Guild Wars 2

Jana.6831:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

snip anything but:
Perhaps “I don’t think you have a point” was too broad to define my perception of this, because you do on many cases. I just dont think the fix involves making the thief class stronger directly.

Oh, so I don’t have a point on many cases, alright then.

To the rest: Yes, it might be different in pvp, I’m playing wvw where there is no runes. Rune shaping/deleting isn’t really balancing and having one (two which no one uses) viable weaponsets doesn’t mean there’s no need of balance.

ETA: And please not again the “but wvw isn’t real pvp; it’s brainless” argument – come and solo roam in wvw for a bit if you think so. And also: pvp is the only balance we can hope for, so it’s kind of silly if all of it is measured on runes.

I actually meant you do have a point on many cases.

Annd I consider WvW reasonably fair game when looking at class balance, bearing in mind that foods and the like tend to often cause outliers. There should be reasonable balance in WVW as well, as far as it can go; and since I often do not play wvw over PVP you and I may well be seeing two largely different states of the thief class.

Whatver the situation may be, though; I firmly believe that this is more of a ( some other classes are slightly overboard) moreso than (Thief is too weak), given the volatile nature of thief in general, because removing the amulets that created incredibly tanky specs and modifying tanky runesets in pvp made thieves drastically more formidable as far as spvp went. If we buff thieves first, I think future adjustments to the other classes are going to leave imbalances that will be blamed on thief being OP.

And since thief’s playstyle is highly reactive, we can’t really handle nerfs well. Might be best to use the thief as a barometer of sorts for locating the problem rather than thinking thief being too weak is the problem.

Marthkus.4615:

All of them. Don’t pug raids. Do them with friendly people you know.

ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding

A cookie for you sir.

What build, what weapons?

Valkyrie / Daredevil runes with intelligence sigil on Sword-Pistol /Staff or on D/P/ Staff,

Pistol Pistol using the new S/A Speed increase while stealthed and D/D for leap on bound (against slower/ Less mobile specs)

And D/P / Shortbow with Marauder played verrry carefully.

I’ve seen these three specifically, and some other specs that use Deception skill type cd reduction instead of condi purge on stealth perform pretty well.

I can’t even touch eles cause they seem to be invulnerable 24/7 and if they’re not they’re dishing out a lot of damage and condis.

eles are still hard to kill, but chilling them when they’re in water appears to be more successful than prior to cele amulets disappearance. I’m not claiming they shouldnt be rebalanced.

Probably all elites have some kill potential, yes, but even then thief have got it the hardest and still have to deal with reveal. That’s why I said: No matter how you turn it.

I won’t deny thieves have it the hardest. That being said, I don’t think they deserve buffs at this time.

It’s still bad, I just think we’d be looking at the wrong end of the problem as the meta stands now if we look into pulling thieves up rather than reminding classes that memorizing a rotation should not almost always give you nigh-invulnerability.
Perhaps “I don’t think you have a point” was too broad to define my perception of this, because you do on many cases. I just dont think the fix involves making the thief class stronger directly.

Jana.6831:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Personally, I think thieves are okay right now.

We don’t need another buff, some of the elite specs need a general look at rebalancing (namely reaper and scrapper) but even so only slightly .

Thief as it stands is okay if the meta doesnt change wildly. It’s hard to play, but rewarding if you’re smart.

No sorry, I disagree, no matter how you turn it – you still have to face everything the other classes throw at you. Condis, revealed, invulnerabilities, “white damage” – it’s too much to deal with for a thief. All you can do is go stealthless and +1 everything.

Nnnnn-

I honestly don’t think you have a point. 1v1 I’ve seen thieves be a decent match for some reapers, warriors, some scrappers, eles and mesmers as they stand now. +1… basi share.

Dragon hunters are another story, but they lose if they play badly, and I’m sure eventually anet will realize a class that can down a player by stacking a point with traps needs minor tweaking.

So.. shrug .

