Guild Wars 2

Being upfront about it, I haven’t played it long, but it’s alright, or could be with some minor changes I think.

Maybe make kneel instant and free. Have this roll over to the stealthing skill and increase the cost to 4 or 5 with a cast time of 0.5-0.75 seconds. Have dodge, change weapon, and jump break the kneel.

Maybe make the stolen items be the same or similar to the core ones, but the offensive ones could be turned into special single-target shots from a backup pistol like the charr racial skill. The trait that made rifle #5 stealth could be reworked (since it would be in the base ability now) into making all rifle (and maybe pistol) shots peirce and the stolen skill explode in an AoE style when it hits the target.

James Quall.6029:

Pistol has been due for a major overhaul for over a year since they removed ricochet. Twice now they’ve increased damage done, which isn’t a bad thing, but low damage is only a small portion of the issue with the weapon.

Pistol is still probably the only exclusively single target weapon in the game, body shot is still a worthless waste of initiative, the weapon trait is bad, and pistol/pistol is still a one skill weapon set. Yeah it’s cool my unloads do more damage than ever before but I can’t live on unload alone.

Yeah, until there’s a good defensive skill on the set by changing either P/P 2 or 3, I can’t see it getting used in PvP. Nice to have an alright ranged weapon for boss fights at least.

saerni.2584:

I would remove the swap-time timer on weapons and allow thieves to freely engage or disengage at will with whatever weapon they choose. This fits the idea of using whatever skill, whenever you need it, in exchange for initiative and not being bound by cooldown timers.

I could get behind this. Maybe give it the delay of engineers switching kits (very minor), but that’s really it. Then we could just give Quick pockets an ICD so it can’t be abused. I mean our initiative is across both weapon sets so it makes sense to me.

I’m enjoying playing with my thief. If I have a bad night I just call it after a couple of games and pick it up the next day. If I quit every game after a few bad days or even a week I wouldn’t have any online games to play.

Ario.8964:

I’ll just list out my thoughts according to your list:
1) I can agree with this one just because we need more than 1 viable amulet for power builds and then it gives people who want to ge zerk for insane damage the option as a blade of grass won’t kill them
2) Also something I can agree with.
3) It’s not terribly unbalanced but maybe a bit unnecessary, idk. I’m impartial to that one
4) No, we don’t need anymore invulns in the game. Maybe you could make another block or something but outside of that this is a big nono.
5) NO, absolutely not. That alone would be the single most broken trait in the entire game. Maybe some sort of armor penetration would be cool but ignoring it entirely is completely OP. Honestly I like the trait the way it is now, it’s a damage boost for those who don’t need the utility from improv. There’s nothing wrong with the trait as it is so I personally would leave it alone.
6) This I agree with again, lots of the base cd’s for utility skills are way too high and this would go a long way to helping diversity within the class.
7) NO NO and NO. The dodges are already pretty much overperforming as it is and this would powercreep dd so hard that there would be 0 options for diversity on the class. Remember the goal is to tone down what’s too strong, not buff it all to high heaven.
8) I don’t think this is necessary. Steal is already on a really short cd when it’s buffed via trickery and SoH.
9) Again completely broken and full of powercreep. What would be much better would be the removal of stealth stripping via reveal and instead only allow it to be applied like sic em. So if the thief is in stealth you can’t take it away but if you catch him in the open you can reveal him.
10) I like cluster bomb the way it is. Maybe an aftercast decrease and a projectile speed increase would be able to be considered but outside of that the skill is fine the way it is.

Just wanted to comment on point 8 since I’ve seen it several places. I think we could knock steal down by simply making the SoH CD reduction baseline. The only reason why is untraited steal is mediocre, so making the untraited version slightly better while not increasing the overall potential would help lessen the disparity between the traited and untraited version. Making that CD reduction and preparedness baseline would go a long way towards making trickery not (as) mandatory.

I’m still going to stick with my suggestion for P/P 1,2, &3.
1) Raise the multiplier of the #1 skill to 0.75 and have it apply 6 seconds of vuln. That means the auto-sustained damage comes out to 0.915mult/sec and results in a constant 7 vuln.
2) Make #2 apply 2 stacks of poison (6 sec) since its both a damage and utility condi. That will let P/D still be viable and synergize with the DA poison trait (this rounds out P/D to applying vuln, poison, bleeding, and torment consistently). Possibly adding boon destruction in addition may also make it useful.
3) Change #3 to a 4 shot backwards evasion (300 units with a matrix style roll) with a 2.0 multipler (0.5 per shot). That lets you stay at range, giving you the evasion the set needs, maintains burst, and limits spam due to the incresed distance. Note that a large chunck of damage from the set has been moved to the autos so you’re not losing anything, but instead gaining situationally useful utility like the rest of our successful sets. The evasion should be 0.5 seconds with a total skill time of 0.75 seconds to allow for counterplay.

Shovel Face.4512:

Shinobi.3240:

1. 15k HP base, would be around 21k with Maruder.

O.K.

2. 15 initiative baseline and make Prepardness where initiative cost for all skills is decreased by 1. (Ex. BP would be 5 initiative not 6 with this trait.)

15 Ini baseline okay, rest not.

3. Add F2 blinding powder skill. Why does Thief not have this? I’m surprised this isn’t even in the game considering Theives are “master of stealth”

Could agree with that on a 60 sec. CD.

4. Replace blinding powder utility skill with “Evasion” – evade all attacks for 6s

Would make thieves way too strong. 6s to freely rampage … hell no

5. Deadly Arts: Executioner trait rework – all attacks ignore armor and protection from targets below 75%, damage is increased by 20% when target is below 25%

So you want to ignore 967/1118/1271 armor rating depending on the class and on top of that the reduction from protection + 20% increased dmg at 25% health. Sounds completely broken.

6. Significant CD reductions to certain thief utility skills (SR, Roll for Initiative, Haste, Etc)

You can reduce the cds already when you trait for it

7. Dash dodge – gain 2.5s of quickness for every dodge.

Quickness on thief is really strong with the buffed autoattacks. Would be broken.

Bound – gain 2.5s of protection for ever dodge.

So perma protection .. nope

Lotus training – give ur opponents 5s of weakness( 20% dmg and condi reduction)

You can have permanent weakness uptime on your target already when you trait DA and DD. No need for more.

8. Steal – CD decreased by 5s

Steal is already so strong with all the enhancements. Reducing the cd even more would be crazy.

9. Reveal does not work on Thieves

Counterplay

10. And finally, fix the cluster bomb. Why does that thing defy gravity?

Agree with that kind of … its nice to set up your burst .. clusterbomb .. switch weapons … blackpowder .. heartseeker … steal .. backstab … can make it hit all at once. Fixing the travel speed would ruin this combo.

As i see it you don´t aim to balance thief you want to make it broken. We have Revenant already as an example for overtuning. Thief maybe needs minor fixes but no buffs. The other overperforming proffessions need a nerf.

Best regards!

Shino!

How does any of this make it broken? You do know protection is thrown around like crazy right? It’s not unheard of for teams to always have protection. Thief has kitten burst because of protection. And yeah I scratched 7. If u didn’t see the edit. And against, I’m not wasting BT just to CD on some skills. That’s a waste. Their is unplayable, I don’t understand how some of u can’t deny this. I’ve main thief and I play PvP, I know what I’m talking about and none of this seems over the top.

The best counter to the uptime on protection would be if larcenous strike stole 2 boons again. After they increased the cost of flanking strike and required the hit for the rollover, they should have reverted it back to 2 boons.

Just gonna leave this here.

If you’re in the middle of a losing streak, take a break and wait for the cluster of every skill level in amber to even out.

Dat zerk P/P build tho….

stuck in a PvP match

I’d just like to see the projectile speed on SB#2 increased by 33%-50%. SB 4 could probably use a poison duration buff back to the original of 4 seconds, but I think they were worried about the possibility of stacking high stacks against people and mobs who chose not to walk out of the area.

Jana.6831:

Azukas.1426:

So you have to make choices and not have a be all spec…LOL ofc this is how it’s supposed to be.

Yes my options: quit this game or play D/P

5111 5111 was because of the initative – we couldn’t affort much else – I did do more than that though – depending on the situation.
I already explained why SA is important to D/D – try your ideas yourself.
But I guess you finally got my point – halfway – btw what was yours again?

ETA: btw: These are my utilities – I know that the DrD untilities are better but I do more than 1 vs 1 in wvw – and I never know in what situation I’ll be next.
Oh, I’m running smoke screen right now as we were capping a tower with only two of us and smoke screen is nice against the rifle of the lord – forgot to switch back and it has proven useful quite a lot of times.

Wait, no stunbreak? Why signet of shadows? You would be more effective running runes of the traveler and shadowstep.

