Guild Wars 2

Even though I love using Dire on my Necro, yes I admit they should never have added it, its too good, and the reason for that being that Condition damage is like the only stat you need to deal damage with condition specs.

They are currently working on changing/balancing all of the useless rune sets/sigils so that patch will most likely fix the perplexity issue.

/casts Anger on the forums

Nerfs and buffs happen to professions all the time. Yeah sometimes it sucks, but this is a direct nerf to a certain type of gear. And this is ascended gear we’re talking about, you can get a full set of exotic gear for like 30g… It took me like 4 months to get my full ascended berserker stuff… And now they are nerfing it and in wvw where it was already a big risk to run glass, condition bunkering is an even bigger advantage so yeah I would like a choice for new stats on my ascended gear that took so long to make… because I sure as heck am not going to make another set. It’ll be goodbye GW2.

You can’t claim thieves have higher sustain dps, and then also point out that they avoid damage by sitting in stealth(aka, massively lowering that dps) … Those PvE numbers you provided do not matter at all in PvP, because thieves cant just sit there and dps. Warriors can still dps while endure pain and berserker stance are active, hence why they have greater pressure, which pretty much everyone knows. Thief burst is still higher yes.

Thieves are not OP. S/D has been nerfed almost into the ground, I am surprised anyone still plays it. D/P has very weak condition removal and if you don’t blind your target you die in a few crits.

Yes they deal great burst, that is called a trade off, risk vs reward.

I would recommend lobbying for Mesmer/Ele buffs, not thief nerfs. Please think about it first though, PU mesmers are already unbearable.

Introp.8465:

. Id sway thief has better damage, better ways to escape death, are better looking, their traits are better, they can use pistol. Can you respond to my points?

Yes actually I can, very easily in fact.

Thieves have superior burst to warriors, which they give up any form of passive survival for. Warriors however, have superior pressure(which they don’t give up passive survival for).

Thief traits are not better. 30 points in shadow arts nets thieves less regen than 15 points defense. Cleansing Ire is better than thief condition removal in stealth(yes the thief one is easier to reach I know).

Yes, I would recommend leaving.

Introp.8465:

- hurr durr warrior op better nerf, i play auto attacking ranger who never dodges anything and die to others. Just look at other popular thread that thief is op. Seems like every class soon to be op, and if you die to it – that was op who killed you not you lack of game knowledge or skill

Now you’re just not making any sense.

Ranger’s wouldn’t be forced into playing shortbow #1 spam spirits if the profession had some of the strengths that Warriors enjoy.

People cry about thieves because they are the stealth class. Every MMO to date has a large group of players who cry about the stealth class, whether it is underpowered, balanced, or overpowered. This is not the same as the numerous complaints about Warriors. Thief is a high risk high reward class, very squishy, and they make trade-offs to get that burst. Warriors just have too many strengths mixed into one package.

No I don’t think anyone thinks every class is OP. I suppose every class gets complaint threads once in awhile, but usually due to a certain build being brainless(spirits, MM necro, PU mesmer), not because the build is actually OP, which is why Warriors are getting so much hate.

I am not using bad builds in my comparisons, I am assuming typical pvp builds. Also, the build doesn’t really matter, what matters is what the profession has access to as a whole.

I presented arguments as to why Warriors are better than other professions(their traits are simply better, and they have far less weakness while also having more strengths), but you have yet to actually respond to those points with anything.

This idea would work for pve balance, but in pvp you would have to change a ton of abilities for every profession, and it would take a lot of time and resources.

Introp.8465:

Stx.4857:

Warrior’s have small weaknesses…

Hammer Warriors can be kited fairly well, and GS Warriors lack control.

Even so, Warriors with their typical pvp builds have FAR more in their total package than other professions.

Part of this is due to having the highest base health and armor, while also having the best healing slot in the game. They can go full offense while still having the sustain of your average light/medium bunker. They have excellent condition removal, excellent damage, excellent control, nice active defenses, and stability.

Warrior traits are also much better than most other professions, as has been pointed out several times in this thread. Comparing cleansing ire to ranger condition removal 30 pt trait is a joke. Regaining 360 hp per second from 15 trait points.. really? Thats more regen than my CLERIC ranger gets from regen boon +signet utility slot. Thats more regen than the entire siphoning tree of Necro COMBINED, and the Necro has to be constantly attacking for his to work.

