Guild Wars 2

I broke the tie on diamond and legend. legend is now ahead by 1

Yeah, that’d be an interesting thing with RA. Win with a team and see how far you can progress in win streaks… Why is this not even being discussed by anet teams? Need ideas for new modes? Look back at your highly successful prequel’s pvp and bring it to life here.

They did. They had a basic sound, it wasn’t coded and there weren’t specific types of pings you could use it was 1 general ping but yes they did have it and I’m surprised it’s not in this game

I totally forgot I posted this… lol I come back and it’s still going. But now I’m gonna see if I can address some stuff I read in here.
1) I don’t run the meta because the meta is stupid. So those of you telling me to play something different, I have been
2) While I get that many appreciate being able to frontline as an engineer with the hammer, the issue I have with scrapper is it has too much tankiness and utility packed onto a weapon that also deals high damage. When you no longer need kit’s to have the extreme utility engi is famous for then there’s something wrong.
3) Scrapper takes 0 mechanical skill to play. I don’t care who you are or how many games you have played or about anything else you think is prestigious, there is no mechanical mastery visible in a scrapper player. Let’s visit back to the old cele rifle days real quick:
People like Chaith and Backpack were able to dominate most who fought them (except nos cause hardcounters are bad in games) because they possessed superior mechanical skill with their build. They timed their cc’s right with their enemies cd’s and followed up with damage combos. With scrapper you don’t need timing, you can literally spam every skill you have and still do well enough to play at the same level as the “pros”. I’m all for having alternative options but alternative=/= easier. Scrapper didn’t make alternatives, it just made everything easier.
4) Glad I’m not the only one who noticed scrapper made this class the most passive in the game…
5) Elite specs in general (no only scrapper) have no mechanical differences from the cores, they are pure upgrades. Scrapper is by definition better than the engineer and that is not how it should be. Some of the best engineers (I mean vanilla engis) have been beaten by scrappers with literally less than half of their skill level because scrapper is so loaded with forgiveness and free damage without requiring timing. You can’t come in and just say if engi is what you like then play it because part of having fun with what you’re playing in pvp is being competitive and successful. You can only outplay powercreep so much (believe me I have been through all that)

Maybe follow what LoL did and code each ping with a sound so even if you don’t look for the ping on your map you at least know what a team member is calling attention to. Then you technically don’t have to look away from fights to know what’s going on so tunnelvision wouldn’t be as big a deal.

Except while there is negation for power via blocks, evades, invuln, blind, protection, toughness, vitality, etc. There is no boon or negation to condi damage. That’s why people get upset by it is because if it’s on them (and it’s easy to stack past people’s condi clear limit) there’s nothing they can do to prevent the damage. At least that’s what I understand to be most people’s reason for disliking condi. I personally have no issue with the DoT type build or the condi playstyle but I do see where people’s arguments lie.

And there is a serious point to consider: Why are some condi builds able to output over 7k damage a second and easily maintain that level of damage? If the design of the playstyle is meant to be DoT then let it be that. The issue you are running into right now with conditions in this game is that they are so prevalent and easily buffed through the condi damage stat that this damage is easy to achieve and then you’re looking at a build which can load people with damage and take them down in 3 or 4 seconds without having to be actively engaged in the fight. The whole idea of a sustained damage build is to have fights last a long time so you’re damage ticks and eventually drains your opponent entirely. Not spiking them down with conditions that go through every defensive tool in the game. In order to truly balance condi it needs to be the defined DoT style for players who prefer that, not an alternative tankier spike build.

Again I have no issue with the DoT playstyle, just have issues with the way it’s been implemented.

I don’t think there needs to be a hard cap on condi damage. But I do believe the condi damage stat needs to be removed. If they give each condi a fixed value that cannot be altered in any way shape or form then they can increase the presence of it on condi specialized traits and weapons and close to remove the direct damage present on those weapons in order to allow for a set of DoT builds to exist but not be able to do massive spike damage through condi. Sure they’d be able to be massively tanky but if they don’t do enough damage to force you out before you put damage into them then it doesn’t really matter if they are hard to kill.

I’d rather not see this function and have people learn to not act like children if they want to enjoy their experiences

Fully support this and I’d love to see Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry modes come back into the game too. They were my favorite thing in GW pvp.

Unfortunately there are a ton of ragers in pvp now who think they are better than everyone else so when they lose a fight it’s always the team’s fault and they won’t do anything to try and bring the game back after a bad start because they are salty after losing 1 fight.

Belial, the point of it wasn’t to say I’m good or anything like that. It was more of an expression of my relief in personal achievement. I know many thieves have made it and that’s good on them but it doesn’t mean I can’t be proud of what I’ve accomplished personally.

So yeah that’s the point of this, pure vanity because why not.

McMarc, grats man! Always great to hear other thieves pushing legendary through soloq.

