Guild Wars 2

This is a good change that won’t impact good thieves, and only the bad ones that rely on chain stealthing (repeated CnD on PvE mobs, blackpowder/HS spam).

The helmet makers of Tyria have not figured out how to build a helmet for Charr. It is this reason why all my charr characters use cultural helmets. No squished ears or funny dunce look!

Kamata.5762:

Sebrent.3625:

The issue, as I said, isn’t that the thief can disengage. It’s the combination of how easily the thief can disengage to reset a fight and the fact that countering several thief skills comes down to the luck of your guesses. Obviously, you can increase that luck by becoming familiar with the playstyle of the thief you are fighting against (each has a rhythm … though the best thieves change that up constantly). Sadly, we can’t see thief names, depending on specs fights can be quite short, and it’s ridiculous to try to remember the rhythm of each thief.

The issue is the guesswork involved with fighting a thief coupled with thief’s ability to constantly reset a fight. You can only guess correctly so many times when that Thief is going to use steal and when that thief is going to backstab you out of the 4 seconds available to them each time they stealth. Eventually, if they keep resetting the fight, you’re going to guess wrong.

Now, this isn’t an issue at the lower tiers because those thieves are garbage that largely think “more damage!” and wait till too late to try to disengage, but at the higher skill tiers this is quite an issue. A good thief knows pretty quickly how the pace of the fight is going.

You dont have to guess or be a pro at thief to know where the thief is going. If a thief uses CnD when hes not yet losing he WILL try to backstab you. Use that knowledge to your advantage. If he is low health and uses CnD, he is probably backing off and so should you, because you cant stop him from backing off and he cant stop you because you will kill him in an instant if he engages. These are just 2 simple examples of many many counters to stealth. As a necro, just place fear around yourself, mesmer can pull with focus 4 distortion blur blink decoy, warrior block with shield, ele can RTL away or stomp with dagger earth 4, guardian speaks for itself. And best of all, DODGE. CnD only lasts 3 seconds, he will try to BS you in those 3 seconds. If you have problems with thieves youre just an average or below average pvper. ( I play a mesmer btw )

Culling in wvw is a different story and that is a problem though.

Anyway my point is: L2P and you wont have to guess.

You’re describing an extremly preditable thief if every time he CnD’s, he goes for a backstab. In stealth, the thief sees if his target is preparing for a backstab – what is to stop him from immobilizing, then kiting with sb instead? Good thieves are patient and time their burst when their target is most vulnerable, not whenever cooldowns are up.

There are a lot of bad thieves who are easy to counter, but Sebrent is right: a good thief dictates the pace of a fight. The fact that in this game, stealth enables you to see what your enemies are doing while cloaking your own movement, so in essence, you should always be a step ahead of your enemy. This means fighting good thieves is largely guesswork, and if otherwise, it’s the thief’s fault for being predictable when he has the tools to keep his enemies guessing.

Rayya.2591:

I took the base reference 2600 , since is the reference for skill coeficient calculations
On my build i managed to keep 2600 armor ( medium armor ) 16000 +hp and 114 critical damage , only with an lose on Power

Wow, my thief is in full exotics (I put my ascended gear on another character) and you have 500 more total stat points than me. It looks like you’re fully ascended/exotic, and some celestial stats, but I wasn’t aware it would make that huge of a difference, even if you had 25 stacks, food, etc.

Understandably for you, 2600 armor seems no problem while maintaining a good amount of offensive stats. I assume an average WvW player would be in full exotics, so it would not be as easy to reach such high armor without sacrificing a lot of offense.

Rayya.2591:

true but
if 13k hp and 3000 armor lose 80% of hp against initial burst, use heal skill for 6000 hp he can fight back with 80% of his HP
if 20k hp and 2000 armor lose 80% of hp against initial burst, use heal skill for 6000 hp he will be at 40% hp , he cannot fight back.
So personaly i sugest at least 2600 armor in wvwvw , before stack vitality

I generally agree with this, but I think it would be more intuitive to suggest to have a balanced ratio of vit/armor like: (vit + amount of health you can heal in a skirmish)/10 ~ armor.