I don’t think right now it’s as bad as you’re making it out to be. Kite the hell out of the reapers cause they’re slow, use your ice shards for your eles, blind the hell out of warriors, the gambits work now.

I’m not saying I’m happy with their sustain as it stands at all, but we have kill potential at the moment and people are already gritting their teeth and hissing over on the mesmer side so… Not gonna push the envelope. I’m good right here if the meta doesnt flip.

Personally, I think thieves are okay right now.

We don’t need another buff, some of the elite specs need a general look at rebalancing (namely reaper and scrapper) but even so only slightly .

Thief as it stands is okay if the meta doesnt change wildly. It’s hard to play, but rewarding if you’re smart.

In addition to that people are already lamenting to the tune of “holy op autoattacks batman”, so I’d like to just leave that alll the way alone and stay in the zone of “Claiming thief is OP will get you laughed at.”

Orion.3812:

In the meantime, thieves could try exploring a way of approaching PvP that doesn’t involve a dependency on instantly killing the enemy-

Note.

these options exist.

However, I’m still against what is apparently looking like a request for a direct nerf without an apparent fix to what the core problem was, which was survivability against classes in general, whether or not they specced tanky.

If they want to run the “Thief survives by being scary” angle, that’s okay I guess.

I’d rather what I quoted, but also would dislike a rollback if the problem isnt addressed.

I actually like zerker warrior a lot now.

If I can be blunt. It has its shortcomings but it’s fun.

godmoney.6025:

How can players complain about other player’s builds if they do not adapt their own builds accordingly? Surely you must expect someone on the other team to have a condi setup.

More often than not, pvpers for Guild Wars 2 seem to have the mentality of:

>Headbutts wall
>Hurts self
>"The wall is too hard"

Orion.3812:

In PvP/WvW, thieves need less evade/block/mobility and more soft sustain outside of stealth (condi removal, healing). Coincidentally, thieves already received these exact buffs along with even more evades when they got Daredevil (heal on evade, condi removal on evade, +1 evade).

I’m going to reply to this in full sometime later, but I just want to say that, judging from the backlash thieves got when we got a taste of “soft sustain”, which I assume is passive sustain, there are just as many people against that as there are against hard sustain.

And yet thief is the squishiest class, still.

Gonna sit on this for a while until I settle on “you have a point” or “Thief being usable in general is bad”.

A note:

If teams are entirely consisted of a single class at a rate considered ‘frequent’, its probably unbalanced.

I dont know necros though. so Im not going to step further than that.

I’m intrigued at how necro went from merely countering popular ele specs if specifically built to outright dominating them.

Necro’s turn in the spotlight. at least you can kite them.

Orion.3812:

- Damage to targets to which you have applied Vulnerability is increased by 5% from all sources
Thoughts?

Per stack or baseline?

There’s no reason to take this over panic strike for group combat, since an immob negates incoming damage prevention through evasion or movement.

Sundering strikes is already useful for pve as it stands, as vulnerability already applies for all sources per stack.

I’m interested in quintupling the incoming damage per stack for vuln though, in exchange for giving up panic strike. You can even cap it at, say, five stacks; so it only applies to thief-applied vulnerability stacks, and only up to five times., to prevent people with high crit builds from blowing up targets.

But I’m not going to really settle for anything less than that, because sundering strikes handles raid involvement as is with the current auto buff, and any other application of revealed target would be superseded by panic strike in any sphere that was not pve.

Nizio Nightblade.8109:

Also it’s only a 1k boost to what AA DPS use to be…

Don’t bother.

People don’t understand math.

Orion.3812:

Pre-patch: attacking a thief reduces the amount of damage they can deal by forcing them to go defensive.
Post-patch: thieves can attack with impunity, doing obscene amounts of damage despite spending all of their initiative on gap-closers or defensive abilities. They no longer have to back off to recover initiative—and combat momentum—when pressured.

