Guild Wars 2

Oh please. As an S/D thief, I can confidently say that you people have no idea what you’re talking about. First of all, I’d hardly classify evasion as “active defense”- pressing a single button to evade a huge number of attacks really isn’t that active. Secondly, you people have access to active defense in many, many more ways than you seem to be stating. Sword #2, Distortion, various combinations of traits and clone play- all of those give you an entire kitten nal to choose from.

For example, on my S/F + GS Lockdown mesmer, I can interrupt via Wave or Curtain, I can reflect via Curtain or iWarden, I can create a miniature bunker by using iWarden and then getting Protection and Regeneration from Phantasmal Healing + Illusionary Membrane, I can evade a large number of attacks by using Sword #2, I can hop out of an area using Portal, I can give myself Stability and an instant stunbreak on-demand, I can temporarily negate my opponent’s abilities with Moa, and I can get all sorts of boons while locking down my opponent with Bountiful Interruption and Chaotic Interruption. On the other hand, with my 10/0/0/30/30 thief, I can try to spam 3 on S/D (with an interval between each FS) or on SB (while doing virtually no damage and typically going in the direction I don’t want to go), I can flee using IR or IArrow, I can evade some more with Withdraw and RfInitiative, I can hop out using Shadowstep, I can very occasionally stealth, I can get a small amount of healing from Assassin’s Reward, and I can just try to evade as much as possible. There’s a very significant difference between these two. Mesmers get many more ways to defend, whereas almost all of my thief’s defense relies on evasion, and most of the remainder of my defense relies on mobility (which has very large connections to evasion anyways). I’m not saying that Mesmers are OP or anything, but seriously, stop QQ’ing.

As it is right now, Mesmers can get almost constant vigor uptime with an almost nonexistent, 5-point investment into a trait line they were probably going to go already. The only real argument against this nerf is the fact that Deceptive Evasion is one of the most significant sources of clone generation, but you can still get a huge number of clones without evading all of the time. Anyways, 10 points into Inspiration can buy you vigor on-demand for both yourself and your teammates anyways, so it’s really not like you can’t maintain permanent vigor uptime after this nerf.

It’s not my problem or anybody else’s problem if you’re going full-damage and are able to survive easily with permanent vigor uptime, and thus your vigor is getting nerfed. If you’re able to survive consistently while dealing insane amounts of damage because of a minor 5-point investment, then you’re hardly any better than the warriors that can do the same but with base stats and a high amount of healing instead.

Rickster.8752:

5, Lyysa runes – Obviously too strong, obviously didn’t design it to be used with 48 second elites. ICD needs to be over 70 seconds imo.

6, Thief evades – Still a problem I think.

7, Elementalist instant burst – need to somehow add some counter play to instant skill abilities with high damage. Not sure how to do this. Thats up to the devs, but it sucks.

About these three…

5. The solution here is not to nerf Lyssa, but to nerf SoRage. Right now, all of the thief elites are absolutely godawful. The only way to make even one of them good (Basi Venom) is to use Lyssa Runes, in which case the elite’s combined effects are pretty good but then also requires you to sacrifice an entire rune set. Nerfing Lyssa is a significant nerf to thief that would render all of our elites completely useless. Signet of Rage, on the other hand, is an extremely good elite even without Lyssa. It’s far more logical to nerf that than it is to nerf Lyssa in general.

6. I would agree that Feline Grace needs a nerf, but the most significant issue here is- what defensive mechanism will replace evasion? Right now, virtually every non-glass build in the game has at least some sort of defensive mechanism to support it. For instance, guardian builds have healing on meditation/boon application/symbol to supplement them. Warrior builds are just naturally hardy, with heavy armor, 18k base health, and an extremely powerful heal. Engineer builds have a wide variety of different healing options and fleeing abilities, as well as good area control. Necromancers have DS. However, of the two main branches of thief builds- evasion-reliant builds and stealth-reliant builds- both completely depend on their respective mechanism in order to survive. As a result, nerfing dodge will render one of the two types of thief builds completely horrible. I would not be so opposed to this change if other classes similarly got some of their primary defensive mechanisms (warriors especially) nerfed, but I feel like thief’s ability to dodge is much further down the priority list than many other different defensive options for other classes. If I could guarantee that this nerf came with many nerfs to many other classes, I’d happily accept it, but knowing ArenaNet, that’s not going to happen any time soon.

7. It’s really not “instant burst”, it’s extremely predictable and gimmicky. If you can’t deal with this then you shouldn’t have made this post.

Rednik.3809:

Arganthium.5638:

Ele- don’t even start that crap with me. Ether Renewal is an absolutely godawful source of condi removal, if only because of the fact that it is so easily interruptible.

If you are constantly interrupted – this is your personal l2p issue.

Engineer- that “large” part isn’t really that large, and relies on your allies being at least somewhat close to you

What is on-point fighting. Also, lol’d at “heavy armor” argument.

Arganthium.5638:

Guardian- if you can’t wait until Shelter is finished to burst an opponent, you shouldn’t play a burst build.

Everybody will suddenly stop unloading abilities bunker at first sight of shelter. In imaginary world, I presume.

Arganthium.5638:

Necro- necros don’t have that many ways to get rid of condis already

We talking about healing skills, and you are trying to switch topic.

Arganthium.5638:

Ranger- not many other condi clears in the first place outside of Empathic Bond (which is getting nerfed/debugged anyways). Rangers also have very, very few ways to actually utilize the water field by themselves

Ranger have blast and leaps, and ofc you again trying to slip away by “forgetting” about teammates who can utilize this field even more. Also -“heavy armor” argument again, lol.

Arganthium.5638:

Thief- you can easily get gap creators with weapons like Sword and Greatsword. The condition clear only applies to very specific condis, and honestly neither of those are enough to justify not getting 392/360 HPS with no cast time whatsoever.

Aka you again trying to switch from skill discussion to class discussion.

Arganthium.5638:

Warrior- so we’ve finally gotten here… Do you still really believe that Healing Signet is weaker than or on average with other healing skills in the game? It has no cast time (meaning no lost damage potential, no lost defensive potential, and no lost healing potential), is less counterable by poison (you have to maintain constant poison uptime in order to get the full reduction from poison), and, when combined with warrior’s other amazing defensive options, is downright OP. Cleansing Ire and Zerker Stance get rid of most of the problems with conditions that warriors ever have. Meanwhile, warrior still has the highest base health in the game except for necro, which doesn’t have the 14% damage reduction from heavy armor anyways.

And that’s why we see so much warrior bunkers in tPvP instead of guardians. Oh wait, we don’t.
Also, you always forgetting to point at little thing about your “heavy armor” arguments. 14% between heavy and light armor is in 0-0-0-0-0 build without any bonuses and stats, aka glassiest glass. Any defensive stats are decreasing this % rapidly.

Ele- yeah, I need to L2P so that I can counter interrupts when I can’t even evade. Nice. 0/10 didn’t even make an effort.

Engineer- what a brilliant and detailed counterargument.

Guardian- this legitimately is a L2P issue. It’s not my fault (or the dev’s fault, for that matter) if you’re still attacking a guard while he’s blocking with Shelter.