Basically, Warriors dont need to make any trade-offs at all. Want great regen? No need to use healing power gear, thats for lesser professions! Want great damage? Just use mostly zerker gear! No problem, you will still have more HP and armor than most professions… Want the best regen and condition removal in the game? just put 20 pts into that tree there.. screw all those 30 pt investments other professions have to make for lesser results, you are a WARRIOR!

ONE trade-off Warriors have to make is between control and mobility. That is pretty much it. Other professions have to choose between damage and survival, while also having to choose between things like condition removal, mobility, access to stability, control, or sustain. Warriors get it all.

Its 360 per 3 seconds WHEN YOU HAVE FULL ADRENALINE. Not every second, every 3 seconds, so its 120 hp/s if you keep adrenaline full, which u never ever do. Either using it to cleanse conditions or do damage. And no, warriors dont invest into healing, because it scales horribly. Could you be kind and first get your facts straight before panicking on forums? And again, dont compare warrior to ranger and some inferior ranger build tbh. Want to be fair – take all classes and compare them to each other. Every class has its perks and weaknesses. If you want everyone to be the same, why bother having classes to begin with.

Thiefs shadow embrace 10 points into – removes condis in stealth. some thiefs build can spam stealths.
And we can compare thief to a guardian: thief has access to stealth, guardian – no. such imbalance right?( and no, other people placing fields for him is not him having access)

This whining goes again and again and again in 100 threads. this is getting out of hand.

I could compare Warriors to every professions, but that would take way too long. So I used Ranger and Necro as examples.

Healing scales horribly for everyone except for select skills like Well of Blood. Obviously Ele’s and Guards make the most of it, but Warrior healing abilities scale with healing power just as crappy as everybody else.

The difference of course is that Warriors get more HPS without gearing for healing power as most professions do when gearing for it. Balanced?

Also, please enlighten us as to the Warrior weaknesses? Yes every class has perks and weaknesses, but Warrior has FAR less weaknesses than other professions, and far more perks. That is the point.

Warrior’s have small weaknesses…

Hammer Warriors can be kited fairly well, and GS Warriors lack control.

Even so, Warriors with their typical pvp builds have FAR more in their total package than other professions.

Part of this is due to having the highest base health and armor, while also having the best healing slot in the game. They can go full offense while still having the sustain of your average light/medium bunker. They have excellent condition removal, excellent damage, excellent control, nice active defenses, and stability.

Warrior traits are also much better than most other professions, as has been pointed out several times in this thread. Comparing cleansing ire to ranger condition removal 30 pt trait is a joke. Regaining 360 hp per second from 15 trait points.. really? Thats more regen than my CLERIC ranger gets from regen boon +signet utility slot. Thats more regen than the entire siphoning tree of Necro COMBINED, and the Necro has to be constantly attacking for his to work.

Basically, Warriors dont need to make any trade-offs at all. Want great regen? No need to use healing power gear, thats for lesser professions! Want great damage? Just use mostly zerker gear! No problem, you will still have more HP and armor than most professions… Want the best regen and condition removal in the game? just put 20 pts into that tree there.. screw all those 30 pt investments other professions have to make for lesser results, you are a WARRIOR!

ONE trade-off Warriors have to make is between control and mobility. That is pretty much it. Other professions have to choose between damage and survival, while also having to choose between things like condition removal, mobility, access to stability, control, or sustain. Warriors get it all.

PvE: Necro(buff) Guardian(nerf)

PvP: Ele(buff) Warrior(nerf)

I would like to be able to choose my stats on all my zerker ascended items… I had to make a big decision between rabid/dire or berserker for my Necro, and I went with the zerker because it was best for PvE and it is still fun to play as a glass Necro in wvw.

Well now that zerker damage is being reduced by roughly 10%(on an already struggling build), I really wish I would have gone with the condition gear.

I don’t have the time or the motivation to re-grind all those ascended items… and I just think its bullcrap that it takes so long to make a full set of ascended just to have them nerf it later.

I doubt they will compensate anyone for this though. Oh well.. at least zerker will still be best for PvE.

If I want a range option for a standard sword spotter pve build, is longbow the best choice for single target dps or is it shortbow?

