Guild Wars 2

Zikory.6871:

EasymodeX.4062:

In any case, the remainder of this discussion is mostly pointless, because it will be nerfed.

So you agree that it’s intended and should be “nerfed” and not a bug which would need to be “fixed”?

Use whatever terminology you want.

Do you feel that permanent AOE root is intended?

I picked on that counter because it’s the most easily broken / invalidated / obviated. The others require more detailed explanation or conditions; e.g. the size of the arrow cart AOE versus the distance of a dodge. Long range instant teleports are the only abilities that will guarantee getting out of a single AC AOE. Nevermind considering more than 1 AC.

Any defended objective is already a kitten to take.

It’s pretty absurd to try to excuse bugs as a balancing mechanism.

Instant deflation.

I do not think BG is fighting for 1st place at least that is not what I hear on vent/ts and what I read in chat. BG can NOT get to second place fighting two servers at the same time so saying it wants 1st place is incorrect imo.

Rofl.

BG can handle itself fine. Depending on time of day, BG will target the weaker of the two opponents to rack up points. Incidentally, during NA primetime, BG and SOR both take a big bite out of JQ.

You may not realize this, but BG gets more glicko taking points from JQ than it does taking points from SOR. Keep up the bright analysis.

I disagree with your extreme assessment (and will casually note that there are 3 other ways to inflict poison off the top of my head), but regardless the point is that if condition damage builds are not effectively combating bunker builds (whether or not they actually “beat” bunker builds), then Anet should review the availability of conditions and condition removal (and where condition removal can be combined with direct damage defenses).

I see, and with all the condition cleanses out there (especially on bunker ele’s) and the fact that pretty much all of our conditions are bleed only, how exactly does that work in our favor?

Thieves also have relatively good access to poison. Learn your class.

Furthermore, the variety of conditions is critical to buffering cleanses. So the assessment isn’t simply a matter of “zomg bleeds get cleansed fail qq”.

In addition, even though Thieves “only” have bleed, Thieves can apply bleeds all the time. E.g. cleanses are only moderately effective.

And last, as I previously said, I think it’s worth looking at the variety of cleanses available to classes and the variety of condition spam available to specific thief builds.

Not to mention, saying “roll condition spec” shouldn’t be the only available answer…

It’s not the only answer. Other answers include picking up every boon strip you can get access to (including sigil and the steal trait) and running with burst damage. Or teaming up with another player.

Or you can run a tank spec that also spams weakness and poison to erode a bunker.

In fact, the random suggestions I mentioned include augmentations to all those potential approaches.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

It’s called professions, who are proficient on what they do, like um, removing buffs. It’s no cookie cutter, instead what you’re proposing will give birth to a cookie cutter anti-bunker thief.

Last I checked, Anet has attempted to make generally varied builds available to all classes, making the “professions” capable of doing multiple things — well, I might add — not just 1.

Indeed, what exactly do you think I’m proposing? If I recall correctly, the other poster had proposed the block-penetration. I randomly tossed out a half dozen alternatives and potential alternatives that change less of the existing game.

You seem to be making a lot of assumptions about the simple concepts I tossed around.

Easiest way to counter prot and armor is to just use condition damage like a P/D spec.

From Anet’s behavior, their “intent” for WvW is to be PvE, so I wouldn’t hold any significant expectations.

evilapprentice.6379:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

An option that is unnecessary given that there are other tools that can do the job more effectively and efficiently.

Please, do list what “effective, efficient” boon stripping options thieves have.

Boon stripping isn’t the only tool that busts a bunker.

SneakyErvin.3056:

IMO Anet should do the BioWare approach, at x level you will get travel speed just like it worked in SWToR. It was the perfect system for movement. Make it 25% and remove the passive effect on signets. This would free up options and make many more specs open. Everyone would benefit from it.

Players already get a, what 33% out of combat run speed boost available at level 1 in GW2.

Various SWTOR classes were able to acquire further universal run speed boosts via specs.

I think the lesson here is that all classes in general have too much access to too much swiftness and passive run speed boosts. Anet should just remove most/all of them and increase player base run speed by 20% or something.

Is there a problem with a greater variety of builds capable of performing a job?

Do you want this game to be that cookie-cutter?

Smitten, my point is that this is not a game breaking problem.

Give it another 48 hours.

