Guild Wars 2

kefro.9312:

Mesmer with perma stealth inside keeps… arena net doesnt even know what they are doing… its sad, unless they are doing on porpose

Basically. There’s no reason to try and defend anything when all that really matters is the last 4:30 before the tick, where it pretty much boils down to the number of mesmer groups you have in critical locations for portal-flipping wins.

Jethro.8725:

Get rid of the crafting booths too. Sometimes I see people sitting in there while we are losing our stuff. Aren’t there enough places in PVE to do that.

Dunno if you knew, but there’s a hefty bonus chance to critical crafting based on War Score each server gets while in WvW. It’s one of the many WvW-only buffs.

The crafting one should be applied to all players in PvE based on their home server, as this then keeps people from creating unnecessary queues. I think the intention by the original developers was to have these bonuses be a reason for fighting, but since it’s not attributed to individual performance, you just see leeches jumping in for a while to get from 0-500 crafting and talking in map chat.

Random.4691:

coglin.1867:

Liston.9708:

And some servers were trapped because they could not rise above their bracket or drop below their bracket during a tournament……

That is wrong. We had tournaments that literally used the exact winner moves up to the next tier and loser moved down a tier, every week of the tournament, precisely like the system your describing. Basically tournaments made population issues worse than they ever were.

It was an utter disaster. Just as I detailed in my post above. We very literally have tested this system through the tournaments, and it was a complete failure.

Using tournaments as an example is a poor decision, people over stacked servers which drained population from others. The difference in populations was far worse during tournaments. IF they get rid of or merge some of the servers that should sort itself out.

People already do this without tournaments. Stacking is the result of people just wanting a high population server and free wins for the sake of winning and steamrolling other people. Merges and constant fluctuations really won’t do much except demoralize people across the board for coming in second, because it pretty much leaves them no way to ever advance, as they’ll constantly be fighting against first place and a tier ahead of them, and subsequently, third will pretty much only have the ability to advance downward.

Not-terrible Acrobatics.

Thieves are upset that we’re being sold back effectively the same traits that were once in Acro + a few that would have made Acro and the thief as a whole complete… without needing the $50 bill in the form of another trait line. The Acrobatics line is still terrible and there’s effectively zero reason now to use it. Daredevil as a name is unfitting but whatever. It’s a freaking name. I am glad at least they changed it from two words to one, though, as Dare Devil was kind of painful to read and isn’t even grammatically correct.

I hope we continue to see releases of elite specs. I’m really hoping at some point we can finally make use of the revealed debuff better. The design concept behind Revealed Training was awesome. I wasn’t on either side of rifle vs staff, but getting reveal on auto-attack from the rifle due to its noise and size and traits focused on being revealed would have been really interesting.

You won’t get banned if you’re not hacking or breaking the code of conduct. You will if you are.

Dude, it’s too late. All we can do is make suggestions for the next elite spec maybe for next year.

As I figured, it’s uninspired. It looks extremely strong, but basically Acro on roids. It’s ultimately all the same.

I guarantee it’ll result in nerfs to the core specializations because they’ll be afraid to touch a selling point of HoT. My guess is damage reductions to DA and CS.

I spent several gold on Usoku’s Needle during the early weeks of release farming for hours on end, and Spark was only 70g. I want my ~400 gold equivalent back, please.

The thing about value in games like these is that things like that change at the drop of a hat all the time. Fashion in games like these is always unstable and always will be, with GW2’s arguably being one of the most stable, if not over-inflated.

They’re allowing for precursor crafting, too. Do you think everyone who’s ever made a legendary is going to be upset? They’ve had the advantage of carrying that prestige for as long as they have before the system implementations. This is effectively no different.

There will always be another new shiny on the horizon better than yours, or the one you have will eventually become easier to get. That’s just the nature of reward-driven systems and human innovation/desire.

BeckaPL.2670:

stop calling non-meta players casuals. It’s just very rude. Just because speed clearing isn’t my goal doesn’t make me a casual.

While I agree with this, I would like to distinguish the difference (likely for other peoples’ awareness) between calling someone a “casual” or “casual player” and labeling a run as “casual.” I say this because labeling a run as “casual” implies that there are no gear checks/extensive content skips, etc. as a means of stating that the run is kind of done without much planning or without much thought or concern – its dictionary definition and very much relevant to the attitude carried for a run done for the sake of running the dungeon with no real thought or mind in composition.

I don’t believe I’ve gotten one as a drop since the week of this game’s release. They have substantially lowered the drop rate since to literally almost nothing.

In all honesty, the number of people buying the 1000g+ ones is so miniscule that it won’t really affect anything.

BrokenGlass.9356:

1.) Why should our community be split into two separate parts?

2.) Why should some game aspects be considered worthless or otherwise sub optimal?

3.) Why should only one the sided dictate builds and gear to all the others?

4.) Why does this split amongst us even exist?

5.) What can we, as a community do to combat the negativity?

6.) What change, or changes can be made to merge our two communities into a cohesive whole where the vast majority of angry or otherwise upset folks have different opinions?

7.) Should we embrace the split?

8.) Are our differences untenable?

1.) Because the community wants to be. There is no such thing as true balance. Period. It’s a theoretical impossibility. It can be a goal people try and chase as best as they can, but there will always be a “meta” in anything with literally any amount of strategy. An optimization will always be found at some point, somewhere.

In my experience playing the game, the only concerns over group composition have come from rightfully-justified statements that groups like four thieves probably aren’t going to work in a particular high level fractal. Typically this comes in the form of an expression of “oh god”, get a good laugh out of it, and we work out who has other more suitable characters. In pug dungeons, I’ve never been kicked, badmouthed, or even know anyone personally who has ever been kicked or bad-mouthed for joining on a “non-meta” class or build. I’ve also never joined advertised parties for speed clears, AP requirements, etc., nor have I ever done so. I’ve only had a few dungeon runs take a truly excessive amount of time and have only left a number I could probably keep track on one hand.

Reality is this, and it applies to both sides: play with like-minded people, and be considerate. If your build isn’t optimal, don’t expect to get optimal groups, and don’t try to force your way into them. Otherwise you’re dead weight to that group. Some people get a thrill out of completing content as fast as possible. If you’re strapped for time, don’t do a dungeon. Wait until you have more time to do it later, or get with a group of friends who can cover for you at the end if need be.

There are definitely jerks out there who pug run creating parties in LFG without mentioning requirements thinking it’s only okay to run optimal setups badmouthing those who do not. I’ve never experienced this or known anyone who has, but apparently it happens. I’d just laugh it off, and ask if they plan on setting any speed clear records with pugs. If they don’t concede that they’re being ridiculous, just drop the party and rejoin another, or see how your party members stand. I’ve kicked people requesting for build changes, and the party as a whole got a good laugh at the attitude for coming into a group expecting them to play per demands.