Nerfing crit damage does nothing in PvE except make speed runs/organized groups take 10% longer to kill things. Bad builds will still be bad, clerics/conditions will still be useless.

In PvP, it will further encourage condition bunker gameplay, which is brainless already.

Overall this change will accomplish nothing good, and will actually hurt the game.

Sorry, I don’t buy it.

Thieves have received nothing but nerfs for a long time now, and S/D literally just got destroyed, leaving one spec… D/P glass cannon backstab, which you would have to be high to claim has higher survivability than a Mesmer.

Aside from that, I see way more Mesmers in spvp than thieves, and I personally find thieves extremely easy to kill, no matter what profession I am playing, where as even bad mesmers can be very tough to bring down between all the teleports, stealths, and evades.

I love people who claim thieves take no skill, and have great survivability. Its a joke. To survive as a thief, you have to time your evades and dodges very well, and also manage your initiative because if you run out at the wrong time, you are dead.

Compare this to a mesmer who can fart out clones every dodge roll(with perma vigor btw) and decoy, and also have a high uptime on stealth if they want, and plenty of teleports between sword and staff. Put it all together and its just so easy to play one compared to a thief, at least for me.

The last time I saw actual data numbers, thieves were way down. This was after the larcenous strike nerf, but before the recent inf strike nerf. I am curious to know if anything has changed.

So let me get this straight. You are upset because two players beat you… one player?

Stealth rezzing is perfectly fine and one of the only helpful utilities a thief can bring to his team.

You what is worse than stealth when it comes to stomping? Stability stomps and invulnerability stomps… now that is just lame.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Why not both? New game mode on a new map.

Sounds great when you say it like that but… are you saying you guys could actually generate those things within the next few years? lol.

Why not balance professions for pve?

Why not fix pve boss mechanics?

Why not add new weapons for classes?

Why not add new skills for each profession?

Why not add new regions to the world?

Yeah…

As for the topic, I vote new game mode! Oh. And trash Skyhammer.

99% of the people who want thief nerfs just got killed by a skilled thief in wvw and come here to cry about it. If they had actually played the class, they would know it is a high risk high reward class, which is what this game needs.

No I don’t think stealth is a good mechanic in GW2, but it is the way it is, and its not going to be overhauled. It has plenty of counters, and thieves in general do not need more nerfs, so if you want to nerf them, then also propose a compensation buff in the same topic.

Against Aegis? NO. Against manual blocking, and evades? Yes, I agree. Against Blind debuff… I don’t see why not.

The only problem I see with all this is that it will nerf thieves, and thieves do not need pvp nerfs… not without compensation.

I use the brown bear in pvp a lot actually.. the condition removal is rather nice, considering I have basically 0 condition removal other than signet. Also, the bear doesnt instantly die if I use protect me, like a lot of pets seem to. My build doesnt really need the pet to deal much damage either, so his lower dps doesnt bother me.

I run berserker longbow/greatsword with signet of stone, protect me, and signet of renewal.

In PvE, or with other pvp builds like BM builds, I do not use the bear 99% of the time.

Magi is terrible for Necro. Our HP is high enough without added vitality, healing power as a stat overall is very weak, and healing in general scales much much better with toughness than vitality. On top of all that, precision isn’t useful without power(unless you are conditions).

Its just a bad stat combo for Necro all around.

No, I don’t think that would be too powerful. We lack stability, and mobility so…

This is a great use for the trait “Shrouded Removal”. A lot of players think this trait is underpowered compared to passive condi removal per 10 second traits, but I beg to differ because I think having condi-removal on demand is much better than passive.

I use Shrouded removal to break out of roots constantly. I also use it to remove single cripples, or single bleeds keeping me in combat longer than I would like to be.

I use Dagger offhand in power builds all the time while roaming, but nothing beats the warhorn in a zerg.

Constant area damage, constant area cripple, and the amazing lifeforce generation is a plus too. Focus is too suited for single targets, and dagger offhand condition cleanse isnt really needed.. the blinds are nice, but the damage on dagger abilities doesnt come close to the damage locust swarm will give you.

I play a balanced dagger build and I find warriors rather easy. I just keep pressure on them, dodge/break their stuns with spectral armor, or just sit in DS if I have to. My damage is high enough to wear through their signet most of the time. I also make sure to try and keep weakness on them, and also use dagger #4 to transfer burns/roots back onto them.

frans.8092:

Stx.4857:

frans.8092:

Soldiers is not a defensive set, it has Power, the primary offensive stat, as main. Cleric is defensive.