Jana.6831:

Azukas.1426:

Also people neglect all the DP nerfs over the years as well.

Im well aware of the SD changes (remember that they hard countered me) and just went with his biased statement since he already hung himself

Buffing other sets won’t go without nerfing D/P as currently a lot of traits are merged in a way that only D/P can profit from them. And you can’t take away that they have 2 shadowsteps with traits and weaposet, that it’s easier to play D/P than every other set.
If you make an OH dagger buff that lets you port to your enemy this utility is pretty much wasted for S/D thieves as they already have it on their set.
So: If you put more utility on the other weapons you won’t really satisfy the needs of each set and D/P will still be stronger.
Even if you buff S/D to what it has been D/P will be stronger, even if you buff D/D, D/P will be stronger, probably even P/D but that sets depends a lot on if condis are buffed – oh and on pistol buffs probably – I guess a faster autoattack would buff that set.
It doesn’t work without nerfing D/P in my opinion – especially since the traits are now a mess.

How do you know that with buffing the other sets, D/P will always be better? There’s no set buffs right now. We should keep giving ideas to make OH dagger on par with OH pistol, and hopefully they pick some of them up like they did the Bandit’s Defense and sword aftercast changes.

Azukas.1426:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Azukas.1426:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Ohitei.8043:

You should seriously admit, nerfing D,P isn’t a solution at all cause it would end up nowhere.

When they nerfed S/D, it lead us to the rise of D/P. So nerfing D/P might lead us to more build diversity.

No buffs,to DP came when the SD nerf came. More people were using DP before the death of SD anyways

I’m not in the mood to dig up some past update but here’s something to prove you wrong.

April 2013
- Shadow Shot skill: The projectile portion is now unblockable. (huge buff)
- FS/LS split
- FS 1st strike used to remove boon, now added to LS
- FS cost reduced to 3 from 4 (then back to 4 again in 2014)

December 2013
- Infiltrator Return nerfed

September Feature pack 2014
- Dagger Strike/Wild Strike/Lotus Strike now hits up to 2 targets.
- Flanking Strike: This skill now must successfully hit a target before giving the thief access to Larcenous Strike. Initiative cost has been increased to 4.

If I wast to cleave with my weapon, I have to swap to S/x. D/P was meant to be a single target set, but after this update, S/D is no longer needed since Dagger’s AA is faster than Sword AA. The recent AA update only further enlarge the gap between Sword and Dagger.

That’s all I can remember on top of my head and I know there were more. I know that LS was nerfed some time ago to only remove 1 boon instead of 2. FS used to deal 252+504 and some time after the split FS/LS only deal 252+365.

*Even though D/P didn’t get a lot of buffs, the amount of nerfs to S/D was enough for players to abadon it and pick up D/P.

In a sense, I like the same thing to happen to D/P — just keep chopping its legs so other sets can also be picked up*.

So in 04/2013 we saw a DP and SD buff. Separating FS/LS was a buff. Then 8 months later we see a SD nerf and a dagger MH buff 1 year later. This by no means shows that SD was nerfed and DP buffed. Sorry you’re wrong, but then your real feelings come out. I highlighted it for all to see….

You’re upset because anet took away your favorite ball. Instead of understanding that hey maybe my ball wasn’t fair you’ve taken up this self righteous crusade against DP.

Thank you for losing this discussion and illustrating the reason why everyone on this forum will now disregard anything you say from now on. Especially on the subject of thieves.

Again thank you and have a wonderful day.

I just wanted to add that in addition to the split of FL>FL/LS (which was a buff), it originally removed only 1 boon IIRC, they buffed it to 2, then returned it to 1 and increased the cost overall by 1 initiative. That would have been fine still if it didn’t require the contact now (which was another nerf), but the should have reduced the cost by 1 again after requiring contact (specifically an unblocked/undodged/uninvulnerabled hit). Overally I agree with your assessment though. S/D has just ridden a roller coaster of buffs/nerfs. D/P and Staff are largely fine, the other sets should be brought up to their level.

You can use a gamepad (like a Razer Orbweaver) that has a D-Pad Joystick for movement using your thumb and then have all your skills keybound to the pad.

My charr thief is my second favorite thief.

Norn(f)>charr(m)>sylvari (f)>human(m)/asura (m)

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Jana.6831:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

That’s actually one of the problems. The solution that ArenaNet comes up with not only helps D/D but also D/P. So in the end, the gap between D/P and the other sets are ever growing wider. To keep D/P in check, it needs to be nerfed.

Yes and no, right now at least the traits in SA favour only D/P – they’re merged in a way which doesn’t really benefit D/D – as both sets have got a different playstyle.

That’s also a yes and a no. There are D/P builds that goes DA/Tr/DrD so they never benefit from SA at all — so that’s a no. In core traits build — it’s a yes. I personally want Shadowstep to also benefit from SA and give CnD shadowstep.

ETA: Prepardness only really helps D/P.

Yes because it is a weapon set with the lowest total cost. In order for other sets to benefit from Preparedness, their total costs need to be standardized. Right now S/P, for example, is only useful when spec for Trick — without Trick, S/P is unusable.

ETA³: But I do want unblockable on CnD – I really can’t with all these passives flying around. And I want it without having to take BV (cast too long and I love my daggerstorm which is of more use to me anyway as I never know if my next fight will be a 1 vs 1 (haha), vs 5 or vs zerg).

CnD just need to have the casting cost removed really. This way I can capitalize on whatever small window I get during combat. There’s no valid reason to telegraph CnD anymore, it doesn’t deal as much damage as it used to be.

I actually semi-agree with you on some of these points. I’d like to see a different implementation in giving Dancing Dagger a rollover instead of CnD having a shadowstep, but I like the intent.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Midi.8359:

Again this is just being pedantic. Since I think D/P and D/D were equally buffed, and in the end there’s only two D/X weaponsets so you could say one benefiting more than the other is like the flip of a coin. But…

That’s actually one of the problems. The solution that ArenaNet comes up with not only helps D/D but also D/P. So in the end, the gap between D/P and the other sets are ever growing wider. To keep D/P in check, it needs to be nerfed.

Alternatively, they could buff the utility of offhand dagger and it wouldn’t buff D/P at all, plus it would close the gap between D/P and D/D + S/D + P/D.

I, personally, am open to any type of improvement to other weapon sets that don’t directly or indirectly buff D/P. The challenge is, you can’t do the same with off-hand pistol. So what would be the solution, buff main hand Pistol? If that would be the case, then P/D will have double buffs. The solution should not be localized on the weapon skills, instead, then should balance including some changes to the traits.

The traits should be generic and without exclusivity. Trickery has too many exclusive traits that need to become available to every build possible. Then a Thief can pick and choose any trait line and any weapon set without feeling that they are missing something. I like the idea of tradeoff, but the Thief’s choices have become less and less comprehensive over time. Nowadays, the choices are nothing but superficial since in order to make Thief viable, the player needs to take the traits and weapon set that ArenaNet dictates.

It is fairly obvious that they don’t want anything else but D/P in PvP since it makes balancing easy for them. However with such limitation, the Thief became really easy to counter. So the goal is to expand the choices and give Thief more tools and more role other than what ArenaNet have defined for them. The player should define their profession, not the Dev. If I like D/P and I like to deal condition damage, why isn’t that viable? A trait that grants condition damage should be available to all weapon set because when an enemy sees me using P/D it’s a dead giveaway that I have a condition damage build. The beautiful thing about D/D is that the enemy cannot predict what build I’m running.

Oh, look D/P, he’s going for stealth burst. Oh look, S/D, he’s going for boon strip evade spam. Oh look P/P single target high crit. It shouldn’t be a dead giveaway like that.

So if we go by your solution of buffing off-hand dagger, how exactly will it open up diversity in builds?

Buffing OH dagger would simply be the start, not the end. I’ve advocated for making preparedness baseline and putting Bountiful Theft in the Master minor slot and moving the steal CDR from sleight of hand to baseline as well. I’ve advocated for pistol overhauls that would help P/P and raise the skill floor on P/D (imo). Buffing OH dagger is simply the starting point. My contention here is that nerfing D/P beyond just the damage from shadowshot is the wrong way to go here.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Midi.8359:

Again this is just being pedantic. Since I think D/P and D/D were equally buffed, and in the end there’s only two D/X weaponsets so you could say one benefiting more than the other is like the flip of a coin. But…

That’s actually one of the problems. The solution that ArenaNet comes up with not only helps D/D but also D/P. So in the end, the gap between D/P and the other sets are ever growing wider. To keep D/P in check, it needs to be nerfed.

Alternatively, they could buff the utility of offhand dagger and it wouldn’t buff D/P at all, plus it would close the gap between D/P and D/D + S/D + P/D.