Made it to legendary as a soloq thief. Took some time cause real life stuff happened as well but i made it and that’s what matters

Well if anet removes those stupid trapper runes from the game and causes the traps to do damage then we will see this build go away. Until then, you’re kinda stuck

Anet hasn’t been shawing stealth from the thief. They’ve been removing the gimmick of permastealth from 1 set. Only reason everyone feels forced into being a dodgy character is because DD is op right now in comparison to base thief. Once everything is toned down stealth play will be a thing again for those who want to use it. Acro needed a buff and so they gave it one but that’s not even enough to force people into an evasive playstyle. It’ll get better with time, just gonna have to wait and see if anet realizes all the changes they have to make in the next patch.

f3 stealth is not needed as we have plenty of ways to stealth and it would add unnecessary tools into the game that they have to balance.

From my experience stealthing is not too expensive within combat depending on how you use it. If you try to spam it all the time in a permastealth attempt then yes it is expensive but every now and again for repositioning it works just fine and if you use a few leaps through it you have time to regain some initiative before you reopen. SA offers ini regen so that should make things easier and then you are free to take trickery and cs

Edit: Deceiver, I’ve been trying for a long time to limit stealth to only thief. Maybe you’ll have more luck than me getting people to realize it’s a good solution.

I’ll be honest I was disappointed in duck’s performance on thief. He made a few choices in build that imo were terrible choices and he missed at least 7 or 8 opportunities to get a decap. I’m not saying he’s not a good player and I really appreciate the fact that he at least played thief but there were some things he could’ve done better.

Build wise:
-Didn’t get to see his sigils but you want air/blood on d/p and fire/whatever on sb
-Swap scholar runes for vamp- yes he is losing a 10% damage buff… no wait he isn’t because thief is rarely above 90% hp in combat nowadays so the rune choice is pointless. Vamp offers more sustain with a high damage boost due to the extra damage from lifesteal.
-Swap blinding powder for Roll for ini- He ran with 1 stunbreak that was also a condi clear and escape tool. That’s too much pressure to put on 1 skill, ho needed the extra stunbreak to avoid being so easily locked down in fights. It would’ve allowed him to dive in for damage more on his melee set rather than only being able to use sb.
-Swap impacting disruption for EA- The trait is a gimmick and if you saw his play it didn’t proc all that much. He would’ve been better served having the extra condi clear to allow him to deal with the enemy necro and Mesmer. Dash combined with EA actually lets you practically hard counter reaper assuming you don’t just spam and actually use dodges and skills with intent. Plus he’d have better survivability for the occasional teamfight.

Rotation wise:
-He jumped into too many equal fights imo. Yes thief can fight in those skirmishes when played well but his team would’ve been better served had another member from his team gotten involved in the equal fights and waited for him to +1.
-Already said he could’ve gone for many more decaps which overtime could have given his team a serious advantage in fights and eventually points.

All this is my observation and opinion. Many of you will disagree with me and that’s ok but this is what I noticed.

That’s why put this out now. I have hit a pretty free spot in my life and figured since I have time to make a video I may as well figure out if it’s worth it.

They will likely do a large patch right after season 2 ends, possibly even before S2 finals like they did last time. Unfortunately that info has not been given to us directly and we must wait for them to unveil it. But, as you have said, we have given lots of feedback so as a playerbase we need to focus now on fixing what we can right now (attitudes, helping others get better) and such things that anet can’t fix with any sort of patching. Leave patching to them and start helping those who will be affected by it.

I have seen and I know plenty who have seen very unskilled players in ranked pvp and I was wondering:

Do you all think it would be worthwhile to make an introductory guide to pvp filled with steps to get better, common sense practices (no zerging, no double capping, rotating reasonably, etc.) and other such things that we see people missing in game?

I’ve debated making a guide to pvp for a bit but first I want the community’s response, do you think it will help people and if so is there anything you want to make sure is in it? Leave a list of topics you want specifically in the video and if I go through with this I’ll make sure to add them.

They made it way too passive with scrapper (not making any claims of what needs to be nerfed I’m just stating what my view is for why the engineer is no longer enjoyable for many to play)

There is no more comboing with kits for cc chains and maxing damage on an opponent. It’s all about spam hammer attacks and occasionally use egun. Enjoyed your old cc chains from the cele rifle build or mara rifle? Too bad, Especs get more cc than you and they don’t actually have to try and chain or land it.

The game takes 0 mechanical skill to play and it has ruined what was such a cool class.
As an engineer you had to be very aware of the cd’s on each kit you had, you had to consistently be able to land your slower moving but highly devastating grenades, and you had to know how to land damage effectively in the short time you had between cc’s in your chain. But instead of making the other parts of engi like that, they decided to make it a passive melee tank that requires 0 focus or skill. It’s not fun for anyone except Fotm players or frankly noobs who don’t think they should have to try to actually be rewarded for playing.

So from an engineer main (not a scrapper main I’d like to point out) Please give us some remnant of the engineer’s old playstyle and mechanical requirement in the upcoming patches. I miss knowing that every fight was either won because i won it or lost because i lost it, not because some bs passives kicked in and did something which caused other passives to activate and made another passive do the thing to the other passive which made the passive do the passive stuff to the guy with the passive on the other side of the map all from 1 button being pressed.

