Guild Wars 2

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

-Youtube witchcraft-

He just punched a god’s head off three times

Why even

how

Don’t get distracted, focus on the shadow kick.

You’re wrongly applying logic to Mortal Kombat — you can’t do that.

BUT

THREE TIMES

I mean yes the shadow kick is amazing let us dye the afterimage but

THREE TIMES

What? Thief is good at something?

• Writes angry letter to Anet

Dear Anet,

Something something something stealth, something something no counterplay, too mobile something something, 5k backstabs. Highest condi cleanse in the game please nerf

Sincerely,
Naruto245xxx Sasuke ooh Cheeha

Sir Vincent III.1286:

-Youtube witchcraft-

He just punched a god’s head off three times

Why even

how

Sir Vincent III.1286:

There’s a lot of work that needs to be done on the Thief, that’s why it’s too soon for a thank you.

I’d like to agree with you but I’m probably happily suffering a delusion and equating not-nightmarish with good.

Again, in no way is thief in a good place . Ive just had enough of the chopping block.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Sorel.4870:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I’d even argue that in most normal cases not having the Kd would be better.

I need to try this tonight, but I’m pretty sure the KD can be stowed. So evade frames would be much better than removing the KD.

Nope, KD happens automatically right after blocking.

which is the whole cusp of the problem, because the channel time it takes to actually launch the KD is enough time to:

Soak 75% of your hp in AOES
Die
Get blocked and also die
Get interrupted

[its still a good skill but I cant handle the salt]

I’d be fine with just a plain stunbreak and a one second block on that KD.

OR

OR

an instant cast KD. A sped up animation would also be glorious.

Just give us the Warrior’s Kick anim and make the KD Channel like 1/4 second. DO IT

I’m okay with being squishy by class, as long as I can eat bunkers if I embrace the squishy, instead of being bad if I try to spec tanky and bad if I spec squishy.

Going to die if outplayed/bursted is ample tradeoff for bunker predator.

- [some] Thief players 2015

Double Trouble.3162:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Double Trouble.3162:

Weapon swap with no cd will not only give advantage to thief, it will make it really op.

Why?

I request elaboration on how thief would become “really op” with this.

Quick pockets will allow u to never go out of initiative. Just imagine never ending pistol whip. Or vault …

Sure i would love that, but it would be way to op.

Ofc they could add a 9 sec cd on that trait, like the sigils have. That would fix it.

I’m also against it in any way. For a thief, weapon swap is a strategic thing. While other classes need to swap, to keep up in dmg, we dont. Weapon swapping often distinguishes between good an bad thiefs. Maybe lower the cd for 2-3 sec, but not 0 cd.

RE: 9 sec CD on trait

yes. Check my response earlier in the thread; obviously they’d have to add ICD for traits that give ini or bonuses on swap, but after that it miggght be a decent idea to run with, notwithstanding glaring problems I havent noticed.

Double Trouble.3162:

Weapon swap with no cd will not only give advantage to thief, it will make it really op.

Why?

I request elaboration on how thief would become “really op” with this.

dash if not using staff, bound if using offhand pistol.

+1 for thoughtful design, modest sound effects and uniqueness paired with a color scheme that isnt a nightmare to match most colors to.

Well done.

So OP that people refuse to use them for both PVE and PVP.

“No Oni-Akuma” tier implicit fairness.

godz raiden.2631:

I’m not a big fan of this idea for a few reasons.

1) Having a cooldown on weapon swaps is important for the “ebb and flow” of combat. What I mean by this is that there are certain opportunities that you, or your opponents, can take advantage of when a weapon swap occurs. Without a cooldown on weapon swaps, I think thief would be given an unfair advantage to some degree, or at least an unnecessary one. Seeing your opponent swap weapons, for most classes, is an important tell that good players will take advantage of. “Alright, that draghonhunter just swapped to his longbow, I need to watch for a good time to use any reflects I have and also try to close the gap to him to make his weaponset less effective.” Weapon swapping having a cooldown gives windows of opportunity.

