit could quickly remove any of the short-term cripples/chills otherwise applied to easily catch up.

Power reaper is much more shroud-heavy than core necro. There’s a lot to gain from being in shroud a lot, especially in group environments with Onslaught, and the LF loss if using CV over Decimate Defenses is cut pretty drastically to keep enabling shroud. GS and axe both grant huge LF gains when out of shroud allowing a quick refill to a tankier, stability-driven, quick-attacking and highly-mobile pain-train build with tons of cleave given its large melee AoE radius after engagement. Only a couple of the skills on these kits are particularly potent in comparison as well, meaning you don’t want to be out of shroud for very long if necessary, because quite honestly, there’s little reason to be. This also means the CDR on shroud is a pretty substantive buff to sustain, because unlike core necro, a damage-oriented power reaper lacks one of the two major sustain lines (DM/BM) to keep itself healthy out of shroud.

Further, DCharge is on a six second cooldown, meaning a reaper could previously DCharge disengage -> Heal -> DCharge engage back into a fight while denying projectile damage both on the way out and on the way back. As it is now, such a build will need to wait for several seconds after disengaging to regain shroud.

There are a number of other engage patterns which were effectively removed as well, such as Charge -> Grasp into enemy stunbreak -> CttB/GS1/2 to their second major stunbreak cooldown -> Charge back into their disengage/reset attempt -> (Fear -> Scythe into CC lock or Exit shroud a second time -> swap -> nuke via Axe 2 to also proc CtD at 20% extra damage which would auto-down most thieves running ToTC/Trickery).

Needless to say, the staff is too slow and the range intent of it does not synergize well with a reaper built to play aggressively. SoS prior to its change allow for much more aggressive plays while also giving the reaper just a bit of a boost in its shroud uptime/reduced out-of-shroud time enough to keep going to re-enter when it needed to leave.

Then you have all of the previous arguments made, such as how being forced into taking the signets trait locks you out from being able to swap into match-dependent utilities like NCSY without taking huge hits to mobility and damage from also losing Close to Death.

There were a TON of edge-cases and reasons to use this trait on such a reaper; so many to the point where I would argue it was the biggest contributor in turning unfavorable matchups into possible favorable ones (notably thief and mesmer), and why from the beginning I have been advocating for its use (with a lot of success from people who have tried it and stepped away from staff).

I understand that my thief knowledge contributes immensely in helping me beat them with relative ease on reaper, but the change to SoS has adversely affected the consistency and overall capacity to turn fights when built to play aggressively. Currently it struggles a lot more in these types of encounters as a direct consequence.

If it’s a problem for Scourge and not for base necro, they should just introduce both effects to Reaper. Otherwise they should have just increased Scourge’s cooldowns.

Chaith.8256:

Mel.3064:

Ryan.9387:

A lot of former top players aren’t trying anymore and spend time in ranked playing fun builds over viable ones (NA). They got their titles and have no interest playing that seriously with the game in its current state.

Yes I noticed it. Those top players usually go afk as soon as someone does something they do not like while bragging about their own skill in chat. They achieved their goals and do not care if they ruin it for others anymore

Straight BS, the AFK’rs and map ragers are the 1550 rated, former duel server stars

Pretty much. People playing easymode cheese tend to believe there’s still some integrity to the game and subsequently winning.

Game/professions need to be better-designed/balanced for people to keep caring, OP. There’s no incentive to try very hard in GW2’s competitive scene since from all angles it’s currently a joke and the best of the best are fully aware of this, so they spend their time either just having fun with it or being more productive elsewhere.

I usually just port over character aesthetics from ones which I play in D&D. It’s probably around 50/50, though there is absolutely no denying I have nearly all of my play-hours on male characters. My D&D buddies used to give me a bit of kitten for playing females, but they eventually realized playing outside of my skin made me a way better player at the RP elements of tabletop gaming, and almost all of my female characters have at some point topped everyone’s list as “favorite character ever,” whereas my male ones were often quite bland because I’d all too often inject my own self into the character rather than taking things as the character would. The alien nature of playing a totally different gender really changed my mind quite a lot in terms of how I approached tabletop games from then on. Important note: I don’t e-RP in games. It’s not very good. And usually ends up with bedroom talk which is just weird.