Jana.6831:

Kire.2364:

Thief as a whole is finally in an ok place after being shoved out of the meta since the specialization update last summer, and rather than seek to help d/d be brought up to the level of d/p you’d rather the whole profession be dragged down into the dumpster?

Thief isn’t in an OK place, D/P and staff are, maybe S/D but guess not.
Your set might be in an ok place, thief the class isn’t. So, why has thief been buffed? Right, because all builds were dead. How easy is it to kill D/P the set? Not easy, otherwise it wouldn’t have been the only set halfway viable after June. Those who sticked to this forum are D/P thieves (and me) – so all traits were modified to suit D/P best = even less chance for my set. If you had taken the time and at least read the first 2 pages of this thread – you’d knew where I’m coming from, but instead you chose to act like a

whiny little brat

Post specialization patch and pre-HoT S/D was working alright still if you didn’t bother with the defensive trait lines, but that’s because Sword could cover up OH Dagger’s weaknesses when combined with quickness. Post-HoT our bursts could largely negated, so high damage+evasion staff and high damage+utility D/P became the obvious choices. We should be working on ways to make OH Dagger have more utility. Our defensive trait lines are in poor shape. You keep wanting to make our other sets trait dependent which is the opposite direction we should want to go. Breaking one of the working sets in hopes they’ll fix them all simultaneously is a bad idea.

If you’re asking for conservative balance ideas, why not start with something they just did for thief sword being done for mesmer sword: Increasing the autoattack speed by reducing aftercasts (without asking for self nerfs elsewhere).

Mesmer sword rides at 0.9-1.0 mult/sec depending on boons or no boons. Why not reduce the aftercasts without increasing the damage coefficients. That’s 2 birds with 1 stone in the form of an increase in sustained mesmer DPS and more boon removal. This is from a PvP perspective.

If they got the sword auto chain down to 1.85 seconds the chain would ride at 1.2-1.35 mult/sec and would be something like a 33% increase to (potential) boon removal.

I’ll just go back to lurking now.

BlackBeard.2873:

Maugetarr.6823:

I have a couple of ideas, although ele isn’t my main so feel free to tell me how off base some of these might be.

The problem I encounter when I play ele (specifically S/F) is that all the autos are weak in different ways because of an attempt to keep them all uniform in range (imo). Since ele lacks a weaponswap, why not make scepter the flexible weapon instead, filling out a niche somewhere between a melee and ranged weaponset?

Earth and water could remain relatively unchanged in damage and range.

Air could be reduced to 600 range on all of the attacks, however the damage of arc lighting could be normalized instead of building and the whole animation could take about 2 seconds, and put it around a 0.85 mult/sec. That would be the tradeoff in reducing the range.

The fire auto could be replaced with something similar to engis flamethrower auto (flame jet). The range could be about 450 and make it a 1.0 mult/sec channel with a tick of burning on the end. Dragon’s Tooth needs a serious reduction in cast time and time to drop. I think using the thief vault as a model is appropriate as that can still be walked out of and they do similar damage. So the cast time should be reduced to 0.25 seconds, the drop time could be reduced to 0.75 seconds, and the range limited to 600 (measured to the center of the placement ring). Phoenix can stay virtually unchanged except maybe limiting the range to 750.

So I know that some of these changes are pretty drastic reductions in range which might not go over well, but the idea is to fill out the entire mid range between dagger and staff in terms of damage and range. The sustained damage recieves a massive uptick as a tradeoff.

Anyway, as I mentioned before I’m not an ele main, S/F ele happens to be one of my favorite alts, so feel free to tell me how wrong my ideas are. I’d sort of like to see the weapon fill a unique and flexible role while not being tethered to fresh air.

I like the idea but disagree with the proposed implementation. Limiting the range on air AA makes it just a bad version of lightning whip. Instead, I think it would be better to give each auto a purpose like so:

- Fire auto: Good mid-range aoe dps. The flamethrower-like auto would be great for this. This also synergizes with basically needing to be melee range for dragon’s tooth and phoenix anyway.
- Air auto: keep the same beam-like attack, but reduce the cast time/aftercasts a LOT and increase overall dps by a good amount. In a 1v1, or when focusing a target, this should be your go-to.
- Water: Make this mid-range much like fire auto, but make all the projectiles actually hit. Also, every hit should apply 1 stack of vuln, even if dps is decreased.
- Earth: decrease the cast time (pre-cast/after cast) a bit, but add the old effect of that earth trait that gave you +400 toughness while channeling. This would be your go-to defensive/bleeding auto.

I think it is important that scepter keeps its 900 range, at the same time that burst ele gets some more sustained damage and survivability. Taking away the range on air auto would remove one of the key advantages of scepter and hurt the defense (positioning) a lot. As it is, at 900 range this is like a bad mesmer GS auto. With a bit more sustained pressure and defense, a dps play-style could become viable.

Those are fair points on air. With the lighting auto I was trying to keep it about double the range of lighting whip, but put it at a 0.85 and with air training and lightning strike you would be able to maintain about 1.2 mult/sec which is pretty respectable single target DPS at 600 range. That might hurt though as you said. The thing about how they balance damage is the closer you are (range versus melee) the damage usually goes up. There are exceptions like Ranger LB and Mesmer GS, but that’s the tradeoff I was looking at.

The vuln on water auto is a great idea to set up spikes. If you could maintain about 9 stacks of vuln from the autos I don’t think that would be over the top. It would essentially be necro axe then (with a lower coefficient).

I have a couple of ideas, although ele isn’t my main so feel free to tell me how off base some of these might be.

The problem I encounter when I play ele (specifically S/F) is that all the autos are weak in different ways because of an attempt to keep them all uniform in range (imo). Since ele lacks a weaponswap, why not make scepter the flexible weapon instead, filling out a niche somewhere between a melee and ranged weaponset?

Earth and water could remain relatively unchanged in damage and range.

Air could be reduced to 600 range on all of the attacks, however the damage of arc lighting could be normalized instead of building and the whole animation could take about 2 seconds, and put it around a 0.85 mult/sec. That would be the tradeoff in reducing the range.

The fire auto could be replaced with something similar to engis flamethrower auto (flame jet). The range could be about 450 and make it a 1.0 mult/sec channel with a tick of burning on the end. Dragon’s Tooth needs a serious reduction in cast time and time to drop. I think using the thief vault as a model is appropriate as that can still be walked out of and they do similar damage. So the cast time should be reduced to 0.25 seconds, the drop time could be reduced to 0.75 seconds, and the range limited to 600 (measured to the center of the placement ring). Phoenix can stay virtually unchanged except maybe limiting the range to 750.

So I know that some of these changes are pretty drastic reductions in range which might not go over well, but the idea is to fill out the entire mid range between dagger and staff in terms of damage and range. The sustained damage recieves a massive uptick as a tradeoff.

Anyway, as I mentioned before I’m not an ele main, S/F ele happens to be one of my favorite alts, so feel free to tell me how wrong my ideas are. I’d sort of like to see the weapon fill a unique and flexible role while not being tethered to fresh air.

Jana.6831:

Put daredevil into the game before June and it’s ridiculously OP – put any of the “metabuilds” in there and it’s ridiculously OP as well.
The problem is that hitting someone has become RNG – and instead of fixing it they’re adding more RNG. You can only save “underperforming” classes by adding more passives and “dual skills” (which are passives as well).
Buut, by the looks of it I’m pretty much out of the game as I can’t take another 7 months of frustration and “you’re not welcome here”.
So you can add your directional skill to DB which would destroy the set for me.

ETA: (you’ll stick to D/P anyway – oh and just because it says “put your camera on max speed” doesn’t mean it’s for everyone – you should lower it a bit to handle your gameplay better – just something I noticed).

They didn’t add any dual skills though. The only change they made to a dual skill was to increase the forward evade frames of deathblossom. Arcing strike is the close combat equivalent of SB#3. What in Daredevil is RNG? D/D was underperforming for a long time before this patch hit, it just took a magnifying glass to it. I’m not trying to add anymore passive skills either. Some stuff needs to be fixed and improved. They took a sledgehammer to the super-tank builds this last time so we’re performing semi-decently now. The goal should be to bring everything up to par. We and warriors didn’t get any nerfs this last go around so it appears that we’re the sort of baseline that they’re going off of now. The goal should be to suggest things to bring everything we have up to par around that baseline and hammer down a couple of the outliers. Complaining how it’s not the good old days doesn’t help.

Jana.6831:

Mauge: That isn’t the point.
The point is that this game has become brainless all around. I already wrote about DB and explained why it has once been a great skill (and if traited vanilla still is) – the problem is everything new.