Also a side point is anytime something is to hard to beat, people cry about it then after enough people throwing fits

Are you a kid? There’s a difference between whining about something that you lost to, and complaining about a legitimate bug that gives an overpowered capability to a subset of players.

I have a Warrior too and I very well will go home and pick up a stack of kitten arrow carts and farm badges by the cartloads until this gets fixed.

Skill? ROFL. Get over yourself, grow up, and get some objectivity. You’re whining about complaining rather than discussing the actual matter at hand.

Monsoon.2589:

Open question to BlackGate Commanders,

If you really want to get back to the second spot you have to focus on taking red objectives not greens. For the last two days on several maps I have witnessed many commanders going for green targets which does not affect the amount of points red gets.

Because BG is fighting for 1st place, not 2nd. SOR is also fighting for 1st place.

Incidentally, JQ NA primetime has softer targets in general than SOR. If JQ had harder targets, BG would naturally tend to attack SOR.

This is not the case.

QED.

I’m saying that sharpening the wood sword is an interesting option.

If a skill can strip a specific boon, then everyone in their mother will have that skill stapled.

Unless it had a significant cost. Duh.

Mesmers have a utility to swap 3 conditions / boons, but most don’t have it selected. Hmm.

Let’s assume for a minute that a certain skill strips a specific boon and glass Thieves becomes a problem, then what?

Who said that glass Thieves would have access to targeted boon stripping? You could make it a GM trait in the steal line, or Acrobatics for that matter.

Lol@ random assumptions.

Any capability can be tuned. The discussion is whether particular capabilities are relevant to nerfing thief damage output and/or helping to beat bunkers in a balanced manner (separate from whether or not thief damage output should be nerfed or whether or not bunkers need more counters than already exist). It could even be tagged onto a utility with a long cooldown, or cost 10 initiative. Shrug.

Zikory.6871:

First off, this trait doesn’t allow you to automatically kill a opponent so your statement is far fetched.

No, it only allows you to permanent immobilize 50 players at 1500 or w/e range in a giant AOE. Balanced, yeah.

If it was a known issue, it would have been brought up well before this past couple of weeks, I’m sorry that it promotes more strategy then banging your head on a door till you can rush in.

For those that are unable to read the thread: the current bug is a result of the recent change to engi turret mechanics.

Draygo.9473:

There is sufficient counterplay here. There are lots of immob breaks, blocking abilities, invun, evades, teleports, dashes that can get you through this.

It’s funny how you mention “immob breaks” when the arrow cart will just immobilize you again a half second later.

So the bottom line here is that it’s fair for 2-4 arrow carts to permanently hold down a chokepoint. Looks like it will be impossible to take any keep from any defense by any competently organized server until Anet fixes it.

This thread is getting hilarious.

I’ll try to dumb it down for people:

1. Many weapon sets have stealth. Many of those sets do NOT use stealth in a manner that will be affected by the change/nerf. D/P is a case where the stealth function is not typically used in a way that will be adversely affected by the change. Anyone listing D/P as a set that will be impacted by the change doesn’t know how D/P is effectively played.

2. All weapon sets are theoretically affected by the change, because they can all use blinding powder then get wtfrevealed as they are running the hell away.

What a useless tangent of discussion.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

and please, go roll 25/30/0/0/15 with a zerker ammy (The spec that hits like a truck and is as tough as a wet dollar store napkin, the one I specifically mentioned) and see how quickly you melt when anything sneezes at you. I’m not saying the spec should be tough, but don’t pretend like its not among the glassiest glass cannons in the game.

Why do I have to roll that? That’s a horrible build IMO.

One thing to note about this line of discussion is that the concept of a “bunker buster” build doesn’t have to rely on raw damage output, which is what that glass cannon spec focuses on. That’s a very narrow-minded view.

A bunker buster may only do moderate damage, but if they can strip away all the defenses of a bunker build, then they will bust it.

One of the issues with the premise of this thread is that you are trying to adapt a glass cannon raw damage build to bust bunkers, which isn’t necessarily the right approach. It could be as simple as adding a greater variety of conditions and boon stripping to a thief condition build so that condition removals don’t work as well, combined with a removal of regen. This, on top of some buff to poison’s heal reduction could very well bust any bunker really kitten fast.