2.) Because optimization is completely objective. Optimization is always done with pretty much one thing in mind: Speed. Since reliability is a matter of player skill, and all content is designed to be achievable by all classes and builds, maximizing speed at the cost of ease of completion makes a lot of people happy. You don’t see a lot of world records for “world’s slowest” at things, because that just occupies the “never” timeframe. Speed increases also make people more money, which makes people happy, for then they can make more money in the same time spent playing, or spend less time grinding dungeons and more time, say, playing in WvW or RP’ing. Skins, food, gear— it all costs money— and as long as PvE content is by far the most rewarding in terms of cash and remains some of the easiest content— or rather, the most optimized form of making “cash” relative to their goals, people are going to be doing it even if they hate it. Additionally, the lack of new PvE content has put many people in a bore, for the freshness is far-gone and at this point all they have left to do is try and set records.

3.) It doesn’t. Again, unless you’re in the speed-clear crowd, nobody controls how you play. And if you’re in the speed-clear crowd and are complaining about the existence about optimized strategies, you don’t belong in the speed-clear crowd, because the entire point of speed-clearing is coming up and perfecting those optimizations. As for people demanding certain specs in LFG; maybe they’re practicing. Maybe they just came from a three-hour long path of CoF1 due to really unskilled and un-optimized groupmembers and just want to end P2. Maybe they’re testing to see if advertising that way actually does have an impact on things. Or maybe they’re just copying what their friend typed in because they’re still new. You don’t know. If it’s not for you, then don’t join. I make my parties almost exclusively in LFG when I run, and I’ve almost never had a wait longer than 5m. Usually the events locking dungeons are what bottlenecks me more than anything.

4.) It exists because people want to optimize their time spent for the rewards gained. It could be because they don’t have much time, just want more loot, desperately want to end their 967th run of a path ASAP because they’re bored but need money, it could be because they want to set a record (Why do people try and set world records for stupid things?), it could be that they are putting theorycrafting about a new build to the test in regards to enabling faster runs. There are may reasons. And none of these are stopping anyone from doing a dungeon without an optimized DPS build.

5.) Respect each other, make your own groups, and expect strange things from strangers. You’ll never be disappointed.

6.) The attitude. Seriously. I see so many complaints on these boards from both sides, and I go in-game, look at some of the players and see what they write in LFG, and they’re just hypocrites. I’ve had people join parties advertised as casual/no requirements talk trash and try and take over to make it a speed run, but I’ve also been verbally abused for just running a DPS build because some party member is upset I like to play glassy DPS and they don’t. Get over yourselves, and respect everyone’s opinions/preferences, and be kind when they don’t align.

7.) People have to. There will always be an optimized way of doing things unless all diversity is removed from the game’s systems and all encounters are against other players and every strategy is completely random within a non-defined game mode. AKA, there will always be optimization in pretty much anything and it’s completely unavoidable.

8.) Yes and no. Because optimization will always exist, because it’s human nature. You’re arguing fun vs optimization. I think people drastically overstate just how toxic the PvE scene is and how invasive the meta is. There are definitely class balance issues, some poor dungeon design problems, formats not providing enough rewards forcing people into PvE, etc., but the attitude will never change at the truly high-end speed clear scene, which is ultimately responsible for the creation of the meta. But that’s where they get their fun from, which everyone rightfully should be entitled to.

Branden Gee.2150:

So, essentially what you are asking for is a way to have options like “Receive Whispers”:

• From All
• From Friends and Guild Members
• From Friends
• None

This seems like a reasonable feature request.
If Player A is on Player B’s friends list, but Player B isn’t on Player A’s friends list, how does that interaction work out?

Would this also extend out to things like mail?

(Please note this does not mean that this will happen, won’t happen, is planned to happen, and or not planned to happen)

Pretty simple, if a player selects the option to have it be from Friends or Friends and Guildmembers, then followers are filtered out if the friendship is not mutual. A player that does not want to be bothered likely will not have any intention of whispering anyone except those on their friends list or guild members. Most new friendships involving two separate parties with no mutual friend are made via alternate methods of chat, anyways, such as through map chat, party chat, or say chat, due to gameplay similarities.

I can’t see a much more complex system being reasonable. Smart systems that don’t use intense data-gathering methods and resources typically don’t end up very “smart” and subsequently punish players. I know I got my chat locked in a game once by responding with “lol” a few times in a row due to a funny guild conversation. Obviously I wasn’t spamming or botting the chat, either. If there was the ability to just “ignore bots” as a chat option, I think it’d have been done already and probably wouldn’t end up as an “option” at all :P

apharma.3741:

The problem with thieves is their stealth really. As you say you can kill the thief if you know where they are but how do you know where they are?

My friend and I sometimes troll zergs, him on thief, me on mesmer, both power burst. If he gets in trouble he switches to shortbow hits blinding powder and teleports away. Then out comes either SR or I MI him and he spam the laugh emote while he teleports around with SB5. Yeah I know it’s trolley but thief does have a lot of mobility to be able to get out of the area.

So why do I say their problem is their stealth? Because they’re balanced around it but the mechanic has never been balanced. A thief should only ever die to their own bloodthirst, they have the best disengage there is (mesmer is now close though) so there’s no excuse for not getting out if things are looking not so hot.

Hopefully HoT will balance it out a bit then we can see thieves getting buffs in places so they’re not super cheesy like extreme evade SD thieves were.

You know where they are through practice. The thief is only ever going to kill you if he reveals himself and stays close, otherwise he gives the target a free reset as well. Obviously, there are skilled thieves who fool me/fool other people, and good for them, but for the most part, they’re very easy to track. Do recall that most players in zergs are particularly bad at tracking stealthed players because they focus heavily on visible targets when in combat situations; I’d like to see your friend do the same thing except going into the blob while they’re busy fighting. He’ll fall over dead rather quickly. I’d also point out there is no context to your friend’s build. I can also make a pure defense nomad/sentinel thief with permanent stealth uptime and troll zergs. I’m not killing anything with that build. The better his damage gets/roaming potential alone is, the way down his durability gets. A glass thief against mine dies with no counter if I get the target on him and isn’t mid-dodge. Literally zero counter. Dead, 13-14k damage instantly that cannot be avoided, stunbroken, or teleported away from. I don’t even need a backstab. No other class except an ele with no boons in ineffective glassy gear can/will go down like that.