Uh, Soldier’s is like THE defensive set, and Dire as well.

I’d think Sentinel’s and Giver’s are a lot more defensive. When you label Soldier’s as “The defensive set” I imagine you do so because it is offering a good mix of offence and defence. Just like Dire.

Well, I kind of forgot about Sentinel’s. But anyway, Cleric’s is only used by a select few builds on a select few professions that can actually make use of healing power. And other than those, Soldier’s is usually as defensive as you can get.

If you want a “mix of offense and defense” I would think of something like Knight’s or Valkyrie gear.

Carighan.6758:

Stx.4857:

Players running glassy specs already sacrifice tons of survival for that damage, basically high risk high reward if they can pull it off.

The problem is that in most cases, the “high risk” right now isn’t there.
This is a courtesy of the active defence being exactly the same for all setups, and the larger a percentage of the fight you can cover with active defence, the less your passive defences matter. As soon as you can cover ~all of the fight (most of dungeons), the need for any defensive stat evaporates since there are no situations in which it’d contribute.

As such, there is no longer a high-risk-high-reward vs low-risk-low-reward choice.
It’s no-risk-high-reward vs no-risk-low-reward.

I was actually speaking more from the pvp side of things(wvw). But as for PvE, having base health and no armor is still very high risk when compared to playing a dire or rabid condition build, soldiers, ect. Especially professions with 10.5k HP. I can survive in any dungeon on my glass Necro with ease, same with my Ranger.. but the thief.. oh man I had trouble with that.

frans.8092:

Soldiers is not a defensive set, it has Power, the primary offensive stat, as main. Cleric is defensive.

Uh, Soldier’s is like THE defensive set, and Dire as well.

I don’t use Celestial gear, but I would be kittenED if I spent all that time making it(why does it take more gold/time again?), and then it recieved a heavier nerf than any other set.

I like the scaling change for crit damage, but celestial should definitely be compensated with either the doubling of power, the increase of all stats by a small amount, or adding boon/condition duration.

I think the changes they are making to crit damage are fine, and make perfect sense. What I do not agree with is straight up nerfing the damage of people using full crit damage gear, which is what they are also doing with this change.

Players running glassy specs already sacrifice tons of survival for that damage, basically high risk high reward if they can pull it off. You don’t want to nerf high risk high reward specs, you want to nerf low risk high reward specs like condition bunkers…

Another big reason why this nerf is bullkitten is because it will nerf many builds in this game that are already struggling. Take a Power Necro for example… they can hit hard, but can be easily CC’d, and have no mobility, so they are easy to kill. If you nerf their damage by 10%, that is completely unjustified. If they plan on compensating power specs in some way then this change would be okay, but we all know they wont do that.

I completely agree. 10.5k is way too low and it makes balancing hard in PvE.

I suggest the gaps be: 14k, 16k, 18k.

My Ranger can’t cleanse conditions reliably, so that food is pretty essential. I am all for nerfing +/- duration foods, but I kind of hope they don’t when playing Ranger hehe.

Rengaru.4730:

Yeah, it’s way to strong.
Compare it to a balanced skill like Banner of Discipline.

That one only gives a meager 8% increase in crit chance plus 15% crit damage to zerker resulting in an >20% increase in damage.

Wait a moment…

Hah! But you have to manually move the Banner around, while the Spirit is… inherently immobile without a trait…

Well, in the end it’s all about the uptime, and banner can only get a 100% uptime with an adept trait, whereas the Spirit can be up 66% of the time… with a 70% proc chance… when traited…

Ok, so the Banner is stronger, but at least it can’t die. Take that OP Spirit!

^ Win

Just out of curiousity, when people talk about Ranger being awesome for 1v1… are they talking about condition bunker BM spec?

I am just wondering because I am new to Ranger and the only builds I have played are Longbow/Greatsword, and Sw/wh/GS BM build. Both are extremely fun to play and can hold their own 1v1 against power specs, but seem to melt vs heavy condition builds.