Example : WvW thief has 16000 base hp, 1 HiS heals for 5.5k, can get 1k health returned from stealth – 2300 armor. This feels balanced, but my next defensive stat point goes to vit.

This changes depending on how you play wvw – some burst combos can clear low hp-high armor builds, so you may need more vit to survive initial burst. If your fat HP pool drops too fast and you can’t sustain your hp levels, get more armor.

Suggesting minimun 2600 armor kills light/medium armor builds since they have to heavily invest in toughness gear and tougness trait tree. An elementalist has base 1800 armor at 80 in full exotics. To get to 2600, gear and trinkets have to have toughness, as well as 30 points into earth magic trait line!

‘This will not end well..’
~Your favorite Sylvari

Kalona.9508:

Dustfinger.9510:

same reason a swordsman would kick an opponent. becvasue an opportunity opened up and he wouldn’t be expectiong it.

If we’re talking realistically…a swordsman WOULDN’T ever want to kick an opponent. Kicks leave you off balance and dangerously open to counterattacks.

It’s the same principle when it comes to attacking with claws/teeth as opposed to actual weapons. Why would you ever choose to forgo the reach advantage of a sword or hammer to try to attack with claws or teeth, particularly when claws and teeth are completely ineffective against any sort of armor.

Light armor wearers look tasty, and it seems medium armor wearers like to wear fancy hats or masks – nom their head!!!

Understandably, teeth/claws would be ineffective on heavy armor – maybe the racial skill would do significanly reduced damage on heavy armor professions. It wouldn’t be too unfair for other armor types as I presume teeth/claws would be melee range, and light/medium armor wearers usually have more range options.

Renovatio.2504:

It seems the people who are complaining about stealth just don’t know how to counter it. Do you not realize that you still take damage while stealthed?

Maybe the people who are complaining about stealth should go play a thief to a reasonable level, then see how it is.

This has been covered many times. You will rarely kill a stealthed thief unless he is predictible. Being able to see your enemies movement while cloaking yours is extremely powerful in an open world setting – it gives infinite juking potential. I’m sorry to say, if you die in stealth from enemies throwing blind aoe and auto attacks, you are bad.

I chuckle every time I use stealth to get away from a sticky situation and watch how silly it looks when I see enemies attacking air, until I realize how silly it is fighting stealth when I’m not on my thief. A post mentioned risk vs reward, and steath having no hard counters creates little risk when engaging and disengaging from any encounter.

What is your build? I’m not too familiar with engies, but if you have access to conditions like immobilize, chill, cripple, it severly limits the distance traveled by HS.

I don’t think traits were designed to have huge drawbacks like this, and the fact that last refuge is 5 points in the SA tree, you can’t opt out of the trait if you invest points there.

At minimum, auto-triggers shouldn’t proc confusion. Confusion is supposed to give you a false sense of choice, but last refuge doesn’t even let you have that.

Tripp.9862:

Cirax.9231

Tripp.9862:

Thieves are supposed to be able to decide when to engage and disengage a fight. It’s the whole purpose of the class, if you can’t handle that don’t fight them.

That statement is a bit contradictory. Not every class has the luxury of choosing battles, and if a thief chooses to fight you, you’re likely in for the whole ride until he chooses to disengage or you’re built for mobility.

You won’t see complains about thieves in competitive spvp because of conquest mode, where bunkers dominate. If a deathmatch was implemented, I’m sure the complaints will spill over to their section of the forums.

It’s not contradictory at all. Thieves are masters of one v one, choosing when to engage and when they need to run. that’s basically the class description right there.

as for spvp, no they wouldn’t. There is no culling in spvp. I use the same setup for spvp as I do WvW. You can tell the difference if you do it yourself. People actually see me for the full duration of revealed in spvp. I like it better that way honestly. It’s more challenging…

I was referring to where you said “if you can’t handle them, don’t fight them.”, but if a thief chooses to fight you, more often than not, you cannot choose to avoid him.

That being said, I agree thieves are fine on the whole. I’ve played one both in wvw and spvp, and they feel balanced in pvp. In wvw however, they can go buck wild without consequence, compounded by culling. I can’t suggest reasonable changes to stealth until culling is fixed, but at the moment I can hop in wvw with my thief and come out with fat loot bags, daily completed, yaks & seige destroyed, all without a scratch. Stealth is extremely powerdul in a open setting, and although thieves specialize at roaming and disruption, they shouldn’t be able to do so with zero consequence.