2)This game gets pretty spammy with skills at times. For example, look at engineers and their kits. Any engineer who runs a multiple kit build does, to some degree, spam their skills off cooldown. They might do it with a purpose for each skill, but the point remains that not having cooldown on the swaps itself allows them effectively just go from one kit to the next pressing 2 through 5 (in varying orders) and be semi-effective. I realize since thief uses initiative this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, but I think you would have to accompany such a change with a baseline initiative return on weapon swap for it be meaningful, and that would probably lend itself to spamming abilities more than thinking about when to skillfully use them.

3) This would be a unnecessary power creep for the thief class that would enrage players of other classes, especially warriors. Warriors already have to invest in a particular traitline to get a 5 second weapon swap, and they have cooldowns on their weapon skills as well. It would just seem like a slap in the face to warriors to get a better version of their fast hands baseline, when warriors have been asking to make fast hands baseline for a while now. I just don’t think our class needs to have a better version of a mechanic that the players of another class consider to be core to almost all of their builds.

Re: #3, I don’t think that “slap in the face to X class because that is their mechanic” is a valid reason for scrapping an interesting concept for another.

Re: #2, I disagree for the same reason you shared. Thieves have an initiative pool, which makes all of their skill usage restricted even without the weapon swap CD. I see that Swap/SB5 away is probably going to be an issue with this proposal, but I wouldn’t say the same about spam. The drain each skill has on ini would probably add another layer of complexity to thief instead coupled with this change. Thieves may be more cautious to not attack all out because they know they may have an option to bail if they have misread the opponent.

Re: #1, I agree with this.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Power creep is badly needed in PvE though. Focusing in PvP meta should not dictate what happens in other game modes…that’s very shortsighted.

Gaile said that all game modes are part of their iteration process and I really want to believe that to be true, but the experience can speak for itself when Thieves aren’t even welcome in raids.

Thieves can barely survive dynamic events. Just looking at the Legendary Wyvern fight, when the whole area is covered in flames, Thief can’t even DPS since they have no long range weapon. Stealing to get in melee range is suicide and neither pistol nor shortbow can reach the target. If the Thief touch the flame, they melt in seconds. When I take my Thief that that encounter, I’m basically dodging the whole fight trying to stay alive rather than contributing by DPSing. With the Thief’s kind of defense mechanism, they should be the highest damaging profession.

So while it is perceived that the Thief is OK, that they don’t need to subject to power creep, their PvE performance is lackluster at best. So what exactly are you thankful for?

What’s PVE?

My point exactly.

I didn’t mean it though, explanation above.

I ended up coming full circle and still meaning it

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Power creep is badly needed in PvE though. Focusing in PvP meta should not dictate what happens in other game modes…that’s very shortsighted.

Gaile said that all game modes are part of their iteration process and I really want to believe that to be true, but the experience can speak for itself when Thieves aren’t even welcome in raids.

Thieves can barely survive dynamic events. Just looking at the Legendary Wyvern fight, when the whole area is covered in flames, Thief can’t even DPS since they have no long range weapon. Stealing to get in melee range is suicide and neither pistol nor shortbow can reach the target. If the Thief touch the flame, they melt in seconds. When I take my Thief that that encounter, I’m basically dodging the whole fight trying to stay alive rather than contributing by DPSing. With the Thief’s kind of defense mechanism, they should be the highest damaging profession.

So while it is perceived that the Thief is OK, that they don’t need to subject to power creep, their PvE performance is lackluster at best. So what exactly are you thankful for?

What’s “PVE?”

beat

Jokes aside I am thankful for knowing we aren’t on the chopping block this iteration.

I know that there’s full-fledged thief shunning in PVE, and while that can be worked on (and should be), I’m happy that balancing is (and I cannot believe I am saying this) for the most part tentative, seeing as how wide power leaps just make the game as a whole unpleasant to experience.

Maybe this is a learning experience for the devs, I dont know; but I prefer being underwhelming to rubberbanding between metas through sweeping buffs and nerfs.

Thief does need sustain though. I am in no way saying I am satisfied with thief as it stands.

