Guild Wars 2

I really should be watching my health and counting down the internal cooldown :P However I find that this trait procs just as I’m casting CnD. So not only am I revealing myself at low health, but I just wasted 6 initiative.

Here are some suggestions that are stealth based:
1) Keep the trait as it is but give the player a 3-4 second boon where hitting from stealth won’t give them the revealed debuff but will still unstealth them.
2) Gain a few seconds of protection the next time the player is in stealth when below a health threshold (has a cooldown).

edit: forget the first suggestion. Messing with revealed is bad.

Can we please talk about how Steal will lock itself if you go underwater with some land based skill in it (Healing Seed being a prime example)? You can’t even discard the item underwater, the whole skill is locked until you get out of the water and use the item.

I don’t know of any other profession that can’t use their class mechanic underwater. If a mesmer became unable to use Shatters underwater if they went into the water with some clones there’d be complaining left and right. Yet this has been an issue for more than a year already.

Please make it so that if you enter water with an unusable stolen skill it either becomes discarded automatically or it gets a suitable water-based alternative instead of locking the whole thing down.

The developers always say they only make skills different in pve/wvw and pvp as a last resort.

So before further balancing is done, shouldn’t those differences be eliminated first and use that state as a new balancing point for pvp then?

Like for example elementalist healing signet 50% pvp only nerf on the passive (I still find it strang to have the signet show 213 healing on the tooltip yet as soon as you equip it in the heart of the mists the healing goes down to 173) or the 5 seconds cleansing water cooldown that is only in pvp?

The Game Slayer.7632:

Dakarius.3284:

This skill is an elite skill that stuns for 1.5 seconds on a 45 second cd with a 1 second cast time. It also doesn’t stack with other stuns. The problem is it doesn’t measure up to other stuns let alone other elites.

Examples of better stuns:
-Signet of Domination (3 second stun, 45 second cd, 1200 range, is a signet, 1/4 second cast)
-Magic bullet (2 second stun, other effects on bounce, combo finisher, 900 range, 25 second cd)
-Static field (2 second stun, 40 second cd, 1200 range, combo field)
-Earthshaker(1-2 second stun based upon adrenaline, 600 range, 3/4 second cast, 10 second cd)
-skull crack(1-3 second stun, 10 second cd)
-Whirling strike(1-2 second stun, 10 second cd)

Basilisk venom was fine as an elite when it was unbreakable, but as it is now, it’s meh as a stun and lacklustre as an elite (this is important as it’s thief’s only underwater elite).

I suggest either increasing the duration to 3 seconds, or reducing the cd to around 25-30 seconds.

i disagree completely. It’s an elite skill which extremely blows out every other one in terms of CD. kitten cd is amazing. the stun is at a good level, 1.5 isnt too little nor is it too high.
And i see almost every thief use it. Why buff something already widely used? so people can never use daggerstorm ever again? or thieves guild?

I use it when roaming because it’s the best option, not because it’s good. Most thieves rotate their elites between situations. Just because it’s widely used doesn’t make it viable, it simply makes it the least kittenty of anything. Thieves Guild is OP in 1v1 situations, but has no place in any other application, while Dagger Storm is great for soloing camps and pairs well with signet of malice for zerg fights. Basilisk Venom is just the “go to” option when not a) dueling or b) capping a camp or in a zerg fight, which is a lot. I guarantee that if BV got any buff, it’s usage for the same situations would neither increase or decrease, and neither would the other two options. Hell, occasionally I even take the human elite Reaper of Grenth over Basilisk Venom, since you can upkeep permanent chilled and stack up to 40 seconds of poisoned, a far greater effect than a 1.5 second stun that I only ever use over Pistol Whip because it’s off cooldown and I could use a second or so to gather my surroundings before deciding my next move. Most fights don’t last long enough to need it twice, anyway. So the cooldown point is moot.

/rant

Terrahero.9358:

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Tow line is the only skill that self-CCs the user for no apparent reason and does nothing good to the enemy to compensate.