Tripp.9862:

Thieves are supposed to be able to decide when to engage and disengage a fight. It’s the whole purpose of the class, if you can’t handle that don’t fight them.

That statement is a bit contradictory. Not every class has the luxury of choosing battles, and if a thief chooses to fight you, you’re likely in for the whole ride until he chooses to disengage or you’re built for mobility.

You won’t see complains about thieves in competitive spvp because of conquest mode, where bunkers dominate. If a deathmatch was implemented, I’m sure the complaints will spill over to their section of the forums.

Dual.8953:

Columba.9730:

Daendur.2357:

in a game where stealth duration is so short, having a movement speed reduction will make it useless.

They can nerf stealth by doubling “revealed” debuff duration and, when a player is affected by “revealed”, gains protection, regeneration and 25stacks of might.

Stealth duration isn’t short. Permastealthing is easy. Go Look at the videos.

Columba: a single stealth is 3-4 seconds. Chained stealth can prolong it, but on it’s own it’s 3-4 seconds. Even Shadow Refuge only achieves it’s longer stealth by stacking together smaller stealths. He made a nerf suggestion, why are you trying to argue about it?

To be fair, he was probably being sarcastic suggesting the reveal debuff to have protection, regen, and 25 might stacks in exchange for a… longer (de)buff?…

3-4 seconds of stealth gives you plenty of time to set up an attack or escape.

wish.3102:

Just use the steal, cnd and bs combo on him, if he is at like half life after, just leave, if he’s almost dead pursue with autoattack and use heartseeker sparingly til it dies.

It’s better to time that burst combo when the ele is most vulnerable. Keep an eye for cantrips like mist form, armor of the earth. Bait those out by kiting with a short-bow, and force the ele to switch to water to heal. An ele on the defense will switch to air for escape, so prepare to use shortbow steath immobilize. If he still gets RTL off, use shadowstep to close the 1200 gap, and proceed to burst as likely the ele has his defenses on CD.

Dont just use CnD + steal + backstap combo on an ele whenever it’s up, be patient and keep an eye on the ele’s rotation and defenses to time your burst.

If you’re a condition thief, I find venom p/d can work, but otherwise it will be a draw with d/d eles since they can easily negate the bleed damage.

Raptured.9307:

TwoBit.5903:

maddoctor.2738:

Raptured.9307:

Calae.1738:

We’re the only class with at least 3 useful utilities and the rest are aweful.

We’re the only class where all our elites are terrible.

The devs spend more time nerfing and taking things away then adding and modifying. Probably because it’s quicker and cheaper. Designing a new ability and balancing it requires a lot of testing; which Arena net doesn’t like to do.

Not really, a good number of utilities are very useful compared to those of the necro or say warrior. As for elites, our tornado is very useful against classes with little cc protection. Just not against guardians.. Don’t use it against guardians please…

Tornado is bad and nearly useless, at least most other Professions have one or two useful elites… Eles have zero. Warrior utilities are far superior than most Elementalist utilities in lots of different situations (banners/shouts beat anything the Eles have as party support).

Oh right you are talking only about PVP here… apparently it’s the only game mode that needs “Dev attention”.

The best Ele utilities are based around self-preservation. Eles have support built into their weapons that balances them out a bit.

Tornado makes turns you into a big target. Useful when you want to get yourself killed in PvP.

Try playing in a team sometime, or capping pts in tpvp against classes with no stability.

Funny, teams usually carry some sort of stability, unless you’re a thief or ranged. Have you tried using tornado capping a point when enemies attacking the node pop stability? Might as well stand there and do nothing because that’s how useful tornado is in pvp.

Good point imz – if only they implemented a “live” tutorial or training server exclusive to new players, so they can comfortably learn pvp mechanics instead of being instagibbed at spawn point by a glory farming thief in hot join.

Pirhana.8935:

A better fix would have been making it so RTL requires a target. That way it could only be used as inetended as a gap closer. you dont put a damage attack on somthing that is used to travel…..