I am not a big fan of condition builds, because other than Necro and to a lesser extent Engi, the only way you can actually kill someone is if they stay and fight you forever. From what I have seen of condi BM rangers, there is nothing stopping your target from just walking away because while you may be tanky, your damage is just steady dots.

If you know your internet connection is unstable, then don’t risk joining tournament matches. Especially if you already have 1-2 stacks of the debuff. Yeah its too bad that you might not be able to play for a day or two, but every time you disconnect, you are screwing your team. Don’t screw your team.

You have to be a glassy spec to kill a Warrior through his regen 1v1. Meanwhile, he will be dealing major damage to you(possibly 2-3 shot you), because you are glassy. On my Ele with soldiers, a Warrior can be AFK and outheal my damage. On my thief, using ZERKER amulet.. I can be firing my ranged weapon auto attack and #2 attack, and a warrior will outheal it with passive regen. Balanced!

I love it when Warriors say the “counter” is ‘continued burst damage’. Basically the counter to a Warrior is to Xv1 him, totally balanced!

Norn elites are great but I also can’t stand the male model for Norns. I just went with human…

First of all, it is an elite skill, so it is supposed to be powerful.

Second of all, if a Necro is using Lich, he is a power Necro, which in Spvp means he is squishy, with no mobility, and should be focused immediately. Lich adds some HP and maybe some armor, but a Necro in zerker will still die very fast in Lich, and Lich has no defense at all, or healing, so yeah.

THIRDLY! The projectiles from the #1 skill are slow, don’t home-in on their target, and can be dodged/blocked/evaded/immuned/blinded/whatever. I once had a Guardian block/dodge/blind every single attack from my Lich form for 20 seconds while we were fighting for a point. It was kitten ridiculous.

This is definitely a nerf to D/P. But it would be a nice buff to S/P and P/P, so I support it.

The thing is though… D/P doesn’t really need such a big nerf, it just needs to lose the perma-stealth crap.

The thing about Warriors is that they just have a little too much passive survival while also outputting high damage. Most classes need to trade most of their defense for offense, but not the Warrior.

Even in Zerker gear, a Warrior has 18k HP, 2200 armor(correct me if I am wrong), and can regenerate a lot of HP with signet.

To compare, a Thief has 11k HP, about 1900 armor, and zero health regen unless he uses signet of malice, which even when constantly attacking, is less healing than Healing signet.

Now this is PvE, and obviously in PvP thieves have more methods of active defense than a Warrior, but you get the point.

What people don’t realize is it really doesn’t take much to push a class from being too powerful, to underpowered. 8% nerf to HS is a good start, but I would prefer it if they just changed the signet’s function entirely. As long as a heal exists that is pure health per second, it will always be viewed as the ultimate heal.

I think one way to help fix this problem is to reduce the gigantic HP difference between the professions. Currently it goes 10.5k, 15.5k, 18k… which is pretty large, especially for the lower end. I think it should be more like… 15k, 16.5k, 18k.

Another reason Warriors are often viewed as the “Golden Child” is because they are simply way more polished. You can really tell when looking at the traits, skills, and playing a Warrior that A-Net really put time into making sure everything worked right.

Compare that to a Ranger or Necro, where certain traits/weaponskills remain bugged for months on end, sometimes years. Rangers main DPS weapon’s auto attack locks you out of dodging! Necro has two traitlines with almost zero function outside of utilizing minions, not to mention bugged weapon skills/traits that took literally forever to fix.

When you compare Warrior traits to other professions, its just obvious which is more efficient. Warriors get +50% bleed duration, other classes get +20% bleed duration. Warriors get 5 sec weapon swap, others get 10, warriors need only spend 10 pts for 25% movement speed, others need to either sacrifice a utility slot or a whole rune set.

To me, its the large number of little polished things that make Warriors the best class, and also of course their insane passive survival.

This kind of grading system is hard to do because a profession’s strengths and weaknesses change drastically based on their traits, weapons, and armor selection.

For example, you can say that Warriors are at the top of mobility, and at the top of CC, but you can’t really have that in the same build.

I think the best way to try and grade the professions would be to take the top two performing PvP builds and the top two performing PvE builds, and then put those builds through a similar system to the one you are making. That would be 32 builds that would be ranked. You could also rank PvP and PvE separately, which would actually make more sense.