And that’s it – you’re absolutely correct. Stealth IS the problem—or at least, partially—because like I mentioned, most players do not spend 3-4k hours on a thief and learn absolutely everything about its nuances and extensively study people playing the class. Actually, I’d argue most people complaining about thief stealth have never even touched the thief for more than fifty hours or intentionally trained against them/study them with the intent to learn for half that time. Strictly speaking, thief stealth is more counterable than mesmer stealth from the tells alone. The duration really doesn’t mean much considering most fights typically do not last beyond the 40s-1m mark except on very reset-heavy or durability-focused encounters.

The issue lies in that the alternatives to stealth-focused play are sub-par on the global scheme of things. Everything defensive comes from SA, and it provides huge bonuses, just like PU. Because of this, the thief can’t be buffed elsewhere, as then the class becomes overpowered, especially when combining cheesier elements like what S/D evasion had. And S/D evasion had/has a much lower skill floor and previously had much higher skill ceiling than D/P did. But, Acrobatics got nerfed into oblivion, and now S/D builds run SA because the defenses are too poor elsewhere/the best S/D player in the game/head of the meta S/D build resigned because the build was made too weak in the past patch. Nothing has changed with stealth and SA’s durability got buffed. At least its damage got toned down.

This is why I advocate for PU nerfs. It’s cheesy, broken, and will ultimately lead the mesmer down this way if people keep playing into it. The devs want to make sure they’re keeping people entertained on the builds they think are fun and good, and playing this way will just inevitably pigeon-hole the mesmer more into stealth/PU cheese builds due to less-meaningful alternatives.

Then again, you have Robert as your head dev. So you might be okay.

There would need to be some serious compensation done to the confusion/torment access available in PvP formats, then. As it stands, condi mesmer is arguably overpowered or borderline overpowered in the PvP formats due to confusion and torment, and it’s about to get way worse with the addition of chronomancer being capable of putting on way more stacks.

And that’s the thing; conditions in PvE are impossible to balance, even relative to each other. They always will be. That’s because mobs don’t cleanse intelligently or at all, and some builds are just going to be better at stacking conditions quickly and maintaining those stacks. Additionally, this is also heavily-dependent on specific encounters. If there was a boss that people ran a lot that attacked 10 times per second all fight long with ridiculous toughness, condi mesmer would be the absolute undisputed best class to fight it, as nothing could compare to the confusion damage dealt per second this way, and power builds would all be useless.

And because there is no trinity in GW2, bosses need to be designed in ways that make the attacks be able to be dodged by all builds and classes with no support, or thus, attack more slowly. I’m an avid supporter of the lack of the “trinity” or forced strategy in the game, but it does have this flaw. And the condition system absolutely does not help in this regard because there are just too many different ones with each class having massive disparities between which ones it can access and how frequently it can access them, even so far as having massive disparities between builds within the same class.

As such, “competitive” PvE will also always favor time-based rewards. So even if an encounter did exist which made mesmers optimal, not only would everyone else complain that their build isn’t optimal, but unless the encounter provides large rewards for the time and effort spent (to the extent there is no comparison which enables more builds/classes), people simply aren’t going to partake in the content and the entire purpose is nullified.

From a purely theoretical and mathematical standpoint, conditions in PvE will never be balanced, and there will always be a single best strategy to completing any scripted content designed to be repeated regardless of complexity or number refinement, and from the devices of human nature, the most efficient mode of completion will always be pursued as long as a reward is attached, and further, will only be completed if there is a reward attached as we are motivation-driven creatures.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

DeceiverX.8361:

My issue with mesmer stealth does not lie in the stealth but the boons given by PU itself.

I consistently and frequently out-play and beat permanent stealth-uptime thieves, trapper rangers, etc. In duels I am notorious for landing single-target skills on stealthed targets. Just today in WvW I fought against two permanent stealth thieves and downed and killed both of them through repeated CnD/backstabs while they were invisible. Through enough practice and playing the class the movements of most of them become quite predictable. D/P 3spam is honestly harder to deal with because of the innate strength of spammable unblockable blinds and gap closes that cannot be evaded, that also deal massive damage when they connect. But that’s besides the point, as I think D/P thief has a problematic skill set inhibiting the ability for thieves to see meaningful buffs due to the abuse of certain abilities. But that belongs in another discussion in another forum.

The problem I have with PU mes is that a mesmer camping stealth gains absurd benefits for being in stealth. I can know where it is, use an enabler skill like CnD or any CC effect, and have it whiff because the mesmer got Aegis, and there’s just no way to know. Then I can land one, attempt to burst it down, but then it just gets protection and giggles away with the capacity to distort if it really gets low, by which it can just blink and the revealed timer is over.

Further, clone on dodge makes it even further difficult for single-target skills to actually land due to bodyblocking/clones absorbing the effects of skills even when the player’s position is known or even targeted/cast on.

Stealth is whatever. Yes, it’s cheesy on the mesmer, and one of the best in the game in terms of its abuse due to the very short cooldown on blink. Yes, I think PU condi mes is faceroll easy and should die (I said the same about P/D thief – actually, I say the same about most abusive condi builds), but stealth itself is fairly easy to counter through skilled play, and even more counters are coming. Unfortunately, stealth cannot be balanced around the strength of the mesmer, especially when thieves have a class mechanic tied to it for their damage and utility (stealth attacks).

Even if mesmers were left with as much stealth as they have now, the removal of the boons from PU would probably leave them vulnerable enough where skilled counterplay efforts could be meaningful enough to shut them down. Right now, it’s half RNG with no real way to know what to do to counter the effects of PU.

You’re right that more counterplay is coming. Would swapping aegis out for something less all-or-nothing like resistance, perhaps, make the difference?
I mean, thieves do get 25% damage reduction in stealth, and are a medium armor class so I’m not sure PU is making the mesmer all that much more durable in general from protection or regeneration, but I can definitely see where you’re coming from on the Aegis. I mean, Aegis has come up before as a concern with PU.
Resistance, on the other hand, doesn’t remove conditions, so it doesn’t nullify attacks like Aegis does, but it does provide some protection, and can be controlled by limiting the duration granted.
I’d be leery of just removing aegis, as one of the reasons they added the extra boons in the first place was to keep PU from just giving you 500000 might stacks out of stealth all the time.