Necro- you were the one that originally said that this was one of the best condi clears in the game. I award you no points, and may Cthulu have mercy on your soul.

Ranger- yeah they have like infinitely many blast finishers, and leaps? Hoo boy, they can spam Monarch’s Leap and Swoop like there’s no tomorrow. I didn’t “forget” anything having to do with teammates, either. Anyways, though- I presume you don’t know much about Water Field finishers, because blasts and leaps really don’t provide that much healing. It’s good to combo it a few times, but after that you’re just wasting your damage potential. Either way, the healing on this skill is still terrible compared to warrior.

Thief- … You should really stop bringing up stuff and then turning and saying that I’m trying to change the discussion.

Warrior- I didn’t even say anything about warrior bunkers, 0/10. You don’t need to bunker anyways because you’re already super tanky. And of course I’m talking about 0/0/0/0/0, otherwise we start comparing builds and that’s much different from comparing classes. I’ll tell you that there are many non-glass builds (though still high-damage) out there that don’t have more than 2127 armor. It simply gives warrior much more freedom than other builds get. As for that % decreasing “rapidly”…. Below is a screenshot of the amount by which that % decreases for each point of toughness assuming that each time a light armor class gets 1 point of toughness, so does warrior. That’s the derivative of the function (2127+x)/(1836+x), and unless you think that a <-.005% difference for each point of toughness is high, you can rest assured that your statement is quite obviously false.

I’m going to leave this thread due to something I realized about tooltips, but I just thought I had better address this guy…

Harper.4173:

Arganthium.5638:

Mightymealworm.8409:

Arganthium.5638:

Mightymealworm.8409:

Warrior axe and guardian sword out DPS their 2 handed counterparts. Guardians scepter is far ahead of 2 handed staff for damage. Haven’t checked other classes but not thinking this argument is holding water :/

Lol are you kidding? Axe is weak in that it’s predictable, so the overall DPS from the extremely fluid GS and hammer w. h its CC is at least as much if not more than axe’s. And scepter… No. Just no. Not even close. Maybe if you stand inside of Smite, but otherwise it’s not even near to staff, especially when you consider that staff is AoE.

Umm, yeah, that unpredictable great sword and the never telegraphed hammer. Scepter 1 vs 1 will wreck a staff. But yes, if you want to set up ideal situations for each two handed weapon where it outshines a 1 hander go ahead. But the point of this topic was simply to address damage, was it not? 1 handers are not lacking on these classes as far as I can tell. Maybe thief short bow vs everything else? Or ranger great sword vs longsword? Staff ele? Let one of them chime in.

I’m not saying that 1h weapons are necessarily “lacking” in terms of skill coefficients or utility, I’m saying that they’re lacking in that they necessarily deal anywhere from 5 to 15% less damage than what 2h weapons deal.

Thief short bow is the only 2h weapon that doesn’t deal an inherent amount of more damage than 1h weapons do (not including stuff like torch). If you’ve ever used the weapon, you know that it deals next to no damage, which is partially because only three of its 5 attacks deal damage in the first place, but two of those three do very little and the third has a super obvious cast.

Not sure what you’re talking about when you say “ranger greatsword vs longsword”.

The reason why staff ele is bad (it’s one of my alts) is because all of its skills have either extremely obvious casts and are easily evadable, or they just don’t deal that much damage. It has nothing to do with the fact that it’s a 2h weapon as much as it is that ANet is bad at fixing ele’s staff.

1H weapons " lack 10-15% damage compared to 2H weapons.
But as proven by a lot of people here they deal MORE damage in the majority of situations.
Your point is null and void.

Edit : You just said that GS has a “reliable burst skill” – that made my day. You have to very skillfully set up a PVP encounter to get 100B off ( assuming you’re not referring to the F1 skill) and that takes a lot of effort and is not " reliable" .

You have very, very low standards for what counts as proof. Even most of those people you’re referring to would disagree that that’s what they said anyways.

Also, I wasn’t talking about 100b, I was talking about Arcing Slice. Next time use your critical reading skills and a little bit of logic, please.

As for your other post- Orb and Wave both have almost the same cast time, and Wave’s attack shoots out instantaneously, unlike the predictable Orb. Orb only deals a whopping 2 more base damage than Wave does, and it’s not even AoE. Please go play a guardian for once.

Harper.4173:

Great evidence – a battle between a decent warrior and the world’s worst necromancer.
I like how it takes him a full FOUR ( 4 ) Seconds to dodge out or walk out of the warrior’s F1 longbow fire field at minute 1.

I love how these 1 v 1s are always proof that warrior is OP – especially when the person he’s fighting has absolutely NO idea what they’re doing.

Yes, because the entirety of my argument was hinged upon that video, and your discrediting it has completely blown every piece of my argument to pieces. I must now hide my face away from society in the shadows, while you stand on top of the intellectual pyramid looking down upon hordes of fanatical peasants.

On a more serious note, the warrior did virtually nothing as well. Even if the necro didn’t play well, you’d figure that he’d at least be able to have +3k damage on the warrior at one point during the fight, given that the minions were obviously doing damage. I mean- even in a fight between a complete noob and a pro player, unless the pro is either super tanky or insanely bursty (the warrior here obviously didn’t build to be extremely tanky, and he clearly wasn’t extremely bursty either), you’d figure that you’d at least be able to deal 3k damage to the opponent. Does it really take 8 noobs (assuming no or minimal diminishing marginal returns) to kill one warrior?

Also, since I’m addressing you here, I should address your point about HealSig. Do you know how long it takes for HealSig to outheal thief’s Withdraw, for example? On average, 11.08 seconds maximum. With Endure Pain, 18k base health, heavy armor, Cleansing Ire, and Adrenal Health, you should be able to last at least this long unless you spend the first 3-5 seconds of the fight just standing in place, in which case the thief would still be lucky to kill you anyways. It’s not like warriors have some insane weakness to burst, especially when some of their most fundamental mechanics to their builds hard-counter burst and direct damage in general anyways.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Arganthium.5638:

I think that the nerf is deserved due to the precedent set by other vigor nerfs; it only makes sense to nerf Mesmer’s vigor as well. The same goes for Guardian.

Let’s be objective here guys- the nerf was deserved.

Yeaaah right. Because objectively, squishy mesmers with light armor and dolyaky regenerating heavy armor guardians rely on dodges to survive in exactly the same way.

Mesmers also have 5k more health, defensive mechanisms related to clones, and a variety of other utilities to pull from that guards don’t have. Guards are too much of a “linear” class; they don’t have a large pool of resources (their only class mechanic, honestly, is virtues) to pull from, and of that pool that they do have, there isn’t much they can do with it. On the other hand, mesmers can participate in very effective active defense through various skills, traits, and builds using their clones. The most obvious example of this would be Illusionary Defense, where you keep up three clones as often as possible so that you can reduce the damage done to you by 9%.