I play a D/D ele 50% the time but even i will tell you there is nothing more annoying than a ele attacking you then at the 1st sign of losing they RTL away to safety.

What about warrior rush, whirlwind, savage leap, swoop, heartseeker, etc? Are these skills with damage allowed to be used as escapes as well? The idea of gap closers presents the player a choice of fight or flight. Most of these skillls do much more damage than Rtl as well.

I’m also surprised you find eles running away with rtl more annoying than thieves /mesmers peacing out with stealth. Rtl can be countered (it’s hard but possible) but you will never catch a good player utilizing stealth to escape (no hard counter. + stealth means you always have the positional advantage moving against your opponent).

^Well said. With a burst build, I poke warriors to see if they are full gc or not. The ones that have some defence are usually better skilled and can survive the burst, while still hitting like a truck.

Guardian is a 180°. They are too tough to take down alone.

I main an ele, so taking one down isn’t too bad. It’s easier to spot windows of opportunity to burst them down when you’ve played the class yourself.

I thought this was the SoS vs Kain vs FA thread, but skimming down this page, I see a lot of “TC this and TC that”, from posters with FA in their signature O_o..

The enemy thief had plenty of time to react when you shadowstepped towards his SR, yet he stood still right in the center.

Stealth isn’t god mode, but it puts you in a huge positional advantage, and thieves should utilize this to always be a step ahead of their enemy.

Burning scales poorly with condition damage, so speccing that on d/d means you’re relying on the bleed stacks in earth. This is very unreliable in a pvp setting, thus the gravitation towards power/precision.

You can splash some condition damage if you like, but I wouldn’t recommend investing too much into it.

What you’re talking about is the blowout mechanic (abilities with launch), which works differently than knockdown. You do have to wait to use your stunbreaker once you’re flat on the ground or it won’t work. I agree it’s lame sometimes but that’s the way it works.

Though as you mentioned, very few skills have this mechanic, and are usually on a high cd or on a utility. I can only count 3 maybe 4 professions that even have access to launch skills.

If you like rng gambling, karma vendors any orr map sell Orrian Jewelry boxes for 4.5k karma each. It contains vendor fodder, some karma back, but most importantly a chance for a shiny, shiny lodestone.

Eles don’t have much access to stability, so the 2 in 1 benefit of armor of the earth is worth the cooldown imo. Especially since you are using ether renewal, cleansing fire leaves you with a buckload of condi removal. Protection + stability would fit nicely with your other utilities.

PvE/WvW gc —→ 10.8k hp
sPvP gc --→ 14.1k hp

Zerker amulet in spvp gives some vitality

‘During the Zhan guo period (Warring States period 475 B.C. to 221 B.C.),  in the country of Chu,  a large household held a ceremony and made a sacrifice in memory of their ancestors.  After the ceremony was completed,  the master of the household gave his servants a jug of wine to thank them for their help.  But there wasn’t enough wine for all the servants.  One of them proposed that they should all draw a picture of a snake.  The one who finished a good picture first would get the wine.

One of the servants finished a good drawing.  He looked around and saw that the others had not finished,  so he then added feet to his snake to consolidate his victory.  When one of the other servants finished his drawing, he looked at the first servant’s drawing and said: “It’s a general rule that snakes do not have feet,  so that isn’t a snake.”  Having said this,  he snatched the wine and drank it down.’

Moral: air elementals didn’t need the extra legs

Haven’t you heard? WvW is a thieves zone, and now that those pesky d/d eles are toned down, there’s no one to contest their reign! Everyone entering WvW should be converted into thieves. We can never see the enemy anyways, so that solves culling and balance issues all in one

freaktong.8169:

Cirax.9231:

freaktong.8169:

I agree to disagree. RTL was way too powerful before (it still is now). The short cd made eles almost unbeatable for many professions as it allowed eles to easily reset fights when things aren’t going their way.

RTL is the only movement ability on the offhand dagger. What differentiates eles getting away with Rtl than a thief stealthing away or a warrior using GS? Rtl isn’t as immortal as people claim it to be. It can be countered just like everything else.

The Rtl nerf in addition to all the other nerfs (soothing disruption, renewing stamina, boon duration, healing) was unnecessary.