The concept that condition damage bypasses armor is already integrated into the game. Naturally the discussion becomes how “easy” it is to remove conditions, and how hard it is to re-apply large stacks. Hence, tuning to the existing condition / removal systems and abilities could easily be a better solution than some “new mechanic” like block-bypass or armor penetration.

One interesting concept is this: targeted boon stripping. There are already many abilities in this game that remove a limited set of conditions (e.g. removes cripple/immob, etc). Why not have a boon strip that -only- removes regen? Or only protection?

This sort of limited + targeted boon strip could be much more balanced / palatable / effective than any wholesale mechanics adjustment.

Edit: Warr GS Arcing Strike could sure as hell use a targeted boon strip, although due to its cooldown I’d say something like Aegis or Fury removal. Removing prot on an 8s cooldown or w/e it was is probably too low.

evilapprentice.6379:

I’m of the opinion that the bigger the PvE / PvP split, the better.

Agreed, but Anet isn’t.

Anet knows two things:

1. To get WvW players to pay any money at the cash shop, they must tie WvW to PvE.

2. PvE content is by its nature repetitive and grindy. Given their semi-broken commitment to avoid massive gearflation (a la WoW), they can’t really add mega tiers of gear every 6 months. As a result, they want to divert PvE players into WvW to occupy their time. Hence they have a second significant reason to keep WvW tied to PvE.

Furthermore, any good change (e.g. using sPvP gear in WvW) would also require changes to other aspects of the system — PvE consumables in WvW, map completion in WvW, karma / not glory in WvW, $ in WvW. Anet’s not going to do that anytime soon.

Edit:

Generally speaking the sPvP / esport notion is a sinking ship at this point. There are so many things against its success atm that I can’t begin to list them.

Gismor.8407:

I hate when people QQ because they die in WvW. Why should ANet get rid of the things that people use to do well in WvW? This is just one of those things that enables a smaller team to help the bigger zerg by wiping and/or delaying the enemy zerg. GET OVER IT. Go back to PvE.

/endrant

So you’re saying that if my class were bugged to automatically kill all opponents on the map, that would be fair because it helps the anti-zerg?

Are you saying you need overpowered exploits to do well in WvW? Maybe you should go back to PvE?

But swiftness doesn’t stack with stacks.

AW rear positional 100% armor pen was a good mechanic though. I certainly enjoyed using it and playing against it.

Dat trinket was pretty kitten stupid though. Although I rather enjoyed the no-resist one for my Sorc when pesky WHs popped up with the immunity cooldown. Sumkittenes don’t expect a disarm to go straight their their magic immune. POW.

The whole point of my post (and I admit, I could have been way clearer on this)was to reduce Thief burst (All burst actually, but thief is the class I’m most familiar with) without reducing the ability to kill bunkers.

One of the very obvious and clear fixes for this is to remove PvE crit damage % itemization from WvW. There’s a very broad difference in burst damage between sPvP and WvW, and no small part of it begins with “Berz” and ends with “erker”.

But I sincerely doubt Anet will go that route.

It would actually probably be hard to make “TC not stack with itself only”, because the swiftness boon on a player probably does not track where it picked up each source of swiftness for what duration.

However, Anet really should have made curtain overwrite the swiftness if the TC boon exceeds the player’s current swiftness duration. Seems easy enough, but … DX.

That’s sustained based on cooldown and ignores baseline damage output between the casts of the special ability you’re looking at.

A more granular scenario would be something like a random skill A (let’s call it “Mirror Blade”) takes 0.75s to execute and hits for 3500 * 2 every 4.8s. Random skill B (let’s call it “Winds of Chaos”) hits for [1200+419] in 0.75s. Random skill C (let’s call this one “Spatial Surge”) hits for 3500 in 1.0s every 1.0s.

In a given 10 second interval, skill A fires twice (1.5s) for 14000 damage with skill C filling the gaps (8s) for 28000 damage. Spamming skill B for 10 seconds would net around 21047.

Spamming A + C is around 42k damage in 10s, and B is about half that. So half dps.

Edit: For individual metrics; MB’s DPS for its animation becomes 9333, with WoC at 2159. Maybe I should have originally said 4×.

The bottom line is that many players don’t realize that when using a Staff, you have exactly 1 button from 1-5 that deals anything more than a dribble of power-based damage, and that is iWarlock. Everything else is negligible damage.

When you use GS, you have 4 buttons that deal ‘solid’ power damage. Mirror Blade is almost as potent per cast in direct damage as using a phantasm. Bonus points being that it can be used every 4.8s [traited], unlike phantasms.