I usually end of maining the male ones because I tend to play with people who are close friends (so there usually ends up being an attachment to character aesthetic/identity), and my D&D characters tend to be too obscure to pull off in any game making the attempts usually result in ineffective builds/strategies. That said, using the fidelity of the model is a totally valid excuse to play something or not.

I’ve never been hit on in GW2 or seen anyone else be hit on in-game unless they go into RP groups or try to make their character as minimally-dressed as possible and beg for attention or whatever, but RP groups are usually all… “heated” conversations as it is. Understand your environment and play accordingly. You’ll up your chances by playing a female, obviously, but I’d see it as hilarious to be able to tell some weirdo over the internet who’kittenting on me that I’m actually a dude.

At the end of the day, do whatever you’re most comfortable with, OP.

There is far too much CC, but there is also far too much access to potent, permanent boons, and far too much access to invulns and blocks/negation as well.

The way things are right now, you can’t kill people without locking them out of playing their characters, because most professions are just immune to everything and super mobile/reset-capable for good portions of every fight.

If they nerf CC, they need to nerf everything else.

And I’m not at all opposed to that.

Are you out of range, did you get blinded, or are they blocking/invuln? It won’t do anything if any of those apply.

flow.6043:

DeceiverX.8361:

Sure, but I don’t think anyone who’s voiced their issues with this trait change has been talking about core necro. I’m rather indifferent because both traits can be decent enough on core depending on build choice and environment/purpose, but power reaper was affected massively by this change in what can only be described as in a very negative way.

Help me understand this, please.

Your original complaint about the change was less defense with a higher Shroud cooldown and that +25% movement speed in Shroud is better than getting swiftness and removing immob/chilled/cripple.
Are you saying that core necros don’t rely on Shroud for defense as much as Reapers? Or that movement speed in Death Shroud is somehow less important? And please don’t say it’s because DS skills have a higher range.

In my very first post in this thread, I started out with

“My aggressive power reaper…”

and continued to talk exclusively about the reaper without much ambiguity.

I never talked about core necro. Core necro had equal use for both traits depending on environment/build/purpose and nowhere did I dispute this nor did anyone bring this up.

It’s also not really relevant because as you said, this trait wasn’t the common pick as it was, and for obvious reasons, largely still isn’t.

Svarty.8019:

The take away is that we all know a nerf like this would never happen to the Thief.

As an ex-thief, were you around between 2013 and 2015? The profession was at one point absolute garbage and against most of the HoT elites, still is.

Necro has flaws that ultimately can be fixed with some QoL. ANet is just bad at designing and balancing their professions.

Hell, they downright deleted my build I’ve been playing since release this last patch, which is why I no longer play/main it.

Helbjorne.9368:

Grasping Darkness inherently cannot be perfectly fine if it has a known bug, and although there are ways to play around it, we shouldn’t have to. My suggested change to Grasping Darkness would allow it to retain its function and just change it from a frontal projectile to a targeted ability.

I’ll lower the radius on Nightfall, and as for the boon corrupt goes, you’re right. I think maybe lowering it to 2 boons would be better? 3 is still incredibly strong now that I step back and think about it.

As for AA 1/2, they’re not quick as far as greatsword autos go. Both Warrior and Guardian greatsword have a flat .5s cast time for their entire AA chain, Ranger has 2 .5s and a .75s cast time, and Mesmer has a 1s and 1.5s cast time, but it’s ranged. We have the slowest melee greatsword AA chain, and that’s why I think we’re better off with just the one ability (as seen in our staff) where we can instantly apply chill to foes without having to run through our first two abilities which offer no utility and hardly any damage.

That being said, if they also applied chill that could work, but the damage output would still have to be increased and it would take away from the utility of the third strike, which I suppose could be changed to Vulnerability? Or a guaranteed critical? I don’t know.

What would you want changed to gravedigger?

I like the fact GD can cleave into groups, and point-and-clink won’t fix the pathing issue with GD. This is a game-wide problem that affects any class that depends on ground-based pathing, and is deeply nested in the way the engine works. Several other professions need to deal with this, and they do; for the potency GD brings when used correctly, I’d rather have it as-is than reworked into something that isn’t a distance group pull. The only way to overcome this is heat-seeking like DH pull, but to do that you’d need to make it single-target, and I find that would be incredibly weak.

