Guild Wars 2

Jeknar.6184:

Everyone automatically assume every condition build is dire. People who complain about it do the same. I know that because when I played Viper Mesmer everyone would call me “Bunker condi kitten” despite the fact that I had only 1000 vitality and toughness.

I see what you mean, but I don’t. If I get shrekt by some cancersmer, I’ll check my combat log to see if their shatter actually did damage, or that I just died from repetitive condi application. Babazhook made an assumption, which I called out.

Cygnus.6903:

Arms is not viable, or maybe I’m using the wrong word here. You can play gimmicky builds, like gunflame, and have some fun, and even be somewhat optimized in a very niche setting (small group roaming). But a build with Discipline will always be better in the current state of warrior.

Jeknar.6184:

And conditions (which are the actual complaint of the thread) are useless in zergs except for the epidemic bombs which is a problem with the skill and not with condition themselves. One could even say conditions are for the ‘very niche setting’ of small group roaming.

I guess we can /thread here, right? But let’s carry on… I’m interested in the warrior Theorycrafting here.

And conditions not being viable in zerg fights is a problem. Not an easy one to solve, whereas condi’s ruining other players’ fun because of imbalanced risk reward in the current state of the game, is.

I’ll continue my post replying to your warrior thoughts, even though we are getting very off topic. But you either misread certain things, or maybe I was unclear. Let me clarify.

Cygnus.6903:

Then you start listing all the benefits from Arms. Dude, seriously. First of all, I can read. Second, I’ve been playing this class a good while now.

If we square off the things you list versus, say, the far superior Discipline traitline.

You get the unblockables, which is nice. You do pay a costly utility slot for that, mind you. They also provide you 0 benefit versus classes that don’t block

Jeknar.6184:

You don’t necessarily need to take Signet of Might to make it proc out of Signet mastery. Of course, it would make a somewhat unreliable use for the unblockable since it would only come up if you hit a target below 50% (and sometimes you want to blast through blocks sooner). However, I disagree that Signet of Might on the bar is compeltely useless. 180 extra power is far from useless imo plus you can still activate it for the 100 precision for 1min.

Three things. First of all, you don’t need to take Signet of Might, but that’s what babazhook suggested. He was pointing to 12 seconds of unblockable attacks, so I am pointing out the huge downside to that biased promotion of a skill that severely hampers your utility bar.
Second of all, off course, the 180 power is decent. On average warrior builds, it is a ~7% straight up increase in damage (assuming you run 2500 power). This does not way up to the fact that you could, for instance, be running Outrage instead. Which, by the way, makes adrenaline generation even less of a thing, but we’ll get to that in a second.
Third of all, who the hell would activate a skill only to lose 180 power in exchange for 100 precision? When you fight an enemy without blocks, Signet of Might does literally nothing but provide 180 power, which is incredibly poor for a utility skill.

Cygnus.6903:

- Adrenaline generation on hit is completely irrelevant. Adrenaline management is a thing of the past, especially if you take Discipline. Fast Hands+Versatile Rage+Burst Mastery are far better then Furious when it comes to Adrenaline.

Jeknar.6184:

That’s true. Adrenaline generation by discipline is far superior. But we’re talking about not taking Discipline so it kinda need to make up for the downside, no?
Still, I’m not really sold on that one aswell. Last time I ran Strenght instead of Discipline, I felt the lack of Adrenaline. But I didn’t try with Arms.

If you’re taking a traitline and can only talk about making up for downsides, something is definitely off, don’t you think? Discipline Adrenaline generation is far superior, so Arms clearly loses here. The discussion I’m having with babazhook is about pointing out that Arms is vastly inferior to traitlines on meta builds, hence they are meta. We already established Defense and Berserker are mandatory, so any discussion would be between taking Discipline and Arms. When talking Arms vs Str, I would think it to be a closer battle.

babazhook.6805:

You are absolutely clueless are you not? You claim p/p can not generate the damage required to kill dire yet I play it every night and kill people in dire. You claim arms not viable yet I have a warrior that does just that . Arms is perfectly viable and more then just viable on a warrior in WvW.

Using arms a warrior can get. A second source of unblockable attacks. (12 seconds of unblockable in a row can be chained. This melts any class that relies on blocks) Adrenaline generated on every hit. 100 percent crit rate. All but permanent resistance to conditions as needed. greatly increased access to stability. Permanent Swiftness/fury. A permanent 5 percent damage boost. Permanent ongoing application of Vuln stacks which generally means 5+ stacks meaning a 10 percent boost to damge when coupled with bloodlust trait.

I understand you are unable to kill people in heavy armor but please do not make a learn to play issue into “it can not be done because I can not do it”.

If you kill a person in Dire with pp on thief, that person is clueless. No doubt about it. Also find it funny how you know the people you ‘kill every night in Dire’ are wearing Dire.

Arms is not viable, or maybe I’m using the wrong word here. You can play gimmicky builds, like gunflame, and have some fun, and even be somewhat optimized in a very niche setting (small group roaming). But a build with Discipline will always be better in the current state of warrior.

Then you start listing all the benefits from Arms. Dude, seriously. First of all, I can read. Second, I’ve been playing this class a good while now.

If we square off the things you list versus, say, the far superior Discipline traitline;

- You get the unblockables, which is nice. You do pay a costly utility slot for that, mind you. They also provide you 0 benefit versus classes that don’t block.
- Adrenaline generation on hit is completely irrelevant. Adrenaline management is a thing of the past, especially if you take Discipline. Fast Hands+Versatile Rage+Burst Mastery are far better then Furious when it comes to Adrenaline.
- You talk about ‘near permanent resistance’. As if those 4 seconds off of Healing Signet make all the difference? Really, another theoretical advantage, which amounts to nothing when actually playing the game. Don’t forget, you often want Healing Signet off cooldown to actually, I don’t know, heal?
- As a sidenote, when that perma resistance fails (boonsteal/corruption), you don’t have Brawler’s Recovery to aid in condition cleansing. So if you don’t land your burst, you die.
- Greatly increased access to stability? Are you seriously talking about Dolyak Signet? So you’re taking Dolyak Signet, Signet of Might and Berserker’s Stance? I guess, in your quest to prove conditions are weak, you decided to die to anything power.
- Permanent Swiftness is irrelevant when you get 25% from Warrior’s Sprint. Granted, there is a small speed difference, but WS also cleanses immobilize on movement skills. You haven’t mentioned that, but it is crucial to a warrior’s survivability, and his offensive ability on a melee set as well.
- Perma Fury is good, Discipline builds only get the Fury from transforming. However, you don’t take Headbutt as a trade-off, which is far superior. Holy kitten, that skill is just too good to be true.
- 5% damage from bloodlust is trumped by versatile power, which is an added 60 power for 10 seconds every time you swap (which with Fast Hands is often). You can get 6 stacks easily if you have boon duration.
- Vulnerability stacking sounds good on paper, but you won’t get 5 stacks from that trait. Get your facts straight. Even if you have 100% crit, it’s only 33% chance per attack, 8 second duration. You would have to hit everything and very quickly to ever get 5 stacks. So don’t make it better then it is.