It pulls you towards the target, as a gapcloser underwater. Thats what it does to your enemy, closes the gap towards him.
Its also not the only ability that CCs the user.

shadow shot also pulls character to target, but it doesn’t stun the caster…also tow line already has relative high costs for spell that does almost no dmg and only cripples

i don’t think thief is a class that can allow himself luxery of being stunned in melee range of the target, especially underwater where they have almost no utilities available

Please? Can we get any answer on it since apprently that issue been there since launch and even wiki doesn’t have any info on that spell stunning the caster himself.

Tow line is the only skill that self-CCs the user for no apparent reason and does nothing good to the enemy to compensate.

Please change this skill. As of right now, I only use it on accident.

I know i had similar post from a while ago but since we have new forums here~ Can stun portion from tow line be removed, please. It makes absolutely non sense that the caster gets stunned by own cast while target isn’t affected at all.

Right now what happens is following: thief uses tow line -> thief (yes, thief) gets stunned while his target is only crippled -> thief is pulled to target while being still stunned and unable to do anything and target can cast at will. Tow line costs 4 ini on top of it.

Thanks.

I think it’s generally accepted within the thief community that, despite its scaling with healing power buff on December 10th, Assassin’s Reward is extremely lackluster for a grandmaster trait.

Due to its placement in Acrobatics, it synergizes well with Trickery builds, which leads to anyone using both lacking both Stealth and Condition Removal. This is an issue in the current meta, and one of the better proposed ideas is to let Assassin’s Reward have a “countdown buff” which removes a condition for every ~5 initiative spent. Being on par with Stealth thieves which have condition removal periodically in stealth, this would allow Assassin’s Reward the viability in a PvP format which most acrobatics builds (aside from one S/D + S/D build that’s fallen out of place) so desperately lack. Non-stealth builds are also actively engaged in combat, and I feel that this change to Assassin’s Reward would do wonders for build diversity for thieves in PvP, who are currently pigeonholed into 3 build archetypes (S/D acrobatics, D/P trickery/Shadow Arts, S/P trickery), none of which dare take Assassin’s Reward due to the lack of survivability you have against condition builds whilst running it.

Thank you for your consideration,
~Glïnt

Gonna agree here. So many positive changes that could be made. But unfortunately we do not fall into the category of Anets pet class. The warrior. Great post it I would nt hold my breath.

I wanted to discuss usefulness and reason behind some of thief traits and them in general.

So out of 60 major and 15 minor traits we got:

• 6 major and 2 minor traits that modify effect of stealing
• 8 major and 2 minor traits giving bonuses upon entering stealth and being in it
• 4 major and 1 minor traits applying stealth
• 6 major and 3 minor traits focusing on initative control

Now let’s take a look at traits modyfing utility skills.
We have:

• 5 venom traits
• 2 signet traits
• 2 traps traits
• 1 deception trait (only cooldon reduction)
• 1 trick trait (only cooldon reduction)
• and improvisation trait that refreshes one category of skills upon steal use.

When it comes to weapons

• 3 pistol traits
• 2 dual skills traits
• 1 dagger trait
• 1 shortbow and harpoon gun trait
• 0 sword trait
• 0 spear trait
• 2 major and 4 minor traits that increase our damage when certain conditions are met, but work with every weapon.

Now let me talk about some trait changes i would love to see.