On top of this enormous buff to combat momentum in PvP/WvW, it’s childishly easy for a berseker-geared thief to kill someone before they can blink. Using a combination of Panic Strike (second-tier Deadly Arts trait) and Basilisk Venom, many engagements I have seen go like this: Basilisk Venom -> Steal -> Win. No other button presses are used, because autoattack is now so powerful that the use of backstab has become a style choice instead of a skill-rewarding ability required to make a clean kill.

Looking out from the walls of Stonemist Castle right now, all I see is thieves. Something is wrong here.

So is this implicitly suggesting that thief damage be rolled back so their zerker wont beat your zerker, or is this suggesting that blink does not break stun -and- move you even if you are immobilized?

What do you want done to fix this problem? Would you like backstab scaled instead? I’m okay with that.

SlayerSixx.5763:

You need to buy something to remain relevant. That is literally the definition of P2W.

Not quite.

Relevancy and Competency are two different things.

I have seen competent thieves beat daredevils, competent warriors beat berserkers, and a few other denominations.

The traitline itself is not a standard for competition, it is an alternative way to play an already grounded class.

I’m sure someone would make the argument that DD saved thief from uselessness, but DA/Trickery/SA or DA/Trickery/Acro(CS) are still viable traitline lineups, especially with Acro now being fixed.

…I’ve got nothing on reaper. There’s solid battle ground there. Whether or not that is example of p2w or example of nerf needed idk.

SlayerSixx.5763:

You need to buy something to remain relevant. That is literally the definition of P2W.

Not quite.

Relevancy and Competency are two different things.

I have seen competent thieves beat daredevils, competent warriors beat berserkers, and a few other denominations.

The traitline itself is not a standard for competition, it is an alternative way to play an already grounded class.

SkullFox.2781:

Love my charr thief!

reminds me of Issac Clarke.

gonna leave this here too

5,1,1,1,1,1,1.

5,1,1,1, 2,2.

rylark.3418:

I still fail to see how bound gives us perma stealth, could anyone please enlighten me?

This assertion is being ignored because it’s quite obvious that it is false.

The argument is essentially " Person is upset because thieves can break sightline with stealth, so nerfing it is automatically a rational idea, even though doing so would force thieves into using the spec Person hates even moreso than they are now and ignores that thieves need to spend initiative or a cooldown to set up the blind field for the leap in the first place."

But L2P would be considered a nonsensical and valueless retort.

Leohart.4610:

What motivates you to play your thief considering the wide arrays of abilities other classes bring to the table, pre-HoT and post-HoT? What is it that keeps the class fresh to you? Is it the concept of the class? Or perhaps the combat?

It’s the only class in the game that largely rewards reactive play. Most other classes with the exception of some odd warrior builds can boil down their playstyles to a rotation of skills that deals with healing, damage, and blocks, but thieves reward cerebral play and cleverness more heavily.

People play D/P too much

Let’s nerf leap on bound so people are forced to use D/P for stealth.

Yeah. I play one.

They don’t often look good in trenchcoats, so I just go barechested.

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

-snip because addressed-

If you actually played thief you’d know that there is no reaction to getting Basi Venom’d from stealth and / or steal. But I think you do know that, and I think you are trying to sidestep that fact because you don’t want to admit you are obviously wrong.

???

Every stunbreak ever?

You can certainly react to basi before having to sit through a whole auto attack chain.

Can someone explain what this person means, since he has his figurative hands over his ears now?

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

If you don’t want an instant gib, run something that isnt +0 toughness or vit? This time the burden of controlling the length of the fight is majorly on you, instead of hoping the other person hasnt turtleshelled their build.

lol have you even played thief? It is not like other classes. Sacrificing DPS for vitality or toughness is pointless when you are only delaying your death by a few more seconds. We don’t have the heals that eles and guards have. To survive we rely on evasion, stealth and mobility to not get hit. Then bursting down foe before they have a chance to hit back. Not getting hit is how we stay alive, building pointless defensive specs is how you get dead.