ETA: And why on earth do I have to fight to be able to play my class (and spec)? is there anything sader than that (in a game)?!

That is the point though. I’m trying to push towards the direction of improving underperfoming sets while toning down key abilities here and there that might be slightly over the top. Daredevil is actually pretty well put together. I hope that acro eventually gets the same considerations and cohesiveness.

Jana.6831:

@ baba: No, they aren’t – you can throw your oxford dictionary at me or get away from “how things should be defined” and get what has been said and discuss that.

I think anet has left this game long ago btw.

ETA: If you don’t have to think because your skill carries you it’s lazy. It’s nice if it’s just a few, it’s bad if your playstyle is defined by it. And thus dual skills are no better than passives.

Actually defining what we mean is a necessary step to moving forward which we seem to be doing.There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with a counterattack skill in the game,the problem you are identifying are poorly designed skills that are too rewarding for their level of effort.

Deathblossom is a key example of this. It is very rewarding for the level of effort you put into it at this point. Shadowshot is another skill we’ve agreed on in the past which could use lower damage for what it does. The problem is that these skills are slightly overtuned. Shadowshot is well designed in terms of mechanics, the damage is just too high for the effect. I think deathblossom has the damage and length of the evade generally in the right place, but the skill floor needs to be raised on it. This is why I and people like DecieverX have suggested adding a directional aiming system to it and lengthening the travel of it because it would make all the hits more difficult to land and offer more counterplay to the opponent.

I actually think Staff #3 is excellently designed as it has a pretty decent self-limitation in that it rolls you backward. This limits the damage output as successive uses will often not hit and limit the followup attacks as it rolls you out of melee range.

forum bug
……………………

babazhook.6805:

It hard to have a debate when one can not even agree with what a word means.

This is my defintion of passive.

A passive skill is one that does not require active keyboard intervention my the players part to trigger. DB can not be a passive skill because I need to hit the 3 on my keyboard to trigger a deathblossom. Whether DB has multiple effects is immaterial. One gets an evade off deathblossom but it does not happen unless you hit number three. One applies bleeds and damage off deathblossom but it does not happen unless one hits number three.One can get a condition cleanse or heal off DB but it does not happen unless a person hits the number three on the keyboard. INI is spent each time One uses it and traiting so it has multiple effects hardly turns the effects into passives.

A passive is a skill like assassins signet running and it giving 180 power. No other input needed from the player (other then equipping the utility) is required. They will always get that 180 power. The active is when one manually triggers that skill for that 15 percent extra damage. The passive effect is shut off for its duration but that 15 percent damage for those next few attacks is defined as an active skill. If I trait Signets to get might from the CS line that Might is also an active as it requires me to activate my signet.

A trait like the new evasive skill in Acro is a passive. I can be standing away from my keyboard and when I drop in health and reach that threshold it will trigger. Pain response is a passive as I can be away from my keyboard and its effect will trigger on reaching the threshold. GI is not a passive. It can not be used unless I make an attack.

The warrior stance Endure pain is an active. It can not activate unless the warrior actively does so. Whether it has secondary effects added by other training does not make it a passive.

The warrior TRAIT defy pain is a passive. While it has the exact same effects as does endure pain no active intervention is needed by the warrior to trigger it. He can be away from his keyboard and under attack. When his health drops to 25 percent or lower it triggers with no intervention on his part required. All effects that happen because of this trigger can be defibned as passives now (such as the stun break) because he did not have to do anything to trigger that trait.

I took too long to type and you basically said the same thing I did using one of the same examples.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Except that I actively used the dodge saving the endurance for the burst and repositioned. Had it not done damage there would be no question about using the dodge actively. In this scenario with damage both the dodge and the damage were active components of play. I didn’t mention hoping to dodge the burst, I kept enough endurance to wait for it and dodge it.

You said, “You aimed your dodge in an attempt to damage them using it as an attack”, thus the intention is clear that your goal is to do damage and relying on evade to passively negate the damage.

However, if you Bound backwards and happen to do damage to someone else, that damage is passive.

Here’s the thing. You mentioned intention here for the determination of a passive or active attack. Say I have untraited dodges with the endurance to use them and the availability of deathblossom. I have the choice of using either. I choose to use deathblossom because I want to counterattack. The intent is to both evade the damage and deal damage back to them. Neither effect is passive there.

The evade is passive.
- If you’re trying to evade target-1 and do damage to target-1, then the evade is passive in this scenario.
- If you’re trying to evade target-1 and damages target-2, then the damage is passive.
- If you’re trying to evade backward from target-1 but target-1 shadowstep to you then you happen to deal damage to target-1, the damage is still the passive.

Let’s blur the lines more. Is a skill that reflects a projectile passive or active.

Let’s use the engi flamethrower airblast as the example here. My intent is to stop a kill shot from hitting me. I could dodge it. I choose to reflect it instead. Is the reflection passive? It deals the kill shot back to the warrior. It seems that by your stance on counterattacking would define the reflected shot as a passive effect.

I think the confusion here is the difference between activated vs passive and skill vs effect.

Dodge is an activated skill, but the evade that comes with the dodge is the passive effect.

Activating a skill to apply a reflect effect is obviously not passive, since it is an activated skill. Once the skill is activated, the reflect effect does its thing without addition user input, thus it is passive.

Attacks can have both offensive and defensive aspects to them. That doesn’t make them passive. Deathblossom is not passive, just poorly designed because it’s spammable.

Nobody is saying that DB is passive, rather it has a passive effect depending on how you use it.

Let me put it this way. A boulder thrown by a snow wurm can hit multiple times (I know, used them for daily dodges). If you dodge the boulder, the evade effect will proc multiple times. If evade is not passive, then I will have to activate dodge for each possible hits making multiple activate evades. The fact that I don’t have to actively evade means that the evade effect is passive.

You are trying to separate cause and effect by way of duration. Under this classification, any cleave damage or an attack with multiple impacts would be considered a passive attack.

The attack is an activated skill — the hits, on the other hand, are not. The hit is one of the effects of the attack since the effect of an attack is either a hit or a miss. The initial hit is a direct result of activating the attack, the additional hits are passive effects.

That is a specious argument. That’s like saying you stabbed someone but didn’t kill them because they died of exsanguination.

Bleeding is another passive effect from DB. If they died from bleeding, then they died from bleeding. If you exhaust your initiative from using DB and your target died from multiple stacks of bleeding condition, then yes, they bled to death.

So damage is a passive effect within this game?

When you activate a weapon skill several things happen — activation -> hit or miss -> if hit, then damage, if miss, then no damage.

When you activate a condition skill several things happen — activation -> deal small damage to apply condition -> condition deals condition damage passively

The damage from a weapon skill is a direct result of the attack, thus it is not passive effect. However, if this attack has cleave, any additional damage after the first is passive.

In GW2, the game system requires that the skill will deal damage before a condition is applied. The condition itself deals condition damage which is passive since no additional input is needed from the user — the condition does what it’s suppose to do on its own.

So, asking that, “damage is a passive effect within this game?” is a little dishonest because I’m sure you know that that isn’t true nor what is being explained here.

Again, you are conflating duration with being passive. A condition is Damage over time. The damage is not passive. There might be passive application through traits over which you have no control. But imagine a skill does 1000 damage as soon as it hits. Now the skill does 200 damage for 5 seconds when it hits. The division of the damage over an interval of time does not affect the activation required to apply that damage.

But you’re not actively applying damage, just as you’re not actively evading a multiple hit attack.

Let me ask you, what do you think a passive effect is?

You actually already actively applied the damage, it’s just taking longer that an instant in fully implement itself. If we were considering time to be a factor in whether or not something was considered active play, at what time would it be considered active. If you don’t think 1000 damage over 5 seconds is active, at what time interval does it become active? It’s not like we can take a limit with respect to time as it goes to zero and at some point the damage transitions from non active to active. Both forms of the attack required an action to implement, one just has a longer amount of time before the entirety of that action is realized.

We can see why considering something like time to have an effect on active or inactive definitions would make it tricky in the long run. Look at the traits Impacting Disruption versus Power Block. I wouldn’t consider either of these a passive skill because it requires an activation by the offensive player (the one interrupting) meeting a condition for their skill to operate. If time is taken into account, powerblock would be considered an active effect while the delay of the damage from pulmonary impact would render it into being a passive proc, but both require the same conditions and are usually a bonus modification to a skill with an additional effect. And no, I don’t consider the addition of effects when a condition is met which require an activation to make an ability passive. If that were the case, warrior burst attacks would be considered active while their berserker counterparts would be passive.

A passive effect is something that triggers on the controlling player that they don’t actually have control over.