There’s no reason to be complaining here.

nicknamenick.2437:

I don’t know much about other classes.. but here’s from warrior view:
Rifle and longbow are both very VERY slow weapons for warriors
Sword and Axe AA does more damage compared to AA GS on warriors

About min-maxing.. it is. allot don’t walk 2x two-handed weapons.. but 1x two-handed and 2x one-handed.. that’s where I can say I get 1 knight and 1 zerker one handed weapon.. because shield brings also an extra toughness..

About skills, ofc your more flexible with 2x one-handed compared to 1 two-handed..
I can go offensive + defensive with Axe+shield
I can go for gap closing + defensive sword + shield or maby sword + warhorn for wvw
I can go for long stun + defensive maxe+shield
condi bunker: sword + shield
Condi semi bunker sword + sword
weird reflect build: mace + sword
and more…

way more combinations to make compared to a single two-handed weapon.

That doesn’t say a two-handed weapon issnt stronger compared to 2x one-handed weapon. but 2x one-handed weapon does have many ways to make your build as 1 solid build.

Rifle and longbow, realistically speaking, are actually pretty fast because they’re ranged weapons, so you don’t have to constantly be in a short range of your opponent in order to hit him/her. Their cast times aren’t too bad either, objectively speaking.

GS can do just as much damage if not more than sword and axe because it’s a very swift weapon with a reliable burst skill and gives you lots of mobility. I used this weapon when I was running a warrior and I did perfectly fine with it.

Stats from a weaponset only apply when that weaponset is equipped- i.e. if you get +100 power from your sword, when you swap to GS you don’t retain that +100 power. You can also just as easily take knight’s gear (which is absolutely terrible btw) with your amulets/armor and be just as efficient, if not more efficient.

Generally speaking, you’re not going to be just swapping weapons all the time between thirty different weapon sets, even in WvW. However, even if you are, that doesn’t put GS to a disadvantage, for instance; it just makes it weaker in some circumstances, but in the situations where it’s strong, it’s even stronger because of that +10% damage.

Again, taking two 1h weapons tends to be more inconsistent between the weaponsets (even if only slightly) than taking a single 2h weapon is.

These arguments are all extremely suspect and don’t seem to be addressing the issue here…

Mightymealworm.8409:

Arganthium.5638:

Mightymealworm.8409:

Warrior axe and guardian sword out DPS their 2 handed counterparts. Guardians scepter is far ahead of 2 handed staff for damage. Haven’t checked other classes but not thinking this argument is holding water :/

Lol are you kidding? Axe is weak in that it’s predictable, so the overall DPS from the extremely fluid GS and hammer w. h its CC is at least as much if not more than axe’s. And scepter… No. Just no. Not even close. Maybe if you stand inside of Smite, but otherwise it’s not even near to staff, especially when you consider that staff is AoE.

Umm, yeah, that unpredictable great sword and the never telegraphed hammer. Scepter 1 vs 1 will wreck a staff. But yes, if you want to set up ideal situations for each two handed weapon where it outshines a 1 hander go ahead. But the point of this topic was simply to address damage, was it not? 1 handers are not lacking on these classes as far as I can tell. Maybe thief short bow vs everything else? Or ranger great sword vs longsword? Staff ele? Let one of them chime in.

I’m not saying that 1h weapons are necessarily “lacking” in terms of skill coefficients or utility, I’m saying that they’re lacking in that they necessarily deal anywhere from 5 to 15% less damage than what 2h weapons deal.

Thief short bow is the only 2h weapon that doesn’t deal an inherent amount of more damage than 1h weapons do (not including stuff like torch). If you’ve ever used the weapon, you know that it deals next to no damage, which is partially because only three of its 5 attacks deal damage in the first place, but two of those three do very little and the third has a super obvious cast.

Not sure what you’re talking about when you say “ranger greatsword vs longsword”.

The reason why staff ele is bad (it’s one of my alts) is because all of its skills have either extremely obvious casts and are easily evadable, or they just don’t deal that much damage. It has nothing to do with the fact that it’s a 2h weapon as much as it is that ANet is bad at fixing ele’s staff.

Mightymealworm.8409:

Warrior axe and guardian sword out DPS their 2 handed counterparts. Guardians scepter is far ahead of 2 handed staff for damage. Haven’t checked other classes but not thinking this argument is holding water :/

Lol are you kidding? Axe is weak in that it’s predictable, so the overall DPS from the extremely fluid GS and hammer with its CC is at least as much if not more than axe’s. And scepter… No. Just no. Not even close. Maybe if you stand inside of Smite, but otherwise it’s not even near to staff, especially when you consider that staff is AoE.

nicknamenick.2437:

Manuhell.2759:

Mightymealworm.8409:

Kits were balanced for 2 sigils. All weapons now get 2 sigils. Change kits to balance for no sigils? Confused.

Kits got rebalanced to account for two sigils (even if you were to use just one, as it didn’t depend on the weapon used).
Two handed weapons are getting a second sigil.
Two handed weapons should be rebalanced to account for the second sigil, as they weren’t balanced for a second sigil to begin with, exactly as kits weren’t supposedly balanced for using one or two sigils.
If that doesn’t happen, revert the changes to kits for consistency, as if two handed weapons are fine with the added sigil, kits should have been fine too (especially since we already pay for them with a weakened main weapon).

Seems simple enough. Either 2-handed get nerfed due to additional sigils as it already happened in the past with kits, or no 2-handed get nerfed and the kit nerfs due to sigils get reverted.

Can you speedup the skills also on two-handed weapons?

Because most two-handed weapon are much slower compared to one-hand.

2x one-hand weapons gives you the option to min-max stats
2x one-hand weapons gives you the option to choice different skills
like sword + shield you can go offensive and defensive and shield also gives another 60 toughness..

With two handed weapons you cant min-max stats.. also you cant change anything to get a different skill..

I’m primarily talking about sPvP… However, there are a few things wrong with your statements anyways. First of all, 2H weapons aren’t much if any slower than 1H weapons. Some 2H weapons are slow, like hammer, but they deal more damage than other weapons do to make up for it. Rifle and both types of bows all shoot fast or at least average no matter what prof you’re on. GS tends to be just as fast as other weapons, an in the case of Mesmer’s GS, an argument could be made that it in fact goes faster. There are also very many slow 1H weapons, like thief pistol, guardian or Mesmer scepter, and mace. However, if you’d like to provide some hard empirical evidence, I’m all ears.

As for min-maxing stats, you really don’t need two weapons to do so. Power, for example, remains better than most other stats for the first few hundred points of it; it’s not like you need to take 5 points of power for every point of precision you take. It’s more like- once you’ve reached a certain number of points of power, you should take one point of precision for each point of power you take. You can also start making a build by choosing the weapons first and min maxing around that. In truth, it really doesn’t make a difference.

Finally, 1h weapons can actually be disadvantageous due to the fact that they require an entirely different OH. It means that they get less consistency. For example, warrior’s hammer is much more reliable than ele’s S/F because hammer is much more consistent with itself than scepter is with focus. Either way, you don’t see players taking 1H weapons over 2H so that they can mix abilities- they get one over the other because it fits the purposes of their builds better. Many guardians run two 2H weapons. Many warriors run two 2H weapons. Many engis use their only weapon slot to run a 2H weapon. Mesmers and ele both will often use 2H weapons as their only weapons as well. 2H weapons have the benefit of being unique and consistent, and are often extremely powerful in and of themselves anyways. Also, typically speaking, once you commit to a certain combination of MH+OH, you’re usually stuck to that weaponset anyways , so it’s not like you’re more flexible.