Begrudgingly grateful that we didnt get sweeping changes that would end up destroying more builds in the end than it created. That being said, the inverse is partially true for PVE, where content is cooperative and the AI does not have a perception of OP.

… I pretty much said the same thing with about 100 extra words.

What is PVE? Make thieves viable there and worry about PVP seperately ofc.

MakubeC.3026:

GUYS!
What if we turn THIS into a drinking game?
What do you say?
One bottle per patch.

A.) One bottle of what? Be more specific, this is either too much or not enough.

B.) We already know we’re going to be drinking every patch

I missed “Grawnks heart” so this is ok to me.

It also takes at least two years for a holiday event to be fully repolished, we did this with halloween.

Not so much forced but-

“Thank you, Karl.”

For not submitting to the power creep allure and thereby saving thief from what might be a tsunami of nerfs to the new meta.

internal CD on traits that affect thief on swap and this would be… pretty interesting to playtest.

Ario.8964:

Santa then pulls off his fake beard and hat to reveal Karl’s face…

Hardcore plot twist 10/10

Zero Day.2594:

Consistently being inconsistent.

Being insistent on consistently being inconsistent is, in fact, consistency.

ya walnut.

I’d just like to say that I am beside myself with glee at how the players who so vehemently squealed that thief and warrior were OP are now finding themselves tortured by people who continue to play the class in its crippled state, because they were too short-sighted to realize that knocking down a class because it personally annoyed you could end up biting you in the kitten when it came to gameplay that requires you to team -with- these classes.

No matter what the players unfortunate enough to play thief/warrior do, they make people pull their hair out.

Suffer.

cackle

Alydeath.1025:

I feel so tired of this meta …

You have to be 100000 to kill 1ele + 1mesmer together or 1ele+1druid …

It’s so annoying fights are endless… We just run on the point and nothing happens …
Where are the DPS people ?

The dps specs got nerfed because the bunker classes complained.

Kayberz.5346:

Umm you do realize that you can only use ONE elite spec at a time, they dont have to account for ANY of these things going forward because all these things are isolated to that single elite spec

Any future elite specs only need to be balanced in the vacuum of their core specs. None of these issues will ever overlap with new specs

I… am not sure I follow.

What are you saying?

Laughing after winning a 2v1 with a class that is widely considered currently overpowered in the current meta = SEND HIM OUT

Bonus points: If you were an asura.

Fay.2357:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Silverkey.2078:

Some people just don’t want the mesmer to be in this game. And this is happening since game lauch: that explains why the mesmer has been in a non-stop nerfing train since launch. Evety time a viable build appears, it get nerfed to oblivion due to whinning. Seems like some people is still afraid of what they don’t understand.

I’d like to say something about thief, but I won’t because derailing.

The wheel does turn, does it not.

Irony. Not saying you’re wrong, just irony.

sweet smooth irony.

You can moan all you want with fake claims about how bad thief has gotten nerfed, but the fact remains that thief has been an essential part of the PvP meta from the launch of gw2, only dropping out of favor now with HoT. There is absolutely no comparison between the treatment thief received and the nerfs Mesmer got; nerfs that removed Mesmer from the competitive meta for multiple years.

I’m not even beginning to say mesmer was not bad for eternity.

I’m saying that I’m finding the repetitive turnabout between both of these classes humorous since the same claims of ‘people being averse to x as a class’ and ‘non stop nerf train’ are being used by whoever is getting slapped currently.

Like I’ve said multiple times, I do not know mesmer well enough to even begin to suggest nerfs for it, especially with the knowledge that it was the hardest class to play for ages.

It just warms a special place in my heart to see how identical their lamentations are to ours.

The part that’s a jerk, perhaps.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

There’s no such iteration, if there is, then it’s new.

this is apparently the case because it sure as heck has been nonexistent.

adozu.6398:

surprisingly spot on

I was moderately impressed for this reason.

Willing to see if they keep hitting bullseyes like this.

“This won’t end well.”

Zergs.9715:

- No cooldown, swappable only on max adrenaline.

Hmmm…

This sounds neat.

jonnis.2946:

rchu.8945:

jonnis.2946:

My wish came true!
.

the cycle begins. Now that two of my classes are nerfed, I will be making thread about other classes/builds too. What comes around goes around, always remember that!

