Guild Wars 2

I’d try an infusion extraction device. ^^

Have to agree with marius here.
Tho maybe not exactly ‘god tier’ warrior is certainly making a comeback.
They are still not easy to play and they can be beaten, but they are much stronger than most people think.
Im not sure if were gonna see them in esl, but I do think they will have one of the next ‘meta’ builds.

Well this at least certainly wouldnt break anything and make the core utility more competitive to the elite ones.
I’d still rather increase cooldowns across the board, but Im starting to feel like the powercreep is a concious decision and wont be revisioned, so might aswell.

Regon Phoenix.8215:

Check the list and then come back again. If it is too hard to understand, here a help: talking about equal skill level. Of course the greatest reaper in the world can tear down the worst druid in the world. It doesn’t make any sense, if we don’t talk about equal skill level.
You should be thief or druid main, i assume.

How about this:
a)Make a thief
b)Play on a dueling server for a few hours.
c)Come back here.

Until then:

Regon Phoenix.8215:

Asrat.2645:

I read your posts from time to time and I find it harder and harder to take you serious.
People putting druid and thief in a ‘god tier’…its just laughable.
Sometimes I wonder if my view on chrono is just as biased and I only cant beat them because I dont believe I can…
Anyways this is ridiculous. The lower part of the list is ok, but the entire ‘god’ tier doesnt exist. All classes there are either top or mid.

And you say, that i am hard to believe. God tier does exists and, at least for now, it belongs to certain classes.

No. There is no class that is not beatable. A chrono will give you an extremely hard fight, even in 2v1. An ele is hard to kill if you dont bring proper burst.
A rev is extremely dangerous if you eat a burst and can still survive the worst hits.
But all of them are beatable. They are strong, might even broken, but by no means a ‘god’ tier.
All of them have weaknesses. All of them have counters. All of them bleed and all of them die.

I read your posts from time to time and I find it harder and harder to take you serious.
People putting druid and thief in a ‘god tier’…its just laughable.
Sometimes I wonder if my view on chrono is just as biased and I only cant beat them because I dont believe I can…
Anyways this is ridiculous. The lower part of the list is ok, but the entire ‘god’ tier doesnt exist. All classes there are either top or mid.

My experience is quite the contrary. Whenevr I play one of the easier classes for an extended period of time, I find it hard to get used to the thief again.
And yes: compared to thief most professions are relatively easy to play. It took me about 150 games on ranger to get them to a point where I’d be only a little bit less effective than a veteran.
Ele an engi both require a different sort of skill: you have to get your rotation right.
Its basically the same for mesmers I guess.
The ‘skill’ of thief is a) Having to react to everything your opponent does. You dont act, you react. b) You cant afford to make a single mistake.

trunks.5249:

Asrat.2645:

Sure. Thieves are the kings of 1v1. There is no way you can kill them. (srsly? Are you stuck in 2013?) Ok actually there IS no way you can kill them…and vice versa. You attack them, they have to run away.

on my druid ranger a thief has never been able to run away because has soon has i daze them they are rooted and get bleeds plus what ever else i want to do to them before they die. well there was one the other day that saw me and just ran the other way. only time they can kill me is if they get me while i am busy fighting someone else

That sounds like you are facing very bad thieves. With unhindered combatant there is no reason to be immobilized anymore.
Rangers are prey. The pet is somewhat of a problem and the glyphs are due to all the visual noise.
I play both classes and kiling rangers on my thief is not easy but doable, killing thieves on my ranger is much harder. Im happy if I manage to keep them off me.

a) I see 1-2 necros per team in every game. Im not even sure anymore if they got buffed or nerfed. (probably nerfed, but the meta simply hasnt settled enough for anyone to say for sure)
b) I started reading this, I stopped at the point where you started to call thief and longbow rangers op.
Adding to that is your problem with ‘invisibility on mesmers’ (lol, this class is heavily broken, but invisibility is not the problem) and unrelenting assault is a l2p problem.

Sry, you make a good and well known point about the HoT power creep. And about build diversity+alternate choices.
But in general you seem like a player with less than 500 games with some typical noob problems. I guess you also have issues with dragonhunter traps?
I dont wanna be rude or eman or ven imply you are a bad player, but this sounds alot like you are suffering from l2p.
Despite the build diversity. That is a serious problem and unfortunately widely ignored by the devs appearently.