Man, all this talking, where it is not hard to see that just Fast Hands beats Arms.

babazhook.6805:

frickenreesh.7068:

Yeah power does have offensive modifiers at the cost of loosing something, if you go full boon duration you loose the amount of total power you can have which means crits and modifiers do nothing because you will have 20% crit chance with fury with low power and be a wet noodle at 100% on crit doing no extra damage because you have 0 ferocity as well, or go full squish ball and have the the ferocity and critt chance and get insta downed in a zerg or fight by condis, because you are full zerker. or have the power vitality and toughness you need and loose out on the crit % ferocity and boon duration increase, Conditon builds do not have to loose anything to gain a lot… they can go burst with conditon duration and not have to loose out on vitality- to deal with burst, or toughness, to deal with power…

Simply not true. Let us take boon duration warrior as example.

High fury uptime . In fact this generally 100 percent. Thats like 400+ precision. Trait signet mastery can stack up 500 precision. Trait blademaster adds 20 percent precision against bleeding foes.

Thats 1300 precision without gear. Valkyrie will get you all the ferocity you need. With boon duration all sources of might last much longer. Just as example Sigil of strength is 1 might stack for 10 seconds base. You get boon duration up over 70 percent and this sigil with dumplingscan build high might stacks. There no net loss in power.

There other options as well such as traiting 100 percent cit chance on burst. Lower your burst cooldown and build adrenaline rapidly and use in Conjunction with DD runes and dodge and you can pump out significant damage via crits with a lower precision overall.

I love how you talk about Arms as if it is a viable traitline for warrior out of PvE. Back to the dreaming board!

He said utility, not food.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

I don’t know what build the thief was running (i think he was core, not sure though, but probably da/cs/tr), i don’t know how many might stacks he had and how many vuln i had (as i mentioned – it wasn’t a 1vs1), maybe he was using assassin signet. Doesn’t matter, it was just meant as an anectodal reference, since you were talking about unload and it just happened that i got killed by it yesterday. Nothing else.

And yes, those remarks weren’t targeted specifically at you, but people that tend to complain about condis always make general statements without anything to back it up. And this includes you (“too forgiving since launch” etc). Why can’t people just talk about specific skills and builds and how to balance those? I mean, nobody says “nerf power”, it is always more like “nerf killshot/vault/rapid fire/CoR/traps/whatever”. But when it is about condition builds, it is always “nerf condis”, just with different suggestions on how the nerf should look like.

@beatthedown.2651
It is more Vans who is facetanking stuff and still staying at almost 100% hp constantly (resistance balanced …), the mesmer plays more defensively and barely pressures him (unless its 2vs1).
But it is not a secret, that certain condition mesmer builds are very strong in 1vs1 (not so much against power warrior though – so that’s actually a bad example). So what has this now to do with condi ranger, condi engi, condi ele, condi rev, condi war, condi thief, condi necro? Or even with different condi mesmer builds? Mistrust/bleed builds anyone? And what about hybrid builds?

Then I don’t get why you make this anecdotal reference in the first place. If it was meant as that and nothing else.

The reason why I am here and made a general statement about condi’s (too forgiving since launch), is because they are when you manage to make builds that do sufficient (understatement) damage to kill people whilst taking almost maximum defensive stats. Thief, Mesmer, Engineer, Ranger, Warrior, Necro and even Guardian have builds like these available to them (allthough necro lacks hard in the mobility department, obviously). A lot of those builds have a very low skill floor to be effective, and that’s without talking about the added room for error you get by taking those tanky stats. That’s not to say that some have a decent skill cap, and that good players can distinquish themselves.

I don’t think rebalancing condi’s so that they would require three stats to do the most damage (like really, not the ‘you need precision to be gud’-bullkitten that we have now) is weird or hard. You even the playing ground for both condi and power that way. Buff and potentially nerf needed skills from there on out.

When Soldiers gear hits like a wet noodle, so should Dire.

I was goign into the P/P part more detailed because I made a sidenote about his example, afterwhich he continued debating that particular skill (unload).

I do call bs on the 16k damage unload you took with 2,8k armor. I bet a few other factors had to have been met for that damage to be anywhere near true.

I won’t go into the rest of your post, as all your parenthesized remarks don’t apply to things I’ve said.

babazhook.6805:

P/P unload is not static in that you can move while using it. This makes seaweed salad synergize beautifully with it. You can also use something like dumplings if you wish instead coupled with a concentration sigil which allows you to stack on average 12 might stacks per unload.

I never said Unload is static, but it is 8 attacks and if you dodge relatively quickly after realizing it’s Unload, you mitigate 75% (!!!) of the damage, and you reduce the might stacking at the same time. That’s a dodge well spent! If you dodge a split second too late when it’s condi, you take the full damage or have to cleanse.
Also, Dumplings+Unload is an average of 11 stacks of might, if you have 100% crit chance to begin with and hit all 8 attacks. Again, it’s painfully obvious that you’re living in a dreamworld, aside from your math (or knowledge of the food) being off.

babazhook.6805:

P/P will always have more power then zerker unless Zerker goes for the signet build. With boon duration and other sources of might (such as might on crit) you can easily build 20 stacks might. This higher base might allows you to churn out as much damage as Zerker.

You are already factoring in that the warrior will allow you to stack might via Unload. What plants are you fighting in WvW, like for real? Mace #2 and Shield #5 will facerape a P/P thief.
Just suggesting that Sigil of Strength is good on a P/P thief is…. It’s wishful thinking.

babazhook.6805:

Use that seaweed salad in conjunction with a sigil of night at night and along with that might stacking you will get a huge damage boost. P/P unload is one of the highest damage brusts the thief has and does not require zerker to get that damage.

So, are we using Dumplings or Seaweed? You are contradicting yourself more every phrase, and we’re still in your comfortable theoretical world. Now you’re even taking sigil of night into the equation. So basically, when the stars align, we’re using two foods at the same time (maybe switch food after getting the stacks you want?!?), it’s nighttime, and my opponent takes all unloads to the face (as if he were, like, a Dire warrior /dancing), you deal good damage? In what world, and this is a serious question, do your opponents give you the time and opportunity to accomplish these criteria?

babazhook.6805:

A thief build in Valkyries/knights cavaliers/soldiers or some combination of the same can make up for missing precision and or ferocity via traits , stacking and consumables

As to them “dodging your unload” , any attack can be dodged including codition attacks.

Again, when facing real opponents, you won’t get anything done with this weak gear as a thief. That condi player can just re-apply and shrug off your damage until you run out of cleanses, which, as a thief, you don’t get a lot off to begin with. Aside from Shadowstep (60 second cooldown for 3 cleanses) and sigil of Agility (1 cleanse only, and you reduce your precision by 180), you would have to forgo Pulmonary Impact to get the cleanse on evade trait, which is such a huge DPS loss, you can’t possibly expect to deal enough damage after that.

