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The problem with Halting Strike isn’t the scaling. I found it to be 1.25x power scaling, which isn’t great for something that pops this erratically, but sits firmly in the “okay” camp. The problem is that if your interrupt isn’t being caused by a weapon (ie: chaos storm or counter blade) then the weapon portion of the damage comes from an internally generated number, which comes out to be much weaker than your equipped weapon.
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I’d agree that Mesmer’s downed state is in decent enough shape.
- #1 isn’t ideal, but it fills a logical role. In PvE, the only way to take you down is attacks. Confusion damages the enemy for attacking. In PvP, it’s still more focused than the Engineer’s “throw RNG” attack. (Though the Engineer’s downed skills are so bad, using them for comparison is practically a strawman argument.)
- #2 can be detrimental if misused. You have to actively weigh the costs and benefits before hitting it, especially in PvE. You can easily screw yourself out of a rez. In return, you get the perfect storm of anti-stomp: an escape that’s immune to both gang bangs and teleporting chasers.
- #3 doesn’t come up often for me, but when I do, it does its job. It generally wins slap fights in PvP. In PvE, it’s almost as good as… well, as simply being a ranger. You’ve got a unit out there actively seeking a target. Depending on the situation, you could focus fire, or use the distraction to hit #4. Because if you’re power based, he hits like waking up next to last night’s bad decisions, and doesn’t need your pew pew.
It’s not the end all be all of downed states, but I’ll definitely take it.
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Compounding Power for 9%+ damage?
Aye, that’s what the decision was between. The two links were 10/30/0/30/0 and 10/30/0/20/10, with Compounding Power in the Ill10 slot.
I don’t feel Compounding Power is at all bad, and certainly works just fine in that scenario. I just feel that in that environment, if I’m getting my full 9% bonus, it often means my phantasms are out (not always, but that is the goal). I haven’t done the math or looked up the theorycrafting to see how three iDuelists/iWardens/iSwordsmen at +15% would stack up to a sword at +9%. I’m sure someone has though, and wouldn’t mind seeing those numbers.
I also didn’t take into account that both builds have Deceptive Evasion. So a full constant 3 phantasms may be a loftier goal for a melee build.
In the end, it’s that extra Inspiration trait that sways me. It’s a nice toolbox for some added condition removal or the like.
If it were between the two, I’d personally choose the 30 in Inspiration. The extra phantasm damage and the flexibility of another Inspiration trait to swap out based on the situation feels worth significantly more than anything the first tier of Illusions has to offer for a phantasm build in a dungeon environment.
‘allo!
I’ve been occupied with non-game life the last few months and nearly missed this post.
IGN: Kyra Darkwish (when I’m not alting)
World: Ehmry Bay – US
Random Facts:
- Spends the vast majority of his time in open world pve, often alting and generally playin’ it casual like.
- Specializes in lounging in guild chat and talking shop rather than going out and doing.
- Gravitated to mesmer because of the positive social atmosphere here on the forums.
- Has an “itchy shatter finger”. This does make building for a casual pve slant difficult, but the need for butterfly pyrotechnics must be indulged.
- Would have better gear, but… dapper kitty and skewed priorities.
The condition damage from Winds of Chaos is as good for your clones as it is from you. (Edit: The only difference seems to be that their bleed is a second or two shorter.) That’s one of the advantages of a staff. However, Illusionary Elasticity will not give the clones an extra bounce.
Dual sword is appealing to many for the sheer damage the Phantasmal Swordsman can deal. If you’re shattering your phantasms, that is going to be less pronounced for you. The block can be handy and the line-daze suites some builds, but neither are game changers. I also like double sword purely for aesthetic reasons.
You are by no means in a bad way using a focus in dungeons. Some would argue it is the best weapon you could bring. Warden brings some area damage to the party and Temporal Curtain offers area control. As weak as mesmer aoe can be, and how important it is in dungeons, this can only be a good thing. If you trait the focus, then the projectile reflecting curtains absolutely trivializes some dungeon encounters.