Revert changes to nades, remove this passive bs from the game, and give us our fun noob- filter profession back.

OBS works pretty well and is free. Just takes a bit to get your settings the way you want them

Just hack his account and delete it. Problem solved :P

Reason thief traps get disarmed is that they are linear. While it is annoying that people keep evading through the traps I don’t like making things unavoidable because then it opens up the door for gimmicks and more things to be made that way. That said for our knockdown trap I could get behind it being unevadeable like the guardian’s line of warding.

@rchu
Actually Mesmer being gutted was the reason I stopped my post where I did. As you see I said I got lazy and I wanted to take a little time to develop one for Mesmer that’d be at sbout the level of detail as the thief one so I could actually do something for the class. Chill and be patient, I’m working on one but it’s taking a bit of time. Might be able to get it out later today

Edit: There I got out what I could. Issue I have right now is there can’t be extreme buffs to classes like Mesmer before we see what especs being nerfed brings to the table in terms of letting some classes become meta again.

Believe me if I were working for anet’s balance team I’d have gotten all these changes pushed through already and you’d have patches way more often.

I’ll just leave my big blob of balance thought here, this is coming from an engi and thief main so if you think something is wrong with my suggestions then that may be why:

General Balance:
Split Pve and PvP balance (WvW will share balance with PvP)
-Big part of this is splitting the stacking of condis between the game modes. Leave it as it is in PvE so that people who enjoy that styl more won’t be shut out due to elitism and then PvE content can be added in the future that utilizes condi within it’s gameplay (VG). In PvP, change it to what it was before they were allowed to stack. Issue right now with condi is that everything can be stacked really easily and that kills the mentality of condi being a DoT style. I have no issues with those builds being tanky because theoretically the tankiness is there to help them survive long enough for the degen to overcome their opponent. But when those builds are able to apply enough pressure to kill an opponent in 2 seconds then I see it as an issue that needs to be changed and frankly this is a quick way to do it that has already had years of testing done on it.
Remove class stacking in queues for PvP
-As a result no prof swapping would be allowed
-While some see it as a band aid fix that would increase queue times I see it as a way to limit the influence of some op builds which will then stop them from forcing all the other profs out of the meta which would then encourage others to play as they could use their favorite class.
-Make revealed 3 sec in pvp again, atm 4 sec is not needed and the 3 sec will allow for some other thief sets to be utilized.
-Remove condi and boon duration stat increases and set base durations to an amount deemed appropriate by the balance team

Profession specific balance:
Most of these changes are just what I believe would be the best choices based on my experiences in the game.

Thief:
Weapons
If we look at the flow of the sets it’s obvious that d/p is the best set. The set doesn’t need any traits to actually make the set function (i.e D/D needing cloaked in shadows). But rather than nerfing D/P I think the other sets should be modeled off of it in terms of just flowing together well and synergizing with every skill so the set feels complete and not like it’s fighting itself.

S/D- Mostly feels good but there’s a couple things that if changed will make the set meta worthy again. Dagger #4 needs a damage increase so it becomes a reliable way to damage a foe who is not within melee range (probably not a huge one but definitely something along the lines of 5-10%). Sword 2 return needs to be instant cast but not a stunbreaker (I.E. can’t be cast when cced but it still is helpful in the times that you need it) and removes 2 condis instead of just 1. Sword 3 needs to cycle on block (after all the skill description is cycles to larcenous if you hit a foe, even if they block it you still hit them you just didn’t deal damage) will remain as it is with evades and blinds as that is considered a miss. Dagger 5 should have a single target blind on it so the skill flows better within both s/d and d/d.

S/P- Keeps all the sword changes but now has #3 split into 2 different skills, The first one is a charge/leap that stuns your foe (just like pw does now) and if it hits (same interaction I mentioned with sword 3) it cycles to the damage part of pw. Reason for that change is then S/P has some stealth access without having to trait for bound allowing the set to be more self reliant rather than trait reliant.

D/D- Keep all the dagger offhand changes I mentioned above and then remove the bleeds from death blossom and change it to act like staff 3 where it hits and then rolls backwards so the set then has a gap opener/disengage and we remove the annoying death blossom lotus training condi builds at the same time.

Staff- #4 blind leaves a smoke field to allow the set to stealth via #4 and vault.

P/P- Have the AA change depending on whether you are p/p or p/d. If p/p, then the bleed from the stealth skill and aa will be removed and the damage will be buffed so it is stronger, rate of attack maybe buffed a bit just so it applies a little more pressure with it’s autos. If p/d it will stay the same as it is now. #2 would have a small roll backwards after the immob shot was fired that would also be a leap to allow the set to stealth itself with pistol 2 and 5 combo’d.

P/D- just incorporate the stuff I mentioned above and it should be fine.