Thieves also have around 40% less health, no sources of stability, higher-cooldown stunbreaks, no real body-block effects (thieves guild is worse than hounds of balthazar for this instance as the thieves are ranged, share a very high cooldown, etc.), no damage immunities, no blocks, a terribly situational deflect with its only reflect being a skill that would reveal and is also on a high cooldown, and no burst condition cleanse option with lower-scaling heals. Outside of D/P SA/permastealth, it also possesses factually the worst condition cleansing in the game, and even with SA, some of the worst condition cleansing per unit of health in the game, as well as lower stealth uptime than PU mesmer (SA is required to get better stealth than PU mesmer), and must also dedicate 2/3 utilities (one of which is bad) to do so. Additionally, all of its stealth-stacking effects lasting potentially longer than 3/4 seconds reveal its location to the enemy (unless multiple cooldowns are blown for HT + BP + existing stealth for 12s at best with no indicating tell, and even then, BP as a utility is typically considered a very poor choice, and steal would potentially need to be wasted and would need to be off CD to do this), via offhand pistol, SR, or SS. Strictly speaking, if one knows how to locate a thief in stealth, the fight is won because doing almost anything will actually kill it or enable a kill. It’s the fact so many people can’t do this, and subsequently let the thief sustain and regen via Rejuv – “resetting” – that lets them win a fight. Being more proactive and knowledgeable here pretty much shuts them down innately. There’s no RNG elements game-side to beating a thief,the only disparity is the thief’s decisions on what skills to use in what ways to attempt to trick their enemy. If the enemy sees through it, however, and has a build capable of killing most things, it’s over.

I just think PU shouldn’t provide boons. Some stealth duration, and maybe some extra static effect like a movespeed bonus would probably still be enough to warrant taking the trait. Stealth is powerful, and frankly, the thief also lost a ton of viability as a whole with the changes on 6/23 due to massive nerfs to its stealth with no compensation elsewhere (the “buffs” seen affected other builds which are still under-performers or other traits/trait lines which are not good enough to warrant their use in almost any format due to the inherent weaknesses of the class). Stealth, and gaining effects from it, make classes much harder to balance. Take away SA from the thief, you have the most underpowered class in the game in the PvP formats from pretty much every angle. Yet, use the trait line, and viability bumps immensely. Thus, buffs to the class where it’s hurting become much more difficult to do. The same thing will happen to the mesmer. You’re already starting to see it, although the mesmer without PU is a little better-off than the thief without SA. PU, no matter how strong, is bad for everyone, including the mesmer, because it creates huge rifts within the class that inhibit necessary fixing/buffing elsewhere.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

DeceiverX.8361:

I reach 8k burn ticks in under 2s on my guardian. No might.

Celestial D/D ele only gets kills because its burn damage is so strong.

Yea, sorry, burning needs a nerf/conditions as a whole need a re-rework because bleeding got nerfed, and poison isn’t a viable stacking condition as it stands, either.

I recognize the power of the builds in particular, but you haven’t answered the point that it’s just a numbers game.
1 burn = 3 bleeds, so anywhere 3 bleeds would be appropriate, so is 1 burn.

The problem with burning isn’t how it’s designed, it’s how and where it is used. Guardians applying a bunch of burn isn’t a problem, guardians applying as much burn as they can is.
Guardians, engis and Eles need a cutback on the amount of burning they can apply.

Mesmers, meanwhile, deal so little burn that their burn sources are outright inferior to their bleed sources. Increasing mesmer burn only falls prey to the problem with burning if you give them too much burning.

Really, you’re blaming burning because that’s where it’s happening, but there’s nothing mathematically special about the burning formula, it’s just naturally stronger, so its sources should stack less than other condi sources…but we’re finding that’s not always the case.

I’d add too, though, that 8k dps isn’t so bad when you can hit better dps than that on an ele or thief without conditions.

The mesmer’s burns from the torch are still nothing to scoff at. These regularly still hit in the 400-500 tick areas in WvW, and can be twice, getting into the 1k tick areas. That’s very substantial especially considering the fact that cleanses need to be saved for incoming stacks of 19 confusion and 15+ torment each ticking for 3k+ that can happen at the drop of a hat. The mesmer’s burning is a cover condition. It’s like saying that building D/x condi thief based around its poison on the auto-attack is a reasonable build, if poison were OP, not even considering the terrible traits designed to bolster this build option which outright suck and are arguably the single-worst traits in the entire game.

That’s not 8k DPS. Those are 8k ticks on top of the additional damage dealt from a carrion build. Considering conditions outright ignore armor, defense modifiers, damage reduction effects, immunity periods like Berserker Stance, and protection, this is typically much more damage in a PvP scenario that any power cannon can shell out. Considering the terribly low amount of resistance currently available, it’s not like condi builds are being hard-countered in the current state of the game. That’s why you’re seeing burn guards being played: a power glass thief like what I typically play can always deal more theoretical damage, and always has, except it gets mitigated entirely by defensive effects and becomes increasingly less-useful the tankier your enemies are, which happens regularly in organized PvP, because tank stats are mathematically better than DPS ones in all PvP settings. It’s why nobody plays the berserker amulet in sPvP, why celestial Ele is and has been so strong (also because burning accounts for the majority of its damage), and why the meta in WvW is pirate ship/GW frontline. I’d also like to mention that if you played HoT, you’ll notice ANet is developing an extremely high number of monsters designed explicitly to hard-counter DPS setups and power builds while handing out increasing vulnerabilities to condi players. The whole PvE argument is a null argument considering it’s referencing old content that isn’t going to be changed/hasn’t been changed since when the game was considered balanced in regards to its skill : opportunity cost : payoff ratios.

Considering the mesmer already doesn’t benefit much from burning relative to the other conditions, why would a reduction to burning be a bad idea coming from the mesmer’s POV? It won’t change the state of balance much. If anything, it indirectly buffs the mesmer, which is already considered one of it not the best condition option in the game in regards to the PvP formats by a fairly large margin.

My issue with mesmer stealth does not lie in the stealth but the boons given by PU itself.

I consistently and frequently out-play and beat permanent stealth-uptime thieves, trapper rangers, etc. In duels I am notorious for landing single-target skills on stealthed targets. Just today in WvW I fought against two permanent stealth thieves and downed and killed both of them through repeated CnD/backstabs while they were invisible. Through enough practice and playing the class the movements of most of them become quite predictable. D/P 3spam is honestly harder to deal with because of the innate strength of spammable unblockable blinds and gap closes that cannot be evaded, that also deal massive damage when they connect. But that’s besides the point, as I think D/P thief has a problematic skill set inhibiting the ability for thieves to see meaningful buffs due to the abuse of certain abilities. But that belongs in another discussion in another forum.

The problem I have with PU mes is that a mesmer camping stealth gains absurd benefits for being in stealth. I can know where it is, use an enabler skill like CnD or any CC effect, and have it whiff because the mesmer got Aegis, and there’s just no way to know. Then I can land one, attempt to burst it down, but then it just gets protection and giggles away with the capacity to distort if it really gets low, by which it can just blink and the revealed timer is over.