And your comment on you can dodge everything, well duh. But, like I said above, if you dodge unload a bit late, you just nullified 50%+ of the damage. If you dodge a condi attack a bit late, you take 100% or are forced to cleanse. Somewhere, there’s a discrepancy.

Nikkinella may be a little outspoken with his opinion, but it isn’t far from the truth.

I wouldn’t rework Dire or TB. Similar sets exist for power based builds.

They just have a very imbalanced risk/reward playstyle that dumbs the game down a LOT.

So the nerf should be to damage output.

XTR.9604:

Cygnus.6903:

XTR.9604:

The class mechanic of thief isn’t really about skill. You can easily play thief where you almost permanently dodge, block, or stealth leaving people only 1 second or less of possible time to get a stun off on you to put you down, and then you just shadow step away and continue dodging and blocking and stealthing for ever lol. If all of that fails for you, just switch to shortbow and run run run like a Kenyan.

I’ve never been on board with thief because it feels scummy to play it, way more so than playing this OP condi warrior.

As far as “kill or be killed” applying more to a thief, I don’t think so personally. You can disengage and run away from just about any fight with ease, I will go down swinging before I’ll try to run away lol. So I either kill my opponents or die trying, I don’t disengage in one of the cheesiest mechanics in the game today which is shortbow 5 lol..

Winning 2v1s against even decent players on this warrior happens pretty often because it has incredible sustain and equally incredible burst damage. I’ve played every class and know what to watch for. I wait for people to blow their clears and dodges then load them up. It is pretty easy to tell what people are doing in a fight to even kill decent player quickly.

I’ll ignore the derogatory remark about thieves, because it expresses a complete lack of knowledge of the class and a very typical condi player characteristic.

I just bolded two things you said. First, you try to be sarcastic about your build being OP, then you say you win 2v1s regularly because the build gives you incredible sustain and equally incredible burst damage. So you slotted traits and put on weapons and armor. Such skill, much wow.

GW2 is dying.

Hey, not my fault we have the ability to build like this. I’ve also played thief and do understand the class – I just don’t like it and think the play style is skillless. Also, I never said this build takes crazy skill or anything. It is easy to play, but if you’re a good player, you can literally almost never lose a fight.

I just don’t get how you can say anything is skillless when you basicalyl admit your build only took you the skill of slotting traits and gear.

W/e, I’ve overstayed my welcome quite a bit.

babazhook.6805:

That p/p thief I am talking about has just over 20k health in wVw in a power build along with 2400 armor. He started with more armor then that (using sentenils) because he WANTED to. he found that as he scaled back his armor for more power and even more damage his survival went UP because he can kill people including your condition builds in their 3.2k armor faster. He was not forced to do this.

~snip~

Dire and trailblazers is NOT an issue. If my power thief can kill a warrior in 3k+ armor and 26k health , he can kill a person in dire with 3.2k armor and 26k health. Against that power warrior my thief can not afford any mistakes. Against a condition build he can make more then a few.

This is so far off from reality, it’s quite obvious to me that you approach this from a theoretical point of view.

A thief with 20k+ health and 2,4k armor will not kill anything quickly. 8k unloads also seem highly unlikely. I know this, because I run a full berserk thief with Scholar runes quite often, and those numbers don’t occur unless you fight something equally glassy. On a sidenote, I think its funny you say its 8k damage on a single attack, as most people (with a brain) will dodge 3/4th of your unload (which is a single button press, but 8 attacks).

If you can show me a vid of you beating a Dire warrior (or any other class for that matter) in 3,2k armor and 26k health with making several of your allowed mistakes, I’ll be surprised.

At least when you are fightign that power warrior, the ’can’t afford any mistakes’-mentality goes both ways. If the warrior screws up a bit too much, a good thief will punish. The Dire warrior can take backstabs and /dance.

XTR.9604:

The class mechanic of thief isn’t really about skill. You can easily play thief where you almost permanently dodge, block, or stealth leaving people only 1 second or less of possible time to get a stun off on you to put you down, and then you just shadow step away and continue dodging and blocking and stealthing for ever lol. If all of that fails for you, just switch to shortbow and run run run like a Kenyan.

I’ve never been on board with thief because it feels scummy to play it, way more so than playing this OP condi warrior.

As far as “kill or be killed” applying more to a thief, I don’t think so personally. You can disengage and run away from just about any fight with ease, I will go down swinging before I’ll try to run away lol. So I either kill my opponents or die trying, I don’t disengage in one of the cheesiest mechanics in the game today which is shortbow 5 lol..

Winning 2v1s against even decent players on this warrior happens pretty often because it has incredible sustain and equally incredible burst damage. I’ve played every class and know what to watch for. I wait for people to blow their clears and dodges then load them up. It is pretty easy to tell what people are doing in a fight to even kill decent player quickly.

I’ll ignore the derogatory remark about thieves, because it expresses a complete lack of knowledge of the class and a very typical condi player characteristic.

I just bolded two things you said. First, you try to be sarcastic about your build being OP, then you say you win 2v1s regularly because the build gives you incredible sustain and equally incredible burst damage. So you slotted traits and put on weapons and armor. Such skill, much wow.

GW2 is dying.

Choppy.4183:

@Cygnus
I run vanilla warrior, which isn’t overtuned from what I can see. So I proposed a change to the way Berserker interacts with it without changing the trait itself. I personally find vanilla perfectly viable for Wvw roaming, though I’d obviously get more mileage running Berserker (I just think I’d be bored).

As for needing to boost sustain elsewhere if AH was pinched, that again was in part a reflection of wanting to keep vanilla warrior somewhat viable and also somewhat dependent on the depth of the cut to AH.

I’d also support a shift toward more active defense and sustain for the class, but I think it would require considerably more work (e.g. reworking weapon and utility skills) than we should expect at this stage of the game’s life.

The reasons you find vanilla warrior viable are twofold; you’re a good player and GS gives you enough mobility. When we’re talking about vanilla anything, we quickly see that if you don’t take the Elite spec, you are gimping yourself. Vanilla Choppy versus Berserker Choppy would be a one-sided matchup. So I think nerfing Elites without nerfing vanilla is a different discussion. Nevertheless, if Anet would want to move in that direction (which seems pretty clear to me they don’t), your suggestion is a good one. It’s a good one regardless, actually.

Your last remark here is what’s really troublesome. I am so tired of passives in this game, which is why I only play a class anymore that probably has the least of it in the game. It’s a sad direction Anet has taken the game, and I think you are right in assuming they won’t change that direction anymore.

babazhook.6805:

My thief can pump out 8k unloads rather easily against heavy armor.

Your post was mediocre at best, and then you bring up unload… For arguments sake, when that heavy armored guy hits you with, say, an Arc Divider, you take 10k+. That’s because you had to sacrifice defensive stats to make unload do an incredible 8k damage.