I have no other problems staying alive against other classes (except necro now even more OP too), but other thieves are now a problem due to the huge buff to dagger AA damage, because it is dealt in less than 2 seconds, which is easy for us thieves to pull off when used with Basilik Venom. So whoever gets first hit wins. BV + backstab + 11111 = dead. That can happen to ele’s and guards too btw.

To be clear: thief dagger AA is now grossly OP. I am a thief and I want it reverted back to what it was before. The QQ has already started (justifiably I would say) and aNet is undoubtedly going to nerf us somewhere else that we really do not want nerfed.

My fellow thieves who know the history should realize this and ask for it to be reverted as well.

Or you can completely miss the point that running something that isnt full glass gives you a split second to react in and solves your issue of getting instantly melted by another glass spec that sees you first and go off on a tangent.

That works too. Obviously if you accepted the fact that you can insta die, glass would suit you fine, but apparently that is not the case for you.

I’m not even going to touch how silly asking for a reversion of less than 100 points of base damage for an auto attack chain, on the grounds that it’s OP, is.

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

Pope – i main a thief. Sinister build on a class with the lowest base health and toughness. I run around with 11k health in a meta that has been put on steroids. I am always literally 2-3 hits away from being downed, BUT….up until this last patch I could still win most 1v1 easily, even pulled off a 2v1 a couple weeks ago. My build is quite nice. ~_^

But thieves and necros are insta-death for me now. Necro is OP that is obvious, and the huge buff to dagger AA is why i lose to thieves now IF they get the first hit with Basilik Venom. The backstab plus aa chain during Basilik Venom easily eats up all my health. Before it only took about 90% – 95%, and I could still fight back (and usually win). Now the AA is just ridiculous OP and allows for brainless fighting.

Here’s a thought.

The bunker meta was considered brainless fighting.

Yes, we got a damage buff on top of the removal of hard bunker builds from the meta (which, frankly missed the point since damage was fine), but at what point does fighting stop being brainless?

Taking forever to kill a target = brainless.
Instagibbing (the squishiest class in the game that decided not to take toughness, knowing someone can open with an unblockable) = brainless(?)

In both of these cases the amulets are to blame. I’ll concede knowing fights will take 5 minutes + is boring as all hell, but this is slightly more engaging than that, if anything.

If you don’t want an instant gib, run something that isnt +0 toughness or vit? This time the burden of controlling the length of the fight is majorly on you, instead of hoping the other person hasnt turtleshelled their build.

Zerker thief vs Zerker rev for dps testing?

Eh, I guess. Let’s roll with it and assume:

A. A berserker thief will be able to get a full AA combo off on another berserker anything
B. This same thief will only auto attack.

If your argument is “thieves hitting me in the face with 1 are op,” you’re absolutely right.

online.1278:

(Daredevil highly depends on player’s personal instinct skill, meaning that this class can be super OP or normal. So I put this class in middle between Super OP and Normal)

Whether a class is overpowered or not cannot be determined by how well the player can play the class. It is either baseline better than a majority of other specs or it isnt. Once you get into “X player makes Z class op” you’ve gone off the rails.

Otherwise I agree mostly. I’d probably swap Revenant for Scrapper but eh, close enough.

It was handled poorly, yes.

It did not, however, cripple the game and was a new system, so bugs and general brokenness is to be expected.

Apology not necessary on this one.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Question. Nobody has mentioned how all of these unlockable effects screw over guard the most :P. Or has guard simply faded into the background cuz traps op?

All being two on a 40 second cd unless you’re 1vxing (in which scenario you should die anyway)

keep that in mind

Those all caps.

/15lemongrabs

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

@Azure
“Why do two unblockable strikes make mesmer thief food?”

We’re already thief food. The basi venom just seals the deal. Attack us when we’re hurting (A.K.A. When we’re using shield, the only actual defense skill we have now other than distortion & sword 2) and kill us.