Further, clone on dodge makes it even further difficult for single-target skills to actually land due to bodyblocking/clones absorbing the effects of skills even when the player’s position is known or even targeted/cast on.

Stealth is whatever. Yes, it’s cheesy on the mesmer, and one of the best in the game in terms of its abuse due to the very short cooldown on blink. Yes, I think PU condi mes is faceroll easy and should die (I said the same about P/D thief – actually, I say the same about most abusive condi builds), but stealth itself is fairly easy to counter through skilled play, and even more counters are coming. Unfortunately, stealth cannot be balanced around the strength of the mesmer, especially when thieves have a class mechanic tied to it for their damage and utility (stealth attacks).

Even if mesmers were left with as much stealth as they have now, the removal of the boons from PU would probably leave them vulnerable enough where skilled counterplay efforts could be meaningful enough to shut them down. Right now, it’s half RNG with no real way to know what to do to counter the effects of PU.

I reach 8k burn ticks in under 2s on my guardian. No might.

Celestial D/D ele only gets kills because its burn damage is so strong.

Yea, sorry, burning needs a nerf/conditions as a whole need a re-rework because bleeding got nerfed, and poison isn’t a viable stacking condition as it stands, either.

MiniEquine.6014:

Gray.9041:

MiniEquine.6014:

Black Box.9312:

Expect about the quality of traits you’ll find in Tempest or Dragonhunter. Or lack of quality, rather.

You are truly the most negative person here (and on every single thread, mind you). Could the same be said about what they did with the Reaper, Chronomancer, Herald, and Berserker? What indication do you actually have that the traits will be bad when they are quite good on at least 4 of the revealed E.specs and at least decent on DH.

I try to be positive, but the last 4 E-specs weren’t Karl.

It doesn’t mean they can’t be good though.

Tempest feels uninspired, but it’s basically because Elementalists can do everything except physical melee or tanking already and they do it all very well, so there is little to work with. In fact, I would hate to be on whatever team has to keep making up specs for the Elementalist because of what it already offers. Tempest does have a lot of potential for WvW and PvP (8 AoE stunbreaks?), though I probably wouldn’t take it into open world PvE.

A lot of people want to hate on DH, and it has its downsides, but the traits aren’t bad and if you’re going for a long-range build it is a must-have. I thought it worked fairly well in the Beta, and they have upped the numbers since then too.

Chronomancer is awesome with passive +25% move speed, Berserker is awesome with the new fire-y mechanics, Reaper is awesome with the new AoE capabilities, and Herald seems quite nice too (but we’ll see when we actually get to play it). Ultimately, my point is that there are going to be less-appealing E.specs, but it would be unfair for it to be assumed in advance that it is going to be bad. They really haven’t set such a precedent.

Karl is responsible for DH, Tempest, and the new thief specialization.

He is not responsible for the positive changes to the other professions.

I fully anticipate not playing the new thief specialization as I have no doubt in my mind it’ll be uninspired and gimmicky. My only positive outlook on the future of this reveal is that we may finally get some developer attention on the fundamental problems with this class, just as how Robert made a pose recently how he plans on addressing the core necro specializations/mechanics of its weapons in the upcoming months as well to solve fundamental issues with the class.

Getting at least some kind of input about the thief through to ANet is about all the good I see coming.

The Berserker’s adrenaline changes cause its single bar of adrenaline to count as 3 bars all the time. Cleansing Ire currently cleanses 1 condition for each bar of adrenaline full, and it was stated by the dev doing warrior/berserker that the adrenaline bar will be considered full as three bars rather than one when berserk, allowing for 5s cd adrenaline skills to constantly always max out their cleanses, and the berserker also has an additional cleanse on a 15s cooldown.

There is absolutely no reason to give warrior this much cleansing, passive healing, resistance, and base high health, and have the thief have so little.

CureForLiving.5360:

I would say ‘yeah sure totally go for it’, but from the latest news regarding fractal updates it seems we’ll be getting newer infusions with higher stats that the current expensive +5 variety. So I’d personally wait and see, safe my mats.

Very much this.

Ultimately, it also depends on your build.

A full set of infusions on armor, weapons, and accessories, nets the possibility of +70 total points to a stat/stats. For power, It’s roughly the equivalent to walking around with a permanent two stacks of might, or in the case of other stats, almost 4% crit chance, 700 HP 6.67% crit damage, etc. It’s a minor bonus, but it can be impactful.

Raven.9603:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Wow ): No wonder roaming is dying alright… So many bads out there calling it quits when the going gets a little rough. Can’t insta-gib people so “nah, this game’s boring now. Things are putting up a fight.”

Go somewhere else then.

LOL. You use sPvP as an example of how condis arent OP, and when someone points “exactly, because in sPvP theres no Dire, No Food, No Perplexity” you resort to calling them bads. Way to beat people down just for disagreeing with you.

Maybe Dire never made it to sPvP because it failed to be balanced when implemented on the poor guinea pig that is WvW?

Dire did make it there for testing. It was removed immediately because it was deemed so overpowered it ruined the balance of sPvP in it of itself. Perplexity made it to sPvP in the live game, and then was also immediately removed because it was deemed too overpowered and ruined the balance of the format.

People who play dire and/or perplexity condi builds in WvW have no idea just how unbelievably overpowered their specs are.

Part of me agrees with the removal of the ability for portals to ignore walls, however part of me disagrees with this as it allows a mesmer to let reinforcements back through a repaired wall during a siege.

The concept of stealth in a keep is cool, too, as I’ve had a few instances where after a flip, my guild in its entirety has balled into a corner and just used thieves to hide and wait for RI to go down. That also feels like a valid tactic considering the entire guild was hiding inside and the obvious thief AOE stealth tells (red circles/lines) were neglected.

ToffiKeks.6385:

Nokaru.7831:

What about Dragon’s Tooth? That ability ignores line of sight, people use it to eliminate all siege inside using zoom hacks, and people have been doing this for years.

Please fix this too

Considering this is getting more dev attention than what Karl gives to his classes, it’d be nice to see these skills get the same treatment (since the programmer’s already here).

Because one of my characters made the terrible decision of drinking a Red Bull and is now suffering the consequences.

If I have one word of advice for you kids, say “No!” to Red Bull. Really. It doesn’t even taste good.

This is why trapper runes, much like perplexity, and dire gear, need to go.

As a mention to the above, NVM, go ahead with baseline cleansing on stealth gain, seeing as warrior/berserker can cleanse 12 conditions every 15 seconds at a rate of 3 every three seconds + an additional 3.

Ragnarox.9601:

Cmon guys be realistic LONGBOW IS OP ON GUARDIANS !!