Conditions allow you to do incredible damage whilst remaining super tanky, and it is very easy to do so. This is speaking generally, off course. When the condi player is skilled, the real power of certain builds becomes more obvious. Specifically condi warrior and mesmer are culprits here.
I can live with a good condi mesmer shrekking me, because I generally don’t take a lot of condi clears (I just tend to avoid these tryhard players with the 20% duration food and the 10% duration oil). So when I do fight one, I either kick the kitten out of him because he is the general ‘need-my-dire-to-carry-me’ player, or he quickly puts seemingly endless stacks of confusion and torment on me, at which point I decide it’s not worth it to entertain my opponent.

The risk/reward factor of condi builds is very off in WvW, and in the game in general.

That doesn’t mean certain power builds don’t suffer from the same problem.

beatthedown.2651:

Yeah they could also revamp condis in general, but I don’t think this happens anytime soon. Adding secondary stats like condi-precision/ferocity would need some thought since the damage can be nullified by removal skills.

Regarding my suggestion by using Precision, they could also just convert the gear into carrion or rabid.

Exactly, give it more thought. I don’t see why the fundamentals of condi and power have to be so far apart. Why can’t they both have the same potential; to be either bursty or sustained DPS? With the same costs, mind you.

An easy step in the right direction would be to make it so that Resistance does not nullify all condi damage, but a % of it just like protection does with Power. Then you invent a condition that reduces condi damage just like weakness does. Even the playing field across the board.

This way, you would still allow for both playstyles, and for diversity in builds (one could try to be more tanky at the cost of a significant DPS loss, or vice versa).

Hell, I would gladly play condi if it wasn’t so kitten forgiving, the playstyle in itself is very appealing IMO.

XTR.9604:

I don’t know what it is like in EU, but it sounds like it is different than NA as far as roaming goes.

The fact that in this new trailblazers setup that I have been running this past week, I have around 3.7k armor solo and 30k HP makes it very easy to live against multiple enemies. I don’t take very much damage and my HP regeneration is great between healing signet, adrenal health and food.

More often than not, I will win just about any fight that I get in to unless someone (or multiple people) has/have a very good understanding of my build and my personal rotations and is on point with their timing for dodges, blinds, and condition clears. It is pretty rare for me to run in to anyone who does any of that. I have two friends that can beat my warrior about 50/50 in 1v1 because they’ve both watched me play it extensively and because they’re both excellent players at the game.

It sounds like you might enjoy something like a thief or trap ranger for roaming if your play style is stab and run. This build is not that kind of build, a “kill or be killed” playing style is pretty much a requirement for this build. Even when I do get outnumbered, I fight hard and see how many people I can down or kill before I go down. I’ve ended up surprised many times after killing or downing everyone or most of the people on me.

Almost every 2v1 that I get in to on that build resulted in me winning, 3v1 is a whole lot harder, but doable as long as my dodges and rotations are on point. The issue with 3v1 is that if 2 people hard rez the person that I focus out first, I may end up losing the fight. If someone tries to hard rez in a 2v1, it is almost a guaranteed win because I will blow up the person rezzing and it is game over for both of them at that point.

If you win almost every 1v2, then it is indeed different on EU compared to NA. If you run into two competent roamers here, and I mean people you would beat every time 1v1, you will get killed quite often.

I do play thief, but not because it is hit and run. I can do that, especially when poking a zerg, but thief in outnumbered revolves around outplaying your opponents more so then rotations or being able to facetank a lot of damage. For instance, I can not cleave a downed person very reliably if my opponents know in the slightest what they are doing, as cleave will end me very quickly (running two marauder trinkets so i am at like 14k hp with base toughness). Instead, I would have to blow a utility to stomp or repeatedly interrupt a res to win, for instance.
So no, not the hit and run style, although, off course, when I decide it’s time to reset, I almost always have that option, which is the Obvious overall advantage a thief has over every other class. The challenge is to stay in the fight and not spam dodges mindlessly, but instead timing burst, interrupting crucial skills and putting my opponents on the defensive. I’d argue that playing a glass thief is way more ‘kill or be killed’ then Dire or Trailblazer warrior.

Choppy.4183:

Cygnus.6903:

The reason to nerf it is because it does too much at the same time. Insane damage, AoE, close to instant cast, gets you absurd healing and it’s close to spammable.

In regards to Arc Divider, I personally favour either cutting the range down to roughly Arcing Slice’s range or reducing the power scaling.

In regards to Adrenal Health, I think the smarter move is having the Primal burst count as one or two stages of adrenaline rather than nerfing the trait. That would also slow down condi shedding via CI and damage through BP (assuming someone’s slotted it), but for the Berserker only (which is where the problem is).

If AH is to be nerfed, then warrior will probably need some additional sustain injected elsewhere. I’m not opposed to that route, but outside the Berserker (and its ability to spam proc AH), warrior sustain isn’t overtuned at all.

We can agree to disagree about Arc Divider. I think it symbolizes everything that’s wrong with HoT, in that a few skills give you everything. The comment of the above poster about it only being OP if you combine X with Y and Z is irrelevant, because you can combine said elements. The problem exists.

Your proposal about nerfing Primal Burst to count as stage 1 or 2 is in fact nerfing AH, so I guess we are talking semantics here? Off course, you would also be nerfing the effects of burst skills, which is likely a bigger problem if you look at multiple game modes. I do think it is a good suggestion, however, as it would, like you said, also deal with the problem of excessive condi cleansing.

Personally, but this is of no importance to the discussion, I would not return to my so long favored class if this would be it. Berserk mode is too spammy to interest me anymore. That, combined with the passive nature of warrior today, has made it low skill floor, and way lower skill cap then it used to be.

And no, I don’t think nerfing warrior sustain through nerfing either Primal Burst or AH requires to buff warrior sustain elsewhere. It is overtuned as is, so nerfs are in order. One could argue that warriors that don’t take Berserker would lose too much sustain, but you can’t play warrior without taking Berserker as is. Nor can you play any class without the elite specialization without gimping yourself severely in comparison, so this is a different problem entirely. If they would have wanted base classes to be as viable as Elites, then a lot of work would need to be done.

Inb4 the condicrew panicking in this topic.

Condi has been regarded as too forgiving since launch. Literally. Problem being that you can do sufficient (or in the current meta, stoopid) damage while remaining nigh unkillable. If you really want to balance this, just making it so that you would need precision to do good damage is not enough. Make it on par with Power damage; if you build max glass, you can melt things in seconds. But then you need condi damage, precision and ferocity. Condi’s should be able to crit, and the ferocity would decide how much they would crit. You would obviously need to balance it so that Power builds wouldn’t start to do crazy condi crits, but that’s easily done by deciding base damage through the condi damage stat.
People might complain that one needs a fourth stat, condition duration. But, you don’t. Adjust all base durations so that you can either burst or apply continuous pressure with a condi skill. Right now, bursty condi’s get to do both thanks to excessive duration. And that’s not even talking about the bonus benefit that you apply to conditions like weakness and cripple, etc. Those conditions are arguably just as important on power builds.

But no, the discussion will boil down to people saying Soldier’s does more damage then Dire. Anet does not have enough faith in their playerbase to make real adjustments and remove player carry mechanics once and for all.

