Thanks for the suggestions. Anyone else have any alternate proposals for Momentary Pacification?
Maybe instead of daze from using an elite skill, it could cause a daze from swapping legend or weapon like Primal Echoes.
The trait is actually working as intended (25% chance to apply torment), but the tooltip is incredibly inaccurate.
That said, I don’t think it’s GM worthy with a 15s ICD. How does 10s sound?
I think most people want the originally advertised version of copying conditions. If that’s not possible, it’d be nice to have a more interesting effect than 1 stack of torment. With the cooldown, the trigger chance, and a limited radius, I almost can’t tell if it’s doing anything.
Well, it’s not only the sword. this class has a lot of bugs that need to be fixed. Let’s pray ha3.
I know what you mean. This profession just feels very unpolished and incomplete overall. I just felt like venting about the sword because I can’t avoid using it for most power builds. It’s not like some of the broken traits (Pulsating Pestilence, Charged Mists) where I have decent alternatives.
Precision Strike sounds like it’s still bugging out. Also the scaling is bugged.
However, UR is working as intended.
Now to add to your list, Offhand Sword 5 needs to either be a shadowstep or have a range increase so you can actually land it. I’d rather see it as a shadowstep personally, but keeping the same animations.
Yeah, now that I look at the wiki I see that scaling is broken on pretty much everything for the sword.
I still don’t like Unrelenting Assualt even if it’s working as intended. Taking 8000+ confusion damage from pushing one button doesn’t seem right. And my character getting stuck after using it is definitely a major problem.
Sword #5 (Grasping Shadow) as a shadowstep would be nice. Instead of copy/pasting Cloak and Dagger they just copy/paste Infiltrator’s Strike. Makes sense since one is a dagger skill and the other is an actual sword skill.
It seems like almost every skill on the main hand sword has some kind of issue. The third chain of auto-attack doesn’t scale properly. Precision Strike sometimes hits completely random things for no reason. Unrelenting Assault gets cancelled by enemies being near walls or entering stealth. Sometimes your character gets stuck unable to move after using it. It also procs confusion damage for every hit rather than just once. Basically the skill seems like 33% chance it actually works, 33% chance it fails, and 33% chance it causes your death.
Why can’t Precision Strike and Unrelenting Assualt be made to only hit your intended target? If an enemy is low on health I don’t want to hit their pet/minions/illusions. It shouldn’t be called Precision Strike if the attack just fires wildly in every direction. And Unrelenting doesn’t fit either when my character can’t seem to focus on the same target, then gives up if he brushes against a wall.
Sounds like you guys are suggesting to create “mercenary” servers.
The thief mostly sucks at large group play, sPvP, dueling, PvE and GvG. It is marginal in skirmish. So the plan would be to gut its scouting and roaming capability? Basically remove its ability to decap in sPvP.
Thieves are so far down the totem pole now any changes to their mobility would effectively eliminate the class from play. Even more so gutting the SB teleport would turn an already pathetic weapon into a complete piece of trash much like they have already done to D/D, S/D and P/P.
Luckily for Karl thief players the “balance” team would never let that happen. So you don’t have to worry about some nonsense like adding a cooldown, then also bumping up the initiative cost a few months later.
Unlike me I’m sure they never had to worry about running out of initiative. Even if they couldn’t use Infiltrator’s Arrow they’d still have Withdraw, Shadowstep, or Dash to escape. Then after a few seconds their intiative is refilled and they can re-engage me with Steal, Shadow Shot, or Infiltrator’s Strike.
A few seconds? It takes over twelve seconds for the entire initiative pool to refill, unless you select a utility to enhance refresh, which means it only takes 11 seconds to refill. From that refill, a thief can get two or three attacks or escape mechanics off and then has to wait another twelve (or eleven) or more seconds. Steal is on a 30 second-cool down. Shadowstep is on a 50 second cool down. Withdraw is on an 18 second cool down. In that time, any other class can get 8 attacks off, or even more if they have cool downs less that 12 seconds (or 11) and all three utilities and their heal off. Basically, more actions than a thief can undertake in the same period of time.
Use CC and you’ve just ruined the thief’s day.
12-15 seconds to fully refill initiative, only 6 seconds needed to use most of the weapons skills. I have to wait 5 seconds for Phase Traversal’s cooldown plus potentially 2-3 more seconds for enough energy to use it, and that’s only if I’m auto attacking the whole time. I don’t think a thief player would completely run out initiative anyways unless they were spamming Unload or something.