Just hope they can be better and hope is a kitten sometimes

Basically, this was what ranger was like pre-RtW. There’s a reason the trait was made and then why it was made baseline, because it was a non-option since every build absolutely required it.

I’m surprised they didn’t give the DH this.

I don’t see it happening. The reasoning is that there is the intent on releasing multiple elite specializations per profession, and this would make an over-abundance of icons that may make core specialization identities difficult to identify/distinguish.

It should be there, but there should also be a quantity selection ability.

So you can buy a thousand of them and just get asked once.

Mcrocha.3891:

DeceiverX.8361:

I think you have no idea what DPS is.

Everything about the greatsword on the ranger is designed for burst damage. Sustained evades to sustain while on cooldowns, two CC’s, an evade, a leap, and a block. And then you have maul, which allows for the biggest damage on a single hit possible in the game. Yes, when traited and gear for properly, Maul can and will hit higher than a full-glass thief’s backstab. Any declaration about the GS being “designed” for DPS is completely arbitrary defined by non-logical reasoning that the skills themselves deal damage.

The greatsword being DPS on other classes has nothing to do with the greatsword’s DPS on the ranger. Sword is one of the ranger’s DPS weapons, Axe actually does more, but on a sinister condi build. Dagger and sword are for the thief, but not for the ele, which instead gets DPS from the scepter. Fun fact, aside from Hundred Blades, the DPS for the warrior is better on Axe than GS. The GS’s auto on the warrior is actually rather weak compared to the Axe’s, and yet the dagger is better for the Necro’s DPS over the axe. And back to the thief again, the optimal DPS weapons change based on the mob’s health. Dagger can only do more than the sword because heartseeker gets crazy scaling below 25%.

A proper example of an offensive spec designed to be offensive is Axe/Axe warrior. There are no defensive components to this set whatsoever, and none of them can really be argued as being useful for defense in regards to mitigating or preventing damage.

So there’s literally no trend here, and your argument is incoherent.

Apparently burst skills don’t contribute to dps, especially not ones on a 6s cd. So let me get this straight. Maul with the right set-up can outspike backstab. This statement on its own is completely false btw. On the other hand, Maul is on a 6s cd and is the hardest hitting spike skill in the game, but GS is not a dps weapon. Please explain that to me so that I may understand what a coherent argument looks like.

I don’t really care to argue this point anymore, but the fact that the coefficients on ranger auto are lower than every other profession is stupid. The fact that it has lower coefficients than the faster attacking sword is stupid. The evasion could be justified on auto bc we are not a heavy class. However, if the dps of the gs is increased to what it should be, then it may warrant removing the evade on either swoop or auto and it may not. That would depend on balance.

Just stating that to achieve Eval’s numbers, your single-hit burst is on an effective 50 second-long cooldown. Over the course of that period of time, your numbers will be substantially lower than what it can peak on a single hit. Thus, your DPS is going to be lower. You’re not going to maul for 20k+ every 6s forever. Yea, that’d be something menacing (though you can do a decent job with it on non-bosses in regards to cooldowns).

I think the majority of rangers who PvP would rather take the evades on GS over more DPS for PvE’ing, and this game is mostly balanced around PvP. Again, if you want DPS, you play with sword mainhand. It has different utility, and is designed around DPS much more than GS is. The weapon doesn’t burst, but does much better sustained damage.

Numbers could probably be tweaked up slightly, but in no way should they go so far as to feel the need to remove the evades on GS out of compensation. Nope, I’ll take lower damage and higher burst for my ranger with tons of evade uptime. Frankly, I like to be able to sit under AC’s in WvW and be immune to the damage since I’m evading in sync with the ticks.

babazhook.6805:

By the way Trappers is about the ONLY way you can make a p/p set into a condition set.

I keep experimenting with other Runes after trappers but always go back be it condition or power which illustrates just how important INI management is in any build. Trappers makes those stealths so much cheaper so as to allow you to use your ini for damage and again so very flexible as I can not think of a weaponset where they would not work with the build.

And most of all FUN.

P/P perplexity interrupt works pretty nicely. It offers a lot of sustain with the blinds, decent base ticks, and holy mother of damage when chain-interrupting your foes :P

yiksing.9432:

With the current status of Shadow’s Embrace, it should be a baseline condi clear on stealth. Clearing 2 condi in 4 seconds of stealth is hardly game breaking.

It would be three conditions, and arguably it might. Even 2 per 4s is the best in the game. Condi builds do need ramp up, and SA would make thieves pretty much invincible to conditions, as this would cure 2 conditions immediately and then one 3s later, providing only a few ticks before probably shutting said damage source down.

The numbers are fine. Sword auto is one of the best in the game. Dagger auto is one of the best in the game. HS is one of the best nukes in the game at its low health threshold, CnD has a very high coefficient. Unload is better for its duration than Rapid Fire. PW is better in many cases than hundred blades. FS/LS has a high coefficient. Shadow Shot has a stupidly high coefficient for its effects, Shadow Strike also has very high coefficients.

What does that leave us with not beating out the rest of the game with? The shortbow (a utility weapon whose damage is close to most other class’s utility weapons, if not a bit higher from CBomb), “utility” skills like BP, headshot, body shot, IS, disabling shot, etc. The only real valid complaint in the damage department is about the pistol mainhand auto.

The thief doesn’t lack damage at all. PvE is all about damage, and aside from eles being able to hit the same thing multiple times from effects like Ice Bow, we have the highest DPS in the game.

We have low relativistic damage in the PvP formats because there’s a need to be resetting so frequently via stealth and thus not doing damage. Our burst is very high, though, so it evens out a bit.

The only valid complaints about the class pretty much reside in the dependency in SA and subsequently camping stealth for defense, and the subsequent lack of good defenses elsewhere. Non-thieves don’t like it. I don’t like it. Non-stealth builds don’t like it. Hell, I don’t think a lot of people except trolls like it. Being able to move some of that defense around such that there isn’t a need to camp stealth would benefit everyone.

That said, a lot of the suggestions in the thread were absolutely absurd to the point where multiple people had to mention that the proposed ideas were beyond overpowered. There were propositions in there that allowed for border-line invincibility while still being able to stab for 20k. Yes, we don’t have high defense, and we are lacking in it, but we don’t need better protection uptime than guardians and more passive damage reduction than anything else in the game. That isn’t okay and doesn’t fix anything.

Helly.2597:

DeceiverX.8361:

I’ll continue not running either of them so I can get the satisfaction when winning a fight of knowing I didn’t win from RNG/sigils carrying me if my opponent avoided my burst and I recovered from said avoidance.