I think that the nerf is deserved due to the precedent set by other vigor nerfs; it only makes sense to nerf Mesmer’s vigor as well. The same goes for Guardian.

Let’s be objective here guys- the nerf was deserved.

Fire and Air share a CD. That might change after the next patch though.

Harper.4173:

How about no?

Two handed weapons are fine – and your attitude is wrong and malicious.
If you feel the situation is unfair to your class than maybe make a post asking for kit damage for engineer to be increased – but don’t start going off asking for nerfs for everybody because you feel like it.

Protip: The nerf you ask for will never happen.

This isn’t just an issue with consistency as compared to kits- this is an issue, primarily, of 2h weapons being inherently better than 1h weapons, across all classes. There is simply no reason why 2h weapons should do anywhere from 5 to 15% more damage than 1h weapons, and it absolutely boggles my mind that people like you think otherwise.

Though I guess the fact that you run a warrior probably accounts for a lot of it, since so many warriors rely on 2h weapons…

Edit: also, I’ll add for you people- thief will be the class that is nerfed the hardest if this change goes through. Every other class will have at least one 2h weapon that is inherently better than 1h weapons in terms of weapon coefficient, but thief has literally the only 2h weapon that does the same amount of damage that 1h weapons get. Everybody else will essentially get a damage buff while we get much, much less.

Yeah, I thought their joke about the 8% nerf to HealSig was absolutely hilarious. Made my day.

Now though I want to hear how much they’re actually going to nerf HealSig, since they only seemed to joke about the matter yesterday.

Rednik.3809:

And here is another blatant lies. We love to “forgot” some “redundant” facts, aren’t we?

Ele- don’t even start that crap with me. Ether Renewal is an absolutely godawful source of condi removal, if only because of the fact that it is so easily interruptible. If you can’t get this through your skull, go play an ele and then tell me that it’s one of the “best condi removals in the game”. That’s complete garbage.

Engineer- that “large” part isn’t really that large, and relies on your allies being at least somewhat close to you, which creates an incentive problem: either you wait for your allies to be in range so that you can use HealTurret for maximum effect but you thereby weaken your own healing, or you use it as soon as possible (which is the HPS that I accounted for in my calculations) and risk being unable to benefit your allies. Engis also don’t have heavy armor, and warriors have 3k more health than they do.

Guardian- if you can’t wait until Shelter is finished to burst an opponent, you shouldn’t play a burst build.

Necro- necros don’t have that many ways to get rid of condis already- both of their other two main sources are weapon skills, one of which has a pretty obvious cast. Either way, the heal is still on a 25s CD, which isn’t exactly super reliable, and again it creates an incentive problem: wait to use your heal for when you have a lot of condis, thereby sacrificing your healing potential, or use it as soon as possible, thereby sacrificing some of your condi clearing potential.

Ranger- not many other condi clears in the first place outside of Empathic Bond (which is getting nerfed/debugged anyways). Rangers also have very, very few ways to actually utilize the water field by themselves, and most attempts to utilize it too much will often result in lost damage potential (I’m speaking as a thief who’s spammed water fields with Cluster Bomb before). The condi cleanse is still nowhere as reliable as Cleansing Ire, which, combined with LB, allows you to remove up to 4 conditions in a 10s period of time very easily, and with Berserker Stance, warriors already become immune to condis anyways. Either way there aren’t enough conditions in fights to make Healing Spring completely OP. That’s why mesmers are still playable. Anyways, you still have 3k more health and heavy armor over rangers.

Thief- you can easily get gap creators with weapons like Sword and Greatsword. The condition clear only applies to very specific condis, and honestly neither of those are enough to justify not getting 392/360 HPS with no cast time whatsoever.

Warrior- so we’ve finally gotten here… Do you still really believe that Healing Signet is weaker than or on average with other healing skills in the game? It has no cast time (meaning no lost damage potential, no lost defensive potential, and no lost healing potential), is less counterable by poison (you have to maintain constant poison uptime in order to get the full reduction from poison), and, when combined with warrior’s other amazing defensive options, is downright OP. Cleansing Ire and Zerker Stance get rid of most of the problems with conditions that warriors ever have. Meanwhile, warrior still has the highest base health in the game except for necro, which doesn’t have the 14% damage reduction from heavy armor anyways. It’s funny- yesterday I was watching a battle between a warrior and an MM necro where the warrior didn’t fall beneath 20k health even once. The fact that it is so impossibly difficult to take down a warrior should be a testament to how overpowered warrior is right now. As for side effects, the fact that Healing Signet is in and of itself a passive effect is a side effect that no other usable skill in the game has. The fact that you don’t have to cast it or, for that matter, even worry about it is such a huge benefit, and you don’t even take that into account.

By the way… Signet of Malice and Signet of Restoration are both signets that have “no side effect” and heal for 200-300 health less than HealSig does, and both of those require you to hit somebody with a skill in order to activate. Furthermore, of the two classes that own those two signets (Thief and ele respectively), they both have 8k less health than warrior, and get 7/14% more damage dealt to them, respectively.

Harrier.9380:

I think 30 HPS is a good starting point. I wouldn’t mind slightly bigger nerf to heal sig, but if stuff like Adrenal Health or Cleansing Ire is also shaved off a bit, it might be actually decently balanced.

I hope this change will be PvP-only though. Healing Signet is not really a problem in PvE and WvW.

@OP – write up comparing HPS between diffirent classes’ heals is completely useless, as all classes have their unique tools. Shelter is nearly impossible to interrupt and blocks all damage during the cast, which is often more important than heal itself. Withdraw on Thief is very similar with it’s evade, but also creates distance. Ranger can leap through Healing Spring and use Drake to blast it to double the heal. Also removes conditions. Not to mention elite spirit which pretty much gives whole party Healing Signet+Adrenal Health, clears condis and can res. Apples and oranges.

I’d agree that it’s a good starting point (as I stated in the OP), but ANet has a history of “revolution over evolution” when it comes to balance patches, and nothing they’ve said has indicated that HealSig will be getting any further buffs in the future.

And you’re assuming that it’s impossible to compare between classes- it’s not, and I’ve taken all factors into consideration. For instance, is a 2s block really worth sacrificing 200 HPS? Probably not, when you take into consideration that you can’t deal damage and you still suffer from condis during that time. The same goes for thief, and not only is blasting water finishers extremely difficult for Rangers, but doing so hardly raises the amount of healing you get anyways. I also mentioned that Cleansing Ire and Adrenal Health (CI especially though) are so good that they make up for a lack of additional effects anyways, however.

In the past I’ve stated that HealSig should be reduced by small amounts- 30 to 50 HPS, for example, in a short period of time until it is balanced. What I did not state was that we should just nerf HealSig by 30 HPS and leave it be because apparently 30 HPS “is a lot more than we think it is”.

