Guild Wars 2

It’s meant to be a utility weapon, people.

It’s like complaining staff on guardian is a bad weapon. It isn’t. The purpose is AOE tagging and support/utility. Shortbow is literally the same thing.

Single-target DPS/burst for ranged is P/P.

Thief absolutely DOES NOT want or need a huge nuke on a ranged weapon, particularly a single-hit one. Gun Flame wars and TS DH’s are bad enough. We don’t need to be doing the same thing from stealth.

And before people say the coefficients are too high on those skills, and that the thief’s could be lower; they’re not even close to what would be allowable. We have so many ways to stack damage modifiers. Unload can do more damage than most ranger’s RF’s, even when they build for nuking with RF, yet it has less than 2/3 of the damage coefficient. Any kind of single-hit ranged burst without an obvious tell is a huge problem, and since we have stealth access, the tell would need to force the revealed debuff during casts, which hurts the gameplay of the set more and makes the set more gimmicky rather than fluid and functional across all skills.

We’re in power-creep wars 2 right now. There’s no reason to request for silly changes/buffs to cohesive weapons just because the new FoTM elites are broken beyond all comparison. I can understand requesting the next elite spec to feature a longbow/rifle due to our lack of 1200 range options. We don’t need more potency at 900, though, and shortbow doesn’t need a re-design just because it’s not 100-0’ing people in one skill at range.

Any kind of long-ranged damage or burst coming from the thief is going to have to be playing heavily with the Revealed mechanic as to enable counterplay if balance is going to be even remotely considered. It’s ranged damage or stealth. Pick one.

JS, amulets in WvW would make the problems even worse. Fights are already very slow with Pirate ship. Nerfed offensive stats like how they are in sPvP would have blobs just be unkillable in melee, so we’re back to ye olde hammertrain except there’s no point in bombing because it wouldn’t kill anyone to begin with, and would subsequently turn the fight into almost purely a numbers game.

Older GvG/ZvZ success during hammertrain boiled down to aggressive burst paired with highly coordinated players building for durability to isolate and kill the opposing players’ damage sources. It’s why a small group could beat a larger one; bomb the damage via periph while the frontline just soaks damage, and once the opposing damage dealers are gone, the periph and backline can stop caring about the enemy’s DPS and support and just start cleaving through the frontline.

With no dead backline and poor periph (which is why the pirate ship is a thing, as periph builds got nerfed and backline got made more durable and got more damage simultaneously), the format would just devolve into a sustain game where nobody dies or one where the numbers become pretty much the only deciding factor.

Good periph/counter-backline and lack thereof truly will define the success or failure of a group in larger-scale combat. PvP amulets and kitten stats would massively inhibit tactical growth and trivialize the fights more so than now.

But yea, Pirate Ship is OP’s “space ship” – at least this is how it’s been on NA for over a year.

Djinn.9245:

I’m a little confused by all those saying that “Elite Specializations” are just additional specializations and not supposed to be better than those we already had. If they’re not supposed to be better, why are they called “Elite”?

Lead game director and CEO of ANet both said, repeatedly, many times, that the “Elite” aspect of the name is only a name and that they were to be alternative styles of play and in no way intended to be stronger than core.

Thing is, they got a little to marketing-happy trying to sell the expansion via the “elite” name and confused people who didn’t do their research on the subject, and now a ton of people are arguing that the power gains are justified by the “elite” names.

Kind of like how “elite” skills are often weaker than their non-elite utility counterparts. It’s just being used as a fancy word for exclusivity.

Thief DPS increases were made to justify their weakness in PvE/raids. There was quite literally zero reason to bring a thief to a raid because it got both out-DPS’ed and out-supported in either one or both categories by every other class by very large margins to the point where its existence in a raid could not actually be justified.

ANet in their stupidity, rather than nerfing the DPS/damage power creep given in HoT, instead settled on unnecessary buffs. The thief community neither asked for or cared for a buff to AA DPS – but unfortunately it seems we’re settled on power creeping the game into ridiculous rather than nerfing the new shiny specs driving sales for the sake of balanced and diverse gameplay.

It won’t be reverted. It was even mentioned by Robert in the elite spec preview. The quote is something similar to how it would look stupid/make no sense to see a character moving with a GS plunged into the earth, which I completely agree with.

It already is a “hybrid” weapon via Deathly Chill on the AA chain.

It doesn’t really need improvement so much as the top echelons of PvP are all filled with fast characters and people with very fast reflexes and good mechanics to punish low speed or openings.

The weapon’s quite balanced for its intended purpose. It’s just not optimal in top-tier PvP. It works fine in hotjoin and lesser-ranks.

Most of them are conceptual failures which I’ve been mentioning even before HoT’s release; the true success of the specs imho is power-built reaper due to how it changes the style of the necro immensely while not really offering build superiority across the board, unlike how its condi counterpart is just objectively better than core necro.

Most of the elite specs are blatantly power-creeped and fail to fulfill the design prospect of changing the way professions are played; they simply just give numbers buffs and give synergy/replacement to other trait lines due to the “loss of customization” that comes with the elite spec by losing a trait line in general.

The prospect would be better-suited for core trait lines to follow the philosophy of having overlap between lines while specializations focus heavily on a style of play or changes to a style of play. That’d require a lot of changes to the core specs and a rework of all elites, however, which I strongly believe at this point ANet is unwilling or incapable of doing, seeing as such a task would be monumental and require constant, rapid iteration for balance and sound design.

Pyriall.1683:

They need to first start with detaching the weapon from the trait lines.

This is what surprised me most regarding the specializations. The new options are mutually exclusive of a self-defined combination of trait lines. Makes little sense to me that a weapon is locked behind traits, which while having good synergy, shouldn’t really be a requirement, just as how the current weapon-trait options work with the core specs/weapons.