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Interesting. I don’t imagine it comes up very often, since a melee clone isn’t likely to survive the 10 to 12 seconds it takes to meet his sibling. (Me: “What are you still doing here? F1”) But cool none the less.
I find I really don’t have to do much with the Naga to get the most out of it. 1 through 10 are readily available, once you’re comfortable tapping the lower buttons. I don’t use the two extra buttons up near left-click because they’re just too far out of the way for me.
Beyond that, I set middle-click to dodge. Shift+1 through Shift+4 map to F1 through F4. Weapon swap goes on Shift+5. Basically my goal is to not have to reach up above WASD. For my own personal touch, I also map some extra things to Z, X, C, and V that don’t have mappings by default (look behind, target nearest, etc).
Also, “-” gets set to toggle walk. Cuz sometimes you just gotta strut like the straight pimp mesmer that you are.
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Those early levels have a tendency to be full of lots of falling down. Without raw burst potential or survivability traits, we’re kind of just a paper warrior for a while.
Sword/Pistol is popular because it offers a lot of ways to not die. #2 offers you an escape and a condition cleanse while #5 is basically melee invincibility against all but dredge. #3 does loads of damage, thanks to most enemies happily standing still for you.
The shortbow won’t really do very much offensively for you early in the game, but it’s got lots of utility and is hard to catch. It’s also near unmatched in terms of its ability to tag every mob in existence during events. More XP. More loots. #2 is a spammable blast combo finisher. #4 is a poison field you can detonate yourself, spreading weakness.
Have fun!
Some kind of new mechanic might be interesting. Just spit-balling here, but…
New Status – Premeditation
At 10 charges, the next dual-skill executed gains additional benefits.
- Unload – Grants Fury and Might. Four of the attacks are 100% projectile finishers.
- Shadow Strike – Increase Torment to x4.
- With a pistol in the main hand, Steal, Dancing Dagger and Head Shot grant +1 charge on use. Head Shot grants an additional charges on interrupt.
Pistol #1 – Setup Shot
Soften your enemy while preparing a bigger surprise for them.
X damage (P/P damage increased to a competitive level, Necromancer axe comes to mind).
+Condition based on offhand (Bleed on P/D, Vulnerability on P/P)
Chance to gain +1 Premeditation based on current Initiative:
- 12+: 100%
- 7-11: 80%
- 1-6: 50%
None of that is a serious suggestion, mind you. It’s just a dart tossed in a direction of thought. We don’t have cooldowns. If there’s a benefit to mindless spamming, we’ll do it. But a sort of self-imposed “soft cooldown” could curb some of it and reinforce a degree of diversity in play. It wouldn’t even need to be as complicated as the above. Maybe improve the damage on Vital Shot and Unload, but have Unload grant some kind of diminishing returns, like a stacking debuff that lowers its damage or otherwise makes it undesirable to use more than a couple times without a breather.
Just fodder for thought.
I wouldn’t even begin to guess the code or optimization that goes on behind the curtain. Thar be dragons that way.
Even if we are to use a pair of tooth picks, Rangers and Warriors will still cry about it.
tp/tp thieves are so OP! My warrior has to eat cheese from the cheese platter one piece at a time. Nerf them, or there will be no cheese for the rest of us!
Stacking is somewhat important for damaging duration conditions and regeneration in that the highest potency (condition damage/healing power) condition/boon currently in the stack decides the damage/healing for the whole stack. When it falls off, the effect falls to the next highest. It’s important to know if the highest damage/healing participant is working towards maintaining the stack or not.