Let’s look at what are generally considered the best healing skills for each class (by HPS assuming that you use your heal whenever it comes off CD and not including cast time) in the game. If two skills are used equally often or both very often, I chose the heal that healed for more:

Elementalist- 333.33 HPS via Ether Renewal (in actuality this is much lower because of cast time, and the cast time removes a great deal of damage application and defense that the ele could be using instead. It’s also very, very easy to interrupt)

Engineer- 2520+390+2520+650 = 405.33 via Healing Turret (again, though, much lower due to cast times and damage output/defense lost. I was using this in sPvP today and I was horrified by how long the entire combination took for the amount it healed me. I’d much rather take a consistent heal that heals for 100 HPS less than Healing Turret)

Guardian- 151.83 HPS from Shelter (lol)

Mesmer- 278 HPS + 32 HPS per clone via Ether Feast

Necromancer- 209.6 HPS + 28.96 HPS for each condition you have on you on average when you heal via Consume Conditions

Ranger- 242 HPS assuming that you get the maximum amount of regeneration (3s on activation and then another 3s per 2 seconds) via Healing Spring

Thief- 289.6 HPS via Withdraw

Warrior- 327.33 HPS with HealSurge if you have 3 bars of adrenaline each time you use it and 392 HPS with HealSig

The 8% nerf translates the 392 HPS to only a 31-32 HPS reduction. That’s still 360-361 HPS. That’s absolutely massive compared to most other heals, and, unlike other heals, it doesn’t have a cast time. Granted, it doesn’t come with some of the side effects of other heals, but most of those are already covered when you take into account things like Cleansing Ire that most warriors take already.

Warriors already have a 7-14% damage reduction over medium and light armor classes, respectively, and have the highest base health (8k more than thief, guardian, or ele) in the game. The logical conclusion would be that the warrior would have an average or even slightly below average heal to make up for these defensive benefits, but right now not only does HealSig heal for more than every other skill in the game (with the 8% reduction it heals for slightly less than HealTurret and slightly less than Ether Feast w/ three clones out) without facing the negative effects of a cast time.

I highly suggest that you at least take down HealSig to the level of thief’s Withdraw, and even further since you don’t seem to be planning on reducing it any more after this patch. The defensive benefits granted to warrior just by base stats is already enormous, and when combined with Cleansing Ire, Adrenal Health, and HealSig, it far exceeds every other class in the game. The logical conclusion is thus to nerf HealSig significantly so that the defensive options of warrior are balanced with those of other classes, given that their offensive options are no worse than those of any other class.

ronpierce.2760:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKjNwLgua8o

There, enjoy Cynz.

You didn’t fall under 20k health once.

Think the MM build/play could’ve been better though.

Mightymealworm.8409:

Yay more direct damage nerfs! All hail the condi bunkers!

Don’t be so quick to assume. I absolutely do not support the damage nerf that’s being done across all classes, and I am no supporter of condition damage. I’m just looking to balance the game.

I should add that 2H weapons have many different damage buffs. For example, LB has a fairly small buff, whereas GS has a 10% buff, and Rifle has a 15% buff (which I did not in fact realize before I wrote this post, and so engis might not be nerfed as badly as I originally said, if at all). I also found out that thief’s SB actually has a 952.5 average weapon coefficient, meaning that not only will thief not get even a small buff to a single weapon’s damage, but will in fact be overall nerfed by this change.

Okay, okay, the first thing that needs to be said is that the change to 2H weapons should be happening. As for the independent CDs… Though I disagree with him more often than not, Helseth’s comments about this are spot-on, and there really isn’t much more to say about the subject.

There is, however, a problem with giving 2H weapons two sigil slots. Given that this wasn’t addressed in the video, I’m assuming that the devs haven’t considered that 2H weapons already do ~5-10% more damage on average than 1H weapons due to weapon coefficients. The actual value is a bit more like 9.97%, but that’s obviously extremely close to 10%. Right now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It means that basically all 2H weapons have an automatic two Force Sigils attached to them, but in exchange for that they get less flexibility since they can only take one other sigil. The devs, however, mentioned nothing about nerfing this value, which could have fairly severe repercussions against a few specific classes/builds and could also create very strong buffs to other classes/builds.

The two classes I can see getting nerfed the most by this change are thief and engineer. The thief only has one 2H weapon, and it’s a ranged weapon that doesn’t do enough damage or is used enough in combat to make the buff useful. On the other hand, most engi builds nowadays run some kind of P/X build, since Rifle is a fairly specialized weapon. The result is that they either have to revert to using Rifle where the weapon is non-optimal, or they simply have to take the nerf/buff to other classes as it comes and face weapons that are just as flexible as their own as far as sigils go but have an automatic 10% more damage attached to them.

On the flip side, all builds that rely heavily one having one or two 2H weapons is going to be much stronger. Hambow is going to become stronger (though bow won’t experience the buff quite as much). Any guardian build running a GS/Hammer and Staff (or whatever combination) is going to get a massive buff. Certain mesmer builds are going to become much more powerful. Staff eles are going to get an extremely large buff (especially with the other sigil changes). While this is not inherently going to be a problem, per se, it could help start a very severe problem later on which I and likely many others would like to prevent now.

TL;DR average weapon coefficients give 2H weapons a 10% damage buff over most 1H weapons, but in exchange for only being able to have one sigil. The buff that the devs are proposing would give all 2H weapons a significant buff over 1H weapons by getting rid of 2H weapons’ main weakness. I thus suggest that the high and low weapon coefficients are decreased by ~10% on every 2H weapon in the game to give all weapons an equal footing in terms of base statistical superiority.

Wanze.8410:

You will still be best at running away.

Wow, looks like thief has a serious advantage there.

I’d just like to point out something about 2H weapons getting dual sigils. That’s all well and good, but 2h weapons have higher weapon coefficients than regular 1h weapons. For example, Greatsword has an average weapon coefficient of 1047.5 while Sword has an average weapon coefficient of 952.5. That means that GS will do an average of 9.97% more damage than Sword will do. That’s the equivalent of two Force sigils already. By being able to place two sigils on a 2h weapon, we’re essentially giving 2h weapons a base 10% more damage than regular 1h weapons with no drawbacks. For a lot of classes/builds, this won’t have much effect, but it’ll have some pretty massive repercussions on thieves (whose only 2h weapon is SB, which isn’t usually used for damage anyways) and engis (who tend not to use Rifle anyways). Given that ANet didn’t address this, I’m deeply concerned that they don’t understand the consequences of their decisions.

Proven.2854:

They said that the 8% puts it near Healing Surge’s amount, that they’re still playing around with the numbers, and that they’re redesigning it a little to give the active some kind of enticing effect.

Don’t just post a quip without context.

It’s really not close at all. The 8% nerf would turn the current 392 HPS into 361 HPS, while Healing Surge heals for ~327.3 HPS on average assuming that you’re always healing w/ three bars of adrenaline, and that’s not taking into account cast times, or, for that matter, the fact that you’re not always going to have 3 bars of adrenaline when you HealSurge. Even with the 8% nerf, HealSig is going to heal for more than all skills in the game save Med Kit (which has its own very obvious problems) and Healing Turret (which I was running around with on my engi today- it was nowhere near as effective as HealSig was, probably partially because of casts).