Steal is rarely 30 second cooldown since most thief builds use Trickery and sometimes Sleight of Hand. Shadowstep isn’t used often enough for the 50 second cooldown to matter, plus if I try to reach them they can just use the return skill and I’m out of energy. Withdraw is also rarely untraited in this condi heavy meta, so the 18 second cooldown is irrelevant.
There isn’t really any chance to attack a thief if they’ve already run away at 1200+ range, let alone attacking 8 times. As for CC I don’t know how I’m supposed to do that when Phase Traversal used up my energy just to reach them. If I did have energy there’d still be a 1-2 second windup for anything that’s not melee range.
I tried fighting 1v2 thieves while defending a camp on my revenant yesterday. Stealth wasn’t really a problem, but when one of them got low health they could just run off into the distance. I basically only had one chance with Phase Traversal to try and down either of them, but usually never had enough energy.
Unlike me I’m sure they never had to worry about running out of initiative. Even if they couldn’t use Infiltrator’s Arrow they’d still have Withdraw, Shadowstep, or Dash to escape. Then after a few seconds their intiative is refilled and they can re-engage me with Steal, Shadow Shot, or Infiltrator’s Strike.
I wish 3 years ago thieves got the same treatment that revenants are having now. They’d probably have 4 or 5 weapon skills with cooldowns tacked onto them, or maybe something worse, like only starting with 6 initiative out of combat. Fortunately for them it’s too late in the game now to address the poor design of the initiative mechanic.
Good nerf. More emphasis on energy management instead of introducing more cooldowns.
More emphasis on forcing the player to auto-attack would be more accurate.
So they can adjust a skill to not target stealthed enemies, but can’t fix it so it doesn’t target random inanimate objects?
I think world linking is working well at the moment in regard to balancing population, but it’s also unfair to players on the guest servers. There should be some form of compensation for losing their identity and having to deal with the queue time. I think that at the very least these players should have a higher priority in the queue than players from their host server. If it’s possible, maybe something like the first 10 queue slots could be reserved for the guest server.
Since all stats go much higher wvw, why limit yourself by spreading them around? You could do that same build with dire/trailblazer and get much higher condi damage plus even more toughness and vitality. I mean, there’s a reason pvp never got a dire amulet.
Ok, what I should’ve said is I don’t think there are any decent builds for you using your complete celestial set. However, a regular power shatter or condi shatter build would probably work fine using your celestial trinkets with some cheap exotic gear.
Actually, I should ask, are you doing roaming or zerging? It probably won’t matter what gear or build you use if you’re zerging.
(edited by Clownmug.8357)
What’s the point of going full celestial? I don’t think mesmer does hybrid damage very well unless you go full viper or sinister. If the extra vitality and toughness is what you really want, then you’d be better off just mixing valkyrie/marauder/knight/cavalier with berserker for a power build, or mixing trailblazer/dire with rabid for a condi build. I don’t know of any use for healing power on mesmer, so that means they’re aren’t any reasons left to use celestial. Am I right?
The hate probably comes from how the “good” roamers are usually running builds with some absurd combination of mobility, stealth, sustain, or damage (via burst or condi pressure) that counters most other players unless they also have a similarly absurd build.
If they added resistance to the possible boons it would actually be a nerf since it’s making things more random. That’s why they added swiftness and might a few months ago.
Well it sounds like you have a problem with excessive visual effects. Adding the signet graphic on top of the animation might actually make things worse for you since it was already considered an easily telegraphed skill for a long time.
Was this some kind of an insult you were trying to pull off? I’d like to keep it formal. That aside I find it easier to avoid spite signet rather than moa mainly as spite signet appears while you cast it. Aslo spite has slightly lower cast time compare to humility so it’s not a question of reaction. This suggestion is mearly to help extend counterplay against humility as it’s supposed to behave like a signet instead of its previous state. Certainly wouldn’t solve everyones problems but it’ll likely increase my chance to avoid it along with others. 10s to disable a player completely out of the fight on top with with continuum split is too stong of a swing I’d say.
It may have stayed as polymorph moa for 2 years but it doesn’t mean it has always been in the same meta or to say “always in use”. Right now it’s at its peak of the most viable / strongest elite, mainly due to continuum while also no longer the full bunker meta as before.