I was more or less expecting the option of getting the new fancy mechanic/weapon as a separate UI panel, picking at most one elite spec at a time, but having the new trait lines be entirely optional; this way, players without the spec unlocked couldn’t use the weapon or trait line, but builds wouldn’t be forced into selecting the elite spec’s trait choices.

apharma.3741:

Actually Deceiver X, mesmer was a competitive choice for speed/record runs because the slowest part of speed runs was time to get from fight to fight. Portal allowed for many short cuts. It’s every other run mesmer was not a part of because of how poor it’s damage was.

Additionally mesmer does bring a lot to the table, stab, AoE cleanses, projectile mitigation etc which had a huge impact on groups. However guard did all that easier and with more dps which made it a better pick for anything that you couldn’t use portal tricks.

Funny thing you say about mesmer has poor DPS because of huge burst potential, guard can JI trap onto you and 100-0 you if you’re not on the ball now. Many other classes have large burst potential also but do not suffer this DPS penalty either. I would give all the legendaries my mesmer has for equality on that front but alas after 3 years I don’t hold out hope. Neither do most mesmers as a large amount have quit the game entirely.

Otherwise I do agree with what you put, I just hope they can nerf the elite specs to be a little more in line with core so it’s not always the best choice. It’s nice having the OP stuff to play with for a few months but without balancing and fixing long standing issues such as a rework of ele scepter, mesmer phantasms, thief being as one dimensional as a line etc they will lose a lot of players.

Sorry, they have lost a lot of players, should say they won’t entice them back.

Portal use was pretty dungeon-specific. By “bringing something to the table,” I am referencing superiority/optimality. I mean a thief can bring two AOE projectile reflections, one of which is objectively better than Feedback, AoE condi cleanses, and group stealth, too. Doesn’t mean that it’s really helpful compared to say the damage it could offer in this kind of scheme.

DH burst is way slower than a shatter unless True Shot is involved. My thief has the capacity to stay in DH traps for several moments before needing to leave/die, especially when only one trap is used (in this instance of JI/trap only one would be able to be casted before the target would likely re-position). Mesmer burst in terms of the damage dealt per time engaging is the best in the game. Other classes have burst, and some, like the thief, have competitive burst, but the mesmer is objectively better here. Does it justify the disproportionately poor personal DPS the mesmer has? No, but alacrity boosting party damage and AOE haste justify the chronomancer’s use in PvE because the damage gain party-wide is pretty much bigger than anything else another class can offer up to a point where too many mesmers are stacked or not enough damage modifiers are. Frankly, I’d love to see mesmer play when building selfish DPS work out better. But the design of chronomancer was group utility for a place in raids. Maybe next elite spec we’ll see a DPS-based concept emerge that reduces shatter potency or removes the blur shatter or something to make the class play more in-line with thief stylistically. I can’t say, but the claims regarding the mesmer/chrono being bad or that the chronomancer is worse than the core mesmer are simply false, which is what I intend to make people aware of.

And believe me, I wholly support the notion of nerfs to elite specs. Scrapper and druid need huge durability losses, tempest needs a lot of tweaking to promote more high-risk/high-reward play through number and trait adjustments, condi reapers need damage cuts (power reaper is very balanced imho, GJ here Robert), and DH’s need their traps and skills to be displayed properly instead of still-persistent culling bugs and radius/effect adjustments for some, such as Maw allowing for dodges inside of it, or True Shot being toned down either in cooldown or damage. Rev’s Cruel Repurcussion needs to be removed/reworked, Thief needs core trait line love in Crit Strikes and some better cleansing options in core, and DD needs damage reductions and utility drops (frankly this elite spec is horrible by design because it does nothing to change the thief’s style of play or really anything about it except making it get Acrobatics++), and Berserker needs a bit better of a tell on Gun Flame.

The power creep is absolutely real, and I’m staunchly against anyone asking for buffs to match it at the moment. Elite specs should be build options, as promised, to change the style of play, not to make existing ones strictly perform better. This is why I advocate so heavily for power-reaper; the style and purpose of the class changed immensely, but the overall balance didn’kittens counters kind of shuffled around, but it’s not really any stronger or weaker than core power necro, and depending on context, it’s both. I’m gonna say now it’s a hell of a lot more fun than core necro IMHO, so I play it for that purpose (as do others), but overall, the spec achieves its goal. That is diversity we should be looking for, and rather than complaining about X being too weak because Y is strong so X should be buffed, we should be looking at how Y is so much better than the way Y used to be, and thus is much more powerful relative to well-designed X and pre-HoT X, so Y should be toned down accordingly, with its new counters and class goals in mind for niche roles or build purposes.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Loosmaster.8263:

You can get in trouble using those “kitten” words…

Oh dear heavenly Dwayna, I meant the six letter word with double s’s that means “analyze.”

Thanks for pointing that out. I better fix that before I get infracted.

I don’t want to make you the butt of this joke but I think both words could be seen as filterable for the same reason ;D

Should have stuck with ‘investigate’.

OP’s issue is a real problem, though.

I formally proposed a rifle option for the thief with comprehensive traits, skills, etc. that featured control-heavy and condition-heavy play while offering some profound DPS/ranged options at the expense of a high-risk style completely changing the way the thief plays while offering huge synergy with other builds, and it was rejected often because it wasn’t OP enough/not a 1HKO from 1500 range.

Can’t go around proposing reasonable/balanced ideas without people getting upset staunchly defending whatever overpowered thing it is that they’re currently using.

The systematic destruction of small WvW guilds via the guild hall changes has led to a lot of bleedout since HoT, paired with the OP banners and trivialized fights from the elite specs leading to a lot of mass-quitting has led to a lot less people and a lot less fun overall.

Crinn.7864:

BurrTheKing.8571:

While the individual concepts are still generally there, often times one class is now simply better at doing a certain role than every other class.