Lol. The class that the devs talked about the least was thief, which got a grand total of three, maybe four sentences for itself. Now we know we’re receiving a nerf that, granted, I and many others are okay with, but we are completely in the dark as to whether or not the thief is going to become a more viable class.

Disappointing.

I like how the devs spent the absolute least amount of time discussing the thief.

I’m okay with the nerf to Choking Gas, but I think there are a lot of buffs thieves could use that would be far more useful than this nerf is.

As for PW… Not sure what to think about this yet. Unless there’s some kind of drastic change though, I don’t think splitting this skill up will help anything.

That’s no more helpful than saying that Engineers should be able to have a kit that contains an endless supply of unloaded pistols, and each of the 5 weapon skills revolves around some way to throw your pistols at your opponent.

DaliIndica.9041:

I think 1v1 you will lose if you just spam attacks, and it does require skill, lots of it if you want to go that far (combat is a lot more than pure numbers, mind games are a part of it). But once any one else joins in, it just becomes a cluster of bin bags riddled with cat kitten o real way to gauge whats going on.

Depends. If the numbers are equal on both sides, then the side being spammed against (assuming they’re competent) should be able to take down the spamming players fairly quickly and easily. On the other hand, in a 1v2, that might not be so easy to achieve (though it is possible if you have a good build, you’re a good player, you have some kind of significant advantage, like the heights at Skyhammer- which, by the way, allowed me to take on a 1v3 today with my mesmer- and your opponents are at least somewhat bad). That is, however, a circumstantial thing, and on average you should still win your games.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Elixer Gun is pretty bad. To get the same amount of HoT that a spirit ranger can get is way too much of an investment. Not to mention that the max HoT is within a very limited area. The 3 skill on EG is clunky and nowhere near as effective as a Guardian condi pull. Good luck on hitting anything with the 2 skill. The 4 skill is decent under certain situations, but its nothing compared to rocket boots.

I don’t doubt that it’s worse than Spirit Ranger can get, but it’s not like the main healing of this build comes from Super Elixir or anything anyways. I’m pretty sure that, when combined with Healing Turret, it’s more powerful than Spirit Ranger’s healing is. The 3 and 2 skills are admittedly fairly clunky and could use a buff, but they’re not bad enough to render the weaponset pointless. Given that the 4 skill is just a weapon skill on a kit, I’d say that it’s pretty good for what it is.

Plus, given that kits have a 1s CD on unequipping/equipping, you can pretty easily swap between EG and your regular weapon set, which offsets how bad the 2 and 3 skills on EG can be because you’re essentially getting 8 useful weapon skills.

This is a difficult question to answer, primarily because we have to define what counts as an actual build. If we’re talking about usable builds (i.e. not using a single Sword with no offhand, using a D/F ele, etc), the answer is easier to find, but if we’re talking about all builds up to those that are just barely usable and right on the verge of being unusable, then the answer more than likely changes.

As a result, I’ll choose two builds, one for each category.

Viable (but not necessarily meta) builds:
1. S/D thief (in current state)
2. S/F + X Lockdown/Reflection mesmer
3. S/F burst ele

Barely usable (not unusable, however) builds:
1. Area Denial Staff ele
2. An Elixir Gun-oriented Engi build
3. Any non-Spirit Ranger

Of these six, I would probably rate them overall as following:

1. Area denial ele
2. Elixir gun engi
3. S/D thief
4. S/F+X Lockdown/Reflection mesmer
5. Any non-Spirit Ranger
6. S/F burst ele

I’m not going to lie- I’m probably biased towards a few of these builds on these lists, specifically 1, 3, and 4 on the final list. My reasoning for each of these is:

1. Area Denial Ele- this is an invention of my own that takes the most popular sPvP staff burst ele and turns it more into a high-damage one that orients mostly around controlling the opponent, maximizing your mobility and minimizing his/hers. This build is overall somewhat mediocre due to the current state of the ele, but in my experience this build basically outshoots every other build in the game by miles as far as skill ceiling goes. The amount of variety in this build with skill usage is absolutely insane. Burning Retreat, Frozen Ground, Gust, Static Field, and Unsteady Ground all match up fairly consistently with this build’s goals, and the plethora of AoE from other skills also needs to be used strategically to accomplish your goal as well. It’s really an incredible build/playstyle, but the overall weakness of the ele in general makes it nearly unusable for sPvP.

2. Elixir Gun is an extremely flexible weapon that really fulfills that “attrition” playstyle that necros were always supposed to have. I feel that this weapon is actually extremely underused for how good it is, but unfortunately the near-absolute dominance of Grenade/Bomb builds makes taking Elixir Gun inefficient compared to your other options.

3. S/D thief… What can I say? This build aims for two things: flexibility and mobility. It’s a build where you can pick from a wide variety of different play styles, ranging from Jumper’s dual S/D, to my S/D+SB boonsteal invention, to Lady Nag Nag’s 10/30/0/30/0 “blow your opponent’s brains out” build. During fights, it’s important to keep your options open, so that you can handle all kinds of situations. With IS/IR and FS, you practice a guerilla-like style that creates a unique blend of ranged and melee play.

4. Mesmers have an extremely flexible array of builds (although once a build is selected, the play style tends to be fairly rigid), but I chose S/F Lockdown/Reflect for two reasons (if you don’t include the fact that I recently built what I believe to be a highly competitive S/F build). First of all, Focus is an extremely flexible weapon, and makes S/F a much more flexible build than most other mesmer builds. With the reflection from Curtain and iWarden, the pseudo-bunker created by iWarden’s ability, swiftness, cripple, and pull available to just two weapon skills, this weapon is very, very flexible, and requires a lot more thought to play as opposed to the linear thinking coming from, say, OH sword. Secondly, Focus is less of a blind-shot interrupt, and it tends to be more beneficial to use this just as your opponent is using a skill; using Void early doesn’t reduce the CD at all. Those two things, IMO, combined with the very nature of Lockdown, gives the build a very high skill ceiling, as I see it.

5. All I’ve gotta say is that if you’re dedicated to running a non-Spirit ranger, you’re either really stupid, or you’ve got some serious guts.

6. S/F only because ele is so bad. I’m not a big fan of calling burst builds (not to be confused with high-damage builds, which focus on doing more overall damage on average given your lifetime but less damage than you’ll do during a burst) “high-skill”, because once you know the combos, it becomes a situation of just repeating them and then spamming/facerolling/etc. However, ele is in a bad state, and I do find the flexibility that S/F has makes it much more of a high-skill build to use well.

Ferik.3127:

2) Evade condition thief
Trust me, it’s easier even than MM Necro, which you at least need to press keyboard 6-10 for ONCE. With Evade condition you only need to :

22223333322222 -swap- 333332222 -repeat-

So you spam an attack that scales with power over and over again on a condi build and then you spam a skill that has a super obvious cast, terribad damage, and a virtually nonexistent evade.