But you see how it works?
First they buffed the acro line, it didnt really help us at all, its still a bad choice.
Now they buffed the already mandatory trickery line, that one made an impact on the game and improved us.

On the other hand with classes, that they, for whatever reason, consider fine, (like mesmer and ele) they started to buff less used weapons and tried to create build diversity.
it is not exactly my favourite approach, but that I can live with. Inter class has to come first.

Orpheal.8263:

Shortbow could be made easily alot better, if the following things would get added/changed about this weapon:

• Change one of the range related Traits to “Ricochet”, so that Pistols gain again a way to bouncing bullets, while the shortbow could profit from this trait by gettign an additional effect on Trick Shot, like that Trick Shot can steal Boons if bounced arrows hit a target twice and let that trait increase also the range of Shortbows and Pistols back to 1200, so that both weapons can be used also again better in defensive situations from hogher positions, aka in WvW

Change Clusterbomb to a much more powerful Condition Spreader that makes SENSE BY ITS EFFECT. Bleeding makes absolutely no sense..you shoot Explosives that you can let detonate on demand, these explosions should cause BURNING & Vunlerability, so that the Thief gets also access by this skill exclusively to Burning, making this skill more effectful for Condition Spreading, especially when combined with sigils that can cause additional conditions on hit/criticals

Choking Gas should cause Torment instead and poison additionally foes only, if they stay in the aoes longer than 2 seconds to give this skill more crow control functionallity that lead to the point, that you force your enemy to move away from the spot where the AoE effect is. The initial hit should cause also for a half second Daze.. its freaking CHOKING GAS..if something like that doesn’t interupt your current actions, then this skill needs a RENAME…

The skill that lets you evade attacks should get removed the back jump effect and simply let the thief gain that auto evade effect after shooting for several seconds instead. And it should become a skill that grants you stealth for 3 seconds to give this weapon more stealth gameplay synergy for when you are short before changing to an other weapon set, like D/D for example so that you can use SB better for stealth synergy to prepare a burst attack when you are about to change your weapon.

Infiltrators arrow should get a nice side effect to give this skill a bit more utility for the position to where you move to, infiltrators arrow should get the ability to deativate TRAPS that are nearby to the ground target, so if you move with this skil lto a spot and an enemy trap was nearby, then this trap wont do damage to you anymore.
This way would become the SB of the thief finally a nice counter weapon against all these trappers lately that we have now due to the dragonhunter.
If there is a class, that should be able to negate traps, then it has to be logically the Thief!! Masters of the Shadows, which infiltrate locations and know exactly how to detect traps and how to negate them without receiving any harm… they should be the logical counter to any trapping build with SB’s help.

Those are some horrible, horrible suggestions you got there.
I hope I dont have to explain why, but here the short version:

Ricochet change. Boon removal would be too much. And it would by my knowledge be the first trait to directly buff two weaponsets at a time.
Shortbow auto could use a slight damage increase (10-25%) to make it more threatening, but it definetly doesnt need extra effects.

Burning instead of bleeding: no. It doesnt make more sense at all. Explosions usually dont burn people. Unless its napalm. Ours is a frag. Burning is also a very badly designed condition since it focusses on burst damage and not DoT.
Using it as a blast finisher can already be very strong.
I also dont want this weaponset to be turned into a condi set.

Choking gas.
a) Torment would be useless. The healing modifier from choking gas is much stronger for a power build than torment could ever be.
The poison duration could be slightly increased, thats all.
And a daze? srsly. Blind would be considerable but already extremely strong.

Disabling shot could indeed use a rework, but several seconds of auto-evade ?
Thats insane. The skill is already pretty useful as a bonus evade. Maybe increase the distance a bit and decrease the clunkyness/precast/whateveryouwanttocallit.
But auto evade? Hell no.

We already do counter trapper builds. We can activate all traps with a dodge without getting hit and still have shadowsteps if we screw up.
The problem is not the traps, its the guardian behind them.
If anyone but our hardcounter was running those traps, we would have no problem to deal with them.

I..I dont think anyone uses shadow refuge in pvp anymore.

I dont play wvw but that doesnt seem likely.
Only thing I could imagine is that maybe something is wrong with meld with shadows.
A flat 1s decrease of all stealth skills doesnt make sense at all, so I rather suppose something with this trait changed (f.E. it doesnt work on smoke combos like in pvp[Edit:no idea where that information comes from, I read it somewhere]) or its bugged.
Or of course whoever said that was uninformed and had no idea.