Traits
DA-
most of the traits are fine as is unless heal on steal were added as a baseline but imo that’d be a bit too much so I will leave this line.

CS-
Keen Observer- Health threshold reduced to 80%
Flawless Strike- Health threshold reduced to 80%
Unrelenting Strikes gives 5s Fury on steal and 5s Fury when hitting a target below 90%, 10s ICD

SA-
Replace Cloaked in Shadow with “Gain 1 stack of stability for 3 sec when you enter stealth” (5 sec cd) In order to help thieves deal with inc cc when going in for a CnD
Remove the reveal proc from engi and aoe from scrapper and rev that strips stealth. Have all reveal require a target similar to “sic em”

Acrobatics-
Replace Instant reflexes with the old Power of inertia
Remove guarded initiation and swindler’s equilibrium and replace with “Vigor regenerates health” (100 base) and “7% damage while under the effects of vigor”

Trickery-
Preparedness made baseline
Base steal CD reduced to 25s
Removal of steal cooldown reduction from SoH
Lead Attacks giving a 20% cooldown reduction to steal instead of 15% -> 20s CD from 25s
Trickster removing 2 condis

Daredevil-
Impacting disruption has its damage reduced by 20%
Whirl finisher removed from lotus training
Leap finisher removed from bound
Dash no longer removes immob

Engineer:
Weapons/Skills
Hammer-
2-reduce damage by 7%
3-remove triple leap finisher (set it to only 1)
4-Remove damage from block but keep vuln stacks
5-Reduce range to 600
Slick shoes no longer knocks opponent down if they are not moving
Poison Grenade reverted to a poison field

Traits
Explosives-
Fine as is.

Firearms-
Fine as is.

Inventions-
Heal resonator regen duration reduced to 3 sec.
Energy amplifier reduced to +150 healing power instead of 250
Bunker down Med pack regen reduced to 3 sec and CD increased to 5 sec

Alchemy-
Protection injection CD increased to 10 sec
Remove Self-Regulating Defenses and replace with Automated response (Incoming condition duration reduced by 25% while below 50% hp)
Backpack regen base increased to 150 hps

Tools-
Streamlined kits cd reduced to 10 sec and swiftness reduced to 10 sec
Lock on changed to “Striking a foe in stealth shoots a rocket at them and knocks them down” (basically the explosives one) (10 sec CD)
Adrenal implant allowed to stack with vigor

Scrapper-
Recovery matrix duration changed to 4 sec.
Rapid regen swiftness heal changed to 135 base and super speed changed to 350
Mass momentum convertion reduced to 7%
Impact savant all values reduced from 25% to 20%
Final Salvo stability reduced to 3 sec, lightning field removed

Elementalist:
Weapons
Scepter- Buff the autoattack rate on the weapon so it can benefit from the signet.

Traits
Air
Remove Tempest defense and replace with “Cast a dust storm at your location when you are disabled” (45 sec CD)

Other Vanilla’s are fine as they are

Tempest
Unstable conduit- (All aura durations reduced to 3 sec)
Harmonious conduit- make the stability 3 sec and baseline (1 stack)
Elemental Bastion- Healing Decreased by 20%

Warrior:
I don’t know enough to speak for the playerbase here so I’ll leave that one to the experts

Ranger:
Weapons
Axe offhand whirling defense no longer roots you while casting
Rest are fine as it is

Pets
Smokescale damage reduced by 5% (only because every hit is guaranteed to land)
Vanilla pets hit reliability brought up to the level of the druid pets and all pets share stats with the player (reason being they can’t build full tank if they want to deal damage, forces players to invest stats into what they want to do in order to actually do it.

Traits
Marksmanship is fine

Skirmishing is fine

Wilderness survival is fine

Nature magic
Allies’ Aid- remove the increased revival speed as the pet res already does enough.
Protective ward- weakness is reduced to 3 sec

Beastmastery
Resounding Timbre- Duration of boons reduced to 8 sec
Natural healing- Healing power removed and instead give the player a 100 hps buff
Zephy’s speed- might duration reduced to 10 sec

Druid
Primal Echoes- Remove the daze
Live vicariously- Healing reduced by 10%
Celestial shadow- stealth removed and replaced with 1 stack of stability for 3 sec
Verdant etching- remove blind and reduce healing by 10%
Natural Mender- reduced to 1% per stack

Celestial avatar
Lunar impact healing reduced by 5%
Rejuvenating Tides and Natural Convergence cast times reduced to 1.5 sec

Necromancer
Weapons
Scepter
-Corrupt boon removed from auto
Dagger (main)
-#2 reduced cast time to 2 sec, increased healing by 20%, and reduce CD to 10 sec
-#3 CD reduced to 15 sec
Dagger (off)
-Fine as it is
Axe
-Auto damage buffed by 10%
-Unholy feast now transfers 1 condi to every opponent hit
Staff
-Fine as it is
Greatsword
-Gravedigger damage reduced by 10%