Lets look at endure pain and defy pain. Regardless of the duration of negating damage, endure pain requires an activation for its effect. If you are burst down before you can activate it, you won’t get to activate it. Defy pain is a passive proc. Once you reach 25% health from an outside source, it will proc without your input.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Except that I actively used the dodge saving the endurance for the burst and repositioned. Had it not done damage there would be no question about using the dodge actively. In this scenario with damage both the dodge and the damage were active components of play. I didn’t mention hoping to dodge the burst, I kept enough endurance to wait for it and dodge it.

You said, “You aimed your dodge in an attempt to damage them using it as an attack”, thus the intention is clear that your goal is to do damage and relying on evade to passively negate the damage.

However, if you Bound backwards and happen to do damage to someone else, that damage is passive.

Here’s the thing. You mentioned intention here for the determination of a passive or active attack. Say I have untraited dodges with the endurance to use them and the availability of deathblossom. I have the choice of using either. I choose to use deathblossom because I want to counterattack. The intent is to both evade the damage and deal damage back to them. Neither effect is passive there.

The evade is passive.
- If you’re trying to evade target-1 and do damage to target-1, then the evade is passive in this scenario.
- If you’re trying to evade target-1 and damages target-2, then the damage is passive.
- If you’re trying to evade backward from target-1 but target-1 shadowstep to you then you happen to deal damage to target-1, the damage is still the passive.

Let’s blur the lines more. Is a skill that reflects a projectile passive or active.

Let’s use the engi flamethrower airblast as the example here. My intent is to stop a kill shot from hitting me. I could dodge it. I choose to reflect it instead. Is the reflection passive? It deals the kill shot back to the warrior. It seems that by your stance on counterattacking would define the reflected shot as a passive effect.

I think the confusion here is the difference between activated vs passive and skill vs effect.

Dodge is an activated skill, but the evade that comes with the dodge is the passive effect.

Activating a skill to apply a reflect effect is obviously not passive, since it is an activated skill. Once the skill is activated, the reflect effect does its thing without addition user input, thus it is passive.

Attacks can have both offensive and defensive aspects to them. That doesn’t make them passive. Deathblossom is not passive, just poorly designed because it’s spammable.

Nobody is saying that DB is passive, rather it has a passive effect depending on how you use it.

Let me put it this way. A boulder thrown by a snow wurm can hit multiple times (I know, used them for daily dodges). If you dodge the boulder, the evade effect will proc multiple times. If evade is not passive, then I will have to activate dodge for each possible hits making multiple activate evades. The fact that I don’t have to actively evade means that the evade effect is passive.

You are trying to separate cause and effect by way of duration. Under this classification, any cleave damage or an attack with multiple impacts would be considered a passive attack.

The attack is an activated skill — the hits, on the other hand, are not. The hit is one of the effects of the attack since the effect of an attack is either a hit or a miss. The initial hit is a direct result of activating the attack, the additional hits are passive effects.

That is a specious argument. That’s like saying you stabbed someone but didn’t kill them because they died of exsanguination.

Bleeding is another passive effect from DB. If they died from bleeding, then they died from bleeding. If you exhaust your initiative from using DB and your target died from multiple stacks of bleeding condition, then yes, they bled to death.

So damage is a passive effect within this game?

When you activate a weapon skill several things happen — activation -> hit or miss -> if hit, then damage, if miss, then no damage.

When you activate a condition skill several things happen — activation -> deal small damage to apply condition -> condition deals condition damage passively

The damage from a weapon skill is a direct result of the attack, thus it is not passive effect. However, if this attack has cleave, any additional damage after the first is passive.

In GW2, the game system requires that the skill will deal damage before a condition is applied. The condition itself deals condition damage which is passive since no additional input is needed from the user — the condition does what it’s suppose to do on its own.

So, asking that, “damage is a passive effect within this game?” is a little dishonest because I’m sure you know that that isn’t true nor what is being explained here.

Again, you are conflating duration with being passive. A condition is Damage over time. The damage is not passive. There might be passive application through traits over which you have no control. But imagine a skill does 1000 damage as soon as it hits. Now the skill does 200 damage for 5 seconds when it hits. The division of the damage over an interval of time does not affect the activation required to apply that damage.

Jana.6831:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Except that I actively used the dodge saving the endurance for the burst and repositioned. Had it not done damage there would be no question about using the dodge actively. In this scenario with damage both the dodge and the damage were active components of play. I didn’t mention hoping to dodge the burst, I kept enough endurance to wait for it and dodge it.

You said, “You aimed your dodge in an attempt to damage them using it as an attack”, thus the intention is clear that your goal is to do damage and relying on evade to passively negate the damage.

However, if you Bound backwards and happen to do damage to someone else, that damage is passive.

Here’s the thing. You mentioned intention here for the determination of a passive or active attack. Say I have untraited dodges with the endurance to use them and the availability of deathblossom. I have the choice of using either. I choose to use deathblossom because I want to counterattack. The intent is to both evade the damage and deal damage back to them. Neither effect is passive there.

The evade is passive.
- If you’re trying to evade target-1 and do damage to target-1, then the evade is passive in this scenario.
- If you’re trying to evade target-1 and damages target-2, then the damage is passive.
- If you’re trying to evade backward from target-1 but target-1 shadowstep to you then you happen to deal damage to target-1, the damage is still the passive.

Let’s blur the lines more. Is a skill that reflects a projectile passive or active.

Let’s use the engi flamethrower airblast as the example here. My intent is to stop a kill shot from hitting me. I could dodge it. I choose to reflect it instead. Is the reflection passive? It deals the kill shot back to the warrior. It seems that by your stance on counterattacking would define the reflected shot as a passive effect.

I think the confusion here is the difference between activated vs passive and skill vs effect.

Dodge is an activated skill, but the evade that comes with the dodge is the passive effect.

Activating a skill to apply a reflect effect is obviously not passive, since it is an activated skill. Once the skill is activated, the reflect effect does its thing without addition user input, thus it is passive.

Attacks can have both offensive and defensive aspects to them. That doesn’t make them passive. Deathblossom is not passive, just poorly designed because it’s spammable.

Nobody is saying that DB is passive, rather it has a passive effect depending on how you use it.

Let me put it this way. A boulder thrown by a snow wurm can hit multiple times (I know, used them for daily dodges). If you dodge the boulder, the evade effect will proc multiple times. If evade is not passive, then I will have to activate dodge for each possible hits making multiple activate evades. The fact that I don’t have to actively evade means that the evade effect is passive.

You are trying to separate cause and effect by way of duration. Under this classification, any cleave damage or an attack with multiple impacts would be considered a passive attack.

The attack is an activated skill — the hits, on the other hand, are not. The hit is one of the effects of the attack since the effect of an attack is either a hit or a miss. The initial hit is a direct result of activating the attack, the additional hits are passive effects.

That is a specious argument. That’s like saying you stabbed someone but didn’t kill them because they died of exsanguination.

Bleeding is another passive effect from DB. If they died from bleeding, then they died from bleeding. If you exhaust your initiative from using DB and your target died from multiple stacks of bleeding condition, then yes, they bled to death.

So damage is a passive effect within this game?

It’s simple: You can use DB to either evade or to attack.
Evade: bleed is passive
Attack: evade is passive

As the latter isn’t intended in each case – it might be however that you evaded an attack although you didn’t intend to or that you killed someone although you didn’t intend to.
If you’re intending to do both at the same time there’s no need to tell you that this skill is badly designed.
The bleed and damage from DB used to be that weak and we didn’t have access to that many initative and additional evades (you have to be quick = on your target to get that bleed stacks up) that before HoT a build like that never worked – not even in “the condi meta”.

In the end, you can always look at a fight between two opponents of the same class and build – if they are unable to kill each other then something is wrong. best example has been cele-ele. So now imagine 2 thieves 1 vs 1 who evade every hit.

You are conflating multiple effects, or impacts with passivity. Which effect of an attack like impairing daggers is passive?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Except that I actively used the dodge saving the endurance for the burst and repositioned. Had it not done damage there would be no question about using the dodge actively. In this scenario with damage both the dodge and the damage were active components of play. I didn’t mention hoping to dodge the burst, I kept enough endurance to wait for it and dodge it.

You said, “You aimed your dodge in an attempt to damage them using it as an attack”, thus the intention is clear that your goal is to do damage and relying on evade to passively negate the damage.

However, if you Bound backwards and happen to do damage to someone else, that damage is passive.

Here’s the thing. You mentioned intention here for the determination of a passive or active attack. Say I have untraited dodges with the endurance to use them and the availability of deathblossom. I have the choice of using either. I choose to use deathblossom because I want to counterattack. The intent is to both evade the damage and deal damage back to them. Neither effect is passive there.