I’m not calling for nerfs to any particular class. I’d like to see the entirety of the game turned down massively. I know its rare but my wish wasn’t actually to get Mesmers or Revenants nerfed, it was to have greater visibility on upcoming changes.

The trick to be mastered here is tuning everything down so that the game is:

a.) not boring
b.) equally demanding of effort regarding every class.

Fights lasting instants between opponents of near-equal skill = N.G.
Fights lasting years for the same = N.G.

Double revenant.

Anything else is a lie.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I guess it’s better than nothing but the problem it not really addressed.

-various snips-

They really should have kept the skills separated for PvP and PvE since this “balance” update has nothing to do with non-PvP contents.

Agree with most of this, addressing what’s left.

Better than nothing, indeed, still hasnt fixed the problem as you said. I’m willing to hold my tongue since at least someone has said something, until it becomes clear that ‘iterative balancing’ is not the game plan for this.

I’d be fine with separating pvp/pve, but it seems that they are averse to anything that prevents people from crossing game thresholds with any degree of difficulty that is above ‘seamless’.

Apart from what they did to thief reveal

I don’t see it happening, but it would make their jobs a lot easier if they did. Then they could worry about not breaking the entire game and focus on how the classes interact with one another in a nice little pvp bubble. Even though feeding cows the transition may be a bit tumultuous for the players, I still say the burden is better suited on them to learn a -slightly different- game if they want to pvp, if it preserves everyone’s sanity in the end.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Frankly as someone who mains a guardian I would rather they change the traps into marks (like necro staff marks).

By doing so there would be a trade off

1: They would no longer be invisible.
2: They would not last as long once placed.

However

3: They would share any boons granted with allies as well.
4: Could possibly have some finishers such as blasts/whirls added onto them.

This would stop the whining from lower ranked players about being surprised by DH traps while at the same time making their utility better for group play.

I’m okay with this. Having only myself to blame for:

*Stepping on a trap
*being positioned poorly so that I can be feared/launched into a trap

is what I’m looking for.

That being said it defeats the purpose of a trap. Maybe not go so far.

hence why I said change them to marks

the point
|
|
|
me

Right, right.

Also:

PrinceKhaled.5104:

WHYYYYYYYY?

outstanding.

rchu.8945:

jonnis.2946:

My wish came true!

Really excited for this, major improvement to the way balance is done. All the changes are nerfs and are being generally positively received which is excellent. Just hope the balance team take that attitude forward. Only QQing because people are complaining that not enough changes were made but I can understand why they were limited at this time.

the cycle begins. Now that two of my classes are nerfed, I will be making thread about other classes/builds too. What comes around goes around, always remember that!

The wheel turns.

Sincerely,

someone who only plays thief and warrior.

rian.9708:

You know that if anet will nerf traps most gur
ards will change to revs and mesmers and the matchups would be even worse but hey a new thing to cry about,most of them alredy did that,the ones that are left playing it are the ones who are not ready to give up on their most loved class after playing it for years…….

Thats fine. Theyll be just like thieves and warriors.

keep nerfing them until people have to try.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Frankly as someone who mains a guardian I would rather they change the traps into marks (like necro staff marks).

By doing so there would be a trade off

1: They would no longer be invisible.
2: They would not last as long once placed.

However

3: They would share any boons granted with allies as well.
4: Could possibly have some finishers such as blasts/whirls added onto them.

This would stop the whining from lower ranked players about being surprised by DH traps while at the same time making their utility better for group play.

I’m okay with this. Having only myself to blame for:

*Stepping on a trap
*being positioned poorly so that I can be feared/launched into a trap

is what I’m looking for.

That being said it defeats the purpose of a trap. Maybe not go so far.

Morwath.9817:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I’m rescinding my sarcastic comment on this thread and saving it for a later time, due to word from balance devs.

Was it a…

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

…bird?!

Stop =w=

zone.1073:

Firebird.8324:

Not warriors, who still have no reason to play this game or buy HOT.