Traits
Spite
-Reaper’s might reduced to 10 sec duration
-Chill of death removed “replaced with corrupt 2 boons when you hit a foe with more than the threshold” (4 boon threshold)
-Signets of suffering boons corrupted reduced to 1. Might duration reduced to 10 sec

Curses
-Chilling darkness now applies 5 sec of chill on 10 sec CD
-Target the weak conversion reduced to 7%
-Parasitic Contagion buffed to 15%

Death Magic
-Flesh of the Master health increase reduced to 25%
-Necromantic Corruption damage increase reduced to 15%
-Reaper’s prot removed and replaced with “release a corrosive poison cloud when disabled”
-Death nova made blockable
-Corrupter’s Fervor reduced to 20 toughness per stack

Blood Magic
-Vampiric changed to not allow minions to siphon health but boost it to 75 per hit.
-Vampiric presence changed to siphon 75 health

Soul Reaping
-Fine as it is

Reaper-
-Chill damage reduced to base of 100 dps (instead of 350, assuming same scaling the highest damage will now be 400 instead of 650 which is far more balanced)
Reaper shroud 5 damage reduced by 20% (zerks critting for 10k with this skill is silly even if it is slow)
-Shivers of dread given an Icd of 5 sec
-Cold shoulder duration increase reduced to 10%

Rise damage reduction reduced to 25%

Revenant
Weapons
Sword 2 damage reduced by 15%
Sword 3 interrupted if it hits a shocking aura

Traits
Corruption
-Fine as it is

Retribution
-Enduring recovery changed to “Chance to gain vigor when struck” (5 sec on 10 sec CD)
-Unwavering avoidance changed to “Gain stability when you break out of a stun” (1 stack for 3 sec on a 5 sec CD)
-Eye for an eye taunt removed and reduce CD to 20 sec

Salvation
-Fine as it is

Invocation
-Fine as it is

Devastation
-Vicious lacerations duration increased to 10 sec but damage reduced to 1% per stack

Herald
-Enhanced bulwark CD increased to 5 sec

Mesmer
Weapons
Greatsword
-Mirror Blade- Given it’s 1 extra bounce back so it has sufficient burst damage
-Mind Stab- Given a blast finisher to allow for some group support to come from the class.
-#4 and #5 cds reduced by 5sec each
Staff
-Phantasmal Warlock hit reliability increased
-Chaos armor CD reduced to 20 sec
-Chaos Storm CD reduced to 30 sec
Scepter
-Fine as is
Sword
-Fine as is
Pistol
-Reduce CD of #4 and #5 to 20 sec
Focus
-Fine as is
Torch
-Fine as is
Shield
-Remove Phantasm from Deja vu
-Turn the stun to daze on tides of time

Traits
Domination
-Fine as is

Dueling
-Phantasm Fury also is applied to allies around the Phantasm

Chaos
-Mirror of Anguish removed and replaced with “Dazes and stuns last 30% longer”

Inspiration
-Restorative illusions changes to “remove one condi for every illusion shattered” to help Mesmer deal with condis better
-Mental Defense CD reduced to 20 sec
-Illusionary Inspiration radius increased to 360

Illusions
-Fine as it is

Chronomancer
-Delayed reactions given a 5 sec CD
-Lost Time given a 10 sec CD between the time when you slow an opponent and when you can build charges again. As compensation remove the cd between charges.
Alacrity will be split between PvP and PvE. PvE alacrity will remain as it is and PvP alacrity will return to it’s pre nerf state.

I’d like to point out that you guys need to not generalize in your conversations about Engineer. The engineer is balanced fairly well, scrapper on the other hand is still power creeped to high heaven (as is reaper and herald hence them being the only classes you see being stacked). If you mean the engi then say the engi if you mean scrapper then say scrapper. It’s not hard and it goes a long way to keeping communication clear to avoid misunderstandings.

Love this post but there is one specific I’d personally like to include. If skill balance between pvp and pve is split (really hope it is) then in that split condi in pvp needs to go back to the way it was pre everything stacks. The game was much more balanced before then and you didn’t have tanky af builds stacking enough condi damage to kill you in 2 sec and being able to maintain that damage. The change will still allow for the degen style to be used but it won’t also have bursting capabilities. I’d also like to see chill damage toned down cause as it is right now I can easily hit 650 per sec chill damage which imo is kind of silly considering it has powerful alternate effects as well.

In pve the condis can stack as they do now so that every style of play is able to be used without elitism saying no condi allowed and such.

So remove class stacking from all queues, sure queue times will be longer for Fotm players but that’s the price they will have to pay for trying to exploit the power of a certain build. It will lessen the exaggeration of the imbalance of some builds because they won’t be able to be stacked and then you are more likely to see more balanced matches cause it’s not just a game of who can stack the most cancer.

Yes the game play is boring. But compared to last season there have been great improvements to the gameplay and hopefully they continue to take the right steps towards finding the ideal balance of bunker, bruiser, and dps.