The evade is passive.
- If you’re trying to evade target-1 and do damage to target-1, then the evade is passive in this scenario.
- If you’re trying to evade target-1 and damages target-2, then the damage is passive.
- If you’re trying to evade backward from target-1 but target-1 shadowstep to you then you happen to deal damage to target-1, the damage is still the passive.

Let’s blur the lines more. Is a skill that reflects a projectile passive or active.

Let’s use the engi flamethrower airblast as the example here. My intent is to stop a kill shot from hitting me. I could dodge it. I choose to reflect it instead. Is the reflection passive? It deals the kill shot back to the warrior. It seems that by your stance on counterattacking would define the reflected shot as a passive effect.

I think the confusion here is the difference between activated vs passive and skill vs effect.

Dodge is an activated skill, but the evade that comes with the dodge is the passive effect.

Activating a skill to apply a reflect effect is obviously not passive, since it is an activated skill. Once the skill is activated, the reflect effect does its thing without addition user input, thus it is passive.

Attacks can have both offensive and defensive aspects to them. That doesn’t make them passive. Deathblossom is not passive, just poorly designed because it’s spammable.

Nobody is saying that DB is passive, rather it has a passive effect depending on how you use it.

Let me put it this way. A boulder thrown by a snow wurm can hit multiple times (I know, used them for daily dodges). If you dodge the boulder, the evade effect will proc multiple times. If evade is not passive, then I will have to activate dodge for each possible hits making multiple activate evades. The fact that I don’t have to actively evade means that the evade effect is passive.

You are trying to separate cause and effect by way of duration. Under this classification, any cleave damage or an attack with multiple impacts would be considered a passive attack.

The attack is an activated skill — the hits, on the other hand, are not. The hit is one of the effects of the attack since the effect of an attack is either a hit or a miss. The initial hit is a direct result of activating the attack, the additional hits are passive effects.

That is a specious argument. That’s like saying you stabbed someone but didn’t kill them because they died of exsanguination.

Bleeding is another passive effect from DB. If they died from bleeding, then they died from bleeding. If you exhaust your initiative from using DB and your target died from multiple stacks of bleeding condition, then yes, they bled to death.

So damage is a passive effect within this game?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Except that I actively used the dodge saving the endurance for the burst and repositioned. Had it not done damage there would be no question about using the dodge actively. In this scenario with damage both the dodge and the damage were active components of play. I didn’t mention hoping to dodge the burst, I kept enough endurance to wait for it and dodge it.

You said, “You aimed your dodge in an attempt to damage them using it as an attack”, thus the intention is clear that your goal is to do damage and relying on evade to passively negate the damage.

However, if you Bound backwards and happen to do damage to someone else, that damage is passive.

Here’s the thing. You mentioned intention here for the determination of a passive or active attack. Say I have untraited dodges with the endurance to use them and the availability of deathblossom. I have the choice of using either. I choose to use deathblossom because I want to counterattack. The intent is to both evade the damage and deal damage back to them. Neither effect is passive there.

The evade is passive.
- If you’re trying to evade target-1 and do damage to target-1, then the evade is passive in this scenario.
- If you’re trying to evade target-1 and damages target-2, then the damage is passive.
- If you’re trying to evade backward from target-1 but target-1 shadowstep to you then you happen to deal damage to target-1, the damage is still the passive.

Let’s blur the lines more. Is a skill that reflects a projectile passive or active.

Let’s use the engi flamethrower airblast as the example here. My intent is to stop a kill shot from hitting me. I could dodge it. I choose to reflect it instead. Is the reflection passive? It deals the kill shot back to the warrior. It seems that by your stance on counterattacking would define the reflected shot as a passive effect.

I think the confusion here is the difference between activated vs passive and skill vs effect.

Dodge is an activated skill, but the evade that comes with the dodge is the passive effect.

Activating a skill to apply a reflect effect is obviously not passive, since it is an activated skill. Once the skill is activated, the reflect effect does its thing without addition user input, thus it is passive.

Attacks can have both offensive and defensive aspects to them. That doesn’t make them passive. Deathblossom is not passive, just poorly designed because it’s spammable.

Nobody is saying that DB is passive, rather it has a passive effect depending on how you use it.

Let me put it this way. A boulder thrown by a snow wurm can hit multiple times (I know, used them for daily dodges). If you dodge the boulder, the evade effect will proc multiple times. If evade is not passive, then I will have to activate dodge for each possible hits making multiple activate evades. The fact that I don’t have to actively evade means that the evade effect is passive.

You are trying to separate cause and effect by way of duration. Under this classification, any cleave damage or an attack with multiple impacts would be considered a passive attack.

The attack is an activated skill — the hits, on the other hand, are not. The hit is one of the effects of the attack since the effect of an attack is either a hit or a miss. The initial hit is a direct result of activating the attack, the additional hits are passive effects.

That is a specious argument. That’s like saying you stabbed someone but didn’t kill them because they died of exsanguination.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Except that I actively used the dodge saving the endurance for the burst and repositioned. Had it not done damage there would be no question about using the dodge actively. In this scenario with damage both the dodge and the damage were active components of play. I didn’t mention hoping to dodge the burst, I kept enough endurance to wait for it and dodge it.

You said, “You aimed your dodge in an attempt to damage them using it as an attack”, thus the intention is clear that your goal is to do damage and relying on evade to passively negate the damage.

However, if you Bound backwards and happen to do damage to someone else, that damage is passive.

Here’s the thing. You mentioned intention here for the determination of a passive or active attack. Say I have untraited dodges with the endurance to use them and the availability of deathblossom. I have the choice of using either. I choose to use deathblossom because I want to counterattack. The intent is to both evade the damage and deal damage back to them. Neither effect is passive there.

The evade is passive.
- If you’re trying to evade target-1 and do damage to target-1, then the evade is passive in this scenario.
- If you’re trying to evade target-1 and damages target-2, then the damage is passive.
- If you’re trying to evade backward from target-1 but target-1 shadowstep to you then you happen to deal damage to target-1, the damage is still the passive.

Let’s blur the lines more. Is a skill that reflects a projectile passive or active.

Let’s use the engi flamethrower airblast as the example here. My intent is to stop a kill shot from hitting me. I could dodge it. I choose to reflect it instead. Is the reflection passive? It deals the kill shot back to the warrior. It seems that by your stance on counterattacking would define the reflected shot as a passive effect.

I think the confusion here is the difference between activated vs passive and skill vs effect.

Dodge is an activated skill, but the evade that comes with the dodge is the passive effect.

Activating a skill to apply a reflect effect is obviously not passive, since it is an activated skill. Once the skill is activated, the reflect effect does its thing without addition user input, thus it is passive.

Attacks can have both offensive and defensive aspects to them. That doesn’t make them passive. Deathblossom is not passive, just poorly designed because it’s spammable.

Nobody is saying that DB is passive, rather it has a passive effect depending on how you use it.

Let me put it this way. A boulder thrown by a snow wurm can hit multiple times (I know, used them for daily dodges). If you dodge the boulder, the evade effect will proc multiple times. If evade is not passive, then I will have to activate dodge for each possible hits making multiple activate evades. The fact that I don’t have to actively evade means that the evade effect is passive.

You are trying to separate cause and effect by way of duration. Under this classification, any cleave damage or an attack with multiple impacts would be considered a passive attack.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Jana.6831:

Yes that is, but I doubt that people spamming vault really do so because they want to evade.
No matter how you turn it: skills like that are bad. They can be nice in moderation but not if they’re “spammable”. ETA: Spammable also by having multiple skills that do the same thing.

Actively spamming the same skill may be poor play, but it’s not passive. We can talk about how poorly a skill is designed, but it still requires input from the player, meaning it’s not passive. Let’s move beyond vault to a power spec D/D build. Using deathblossom to evade an incoming attack is going to do virtually no damage, however you may use it to evade an incoming attack when you can’t dodge because you’re out of endurance or immobilized. That doesn’t mean deathblossom is a passive skill. You’re actively using it to evade in response to an incoming attack.

DB is an active attack while passively evading attacks. At the same time, DB is an active evade while passively doing damage. I get what she’s saying.

In case of dodges (by extansion DD GM), it’s an active position displacement with a passive evade effect, so if you didn’t roll (or Dash) far enough, the passive evade will negate the damage.

The problem I have is that this argument is conflating passive play and poor skill design.

Let’s use your example of the GM dodges. You’re fighting someone and both at low health. You have bound equipped. The opponent tries to land their burst and you counter by dodging into them, both evading the burst and attacking them. Which part of that is passive? You aimed your dodge in an attempt to damage them using it as an attack. You waited for their burst so you would have the endurance to dodge it.

In this scenario, you’re using Bound as an active attack while hoping that the passive evade will negate the damage. This is not different than if you choose to use DB.