Other than slot 6 and Transfusion, is there any reason at all for a Necro to waste a stat slot on Healing Power? Siphons scaling are basically non-existant. Knight’s or Soldier’s would be much better if you are trying to play with survivability.

I actually think the kick and leap is really fun to play, since I mostly quest and PvP. But if I have to choose between a fun mechanic in PvP and a completely broken mechanic in dungeons, I will choose to change it for the dungeons. Not being able to dodge on bosses is just inexcusable. It needs a change.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Roll a ranger, I did and I don’t regret it. Having so many evades, blocks, stuns, endless dodging, invulnerabilities….oh its like a breath of fresh air. I tried doing the warrior thing for a while but I would fall asleep at my keyboard after the first 5 minutes. Strangely enough I would awake to find I landed several victories while I was asleep…go figure.

I don’t know what awaits us in march, it may be good, or it may bury the necro once and for all. Until then I’ll keep working on my ranger. Almost got him map completion already and working on his ascended gear now. Just don’t go read ranger forums lol. Those guys have no idea how to play their own class.

This is funny because I had pretty much the exact same experience. I leveled a Warrior to 80, and it was soooooo easy to play and very powerful, but I was dying of boredom.

Then I watched a couple Ranger WvW videos, and it inspired me to try one. My Ranger is currently at 55% map completion and I plan on getting to 100% with him, very fun class. Lots of evades, great attrition(HELLO!), and the thing I like the most is.. mobility. I can’t describe how nice it is to be able to Swoop every 10 seconds for 1100 yards. Also, Rangers have really nice defensive cooldowns… traited Signet of Stone is awesome, so is Protect Me(with the right pet), and Greatsword #4 can block attacks every 12 seconds traited.

I have heard for a long time that Rangers suck at everything, but it seems to me they just lack build diversity. Their melee PvE build is really great to have in endgame, better than Necro anyway, and Rangers can also roam like a pro.

I mostly want Knight’s(Toughness, Power, Precision), and a new one.. (Toughness, Power, Condition Dmg.). The first would make more power builds viable(like Necro), and the second would make Hybrid builds more viable.

Well if you are not a fan of pets… what more is there to discuss? You are forced to use a pet as a Ranger, and it is a part of your character and your damage output.

I think Rangers are much more fun to play. Yes Warrior has efficient damage output, high base HP/armor, and high health regen… but Ranger has great weapon skills, nice mobility, defensive cooldowns, and ranger heals are pretty good too.

I love this trait, both in PvE and sometimes in PvP.

I don’t usually take it with my 30 SR builds, but with my dagger crit pvp builds flashing DS is fine as long as you have backup defensive cooldowns available. High uptime on Fury and the damage/weakness from auto EB is great.

ESO comes out April 4th, so there will have to be something VERY impressive changed about the game to keep me interested by that point.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Stx.4857:

Why can’t they convert crit damage into a normal stat without nerfing overall damage?

You already run a larger risk playing glass cannon specs due to being squishy, so this change will push even more people toward the horrible condition bunker style of play.

As for people like me who take advantage of the item budget on jewelry and mix in defensive stats on armor/weapons… this change hurts a lot because jewelry will now be normalized…

Either way its a damage nerf to power specs, and while perhaps this will make condition specs closer to viable in PvE, overall it will just kitten people off and make pvp even more brainless.

Taking advantage of the item budget on jewelry to make a tanky spec do respectable damage is probably not a design decision they intended. Why should a tanky spec be able to get as much damage with less risk? It’s a no-risk build. Now maybe tankier builds will need to dip into more damage, or live with just being tankier.

Well yes, I agree, but thats not really the point here. I am just saying that glassy specs got nerfed, and mixed gear specs will get a noticable nerf too, which is the opposite of what needs to happen in PvP, especially for Necros. This nerf will encourage more players to play bunkers/condition spammers.

Why can’t they convert crit damage into a normal stat without nerfing overall damage?

You already run a larger risk playing glass cannon specs due to being squishy, so this change will push even more people toward the horrible condition bunker style of play.

As for people like me who take advantage of the item budget on jewelry and mix in defensive stats on armor/weapons… this change hurts a lot because jewelry will now be normalized…

Either way its a damage nerf to power specs, and while perhaps this will make condition specs closer to viable in PvE, overall it will just kitten people off and make pvp even more brainless.