No it wasn’t meant as an insult, sorry about that. I’m just saying that adding more graphical clutter isn’t going to help.
The fact that this skill is being used more often now, than in the past, doesn’t mean it suddenly needs to be tweaked for counterplay. It’s already got an animation that most people have learned to spot easily. As others have mentioned, the fact that you see the signet on the mesmer’s bar makes it even easier to avoid than in the past. So what I’m saying is that your suggestion is reasonable, but unnecessary considering there are already visual cues in place.
Well it sounds like you have a problem with excessive visual effects. Adding the signet graphic on top of the animation might actually make things worse for you since it was already considered an easily telegraphed skill for a long time.
It doesn’t seem like a big issue considering it wasn’t even a signet skill for almost 2 years. Everyone could see the mesmer casting just fine back then, and I’m pretty sure the big purple glowing hands are still in the game.
Is there really a need to do any math?
The build focuses on spamming a slow, easily interrupted skill. It can only generate illusions through weapon skills. It can’t use any of these skills (except phase retreat) while channeling the mantra. Inevitably, most of the shatter heals are at the 0-1 illusion level, and are being wasted to gain stability and quickness to cover the weaknesses of the mantra.
After watching the video I’m not even sure the if the trapper guardian / condi mesmer player was trying to win. There were times she was at full health while the guy was nearly dead. Makes it seem like they held back to try and make the build look viable.
So because they won’t take volunteers, you believe favoritism/cronyism is the best compromise? They already used several streamers for testing the desert borderlands, look how well that turned out.
They should have people sign up to become testers like every other company does. There’s no need for a popularity contest.
It feels kind of weird that it does less damage than Well of Calamity, but I guess that’s the difference between the “heavy” damage and “massive” damage mentioned by their tooltips.
-Demonic Defiance is really cool in theory, but its hot garbage. 2 seconds of Resistance for activating my elite is like getting a handshake from an invisible man.
It gives 2 seconds for any Mallyx skill you use, not just the elite. Did you mean the elite should give even more resistance as well?
Tempest isn’t bad for open world and warhorn isn’t bad for a support weapon. Is that simple of enough to understand?
Anyways, I don’t really care about PvE. For PvP and WvW, Tempest functions very well if you know how to think outside the box.
The only point I can agree with from you or Senario is that overloads are easily interrupted. For PvE I wouldn’t use Tempest outside of open world anyways. Also, you guys know you don’t have to use warhorn right? Most support weapons are subpar.
They mindlessly follow a rotation because that rotation is how you maintain DPS in PvE.
What are you going to do, sit in fire and do fire autoattacks on dagger? Bye-bye DPS.
You gotta keep using burning speed, frozen burst to blast, earth 4 to blast again, and switch to air for the only non-garbage autoattack DPS on dagger.
It seems like you are the one who doesn’t have a clue why elementalist can only function by constantly swapping.
It will continue to be the case until the autoattacks on attunements besides fire staff and air dagger aren’t total garbage. Any autoattacks besides those two are a large DPS loss in PvE and doing an overload doesn’t come close to compensating.
And yes, you have to swap attunements to blast your fire fields to proc perma fury from persisting flames for your group. That is why they’re even bringing you.
Right now Tempest only functions as a gimmick bunker pvp spec, complete garbage in any other game format or gear set/playstyle.
How is that not a problem?
I don’t see reaper/chrono/scrapper/dragonhunter/herald being pigeonholed into a single role and a single tank stat combo.
I don’t know how you’re stuck auto-attacking for 5 seconds, I don’t have that problem. Also, if you care enough about might generation there’s Tempestuous Aria.
Yeah, that MUST be it. It cannot possibly be that the spec has several obvious flaws, that make it difficult to use…
I’d like to know what these flaws are. Care to list them?
It only procs from the illusions that hit the target
Wow, guess that’s another reason for me to never take that trait.
Right now I think a lot of players are hung up on a few issues:
1) They mindlessly follow a rotation and can’t overload because they’re constantly switching attunements.
2) They’re not willing to use anything other than cantrips even though some shouts would work well in their build.
3) They don’t know how to play builds without arcane or water trait lines.
If they can adapt and get around these issues, then Tempest opens up a whole lot of build options.
Elite specs are just something new you have to learn how to fight. You’ll be playing up to par again once you get used to them.