One of the following things needs to go:

-Signet of illusions. It is simply extremely strong for a single utility. Recharging four shatters is bad enough, but the buff brings illusions to 6k-9k health (clones and phantasms) making it extremely hard to kill them before they get shattered.

-Chronophantasma or Illusionary reversion. One of them is ok, but both simply mean constant shattering will not heavily decrease your illusion uptime.
Shatter should be a concious decision to sacrifice illusions, not a way to maintain them.
Putting them in one tier would already be sufficient.

-Blurred frenzy, echo of memory or deja vu 3 Blocking/Blur skills on 1 weapon set are too much. Together with distortion it gives you too much uptime of damage-negating effects.

And of course the rather commonly asked for solution of decreasing both the duration and the cooldown of signet of humilty.

Ahhh yeah. The typical oneshot-eles. kitten they are everywhere what should we do?
And of course the new super-smokescale with undodgeable attacks.
Finally: how do you get oneshotted by a necro? I admit, if you let them hit you with the wrong skill it will hurt, but you should survive if you disengage.
Do you facetank an entire soul spiral?

Dont fight them 1v1, 2v1 or 2v2. Unless you know for sure you are playing a counter class.
The chances to win are too small and they have much bigger problems in a scenario where they can be locked down and focussed.

SkyShroud.2865:

seperate pvp from pve……
should consider playing a MOBA becoz this is a mmorpg

And that implies we can not have good balance why?
The genre has absolutely nothing to do with such developement decisions.

That is why U use such things like stealth and shadowstep to avoid being even in consideration as a target unless you have an opportunity to strike.
Thieves being oneshots is stupid. We are literally the hardest class to kill at all.
A good thief with a reasonably good team should not die.
You only die because:
a) You miscalculated and played too aggressive at the wrong time.
b) Your team is so bad you had to actively participate and stay in a teamfight or deny a cap.
Both is not supposed to happen.
How exactly to oneshot us:
-Being a bloody idiot and triggering a full set of dh traps without a dodge or even an emergency shadowstep.
-Getting hit by a condi burst and dont cleanse it
-Getting stunned and not using shadowstep within 0,5 seconds.
-Meeting another thief of superior skill. The only thing besides my own stupidity that can kill me is another thief. Either they are better, or they find me exhausted, damaged and on cooldowns.

How can that be killed, which can not fight nor be fought?

Nice to know its not just me. So most lifesteal effects are either not working or working too well? Gj ^^

Ryou.2398:

But its called a thief, anet is trying to do something different why cant it play more like a ninja then a classic fantasy rogue?

Well, the outcome of our duels is mostly dependant on ‘steal’, what more thievery do you want?

Pls dont turn this into that discussion now. I fought that battle already and Im tired of it.
I hope we will become a dueling class again, but until then I want to focus on making the best out of what we have.

‘’We are not fully against skill splitting between the different game modes but it adds a lot of overhead to every balance and design decision. While it does give you another tool box it does lead to optimizing skills heavily for each game type which does make power creep.Its on the table and it’s something we may use in the future’’

(Cause there is certainly no powercreep now)

Have you guys noticed any procs for leeching venoms while testing?
I wanted to find out whether ot not it can be exploited in a broken way like rev but, according to my combat log, neither the heal nor the damage part happened.
The stacks get consumed, and the condi gets applied, but no LV proc on enemy or in log.

Yeah. the whole shadowstep thing sounds a lot like what we have with molten berserker: Stay close and it wont happen.
I agree on the small swing tho, that attack isnt telegraphed and deals enough damage to literally kill everything.

Well if you position yourself in a way where you are simply out of range that should be quite easily confirmed by running a few tests. It also helps to target the seal before hitting.
If this was a bug it would be very strange indeed to only occur ‘sometimes’ and not everytime.
For now I would suggest you make sure to be positioned perfectly, and if it still shows unexpected behaviour, report it.

Ohhh I didnt try it out. I dont play guards. But several experienced players have stated meditrapper to be a counter for necros. Both sides, necros and guards.
Mb only states ‘power based builds’ as counter, so I guess there is some truth to it.