What? Honestly if someone is avoiding your burst (especially as a thief) and you still managed to win it most likely didn’t come down to sigil procs, especially with how they are toned down.

I don’t know what spec you’re running, but I assume it doesn’t include improv with your attitude. You must have either 0% crit chance or 100% crit chance since otherwise it involves a certain amount of luck/rng.

Depending on the matchup, the 50% chance (a chance on a chance) is too inconsistent and provides too much of an unavoidable payoff.

It doesn’t, no. Improv is too inconsistent for my build since I only run one type of utilities on 7 through 9, and executioner works better with my build concept due to triggered protection reducing damage substantially.

I used to run intelligence sigils to guarantee perfect crits. Unfortunately I’ve had to move away from them due to the dependency on swapping to disengage rather than engage. There is RNG on my build, but it’s not substantial. A CnD critting, while it can be impactful, typically will not define the outcome of a fight. I’ve done everything in my power and within the limitations of the class to make the damage as consistent as possible for my build’s durability needs.

I’ll put it simply, my crit chance is better than the fire/air proc chance even on a 100% crit rate, and all my attacks are avoidable.

The benefit to initiative is you can force situations to happen. If something doesn’t go your way at first, you can immediately try again while your opponent is recovering from trying to counter you. If I need that CnD crit, I can make it happen by not revealing myself and doing it again as soon as stealth’s up. Typically that doesn’t happen, though, as a heartseeker finisher is a bit better.

Different and fun.

or

Holy might stacks!

Midi.8359:

I agree with the nerfs too. Although iirc didn’t both of them get nerfed? Or was it really just fire.

I think some people run sigils of blood now as an alternative. I still run both air and fire personally.

I’ve only noticed reductions on fire, but that reduction feels lower than 25%, so I don’t know.

I’ll continue not running either of them so I can get the satisfaction when winning a fight of knowing I didn’t win from RNG/sigils carrying me if my opponent avoided my burst and I recovered from said avoidance.

Mcrocha.3891:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

If a weapon has 60% of its skills doing other things than DPS and its auto attack does low DPS, how can that then be classed as a DPS weapon? It makes no sense to do so. If maul was not on GS, it would almost be totally defensive, so with the added burst, it is utility. But lets not argue over nomenclature.

A lot of the skills in this game do things other than damage. Every skill on the GS is designed for dps; the fact that people primarily use the gs skills for defense, is in itself an argument as to why the damage should be buffed. The way I see it GS has Swoop as its gap closer and hilt bash to spike/rupt. The only “defensive” skill on the weapon is counterattack, and that is more offensively designed given its name and the active snare in Crippling Throw.

Now these skills can be used defensively of course, thats why they provide utility, but a weapon designed to dps should be buffed when that dps is not comparable to other dps weapons.

One could argue that they don’t want extra damage on the auto in exchange for giving up evasion, but one has to also account for the offensive pressure that you gain from better damage. As is, the only threat on the gs is one of the most telegraphed skills in the game, but a buff to auto could also give it more pressure.

I think you have no idea what DPS is.

Everything about the greatsword on the ranger is designed for burst damage. Sustained evades to sustain while on cooldowns, two CC’s, an evade, a leap, and a block. And then you have maul, which allows for the biggest damage on a single hit possible in the game. Yes, when traited and gear for properly, Maul can and will hit higher than a full-glass thief’s backstab. Any declaration about the GS being “designed” for DPS is completely arbitrary defined by non-logical reasoning that the skills themselves deal damage.

The greatsword being DPS on other classes has nothing to do with the greatsword’s DPS on the ranger. Sword is one of the ranger’s DPS weapons, Axe actually does more, but on a sinister condi build. Dagger and sword are for the thief, but not for the ele, which instead gets DPS from the scepter. Fun fact, aside from Hundred Blades, the DPS for the warrior is better on Axe than GS. The GS’s auto on the warrior is actually rather weak compared to the Axe’s, and yet the dagger is better for the Necro’s DPS over the axe. And back to the thief again, the optimal DPS weapons change based on the mob’s health. Dagger can only do more than the sword because heartseeker gets crazy scaling below 25%.

A proper example of an offensive spec designed to be offensive is Axe/Axe warrior. There are no defensive components to this set whatsoever, and none of them can really be argued as being useful for defense in regards to mitigating or preventing damage.

So there’s literally no trend here, and your argument is incoherent.

Not even 2 classes. THREE.

Marksman, Warden, and Beastmaster. The Marksman was designed solely around the ability to use only ranged weapons, and had no pet or even ties to nature in its initial design concept.

The Marksman was scrapped due to the limitations of a ranged-only class, but the pet being merged into the class was only an afterthought done by scrapped ideas taken from the warden and beastmaster concepts because it simplified things and reduced redundancy, while giving the ranger its own unique class mechanic, as no other class has pets, and without such a gimmick it would be basically a worse warrior. A ranger being the pet class was only done to consolidate things and hasten development, not to design a ranged pet class as we know it. The reason you have historically seen so many longbow rangers over pet/melee ones is because the majority of people who look at the class intend to play a dedicated archer. This isn’t possible in GW2 and frankly, should be.

They paid a lot of attention to the CDI. The results of it were not immediate, but they were there.

Some of my early suggestions in that thread were:

Baseline increased arrow projectile speed.
Baseline signets applied to the ranger.
Reduced CD on ROA.
RF channel speed reduction.

And I know even other people’s suggestions were definitely considered and have been implemented already. It will be interesting to see if the pet hangs around as an aspect or if we still have the stupid AI companion.

Zenith.7301:

I don’t even get why people call GS a utility weapon. Whirling Defenses or an extra blast finisher from call of the wild is far better utility to your group, and you still get leaps via monarch’s leap to blast water fields with.

This is the problem with a competing pvp versus pve population, what pvp people find valuable is completely worthless to a pve crowd.

…if you’re running PvE speed clears, sure.

A weapon devoted to not dying can just as equally be considered a utility weapon. A utility weapon performs roles that the other available ones cannot.

Ask any thief what their utility weapon is. Almost all of them will respond shortbow. PvP players will not say it’s because of its blasts but because it offers the best mobility and evades on the class. No other weapon is as defensive.

Guards say staff, because it enables offensive pressure through stacking might and swiftness.

Warriors say longbow because it offers ranged pressure and reliable CI procs.

Necros say staff because it offers long range and LF generation with AOE potential.

Mesmers say staff of torch because they offer durability in the forms of damage avoidance and stealth.

Eles will say staff because of its AOE potential and CC/direct group buffs.