Just because you can spam a single skill doesn’t make a build good or unskillful. I can spam auto with any build in the game, but that doesn’t mean I’ll become a pro player. Similarly, condi thieves suck anyways, and if you’re just going to spam 2 and 3, then you’re simply going to die.

Saturn.6591:

Arganthium.5638:

And Chaos: are SoHydromancy bugged? I tried them out on both Staff and GS, but for some reason it didn’t always activate during combat. Any ideas?

I’m not Chaos, but I can still tell you this was probably because you’re still using the fire sigil on your other weaponset. They share their cooldown. That means if your fire-sigil triggered in the last 5 seconds, nothing will happen if you swap to the weapon with the hydromancy-sigil, since it is on cooldown as well.

Mmm. Thanks for the information, didn’t know that.

UPDATE

Today I’ve been trying out this build, but I’ve been using greatsword instead of Staff. The new build thus looks like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsdRlwziqnVTlGZ9IipHBnvJcnUAdLXJF82FC-TsAg0CtIQShkDJDSSksINKYZx0CA

While I still have to try this out more, the following was my logic for choosing GS:

• GS deals damage more quickly and more reliably, and without projectiles. Also, it is a power-based weapon, which works better with my build overall.
• Illusionary Wave is more reliable as an interrupt, and I find the utility from being able to push away an opponent absolutely critical. It also has a slightly shorter CD.
• The boon removal helps me fight against boon-heavy builds.
• Phantasmal Berserker is extremely strong, and the cripple is extremely useful against fleeing opponents.

That’s not to say that GS is necessarily better, but I’ve done terrifically with it so far.

And Chaos: are SoHydromancy bugged? I tried them out on both Staff and GS, but for some reason it didn’t always activate during combat. Any ideas?

Chaos Archangel.5071:

-snip-

Thanks Chaos!

I’m certainly considering participating in next month’s BotM- I feel that this is a pretty solid build overall (though, admittedly, today I wasn’t playing very well; then again, this wasn’t a mesmer-specific issue for me, either). As for the focus vs sword debate- I’m certainly beginning to believe increasingly more that focus could very well be better than Sword. Of course, there’s still a long way to go before there’s any fairly conclusive evidence that shows that focus works better than sword, but I’m certain that they are at least approximately equal in strength.

As for SoHydromancy… When I was reviewing Lockdown builds (before I started playing one), I found skcamow’s “Chillruption” build extremely interesting, and almost decided to play it. However, the primary objections I had to the build were that the bonuses and duration of chills were simply not enough to justify centering a build around it. In retrospect, that’s essentially what Lockdown builds are, however- short CC durations that really pack their punch when you consider them in the context of Chaotic/Bountiful Interruption and other such traits. Still, it’s difficult for me to justify a dual specialization (both CC and Chill) when I’m already trying to do high damage at the same time.

There’s also another problem, in my eyes. Sigil of Hydromancy creates an incentive problem; if I don’t swap weapons often enough to utilize the Sigil, then I’m practically wasting a Sigil slot that I could be using for much, much more useful things. On the other hand, however, if I try to utilize the Sigil too much, then I might end up swapping to a weaponset that’s inferior for a given situation, or, going to the extreme- if I tried to weapon swap every 10 seconds, then I’d have to interrupt animations and thereby reduce the total amount of damage I do anyways as well. If you’re familiar with any of my work on thieves, you might know about how this is my primary objection to any non-dual S/D build that runs Quick Pockets (3 initiative on weapon swap). It’s essentially my job to try and find the middle ground between those two extremes, but then the question becomes one of whether or not that middle ground’s benefit justifies taking up a sigil slot. In my experience, it tends not to if the risk-reward ratio is already very high. However, for this sigil, that may not be the case.

Anyways, I tend to try to get rid of as many of these conflicting interests as possible in a build so that a player can focus more on combat than on other factors, and to maximize the utility of all of his/her traits/stats/etc. However, neither of these reasons alone are enough to “refute” SoHydromancy, so I’ll have to play around with the Sigil in some games to see how it goes since it does have a logical cohesion with the build. Thanks for the suggestions, though.

As for Concentration… It’s not really a disengage as much as it simply is a stomp ensurer and stunbreaker. In both of those regards, the utility is excellent- the 4s total stability tends to be more than enough to stomp a player without getting interrupted (and usually you only need to activate it once to get off a stomp anyways), and the fact that it’s an AoE stability only makes it better. As a stunbreaker, it can be practically insta-casted twice in a fight, and with its lower CD than Blink or Decoy, thus serves as a better stun breaker in spite of the 3s cast time (which I usually prepare before a fight- it’s not the end of the world if it has to be used during a fight, though). It obviously doesn’t give me the same disengaging ability that Decoy or Blink gives, but neither of those are stomp ensurers either, and as stunbreakers they are lackluster by themselves. However, I can disengage using focus, coincidentally. The reflect on both Curtain and Warden can create miniature “safe havens” for me against a wide variety of opponents, and with regeneration/protection, Warden can create a temporary bunker for me to hide in. The Swiftness/cripple is also extremely useful, and being able to pull an opponent back usually does the trick if I’m trying to escape. Overall the disengaging ability isn’t fantastic, but it does work very well with the build.

StickerHappy.8052:

I suggest replacing the runes with cc runes or centaur or others. The only thing that affects that 4% is the sword 2 and the shatter, and the aa’s of course.

CC runes will help give cohesiveness with the build.

There’s no real point to putting in CC runes, and, to be completely honest, Centaur runes are pretty terrible to begin with. This build is not a swiftness-based build; it simply happens to be a side product of using focus. There’s no real point for me to be keeping up perma swiftness since my Swiftness from focus usually lasts ~15s to begin with, which IMO is more than sufficient for when I’m out of combat. In combat, Swiftness on heal and increased swiftness duration are completely pointless, and I’d even venture to say that the bleed duration isn’t very helpful either. As for the power buffs- well, those are, of course, the same buffs you get from Ogre Runes anyways.

As for CC runes, my first objection to them is that they don’t help much with keeping your opponent “locked down” anyways- a fifth of a second of additional CC, for instance, really isn’t enough to justify taking some kind of damage nerf or something. My second objection is that the longer my opponents are CC’d, Chaotic Interruption will do increasingly less. It’s better to simply interrupt, and then use the immobilize as a sort of de facto CC. Finally, if nothing else, I don’t even know that there are any runesets (at least for sPvP) that affect pulls anyways.

While I see what you’re trying to say with the power/4% damage buffs, most of my damage comes from the autos/BF anyways. For example, 2 of my 5 Sword skills are used to keep an opponent in my range while I auto attack and BF him. Also, the damage buff does apply to Chaos Storm, which is an AoE to boot.

ahuba.6430:

Arganthium.5638:

The heck is an evade condition thief?

deadly blossom spam i guess

Ah yes the old OP LDBlossom build. o.O

The heck is an evade condition thief?

Qaelyn.7612:

Arganthium, your PM box is full.

Fixed. thanks for telling me.

*UPDATE*

Arcane Thievery- changed to Portal. Not much else to to say about that.

I’ll try to get some raw footage of gameplay soon.