However, this now begs how the game purges conditions beyond the cap stack. I don’t know if this has been researched in the past. It likely didn’t matter that much with a 25 stack cap. Even in a champion zerg scenario, it wasn’t hard to slip at least one burn or poison in there with your name on it, bolstering the perma-stack to account for your illustrious 1,700 condition damage. With a stack of 5, that could very likely not be the case, depending on how it prioritizes replacing and purging. If it’s something like “first in, first out”, then a misplaced venom share or noob Guardian with an F1 fetish could do some serious damage to overall DPS.
sniffle I just wanted to steal the massive boon stacks off dredge. Is that so wrong? ArenaNet, why you love dredge so much?! (srsly, they’s friggin everywhere) I guess I’ll augment it with Bountiful Theft, but that’s less of a boon steal and more of a “vigor with benefits”.
Aye, I’ve been a supporter of a “pockets” system for a while now. Getting the item off of F1, however the rest of the implementation works out, would fix this entirely by allowing you to Steal without using the item. One Steal granting two possible abilities does sound appealing, allowing for a bit more strategy. I don’t foresee it happening, since that would require making a lot of new skills, but I like it.
I’m realizing my posts on the topic are coming across staunchly anti-sword, when that’s not the case. I asked myself why, and it seems to be largely devil’s advocate against the kinds of arguments I’m seeing in defense of the weapon. These fall in two categories:
- “It works for me, you suck at games.”
- Defending its weaknesses with its strengths.
The first just irks me, partially because of the perceived elitism, and partially because it speaks to a definite problem with the weapon. It means there’s a barrier to entry. Ideally, a mechanic should be easy to learn, hard to master. Low entry level, high skill ceiling. The sword clearly lacks the former and there’s not much help out there to help people over that hump. If sword were a building, the front door would be on the third floor with no stairs to it and a sign hanging over it that says “High DPS apply within”. Some people have managed to climb the side of the building and claim their prize. Now folks want to install an elevator.
The second tells me that there’s a definite appreciation for unique weapons and a fear of them all gradually becoming homogeneous recolors of each other, though that’s not exactly how it’s articulated. The core sentiment seems to be “weapons that feel truly unique from top to bottom should be more common, and the versatile mechanics should be refined and accessible without taking away what makes it special”, but mistrust shapes the response to “I don’t trust you to touch it without kittening it up, so I’m content to deal with any limitations if it means I get to keep what I have”.
This mistrust, as well as the first bullet point, are probably furthered by the fact that it is far and away the highest DPS weapon in the Ranger’s arsenal, and there’s a perception that it’s a trade-off for the challenges of learning and using the weapon. Take those challenges away and ArenaNet may feel obligated to nerf the damage (further) in response. Would something as simple as allowing a mid-kick dodge compel them to shave off damage in trade? I definitely can’t promise that as a “no”, and that’s just not acceptable to people who have entrenched their play-style around this implied trade-off.
I can’t completely dismiss those concerns. What are the odds that the sword could undergo entry-level refinement and come out the other side still equally functional at the high-skill end as it is right now? I don’t think the sword is in a good place right now. I think it suffers from a fairly unfinished implementation marred by its place as a fringe mechanic. I wouldn’t call it fundamentally flawed, just that its fundamentals aren’t well supported or considered in the game’s overall design. There’s a need for polish. But that polish could come at the costs of some players’ investments. It’s only a gamble, but being an outlier set of mechancs, there’s nowhere else to get it once its gone.
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Last time I checked, you couldnt dodge out of any leap, be it rangers gs2, warriors s2, you pick one. Why should be rangers sword be any diferent?
That’s not even a remotely similar comparison. In those other cases, you press #2 because you want to leap. Whether it be to close a gap, turn and escape or initiate a point-blank leap combo, they’re always deliberate and premeditated. This isn’t the case with the sword. You can’t not leap. It is a mandatory function irrevocably welded to your means of dealing damage. The first time you press #1, that’s a freebie. Every other possible button press on the sword after that is a commitment to an uninterpretable, algorithm determined relocation. With no less committed alternatives shy of changing weapons, it demands a meaningful degree of prescience.