See the trend? Utility isn’t just about stacking 25 group might and enabling some heals and pressing 1.

fluffdragon.1523:

And now:

• Daredevil: as an adjective, “recklessly bold or adventurous.” This is the entire opposite of Thief and the style it presents. I mean, recklessness and stealth don’t really work together.

I think that’s the point. I would expect a lot of synergy with the revealed side of stealth rather than the invisibility of it.

Consider Revealed Training.
Now have traits for +200 toughness and healing, bonus damage, condition cleansing, endurance regen, steal now acts as a form of rampage utility, etc.

There’s nothing wrong with playing outside of the stealth box. The name is fine (again, I hope it’s one word and not two, as two is not grammatically correct for the context/it’s smoother to pronounce). I know people want their bad-kittenin-y shadow-loving vampire-sparkly nonsense, but specializations are supposed to change the style of the class dramatically. They’ve succeeded largely at doing this, albeit with some implementation failures (Dragonhunter and tempest come to mind), and the concern should lie in those implementations, not the name.

Because honestly, the name means absolutely nothing because it’s the same thing as a trait line. Would you really care if they replaced all trait line names with numbers? It changes nothing about your character’s aesthetic unless it actually changes the character’s aesthetic, such as shroud.

Welcoming new styles of play is a good thing. Just buffing what the thief is already designed around doesn’t help the thief; it just puts our pigeon-holed status somewhere else/requires the expansion to play if it’s good/better than current options. Use the BWE and subsequent feedback opportunities to talk about the core specialization problems in conjunction with the BWE class problems. Given enough response about the limitations of the base class, it’ll at least raise awareness for future changes.

You’re not going to find anything on par with it.

Air/Fire was in every single way the best combination of sigils for any power/prec build. They absolutely had to get nerfed. It was causing skills to double/triple their damage every 3s that did not go on a cooldown if blocked/missed/evades/etc. People now get less “free burst at no opportunity cost” since the other power sigils are underwhelming/don’t perform as obscenely.

I’m glad fire got nerfed. I hope air is next. Actually, I’d like to see them removed altogether, and better consistent sigils added, because I’m sick of evading a big attack but still taking the same damage because I got hit with some tiny crit off of a skill not intended to deal damage afterwards that procced sigils. These sigils made PvP a joke because half of your deaths could be attributed to RNG timing that had no visible tell.

Tabootrinket.2631:

Hmmm what the elite name inspires me is RNG skills.
Like you see dices rolling above the daredevil’s name as the casting time and if you get a 6 you rek stuff, if you get a 1 you better flee (if you can).
Or, there’s a selection of different effects for each skill and the dice decides which one will apply.

(A bit like “Taro cards of fate” for minstrels in the old Ragnarok online : It was one skill that was actually like 9 in 1, but only one is selected randomly when casted)

They should just rename it to “Useless” then, if that’s the philosophy they’re going by.

Hidden Killer feels pretty underwhelming as a GM imho, and provides no incentive for any builds aside from D/x looking for reliable stabs to take it, as NQ and IP are strictly better. Obviously the trait is good, but is it grandmaster good? On another class, it’d very much look like “Dagger attacks from stealth have a 100% critical hit chance. Reduced cooldown on dagger skills”, and probably would be a minor or master.

Obviously, since we lack cooldowns on our weapon skills, why not provide CS with a little sustain against conditions? We have IP for pure health absorption, which is great for cleaving groups of raw-damage dealers, but what about more revealed-style benefits for those who don’t play so heavily into stealth/reset but need just a wee bit of sustained cleansing?

Thus, why not promote a new Hidden Killer?

Hidden Killer -> Dance of Death: Lose conditions upon gaining the revealed debuff and gain 100% critical hit chance on your next successful attack when attacking from stealth. Remove fewer conditions based upon stealth duration.
[Stealth] Under 4s or gaining [Revealed]: Conditions Removed: 1
[Stealth] Under 1.5s: Conditons Removed: 2

Why this works:
- Better skirmishing/sustain on non-SA builds.
- Offhand dagger buffed into viability due to better ability to chain this effect repeatedly.
- Promotes leaving stealth more often, a healthy style of play for all parties involved in a fight. Punishes camping stealth.
- Does not de-value the revealed debuff but does not directly punish players for using its effects as counterplay, while punishing misplays. Locking down a thief with conditions and then revealing him will remove a condition, rather than revealing and then locking him down.
- SA builds benefit from SE’s DoT cleanses + Withdraw’s movement cleanses + This effect removing weakness and vuln = all bases covered. Yay!
- Acro builds (S/D) get more options for condition lockdown/DoT cleanses.
- Non-stealth builds (P/P, S/P) taking stealth utilities can capitalize on short duration stealth effects, gain benefits from being revealed in bad play by an opponent, and do not feel locked into NQ/IP.

Do it, ANet. :T
(Oh wait, nobody reads this, QQ)

If they stick to it, I just hope they make it one word, seeing as it’s actually one word and not two. The flow of two words also just stinks in this case.

Would be cool to see a revealed-based spec come along, though. I had some cool rework ideas focused on maintaining revealed for effects like RT for the sake of skirmishing. Since kits as a class mechanic alteration/utility skills are still a possibility, I think it’d be neat to explore weapons that reveal on the use of the auto-attack for maintaining permanent bonuses to effects like RT, etc. for better skirmishing potential outside of stealth.

I wouldn’t say anything yet. The same dev is responsible for both.

Bloodyx.5946:

Naggar.2047:

How is this possible?

19k? did you do this on purpose with a friend or something because this is basically impossible

Basically, which is kind of why it doesn’t happen very often in sPvP. You have to try really, really hard (stupid filter) on a build that’s really, really bad to get these kinds of numbers. Especially since coming close to them is doable on much better builds, and just unloading initiative on Shadow Shot and Heartseeker with fire/air slotted will deal similar damage with a build that doesn’t need everything in the galaxy to line up to work once, ever.

Dagger mainhand for condi is pretty much considered ineffective. I think you’d be better off just playing P/P condi interruption and just removing the berserker stats off of your gear altogether. D/P has a lot of initiative burning for gains you’d probably better see on D/D. In the event you still would stay D/P, I’d also suggest Uncatchable or Flanking Strikes in Trickery over ToTC considering haste will synergize better with your condition application via more chances per unit of time to proc the poison, and Uncatchable obviously for condition damage boosts.

For a kind of similarly-niche build focusing on unorthodox traiting, I’d probably look further into something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZEQNAqaVlsMhimY5Tw7Jw/EHwEl/LW0Rk3DxwOo/zAoAA-TVyCABAcEAcWZ1xPAQPwLaCWe/R9nEVCSxhAILlKTfCAIEwi1A-w

Granted, it changes the style substantially.