How would this make it viable exactly? We have three viable skills that apply daze, all only for 1 second, and two of them are on mace which is already a great weapon?

Are you thinking of comboing with another class that would apply the daze or someting?

XTR.9604:

I have several videos of me winning 1v2 and 1v3 on my website. I know exactly how solo roaming is since it is what I primarily do in WvW lol.. The only times I ever run from a fight is if there is a blob chasing me down. If they’re committed and catch me, then it is whatever. Dying is just part of the game lol. You respawn pretty quick and get right back to it, not a big deal.

Also, the reality is that there are maybe a dozen people in WvW that roam and have a similar skill level to me. That is not arrogance, it is just the truth. Running in to 2 people on my level will pretty much never happen in the current state of the game.

Like I said, if you don’t mind dying, then it really is whatever. I don’t mind it either, which is why I don’t play condi.

Video’s of winning 1v2/1v3 pretty much always show either a pretty serious lack of skill in comparison to you from your opponents, a severe advantage thanks to builds used, or a combination of both. I’ve fought a fair share of 1vX myself, and I never fooled myself into thinking my skill was that impressive.

If you ‘only ever run from blobs’, then you should die often. In fact, every 1v2 should be lost if opponents are not thrash or playing thrash builds. Fighting a mediocre player 1v1 is easy, fighting two players 1v2 should be more then twice as hard.

And I don’t think it is arrogant of you to think that there are not many people in WvW with a similar skill level. I will however quote your question to me to… put things into perspective maybe?

XTR.9604:

Not sure what tier you play in

I am on Piken Square, which bounces between Tier 1 and 2 I believe. We face the top roaming servers on EU regularly.

Miko.4158:

post adrenal health I’ve seen a fair number of guardians try warrior, some have stuck with it most have not. the burst skill is nice, but guards have 3 fkey boons on tap which they can recharge with their elite (+invuln), giving them 6 on demand fkeys as opposed to charging adrenaline then firing up the xmas tree. It hits hard but that’s not a reason to nerf, if it’s about balance.

The reason to nerf it is because it does too much at the same time. Insane damage, AoE, close to instant cast, gets you absurd healing and it’s close to spammable.

Choppy.4183:

Cygnus.6903:

It is kind of stupid though, don’t you think? GS burst and Longbow burst nullify counterplay somewhat completely. The GS burst is near instant and 450 range AoE, the Longbow burst can’t even be denied. Even if you do miss, you get a retry a couple seconds later. Adrenal Health is not hard to activate or to maintain, and has contributed a lot to poisonous spammy warrior builds.

Ranged options may be limited, but a warrior is close to immune to CC, both soft and hard, if he chooses to be. So good luck keeping him off you if you’re not a thief.

Yeah, I’d like to see Arc Divider be given the same radius as Arcing Slice. It can already be spammed and has higher power scaling, so it’s advantage over AS sufficient without triple range.

But a smart druid can still outplay it in a 1v1 wvw situation. The mobility is sufficient, there’s plenty of stealth, and the two main cc is a pushback (so not immune, unless running Last Stand that isn’t on cd) and a cheap Ancient Seeds glitch which isn’t easy to land but will lock the warrior out of his bar.

That Arc Divider is only available when the warrior is glowing red makes it pretty easy for the kiting druid to avoid relative to other classes that don’t have the same tools. The warrior will proc AH off of the pet anyway.

A warrior that’s running lots of blocks and heals (like your Defender rune build) might be able to push a stalemate, but it won’t create a win unless the druid plays it badly, imo.

Honestly, Arc Divider could be fine as a niche burst skill that allows you to land a burst reliably. It just does so a bit too easily, and has WAY too much damage. It’s so poorly tuned, I can’t really wrap my head around it tbh. I would rather it be the Fire Field creator that it was initially intended to be, get you some Fury maybe, and be a decent AoE (not as big a range as it is now, or give it more cast time). Lose like 30% of the damage, for starters.

Specifically about the drood matchup, drood can reach a tie with just about everything 1v1, because of the insane healing. It’s such a forgiving class. Like you said, on my Defender build, I usually didn’t die unless they went more offensive, which also gave me a chance to stunlock ’m to death.

About the CC immunity, what I meant was that while in Berserk, you pulse stability, so the pushback won’t work. Out of Berserk, Outrage gives you a very low CD stunbreak that also applies Stab if you break a stun. Traits like these on warrior, and others on other classes have effectively ruined a weapon such as Hammer. Mace only remains viable thanks to it’s insane Berserk skill and it’s defensive prowess.
And Cripple/Chill/Immobilize are not effective on a Warrior anymore thanks to spammable cleanse and Warrior’s Sprint.

That’s without mentioning blocks that reflect. It’s hard for a ranged class to apply real pressure.

Choppy.4183:

In retrospect, I wish I’d given the OP some advice on how to fare better against warriors. I hope he’s still reading the thread.

Warriors received a big buff to a passive trait called Adrenal Health not long ago, which gives us a huge amount of regen that can’t be stripped and lasts 15s. To maintain permanent uptime, we just need to land a single burst skill before the time is up.

What you want to do is deny us that burst. If you can do that, you put a major dent in our sustain, cutting our regen/heal by 66% (depending on the build of the warrior).

How you do that depends on your build, the warrior’s build, your build, and your ability to recognize when the burst is coming.

For example, most warriors run melee, which means they have to get close to you to land a burst, otherwise they have to smack your pet. If you build for it (e.g. staff/lb, staff/gs, lb/gs druid), you have a boatload of tools to keep your distance and otherwise make landing a burst difficult (mobility, stealth, cc, blind, evades, dodge, etc).

If you keep your distance, attack from range, and then reposition when the warrior gets close, the warrior’s going to blow all sorts of skills (defenses and offensive skills tied to mobility) just to get to you. That’s going to leave him low on defense, offense, and sustain (from lack of landing Adrenal Health bursts) if he does manage to get close.

Doing this may force the warrior to burst your pet instead, which is easy to do and will give him adrenal health. But it wastes a high damage skill on your pet instead of you, which makes you safer and only buys the warrior a little more time.

If the warrior is using a longbow, you generally won’t be able to deny the warrior his burst. Basically, he just needs to hit the ground with it and he’ll get it, whether he hits someone or not. The good news is, your ranged options are better because the warrior longbow sucks at range (can be lethal up close) and it has no defense or mobility, so stick with the above strategy and you should be fine.

Best of luck.

It is kind of stupid though, don’t you think? GS burst and Longbow burst nullify counterplay somewhat completely. The GS burst is near instant and 450 range AoE, the Longbow burst can’t even be denied. Even if you do miss, you get a retry a couple seconds later. Adrenal Health is not hard to activate or to maintain, and has contributed a lot to poisonous spammy warrior builds.

Ranged options may be limited, but a warrior is close to immune to CC, both soft and hard, if he chooses to be. So good luck keeping him off you if you’re not a thief.

XTR.9604:

If you have to disengage, you’re playing this build wrong. This build is to be played “in your face” style. You have to stay hard committed to who you are fighting or else you’re going to lose.