RTL isn’t an elementalist’s only escape. When chained with mist form, lightning flash and dagger abilities (fire atonement), the elementalist have almost unprecedented escape.

Not every elementalist uses d/d, and not every elementalist use both cantrips. In addition, utility cantrips have a high cd – chain them together for an escape, and any other profession with weapon movement abilities will catch up to you. and now you have 2 important cantrips on cd.

If a bunker d/d ele gets away with all those skills, fine. If im playing the running game, I’ll go on my alt warrior and use 2 repeatable weapon skills on gs, or even easier, press one button on my thief and disappear… while actually downing enemy players at the same time.

Rtl nerf changes a lot more in game than it seems on paper. Anet mentioned bunkering would be addressed, but many other builds were unnecessarily affected as well.

freaktong.8169:

Grevender.9235:

I am mildly satisfied by the humble boost on our defensive abilities, but the nerf on RTL is too heavy. Now I finish my basic rotation and still have 4 (FOUR!!!) seconds of RTL cooldown.
I could’ve accepted – reluctanctly – one or two seconds nerf, which already compromises our key strategy for survival – which, given our super low hp and paper armor is, guess what, mobility – but not to the point to force you into changing gear or utilities.

I agree to disagree. RTL was way too powerful before (it still is now). The short cd made eles almost unbeatable for many professions as it allowed eles to easily reset fights when things aren’t going their way.

RTL is the only movement ability on the offhand dagger. What differentiates eles getting away with Rtl than a thief stealthing away or a warrior using GS? Rtl isn’t as immortal as people claim it to be. It can be countered just like everything else.

The Rtl nerf in addition to all the other nerfs (soothing disruption, renewing stamina, boon duration, healing) was unnecessary.

Fire focus is now much better, and focus overall is much better. More options!

Rtl nerf wasn’t necessary imo. Healing outside of water dodge EA should’ve taken a hit to address the bunkering issue. For x/d players, your rotation to air for Rtl may have to change since the 5 seconds extra cd may throw off the timing to have it available when you need it. Boo to this change

Frost aura got overbuffed – if they just changed the stacking chill fiasco, that would be fine. An additional 10% reduction to damage makes auramancer builds very tempting…

Edit: They did not mention the nerf of soothing disruption to half the regen and vigor duration, and the fix for shocking aura proccing zephyr’s boon for 5 seconds of swiftness instead of 10.

Most of these changes are reasonable, except RTL. There was no reason to nerf it, and the 5 second increase in CD makes a bigger difference than it seems.

Atherakhia.4086:

Ask around. RTL is the problem most people bring up. The mobility of the class and its ability to restart a fight on demand is what pisses people off. The healing mechanics for the class make it that much easier to do this. I’ve never once heard anyone complain about the actual damage the elementalist does because, lets face it, the damage just isn’t there regardless of spec. I’d take a hit to both RTL and Healing if it meant a real direct damage or burst option that actually worked.

People will always complain about what annoys them, often disregarding the real root of the problem. Thief stealth gets loads of complaints for resetting fights and making fights “annoying”, but the nerfs suggested by these players would destroy the class

Rtl can be annoying, but bunkering because of consistant strong healing is the real problem.

BTW ppl have complained about the damage of d/d eles… once some build gets on the the hate list, ppl will throw every nerf in the book and would be happy to see their nemesis profession become a free kill.

While skill floor can be measured between classes, skill ceiling can be limitless for any class dependent on the players active in competitve play. Even if you have mastered your class (regardless of how easy or hard it was to get there), your battles come down to mind games, creativity, team coordination, and counterplay. As long as those are everchanging, there is never a ‘max’ to skill level, and players will strive to outplay other players.

thewanderer.8561:

Yes. But starting to get bored as well. playstyle goes like this:

1. Join a zerg ball by following a Blue Dorito on the map.
2. Then, Hope you got enough numbers.
3. Stack, do combo fields then pew pew
4. Hope you don’t die.
5. Rinse and repeat.

Tried roaming around with small groups on classes other than the thief. Doesnt work. People most of the time run away from you. A few minutes after, you get facepalmed by an invisible zerg out of nowhere. Spec ops gameplay is better left to thieves imo. No choice but to run with the zerg or turn your small group into a zerg ball, or better yet get a blue dorito as well then zerg to win around the map. Overwhelming Zerg=ONLY solution to every objective.