^

Add to warriors’ Signet of Might the ability to make their attacks unblockable + immune to evade + corrupts Protection.

The masters of weaponry should have the unique ability of landing all attacks successfully (aside from invulnerability).

I main(probably? more like 50/50) a warrior and nnnnooo.

action oriented pvp means action oriented. we need to move away from absolute builds, not toward them.

signet of might already ignores blocks and reflects, why are people suggesting that we force feed people damage as good design?

Nova Stiker.8396:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I’m rescinding my sarcastic comment on this thread and saving it for a later time, due to word from balance devs.

Yeah, still doesn’t help that all mesmer balance must consider any action being able to be preformed twice. All balance must consider Revenants 50% free boon duration and all balance must consider Reapers access to perma-chill.

If you compare Facet of Nature with the Warriors Signet of Rage, Facet of Nature has the same power as the warrior elite skill AND it comes with a bonus boon duration.

This is true. I’m not saying its fixed yet. I’m saying I’m willing to hold my complaints until I see how frequent this iterative balancing is.

NinjaEd.3946:

Highlie.7641:

your best bet is just to log on and try it yourself honestly. just know you are going to die. alot

Also has or dps been gutted to where we cannot snipe squishy targets anymore or are squishy targets non-existent in a typical match up?

The latter.

DPS is fine, its just we cant sustain long enough to fight because the meta is now bunker.

unless you’re fighting DH, who is squishy in return for his DPS being invisible.

And that balance patch is today.

check PVP forum.

I’m rescinding my sarcastic comment on this thread and saving it for a later time, due to word from balance devs.

Oh my God.

Brb, eating my words and my hat.

/15Dwaynas

?

Why are people saying -just dodge the DH traps-?

Is this still a thing? people are going to pretend that invisible burst is okay. It doesn’t matter how squishy you build, being able to run a build that can nuke someones HP pool without telegraphs is poor design.

We went over this with thieves.

We went over this with Stealthbomb mesmers.

“oh, just predict the invisible attack” didn’t work then.

Why should this be any different?

Of course the DH is a dead target once he spends his utilities, but being able to spend them all to erase an HP pool, even with a half-second window as counterplay, is still bad design. What is it about cruise control builds that gets people so defensive? Your strategy is literally:

a.) Drop traps somewhere that is frequented by enemy
b.) Be nearby to stomp

That is almost identical to the turret engie decap build that people tried to declare as an engaging build when it was valid.

except this one is invisible, portable, impervious to dps, and comes with a port so you can literally drop traps on your opponent.

Nova Stiker.8396:

They clearly have no idea what they are doing.

What are they doing?

Silverkey.2078:

Some people just don’t want the mesmer to be in this game. And this is happening since game lauch: that explains why the mesmer has been in a non-stop nerfing train since launch. Evety time a viable build appears, it get nerfed to oblivion due to whinning. Seems like some people is still afraid of what they don’t understand.

I’d like to say something about thief, but I won’t because derailing.

The wheel does turn, does it not.

Irony. Not saying you’re wrong, just irony.

sweet smooth irony.

NeXeD.3042:

It’s definitely a trap.

This, + so amusingly obvious it hurts

10/10 for being so enthusiastic it went full circle and became just plain scary.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Einlanzer.1627:

I’d like to know if it’s because they’re completely inept at their job or if it’s because they are restricted from posting by their management (meaning their management is inept at their jobs).

That’s part of it why it is really strange since they we’re very active in the forum prior to HoT’s release.

Its usually normal for devs to go on CD after a large release. unwinding from stress, pinch patches and the like.

Probably more than a few of them were just stressed the kitten out for this expansion that they never even planned on doing at first. I assume multiple vacations after such a burst of content.

Puz.8529:

I really hope we could get some slight push into becoming a pure anti-bunker tool.

[ vibrates intensely ]

King xiuras.3615:

- I am not a thief who dps ppl to 30% and uses the elite skill to stomp ppl

I’m getting the feeling you think thief is OP.

If you could confirm this is not heresy, that’d be great.

Called it.

Next up on the chopping block, Mesmer.