I prefer skill2 to…
Staff #2: Nature´s Wrath > Master’s Warth.
Use staff throw your “pet” to target 400aoe range900 daze effect on direct hit.
And side effect is up to what “PET” you throw!!
Bear type : get launch.Throw bear to target ha!!
Dog type : get fear. you know dog bite hurt then…run!!
Pig type : get cripple.OUCH!!
Bird type : get weak. I don’t like smell of…
Spider type : get poison. Ewwwww.w..w…It stinky.
Lizard type : get torment. It’s stink!!
Devo type : get knockdown. It’s heavy!!
Moa type : get more daze and stun sometime. kungkittenbird kick em all!!
Jellyfish type : Umm…well if you fast enough immo…them.
Fish type : again…if you fast enough…valu and bleed.
I’m not sure how viable the idea is in practice, but I find the imagery of Animal Lacrosse hilarious.
Over 9000 deeps!
There really isn’t a reliable means of measuring DPS in the game. The combat log isn’t exportable, doesn’t have time stamps and (last I checked) doesn’t even output your pet’s damage. It’s all kind of eyeballed and gut checked.
How much is that on your interface panel? I find it hard to get that high.
Heh, sorry, that first part was a really bad joke. But, Chopps’s post is a very good start towards that goal. Sword will take some getting used to, but it’s capable of some mind blowing face melting. Looking at numbers, Ranger will always feel like they’re doing less than they are. Their damage comes from multiple sources that add up to a solid sustained output. They’ll never see the big numbers pop like a Thief’s backstab, but that’s because they’re built more for heavy pressure than quick burst. If you can work around the quirky mechanics, then they’re good at what they do.
Over 9000 deeps!
There really isn’t a reliable means of measuring DPS in the game. The combat log isn’t exportable, doesn’t have time stamps and (last I checked) doesn’t even output your pet’s damage. It’s all kind of eyeballed and gut checked.
It should also be noted that we’re getting stun-breakers that can interrupt launches in a coming patch. Hopefully this means that they’ve surpassed whatever technically limitation disallows interrupted actions in mid-air and will consider implementing a mid-leap dodge for sword #1. If no other changes were made to the weapon, could anyone conceive of a reason this would be bad?
It’s kind of like I was discussing in chat with some others. Good thieves really don’t spend that much time in stealth. Long stealth is handy as a reset button or GTFO, but not really mid fight. As a condition cleanse, the most important is the instant tick. The next tick is 3 seconds away. 3 seconds is a long time to stay on fire when you have Thief health. Also, In that time, you could’ve backstabbed/sneak attacked someone and been a good chunk through your revealed debuff, ready to do it again. Despite popular belief, we’re not invincible in stealth. Nor do we stack up boons every second in stealth like Mesmers. Time spent stealthed is time spent not winning.
So, I don’t really see an anti-stealth utility with a 10% up time as threatening.
Edit: I did skip over Shadow’s Rejuvenation, but that one’s not game breaking either. It’s comparable to something like Warrior’s Healing Signet, but more situational. I can get comparable healing rates from Assassin’s Reward + Signet of Malice, except replace “regenerate health while in stealth” with “regenerate health while rearranging intestines”.
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You laugh, but one day the Legendary White Bunny will return. Judgment Day. We’re training. We can only pray that we’ll be ready.
Oh, we’re not talking about tequila shots… awkward… I’ll just… yeah…
We’ll just have to see if a massive HP surge is incoming. I don’t think that would really address the matter so much as band-aid it. There are certain attacks meant to be dodged or you get gibbed. Rather than making minions nigh invincible, a system more focused on this mechanic would probably be more appropriate.
I’m reminded of the Dodge mechanic in Champions Online. Dodge as a passive defense was more effective against charged-up power attacks. The game was consciously aware of the difference between big, slow hits and quick, weak hits, and had a mechanic that scaled with them. The actual implementation wasn’t perfect, since it leaned heavy on RNG and partially trivialized the active blocking system, but it’s a general concept that might work better with minions. Make it so they can take the big hits without trivializing the attrition from normal attacks.