So yeah, that’s why im bored.

^Carbon copy of my WvW experience. Following a zerg is fun once in a while, but it gets boring with aoe spam and chasing the same objective over and over. If you want to roam, you rarely find a good skirmish with other roamers, and likely run into 20 man camp flippers instead… which is “roaming” group to a high pop server. I log out at once when my fps drops to a nearby zerg – you could almost hear the train of pain approaching when that happens :p

I’m hoping the march update will freshen things up, but currently wvw is getting stale.

Elementalists benefit from all major and minor stats, so I think it’s a great choice if you’re moving towards a more balanced build. Plus, those rings look pretty cool as a set

You may find you’ll be down 100ish power and some tough/vit if you change your amulet and rings from PVT to celestial – it’s up to you how much you want to trade-off. (E.g. keep the amulet pvt to maintain some power)

covenn.7165:

Ralloff.7359:

(Quicknote) outside of confusion, conditions are useless against eles. So much cleanse it ain’t funny.

Not completely true. Someone that knows what they are doing can keep conditions on us fairly well because they know how class works and exploit it.

^This – there are some builds out there that can stack multiple conditions at a time, and if timed correctly, can be applied on eles faster than the removal believe it or not. A condi Engie or a venom p/d thief comes to mind, but those builds are so rare yet they are a direct counter to d/d eles.

I’ve noticed the clusterbomb issue in sPvP – about 5% of the time, the projectile vanishes, and the #2 SB skill slot is stuck toggled on detonation until you press 2 again.

Silferas.3841:

If you think about the issue even a little tiny bit, you could see that:
1) you need a dps to down a bunker
2) usually two of them at least
3) if you finally manage to bring down the bunker, you still need to stomp him to start de-capping the node

a) DPS characters have no access to secure stomp -> bunkers reign supreme (even more)

b) DPS characters stay as they are -> bunker meta issues don’t escalate further into all-tank madness and terrible game mode of MY GUARDIAN HAS SURVIVED THE ARMAGEDDON… TWICE!!!

</thread>

Good point +1

Solori.6025:

Cirax.9231:

D/d eles are strong, but mobility is not the issue. Burning speed and magnetic grasp are gap closers, but aren’t reliable as escapes. Rtl is the only real mobility skill in that weapon set.

Devs have indicated a tone down to ele bunkering soon. In addition to the upcoming aoe tweaks, nerfing d/d mobility will set them back to free-kill status.

The devs hinted at taking down the small things that add up to the bigger ones..

I expect healing will be nerfed first.

Yep, I wholeheartedly agree with their justifications on why eles are strong, but I strongly disagree mobility is an issue as argued in this thread. I was just saying if they nerf mobility too, that would be a disaster – but I’m confident it will be healing first as you mentioned. That’s very fair.

Sand Beagle.9827

uhh, well the thing is depending on the class your immobilize is usually a short range attack, so besides predicting the future and immobilizing a second before they trigger ride the lightning, it would take you half a second to react to their ride the lightning and then ~half a second for the immobilize attack animation to finish. By then they are probably already out of range.

When a d/d ele is in trouble, you can see them switch to water for heals, or air for escape. That is a very clear indication of what is going to happen next. The number of times I’ve seen eles being immobilized by competent players right after swapping to air before rtling away indicates this is very counterable.

I emphasize this again: there is already dev discussion on toning down bunkering and aoe. Mobility on a melee build on a profession with the lowest armor/hp is the least of anyone’s concerns once they tweak the heals and aoe.

I instagib someone fighting distracted on a node with a gc thief, then getting instagibbed by another gc thief from behind. After getting stomped, I watch the thief that just killed me get instagibbed by another gc thief from my team xD glass cannon train in hotjoin is good times

D/d eles are strong, but mobility is not the issue. Burning speed and magnetic grasp are gap closers, but aren’t reliable as escapes. Rtl is the only real mobility skill in that weapon set.