Except that I actively used the dodge saving the endurance for the burst and repositioned. Had it not done damage there would be no question about using the dodge actively. In this scenario with damage both the dodge and the damage were active components of play. I didn’t mention hoping to dodge the burst, I kept enough endurance to wait for it and dodge it.

Both the evade and damage of deathblossom are active, but the combination is poorly designed which leads to spam and a low skill floor.

Not always. If your intention is to deal damage, then you’re hoping for the passive evade to do its job. You can actively use DB to evade with no intention to do damage, thus when you actually dealt damage, then that’s just a passive effect.

Here’s the thing. You mentioned intention here for the determination of a passive or active attack. Say I have untraited dodges with the endurance to use them and the availability of deathblossom. I have the choice of using either. I choose to use deathblossom because I want to counterattack. The intent is to both evade the damage and deal damage back to them. Neither effect is passive there.

Let’s blur the lines more. Is a skill that reflects a projectile passive or active. Let’s use the engi flamethrower airblast as the example here. My intent is to stop a kill shot from hitting me. I could dodge it. I choose to reflect it instead. Is the reflection passive? It deals the kill shot back to the warrior. It seems that by your stance on counterattacking would define the reflected shot as a passive effect.

Attacks can have both offensive and defensive aspects to them. That doesn’t make them passive. Deathblossom is not passive, just poorly designed because it’s spammable.

Um. Non ele main here just wanting to weigh in. Scepter needs some serious buffs aside from relegating it to fresh air. Without a weaponswap it needs more variability in the autos as it has poor sustained damage. Why not make water and earth auto long 1200 range and weaker while making fire and air shorter range (900 or less) and making it more powerful. Fire auto could be something like engis flame thrower auto and dragons tooth needs a serious reduction in both cast time and fall time. Use vault (thief staff 5) as an example. That skill can still be walked out of at a 0.75 second total cast time. Reduce the range of dragon’s tooth to make it riskier, but actually have a chance of hitting if both the cast and drop were at 1 second or less.

Lightning auto just needs to be sped up by about 50%.

These ideas are just pulled out of my head and ele mains should be the ones to be given more weight on the final iterations, but I wanted to throw some ideas out to show the level of buffs needed before scepter starts to be competitive.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Jana.6831:

Yes that is, but I doubt that people spamming vault really do so because they want to evade.
No matter how you turn it: skills like that are bad. They can be nice in moderation but not if they’re “spammable”. ETA: Spammable also by having multiple skills that do the same thing.

Actively spamming the same skill may be poor play, but it’s not passive. We can talk about how poorly a skill is designed, but it still requires input from the player, meaning it’s not passive. Let’s move beyond vault to a power spec D/D build. Using deathblossom to evade an incoming attack is going to do virtually no damage, however you may use it to evade an incoming attack when you can’t dodge because you’re out of endurance or immobilized. That doesn’t mean deathblossom is a passive skill. You’re actively using it to evade in response to an incoming attack.

DB is an active attack while passively evading attacks. At the same time, DB is an active evade while passively doing damage. I get what she’s saying.

In case of dodges (by extansion DD GM), it’s an active position displacement with a passive evade effect, so if you didn’t roll (or Dash) far enough, the passive evade will negate the damage.

The problem I have is that this argument is conflating passive play and poor skill design.

Let’s use your example of the GM dodges. You’re fighting someone and both at low health. You have bound equipped. The opponent tries to land their burst and you counter by dodging into them, both evading the burst and attacking them. Which part of that is passive? You aimed your dodge in an attempt to damage them using it as an attack. You waited for their burst so you would have the endurance to dodge it.

Both the evade and damage of deathblossom are active, but the combination is poorly designed which leads to spam and a low skill floor.

Jana.6831:

Yes that is, but I doubt that people spamming vault really do so because they want to evade.
No matter how you turn it: skills like that are bad. They can be nice in moderation but not if they’re “spammable”. ETA: Spammable also by having multiple skills that do the same thing.

Actively spamming the same skill may be poor play, but it’s not passive. We can talk about how poorly a skill is designed, but it still requires input from the player, meaning it’s not passive. Let’s move beyond vault to a power spec D/D build. Using deathblossom to evade an incoming attack is going to do virtually no damage, however you may use it to evade an incoming attack when you can’t dodge because you’re out of endurance or immobilized. That doesn’t mean deathblossom is a passive skill. You’re actively using it to evade in response to an incoming attack.

Jana.6831:

Maugetarr.6823:

Jana.6831:

ETA: I mean weaponskills that evade, btw.

Weaponskills that evade are not passives. They require input to use. Passives would be something like the new instant reflexes that automatically trigger when a condition is met that you had no control over or just grant a permanent buff.

To more clearly define it, our signets are a passive buff until you activate them. Passive vs. Active effect.

They are – they are dual skill – you can either chose to attack or to evade – the second skill is in that case passive. It’s not that hard to get what I mean, is it?

ETA: “Uhh, I’m gonna hit this guy – oh, he tried to hit me at the same time but my skill let me evade that.. nifty!”
Or: “Uhh, I’m better evade this hit – wow I killed this guy while evading, didn’t intend to but I’ll take it”

…..but it requires direct input…. it’s not passive. A better example. I’ve been immobilized and someone is trying to land a burst on me. I use debilitating arc (staff #3) to evade the burst and counter attack. That is actively counterplaying an opponent. If a code in the game caused me to avoid the attack without input from me (instant reflexes), that would be passive.

Jana.6831:

ETA: I mean weaponskills that evade, btw.

Weaponskills that evade are not passives. They require input to use. Passives would be something like the new instant reflexes that automatically trigger when a condition is met that you had no control over or just grant a permanent buff.

To more clearly define it, our signets are a passive buff until you activate them. Passive vs. Active effect.

It’s possible to hit 5k in game, you just need a 3 stat power main amulet (precision and ferocity don’t matter). If you get all the flat procs like executioner, exposed defenses, lead attacks, havoc mastery, staff mastery(optional), Bounding Dodger, bloodlust stackd, and a sigil of force, you can do it. 5.5k was the highest I’ve hit during actual play. Most of the time it hits somewhere between 2-3.5k. It’s decently balanced for not being able to crit.

Don’t know if anyone has suggested this, but have you guys considered rolling balance changes for just the classes every 2 weeks for just 1 class at a time? You could also have minor adjustments to the previous classes limited to a number tweak here and there and a reversion if a change didn’t play out the way you thought it would.

So for the classes 1-9 with would be a rotation like this:

Week 2: balance changes for class 1
Week 4: balance changes for class 2
Week 6: balance changes for class 3; revisions for class 1
Week 8: balance changes for class 4; revisions for class 2
Week 10: balance changes for class 5; revisions for class 3
And so on looping back around at the end.

With the minor revisions, and single class focus for major changes; you’d have a solid rollout with whatever lead time it takes for a major design change, then about 3 weeks of gathering data to see if it was too far or not enough. Each class also gets a balance patch once every 4.5 months which seems to be about the rate you guys stated you wanted, but it allows for a little more control so stuff doesn’t run away or get totally pushed out for 3-4 month blocks.

General balance changes can still be dropped every 4 months.

From the above conversations:

I think that’s why we need to keep suggesting improvements though rather than nerfs to our own sets. There was a time when I ran S/D +D/P and it worked decently back then. However, S/D and D/D have shown themselves to be heavily trait dependent which is why I want them to have improvements that rectify that.

Some of the things we suggested made it into this patch, like sword autoattacks, Bandit’s Defense rollover, and improvements to basilisk venom. I’d rather keep giving them constructive ideas because they’re pretty good at bringing the nerf hammer down on things that need it (and sometimes don’t). That’s why I really shy away from saying they could remove something from a functional set in the hopes of maybe getting it back later (acro stands out here). That’s my hesitation with Deathblossom even though I don’t like it; I want to see the replacement first before I say yeah, go ahead. Shadowshot is an example of this. The rest of the set has damage, so shadowshot doesn’t need it.

It’s an awkward skill. Use it in combination with steal to hit all 3 times. Precast it like you would CnD and you semi root as you spin.

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m just very much against the notion of dealing damage while not being able to take any. I’d be okay with leaving the bleeds on DB only if they made it a 900-range gap close evade that always went the full distance so that it couldn’t be spammed for damage, thus requiring more cohesive buffs elsewhere to OH dagger.

P/D can’t have a teleport gap close, so no-go on Dancing Dagger. The engage->disengage combo potential would be way too strong, especially when combined with the ease of stealth access and SA stacking with naturally tankier gear.