Sure. Thieves are the kings of 1v1. There is no way you can kill them. (srsly? Are you stuck in 2013?) Ok actually there IS no way you can kill them…and vice versa. You attack them, they have to run away.

But…that would decrease the value of salvaged brillance and therefore the value of my shiny title…
Kidding tho. Accessories are one of the harder things to come by, a lot of players even found it more beneficial to swap them around their characters.
Right now every method of aqquistion is kinda timegated, so it would probably be best to also base any form of fractal vendor on it in order to make this an additional method, not a superior one.
@swagger. I would decrease gold and increase pfr heavily. Pfr are used for almost nothing else and would tie this form of aqquistion almost exclusively to people who actually run fractals.
There are enough other things to waste gold on.
So more like 150-200 pfr (you really cant use them for anything else) and 5 gold.

They are far from gone, they just work differently now.
You are playing:
a) What many considered to be the direct counter for necro.
b) The single strongest dueling class.
They moved from ‘slightly op’ to ‘lower average’ so ‘hardcounter or ’completely broken’
has an easier time destroying them.
On my thief I found fighting them actually to be a little harder (still possible) since we cant cleanse one of the main damage sources on every dodge anymore.

So Ive been getting pretty frustrated lately from the role this game forced upon us.
The decap, the +1, the constant disengaging.
All in all I got sick of ‘winning fights by not fighting’
That was literally what I was thinking when it came to my mind that I was intuitively using a quote I have heard before.

If you do not know the art of war. Short version: Its a 7000 years old strategic guideline, yet even today common, if not mandatory lecture amongst militaries, laywers, businessman or even psychologists.

So why am I posting this: two reasons.

First of all for people like me. If you are sick of our classes role, this might be able to cheer you up.

Second for new thieves and all those who wish to get better at their class.

Because the art of war literally describes our current role perfectly. I will be linking a site with some quotes on it. You will find a lot of them are only variations from one another, but nonetheless almost everything written down there can be applied to gw2 pvp in general and specifically the thief class.
And that is pretty amazing.
Actually, If you as a player want to improve, you should read that stuff.

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3200649-s-nz-b-ngf

So yeah. Either draw from this whatever wisdom you can, or call me silly for comparing a game to warfare to begin with. I posted this because it proved useful for me and might for others.

I was confused for a while due to you people having a very similar name.
As we have been reminded this a thread about discussing ways to counter mesmers, not about mesmers themselves.
I cant say anything Im afraid. I started to make some quick side notes about what you said and ended up with a few hundred words.
Let us just part with this: I like mesmers. But I strongly disliked what they have been turned into. From my point of view things went the wrong way the second illusions started to get summoned for the sake of shattering.

Its a damage modifier for all but condition damage.

I actually imply double use of cv (due to cooldown) and also imply the use of Brawlers tenacity and a ~50% vigor uptime.
But the number was in fact an approximation I did a few days ago while wandering outside, not having access to the actual numbers.

Yeah, I have to say im quite disappointed.
The necro nerf giving them a chance to come up with power builds? No they all just rebuild on bleed and still spam condi as much as possible.
Power scrapper sustain nerfed? Suddenly they all use condi scrapper builds instead of maybe trying to use some healing power.
Warrior buffed? Lets get back to a condi based shoutbow or better yet: condi berserker. If it doesnt apply confusion or burning, I wont even look at it.

Last two seasons I still consider bunker meta. But I guess this time we will actually see mostly condi builds.
Not only that, but people still want condi bursts instead of taking condi for what it should be: damage over time.

Daishi.6027:

Majority of mesmer’s viable builds since release have utilized shatters as the apex of their damage. Those require 2 long cooldowns available on each weapon set to summon a grand total of 2 illusions (outside certain exceptions like +1 clone on sword offhand, or AA on scepter. Both of which are rarely used) If the mesmer runs dueling they also have a clone on a doge roll. Not that many mesmers take dueling right now, since most take insp to deal with condi if their team can’t cover them, and even power mesmers require domination to even do decent damage.

So for max damage mesmer needs to pop a minimum of 5 clone or phant spawning c/ds. Mesmers typically have one primary clone generator and one phantasm per weapon set.

^ all of which btw can be negated by cleave and AoE.
image if condis, or warrior adrenaline bar could just be cleaved down or required specific cooldowns per weapon set. lol

Everything else a mesmer can do with their two remaining attacks is negligible damage wise, and is often CC, or a defensive cooldown. Typically though the damage is easy to out heal regardless of your spec. (well unless you run something completely unviable.)