This problem has always existed and will always exist. Nostalgia aside, given multiple different ways to do something, one of those ways will invariably be better than the others.
This is why balancing asynchronous classes is a impossibility.

While true, and something people seem to forget (especially in PvE), the OP’s post has a lot of merit in that the design philosophy has changed from “each class can do the same general thing but in different styles and aesthetics” to “each class does their own thing entirely.”

The specialization framework concept offered a ton of room to really improve, but I feel like implementation was rushed and poorly-executed with what I’d deem as a blatant failure from design and balance of the individual specializations themselves.

While they’re definitely more balanced, the over-dependency on sustain and over-synergy with the sustaining trait lines and defensive gear pushes the class by design into a sustain role with no real capacity to function in any other way except PvE set-and-forget AOE fields and bombing in zergs in WvW where the focus-fire isn’t as intensive as it is in small-scale.

Ithilwen.1529:

I pre purchased HoT. In addition I’ve pretty much mained Mesmer for years.

No, the Chronomancer line really is not build defining. the Alacrity and quickness changes have made it a sideline factor at best.

If as you say the elites weren’t intended to be more powerful; Then why were they released in a form that was considerably more powerful than the core classes?

Here we have a clear conflict between statements and actions. One possible explanation is that it was to force players to buy the expac to compete in season 1.

It’s build-defining for challenging PvE which is what HoT was supposed to feature. Take a core mesmer to a raid and you’ll be laughed out of the door. Chronomancers, however, bring tons of group utility/damage to the table and have a huge role in organized PvE.

Which is exactly a role the core mesmer absolutely does not have. Recall all of the complaints from mesmers being kicked from speed run groups/never being part of the speed run dungeon meta before HoT landed. The class does very low personal DPS due to its massive burst potential, and core mesmer brings little group utility to the table aside from long-cooldown quickness.

Like I said, expecting to have the new elites be the best or competitive in all formats and all contexts is silly when the announced intent was to feature ways to change how the class plays. Since the chronomancer can have a huge effect on group performance whereas the core mesmer doesn’t at all, this is a pretty big change, just as how the Reaper is designed to handle multiple foes and be shroud-heavy for low burst and high DPS while core necromancer is not shroud-heavy, and core shroud is focused on high burst and low DPS on a single target (speaking for power/concept, condi is overtuned in its numbers atm).

As far as releasing the classes being OP/more powerful than core, of course they did. Would you have preferred to have the elite specializations suck at release to be upset when you realize your original build was strictly better? Would you have then regretted purchasing the expansion before the patch landed due to underwhelming elites? And that’s just assuming the balance issue stems from the incompetence of ANet’s balancing staff.

Further, power creep is how expansions are sold. If I’m going to try to convince you to buy a new version of something you already have, you’re going to want it to be better, rather than just waiting for what you have to break first. This is basic marketing; hype the features of the new product to get consumers to leave their current versions to accept the new one because of how great the new one is. We see this all the time with cell phones. The model from three years ago still works just fine, yet there are people who camp for days if not weeks outside of stores to be the first in line whenever a new iPhone is released, and continue to do this every single release, despite the new features per iteration being very minor.

Simply, they were likely intended to be released as superior alternatives to the core specializations to bolster sales. Anet is a company owned by a massive gaming company. If their figures aren’t good, they can expect to get some cut funding or forced to restructure their business/business model. So they power-creep the new shinies to make them more appealing to bolster sales to make upper management happy (upper management does not play the game or care about the quality of content, so long as the game sells well. I speak from personal experience having worked on a AAA MMO game before). Often the short-sighted-ness of upper management gets in the way of making intelligent long-term development decisions regarding the quality of content, but that’s how the business works. If the CEO of your company was over your shoulder and told you to do something at work and is clearly not in a mood to open discussion about the collateral, you do it, regardless of what the consequence may be, because that’s the nature of running a business.

Seems to me you fell for a marketing ploy and are upset you got played or are unwilling to admit you did. Expecting anything but this kind of release pattern suggests a lack of business insight/skepticism.

Ele will never be properly balanced so long as it’s built around the principle of being “decent” at everything.

Either you excel or you suck in PvP. It’s why longbow ranger used to be bad before they buffed it massively (designed/discussed in a video with the ranger designer as kind of a “sustained” ranged damage option with some utility). It’s why hambow and cele ele and bunker mes and scrapper dominate(d); they have the raw numbers to back up being “too good” at something, and that something is pretty much entirely sustain.

Ele’s dependence on boons and swapping attunements for meaningful benefits are keeping its build path options very limited and very imbalanced. Fire/Air are pretty terrible lines because what they bring to the table will never be as good as water/earth/arcane/tempest, and the majority of the damage gained and synergy in dealing damage comes from weapon skills and stacking boons, rather than stacking trait effects to allow deeper specialization with some “extra” kind of back-up utility found in other attunements.

Other classes (mostly) need to specialize heavily in traits and select their weapons very carefully, making sacrifices somewhere along the lines to get the synergy they need in performing what the build is intended to do, making them have definitive and innate weaknesses per build. The ele’s coverage of effects inhibits this kind of build creation and subsequently makes the class overly-difficult to balance.

The removal of the celestial amulet was a big step forward to reducing the elementalist out of the “master of all” issue it had, but a lack of synergy within their offensive options and boon-dependence within certain trait lines keeps them from being able to deviate from the sustain-oriented path.

Ithilwen.1529:

So, in essense you agree that Chronomancer is in fact weaker at this time than the core Mesmer class. We have that much common ground at any rate.

Sure, I’ll agree that build diversity is something we want.

Nevertheless the Elite specs were released significantly stronger than the core classes. This made it pretty much mandatory to buy the expac to compete in PvP.

To then turn around and nerf the elite classes hard is cynical at best. If the intent was to create build diversity, then the elites would have been released as different modes but of similar power. They were not. Ergo, diversity was not the goal.