I have no issues with it other than catching people who are running away from me.

what?

You won’t always be fighting evenly in WvW, more often then not you won’t be, in fact. Being able to disengage is a very important aspect to any wvw roaming build, be it through stealth, mobility, or heavy soft/hard CC. Your build has none, so every time you are at a disadvantage that you can’t realisticly overcome (for instance, two people versus you by yourself with similar skill level), you will die.

This in itself is not really a problem, because dying is almost irrelevant in a videogame. And off course you can still faceroll most people in 1v1, most scrubs in 1vX. But the problem exists nonetheless.

XTR.9604:

I have no issues with it other than catching people who are running away from me.

This is 80% of the WvW population. More then that when they see what build you are running.

again, the effort you put in this is admirable. Still don’t agree with everything, especially making the stances into buffs instead of boons. But still, nice job.

Duvhaldor.7531:

Lahmia.2193:

The Berserker and Balanced Stance changes makes it sound like you’ve been killed by one too many necros. Can’t let those immunity skills have counters or anything, right?

Opposite, almost 100% resistance uptime make fights vs condi too easy. + My berserker changes give us less condi clean so maybe I didnt get your point.

The point is, if you change them into unstrippable skills, they have zero counterplay.

for Berserker Stance, this would mean complete immunity to condi’s for 8 seconds, and possible another 5+ (depending on boon duration) afterwards. Mesmer, Thief, Necro, would not be able to strip that boon off you, which reduces counterplay (which is a healthy thing).

Your proposed change to Balanced Stance is even worse. Guarantueed immunity to all CC for 8 seconds? So, basically, downing a Warrior, Guardian, Necro, Ranger, Revenant or Engineer means a guarantueed stomp if your team can cleave halfway decent and the opposing team can’t stealth?

Both skills seem fine as is tbh.

The Endure Pain change is interesting but defeats the purpose of the skill as Hoax stated. Maybe you can do that to the auto-proc trait, but I’d rather that be removed completely.

Proposed buffs to Defiant Stance make it seem a bit OP, shave a second off of it maybe?

The Frenzy change…. made me giggle, so that’s a good thing. Think about running something like 50% boon duration and getting 22,5 seconds of quickness. Awesome!

Threather.9354:

You’re facing wrong servers to face roamers. Best servers to face against to get some roaming action would be in this order: Gandara, Desolation, Jade Sea, Seafarers rest, Gunnars hold. Unfortunately all of them are kinda in different tier.

Basically, just dont face German servers and you have much higher chance to get action, because Germans dont roam. And even if they do, they log out after 1 death.

LOL at placing Gandara at the top of that list.

Piken Square still has a lot of roamers, they just tend to PvP more because of the roaming scene still declining.

If a guild ‘might let you play’ what you want to, get another guild.

Thief is fine as a DPS, easier then Tempest, and often similar or slightly higher damage because the rotation is easier to maintain.

Hoaxintelligence.4628:

Tooltips are often not accurate.
Same as warbanner. Tooltip of warbanner

“Place a battle standard that revives fallen allies and grants fury, might, and swiftness to allies”

But that isnt correct, when the fallen allies has poison on them they cant be revived.
People that don’t know that think there banner isnt working, /bugreport for nothing.

That’s almost correct. They can be revived with poison on them, but the ‘heal’ from the battle standard will get the poison reduction. Still, if the downed person’s HP is high enough (for instance, from a person already trying to res), the standard still revives.

Berserker with Scholar Runes! More fun. Use two Marauder trinkets and you got 14k HP, that should be enough.

Ascended armor is so expensive, just use one set for WvW and PvE.

Electra.7530:

As a roaming guardian, (who is partnered with a necro) I would sell my right arm, left leg, right ear, and left eye for mobility.

But, then the beautiful thing happens, thief bursts on me when I’m standing in all my traps and, WHOOPS! Dead thief, right? Nah, seriously wounded thief already way beyond my bow range stealthed, clearing all my partner’s multiple conditions, returning to full health.

Sighs.

WE HATES THOSE THIEVES! WE HATES THOSE THIEVES! WE HATES THEM SO MUCH!

Poor thing, your traps didn’t work? Where it took you such skill to set it up? Sad face.

In WvW, mobility is not the true king, it’s stealth. Mobility is a close second though. As thieves have a lot of both, they are still the most popular class for solo roamers I would say, although I don’t think they are the best.

So I’d say;

- Condi Chrono (absolutely destroys everything 1v1 except for maybe a Berserker, very easy and forgiving to play OKish, becomes insane when you’re decent. Second best escapability, and invulnerabilities for stomps. Continuum Split is funny.)
- Thief (pretty good vs most other classes, although tanky brawlers can give you a lot of problems, as does condi. You escape from everything if you have good reflexes)
- Chrono (hits harder then the condi version but gets hit very hard, and has a hard time vs good thieves. Oneshots all others, though)
- Berserker (counters a lot of popular classes. Great healing and very condi resilient if built for that. Berserk bursts hit incredibly hard, the GS one being absolutely overtuned. Still good mobility too)
- Scrapper (lots of defenses and does good damage while remaining tanky. Also good access to stealth)
- Drood (can be tanky and hit hard, with heals for days, and stealth access. Pets hit like a truck and they have good mobility and CC. Can kite effectively too)
- Everything else

The top three don’t die if they don’t want to, pretty much.

Cerby.1069:

Then I’d remove our downed state. Instead I’d make vengeance happen immediately on a 25% chance. So 75% of the time we die instantly upon hitting 0 hp. And 25% of the time we are instant upp’d in vengeance state. Then downing an enemy will grant you 2seconds extra uptime of vengeance, and kill them in their downed state will give you 100% chance to rally.

You’ve put some thought in your post, but this made me giggle a bit. Warrior would instantly become unplayable in PvP should this happen. Everyone would focus warrior because when you deplete their HP bar, you have a 75% chance of instantly removing somebody from the fight. The other 25% you can just /ignore him for a few seconds and achieve the same goal.

The true unbalance in downed states comes from a couple classes being able to delay their stomp without fail. All other abilities are irrelevant until those are either nerfed or given to all classes.

I personally really like the idea behind Vengeance, but it is poorly executed. The knockdown is also pathetic, easiest downed state cc to avoid ingame.

Caedmon.6798:

Cygnus.6903:

I believe that was intended.

That’s strange..i havent used balanced stance in ages coupled with rousing so i just noticed it now.Nothing gamebreaking or anything its just weird if they intend it to happen only on balanced stance,don’t see the reason behind it really.Tooltip also says rousing should only activate when breaking out of a cc.

The tooltip is what’s strange here. I personally recall them clarifying that balanced stance would always activate RR even when not breaking a stun was intended as a buff to both the skill and the trait. They were both quite weak once upon a time.

You not noticing is also quite natural, as you would often use Balanced Stance to break out of a stun in the first place. The Last Stand trait only activates when stunned so that obviously always procs RR too.

You may find Anet’s statements about this in the release notes somewhere.