And this trait for Warrior has zero internal cooldown? Really? Giving it even a 1sec internal cooldown would solve this issue, as it would immediatly only proc for 1 player instead of a whole zerg.

The lack of ICD is balanced for the trait for Warrior abilities. All Warr abilities that have cripples are on cooldowns, and some Warr abilities that strike twice with cripple (Bladetrail) are intended to have the trait proc twice in rapid succession.

ICD doesn’t really make sense for the trait for Warr abilities. Of course, it doesn’t really make sense for the trait to apply to siege. Lawls.

Wth is southsun supposed to be? Don’t make me wiki it :\.

That would be valid if the swiftness from Curtain overwrote swiftness of lesser duration. As it is, the reliability is pretty bad in terms of actually applying swiftness, so the compensation isn’t there (from a swiftness perspective; curtain/void is more than fine as an ability).

In addition, in a general WvW case group swiftness is not, in fact, worth a tradeoff of personal swiftness since most players have their own personal swiftness anyways.

Rofl. D/P just uses HS again for more stealth without appearing / triggering the new reveal. Hello people, do you even play D/P?

seriously, we are talking about punishing thieves for repeatedly using their defensive ability here.

This may come as news to you, but thieves have more than 1 defensive ability in their arsenal.

Perfect example of a stealth crutch player who has no concept of dodges, blinds, or evades.

What do you guys think? Was there another WvW/RvR based game that solved this issue?

GW2 objectives can already be simultaneously assaulted and simultaneously defended. The largest constraint in GW2 atm is that the maps are too small for 3 servers’ of zergs to spread out and become discombobulated. E.g. currently 1 server’s zerg can ping pong between nearby objectives and stonewall.

In other news, uncapped AOE damage kills zergs good. <insert 8 v 9000 example from DAOC>

Also, the #1 anti-zerg change to the game would be to remove the downed state. Yeah really.

Given bases A, B, C and D, you can only attack B if you own A and you can only attack C if you own B, etc. You need a link. If you are attacking B and the enemy flips A, tough luck. Your attack on B immediately fails because you can’t capture B without owning A.
This forced players to play defense at least enough to allow their offense time to work.

This already exists with the siege defense construct with Trebuchet offense. E.g. points become defensible with fewer numbers via siege, and objectives are vulnerable from other objectives via Trebs.

Most of the WvW design breaks down when nobody cares about winning and therefore doesn’t care about defense or upgrades. The real question, I think, is how to make players care more about winning — about taking towers and holding them and upgrading them and defending them long term.

What’s wrong with killing players?

Defense/sieging around static points is boring — this is why players have started to step away from it.

Edit: Don’t take it personally, but you’re thinking like an MMO Dev out of touch with players. You are asking “why won’t the players play the game the way we designed for them to play?” Why not let the players play the game in a way they find fun? E.g. random roaming and killing shouldn’t be incentivized against, which is what you ask for.

Killing other players is fun. Hence the entire objective / siege / defense mechanic is basically bait and context for players to fight other players. This is perfect.

Personally, I think more basic rewards (influence, more gold/xp) should come from killing players, rather than completing objective events. More incentive for player-on-player kill action.

Sure, but it shouldn’t be in a random overpowered delivery vector.

Also, while few v. many mechanics are great, this is still like 5 vs. 200 perma immob roflololololololololololol.

E.g. bad solution to the “right” problem so to speak. Sidenote: problem may not exactly be right, but good enough for this thread.

swinsk.6410:

Sure, I am wrong. It’s a dual skill. Flanking strike still has no daze, you were refering to tactical strike and said flanking strike.

Not exactly. He said: I run dagger offset not for dancing dagger, but for flanking strike. My only use for stealth is the occasional daze. Meaning I already have revealed debuff EVERY TIME I stealth nothing changes.

He runs S/D for Flanking Strike. This establishes the connection between his statement and the previous “all /D affected” (and he clarifies that he uses S/D for FS, which may be an unnecessary comment).

Separately, he states that Daze is the only reason why he uses the stealth in the S/D set, and therefore he always has revealed anyways.

There’s no reason to automatically relate the two statements. Although I’d still give it a 33% chance he meant to say Tactical Strike, I don’t think it’s guaranteed. I think there’s a reasonable 2/3s chance that he just threw in extraneous explanation for why he uses S/D (perhaps to reinforce the fact that it is not “just for CND stealth”).