Now to avoid shatters is like avoiding 100b, the tell is there, you see it coming. Doge into the illusions, and you will mitigate most if not all of the damage. I cannot express how easy this is, and this is like the single most valuable thing that shuts a mesmer down. I have killed my fellow mesmers in moa on different classes just because it’s that simple.

So this means that a mesmer to do max damage has to blow C/Ds on both weapon sets, Plus aided utilities, two shatter cooldowns (one of which is over 30 seconds if domination) and this is all under the context that 1. your clones didn’t die in AoE or Cleave. 2. your opponent didn’t take pressure back. 3. he didn’t just doge the obvious animations. Only to achieve: less damage than a thief with less escape, or DH with less chase, and very little momentum to follow up with, nor the ability to keep yourself a float or pressure if you screwed up or fail to eliminate your target.

Also out side of S1. mes gets easily pushed off points, so it has even less value in certain areas.

tl;dr
There is a large stigma against mesmers and it’s only justification is noob stomping for the bads who get lost in the clones and can’t doge shatters. But fact is if you die 1v1 to a shatter mesmer you got out played. Arguably it was given the tools to outplay you, but you had just as much of a chance if not more, to outplay it. Thus Shatter mesmer condi or otherwise is not OP.

If you want to entertain a discussion of mesmers strength being condi, it is a problem with condi itself not mesmer.

If the team utility is what makes it OP, the context of how mesmer has to fight is justification for it’s strong utility roam.

A) The problem with the current mesmer (chrono) is not the damage, its the sustainability.
Namely Mental defense, Deja Vu, Blurring frenzy, Distortion, Restorative illusion

B) When talking about shatters you should remember that the meta mesmers use signet of illusions and also blow all their shatters during continuum split.
There is also alacrity decreasing both shatter and illusion cd’s by quite some time.
Shatters should be strong skills used tactically to change a fight at the cost of sacrificing precious illusions. Not spammed tools to apply as much condi as possible.

C) The sheer uptime and access of/to illusions is incredible thanks to Persistence of memory, Illusionary reversion and Chronophantasm.
Now dont get me wrong, mesmers should be able to maintain many illusion…but not by shattering them.
You dont shatter you illusions: you have 3 illusions up most of the time.
You shatter your illusions: You dont have many illusions up most of the time.
Doesnt sound so hard, does it? Unfortunately anet seems to be thinking different.

D) As powerful as mesmers are, it gets much worse considering their mobility. If you have a class that you can either not beat at all or at least is tanky enought to make a kill take a lot of time is usually supposed to be slow, so you can outrun and outrotate them.
Right now mesmers are like a slightly slower thief with much higher sustain and more sustained, harder to avoid damage. Just like thieves a smart mesmer is also able to disengage from most fights, making a kill almost impossible.

E) Finally we have the split moa and the portal. We are not talking combat skills anymore. We are talking gamechangers. Two of them. In one build.

The last thing this game needs is more protection. Id rather advocate to give no class protection or stability uptime higher than 20% softcap(meaning if you take every possible source you can reach about 20%)

Im starting to consider acro again.
With the super scrapper nerfed right now a lot of engis are trying to hop on to the condi train and we can no longer auto cleanse the necros strongest condition.
Pain response has become extremely powerful and makes it easier to run w/o escapists absolution.
I would probably go with assassins reward tho. The initiative is nice, but you already have a high uptime of regen from pain response alone.

Yes or no is not sufficient.
I am happy with the patch.
But if they dont do a little more before the next season starts, we will have a problem.

Actually this seems like a very fair request. Same chances are impossible due to elite specs, but at least make people able to play the same content, the AR is a serious issue.
Central tyria masteries available to non-hot players, at least for p2p players is not asked too much.

Hammerguard.9834:

I don’t even know why we have to fight with Anet over this. It’s like they like watching their ever dying community suffer every chance they get. It’s not even just the removal of ranked. It’s practically ever decision they make. Its honestly disgusting how much help they need to not kill their own game.

Earlier today I was just thinking about how its relieving getting into a game where you know the developers will deliver in every aspect they set out for the game. Blizzard doesn’t need 90% of their community to come to the forums to tell them how stupid a decision they never made was.