Deadly Arts

• I – Back Fighting – Does anyone use that trait? When i play i try to stay alive as long as possible, not to fight in downed mode.
• II – Corrosive trait – Is that trait really that powerful that it can’t be a single trait with Master Trapper?
• V – Potent Poison – There are so many conditions out there. Do we seriosly need 50% more duration on poison? It’s easy enough to have 100% uptime by using steal and d/x
  autoattacks on target. From pvp point of view, i would prefer it to be changed to bleeding, torment or even blindness.
• VII – Improvisation – It doesnt happen too often that i have skill from every category as i just like to trait into skills i have (like most of players probbably). Second part is useful for Fiery Greatsword though.
• VIII – Quick Venoms – is it another trait that overpowered that it needs to be alone there? Every other class has some bonus to skill category for taking cd reduction trait for it, we don’t.
• IX – Dagger Training – 5% damage increse… People take it only because this trait lane lacks any other usefuls skills – also only trait that improves dagger use
• X – Dual Training – ok, dual skills are good, i like the idea of changing skills depending on weapon combination we have, but trait that increases damage by amazing 5% of single skill? As previous one taken only because of lack of useful traits.
  Critical Strikes
• V – Pistol Mastery – 10% is better than that 5% we have up there, but still, have to take more traits to have some additional effect.
• VIII – Signet Use – it was good when our initative regen was 7,5 per 10 and it gave us 2 initative. Which meant that if we used all 4 signets avaible to our class we would get more initative than we normally got in 10 seconds. Now It gives us 4 initative out of 10 we regen during 10 seconds. From over 100% to 40% that’s really a huge nerf. Best idea would be deleting that initative regen thingy and merging it with Signets of Power, even if it meant lowering might stacks gained.
• IX – Combo Critical Chance – check dual training. Only difference is that here we have more useful traits to take.
  Shadow Arts
• I – Master of Deception – 20% cooldown reduction without any bonus effect…
• II – Slowed Pulse – works only on bleeding
• VII – Power Shots – another amazing 5% damage increase, you so witty
• X – Patience- "No initiative is gained upon entering stealth. The user must maintain stealth for 3 seconds before they will see benefits from this trait. " Quote, from wiki.
  Soo, i understand that real patience is needed to benefit of this trait that gives us amazing one point of initative.
  Acrobatics
• V – Master Trapper – again, 20% cooldown reduction, wrote about it in deadly arts II
• IX – Quick Recover – 1 initative per 10 seconds. Thank you i’ll pass.
• X – Hard to Catch – Too unreliable and can put us in even worse situation.
• XI – Assasin’s reward – The fact it relies on initative doesnt mean it has anything to do with initiative management. Grandmaster traits should be more connected with topic of trait lane. Place it in shadow arts to make thieves benefit more of it.
  Trickery
• V – Thrill of the Crime – We get swiftness, fury and one stack of might? Deleting that one stack of might and extending fury and swiftness duartion would be nice.
• VIII – Trickster – and again, 20% cd with no bonus effect
• XI – Hastened Replenishment – move it to acrobatics instead of Assasin’s Reward

The only thing I’d like to see changed about steal is it going in full cd if you don’t have anything targeted. It should go to kitten cd like when you try to use it on a target which is out of reach.
Everything else is fine imho. It’s a free, pseudo-stunbreaker (it saved my life in many occasions) and a teleport.

The fact, untraited steal is the most inefficent class skill of all classes.
Having a 35sec cd gapcloser with the Chance to missing the target> gain nothing > waiting 35 sec again>and maybe failing again.
And the fact of traiting, will not increase the effect of getting stolen skill when missing /blocking/blinding/evading.
I dont have to explain other classes class skills because compared to Thief Every other classes have simply more Options in using their untraited class skill abilities.

Suggestion:
Stealing an ability should not beeing affected by blocking/blinding/evading/immunitiy/missing.
You should getting rewarded with a stolen skills everytime for a steal.
>>>>Traits are not beeing affected by this Suggestion!<<<<

In order to improve steal ablility, you should get 3 different skills from 1 class:

F2 >1 dmg skill
F3 >1 CCskill
F4 >1 selfbuff skill

You can using theese skills at the end by 1 of the following 2 methods:

A) After using F1 steal (on cd) you will get F2-F4 skills and using them until you steal again. Stealing would automatically replace them all with new skills.
That prevents Player from “collecting” specific skills to be unfair playstyle, for example collecting 3x fear.

B) After using F1 steal (on cd) you will get 3 stolen skills placed on the bar above your initiative bar, theese are not separately activatable.
You have to use F1 to activate 1 skill and you will see the F2 skill will switching into F1 Slot. After using F2 skill , the next F3 skill will swap into F1 Slot and the same appears with the F4 skill.
At the end you will be rdy up for steal again after all of your skills are completely depleted and the cd on steal is ready up again.

I made a List of " new stolen skill " for every class beeing stolen from the Thief.
PLease excuse me, the Symbol of using stolen-Staff/stolen-scepter is similar, would be nice if anet would make different Icons

Edit: PLease excuse my average written english text. I hope the message getting across with this thread

JonPeters.5630:

Thief:
…
Also we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait and increased effectiveness of the Assassin’s Reward trait.
…

Unfortunately, it appears to me that these efforts did not have their intended effect.
Some observations and a question to the Devs.