That leap kitten with Ranger Sword is annoying as HELL to get used to. Edit: I think the biggest problem is the animation lock with all the steps of Sword1 messing up the timing of the other abilities, causing the timing of everything to be weird as hell until you get reaaally familiar with it.

Personally I think the “stall” time at the end of the leap animation where you can’t move needs to be reduced. Hard to use it twice in a row (turn around for the first half) to leap twice in the same direction (which is hilarious kekeke).

That said, using Ranger S/D with Quickness makes you go batkitten insane flippy floppy mad attack rage. Enemy doesn’t know where the hell you are or what the hell you’re doing when you’re spamming those.

FS

Damage: 756

BS

Front damage: 403
Back damage: 806

FS is 188% of a frontstab, and 94% of a backstab.

Edit:

Whoops, what the hell did I click to get 571??

Aside from my complete inability to click and read correctly, yeah it looks like it does most of a backstab, with one caveat: if you press consecutive FS’s too quickly, you can cut off the second strike and lose the damage.

Right.

The change is that if you don’t exit stealth via an attack (in other words stealth drops via duration), you STILL get a revealed debuff. This means you can’t “almost-chain-stealth” forever with CND every 3.01 seconds.

Oh I don’t care about the swiftness, I just want any excuse for a Mantra Elite so I can get more bonus damage.

KEKEKEKEKEKE

Yeah it would be nice if Flanking Strike simply worked as a delayed shadowstep+hit (evading during the delayed ‘shadowstep’ half). Much easier to code / much more reliable positioning / less player hate / everyone happy.

Again, I’m not going to write a dissertation with citations and references – unless this is your first time on the boards, you have a general idea of what I’m talking about.

I didn’t mention the sentiment of random players. I mentioned whether or not the 1-shot was a fact (which it is) and the conditions under which the 1-shot occurs (which is a much more interesting discussion and could use nerfing).

Flanking strike would be an awesome boon removal…if the skill pathed correctly.

Tbh it paths well enough when you get used to it. Also, the boon strip has no ‘pathing’. The real limitation seems to be the nature of boonspamlulz where players who focus on it can get ridiculous numbers of boons to buffer with, with Flanking Strike requiring a lot of initiative for only 1 RNG removal.

Minor tuning on the flexibility of the player to control the end of the FS motion sooner is also a nice consideration, but tangent to the main point: FS could remove 2 boons if increased boon removal is actually balanced/necessary for the thief class.

Bountiful theft is nice to rip 2 boons every 32-36 seconds. No bunkering spec in the game will be crippled by losing 2 boons every 32-36s.

Should thieves have pervasive access to every anti-bunker capability in the game?

What capabilities do other classes have for that role?

Crit boon removal sigil is garbage – its uncontrolled and happens once every 10s, it cant be applied tactically.

Should the ICD be dropped to 5s? Should it remove 2 instead of 1?

If armor was the key to bunkering, you’d see more bunker warriors.

The reason why protection is relevant is because it’s an exponential bonus for the final “DPS – HPS” grind. You focus on protection because you can’t remove armor — you can only remove prot.

Bunker warriors have limitations from a general combination of (a) low ret, (b) infrequent condition removal, and © mediocre healing.

Warriors have / can have kitten good CC, but that tends to fade into a wash of “opponent can dodge/evade/block your few CCs”, whereas passives will work regardless.

(Unless you’re advocating some attacks ignore 60%+ armor, which just off the top of my head feels pretty OP, though maybe warrants some investigation)

The one easiest example off the top of my head is to have the rear-arc bonus for Backstab penetrate 100% of armor, instead of granting double damage. BS is the most obvious candidate for such a change. You could also have a signet (say, Assassin’s Signet) grant 50% arpen for the next 3-5 attacks or something, rather than giving the direct % damage boost.

I think Mug is also a good candidate because that needs nerfing all by itself. I was crit for 6.5k by that last night. So silly.

Dasorine.1964:

Overwritten isn’t same as not work at all, you still get the effect you click the next button for it just replaces an older one.