If I had to place blame on where it went wrong, I’d blame it on the creation of heal focused specializations. Originally the game was designed with the intent of every class being self reliant, having their own heals and utilities to provide whatever they needed. The game wasn’t designed to have healers and boon bots. If they reduce base heals drastically (increase scaling as a result) they force people to invest stats to get heals and such.

There’s also the issue that comes with scrapper having a full evade 3 leap on hammer that lets them heal to full without heal power. Things like that need to go away then they can actually balance the game.

Issue with divisions is everything can be grinded. Especially getting up to ruby, you’ll make it there if you spam enough games but that shouldn’t be the way it works imo. Unfortunately I’m not sure how to change the system besides letting people lose pips and tiers in all divisions not just after ruby. But maybe just that change would be enough to stop the divisions from being complete grind fests.

On the subject of untraited steal, what traits could be made baseline so we didn’t have to trait the kitten out of steal? Cause Maugetarr I’m thinking very similar to you on this, it’d be great to lessen the disparity between the two so untraited is still functional but not as powerful as a currently fully traited steal.

If it’s irritating you then why did you start a thread you knew would get this type of response? Doesn’t make much sense to start something and then get upset when people respond in a way that doesn’t line up with your desires.

I think we need to be more specific and say tempest/scrapper. Without scrapper engi is actually pretty well balanced. I can’t say the same for ele cause I suck at it so I have no idea whether it’s balanced or not. Honestly you can carry with anything you’re good at. It’s not limited to those 2 classes as I’ve carried on thief, daredevil, chrono, Mesmer, dh, reaper, etc. Yes the unkillable stuff needs to go away but there should still be some bunker/tank presence in pvp in order to promote balanced gameplay (I.E. avoiding the 1 shot festival we had a year ago)

What’s the point of this thread? It sounds like you’re either kitten because you couldn’t get out of amber and someone said that it means you belong there or your were trying to be funny and now that you realize it wasn’t funny you’re trying to make a logical argument out of absolutely nothing…

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

My real issue right now with thief is weapons. Mostly the flow of weapons and their interaction with some effects. While that other stuff does need some work I think the best thing we can do for the thief atm is balance the weapons so we can move away from the “d/p or die” type mindset.

Wall of text inc:
If we look at the flow of the sets it’s obvious that d/p is the best set. The set doesn’t need any traits to actually make the set function (i.e D/D needing cloaked in shadows). But rather than nerfing D/P I think the other sets should be modeled off of it in terms of just flowing together well and synergizing with every skill so the set feels complete and not like it’s fighting itself.
S/D- Mostly feels good but there’s a couple things that if changed will make the set meta worthy again. Dagger #4 needs a damage increase so it becomes a reliable way to damage a foe who is not within melee range (probably not a huge one but definitely something along the lines of 5-10%). Sword 2 return needs to be instant cast but not a stunbreaker (I.E. can’t be cast when cced but it still is helpful in the times that you need it) and removes 2 condis instead of just 1. Sword 3 needs to cycle on block (after all the skill description is cycles to larcenous if you hit a foe, even if they block it you still hit them you just didn’t deal damage) will remain as it is with evades and blinds as that is considered a miss. Dagger 5 should have a single target blind on it so the skill flows better within both s/d and d/d.
S/P- Keeps all the sword changes but now has #3 split into 2 different skills, The first one is a charge/leap that stuns your foe (just like pw does now) and if it hits (same interaction I mentioned with sword 3) it cycles to the damage part of pw. Reason for that change is then S/P has some stealth access without having to trait for bound allowing the set to be more self reliant rather than trait reliant.
D/D- Keep all the dagger offhand changes I mentioned above and then remove the bleeds from death blossom and change it to act like staff 3 where it hits and then rolls backwards so the set then has a gap opener/disengage and we remove the annoying death blossom lotus training condi builds at the same time.
Staff- #4 blind leaves a smoke field to allow the set to stealth via #4 and vault.
P/P- Have the AA change depending on whether you are p/p or p/d. If p/p, then the bleed from the stealth skill and aa will be removed and the damage will be buffed so it is stronger, rate of attack maybe buffed a bit just so it applies a little more pressure with it’s autos. If p/d it will stay the same as it is now. #2 would have a small roll backwards after the immob shot was fired that would also be a leap to allow the set to stealth itself with pistol 2 and 5 combo’d.
P/D- just incorporate the stuff I mentioned above and it should be fine.

So yeah those are my proposed weapon changes to make all thief sets self reliant and give them a better feel to play. This will reduce dependency on D/P and will allow other builds to emerge as there will be no 1 best set. (damage on each can be adjusted depending on how the proposed changes affect their performance).

In terms of traits I think it mostly comes down to making baseline what can be in order to reduce the mandatory nature of some lines and then buffing/nerfing what is under/over performing in other lines. The extra ini from trickery would be great to see as a baseline and some buffs to steal that you trait would be great to see baseline so the steal can function without needing several traits to make it that way. I’d also personally like to see the leap finisher from bound removed as all other sets would have leaps/ stealth access built into then and then stealth focused builds would again have to invest into SA in order to get high stealth uptime rather than getting all of dd and high stealth from the leap. (not that it’s overperforming it just goes against what I see as a balance ideal which is that you should have to invest in order to get something and taking 1 trait for near perma stealth is not imo an investment)

Outside of what I talked about there’s not much else I can think of that could be changed or that I have the experience with to suggest changes to without either causing more power creep or really messing up game balance.