I bought the expac ( twice, one for each of my accounts ) specifically to finally have a competitive Mesmer. That was the promise.

Nobody promised anywhere that the meta would change to be inclusive of the Chronomancer or the mesmer in general. If you bought the expansion to be viable, you either did it well-after HoT launched knowing that Chronobunker was OP, or you purchased the expansion before/as it launched simply hoping that what you were advertised was going to do better in a very undefined meta. The Chronomancer was super competitive because it was objectively overpowered, not because the class was well-designed or the structure of the mode changed.

You bought the expansion for all the wrong reasons if you just expected to be more powerful, and clearly didn’t research the product. Numerous times, including the announcement at PAX South, did the lead game director and CEO of the company announce that elite specializations were intended NOT to be more powerful than core specializations and were released to change styles of play/add more diversity to the classes for different purposes. People claiming that the specs should be more powerful are lying to themselves and/or didn’t actually look at what the intent of the expansion was to be by reading about what they were purchasing.

The chronomancer spec/trait line has very distinct and very significant/build-defining uses that have allowed the profession to be played differently and be used in different contexts. That was the intent. If power-shatter mesmer is superior to power-shatter chronomancer, but bunker builds are possible and the class brings massive group support to PvE on the chronomancer, the spec has been done properly by ensuring that more styles of play have opened up rather than power creep.

It doesn’t justify the power creep on other classes, and in particular, this mentality shows how Daredevil is the biggest design failure of all of the elite specializations since it did objectively nothing to change the way the thief plays and opened up no new builds except D/D condi which is a scumbag build, while only buffing D/P. Just because other classes are power-creeped, however, doesn’t justify that the mesmer/chrono should be; everything else just needs to be toned down, and we should be expecting a lot more nerfs in the next quarter’s patch, for that’s what the game director said they’re focusing on for the next major patch: balancing elite specs to core.

Ithilwen.1529:

No the elite specs were better initially. This made the expac an necessity for established players. Once those sales were done, the elite specs were knocked down.

That’s a pretty cynical move in my opinion.

Basic MMO marketing strategy. It’d be like if car companies could take away features from your car after selling it to you for you to buy again. Car companies don’t have this luxury from obvious legal concerns, but software, especially video games, differ. If companies selling physical goods could get away with this, they would.

Thing is, Elite specs are all still way better than core. The only “balanced” one with core IMHO is power-built reaper, but the condi build is out of control. Otherwise, all of the specs are just blatantly superior to core by very noticeable margins.

Straegen.2938:

A thief does not have a shot that hits this hard. Once upon a time it did but those days are gone. The biggest hitter on the thief is now Pistol Whip and it is channeled. Huge Backstabs require a thief to go invis, pop cooldowns, get close and hit from behind. Even then it is single target, doesn’t hit as hard, doesn’t daze, doesn’t apply 3 stacks of burning, doesn’t pierce and cannot be effectively spammed.

I very rarely see 10k Backstabs and the biggest I was hit with all night tonight was 8k… The big Gun Flame shots lit me up including several in the 9k to 12k range. A few more above that and at least two at 14.5k and a whopping 16.2k.

If you’re stabbing < 10k on a build meant to deal damage you’re messing up somewhere. Even without the signets 10k+ is very doable in WvW.

Like I said, it’s much riskier than GF war because of melee/cooldowns/lower defenses, but such damage is very much achievable. GF war is just safer by a lot, and much easier to execute. I’m not justifying GF war but instead debunking the claim that such damage doesn’t exist on other classes, especially the thief.

The claims about the DD also lacking damage are untrue. If I really wanted to maximize DPH, I could drop Trickery for DD and have run Staff traited, and have pushed close to a 30k vault.

DD is superior to every other trait line the thief has except Trickery just because it’s irreplaceable due to its initiative gains. Otherwise it brings comparable damage to CS and DA with better cleansing than SA and evasion than Acrobatics. It’s straight-up power creep just like the rest of the Elite Specs and proclaiming it’s weak is just silly and mathematically incorrect.

Straegen.2938:

Generally after a big shot, I have time to react but not with this thing. I go from near full health to downed instantly. No other class in the game right now can do this at least on a non-channeled skill. I haven’t been hit by anything else even approaching these numbers. The worst part is this attack blasts a half dozen times in 30s. Even if I manage to duck 5 of the shots, the sixth one has been finding its mark.

Very achievable on the thief, if not able to pump more damage.

The sacrifices made to achieve this kind of damage are bigger and more riskier than what GF warrior needs to make, however.

Play condi Rabid/Carrion/Dire and they lose, no skill needed. Better defense and better damage than berserker/valk. You can eat shatters and kill them during distortion with mass application.

As a power build in WvW, you’re often not going to beat a good chrono. Too much distortion/block effects and huge bursts/kiting can make the build almost unstoppable when played right. Basically just going tank is the way to not die, but won’t really kill them, either.

I find it pretty good. I’m not really fond of BB, frankly, and think it shines more on builds which have durability rather than the berserker build I run.

The reset is amazing for PvE and WvW. One thing to take note of, though, is that it does not reset a skill currently being cast; Spiral, Charge, Scythe, or maintaining stability will not reset their cooldowns during their uses, so be careful on the context of when you’re killing things. That said, constant resets on Death’s Charge are awesome for moving around, and a blob fight with lots of soul spirals right after the the other is pretty amazing.

The DPS gain will make you win an identical fight 1v1 against another reaper of the same build using BB. That said, it is a bit marginal.

Additional effects still aren’t. Backstab can already hit like a bus and makes a big impact on most fights. BV already punishes people not running stability enough as it is; there’s no need to get such short cooldown CC or extra effects.

Power creep got us into the problem of backstab seeming weak to begin with. More power creep/extra stuff for free will only make other classes demand for power buffs and the cycle will repeat until either everyone is one-shotting each other with skills with infinite range and can’t be prevented or nobody ever dies.