The boon corrupt is fine, just a moving 300 radius wasn’t. 200 to make it kitable/escapable with some basic movement /soft CC and it’s fine. Honestly, I like the static field location as it is better because I can drop it in someone else’s fight or to reset to pretty much win it and keep moving, and the size is quite nice for larger group battles or 5v5, but that’s just me.

The ranger and warrior both have longer aftercasts than the reaper does and have the same initial precast time on the animation for the first hit, which puts the animation a lot closer than you’d expect (around .17s difference at the longest between ranger and reaper) , and do between 50 to 70% of the damage reaper does per strike. Overall, reaper GS AA 1/2 are substantially better than any other since the DPH is much higher and the initial strike is just as easy to land as any others’. It’s literally nearly double the damage in the same amount of time, and when coming out of shroud on a power build, this is one of the best ways to start due to how big the burst is. GSAA3 is the weak link due to its slowness of the cast; people just walk out of it. 1s chill on the first hit will allow exactly what you want – a reliable chill proc – and will allow the second to land more reliably and give you more functional damage uptime while your opponents cooldowns are consistently slowed down and their mobility reduced which lets you keep landing hits. I’m not saying no to applying chill (as more chill on AA allows for a less-impactful Deathly Chill nerf as to keep the condi build usable but not overpowering in its burst like right now), but rather that GSAA1/2 are the better skills by a very substantial margin and should be preserved as such because otherwise nobody will get hit by the AA at all.

20 is a blob o.o

I know the OP speaks from PvE, but am I the only person in the world who thinks Grasping Darkness is completely fine in terms of function and that the weakest part of the GS is AA3 and Gravedigger?

Like if you want the pull just de-target. The ability to snag a whole group is so huge. If you test the ability you can figure out what causes the terrain bug to prevent it from happening – or go play thief and learn how pathing works. I haven’t missed/failed a GD in a very, very long time and find the skill the primary reason to use GS.

OP, if nightfall moves with the caster, the radius needs to come down. Even a 300 radius mobile blinding corrupt is absolutely insane for its cooldown.

GS AA1/2 are imho the better abilities of the AA chain. They’re quick as far as GS autos go. Get AA1 to apply 1s chill and I think the chain ends up great.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

As a vanilla Necro, this is my favorite change that has been made in a long while. Saves me constantly and I’m incredibly happy with it. In WvW, nothing kills me more than random Chills, Cripples or Immobilizes when I’m critically out of position, which subsequently leads to being focused and killed. Happens a whole lot less now and Ancient Seeds Druids are less of a threat as well.

EDIT: Also, anyone who was taking Speed Of Shadows pre-change and was using a staff was an idiot. I’m completely with Flow on this. It’s still very much worth taking. I miss it sometimes when I need to Fear someone, transfer conditions or Poison + Chill just before a heal but I feel it’s worth the trade off with the changes to Speed Of Shadows. Prior to the changes, 3 seconds off Shroud entry was in no way worth it. Now they just need to do something with Unyielding Blast.

Sure, but I don’t think anyone who’s voiced their issues with this trait change has been talking about core necro. I’m rather indifferent because both traits can be decent enough on core depending on build choice and environment/purpose, but power reaper was affected massively by this change in what can only be described as in a very negative way.

Elites aren’t meant to be overpowered so much as that they can be game-changing when used correctly. This is still the case with the thief’s elite skills.

TG cooldown is high because it’s got built-in CC and you can share venoms to them which can generate a lot of condition pressure or heavy CC in a short period of time. It may be just a bit weak for the cooldown it offers, but it isn’t a strictly terrible skill when active. Body-blocking, CC, and the likes are all useful when built to have synergy with it.

BV is more of the all-fitting elite and used to have a longer cooldown/duration (but not unblockable) and could not be stunbroken. It was not very healthy for the game, though, and didn’t really change much in a fight; there was no counterplay at all when it went through, and it was basically a free kill in most cases. Otherwise it did nothing for consistency against classes with lots of blocks, which have been vastly expanded since HoT. The unblockable attack itself is quite powerful when used properly to gain interrupts and damage on classes with lots of blocks like guardians and chronomancers. BV will ignore the block and since it CC’s will also interrupt the channel of said block, all the while it can be applied to any given attack – like Vault or Backstab – applying potentially very high damage as well. Since the thief has very good capacity to burst on single attacks, it’s actually quite a powerful elite.