Ummm. a) I always see the same 20-30 people around here, that is not 90%
b) Actually they did a lot of things right with this patch. They only forgot a few nerfs.
(and the powercreep, but its starting to look like that is intentional)
c)What decisions is it exactly that you dont like?
d)No matter what game or what time, there is always a part of the community unsatisfied. Its not significantly bigger in guild wars. And there is always, with every single patch in every single game a couple of people going all like:
Thats it. This patch killed the game. Im leaving now. The game will be dead in a month.

1: Daredevil has too much access to evasion. You get about 15 dodges over 30 seconds(with SoA, CV etc) I think. That is way too much.
I’d love to see that lowered, but only if they either also decrease other power creep or instead boost our alternative defense mechanic named stealth.

2:We were already basically a strong counter class to the necro. No boons to corrupt, instant cleanse of chill, and the fact that a lot of your high-damage skills are easy to evade. (especially reaper shroud skills)
But your description seems unlikely. Usually we decide a fight by: dealing some damage, running away. You cant chase us and we have much stronger healing potential. So as soon as we are back to high health we come back and damage you again. Shroud is to be outkited. Time is on our side.
So you should always loose the fight against a good thief, but the thief should have quite a couple of near-death experiences. If you didnt damage them at all, you just spammed your skills instead of baiting and predicting dodges.
There are always small time windows at the end of a dodge when you can attack us. Thats is when you try to land your high damage skills. Of course some skills are so telegraphed only a leg-amputated donkey thief couldnt evade them.
The mnetality is extremely important. I found it almost impossible to fight mesmers. Its still extremely hard, but It has become significantly easier since I started to see them as mortal beings.
General tips:
If they have a pistol, dont use your healing skill in a scenario it can be interrupted
Dont try to burn all your skills at once in an attempt to finish us, we will disengage, return and you are on cd.
If you managed to stack a good amount of condition, stop attacking. The thief might have escapists absolution.
Manage your shroud carefully. If you use it on low health to prevent death, you have lost. We can just disengage, and either you wait until it runs out, or you turn it off and are easy prey.

Dont see the problem. It is really entertaining to watch some of the things my teams do in unranked.
For example we had an enemy necro standing on the ledge above the point spamming wells, and a rev who was running around below and didnt find a way up. It was hilarious.
And who cares wether you win or not? Who cares if you have a 3 thief comp. Its so much nicer then people kittening up about their pips as if the rank had any meaning.

Sry but this has been clear since season 1: Guardian traps a re a l2p issue.
Besides, for whatever reason guards have realtively strong utitlity skills for combat and applying damage. In contrary their weapon skills are relatively weak.
So if the traps got weakened to be more in line with thief or ranger, there would need to be a shift in favour of the weapons, subsequently decreasing the access to burns on other utility skills, leading to…
Well, you know what I mean. Another class that could use a redesign, but you cant just change one aspect and leave the rest.

Furajir.3815:

But they can’t grab everything is my bloody point. Which forces some of the more power creep stuff to be toned down if you want access to a more well rounded character.

This is the only MMO ive ever played that limits build diversity and limits access to your skill trees and makes you select x out of X

Well, as much as I liked the idea of spending limited points, they are right here.
You would pick exactly the strongest traits available.
This would lead to a different kind of powercreep. Highly specialized roles instead of allrounders, but its still powercreep.

Xirus.9675:

>Pretty hard to misinterpret what I said.
>Not everyone is in an active raiding guild, so excuse me if your hugbox doesn’t include people who don’t share your 1337 interests.
>You already had raids. There was no reason whatsoever to demand that fractal dailies be made this difficult. Its just another spiting of casual players – who make up a majority of the playerbase and thus are the majority of anet’s customers.
>“They should work harder for their rewards”. Yes, because hard work is totally what most people who earned money doing hard work want to spend that money to do. You’re quite the economist. I stand corrected, sir.

Im playing fractals with pugs. Exclusively. For the challenge I needed 3 teams and about 2 hours, but only because people were being stupid. (thinking anguished tear of alba would protect them)
This kind of conetent would become extremely easy if the playerbase would stop leaving the party after the first wipe.
Additionally the months of swamp have caused exactly whta I was afraid of: everybody now thinks they have to be able to do the t3 dailies.
People who should have stayed in t2 where allowed to exploit the system and now believe they have a right to get the rewards.
And if you suggest that maybe the last 25 tiers of the current semi-hardcore instanced content is not for everyone, they claim the moral high ground and call you an elitist.