The power creep seriously needs to end. Just nerf the new broken stuff instead of buffing backstab to compete better with what’s already overpowered.

You’ll never convince baba that dire condi is cheesy because he staunchly defends the build regardless of context and makes claims that the build is a lot riskier than it really is.

Serious Thought.5394:

DeceiverX.8361:

NinjaEd.3946:

(I’ve suggested giving us the active of assassin’s signet on killing a foe with an ICD, so yolo thief can transition to the next target with a punch.)

I’d love the idea of a remove revealed effect given the amount of it that’s being tossed onto professions. +1

Again, I dislike the removal of Reveal due to what I think right now is an excess of stealth game-wide, including the thief), and it lacks synergy with signet builds.

That said, this concept could have amazing potential. How about the elite signet refunds two initiative on activation and it gives a short buff effect on activation which when the thief kills a player, the cooldown resets? This could make SoP a viable trait choice for racking up lots of might after repeated kills in a short period at the cost of BV and DS, but would remove the need for stacking a full bar of utils to blow for the sake of might stacking for signet builds. This also lets signets push into sustained-fight viability or build around it with the remaining utilities instead of just being solely a burst-or-burst trait choice.

This way, cooldown could also be reduced to 45 seconds or less since its gains aren’t huge but offer a lot of niche use for a new build.

The passive is still tough to think about what would be useful and balanced.

But the thing is, no one really uses Assassin Signet. I do, but I play mad yolo PK TDM bs. Here’s what we have:

Malice- attacking heals.
Shadow- move faster, blind someone (weaker signet of air)
Infiltator- init/time with a tp
Agil- crit/dodge/endu
Assassin- damage

So we have what looks to be chase set up with some stickiness (malice just needs some help… so bad… like Shiro Heal style rework maybe?). Run after, tp to, burst. Heal if they counter burst. Signets are built to end things faster on Thief.

Passives: We have heal on hit, movespeed, init per second, precision, and power.
Actives: Heal, blind, endurance100, +15% damage over kittens.

Brainstorming hurts >.< But I still vote revealed. How does it make sense to have a signet for every line except Shadow Arts? :C Poor thing, it wants a friend.

Signets as a whole push for aggressive play/constantly hitting things, though. They’re not really built or designed for intermittent in/out effects. Deception skills are more or less what SA pushes for, since these abilities are usually bolstered through the use of stealth to throw off opponents or simply directly give stealth; 2 of the utilities give stealth, 1 enables it, and the heal directly gives stealth as well. Signets conceptually push more or less into sustained combat bonus via the passives and spiking with the active effects.

We also don’t have any sustained-combat-oriented elites. TG is just generally-speaking bad. Getting initiative refund on a kill with a cooldown reset on kill would enable aggressive thief builds to just keep on killing, rather than being forced into retreating to recover initiative even if fine on health. Basically, it’s Kleptomaniac on a signet, which could also help reduce the dependency on Trickery.

Maybe OP as a buff effect for the thief in general (changed perhaps to a debuff which “marks” the target, and has a timer that starts on the first target hit and only refunds initiative/cooldown if that target is killed).

So for the sustained approach to signets as a whole with big-money actives to aggressive and kind of combo-centric play they offer as a whole, I’ll propose this:

Ravager’s Signet
Cooldown: 20s
Cast time: 0
Passive: +180 Ferocity
Active: Your next attack made marks the opponent for six seconds. If the target dies within this period, the cooldown is refreshed and you gain two initiative. This effect cannot be negated.

There is no DPS loss from not using NQ and instead using IP so long as you run Trickery instead of Acro. Lead Attacks directly compensates for NQ assuming maintaining fury isn’t an issue. Otherwise, the damage gains from Trickery are better than NQ’s ferocity, while offering competitive fury duration from ToTC.

Depends heavily on trait, gear, and weapon choices. DA/CS/DD berserker you’re better off running BD up until like 12-13 stacks of might. Best to take IP for this, though, as you’ll be losing benefits from NQ fast unless fury is being spammed by other members and HK is kinda useless.

Fay.2357:

slinkiestyew.6823:

Well, I would’ve liked to think Chrono would provide at least ONE build we could be ‘reduced to’. But after being abruptly kicked out of about five raid fights now BEFORE THE FIGHTS EVEN BEGIN simply because I’m a Mesmer and apparently ‘Mesmer dps sucks —-, play a different —-- class’, I’m starting to think it’s time to leave the class (or the game’s apparently awful community) :/

Yeah, I can bring Chrono to the Vale Guardian where boon-stripping still sees /some/ play. But it’s an inevitable kick once we down that boss because every(any) other class apparently outdoes us at the moment…? Perhaps it’s the awful luck I’ve had with absurdly selfish LFG groups of pricks, perhaps it’s the class. Either way, it’s certainly soured the experience for me.

Chrono is still an unarguable damage boost to the raid if played well. Anyone kicking a chrono on sight purely for being a chrono is just a bad and probably won’t finish the raid anyway.

It’s not uncommon for people to go on LFG for a boss and then between bosses kick sub-optimal DPS.

Why, I have no idea, seeing as you’ll spend more time on LFG/wasted on trash by not having someone there, but stupid people are stupid and they do it.

Thief didn’t see any damage increases except it’s AA, though.

The damage you’re seeing isn’t anything new and hasn’t been anything new since 2012.

If anything, it’s lower, because ANet has improved armor and passive defenses so much since release.

P/P thief offers near-identical DPS as a longbow ranger, as I discussed with someone some time ago in another thread who complained P/P thief relative to LB ranger did too low damage. Further, the longbow ranger had many more conditional dependencies tied to his damage such as not being allowed to dodge, which the thief did not depend on.

Range doesn’t need to deal less damage so much as if ranged damage is going to be competitive to melee damage, there needs to be substantial risk in dealing said damage.