The reality though, is that thief, with its high damage, high mobility, and kitten tons of evades, already eats us alive on anything that isn’t the bunker spec.
You have 3 dodges, roll for initiative, the rolling heal (which is being buffed if I recall correctly), and vault/sword also evades.

You guys have more invulnerability than mesmer does now. And it’s also being made so that if I want to take you from 100-0, you’ll stop at 25% and evade everything I do for 2 seconds.

I’m going to give credit where credit is due.

Yes, Thieves eat non bunker mesmers.

That being said:

“You guys have more invulnerability than mesmer does now”

No.

“(A.K.A. When we’re using shield, the only actual defense skill we have now other than distortion & sword 2) "

Don’t do this. Don’t downplay distortion and sword 2 to make it seem like mesmers have less defense than they do. I know better than that, at least.

Level with me here. I’m tired of the silly balance see-saw, and I know that if I give in and go full jerkass with whatever inversion of power that is coming with the balance patch, Its only going to be six months long, so I’d rather things be settled out of the gate.

I will grant:

• There are a lot of dodges

• Non bunker mes is (probably) thief food.

We still have bunkerish amulets though. they just are not full bunker and require more active play instead of forcing slow death by attrition.

I’m looking for mechanical disadvantages, glaring imbalances that we can have ironed out promptly, from people who play the class and can manage winning with a playstyle that is a far cry from [insert every block possible here and wait out opponents hp bar].

I’ve lost to zerker shatter mesmers as a thief before; whether that makes me bad or them good idk, but I’m looking for solid arguing ground here, since the majority of people that are angry with thieves getting looked at after a 6 month period of uselessness (and those that believed we deserved it) played or main mesmer.

Hey, what’s up. I hail from the thief forums, have never played mesmer, and have never set foot on these forums before.

While I think the unblockable buff was necessary, I was surprised to see the removal of bunker amulets on top of that, so I’d like to request some level headed insight from people who play the class.

Basi venom is a channeled buff that adds two unblockable strikes to the thief’s moveset(because, most likely, people are going to pick shadow rejuv over venomshare, and if you are outnumbered you should be dying anyway unless you’re the smoothest player in the world).

Why do two unblockable strikes make mesmer thief food? Is this in conjunction with the amulet removals? Because on my end it certainly doesnt seem like two strikes would constitute a game changer, when those strikes expire on whiff or interruption.

Please explain it as you would to someone who has not played the class, because I haven’t. I dont know the inner workings of the rotations for mesmer, but I do have a wiki, spectate on PVP and battle experience with them, so I think that I’d be able to sift something from an explanation.

I’m playing it, but its kind of just the polar opposite of GW2. There PVP is amazing and PVE is flyby. Here it’s the inverse, with PVP being interesting but (as of yet) not sufficiently balanced. They’re both missing a little bit of what the other has, so I don’t see it being a dominating game.

Still good though. If I get cheesed here and ever get to the point where the salt just makes me have to log off, I have other options.

TainoFuerte.8136:

Meh. Buffing thieves/warriors when they are taking a patch to nerf all the stupid bunkers while also removing bunker amulets might not be a good idea… but whatever. Wait and see.

This.

I only play Thief and Warrior, and I’ve frankly been starving, but at the same time as yanking all the tanky from the players that rely on it seems a bit like being served way too much food at once.

You appreciate the effort, of course, but at the same time that’s more than you’re going to eat.

Like everything else, I’m going to test it out.

the nerf to scrapper gyro cd was necessary though, if nothing else. Take that.

I’m fine with less dodges/removable dodges, I’ve been feline grace’d before.

Ithilwen.1529:

You think I can dodge 5 attacks? Every one of which will either kill me outright or kill me by poison ticks? ANET kittened all over Mesmer and replaced it with thief. If having a short invulnerability that prevents point capture is so bad..

Then why is a god mode single hit kill that can’t be stopped ok?