1. Thief stealth abilities still work. E.g. blinding powder still blinds. Refuge still stealths everyone else.

2. Multiple combo fields don’t stack. So, based on your wording, Mesmer Feedback and Null Field “don’t work at all”.

Dasorine.1964:

shatters not a utility its a class skill is it not? Im talking actual utility slots, you can still fire off stuff like charge mantra’s without having to wait between each one.

Phantasmal Disenchanter and Defender will overwrite existing clones and phantasms. They will also be overwritten by mere clones if you have 3 phantasms up.

I still don’t understand why they decided to blanket nerf the mechanic rather than properly fix the bits that are causing the proper problems (and not just complaints by people who think stealth is invincibility)

Because the “blanket nerf” is, in fact, a directed fix for repeated spammy stealths (without affecting stealth stacking, which should probably also be nerfed, but would impact current gameplay a hell of a lot more).

Dasorine.1964:

Fact is no one else gets penalized for using their utilities back to back, with this change it will punish those thieves that use more than 1 instance of stealth for something other than sitting around farming newbies with CnD only.

Mesmers have a 0.25 second global cooldown on shatters. So they can’t chain/combo them.

Also, Mesmers are subject to the stealth reveal changes as well.

Also, all classes with leap finishers are also affected.

3) No reasoning? Here’s a truncated version of the last paragraph of my original post. “Keep bunker bustering in via changes suggested, that way overall damage can be lower and other classes no longer feel like thieves 1 shot them, but bunkers still need fear them”.

That’s nice. Doesn’t explain whether or not players actually do get 1-shot, or whether getting “1-shot” is legitimate or not in the first place, or the conditions and characteristics of getting 1-shot that are legitimate or overpowered. Or how reducing “1-shot” damage/scenarios somehow correlates to a requirement for a total damage reduction.

In other words, you’re assuming that Thieves need a general damage nerf and that they need to bust bunkers more than they currently do (in order to compensate for it). If you want to make those assumptions, fine. State that those are your assumptions.

However, based on the last 10 patches, it doesn’t seem like ANet is interested in nerfing general thief damage (good). And if any changes need to be made, they are relative to the specific execution of specific combos (the classic CND Mug BS) or itemization (PvE crit damage itemization in WvW) rather than any general damage change for the class.

3) Heal reduction affects all classes, not just bunkers (as my suggestion did). People already feel thieves are too powerful, and with high access to poison, this will appear as though a pretty direct buff for them.

Bunkers don’t survive without sustain. Healing is the primary sustain mechanism in GW2, particularly the relatively “high” base healing with armor (toughness) stacking.

At the end of the day, if Thieves already have good access to weakness (anti-dodge), poison (anti-heals), and some degree of boon strip (sigil and/or flanking strike and/or traited strip-on-steal), then why does a Thief need more anti-bunker than what is already “the best anti-bunker in the entire game”?

Seriously, I like the idea of armor pen. On one hand, protection is much, much more important than armor for DR,

0 to protection reduces damage by 33%. 0 to max toughness reduces damage by 50%? Plus or minus. Pretty sure armor (and the synergy of armor x heal) has more of an impact than protection.

VOLKON.1290:

Sardonia.8196:

All i can say is “WHAT?”

I think he’s trying to communicate with us, but can’t be sure…

I’ve summarized it a bit for the laymen:

jq convertingto muchless men of leader events have you passing out chastise to their fights the people thatthnk dynamic in itself finds gems thru fear of guilds have tower for engaging the manuals

… does that make more sense?

Zikory.6871:

Sorry for the semi rant but this is getting old. There is always going to be something a different class has that seems OP! Why cry about it?

Because unlike other supposedly OP things, this is actually pretty OP.

We’re going to try and have a discussion here – I’d like to assume you know how to do that, but so far it doesn’t appear so. Allow me to help you with specific inquiries.

You make posts like this and you don’t get infractions? Wow.

In case you didn’t know, you are the one who started the discussion. Your original post didn’t actually make any case supporting any change to the Thief class.

You:

1. Cite an original intention from the Devs.
2. Suggest (with no support) that that intention should be for Warriors.*
3. Put forth your own vision for the Thief class (with no reasoning why it should be as you imagine).
4. Suggest a damage buff against block in particular (without any reasoning as to why block is a “key” tank mechanic), as opposed to any other anti-bunker mechanic imaginable (why not have Thieves ignore X% of armor?).
5. Mention an ambiguous damage nerf to compensate with no order of magnitude from which to begin a useful discussion.