Edit: I forgot to say make reveal 3 sec in pvp so it is uniform across the game and d/d has potential to see some play in pvp.

Glad you’re taking the initiative to get better (see what I did there? :P)
A few tips I have just in general to take your gameplay to a higher level and allow you to be the highly influential player you are destined to become:
-Record your gameplay if possible (allows you to look at it and see where you may have done something wrong)
-Duel a ton to improve your mechanical skill (also helps you figure out the defensive rotations of other opponents so you know when to burst in actual matches)
-If you need help with surviving, go into wvw and find a group of players then see how long you can survive until you get killed
-Practice bursting in different ways and find a combo that you can use quickly with high amounts of damage without completely draining your ini pool so you can still react to unexpected events.

Build advice
-Either run d/p or s/d. Like someone said previously staff is not much of a +1 weapon and it is outdamaged by d/p. D/p technically is the best choice but s/d can still work extremely well and does not rely on stealth to burst so if you don’t enjoy playing stealth builds then that may be your best bet. (s/d works well in +1s due to it’s extreme mobility from sword 2 on top of shortbow 5 and dash so you can have insane map presence and always be where you need to be to help your team. Plus with the right combo you can still have a really heavy burst in only a little more time than d/p would be bursting so the choice really comes down to preference)
-I would play mara over zerk due to the fact that there isn’t a huge difference in damage and you’ll be much more survivable long term which will allow you to enter fights more often and stay in the ones you need to without getting downed by every random aoe someone poops on the point.

Until there are more specific questions or your full build is posted there’s not much else I can offer as all of this is just general stuff. Good luck in your endeavors

That said mara rifle engi works really well still if you manage your positioning and use your combos correctly.

Hey, you picked 2 great classes to play. My personal preference on engi is power rifle, I love the style and like you I love my nades. (I don’t use scrapper on my character because I find it boring to play that level of opness nothing wrong with those who like it but it’s not my style)

If you want I’ll message you in game and we can try to walk you through on anything you have questions over with engi.

I’m pretty sure he doesn’t intend to just nerf scrapper and leave everything else. It seems to me he just knows specifically on scrapper what he believes to be off and is therefore mentioning it so that it can be considered in future patches. Everyone knows that HoT was pure power creep and that everything needs a nerf, I don’t think it has to be mentioned in the OP for that to be implied.

I think a large portion of the players would agree with me if I said that we would be fine with class lock in matches if it meant we got no prof stacking and a prof based mmr to allow people to experiment with playing different chars without having to fight pro players using a brand new class.

I know there will be some who disagree with me on this but my personal thought is this:
Bound works for both s/d and d/p but it lacks the escapability of dash. S/d I generally would run dash due to escapes being one of the only reasons you survive well. On d/p, I’d run bound unless there is a necro on the other team then you will want the consistent chill removal. I’d say ALWAYS run EA, there is too much condi in the game right now to not have it without making yourself too easy to kill (yes impact has broken af damage but I find it more worthwhile having the extra survivability in teamfights and the ability to adapt to whatever I have to face on the fly). Hope that helps with the decision, and as a side note if you do run bound with d/p make good use of sb 5 to make up for your lack of swiftness as you will still make good time to points.

In the line of keeping up regen, without RR it is possible to easily regen 500+ hps. So it’s not like you lack sustain at all by going into MM. MM in the end does give you more damage and if you play smart you won’t really need any more sustain than what you will already have. But again my opinion is if you use slick shoes RR may be better for you just so you have the extra regen to help deal with stun damage combos. Outside of that MM will be better every time

I’m not saying the other classes are near balanced. Cause heaven knows they aren’t even close. What I’m looking at is returning thief to be balanced in itself. Right now if you were to only look at thief balance and ignore everything else d/p would be op. Only reason it isn’t is cause everything else is loaded with even more power creep.

So yes other things need major nerfs but that’s not my area of expertise so I’ll stick to thief and engi for now with these posts until I’m a little more comfortable speaking for other classes.

Just my thoughts:
They are both strong in the right situations but the best choice depends on your build. If you run Elixer B with boon duration then I’d go MM as it will provide insane amounts of might (perma 25 in combat) and therefore damage as long as you compensate enough by building into other types of sustain (I.E backpack regen).
RR will be better in almost any hammer build and will be a wise decision if you aren’t utilizing BR. If you have slick shoes as a utility you may want RR for the recovery boost on stunbreaks but otherwise I’d say go with whatever you think your build would take the most advantage of.