I was thinking more along the lines of tutorials from the ranger community. ArenaNet isn’t going to release such things. But since the ranger sword is possibly the most publicly loathed weapon in the game, there is an ever so minute chance that they will cave to the pressure and overhaul the weapon. MMOs have a tendency to gravitate towards homogenization over time like that.
It will ultimately fall to the ranger community to T2P if they’re serious about protecting their sword.
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I am never gibbed with my sword in dungeons. Please don’t change the sword, ask for a new mainhand that doesn’t have leaps like a dagger. Thank you.
While I’m sure you can sword your way through dungeons just fine, claims like that are really all I’ve heard on the forums. I’ve only seen faeral’s videos really discuss how to make the sword functional, and they’re more of a basic primer on how to not completely suck. If it really is a case of L2P over the sword being functionally flawed, then better training resources would go a long way towards curbing the sword hate and ensuring it retains its current design.
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The never ending dilemma. PvPers who don’t need precision dodging loving the sword for its harassment, mobility quirks and damage potential. PvEers tired of getting gibbed in dungeons because they can’t dodge clearly telegraphed doom attacks.
It’s been debated since beta. A year into the game without so much as a hint at change being considered, it’s pretty clear it’s staying like this. I think all you can hope for at this point is a new onehand melee weapon when they eventually get around to that.
If you were here for the boatload of changes back in late June, then you’ve seen most of it. They’ve been pretty conservative with the profession updates over the last couple months. Cuz of some tournament or some such.
That’s still pretty broad. That kind of rules out conditions, but there’s still a lot of options in glass gear. Deciding factors might include dungeon/world pve/pvp/wvw, favorite weapons, preferred styles like shatter or phantasms, etc. No trait fits every need.
They can’t close this thread. That hat is too classy.
Though the only reason we’re talking about it now is because we were asked not to. It’s a hypothetical patch in which hypothetically nothing really happens. Meld with Shadows bug fixes, a slight berf to Teleport to Intervening Terrain Feature and a mini-buff to our nichest build. Maybe there will be something to discuss come actual patch.
My solution was to stop making stealth builds. Dodge spam FTW!
Wait, no… One burn stack got through. I’m dead.
I guess we all have our hurdles.
That’s probably going to require some testing if such a change goes live. It would depend if Signet of Inspiration copies the accumulated boons as one large one or retains their internal stack counts. Also, will higher duration boons be able to intelligently push lower duration ones off the stack? Speculation is pretty much impossible without these kinds of specifics. Though I suspect it’s safe to assume Boon Storm will go from being able to eventually maintain the current cap on every boon to maintaining the new cap on every boon.
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The weapon’s stats won’t have that significant of an effect. I know some people put defensive stats on their shortbow because they use it defensively and accept they won’t be doing loads of damage with it. It doesn’t really make them tanky, though. You’re only shifting something like 15% of your overall bonus around.
Straight Assassin isn’t really very appealing. It’s just too much crit. Pure Berserker’s for your glassies is still where it’s at. For builds/professions that are mixing their gear from different sets, Assassin is a nice alternative to Rampager’s. It gives you that big surge of extra crit chance, without the wasted condition damage. Still, since a lot of those non-thief builds that just have to crit every time are probably doing it for the conditions, Rampager’s isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
For Thief, crit is really just bonus damage. There may have been a time when we could work some sigils into a fine crit build, but that’s little more than debatable history now. None of our traits make it any more appealing. Power wins in terms of core damage, while crit and crit damage just makes it better. So, Berserker’s all the way for your direct damage bumps.
signet – > critical strikes, tricks – > condition damage.