Mesmer’s now got the thief spot for raids before the massive AA damage buffs. Although the thief wouldn’t have been allowed in to begin with :s

Such is the nature of a burst/stealth-oriented profession. Unfortunately mesmer can’t get such DPS because of its PvP-centric durability and design for group utility with the Chrono, which is unfortunately now lackluster compared to the Druid.

This is the community ANet catered to by implementing “hardcore” content aimed for a strict meta/group composition per the style of the forced trinity while enforcing a community built among friends and guildmembers rather than opening up to other players/pugs, which is the type of content many other games have traditionally offered, and why many of those games have vile communities or low player counts.

There’s a reason ANet sold this game initially on the principle that all content could be beaten by all classes and builds; following the more traditional/tinity dynamic creates a unsustainable future for the game and hurts the community. There’s also a reason this game was praised for its community before HoT. Raids are a huge backpedal away from this and unfortunately those who had the insight to see this coming to try and resist such implementations were not as loud as the “hardcore” speed-runner-wannabes whining about the “berserker meta” in the old dungeons.

There will always be optimization in games and strictly speaking enforcing a form of optimization in design will ultimately result in less diversity and stricter player decisions while marginalizing the non-mathematically-best solutions to uselessness due to communication opportunities such that these solutions can be given to even the dullest of players who don’t think about optimization at all.

Sad truth. And Anet’s solution has largely been to power-creep the week stuff for PvE instead of applying nerfs to the overpowered stuff or re-designing broken/bad ideas, even if this means the PvE encounters themselves need toning down.

The flat mod is the one which matters, especially when you combine it with the overall bonus stat gains from each piece (including armor) and then apply it to external damage modifiers.

We won’t even talk about infusion bonuses.

online.1278:

you guys still don’t even feel, beyond understand or know what this mean, at this rate?

Hah…. no answer then…

…Are you high?

Fay.2357:

Yeah, I take issue with the phrase ‘reduced to this’. We weren’t reduced to this, we were brought up to this level. Previously we were only brought for portal, and time warp was used because it was good, but wasn’t enough to actually have us in a dungeon party at all.

Ranger was the same way, brought for Frost Spirit and Spotter, but still brought nonetheless, and similarly, are brought more now for their increased support.

People wanted trinity-style raids for “hardcore” groups; this is what it comes down to. Some class is gonna have the low DPS numbers and will have high support or defensive capabilities. It’s part of the dynamic that a vocal minority demanded, and mesmer/chrono happens to be the low-DPS high-support/durability-potential build.

Damage gains are roughly 10% when comparing a full set of ascended weapons and armor to exotic. The defense gains are negligible.

As I’ve mentioned, the more interesting figure and subsequent analysis will be Q1 2016 compared to Q3 2015 (pre-HoT) and Q4 2014 (pre-HoT-hype from PAX).

Anyone claiming the expansion itself didn’t sell well is an idiot. What matters are going to be the churn rates thereafter.

That’s more or less a fundamental issue with stealth and DoT effects and how our application methods are all pretty safe, rather than conditions as a whole.

If the best options for a thief to apply conditions involved self-inflicting the Revealed debuff (or not evading while dealing damage), people playing such builds would need to much more carefully evaluate when and when not to stack the conditions to begin with.

Confusion as it is currently designed is a busted mechanic; for even the act of cleansing it deals damage, which makes no sense.

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

I never said it was “OP” I said it was quite strong.

DeceiverX.8361:

As far as Shadow Refuge and the removal of reveal; it’s a very important mechanic to have in the game. It was implemented for a reason, because the thief was wildly OP when it wasn’t in the game.

Not one of this discussions again
Give me 5 minutes before I read the rest – I need to get my head off the desk before I can go on…

Please re-read or there was a mis-understanding? I was referring to the thief being OP when the Revealed effect didn’t exist in the game (on the topic of Reveal). I wasn’t referring to SR in that statement but the proposal of anything removing the Revealed debuff, especially SR. I said having SR remove the Revealed effect would make the thief OP again becausse of how ridiculously overpowered the class was before Revealed was added to the game.

I then discussed how SR doesn’t need a buff but that the skill isn’t OP, and that SR as a skill is in a pretty good spot.

Virtute.8251:

1-up-1-down would drastically increase the frequency of (even more) imbalanced matches. For each tier, the middle server will tend to get stuck, and the #1 and #3 will tend to bounce constantly between their natural tier and the neighbor tier. I would expect the players to quickly realize that fact, then fall into a pattern of off-weeks and on-weeks where a majority would avoid the match following a 1-up that pushes them into a guaranteed curb-stomp loss. Counterpoint, of course, would be the karma train swap meet for the guaranteed win week. That’s what happens now, just less frequently.

1-up-1-down can work in competitions with 2 opponents per match. The third opponent is why it won’t work here. Furthermore, it gives no real weight to historical performance, and so it is too volatile.

This, right here.

1-up-1-down would be great only if:

Matches were of only two servers
- OR -
The disparity between tiers/servers across all tiers would approach zero.

Otherwise, you have middle-score stagnancy and wildly-swinging weeks as described above. Middle-tier stagnancy is already an issue, but the wild swings due to tier disparity are rare.

The best would probably be some kind of weighted system which measures score/tier growth perhaps with some weighted data such as population changes and coverage hour graph analysis. If a server gets stacked, this will be visible in the data, and rapid tier acceleration/winning streaks will push the server up and up faster rather than needing to wait for glicko to catch up.

The most balanced possible matchups would require a change from the server-exclusive model, though, as heuristic functions with some genetic algorithms using lots of data as a backbone could pair multiple servers together to cover multiple heuristic needs to create the most balanced encounters, while mutation functions keep the server combinations fresh.