My personal belief with this choice is if you build cele you will have a greater boost from Mass momentum as you will gain back a large amount of power as a base from the toughness to power conversion and then the extra might will buff your damage to zerk level if you combo well and have the right setup of skills. But any time you specialize in swiftness uptime and superspeed uptime or need to pack more sustain on the build then RR. But using BR will eliminate the need for RR and allow you more damage if you run alchemy in your build (yes it requires you to use kits a ton but I use 4 kit rifle so I do that anyways) but if you like the invuln then probably use RR as long as you have perma swiftness and lots of access to superspeed.

Except then you remove the versatility of stealth in the game and the unique playstyle on each weapon set. There is no unique playstyle after that as everyone would just play d/p for the blinds and no other set would ever be used.

Stealth could easily be balanced if they removed it from every class outside of thief. Then it’s easily balanced accordingly and it’s interaction with certain effects could be changed without risking it becoming op on another class. And if it was changed to be that way then what’s the use of having SA? You’d have to completely redesign the class which I don’t believe anet will do.

No I agree it’s not really worth perma stealthing in pvp. The point I’m getting at isn’t that it’s gamebreaking #1 needs to be balanced priority level, it’s that the functionality of it goes against the fundamentals of balance. The reason it is so hard to argue the necessity of this change is because it’s not brokenly op or being mass abused by players.

The reason I brought it up is because the trait with EA gives you all the utility of SA with the extra fighting utility dd grants when using d/p. I’d much rather see leaps added onto sets like p/p and s/p and give the sets more interesting combo play through that then justify not making changes to sets based on the fact that bound gives them leaps. If bound is too strong on d/p in comparison to what it offers the other sets then changes like this can be made to bring it’s interaction with d/p in line with it’s interaction with other sets. Then at the same time you make it necessary for people who want to possess high stealth uptime to make the investment into a stealth based line to do so.

Doing all this sets a balance precedent overall which is something the game desperately needs. The idea behind balance is that you get what you invest into, no more and no less. Bound’s leap undermines this and removing it and spreading the utility elsewhere 1) removes the mandatory nature of this trait for some styles and 2) opens the door for weapon redesigns and other balance changes similar to this the would be beneficial to the game as a whole.

So should it be their top priority? No because as you said it’s not a gamebreaking problem in the meta but it definitely needs to be looked at in the near future.

Dirty, The issue is that the build is not really that clunky. The only difference from the standard build is channeled vigor over withdraw. Roll for ini was left over from my s/d build as that skill slot is filled through preference.

Deceiver, I’d give you that if it weren’t for the fact that they also stacked reveal onto other classes in order to counter our stealthing capabilities and load them with sustain to make it pointless for us to draw out fights… (granted I still love SE for the condi cleanse when I can get away with it but more often than not it is better just to take daredevil as it offers more cleanse and utility overall.)

Cynz, I’m with you all the way. They made too much spam with all the auto procs and added effects to skills with reduced CD’s. If they would focus on changing the spam nature to more time and skill based play then we would see loads of improvement on balance and marketing.

Seriously these “nerf all thief AA’s because dagger is strong” threads need to stop. If you have a problem with dagger/ pistol then ask to nerf dagger pistol in an intelligent way instead of asking for nerfs to the whole class. If you aren’t capable of doing that then your opinion is worthless and you need to keep it to yourself.

1 set cannot be used to determine the balance of an entire class or traitline. Is d/p over performing? Possibly but that doesn’t mean we go WWIII on the thief class and destroy the whole profession further forcing people into either d/p or another class. There are issues that need to be addressed but honestly it shouldn’t be a priority when you still see heavy dominance from scrappers, druids, and reapers in pvp. Also keep in mind this leaves room for DH’s to come into the meta as a hard counter to thief so there’s a bone for you guards out there

The issue I’m seeing is the fact that the interaction is too good with pistol 5 for me to justify it being utilized for utility on other builds. (and that’s coming from someone who made it a point to try and create p/p s/p and other such underutilized builds using bound for it’s utility to buff them to viability) I could justify something like bound being in SA because the stealth interaction would be within a stealth based specialization. The fact that 1 trait gives you more utility, defense, and damage than another entire line is ridiculous. Buffing sets on the thief is a better way to try to make them viable instead of giving them a trait that is too good in combination with another set. If other sets need leaps then give it to them in a way that it can’t be accessed by other sets that would benefit too freely from it. (i.e. make staff blind a smoke field that lasts for 2 seconds so you can get some on demand stealth built in. Make s/p 3’s stun a charge instead of a swing and cycle the same way as s/d 3 so the leap part can be utilized separately from the damage part. p/p 2 could have an added leap backwards after the shot is fired so it’s both an escape and a way of gaining on demand stealth)

Yes I recognize the utility is amazing and not everyone using it is D/P but it doesn’t change the fact that the trait is too good with D/P as the set being used with it. Instead of just gutting another thief set I’d rather see other sets buffed to that level of performance on their own so that all sets can compete with each other.

Edit: Fixed an error in the title where it changed to something I didn’t want. Thanks phone, you’re a real helper… /sarcasm