The elite skills are quite good for what they are; I think the problem is that you’re comparing core game elites to the HoT game-state and other elites where the power creep is massive. There are some professions where elite skill potency may be much higher, however the thief has the ability to utilize these lesser-effects due to a lower dependency on rotations etc.; their lack of weapon skill cooldowns and alternative forms of defensive play allow for responding to a lot of things without simply needing to depend on such potent abilities.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

It is also wise to lean and study all other classes

This is the single most important thing to know as a thief. If you don’t understand your enemy, you’re going to not do as well as anything else would have otherwise done.

It only applies if you get corrupted or applied a movement-impairing condition before entering shroud and would somehow already have swiftness, which doesn’t make sense unless you’re already taking boons from other people, which kind of defeats the entire point of the argument. If you enter shroud and get corrupted, you’re now at a bigger deficit because a movespeed bonus is not there and you’re crippled for 10s, or any other mixture of boon removal + cripple from any other class which is super easy to have happen. This is especially apparent in situations with more than one attacker.

It’s a buff is the reaper is not already in shroud or uses shroud primarily as a form of damage sponging with intermittent attacks from shroud. Otherwise it’s a massive nerf on both fronts of the mobility consistency and cooldown time.

Honestly if you’re not being focused as a necromancer your opponents aren’t playing very well or very smart. Power or not.

As for shroud skills having cooldowns, I run and have run Onslaught since HoT and usually accrue 2-4 downs per rotation in group combat scenarios. This was especially the case when I could run NCSY in block-heavy encounters while retaining in-shroud mobility. Even without, something like Charge -> Heal/Cleanse -> GS LF gain combo only takes around that seven second window, in which case Charge can be used again right as you enter for another reset or re-engage while also offering additional damage sponging if really on the defensive. A lot of the seamlessness rotating in and out of shroud is no longer there unless you camp AA out of shroud, and I’m not sure how people argue power necro is any good if not utilizing high shroud uptime and maximizing their burst LF gain when rotating out of shroud.

AikijinX.6258:

DeceiverX.8361:

Good gameplay as always. Was fun being against you in some of our server matchups some time ago, despite none of it making it into the footage – pretty much always came down to who got the jump on the other one first lol.

Admittedly you and your OH pistol stealth caught me wildly off guard a few times more than I think I caught you :P

I miss my thief u.u

Haha. I did put you in my Vol. 2 montage. Or did you forget :p. But yes those were some good times, and good surprise attacks. Ultimately it really was whoever attacked first, but it was usually me :p

time 2 thief again, and thanks for the support brotha!

Had to go back and look; didn’t even see it there at the beginning haha.

You put in like the worst fight we had lol. I’m sitting here looking at me being stunned just thinking what the hell was I doing xD

Yeah, it’s a really strong condition.

Good gameplay as always. Was fun being against you in some of our server matchups some time ago, despite none of it making it into the footage – pretty much always came down to who got the jump on the other one first lol.

Admittedly you and your OH pistol stealth caught me wildly off guard a few times more than I think I caught you :P

I miss my thief u.u

Flow-

You just really don’t get it… SoS is and was a better trait than Soul Marks or any staff-using power reaper outside of hyper-organized sPvP groups. The shroud flickering and movespeed which cannot be corrupted, stripped, stolen or removed in any way, shape, or form were what made the trait actually worth taking.

The only buff it has now is when flickering shroud for non-shroud movespeed. But that’s pointless because if out-of-shroud movespeed was super important, you’d run warhorn or SotL instead; both of which were very potent in their own rights.

I also ran axe before it got buffed so there’s no need to lecture me. I actually ran SoS + A/D + GS before people started moving from Soul Marks and before any of the kits were buffed because they have amazing potential when played well. If you really want to go digging through my hundreds of posts since HoT, you’ll find me saying that and a large number of people (who since moved to A/D + GS + SoS disagreeing with what I had to say. I tried staff for the initial few weeks of reaper, and while silly when comboing SS into Chillblains’ poison field for 24 poison stacks, it wasn’t very good.).