Hard to catch
This trait is basically a handicap in trait form. Being moved in a random direction, for a random distance when hit with a CC, Even if you have stability, and most importantly at the whim of another player, does not increase survivability. It’s disorienting, can force you off points, and doesn’t even clear the control effect. The range as well is much too short to be useful – being moved a maximum of 600 away from the target that CC’d you does almost nothing . Any melee class can close that gap in a second, and every non-thief has access to 1200 range (or better) weapons. Generally in most MMO’s, being moved by an effect you don’t initiate or control would be considered a CC effect, not anything positive.
How did Anet envision this increasing thief survivability?

Assassin’s Reward
This change has 2 problems.

• It’s a change in healing power scaling.
  What thief has room in their build for healing power? Perhaps a Venom share build dedicated to healing their teammates and doing almost no damage themselves might find use in stacking high healing power, but Venom share doesn’t have 30 points for the acro line anyway, so it’s a moot point.

• 35% more healing power scaling equates to 1 additional point of health healed per init spent for every 100 healing power you have, when compared to pre Dec 10th AR.
  How did this math justify a bump from Master to Grand master? The trait wasn’t a “good trait” when it was in the Master tier, and the buff is essentially non existent. How could someone crunch the numbers, see what an extremely minor effect that this change was going to have, and still push it through as a buff?

Could someone from Anet come and have a discussion with us, concerning how we are supposed to use these acrobatics changes to increase our survivability? Failing that (I honestly can’t think of an argument that would sway me into beleiving these changes increased survivability), could we discuss how to change/improve them in the next patch so that thief has some options for survivability via the Acrobatics traitline, as you intended?

Hard to Catch is an awful trait that can actually increase the effectiveness of enemy CC. A knockdown with Hard to Catch essentially becomes a Launch as not only will you be on the ground but you’ll also be moved back from the enemy. It can and does kill you by moving you out of Shadow Refuge when you are stunned or dazed, which normally wouldn’t matter. It can also result in failed stomps that would have otherwise succeeded as you will be teleported out of stomp range (“to safety”) even if you have stability. I’m just glad it’s a Major trait so I can ignore it completely until they decide to actually make it useful. If it was a Minor trait like Last Refuge I’d avoid speccing into Acrobatics just to avoid it.

Assassin’s Reward is just not good enough to be a Grandmaster tier trait. Even in it’s “buffed” state it will heal you for less than Shadow Rejuvenation, the Grandmaster in Shadow Arts. If we’re going to have two grandmaster traits that both deal with healing, they need to be either on par with each other or Assassin’s Reward needs a secondary effect to distinguish itself. What that secondary effect should be is debatable, but personally I would make it group-support oriented. Thieves currently lack many support options other than Venomshare, which is another grandmaster trait, so a redesign here could potentially do wonders for Thief build diversity.

nicknamenick.2437:

Detharos.3157:

While we have different class mechanics, the largest raw healing numbers over a period of about 120 seconds I can get on ranger would be with Heal as One. Comparing the two, on my current ranger with an ascended cleric greatsword, 3 ascended cleric trinkets and about another 75 healing power from my other trinket slots, and a FULL 25 stacks of healing (+250 healing) power my Heal as One only hits about 7.3-7.5k (not sure which) which is with no added perks individually on a 20 second cooldown timer, and easily interrupted and susceptible to poison reductions. (Especially for many ranger builds in how limited we are on controlled condi removal.)

So, if Healing Signet really is topping 8k every 20 seconds as many are saying it does with no healing power coupled with by default larger damage reduction from armor type further augmented by easy access to many, many damage reduction functions via traits and skills.. then yes, healing signet may just be a little bit too high at least in comparison to what my class deals with. To be fair you can entertain the “well rangers have a lot of evades argument” but warriors have easily enough damage reduction by nature in every single warrior build(And high damage to survivability ratios) too easily outdo any evade spam.

Wanna compare the rest also?
Yeah warriors have also more health and armor.. but you can also use allot of evade skills + kite around way more compared to warriors + you have protection etc..
I would be happy to get some evade skills on my sword and some protection + stealth also you have to trade for that Healing signet..