Of course, this comes at the cost of keeping things solely server-based, which the community is divided on. Sustainable balanced matches without stagnancy versus server communities; take your pick, as both isn’t possible as far as anyone’s aware.

Working as intended to only “need” one set of armor. Lack of trinity and the entire game being designed and marketed as “play how you want and you should be able to beat any/all content” is why you only “need” one set.

Raids pushed away from this with the hardcore scene, but otherwise, there is no hard requirement to own multiple sets for a functional character, which is also intended as it lets players not need to worry about spending tons of cash on many different sets of gear/worry about needing to bring different gear to different encounters. Running DPS will cut down on time to beat content, at the cost of making an encounter more difficult. There are a handful of videos of a cleric’s(?) GS warrior soloing lupi with no blocks, dodges, or reflects – just pure facetank – made to demonstrate that building tankier does make you tankier to the point where a lot of content can be trivialized. That said, it took the guy a LONG time to kill the boss. But seeing as he could basically have done it AFK, it makes sense.

Complaints about the berserker “requirement” stem only from people trying to reduce time when plowing through content either from boredom/wanting to make money faster or for the sake of running faster. I’ve never joined a party in my history running dungeons where I was asked for a gear check unless it was explicitly stated in the party description (in which case don’t join, because unless you intend to uphold speed running with them, you have no reason to be there), and in some instances, some of my fastest, smoothest runs have come from non-berserker players just playing better than whatever FoTM DPS class/build is.

So really, the only “reason” not to play full DPS is for personal preference, or if perhaps you’re going into combat that simply can’t be done while playing glassy as a solo player, and such content exists albeit it’s secluded. On the converse, the only reason not to be a tank is because it makes things go faster; almost all boss encounters in core Tyria do not have heals unlike many other games, so there’s no minimum amount of damage required to beat the content, just time.

There’s always going to be an optimal way of playing, defined either by the game developers (trinity systems/encounter design) or players (efficiency of content completion within expected skill thresholds). I think that’s why GW2 released the game as “play how you want” to begin with, because a meta is uncontrollable and preventing people from beating content via build/gear decisions is a pointless obstacle that just makes things more frustrating for everyone while not actually solving the whole persistent-optimization problem.

francescoG.1069:

DeceiverX.8361:

Sorry, OP, but your issues do not stem from the mesmer class but from your build simply not being cohesive. Mind Wrack is unquestionably the best burst in the game still, with high-investment mesmers able to get each wrack to around 6-7k per clone against squishier targets.

Pick power or condi; building into both on your gear won’t work in WvW. You’ll find yourself exponentially weaker in power if you keep the rabid gear, and in order to make condi work for damage you need to go all-in due to how conditions scale and the way you’re applying them. You’re not really overcoming most armor thresholds now, and your conditions aren’t overcoming most cleanses + heals.

Mesmer does lack personal DPS, but it has unrivaled burst damage, especially for its durability, with only the thief being able to shell out extremely similar damage over the course of a very short time frame, but such class/build mix is unquestionably squishier by very large margins.

I would not know what to tell you, I like to state the facts, the facts are that among all the build I saw the mesmer dps with burst / Mind Wrack is just a build from WVW involving the use of consumables and sharpening stone, if in pvp we ended up using Alacrity Bunker dps instead of using the celestial instead of the Marauder / Berserk there is a reason.
But maybe we were wrong all except you, I would never have been happier to be wrong ^^.

OP’s complaints are based on WvW, so my reply is based on WvW. PvP punishes any kind of burst builds because the offensive stats are completely kitten.

Put simply, expect double damage in WvW from offensive builds, while tank builds retain similar defensive capabilities. Power/crit builds scale exponentially but depend on this scaling to be good. PvP amulets prevent this scaling making the investment next to worthless. Paired with a format which by design encourages tanking in a small area (not something core mesmer or any similarly-designed class (thief) is really good for when building for damage, as it depends on mobility/re-positions/general trickery for defense. Bunker chrono had the on-point immune uptime necessary to make it good for this purpose. It works in PvE because mesmer’s DPS (not burst) potential is so low and its immune uptime was so high that it didn’t really matter to exchange the mesmer as a tank for something else to run DPS. Nobody ran it in WvW, though, because the build accomplished absolutely nothing.

If this thread was about sPvP, then yes, my reply would have been different (although the high burst statements and the OP’s build not being cohesive still remain).

And no, WvW is not about consumables. Stat-wise from gear alone a berserker build will deal around 75% more scaled damage baseline compared to sPvP. That’s a massive difference. Consumables are just icing.

DD is pretty much unquestionably tied for the best or second-best trait line at the moment, with Trickery often finding its way to the top just because it’s basically necessary.

It offers some of the highest damage and best defenses of the trait lines. If you didn’t plan on running Trickery, then DA/CS/DD is the highest-possible damage build available to the thief, even if not using a staff (staff dominates DPS when building for it, though). You will miss out on substantial steal-utility and initiative when not building for Trickery, however.

Typically it’s smarter to run DA/DD/Tr or CS/Tr/DD for PvE. As far as running out of endurance goes, Channeled Vigor is pretty ridiculous for refunding endurance, and there’s enough endurance regeneration in there to keep high uptime of the effects without too many issues via Endurance thief, staff master, and BT.

Depends on your needs, though. Building more defensive means less uptime on the GM trait bonuses, but amazing condition cleansing/mobility/damage mitigation/utilities.

SB’s a pure utility weapon, so it’s not really meant to feel optimal in combat.

The initiative system reduces dependencies on needing to swap weapons, which allows for stylized weapons like the shortbow to be so strong without needing high numbers. It’s what the skills bring to the table which makes them good, and no-cooldown blink, AOE unblockable poison, spammable evade/cripple, spammable blast finisher, and AoE tagging auto give the weapon lots of use despite not being main-set-worthy.