Would also say thief. Although squishy, Staff has insane damage to melt thrash quickly, and vault/bounding dodge both evade while dealing high dmg. Shortbow for extremely fast travelling.

Clownmug.8357:

Cygnus.6903:

Clownmug.8357:

Cygnus.6903:

You can just smell the thief complain topics before opening them.

Try playing said build.

Swagger never mentioned any specific profession or build. Why would you automatically assume a topic about balance problems is talking about thief? Weird.

You didn’t read through the entire topic, did you?

Didn’t read your own post about predicting the contents of the topic before opening it, did you?

My predictions came true, so… what?

OriOri.8724:

This is exactly what I cannot believe from thief players. Yes, you are correct that thief needs this ridiculous amount of dodges to survive. How can you not see that is broken? The problem right now is that because of how many dodges and evades that thief/DD has, ANet cannot give them better defenses and ways to survive otherwise it would be broken beyond belief. People like you are actively defending broken designs that are hampering the ability of the thief’s class design to move forward and be more versatile. If I was a thief main I would be campaigning to limit the amount of dodging that thief can do so that it could get other defenses and ways to survive.

Your logic is so flawed here, I was tempted to give up.

So I am correct that thief need this ridiculous amount of dodges to survive. Then how can you propose nerfing it while not SIMULTANEOUSLY buffing other defenses on thief? That’s the whole point I am trying to make here, you can’t nerf the defense when you can see clearly that thief would drop down to unusable.

I for one would gladly drop the second dodge from Signet of Agility as well as nerf half the endurance regen from Channeled Vigor in exchange for a medium HP pool, for example. Please, drop the evade on Death Blossom entirely, condition specs are stupidly forgiving.

You say that I defend the current design of thief. Point me to something I said that proves this. In fact, I will quote myself to reiterate what I was trying to clarify;

Cygnus.6903:

This does not mean that I don’t think thief has some very poor design issues. They took this route with HoT, and I would like to refer to a post by somebody in the topic on Ghost Thieves, where he referred to a game designer explaining the concept of ‘anti-fun’. And fighting something like DD condi, which runs very little risk of getting caught for their mistakes, removes the fun for the opposing player. This, however, is a problem with a lot of condi specs, since launch.
An opposing player using 7 back to back dodges to, get out of dodge, is frustrating. Obviously. You need to understand though, that those 7 dodges are our double endure pain, our plethora of blocks, our invulnerability spam, our 2-second full heals, etc. I could go on.

Again, propose a buff to defenses along with a nerf, because thief is in a state where it is forced to rely on anti-fun mechanics.

I believe that was intended.

Clownmug.8357:

Cygnus.6903:

You can just smell the thief complain topics before opening them.

Try playing said build.

Swagger never mentioned any specific profession or build. Why would you automatically assume a topic about balance problems is talking about thief? Weird.

You didn’t read through the entire topic, did you?

Rettan.9603:

My redesign starts with an change of the burst skills. Their spamable character make the class mechanic much to easy. (Berserker kills it completely.)

+1

DrDivine.5378:

ParanoidKami.2867:

Some players are just bad. It’s not Thieves in particular but is actually evenly distributed among the classes. Thieves are just more visible when they’re not good because you can judge them from how they move on the mini-map. I main a Thief and I’ve won the last 9 of my 10 games.

This is true, but I think there is more of a skill gap between classes such as a thief and a DH. A thief you can very easily be one of the best or the worst on your team, no disrespect to DH mains but they can deal out a lot of damage and such with comfortable options for recovery.

So… basically what you’re saying is that you don’t like thieves because their job requires a complicated skill (map awareness) opposed to things like Dragon kitten that can just place a trap and /dance while blocking?

Several people already talked about some key points that are not easy to master in this topic, things a thief has to master to be halfway decent. Cut them some freakin slack. We were all newbs once.

OriOri.8724:

I can’t believe the thief players in this thread.

How are we supposed to take you seriously when you say stuff like this. Most comments have been very to the point and knowledgeable about thief class in this topic, which is an exception, I’ll admit it, but all the more reason you shouldn’t make things personal like this.

Obviously, you are not a thief player? I deduct this from your disbelief about thief players in this topic, as you are in this topic yourself, and I can’t presume you don’t believe in yourself either, judging by your demeanor.

So you are not a thief player (please correct me if I am wrong), and you don’t seem to understand that what many thief players, including myself, are saying here, is that without the overabundance of dodges on the class as it is right now, thief would not be able to survive against anything. As it stands, it is hard enough to survive already. I am talking about competent player on class X versus competent player on Thief.

So calling for nerfs when you don’t acknowledge that problem is bad game design if you ask me.

This does not mean that I don’t think thief has some very poor design issues. They took this route with HoT, and I would like to refer to a post by somebody in the topic on Ghost Thieves, where he referred to a game designer explaining the concept of ‘anti-fun’. And fighting something like DD condi, which runs very little risk of getting caught for their mistakes, removes the fun for the opposing player. This, however, is a problem with a lot of condi specs, since launch.
An opposing player using 7 back to back dodges to, get out of dodge, is frustrating. Obviously. You need to understand though, that those 7 dodges are our double endure pain, our plethora of blocks, our invulnerability spam, our 2-second full heals, etc. I could go on.

Then there is the damage issue of Vault. I do think that an ability like Vault is a prime example of what is wrong with the game. Calling for a nerf feels like discrimination more then really trying to improve the game, however. Such a wide array of abilities and mechanics are equally or way worse right now. There is a troubling tendency from Anet to buff specs that require very little to achieve very much. Vault is a good example of this were it not for the thief class being so incredibly squishy without any passives (bar the stupid stunbreak into endurance refill in acro) to make up for mistakes. You have to be quick.
Thief has a place in PvP solely because of mobility, not damage. So nerfing the damage of a class where that is not the main issue seems, well, you can guess.

You can just smell the thief complain topics before opening them.

Try playing said build.

Was thinking of trying this. Problem is I don’t often have the time to spend 2-3 hours playing GW2. But, if even vax is joining this…

As a person above asked, are there any time schedules for raiding?

Ben K.6238:

Cygnus.6903:

And that’s the problem. You could make every skill on thief deal 10k damage, the class is still poorly designed. Because you are solely reliant on reflexes, use this or that teleport/evade/stealth in time, or you just die. Other classes get WAY more room for mistakes with all the passives, not even talking about the fact that for thieves to do meaningful damage, you have to be insanely glass to begin with.

Pretty much sums up my attempts to use thief.

I have more survivability on a naked ele. Thief requires good reflexes and low latency to pull off. It’s a fascinating class though, so I haven’t given up just yet.

And you shouldn’t. Even though I believe that almost all classes have been broken (either OP or just no fun) by HoT, especially what used to be my main, Thief is still very enjoyable to me. And I don’t have superhuman reflexes at all. Running almost full zerk+scholar in WvW.