When a warrior is out of its endure pain/berserker stance and maby shield stance.. after that we eat almost ALL damage we get.. where you can go stealth or use you evade skills also.. + you also have endure pain like skill + almost perma protection where you get way less damage compared to heavy armor warrior…

All evade skills come with some sort of aftercast or moment of vulnerability or some other type of disadvantage that offsets the strength of the skill.

Warriors can kite just as easily or even more easily than most other classes, because LB allows great condi removal and doesn’t do bad damage either and Rifle is just an absolutely murderous weapon. Heck, if you wanted to just kite, you could run a LB+Rifle build and all of your problems would be solved.

Protection always comes in small quantities and/or has a significant CD. Stone Spirit is a small exception to this (though it’s only any good in Spirit builds anyways), but even that has an ICD, if I remember correctly. On the other hand, warriors will always have a 7% damage reduction buff over rangers, and they don’t even have to build for that. Not to mention- because armor is not characterized by the protection boon, you can have heavy armor and have protection applied to you. Rangers don’t get that same kind of benefit.

There are many reasons why warriors don’t have stealth, but the primary balance reasons revolve around Eviscerate and Kill Shot. Even a level 2 Eviscerate deals more damage than a backsided BS, and Kill Shot would be an absolutely devastating skill- it deals more than 150% of BS’s damage from a 1500 range at level 3.

Those 3 “stances” (“Shield Stance” isn’t actually a stance…) have a combined base duration of 15s, which can be brought up to 18s with Sure-Footed. Heavy armor and the 18k base health both reduce the amount of damage you take anyways, and Adrenal Health, combined with Cleansing Ire, seals the deal. You have absolutely nothing to complain about (especially since nobody has “perma-protection” anyways… Jeez, man…).

Healing signet ignores or devalues every single healing counter available in the game.

With no cast time, it can’t be interrupted.

Due to its passive nature, you can’t preemptively CC your target when they’re low and DPS them down before they can break the CC and heal.

Due to its passive nature, it’s ticking at all times – when you’re blocking, when endure pain is up, when you’re attacking, when you’re running away, when your target is CC’d….

It’s highly resistant to poison – since the healing is spread over time, the only heals more effective against poison are those that cleanse poison before the heal is applied.

The base healing is very high at 0 Healing power.

Then there’s all the other little things that contribute to how powerful HS is.

Cleansing ire makes it very hard for a non-condition based spec to get poison to actually stick to a warrior for any reasonable amount of time.

Berserkers stance used after a CI that removes poison can guarantee 8-10s of full, unstoppable healing.

AH helps bolster the already great healing of HS.

Endure pain, defy pain, adequate access to blocks, great access to hard CC and the highest base health pool in the game all generate more time for healing.

With all that in mind, I wouldn’t claim that it’s crazy OP – but it’s not well balanced either. It definitely warrants looking into by the balance team, it has way too many strengths and almost no weaknesses, and likely needs to be shaved. The other abilities/traits (CI, AH, Zerkers stance) that contribute might be the culprit instead, but most of HS’s strengths are inherent to HS. The passive should probably be shaved (25-75HPS), the active slightly increased, and the Healing Power contribution increased – High HPS is fine for a warrior when they invest into healing power.

While we have different class mechanics, the largest raw healing numbers over a period of about 120 seconds I can get on ranger would be with Heal as One. Comparing the two, on my current ranger with an ascended cleric greatsword, 3 ascended cleric trinkets and about another 75 healing power from my other trinket slots, and a FULL 25 stacks of healing (+250 healing) power my Heal as One only hits about 7.3-7.5k (not sure which) which is with no added perks individually on a 20 second cooldown timer, and easily interrupted and susceptible to poison reductions. (Especially for many ranger builds in how limited we are on controlled condi removal.)

So, if Healing Signet really is topping 8k every 20 seconds as many are saying it does with no healing power coupled with by default larger damage reduction from armor type further augmented by easy access to many, many damage reduction functions via traits and skills.. then yes, healing signet may just be a little bit too high at least in comparison to what my class deals with. To be fair you can entertain the “well rangers have a lot of evades argument” but warriors have easily enough damage reduction by nature in every single warrior build(And high damage to survivability ratios) too easily outdo any evade spam.