For sPvP enthusiasts, the weapon is often considered as being pretty much the only thing holding the class together due to its unrivaled vertical mobility potential, such that it’s pretty much required on all competitive builds for its mobility alone.

I never said it was “OP” I said it was quite strong. It’s always been a strong contender for a utility skill and offers a lot of utility such as preventing stomps on critical targets or allowing a long-duration stealth effect when used before entering combat to really enable getting the jump on someone due to the extended stealth gained with zero indicators once casted. It also heals and is a dark field, enabling more healing for a group or yourself depending on your build.

Half of the battle of playing defensively is knowing when to use those defensive abilities through knowledge of your opponent. You don’t cast/rely on SR in front of a GS mesmer which hasn’t used its knockback yet, or hide in an AoE circle if a necro hasn’t dropped its marks (especially fear on staff) and wells. Knowing when and where to place the effect is simply part of smart play, and not being smart in a combat environment is what gets you killed. This should be applicable to every class.

And that’s the thing; SR has never been a get-out-of-jail-free card against skilled players. It was against only against unskilled ones, and the basis for asking for such massive buffs is extending to “My enemies have gotten better and I don’t want to switch my utilities or adapt to their counterplay.” SR is textbook of the old (superior) systems in GW2 and well-designed mechanics that were in the game in that in order to counter it, quick-thinking through the use of the right skills would put a monkey wrench into someone’s strategy or skill use. Asking for more buffs by the removal of counterplay will only help contribute to the downwards-spiraling of the game’s combat and the thief as a whole into more linear build paths through the use of blatantly superior/power-creeped abilities and overall trivialization of combat.

Having the skill remove the revealed debuff is just completely and wildly overpowered. I’d never not run this utility on any build, from P/P condi to S/P power. I’d drop signets for it because it’d be better burst, better sustain, and better reliability over quite literally everything. Five consecutive backstabs over the course of five seconds would just be so incredibly overpowered and you know it would.

As far as Shadow Refuge and the removal of reveal; it’s a very important mechanic to have in the game. It was implemented for a reason, because the thief was wildly OP when it wasn’t in the game.

SR is a powerful utility but shouldn’t be the be-all-end-all solution to stealth/safety. If it removed revealed, there would be no way to deal with a thief using it aggressively, as stealth attacks inflicting self-reveal would get the effect removed and the thief could just keep using stealth attacks with free stealth pulses, and the utility is already considered to be quite strong; there’s no real justification in buffing it more.

Other classes certainly have too much stealth. It doesn’t mean we should get power-creeped more, though. They should be brought down in accordance and made similarly-counterable, instead.

Just seems too strong to do so. SoS and Blinding Powder would allow for double backstabs and that’s just straight up unreasonable.

I also kinda like the clutch blind AoE blind. I’d use it more if the cooldown wasn’t so long, though. Putting it on 15s like SoM would be enough such that SoP could let it stack 5 might near-permanently and have more frequent sustained use in a fight while keeping its passive available when most swiftness sources (ToTC comes to mind) end/come close to ending.

You can use them without unlocking them in the sPvP lobby on golems and mobs and custom arenas for playing against others. While not fully reflective of the rest of the game, it does at least give you a chance to get a feel for the skills/combos and whatnot without needing to invest in beating the HoT content.

Ananeos.4587:

Andulias.9516:

Ananeos.4587:

Thaddeus.4891:

Ananeos.4587:

If Chrono shield 4 and Well of Precognition both got emergency nerfs weeks before the balance patch I expect emergency buffs to wells.

That’s debatable, that still doesn’t obligate them to do what you ask. Anet could consider wells to be good how they are now since they are in a good position in PvE and buff the mesmer in another way to make it more on par with other profession for PvP.

Well here is an incentive. Chronomancer is currently the WORST elite spec in the game, worse than Berserker. If you aren’t going to play with the wells you are, what, going to make your clones run faster when you shatter them? How is Anet going to pander to 2 character slot f2p players that have mesmer as a main?

No, absolutely disagree. Despite the nerf, Chronomancer is still the most unique and intersting elite spec that made everyone radically shift their playstyle and shed a new light on the class. That hasn’t changed.

You can say how unique and interesting and how much of a radical shift Chronomancer is but it does not change the fact that it is the weakest elite. There are eight other elite specs, choose one and we can compare the math.

Nowhere did anyone claim the power creep from the expansion on any of the classes was justified.

Frankly, more elite specs need aggressive nerfing as well.

Don’t get me wrong.

I’m just saying that the Revenant as a whole isn’t trash or really close to it. It’s not amazing, but it’s not trash.

Really the big issue atm is powercreep on most classes coming from HoT. A lot needs to be toned down, and yes, I agree the supportive options (Jalis/Ventari) and some of core Revenant need reworks/substantial changes that do not just entail numbers increases. This holds for a lot of builds/classes/trait lines, though, and is not unique to the Revenant.

NinjaEd.3946:

(I’ve suggested giving us the active of assassin’s signet on killing a foe with an ICD, so yolo thief can transition to the next target with a punch.)

I’d love the idea of a remove revealed effect given the amount of it that’s being tossed onto professions. +1

Again, I dislike the removal of Reveal due to what I think right now is an excess of stealth game-wide, including the thief), and it lacks synergy with signet builds.

That said, this concept could have amazing potential. How about the elite signet refunds two initiative on activation and it gives a short buff effect on activation which when the thief kills a player, the cooldown resets? This could make SoP a viable trait choice for racking up lots of might after repeated kills in a short period at the cost of BV and DS, but would remove the need for stacking a full bar of utils to blow for the sake of might stacking for signet builds. This also lets signets push into sustained-fight viability or build around it with the remaining utilities instead of just being solely a burst-or-burst trait choice.

This way, cooldown could also be reduced to 45 seconds or less since its gains aren’t huge but offer a lot of niche use for a new build.

The passive is still tough to think about what would be useful and balanced.