The elephant in the room is that this person is upset because fighting 1vX will now be a losing battle for him, where X is greater than 1.

correct me if I’m wrong, I’m okay with being wrong. I’m just saying that’s the only way you’d have to dodge five burst damage attacks/condi dump, right?

Thief gets two unblockable hits. If you’re in a situation where venomshare puts you at a disadvantage and you do not have backup, then.. that should be par for the course.

I’ll also humor you once. Assuming that you are 1v1 and not 1vx, where you should lose anyway, you only have two attacks every 40 seconds that are unblockable, which you can dodge, loS, or blink away from, interrupt, spoil via skills like The Prestige, and the like. Most of these options are on a < 40 second cooldown.

Just playing better would remedy this situation, instead of pining over what I assume is the inability to bunker 1v2+. If this is a “I’m scared I’ll be focused” angle, The Prestige works for that too. As does decoy or anything that puts an object between you and your attacker(s).

Things/Changes I don’t like:

All caps in forum thread titles.

Bought one for my [Selfless Potion]

Did not regret.

Price is high though. Worth is strongly correlated to how many things you think should fit those slots.

Urejt.5648:

Boys, did u get hard? They say we will be extremly dangerous which is huge step from harmless fly!

I’m more concerned with how they’ll do that while still allowing us to easily refute whiny snot-kids complaining about Teef OP.

I don’t want to ride this stupid balance seesaw. 6 months of OP isnt worth 6 months of being useless, because for the whole year we get complaints of varying nature (that would not bother me if they did not possess a shred of credence.)

Dash should have been baseline.

Other than that, I consider it a bandaid fix for acrobatics disguised as an upgrade.

That, however, doesn’t mean it isnt good. you can do without it, is all.

I’d like to reiterate that our problem is, I assume by majority consensus, not that we cannot burst tanks down fast enough, but that we cannot survive long enough to implement a plan of action that would work against tanks.

If I can be frank, its missing the point. we have the slipperiness to kite tanks well enough, but it is offset at the moment by our glassiness when that mobility is not available.

We don’t want -easy- combat. At least, many of us do not. What we want is a reasonable amount of time to act on a strategy.

If any dev is reading this, take a look at the balance changes regarding thief and consider making us less squishy first and then implement any needed damage scaling in the iterations after.

I’m watching this thread because the dev seems actively involved and is considering feedback.

Stay the course. I want that more than the balance patch.

I’m 50/50 on this.

• Good:
  - Thief has been recognized as being vastly underpowered

• Bad
  -Messing with thief damage may cause more problems than it solves. The problem was mostly with survivability moreso than damage.

Handle this very carefully, Anet. Fear should scale with skill, not class damage. I dont want to begrudgingly admit X player has a point when they come whining to the forums about ganks and then post irrefutable posts of 5-7k autos eating their hp.

[EDITED OUT]

Apparenty GW2 forums like to gobble my posts down and then regurgitate them when I’m not looking.

Bad dog. er. post.

Wondrouswall.7169:

As much as I would love the game to be balanced, it won’t ever happen. Players seem to love this dilemma of waiting for things to work out. If they actually balanced the professions, then things would become stale.

Don’t you people like hating certain classes, calling each other names for playing a cheese, passive, and/or bad build? Constantly changing your build and spending more gold into converting or making new stat gear because <reasons>?

You do. And the developers recognize this. Bless them for understanding that if things worked out, then every log-in would just be another day at the office.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

/s

understandable.

However, the meta should not be so unbalanced that you have to shelve classes.

I’m fine with shelving gear sets now and then.

babazhook.6805:

Thanks for the responses. I think I can adapt playstyle to work around the fact that they do not stack so as to ensure I maximize the number of crits I get in a build I am trying to work with.

The intent is a low crit rate build with high toughness and vitality and no significant impact on ferocity wherein i rely on PI and interrupts to inflict damage in between those times I will not have that crit readily available.