• I want to separately point out that you only reference a vague and poorly-described sentiment that Thieves do “too much damage” as a the driver for this entire discussion. There’s no assessment by you to measure Thief burst or sustained damage, and how those are effective, or not, against bunkers.

I’m not seeing where you establish a link that bunkers rely on block to tank. I’m seeing no comparison of existing Thief anti-bunker capabilities (boon shred, poison, weakness) versus those of other classes to assess how well-oriented towards busting bunkers Thieves already are. I’m not seeing any argument from you that supports the need for a new mechanic (%block penetration?) instead of existing mechanics (boon shred for Aegis, rapid attacks or evade-attacks for block-counters, or interrupt mechanisms for pure block).

Edit: There is an addition issue of changing the nature of blocks beyond just the damage — currently blocks evade the effect of whatever attack was blocked. With a percentage pass-through, the target would now be affected by whatever conditions/CC the Thief is applying. This is a fundamental change to the mechanic of blocking, which would require significantly more consideration.

So, the bottom line:

Why do you feel my suggestion is unnecessary?

This is your thread. Maybe you should start by demonstrating why your suggestion is necessary?

Perhaps if you started with some actual logic and arguments, I would have something more than blanket dismissals to throw at it.

What exactly do you feel is bad about my idea to lower a thieves overall damage while keeping them as the “Bunker busting” class ANet envisions them as?

Generally speaking, in order to make [some] Thief options more aligned to bunker-busting (ignoring the discussion of whether this is a good idea or not), I would say:

1. Improve boon shredding arsenal.
2. Slightly more weakness.
3. Increase the heal reduction of poison across the board.
4. Significantly reduce the burst damage of key burst abilities and give them armor penetration. This retains their burst against “bunkers” and reduces their effectiveness against glass. ARPen is a pretty common solution for this problem. Still don’t know why you key on block so hard.

Edit: For example, replace the “double damage from behind” on backstab with “ignores armor from behind”. Reduce Mug’s damage by 30%, and add a 50% armor penetration to it. Make the first hit of Flanking Strike ignore armor (the weak hit). Make the Warr GS Burst ignore 100% of armor. Shrug.

The first 3 are minor tuning that can take place within the existing system. The last is an unprecedented change, but also very targeted to the problem. However, it would also demand a general balance pass to see if other class/subspecs that are also targeted towards “ANTI-TANK” aspects should have armor penetration as well.

And, aside from all of this, there is the discussion of whether or not that’s a valid mechanic when you already have conditions that bypass armor. I think it’s valid, but it’s worth discussing next to conditions.

Your suggestion is unnecessary. All players are sadface when their attacks are blocked.

Deal with it?

- the fact that #2’s bounce only works at midrange and closer is counterproductive to the concept of the weapon. I can choose between doing less dmg with skill #1 and maximizing my bounces (which is fun!) or I can stay at range, but then skill #2 is rather bad.

Eh, no.

You use 1111 when the target is at range, and you use 2 when your phantasm is spawned (it will bounce off the phantasm and back to your target), OR within 600 range of you.

If the target is in melee you hit 5 and then continue, or swap to your other weapon set.

GS2 is not counterproductive to the concept of the weaponset — your mental concept of the weaponset is misaligned.

Cataca.3867:

EasymodeX.4062:

6. Staff is a tank weapon. This is common knowledge. If you need more tank, go Staff. Switching from Staff to GS in a power-based shatter build basically increases your total damage output by 50%.

What? Your other points may have merit, but thats complete bullkitten. For shatters GS vs Staff theres zero difference. The buffs from staff and GS pan out, and chaos storm has a very good chance of giving you frenzy, which increases your dps by more than the weakness from GS 2.

Between GS and Staff, the shatters will deal similar damage.

GS phantasm will deal marginally more reliable damage.

GS AA will deal a little more damage.

Non-AAs will deal a kittenload more damage (MB tends to hit for about twice AA DPS, which is already higher than staff’s).

50% more is probably exaggerated. It’s probably like 33% more in reality.

New Elite ability: Mantra of Swiftness

When charged, the Mantra passively adds 25% movespeed. Readies 2 charges of 4s Quickness with a 4s cooldown. Mantra has a 90s cooldown.

Link describing fractal weapons:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractal_weapons

All ascended gear should be similar by offering basically skins.

This would improve the gameplay experience of players.