Personaly i don’t belive an condition signet is required, and i don’t belive cond thieves would benefit very much from an signet , (since they cannot invest much in signets mastery’s )
Aye. As it is right now, it’s mainly because we have no good crit procs. Warriors, Necromancers, Mesmers, Engineers and Rangers have access to bleeds on crit available in their crit trait lines. All but Ranger have those as minor traits. It makes the crit line far more appealing to condition builds. Engineers and Elementalists also have burning crits as adept traits in their power/cduration line.
That just leaves Guardian and Thief. Guardian get a might boon support crit proc, cuz they have to be different (in their tree that is not crit, crit damage or boon duration, cuz: guardian). Thieves… just crit to crit. We have no build-centric reason to do it other than direct damage. While it’s nice that we’re not ruining the 25 stack of doom on our power builds with weak bleeds we were forced to take by some minor trait, it also draws a hard line around the crit line (and thus the signet line), denying entry to all but direct damage builds.
Until that changes, I agree. Condition damage signets would be counter-intuitive to our current build structure.
My feeling is with Skady on this one. It doesn’t work for me because I already don’t wait until I’m getting low to dodge. I dodge when I don’t want to get hit at all. Gap making is nice, but it’s the invincibility frames I’m interested in. I hit dodge because I want to stop whatever I was in the middle of doing and not get hit instead. If taking damage wasn’t an issue, then I wouldn’t bother ceasing my damage output in the first place.
The sword does enough damage that nothing in the 1-15 areas is going to really be an issue. You’ll two-shot almost everything and nothing can two-shot you. Mix in something offensive like a bird pet, and nothing will live long enough to take a meaningful swing at you. Even most of the champions are straight kite-n-fites.
But there does come a point in PvE where you probably won’t win the DPS race. Harder content is designed with dodge in mind. Sword has committed leap frames on 2/3 of its main attack that can’t be interrupted by a dodge. This can be partially worked around by disabling auto-attack and building a rhythm with a pause between the second and third hit. Having something like a Naga mouse or other means of hitting attack with your thumb helps there. But ultimately, you’ll never fully mitigate the delay. Sometimes you won’t be able to dodge when you want to. When you’re building to take full advantage of the sword’s high damage potential, that can be fatal.
PvP is another story, where dodge is slightly less vital to living. You gain more from the constant pressure of humping their leg like the animal you are than is lost in precise control.
I want to like the sword. The animations amuse me and the pet might is appealing. But I like dodging more. I don’t have it bound to middle-click because I thought the button was feeling unloved. Ranger has permanent 50% vigor as a low hanging fruit, and I like taking advantage of that. Timely dodging is important to me, and the sword just can’t offer that.
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Random Ideas:
Snake Skin Signet
Passive: +180 condition damage
Active: Send up to 3 conditions from you to target foe.
Signet of Venom Blood
Passive: +10% condition duration
Active: Convert conditions to boons.
Signet of Hemorrhaging
Passive: +15% bleed duration
Active: Gain health for every bleed on target. Target is weakened for 5 seconds.
I think most people would agree it needs some type of movement skill. Maybe give head shot a short evasive backward roll (Keep the range in line with Axe Leap)
Hold-out Pistol
Fire a hidden pistol, catching your opponent by surprise, while you perform an evasive roll backwards.
Performs a withdraw-style backroll, but shorter, plus the daze shot.
For balance/interesting purposes, perhaps give it a temporary second attack, similar to how Flanking Strike/Larcenous Strike works, reflecting whatever contingency shot you loaded into the second barrel of your Tyrian Derringer.
It’s generally known that P/P is under-performing, but it’s something of a delicate operation. P/D, S/P and D/P are all functional specs that they have to be careful not to upset. If they don’t want to tweak the other sets, it means fundamentally changing Unload to tie the set together. They did something similar with P/D by giving its dual-skill torment. The difference here was P/D was already a functional condition set and they were just playing to its strengths.