To be fair, the dancing dagger rollover is 2 initiative, so a full combo would be 3 for DD, 2 for rollover, 6 for CnD, 4 for shadowstrike, totaling 15 in all. If you dodge the Dancing dagger, they don’t get the rollover. That’s potentially a strong burst, but it’s clearable and there’s no sustained bleeds from autos anymore, but there is poison on P#2 so overall I think it would balance out nicely.

It’s not like the disengage/engage makes sword overwhelming (in its current state) and I think the teleport rollover on Dancing Dagger (after hit) would offer the same counterplay that sword has.

DeceiverX.8361:

This was my thought process for the substantial buffs to Dagger Training and Potent Poison, buffing DB’s evade to cover a bigger distance, and putting the bleeds on Dancing Dagger, removing the bounce, and upping its damage by 50%, as it’d unify the evade as an evade/reposition on all combinations, make P/D a devastating condi set (bleed on auto + torment/disengage on 3 + bleeds on 4 with some chase potential), and allow D/D condi using DA to deal better condition damage due to poison’s high coefficient, but at a higher risk than just spamming 3.

The community doesn’t know what it wants, though. D/P players don’t want 3spam nerfed, D/D condi players don’t want 3spam nerfed, D/D power players proclaim using DB as an evade should be a one-click-wonder evade and want a teleport on Dancing Dagger to make the set a D/P clone.

D:

….I want a teleport on Dancing Dagger…. it would help D/D and P/D (and S/D to some extent) imo….

However, I wanted to make pistol autos more of a power set with vuln instead of bleed and then add more bleeds to the sneak attack (2 bleeds per hit instead of 1) since half of the shots are dodged anyway. Poison on P#2 would help too for both power and condi. Like I said though, I don’t want to remove the bleeds from deathblossom before we have an alternative because people have worked hard on gear and stuff.

There’s lots of discussion to be had though on different routes outside of overnerfing our successful sets though.

DeceiverX.8361:

Trying to convince Jana that SA wasn’t mandatory or even more-useful to D/D over D/P before June is nigh impossible.

Trying to convince a variety of players Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger need to be changed to sport more potential utility is also nigh impossible, because many D/D condi players love their 3spam for damage and giving the set more utility on Dancing Dagger is unnecessary, removes flavor, and D/D condi already doesn’t need more buffs.

Well, I’d honestly love to see the bleeds on Deathblossom be removed and the set made to be cohesive, but I don’t think that should be done until we get a mainhand melee weapon focused on condition damage. They could do something like a bandit specialization and give it an axe and and wells (poison fields, etheral fields, fire fields) and put just a spinning deathblossom in that for a high condi application. Then D/D could be unified.

Jana.6831:

Maugetarr.6823:

Jana.6831:

Maugetarr.6823:

Another example to help clear up what I mean. Look at how relatively weak venoms are. The problem is that to make venoms any good, you are locked into a specific build and traitline. Venoms should be good untraited, and traits should add a little boost on top, not the binary nature of UP/OP when untraited/traited respectively that we have now.

It has always been like that – the weapons we have have got distinctive skills – you could either take that away or modify the traits. I don’t really oppose giving CnD blind, but that would be more “into the same direction” as if there were different equally useful traits. And yes, that’s my point, that’s why I’m saying D/P should sacrifice some of the utility and get it back from traits.

And that is my point as well: Look how “OP” D/P is as all traits add to the already good utility.
I don’t know too much about venoms, I have never used them – but as far as I know they’re pretty strong, so maybe turning half of it into traits was to prevent them being “OP” but that didn’t happen with D/P.

But that’s the thing. You keep advocating moving skills into lines that would make the lines mandatory and runs the same risk of being messed up as whats’s happened to D/D. D/P is well designed and well balanced. D/D is not. Your idea would be to take the utility from the set and do what with it? Headshot does nothing unless traited? BPS does nothing unless traited? Nerfing shadowshot damage is the only possible move that would be reasonable and honestly that doesn’t even need to be given back as a trait. Here’s the thing though. Until offhand dagger is given more utility, D/D isn’t going to be any better. It’s going to require a specific traitline to make it viable for you and that’s just not good for it. It needs to be able to stand on it’s own so multiple builds can be made for it. We already have problems with thief being locked into core lines to make it decent. We don’t need to keep locking ourselves into lines.

Reread my last post adressed to you – you skipped what I wrote.

ETA:

Jana.6831:

They took most (or all) of the set specific traits away in June and that what remained was D/P.

All other sets had to trait for their utility – maybe that was to balance them. D/P is the only set that never “needed” a trait line because all of its utility is on the set. All traits did was making this set stronger. As long as D/P remained, thief seemed fine – although we only had one build left. D/P has got twice as many utilities as other sets but no drawbacks. You can’t buff the other sets good enough (weaponwise) to create original sets – we had traits for that.
Just because you didn’t need traits doesn’t mean it’s really meant like this. Maybe they forgot about their initial premise and added D/P to the game without realizing what exactly they’ve done. And in June they forgot that all other sets are trait based.

ETA² – and before the traitline merge we still had stats tied to the lines, so certain lines have been favoured over others.
I hated the ferocity patch at first but later on acknowledged that it was probably the best that they’ve done – with some exceptions: Condis OP and thief being forced to go full glass (I don’t know why, my excuse: I have been a noob back then – and still am – I don’t know the numbers between the stuff that has been changed). So full glass means they had to take either DA or CS or both if they wanted to be viable. So nobody really noticed the utility D/P has as everybody was using the same traitlines anyway.

Requiring traits to make a weaponset viable is a poor design. It limits build choices.
They actually rolled a lot of the specific traits to baseline because they realized that it wasn’t good for build diversity. Combined training, dagger training (the original version), and shortbow training. I don’t know why they decided it was a good idea to basically bring back a sword damage buff. They should have made swindler’s equilibrium not require a specific weaponset and made sword base DPS competitive.

Here’s another interesting thing, D/D didn’t actually require SA before the specializations patch. I was using a 5/0/0/3/6 build quite successfully with it. The problem has always been that it needs some form of utility to make up for its distinct lack of utility. It still has that problem. Buffing offhand dagger is the better way to go as D/P already demonstrates the importance of utility in the set.

Jana.6831:

Maugetarr.6823:

Another example to help clear up what I mean. Look at how relatively weak venoms are. The problem is that to make venoms any good, you are locked into a specific build and traitline. Venoms should be good untraited, and traits should add a little boost on top, not the binary nature of UP/OP when untraited/traited respectively that we have now.

It has always been like that – the weapons we have have got distinctive skills – you could either take that away or modify the traits. I don’t really oppose giving CnD blind, but that would be more “into the same direction” as if there were different equally useful traits. And yes, that’s my point, that’s why I’m saying D/P should sacrifice some of the utility and get it back from traits.

And that is my point as well: Look how “OP” D/P is as all traits add to the already good utility.
I don’t know too much about venoms, I have never used them – but as far as I know they’re pretty strong, so maybe turning half of it into traits was to prevent them being “OP” but that didn’t happen with D/P.

But that’s the thing. You keep advocating moving skills into lines that would make the lines mandatory and runs the same risk of being messed up as whats’s happened to D/D. D/P is well designed and well balanced. D/D is not. Your idea would be to take the utility from the set and do what with it? Headshot does nothing unless traited? BPS does nothing unless traited? Nerfing shadowshot damage is the only possible move that would be reasonable and honestly that doesn’t even need to be given back as a trait. Here’s the thing though. Until offhand dagger is given more utility, D/D isn’t going to be any better. It’s going to require a specific traitline to make it viable for you and that’s just not good for it. It needs to be able to stand on it’s own so multiple builds can be made for it. We already have problems with thief being locked into core lines to make it decent. We don’t need to keep locking ourselves into lines.

Jana.6831:

@ Maugetarr: If you look at it all offhand weapons need help – we have at least 50% useless traits, why not redesign them? CiS is a trait I’m fine using it as long as it is in a traitline I can actually use – former SA suited my plystyle really well: There theoretically is a way to make most of this trait based – it has been in the past. Only set that never needed a specific traitline is/was D/P.

That is shortsighted though as it locks specific weaponsets into specific lines. D/P has stood the test of time because builds we’re able to be when certain traitlines were messed up. Look at how dependent D/D is on shadowarts. The only D/D build that isn’t is signet burst. It only took a small trait rearrangement before D/D became largely not viable for you, however, D/P has survived multiple nerfs to traitlines because it is well designed and not trait dependent. The ideal goal would be to get weaponsets functional first, utilities second, and traits third.

Another example to help clear up what I mean. Look at how relatively weak venoms are. The problem is that to make venoms any good, you are locked into a specific build and traitline. Venoms should be good untraited, and traits should add a little boost on top, not the binary nature of UP/OP when untraited/traited respectively that we have now.