EDIT: I will mention, though- just came back from two tPvP matches, won them both with the build, so I feel pretty good about it at the moment.

tattoohead.3217:

HA that’s just what THFs needed… Fear lol.

Yeah, nothing worse than a 2s cast that’s our only real CC (aside from the rather lackluster Basi Venom) that involves holding you hands above your head like you’re trying to hold up Simba and sing “The Circle of Life” before a large dark pulse moves out in a radius with a fear that doesn’t match the wiki description and can be stunbroken fairly easily since we have so few CCs.

Look, I agree that Feline Grace should be nerfed, at least a little bit. I might even agree to a LS nerf, as long as other weapon skills are buffed (such as reverting or changing the boonsteal nerf on that skill- it’s caused many extremely powerful builds that existed before the LS patch in early 2013 to come back into prominence and become absolutely monstrous). Heck, Jumper stated most of the changes that needed to be made, and while I don’t agree with all of them, I almost completely agree with all of the sword changes, or at least their intentions.

That being said, you really need to L2P. Thief is by far my most-used class, and within the class, S/D was the weaponset that really "raised me into maturity" as a thief (not to claim that I’m some kind of amazing player, per se). I would be willing to bet that there are few other thieves out there that have displayed the same kind of absolute and undying worship devotion to the weapon set as I have, so that should at least give my following advice some merit. Anyways: thieves have multiple casting times, aftercasts, and "vulnerable spots" in their cast times that make hitting sword thieves possible. For example, at the end of Flanking Strike, a thief is essentially rooted in place for a short period of time, and is vulnerable. During the sword auto attack, each of the autos has a rather large after cast, which makes it possible to hit them if they don’t combine the aftercast with an evade (which is essentially Jumper’s "patent"). During Infi Strike, it is again possible to hit a thief quite easily due to the overall casting time and aftercast of the skill, unless, again, a thief is able to pull off combining an evade with the aftercast of the skill (which is admittedly also an extremely difficult maneuver to pull off). Larcenous Strike is the same as the previous two skills: you have to evade during the cast in order to reduce the aftercast. All of these maneuvers require a load of experience in order to master, and, quite frankly, it’s extremely difficult to even grasp a small understanding of them. Using them in play is near impossible.

Understanding that, you can probably beat ~95% of all S/D thieves extremely easily. There are a few resilient ones that have played the weaponset for months and continue to play it, and have thus gained a lot of experience with the weaponset, but, to be completely honest, I don’t think that anybody who picked up a thief and started playing S/D from scratch would live very long. It’s become an extremely dissatisfying weaponset to use, and is honestly pointless when you take into account the skill required to play this weaponset as opposed to playing other classes.

Even I am personally beginning to find myself getting sucked into my mesmer (with my newly "patented" 0/20/30/20/0 S/F+St Lockdown build, which oddly enough does a lot of damage from Ogre Runes and Zerker amulet, and while not as effective as most other LD builds, is fun as kitten to play) because of how much easier it is to play a _Lockdown_ mesmer (the type of mesmer that is typically viewed as being the most challenging), and to make things worse, a build that isn’t even meta- I made it up myself, completely from scratch, in about 1/20 of the time it took me to create and hone my other "patented" build on my thief (10/0/0/30/30 S/D + SB). The truth of the matter is that thieves don’t have as many resources to draw from as other classes do, so the real art of playing thief comes from utilizing what you do have to the fullest extent of your ability. Unfortunately, most thieves can’t do that, so most of your fights will be relatively simple with the aforementioned advice against S/D. The story I’ve been passing around recently is that the last time I played against an S/D thief (using the most "common" S/D build, 10/30/0/30/0), all I had to do was auto attack at the correct time and I won my fights.

EDIT: as for perma stealth, it no longer exists.

fugazi.5139:

lol do it.
its funny to say the least.

Of course I didn’t watch the entire vid… But… Just… Wow. I certainly wouldn’t have called the EU players bad, but to say that they were phenomenal or even great would be something of a lie.

… I don’t even know what to say, that was even more of a blowout than I had originally thought it was from what I had heard.

hihey.1075:

What I am asking is to make the Steal ability go in kitten cooldown (or no cooldown at all) if you do not have an enemy targeted.

Sorry, my critical reading skills seem to be lacking. -_-

To be honest, I never even watched it. I knew it was going to be absolutely horrid and, judging by peoples’ reactions, it was.

That being said, I guess I should watch it, now that I remember...

To define the argument from fallacy (or what we have affectionately been calling the fallacy fallacy) from Wikipedia...

Argument from fallacy is the formal fallacy of analyzing an argument and inferring that, since it contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false.¹ It is also called argument to logic (argumentum ad logicam), fallacy fallacy,² fallacist’s fallacy,³ and bad reasons fallacy.⁴
Fallacious arguments can arrive at true conclusions, so this is an informal fallacy of relevance.⁵

And

It has the general argument form:
If P, then Q.
P is a fallacious argument.
Therefore, Q is false.⁶
Thus, it is a special case of denying the antecedent where the antecedent, rather than being a proposition that is false, is an entire argument that is fallacious. A fallacious argument, just as with a false antecedent, can still have a consequent that happens to be true. The fallacy is in concluding the consequent of a fallacious argument has to be false.

SoulSin.5682:

Arganthium.5638:

Steal is fine, it has a lot of mobility and a lot of utility to go along with it.

hihey.1075:

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.

There aren’t range markers in this game, and Steal doesn’t produce some kind of circle that tells you whether or not you’ll be able to land the skill. This change would completely break the mechanic. Anyways, we already put Steal on CD if we don’t have a target in sight whatsoever. The 5s penalty for being out of range is quite enough.

There are range markers in this game.
Its a really small red bar below the skill icon that marks if you are in range or not.

Wish it was more visible, but it’s there.

Really? Hm. Well, guess all that time I spent making ranges intuitive is all for naught. :/

So referring back to hihey’s comment… If the range markers were made more visible and you still get boons/other side effects that you usually would get if you didn’t have a target, then I suppose it would be an acceptable nerf. I would however prefer that other classes get the same nerf to similar skills… Otherwise it would seem like another whack-a-mole nerf.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Arganthium.5638:

Stand The Wall.6987:

Passive applies only while taking direct damage.
Anyone?

That’d be difficult to implement since damage, technically speaking, doesn’t have a duration- it just hits by stair-step amounts. As a result it’s difficult to use the word “while” in this regard.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Vampirism
acts in a somewhat similar fashion.

Oh, I see what you mean now.

redslion.9675:

boumz.9851:

proud hambow warrior reportin in, l2p :-)

http://img.pandawhale.com/78870-miley-cyrus-licking-hammer-gif-GEuq.gif

That’s how I see you.

Sincerely,

a non-hambow/fotm warrior aficionado.

I’m so tempted to link that gif to my sig.

boumz.9851:

proud hambow warrior reportin in

That’s an oxymoron.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Passive applies only while taking direct damage.
Anyone?

That’d be difficult to implement since damage, technically speaking, doesn’t have a duration- it just hits by stair-step amounts. As a result it’s difficult to use the word “while” in this regard.