I think OH dagger is just as good in a majority of settings. The higher cooldowns and ease-of-dodging marks (which have longer cast times, more obvious tells, etc.) isn’t worth the tradeoff. In a larger group fight or heavily-organized one where the necro is babysat? Sure, it’s a good kit. But are the gains really oh-so-strong? Not really.

GS is the better PvP weapon over dagger. It almost has been from the beginning. AA chain 1/2 and Nightfall/Grasp make the kit astonishingly strong. Gravedigger is absolute garbage, but a power reaper shouldn’t be camping outside of shroud any longer than necessary to a few essential GS hits.

CtD gets overridden by the Signets of Suffering trait necessary in conjunction with SotL for the movespeed bonus. I typo’d the trait out of it. This occupies a trait slot replacing CtD as well as a utility slot which could have previously been swapped into depending on matchup or environment (Cleanse/Stunbreak are obviously very much necessities in a power reaper build, a typical “best combo” being Suffer and SA).

You consistently seem to fail to recognize the merit of the old SoS movespeed bonus, which is why CtD can’t realistically be traited since an aggressive power reaper depends so much on the movespeed from the Signet trait: It cannot be removed. A power reaper/thief matchup used to be fairly winnable – if not easy depending on the thief’s kit – unless the thief was astonishingly good at abusing Daredevil (and often needed to also be running Acro for HtC due to GS’s capacity to CC-lock/instakill a thief with one well-placed and well-timed GDarkness+shroud combo). Swiftness can and will be stripped, stolen, and corrupted. By every profession. It only takes an interrupt and the right sigils and it’s gone. Or a thief stealing with BT or LS which now out-paces you by a huge margin without the swiftness (also, S/D thief was buffed and is run much more often now, so good luck maintaining it), or a mesmer with GS3 which is already at range and probably running chronomancer, or another necromancer turning it into cripple from any number of corrupts (such as scepter AA) and laughing as you get ganked and can’t even play catchup.

It is a shame, I’d love to duel you. I can’t actually recall a time which I’ve lost a fair fight to a power reaper running staff; they’re normally just free kills.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

DeceiverX.8361:

- The most potent and most-common small-scale classes aside from cases where things end up totally overpowered tend to be ones which are absolutely useless in zerg fights. When was the last time you saw a commander ask for rangers, thieves, or mesmers (outside of a veil/portal/blur bot)? They’re basically useless in big-scale encounters, unfortunately by design.

To give a little bit to the mesmer class here.
I’ve never been turned away from an organized group for playing a support chrono.

Boon sharing resistance is still pretty important, especially since everyone’s boons end up corrupted most of the time anyway.

Not to mention dropping gravity wells deep on a group’s back line can flat out stop small organized groups from standing a chance against your larger, less organized zerg.

I haven’t been in T1 in the past few months, so maybe things have changed, but last I knew, since the changes to boon sharing the mesmer was no longer included as part of the meta which is why I excluded boonsharing from the list.

Upped usage of necromancers and condi reapers and the likes for mass corruption pushed them hard out of their prior purpose AFAIK.

There’s a degree of utility which any profession can bring – I frontlined a bursty power thief meant for target prioritization/pin sniping in most groups up until this last patch which removed my build from the game – but there does come a point when people need to understand “yeah, I’d generally be more useful on a guard if I were equally as good on it.”

The mesmer has the ability to make some pretty big moves in highly organized groups, but historically so have thieves and mesmers. Most open raids won’t kick by profession choice – it’s why they’re open raids – and always want you playing your best, whatever profession that is. That doesn’t mean they aren’t secretly hoping for more of what’s on the top-end of useful.

I think it gets into too many edge-cases, though. If AA’ing is your opponent’s primary source of damage or optimal move at a given point in time, why shouldn’t someone who recognizes this be allowed to punish them by being rewarded for interrupting AA chains? This would also go to suggest the interrupt-style approach to gameplay could just be countered entirely by not using skills and instead pressing 1. This isn’t really interactive for anyone involved.

Passive Signet of Stone isn’t giving up a lot of durability.