LOL

First of all, the most powerful Healing Surge only heals for 9820 at base, and that’s on a 30s CD with a 1s cast. In any battle, mathematically speaking, a warrior only needs to live for a few seconds (~10s against a thief with Withdraw, for example) before he/she starts healing for more than his/her opponent does. With Endure Pain, 18k base health, heavy armor, Adrenal Health, and amazing condi cleanse and adrenaline regen from Cleansing Ire, that’s extremely easy. If you really need to increase the passive effect more in order to survive, then you’re just a bad player, and that’s all there is to it.

why not posting here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvP-Warrior-Healing-Signet-is-Too-Powerful/page/3#post3481722 ?

I believe this trait needs complete rework.
True, there HAVE been times in which it has saved me, but there were also a lot of times in which I have been killed by it.

Last Refuge (Shadow Arts Minor Adept Trait):
Use Blinding Powder when your health reaches a certain threshold.
-Health threshold: 25%

Let’s see WHEN it is a good trait to have.
1) if you are already stealthed and are running away. It is "good", because if it procs, it will extend the stealth duration and will blind nearby enemies, thus improving your chances of escaping.
2) if you are disabled. It is good because you would enter stealth and will blind nearby enemies, thus improving your chances of survival.

On the other hand, let’s see WHEN it is a bad trait to have:
1) If you are not disabled and are attacking your target. Your next attack will give you Revealed, and since you would be already at low health, you would immediatly need to back off from your target. Failure to do so usually results on your death.
2) If you are fighting alongside a nearby thief who is attacking his target. Same reason as above, but of course the victim will be the other thief. Results here could be even worse, because the other thief would get Revealed out of nowhere and most times he will be dead before he realize what happened. If the "user" is experienced, he will know what happens when it procs, and AT LEAST it will give him time to react or to understand what happened. But if it procs and stealths a nearby thief (assuming him to be a SA based thief, thus with stealth as main defense), he would rarely understand why he got Revealed. Even worse, the other thief could waste a lot of initiative trying to get into stealth again, adding to the problem.
3) (minor issue) If you already have Revealed, the only thing this trait will do is to blind nearby enemies, thus greatly limiting the effectiveness of it.
In a way, when this happens it would be a good thing for you, because you would be ensured you wouldn’t face the #1 issue, which is far worse.

This problem applies to every area of the game, be it WvW, PvP and PvE.

In my opinion, I find that traits should always be a "win-win" situation. That is, no matter how powerful, there shouldn’t be situations in which having a particular trait would dampen your survival BECAUSE of the trait itself. If such situations exist, the trait should be changed. The fact that Last Refuge is a MINOR trait, and as such it is mandatory for every thief who specs into Shadow Arts, greatly adds to the problem.

That’s why I believe it needs a rework.

Now, let’s see what we could change in order to fix this problem.

Many people have asked for it to remove the Revealed debuff.
This change would fix the #3 minor issue I listed above, but would worsen the #1 issue.
True, it will "cure" Revealed, so you would always benefit of the "full" effectiveness of the trait. However, it would potentially increase your Revaled time if you are timing your attacks in the proper way.
I’ll provide an example:
Let’s assume a D/P thief. The thief has just backstabbed the enemy, thus getting Revealed and exiting stealth. The thief now casts a Black Powder (off hand pistol #5 skill), and proceeds to autoattack the enemy, planning to Heartseeker through the Smoke Field when the Revealed debuff expires.
IF this change would be implemented, there is a chance for the thief to proc the trait while autoattacking, curing revealed but giving an additional 3s (4s in PvP) of Revealed upon landing the following autoattack, thus messing with his rotation.
-->let’s discard this change, as it could potentially do more harm than good.

Another possibility is to make it that the stealth you get from it would be "unbreakable" for the whole duration.
While this would solve all the issues I listed, this change will make the trait too good, as you could attack your target while stealthed for 3s (4s if traited) withoug worrying about getting revealed.
-->So let’s discard this change too, as it would make this trait ridiculously OP.