P/P has no coherent theme to speak of. #1 and sneak are damaging condition stackers, but there’s no stealth in the set and no other damaging conditions. #2 stacks a non-damage support condition. #3 is a raw damage crit-fisher attack, but thief has no good on-crit procs and what they do have has internal cooldowns. So what you end up with is very cool looking confusion/retaliation bait. #4 is purely for interrupts; cool but situational. #5 provides melee tanking support, but it’s a ranged set.
Both #2 and #4 could be modified without ruining their other sets. P/D doesn’t really need Body Shot and Headshot only recently saw popularity from Perplexity abuse. The hard part would be making these something that functions with every set while not breaking any individual set. I wish them the best of luck in that unenviable task.
Unload is a more isolated beast, and likely what will be looked at first. If Unload was made to do something like apply conditions (one random stack of 1s burn, 4s bleed or 3s vulnerability per 2 shots, as a crackpot example), you’d probably get something more functional. Mix in some kind of bleed-on-crit trait, like countless other professions get, to take advantage of your 8x crit-fisher. You’d essentially be making main-hand pistol the thief condition weapon in all instances while leaving the other weapons untouched. Since this would ultimately lead people into Trickery for the cdamage, improve the pistol options there and tweak Steal to be able to shadowstep away after use (F1 becomes Shadow Return, F2 uses the stolen item), making it more viable for a ranged set user.
I’m kind of sick of condition builds, so it’s not my first choice, but it seems like the path of least resistance right now.
And it would have to be main hand pistol only, because I think that’s the only thing in the profession I haven’t heard blood-curdling cries of abuse over yet. But mark my words now, that won’t last. Body Shot will one day get its expected makeover. And the hills will echo with the cries of OP.
Nope too late. Body Shot is OP.
It went from 3stacks 8s, to 5 stacks 6s, to 10stacks 3s. :/
I saw the change, but didn’t do much with it after giving up on P/D. I just assumed that since there were builds on several professions capable of perma-maintaining anywhere from 10 to 25 vulnerability solo with little to no effort, that we’d be free of that rage. The Runes of Perplexity thief hate should have taught me otherwise. I don’t learn so good.
Backstab is OP.
Heartseeker is OP
Stealth is OP.
Blind tanking is OP.
Bleed spam is OP.
Headshot is OP (totally not the runes of perplexity; it’s just thieves).
Dodging is OP.
Now you know that one weapon set with no burst damage? The one with slow, telegraphed attacks and one neat trick where it takes your boons? But not in that cool way like Mesmers or Necro where they share them with their friends or turn them into conditions. Rather more frequently in the same ongoing theme of slow and obvious. Yeah, you know the one. We used to joke about how much it sucked back in the day.
That’s OP too.
Please kindly stand still in your P/- spec. You may spam Repeater if you like, to promote the illusion of fighting back and possibly trigger confusion or retaliation. But no utilities. We wouldn’t want you to accidentally win.
And it would have to be main hand pistol only, because I think that’s the only thing in the profession I haven’t heard blood-curdling cries of abuse over yet. But mark my words now, that won’t last. Body Shot will one day get its expected makeover. And the hills will echo with the cries of OP.
You have my deepest sympathies and best wishes. I think this thread is a poster-child for karma. Yours is the first screen name I think of when I think about the positive atmosphere and communal spirit that drew me towards the Mesmer sub-forum. Official game forums tend to be very negative, anger-filled places, and the presences that subdue that force are valued. You get back what you put in, and you’ve earned our support.
That’s the power of boon sharing!
Take care of yourself while you’re caring for others and we’ll be here to welcome you when you return.
My info I posted to the Halting Strikes discussion page:
I just tested this on Utahein in the mists. Using a Steady Sword and Counter Blade, I get a power scaling of about 1.25x, assuming the 3 stacks of Vulnerability caused by Illusion of Vulnerability proc before Halting Strike. If someone wants to check my math, I got:
129 damage @ 1016 Power
174 damage @ 1361 Power
212 damage @ 1660 Power
248 damage @ 1939 PowerWeapon damage was 258 steady and Utahein seems to have 2600 armor.