-Being prl 78 thanks to swamps does not qualify you for endgame content.
-If you have no idea what youre doing and are just after quick rewards, gtfo and back to 40 farming or now also dungeon farming.
-If you have no idea what you are doing but are actually willing to learn and to improve, be my guest. I gladly carry people who enjoy fractals for what they are, not for the rewards and I gladly explain the entire encounter+ every possible tactic.

But actually the last thing I want is for this to become another hc vs casual debate. As others suggested: Mai trin is easy. Lvl 100 can be soloed. Just get your kitten together and do it. Also if you face adversity, consider different tactics than ‘stack and damage’
We did 79 by hiding behind pillars.

In core game everybody is running 3/5 and effectively it would be 4/7.(you gotta read the whole thing) Seems legit.

Xirus.9675:

Asrat.2645:

75. Besides: its not that bad. And for a t3 daily you should invest some more time and skill than the stupid mossman.

I love how you’re basing what anet should do on what you think paying customers should do, instead of what most of them will do if fractals stay killed like this. Speaks volumes about your understanding of economics and how much basic morality you likely have.

I’m not leaving because idc about legendaries and I already have everything I was after and can avoid fractals and can just enjoy the parts of the game I like. Just stating the obvious about those who can’t – this will alienate many of them and they will leave. The last thing Anet needs is to emulate Blizzard or the SWG dev team. -_-

What are you even talking about? Ive never seen so much interest in actually doing fractals. Sure it will lessen in the coming weeks when it stops being new, but this is exactly what we wanted.

My approach would be:
3 core lines.
1 Elite line, also creating a ‘basic’ elite spec representing aspects/builds of the core class
Also heavily narrow the field of application of current traits. For example a defensive built warrior only having access to their best defensive assets whilst wielding a shield, to avoid creating monsters that can do too many things at once.
Finally slightly nerf all traits across the board to compensate for the increase of traits total.

This way we’d hopefully:
-Have no mandatory lines unless they are synergizing with the build choice from the elite line.(For example a thief choosing stealth augments from the core elite would naturally go with shadowarts, one with open combat choices or daredevil would take acrobatics)
-Give more traits to select from without impacting the overall class performance too much.

The main thing here is the core line.
With three respective choices for each tier you could pre-define three builds for each class, but the player would still have 3 traitlines for variation. For example whether to focus a defensive build more on condi or direct damage denial.
The elite spec would either open up a completely new option for the class, or prove a superior variant for but one of the core builds, not for all.
A herald therefore would become a stronger supporter than a ventari focussed core build, but still be inferior to a shiro core choice in direct fighting capability.

Idk, Ive been working on this for a while now, and besides the need to basically overhaul every trait and add 100 completely new, it should work out pretty well in terms of build diversity.

Pain response, didnt even notice that one. Tho I dislike the passive procs, looks like they are here to stay. With this in mind, that trait could actually help making acro a considerable choice. Full dmg condi cleanse +reg every 16 seconds could prove to be extremely valuable, especially on builds without escapists absolution.

The changes mostly buffing the trickery line is disappointing but understandable.
You have to see what they did with this patch: they improved the lesser used aspects of the strong classes, and the more used aspects of the weaker classes.
That appears to be following a schedule. First a profession gets buffed (aka powercreep) to viability to ensure inter-class balance. then its lesser options get promoted to slowly create intra-class balance.
If powercreep wasnt their way to go, I would actually like that approach on balance.

Finally you have to look mostly on other classes changes. They nerfed one of our hardcounters (engi), eventually nerfed the other hardcounter (cant tell so far if guards got buffed or nerfed), gave a slight nerf to our replacement and seriously damaged one of the main damage dealers.
The increase in boonstrip also seems like they want to give us the dd+anti boon role that has been taken by necros.
All in all we were the winners of this patch, along with warriors.
I still dont think 2+ thieves will be very desirable, but at least a single thief should now be an improvement to the team, rather than a liability.

We will see where the meta takes us, but for now it seems we are in a relatively good spot.

The most important thing is, after all:
Even tho it was kinda ‘too easy’, it didnt make the fractal any less enjoyable.
Ofc it didnt feel as rewarding as finishing 94 for the first time, but at least we stood there and we’d be like: ‘well, that was pretty cool’