The problem with LB ranger in zergs is projectile hate, retal, and reflects. You barrage into an organized group and you melt from the retal damage. You RF into a WoR which gets covered in all the visual clutter of other skills and you accidentally kill some frontliner or yourself. The unblockable abilities help a lot to make the weapon usable, but it’s a far cry from being particularly good in large combats.

A 2s ICD would probably be enough to keep it good for interrupt-oriented play, but not unbearable to opponents that lack stability. Needs to be saved for big hits/skills and you get extra mileage. It nerfs the mindless spam and it doesn’t affect top-end play where most people cancel-stow, either. 5s is pretty oppressive and not where I’d start.

Forcing AA cancels can be a pretty big part of interrupts so it’s kind of difficult to advocate for that. Especially so for a lot of condition builds which apply conditions on AA’s. To support no-interrupt AA’s a lot of traits and skills would need changes to really be fully compatible while keeping the playstyles of interrupt thief/mes intact.

As a side note, OP, you also cannot propose legendary weapons or ones with excessive effects like Legendaries or the entry will be DQ’ed.

Taobella.6597:

you do know… weakness make it so a player can not crit.?

Not true; it causes a 50% chance to not crit and drops the damage of power-based attacks by 50%.

It’s a bit more than just that.

Highly-mobile professions with stealth access like thief and mesmer are top-dogs in the small-scale because:

- As covered, resetting a fight is a big advantage given the space to do so and a lack of precedent for staying in combat.

- Most meta roaming builds don’t feel imbalanced or un-fun to play against. They just are. The intent for these builds is to be able to enter any given encounter and either win through sheer overpowered stats (condi thief/reaper/mesmer/pre-nerf condi beserker, bunker druid) or leave (mobility, stealth) if a win can’t be done.

- Mobility and stealth are taken for small-scale because these mechanics negate pressure zergs can apply to solo players. Sending 50 people to squirrel after a thief or mesmer is pointless, and these can OOC unkilled somewhat easily, whereas doing such for less-mobile professions basically grants a free bag.

- The most potent and most-common small-scale classes aside from cases where things end up totally overpowered tend to be ones which are absolutely useless in zerg fights. When was the last time you saw a commander ask for rangers, thieves, or mesmers (outside of a veil/portal/blur bot)? They’re basically useless in big-scale encounters, unfortunately by design.

- Building on the previous point, these players are going to be very adept at roaming because it’s basically all they have the option to do. Practice makes perfect. This restriction is also what enforces cheese metas; they optimize around the best thing that can be done for the small-scale fight because it’s all they can really partake in without being called out or being a liability to their blobs.

I share the sentiment that there are too many sources of stealth and spammable resets in the game. That said, it’s been a necessary evil for the design approach of these professions. Until blocks/dodges/cc spam/immunities/boons/AoE bursts/etc. all get toned down I don’t think we can ask for blanket statement nerfs to mobility and the likes.

At the end of the day the existence of this kind of gameplay is on ANet’s shoulders for designing the professions in a way which allows people to be so exploitative of low-vulnerability builds, just as much as it’s their responsibility to clean them up in a reasonable time frame and keep the general game-state healthy. We’re simply not seeing that; these builds come and stay for longer than they’re welcome.

Jayne.9251:

Cal Cohen.3527:

joeyw.9531:

Flûte ! Retrying, edit function is slow for me x)

Vizunah square !

https://media2.giphy.com/media/JIX9t2j0ZTN9S/giphy.gif

ok

You will need some key phrases in French then!

1. Bonjour! Ou est mes pantalons?
2. Zut alors! Est ce que vous avez du Grey Poupon?
3. Mon p’tit chou fleur!
4. Blaggard! Vous avez voler mes pantalons!

You French people surely need to keep better track of your pants if those are common phrases. I recommend a wonderful invention called the belt.

._.

flow.6043:

DeceiverX.8361:

flow.6043:

…

Depends heavily on chosen builds. My aggressive power reaper gains nothing from Soul Marks since it doesn’t have any use for staff

You’re just confirming my point.

Your build is weaker than any build that uses a staff because they use a staff and you don’t.
The problem isn’t how the change affected your build but that you shoudn’t have run that build in the first place.

DeceiverX.8361:

The change in cooldowns is nearly a 50% increase in windows of opportunity for your opponents versus before.