I am looking at a s/d with d/p build here as I want to stay away from weapons with multiple attacks in one iteration. Ie Unload and pistolwhip would waste a lot of potential damage if only the first strike was a crit.

If I can generate a good number of PI strikes via interrupts coupled with sigil of draining these can generate 4K damage per interrupt quite easily without a crit.

Sounds solid.

Test it out, see how it runs.

I may be misunderstanding you, but ill say it anyway; remember impact doesnt crit, so dont waste your stacks on headshots.

Good work.

/15ReadingthisinScarlet’svoice

Swagger.1459:

Profession designs are subpar, lack meaningful roles and meaningful diversity and traits are a mess and there is disparity with movement and meta builds are extremely low in number and healing is messy and tanking is messy and lots of other stuff is a mess…

Swagger.1459:

The devs play the game, they know what’s up.

See now if they knew what was up from a player perspective, the above largely wouldnt happen.

I’m not saying they’re dumb, I’m saying developer glasses might obscure how the traits and balances they make function practically. If theyre just disregarding feedback because they cant sift what’s actually valid from whining, telling them “do it faster” isnt gonna work out so well.

Boobs n Soul boasts competitive pvp, but I’m not sure there’s any mmo on the market right now so vastly superior to gw2 that it would just steal their whole playerbase.

We did this with Archeage. wait for the playerbase usurping to actually happen rather than predict it, they may launch terribly, who knows?

Swagger.1459:

They have already worked at turtle pace for 3 years with regard to professions and combat improvements… This is not a rational post.

Profession designs are subpar, lack meaningful roles and meaningful diversity and traits are a mess and there is disparity with movement and meta builds are extremely low in number and healing is messy and tanking is messy and lots of other stuff is a mess…

There has been enough feedback on this matter… The only saving grace to professions is the ability to move and cast, but that all base combat design…

Professions are low budget design and are on extremely low budget maintenance mode…

And since “balance is important”, as Gaile says, you’d figure that that the devs would be much more proactive and reactive…

Again, I’m not saying I disagree that the balancing should be faster. In fact, that is the polar opposite of what I’m saying.

The rationale I’m trying to draw attention to is the fact that we’re asking them to balance faster without knowing how they process or obtain the majority of their usable, consideration-worthy feedback.

If, in fact, this feedback is coming from the devs opinons on raw or processed metrics then we have a problem anyway. I think that at least we need to get confirmation or insight into how we need to format, consolidate and supply data for balance suggestions in a way that would get devs to see how the classes they are balancing work in combat situations ( with player mentalities that cannot see the numbers or the picture the devs see, and base their playstyles around practical effectiveness rather than theory) before we begin asking them to rush.

Because, judging from some implementations such as guarded initiation, it looks like devs are doing class tweaking based on theory over practicality.

This is not saying “oh they should just take reallly long so they get it perfect.” We have a patch coming up really soon, and the game has been borderline intolerable for me for half a year as far as pvp goes. Obviously what they are doing now isnt working, we can at least agree on that.

What I’m saying is, If they’re going on metrics they’re forced to take a long time by the workings of their system. If they go faster, the metrics are less reliable, and they may begin using player feedback more fully than they do now.
If they do that the way feedback is currently, the game is going to get much worse.

Yes, of course we need faster iteration. What use is it, though, if they’re iterating based on whats happening in the pvp forum right now? 6 month patches based on what I can only assume is founded on metrics and theory isnt working, why would 1 month patches founded on metrics and theory work better, if they’re ignoring the people who are actually affected by the patches because they cant agree on anything with concrete proof of why X is weak or Y is strong in the meta as it stands?

It doesnt stack.

I run DD runes and intel with valkyrie, and every dodge is one stack of guaranteed crit that also overwrites any stacks of remaining crit from intel.

So if you were to swap then have to dodge a killshot or whathaveyou, you’d be dropping two stacks.

It’s still good, you just have to run a combat strategy that lets you attack three times before needing to dodge on swap. That’s easy with S/P or D/X