(258 [Weapon] * 1660 [Power] * 1.25 [Coef]) / 2600 [Armor] = ~205.9 damage
~205.9 * 1.03 [3 Stacks of Vulnerability] = ~212.1 damage
I did this using Counter Blade because you can only get steady results from an interrupt caused by a weapon. Utilities and the Diversion shatter have their own internal weapon of sorts and ignore whatever you’re holding. Using Pyro’s data, we should be able to roughly deduce that internal weapon’s power (edit: about 760 -775; that’s painfully low) .
(edited by Clockwork Bard.3105)
Wow. That escalated quickly.
Now everybody take a deep breath. No traits have to get hurt. Happy thoughts. This isn’t the thief forum.
Imma play devil’s advocate here. Just cuz.
Let’s look at the topic from a different skew. Without the threat of DE removal. Is it “too important” to a shatter build? If so, why?
It seems less a matter of DE being too good and more one of non-DE clone generation being too bad. Clone generation for a DE shatter build is a non-issue. They are more often limited by their shatter cooldowns. It kind of corners that family of builds into a 0/20/0/0/30 framework. Some will drop Illusions before they’ll drop DE. I think the general hostilities in this thread have shown just how important it is to people. Liking a trait is well and fine, but I don’t know that any trait should be that vital.
What I think this shows is that if a build functions off of clones (that “if” is important, because discussing non-clone builds shoves the target issue out of focus) then we’re getting them (before traits) much slower than we need to use them. We’re feeling ammo-starved.
I don’t want to see DE go. There’s nothing wrong with it. But there is a definite dominant strategy issue within the clone build circle. It needs some competition.
(edited by Clockwork Bard.3105)
Aaaaand their price promptly doubles. Now I’m regretting not farming the Living Gold Mine.
Clones faking out players is that neat idea a lot of us had going in, but it’s not going to ever be a realistic feature of the profession, nor do I believe it was designed to do so.
I see complaints about things like clones not having food buffs, and so they’re given away by targeting them. I think that’s giving our opponents way too much credit. In truth, if a player is paying even a fraction of that much attention to you, no amount of shuffling and UI obfuscation is going to pass off a simplistic AI as a player. Seen through anything more than the corner of one’s eye immediately gives them away through behavior alone.
The one-handed dual skills are basically just weaker versions of what you would get if you were dual-wielding that weapon.
- Twisting Fangs [D/-] is like Death Blossom [D/D]
- Repeater [P/-] is like Unload [P/P]
- Stab [S/-] is just a slightly stronger basic attack. You can’t dual-wield swords, so there’s nothing to mimic.
- Improvisation: I think thieves are not big fans of RNG. This has enough going for it to earn its spot, but I doubt it’ll ever be popular. Because Steal related abilities are often called “bundles”, the added damage functionality is ambiguous and misleading.
When I last tested this several patches ago the only thing I noticed it increasing damage on was summoned ele weapons. Has anyone been able to get Bonus damage from this? or is it only take for the RNG CDR?
In GW2 Beta as a thief when you stole an item it would replace your weapon skills, and this trait boosted all those skills. The thief steal bundle mechanic was changed to what we have now, and the trait has been left the same since then.
*To use this trait to full effect you have to team up with an ele who summons weapons. *(Not very likely)
I’ve tested it in a handful of situations, and it does seem to only apply to items that replace your weapon bar. General consensus seems to be (really no idea how to test this proper) that it bolsters WvW siege weapon. At this point, it should probably be an engineer trait. We can trade them. We’ll take… um… I don’t know, how about Incendiary Powder. I’m sure they’re not using it. <.<;
hahaha if you send me Urmom maybe.
Her ashes are dear to me. But with today’s cotton and iron economy, we can’t afford to be choosy.