I know you’re trying to say that 3 is almost 50% of 7.
But I call bs if you try to argue that in every fight you ever had you spent all time in Shroud except for the occasional 7 seconds (and not more) to generate life force.

DeceiverX.8361:

To get equal effect, you need to run Spite/SotL amd drop CtD therr as well, so just to have the same level of offensive pressure as before, you need to sacrifice a trait, a utility, have 50% increased windows of vulnerability, lose a ~1k burst from a modified spinal shivers, and have lower damage in general.

I don’t understand what you mean here. Maybe post some build calc links.

DeceiverX.8361:

Further your point only holds in sPvP. WvW soul mark reapers are absolutely demolished compared to SoS ones from the faster pace of combat.

Wrong.

Lmao, okay.

So Basically, we’re seeing underpowered builds already nerfed because reasons and that it doesn’t matter, and anyone who plays without a staff is bad.

I’m sorry but you’re beyond reasoning. At this point I’m just clearing the air so people unfamiliar don’t get confused by what is honestly just nonsense.

The staff is a garbage weapon for power reaper. It used to have a fair use-case because it was the best ranged option for power necro because Axe sucked. Axe got buffed and is one of the top weapons necro has. A/D brings everything staff has save the fear, except it also has everything on lower cooldowns that aren’t obvious to dodge through, retaining superior power coefficients and better boon corruption, with much better synergy for vuln stacking, and GS is the best melee option that necromancer has when in good hands.

Would love to see your super-powerful staff power build.

Right, it doesn’t exist.

Spinal shivers on three boons and a power build meant to actually kill things hits 4-5k easily on targets with three boons, which is nearly everyone these days. CtD being overriden by SotL for the necessary 25% mobility to keep power shroud builds relevant immediately bumps the burst of this proc alone by 1k damage on its hit and all subsequent hits by a substantial margin. On a target below half, this usually means 1-1.5k damage lost per AA hit in shroud. There really isn’t much math needed here. This is common knowledge to people who actually play an aggressive power reaper.

The CDR is massive when flickering shroud between negation and alternating weapons and utilities and use of DCharge. A power reaper should want to spend the least amount of time possible outside of shroud when engaged with his enemy unless performing necessary actions that require leaving shroud, such as transferring mass condition application, corrupting important boons, or stunbreaking a pre-burst-combo CC that’d otherwise just waste LF.

flow.6043:

Crinn.7864:

The primary cause of death for necromancers in PvP is getting spiked while shroud is on cooldown. old Speed of Shadows meant that necromancer had a lower vulnerability window.

I’m using this quote but my answer to it is supposed to address everyone who is bothered by the change to Speed of Shadows:

The primary cause of death for those who think they got nerfed by having 3 more seconds on their Shroud cooldown is the fact that they don’t use a staff in PvP and therefore don’t need Soul Marks (which imo is the only reason one should pick Soul Reaping for PvP at all).

Depends heavily on chosen builds. My aggressive power reaper gains nothing from Soul Marks since it doesn’t have any use for staff, and non-boon movespeed is huge for reapers which orient themselves towards shroud. The change in cooldowns is nearly a 50% increase in windows of opportunity for your opponents versus before.

To get equal effect, you need to run Spite/SotL amd drop CtD therr as well, so just to have the same level of offensive pressure as before, you need to sacrifice a trait, a utility, have 50% increased windows of vulnerability, lose a ~1k burst from a modified spinal shivers, and have lower damage in general. Previously-winnable matchups like power rev snd dh are now a huge struggle because there’s no wiggle room left in the build.

Further your point only holds in sPvP. WvW soul mark reapers are absolutely demolished compared to SoS ones from the faster pace of combat.

Dadnir.5038:

And while we’re at it, Reaper’s Onslaught needs to be changed up a bit. Remove the 15% attack speed increase, it’s useless because it doesn’t stack with Quickness anyway. Then make the 225 Ferocity bonus a party wide effect like Empower Allies.

That would help the reaper for sure but this “aura” effect have already been given to the revenant.

It’d absolutely destroy the trait for anything except PvE. The attack speed is massively important in competitive modes because it affects all casts including the channels on skills 2/4/5 and buffs baseline might stacking/personal damage synergy with Spite and SR by cutting the animation on shroud AA just enough to mesh nicely with the ICDs of the other traits.