Devs have indicated a tone down to ele bunkering soon. In addition to the upcoming aoe tweaks, nerfing d/d mobility will set them back to free-kill status.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Cirax.9231:

I thought mesmer’s #2 down was safe if timed right before the stomp goes off (the stomp finishes when both you and the clone are still stealthed). Of course, if you use it right when you’re getting stomped, you have a chance of appearing close to them and they finish you, but does this still apply when the mesmer is in the middle of downed state #2 “limbo”?

I have used the Downstate #2 before they start the stomp and during it, because its VERY unreliable when it comes to getting teleported it can be pointless as i have been quite a few times teleported right next to where i was before i teleported.

Another issue is that if you start the Downstate #2 DURING the stomp you can be ported away and in stealth and they will finish the stomp and it will kill you – that happens to me quite a lot as well.

What happens if you use it near the end of the stomp, but before it finishes?

I don’t think updraft counts as knockdown, rather a blowout like the big explosions engies make. I’ve tested this in the mists – earthquake counts but not updraft.

I thought mesmer’s #2 down was safe if timed right before the stomp goes off (the stomp finishes when both you and the clone are still stealthed). Of course, if you use it right when you’re getting stomped, you have a chance of appearing close to them and they finish you, but does this still apply when the mesmer is in the middle of downed state #2 “limbo”?

lettucemode.3789:

EasymodeX.4062:

I didn’t say it was OP. I just said it was much faster than other kill combos for no apparent reason, with less telegraph as a random and unnecessary bonus.

Probably because a thief using this kill combo is far squishier than a rifle or greatsword warrior.

This is true based off of passive defensive stats, but I’d be much more comfortable with bursting on a thief as they have much better escape tools. Thief burst is also much more reliable and has a better edge in surprise, which is why thieves are more common in pvp (and more complained about).

Op, tell is what you’re smoking and share with your fellow magus friends

I agree OP. I think the intention of the warrior is to have natural base defense in order to fight in the heat of battle. This is seen in pve (warriors are super easy mode there). However in pvp, they melt pretty fast even with their high hp/armor. The best damage mitigation against other players in this game lies with active defense like mobility and boons.

I think toughness should scale better and boons should be toned down a bit to balance out this issue.

D/D ele’s are still susceptible to burst if you time it when they’re most vulnerable – the key is to be patient. Kite them or wear them down depending on your build, and pay close attention to cantrips used (mist form, lightning flash, armor of the earth). Try to draw these out as they’re get-out-of-jail-free cards. Eles would always try to cleanse threatening conditions like immobilize, chill, and cripple. They feel uncomfortable when hp drops to 50-60%, so they will likely heal in water attunement or use ether renewal (<<<—-YOU MUST interrupt this). After their burst heal is a great time to do some damage.

In a good fight, you will draw their cantrips out. Burst specs only have to wait until the ele’s hp is around 75%. Having the lowest hp/armor in the game, they can’t reach any more than 21.5k hp in sPvP even with all the vitality they can get. A good burst spec can easily clear 16-17k damage with their combo on ~2500 armor (eg. C&D —> steal —> backstab: 5k + 5k + 7k). Time burst when given the opportunity, and the ele is dead.

I know this has been said a 1,000,000 times, but the best way to learn to counter a profession build is to play it. Once you play them, you feel the strong and weak points, and learn how you can exploit the weak points (or take note of what others did when you’ve been defeated).

NinjaEd.3946:

You must have a 3rd eye, because apparently you can see the enemies behind you while you are trying to take out enemies. I have 2v1 ppl b4, I have survived a 3v1 situation b4, but as soon as a warrior gets involved out of nowhere with bulls charge at the right time + the combo, it isn’t avoidable unless you rely on pure luck. No, it’s not doing something wrong its warriors are too good at what they do, which is why it disgusts me to see thief nerf posts when this garbage is running around free.

Isn’t that exactly what backstab thieves do best, except there is a chance they jump in with their combo stealthed and unseen? O_o…

I think the culling issue in WvW enables thieves to land a lot more backstabs reliably, but otherwise the skill is balanced – it takes good positioning and set up to hit for big damage, which is a fair trade-off.

I play an ele and I don’t even know half the skills conjured weapons bring, but I know for sure whatever utility they bring, all professions can do something similar within their own skillset, hence the neglect.