The last thing I could think of, is to change the "stealth" part of the trait, making it only work as an AoE Blind rather than a AoE Blind+Stealth
This thing would solve all the problems, while still being a good thing to have as a low HP proc trait
There wouldn’t be situations in which you would die because you wouldn’t get revealed out of nowhere. At the same time, nearby enemies would still get blinded, so it will improve your survival anyway (which is what you would want from a 25% HP proc trait).
-->This change would make this trait actually good to have, and would completely fit a Minor Adept trait in terms of cost-effect.

Any other thoughts are appreciated. If any other good solution would be posted, I will add it to this post.

EDIT: typos

This skill is an elite skill that stuns for 1.5 seconds on a 45 second cd with a 1 second cast time. It also doesn’t stack with other stuns. The problem is it doesn’t measure up to other stuns let alone other elites.

Examples of better stuns:
-Signet of Domination (3 second stun, 45 second cd, 1200 range, is a signet, 1/4 second cast)
-Magic bullet (2 second stun, other effects on bounce, combo finisher, 900 range, 25 second cd)
-Static field (2 second stun, 40 second cd, 1200 range, combo field)
-Earthshaker(1-2 second stun based upon adrenaline, 600 range, 3/4 second cast, 10 second cd)
-skull crack(1-3 second stun, 10 second cd)
-Whirling strike(1-2 second stun, 10 second cd)

Basilisk venom was fine as an elite when it was unbreakable, but as it is now, it’s meh as a stun and lacklustre as an elite (this is important as it’s thief’s only underwater elite).

I suggest either increasing the duration to 3 seconds, or reducing the cd to around 25-30 seconds.

Venomous Aura appears to ruin all venom skills from a balance perspective.

The Game Slayer.7632:

Dakarius.3284:

This skill is an elite skill that stuns for 1.5 seconds on a 45 second cd with a 1 second cast time. It also doesn’t stack with other stuns. The problem is it doesn’t measure up to other stuns let alone other elites.

Examples of better stuns:
-Signet of Domination (3 second stun, 45 second cd, 1200 range, is a signet, 1/4 second cast)
-Magic bullet (2 second stun, other effects on bounce, combo finisher, 900 range, 25 second cd)
-Static field (2 second stun, 40 second cd, 1200 range, combo field)
-Earthshaker(1-2 second stun based upon adrenaline, 600 range, 3/4 second cast, 10 second cd)
-skull crack(1-3 second stun, 10 second cd)
-Whirling strike(1-2 second stun, 10 second cd)

Basilisk venom was fine as an elite when it was unbreakable, but as it is now, it’s meh as a stun and lacklustre as an elite (this is important as it’s thief’s only underwater elite).

I suggest either increasing the duration to 3 seconds, or reducing the cd to around 25-30 seconds.

i disagree completely. It’s an elite skill which extremely blows out every other one in terms of CD. kitten cd is amazing. the stun is at a good level, 1.5 isnt too little nor is it too high.
And i see almost every thief use it. Why buff something already widely used? so people can never use daggerstorm ever again? or thieves guild?

Each of our elites has its uses, but I agree that BV could take some love.
I think even a 1s UNBREAKABLE stun would be ok.

The fact that most thieves run it does not qualify it for being good. Most eles use Tornado in PvP, yet all Elementalists’ elites are awful.

BV is usually taken in PvP for Lyssa Runes anyway.

reikken.4961:

it has to be super weak because of Venomous Aura
which is really stupid. If venoms have to be underpowered because of that trait, the trait should be removed.

Yup, that’s exactly the point and I totally agree with your suggestion.
What we truly need is some good way to defend ourselves – like a trait which boosts def while using venoms or something.

it has to be super weak because of Venomous Aura
which is really stupid. If venoms have to be underpowered because of that trait, the trait should be removed.

There are other options of course – lowering the cast time for one. I understand why Anet doesn’t want BV to be instant cast, but a .25s cast time seems sufficient.

In addition, since BV is an elite with 1 application only, we can add some more powerful effects. Why not add a 5 second weakness to BV, so it has some utility beyond the breakable stun? Perhaps some poison as well – 5 seconds of Poison and Weakness on BV would come a long way into bringing it up to snuff as an “elite” skill.