To be honest, if people want a better PvE reaper/necromancer, they should be making suggestions for more damage modifiers profession-wide and increased sustain in the BM line to make it not laughably bad overall.

Terrahero.9358:

I don’t see the point. Other legendaries iirc have to dump a ton of gold on arbitrary stuff that serves no purpose at all other than to be a gold sink. Atleast here you still get something, even if you don’t see yourself using it.

So long as the costs are more or less in line with contemporary legendary pieces, i don’t see the problem.

This.

Doesn’t matter if OP won’t use it; everything else is similarly gold-gated, and this purchase has permanent, lasting potential use.

It’s also meant to be an extreme luxury item meant for only a handful of players to acquire. The item even has the word ‘Commander’ in its name. It’d be a pretty big insult to every existing commander who runs a tag etc. to have every pug with the ‘commander’ backpiece lol.

All 1U1D does is have servers that don’t belong in a given tier fall or rise faster. Otherwise once it stabilizes, which it does so quicker, it’ll be even more stagnant and less-balanced than before.

After stabilizing, the top server placement matchups will be
(1, 2, 3)
(4, 5 , 6)
(7, 8, 9)

where numbers are the ranks/servers. This makes sense for balanced matchups.

On the 1u1d system the following week will be

(1, 2 , 4)
(3, 5, 7)
(6, 8, 9)

T2 and below now have a full two-tier gap between red and green. #4 isn’t going to do better than #3. The only way to rise in 1u1d with existing disparities is to actually get mass transfers and stack servers, which is the exact opposite solution people were looking for. 1u1d would only ever work for servers that were already very close. Obviously this isn’t true at all.

And the following week?
(1, 2, 3)
(4, 5, 6)
(7, 8, 9)

It’s a cycle. The expected chance to win never changes.

apharma.3741:

DeceiverX.8361:

Junkpile.7439:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Junkpile.7439:

Well you can’t dodge thief first attack. First backstab is instant straight from stealth.

Said thief has already blown most of his action points, or shadow refuge, to pull that off without you seeing it coming.

If you saw a thief suddenly go invisible, you can pretty much assume he’s coming for you, and throw up a block.

Most thieves aren’t carrying around 20 seconds of stealth anymore.

Hell, tbh. Most of the thieves I’ve fought aren’t even wearing zerkers gear anymore. Backstabbing isn’t as stupidly amazing as it used to be.

As for the discussion, everyone runs tanky as hell now-a-days. Why are you trying to make that even worse?

I literally sat in a 15 man group’s bomb yesterday questioning “where is the damage”. I’ll tell you where it was, non-existent. They were just melee training and killing all the scrubs that don’t know how to dodge, and are running PvE gear.

The only class I even remotely fear in this game is a reaper, and that’s only because of all the boon corruption.

I don’t have blocks. So should i use mistform straight after thief go stealth?

As an ele you have the ability to negate almost all power thief damage by just camping Earth with Stone Heart.

If you see them stealth up, you can swap attunements and the backstab will get negated (technically blocked – including unblockable attacks – on any critical strike as it negates procs as well) entirely. Backstab is actually less-bursty than just using dagger AA after Shadow Shot. Strictly speaking, ele is probably the second best power-thief-killer in the game if traited to deal with them, following DH. FA played well hard-counters thief as well because it has mass AoE blinds which negate stealth attack usage and offers a lot of CC and huge burst numbers.

Anticipating the attack from stealth is an acquired skill that is also best learned by just playing a thief for a while.

He doesn’t just play ele though, saw him running around most of the time on scrapper with toolkit for more blocks. He then rage whispered half my guild saying they should play something with risk like Sc/D ele. This is with me playing a core DD ele so not exactly something super easy in the meta so take that how you will.

If he as a roamer hasn’t a counter to thieves oneshotting him that’s his problem because many classes will CC and burst from stealth given half a chance. He could always trait tempests defence and/or use arcane shield or even have auto arcane shield at 50% and not be silly enough to run full zerk.

If you run full zerk Sc/D ele and have only mistform as your defence that is 100% your fault and you deserve to die for running a bad build.

Given his reference to using Mist Form I made an assumption about what he played. Otherwise I’d have asked.