You develop a sort of spider sense over time; where you will do what others would classify as ‘random dodging’. But it’s rather about positioning and knowing that if you take a hit or a CC at that time, it would be over. Luckily, thief has an insane amount of dodges.

shagwell.1349:

While at it, Make stealth less accessible. It shouldnt be a free out of jail card. You always should have to decide if you use stealth for an opener or to run, not being able to open from stealth and run instantly again.

How is it a free get out of jail card for regular thieves though? 9 initiative to gain 3 seconds of stealth is quite a hefty price, so is using a 40 second cooldown skill. If the thief decides to run away straight after, he just spent the leftover initiative as well as the initiative he regen’d in between and has 0 left. He also accomplished nothing in that window.

Long story short, you can’t just ‘make stealth less accessible’ without buffing thief survivability in other areas.

Straegen.2938:

I would point out we are talking about a class that is mediocre at duels (and that is generous), virtually useless in zergs and marginal at best in skirmish. It even mostly sucks in sPvP outside of Decap.

If the plan is to nerf it so zerglings can fight it solo, well then go for it. However any player getting blown up by Vault spam is a fairly crappy player or got caught on cooldown (as the OP was) which can happen with any decent build.

Staff thieves are so far down on the list of “hard to beat” classes in a straight up fight it isn’t even remotely useful what is being proposed here.

And that’s the problem. You could make every skill on thief deal 10k damage, the class is still poorly designed. Because you are solely reliant on reflexes, use this or that teleport/evade/stealth in time, or you just die. Other classes get WAY more room for mistakes with all the passives, not even talking about the fact that for thieves to do meaningful damage, you have to be insanely glass to begin with.

OP complains, but 1 of those vaults wouldve OHKO’d me on my thief. Boohoo.

HoT has never been balanced, never will.

Other then this, duh, the skill needs a nerf. Just to the damage though. Removing the evade means the skill becomes unusable thanks to AoE killing you too fast.

Incredible how people are still argueing that you can;

- ‘just stand in the black powndur!’, yeah, cause I can perfectly predict where the invisible dude is going to apply his next 10 seconds of stealth.. And I have the mobility to instantly be there. No problem.
- ‘use a stealth trap oktnxbye!’, Can’t believe people actually think this is ok. How little could one understand about WvW? What if elementalists had a build that could only be countered by a stealth trap? What if DH did? No build should require you to use supply, an external commodity, to be able to stand a chance. Let alone the fact that you have to buy stealth traps and it would take up inventory space. Seriously, what the actual kitten. Besides, Shadow Step+steal and you are 2400 range away.
- ‘just use condi cleanse!’, well, duh. Thing is, every other condi build you face requires the same thing, but you can actually see them. The Ghost Thief just restealths and restealths and applies a new batch of condi’s until you either screw up the cleanse, his cooldowns were lower then yours, or he can’t kill you at which point he just leaves. Fun and interactive gameplay, people.
- ‘just run away’, so.. do you people even know what ‘counter’ means?

The real issue here is that Ghost Thief can do what should never be possible in any serious PvP game; kill people while remaining in stealth. It requires zero skill other then a little positioning. There is no risk, medium reward (staying alive against a zerg while still harrassing is a win in itself). Toxic, and should’ve been removed a long time ago.

Napo.1230:

I’m already feeling the rage from a rifle thief. Pew pew massive crits from range and all that stealth and gap creation you can do, ouch.
Be a real good opportunity for anet to bring a new dimension to thief, if your gonna range you forfeit your slippery ness.

How would thief ever forfeit that, though? Our class mechanic, our utilities, hell, even a lot of weapon skills will always remain slippery. Unless they add something like ‘with this elite you can no longer shadowstep’, thieves will Always be slippery. That’s without even talking about stealth. For sure, the rifle won’t get an option to enter stealth by itself. If it does, the damage will be pathetic to compensate.

I actually like the idea of rifle for thief.

Artaz.3819:

What also makes it interesting is if the attack speeds are much quicker for Dagger since it gives Warrior a less telegraphed option for PvP/WvW.

Wait and see … we are at probably at least eight months before preview so … lots can change.

Exactly this.

I just hope warrior becomes more then a burst spamming healing machine again. The playstyle is so boring right now.

Choppy.4183:

Cygnus.6903:

Hoaxintelligence.4628:

mike put.6892:

Hoaxintelligence.4628:

mike put.6892:

Hoaxintelligence.4628:

mike put.6892: ‘’reckless dodge will remove blinds for you’’

How do you remove blinds with reckless dodge :o ?

Strength traitline makes it so the dodge does unblockable 2-3k damage on dodges.
Use that to dodge on your enemies and remove the blind if you have it on.

So Reckless Dodge can cleanse condi now ? Sins when ?

It procs damage that cleans the blind.

Wow i didnt knew, I thought reckless dodge only do unblockable damage after you dodged. I never knew about the blind cleansing.

Are there more condis that can be cleansed by reckless dodge? Or only blinds?

I am pooping myself here.

I think he’s saying Reckless Dodge counts as an attack, and blind clears after preventing one attack. So, if you’re blinded before your big burst, dodge into the enemy, blind clears after negating Reckless Dodge, and you’re good to go with your burst without the blind to stop it.

We all know what he is trying to say, this guy just doesn’t know when he is getting trolled.

I am waiting for him to explain warrior mechanics to me now.

mike put.6892:

Cygnus.6903:

mike put.6892:

i dont get why so many of you feel like saying blind is an obstacle. Zerker stance when you burst and that problem is fixed 70% of the time. And stabillity can be played around unless you’re fighting a rev traited for it or another warrior. And Cygnus the only two things from the list of classes you named that can actually counter hammer are Revenant and DH. The rest can easilly be played around. especially tempest , Chrono , and Scrapper just by swapping traits around.

How long does Zerker Stance last? WvW is a big place, and warrior is an easily kited class. When your stance runs out, your hammer becomes useless against a foe with blinds.

Sure you can play around stability on classes that aren’t War/Rev. But most classes have a lot of it, and then they still have blinds, blocks, invulnerabilities, stuns of their own to counter yours, and when all else fails, they port away or stealth up to reset their cooldowns. Especially Tempest, Chrono and Scrapper.

You seem to forget you also have a gs with that hammer that can close gaps + reckless dodge will remove blinds for you. And warrior is not an easilly kited class only easilly kited by mes and thief and if you play it right only by thief. If you as a warrior have problems fighting scrappers i think you might want to rethink what class you play if anything is suited to deal with scrapper it’s warrior. Take the trait : Destruction of the Empowered and watch them die. Even without it it shouldnt pose a big threath. Blocks also get outplayed by Reckless Dodge.

I will rethink what class I am playing, you gave me incredible insight.

Few questions.

You do realise that anything with stealth can kite you, right?

You do realise that anything with a teleport can kite you, right?

Final question, when you are using your dodges to cleanse all the blinds and proc all the blocks, what do you use for damage mitigation, when all your opponents can use their dodges defensively to, I dunno, dodge your highly telegraphed hammer stuns?

Edit: just thought of another big question. When you dodged into a DH to cleanse/proc, and the trap closes on you, what do you do?