LOL @ People who think 200 Ranks is not achievable. This is like one weekend with a birthday booster.
Yeah, one weekend where you play for 72 hours straight.
I earned 60 ranks in 12 hours of WvW last weekend using a booster. At that same rate, I could have hit 200 in 42 hours using boosters.
Ok, even if what you say is true, it’ll still take longer than the hero challenges in the jungle, which will probably only take 2-3 hours if most are easy to reach.
LOL @ People who think 200 Ranks is not achievable. This is like one weekend with a birthday booster.
Yeah, one weekend where you play for 72 hours straight.
What happened to 170 points?! You maniacs! You blew it up!
Time Catches Up seems pretty good to me, what’s weak about turning your shattered illusions into super fast homing bombs?
err. my main issue is the meta for mesmer is just stealthing and restealting trying to get a invis shatter on someone. it took a profession that was out in the open skillful and made it = to a thief pushing steal from out of los.
ugg.. my shatter missed.. i better blurr to stall until reveal is over so i can restealth again.. ugg missed that shatter too.. better distortion so i can stealth again..
old days=best days.
Ha! this guy, ok den..
Seems like an accurate assessment to me, I don’t see what’s funny about it.
OP, you forgot to add blocking and evading stealth attacks reveal the attacker. That should’ve been #1 on your list.
It would be nice if Illusionary Counter (and Illusionary Riposte) worked like Riposte and Counterattack. I guess having weaker versions of other professions’ skills is supposed to be a mesmer thing.
I don’t want another interrupt trait, they’re too unreliable for people who don’t have a fast connection. I’d rather have it rolled back to 50% chance if it was actually necessary, which I don’t think it is.
It’s good advice if you’re a thief fighting another thief, have nearly identical builds, and think/play the same way.
Mesmer is my main profession actually. I’m just being nitpicky because it seems like thief players only know their own profession and give advice that requires non-thieves to work ten times harder to beat them.
OP, you said this topic applies to mesmers as well but why do I only see advice for a single thief weapon set?
His counter was about timing and knowing their method of attack. If you learn about the mesmer stealth timers and how they deal their spikes of damage, you can counter in a similar fashion. Learn the classes you struggle against to learn how to play against them better.
Yes, it’s good advice to learn to play different classes but tips for just dealing with stealth in general would’ve been nice. It’s like telling someone afraid of flying to go become a pilot when teaching them relaxation exercises would’ve been simpler.
OP, you said this topic applies to mesmers as well but why do I only see advice for a single thief weapon set?
How many thieves does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Just two. One thief puts in the bulb while the other complains on the forums about +1ing.
Nice video but the devs usually don’t respond to anything unless it’s presented in bullet points.
People should be used to this by now considering thieves were doing it for almost 3 years.
No they weren’t. Thieves were either super glassy and required melee attacks/reveals to do their damage or they went D/P which was high stealth but wet noodle damage and those were also fairly glassy. The condi variants were somewhat dangerous but they simply couldn’t apply sustained condi damage without a reveal. With the exception of the trapper build in the thief class, they have to be seen to apply their damage. Their burst also came with the condition they ran zerk or equivalent.
Now we have condi as strong as it has ever been attached to builds that do most of their damage passively. No thief build worth playing in the past has ever been as dangerous, tanky and stealthy as the current crop of stealth/condi builds. An old school D/D would get nuked by a decent PU today as would a D/P.
I was referring to the gloating and telling people to L2P, not playing a condi build.
…
I just wish that the Developers would look at these Condi-spam Stealth/Invis Bots and see that they need to be toned down so that other builds have a chance to go toe to toe with them, as it is now, it’s either join em and make a PU mesmer, ect. or run, and I know the 1%‘ers will come in and say, " I’m able to win just fine…" or the delusional “Pro” Mesmer who believes the class is, “Perfectly balanced” and “Fine as is”. Will come in gloating about their superior skill, and tell us all to L2P….
People should be used to this by now considering thieves were doing it for almost 3 years.
Sentience? Has PvP become Skynet now?
I think Mender’s Purity sometimes has this problem as well.
If there are issues with getting the portals’ positions why not track the player instead? You could create an arrow at the player’s position when they activate portal entre and have it point toward the player as they move, then when they activate portal exit this arrow would stop moving and a second arrow would appear pointing to the other.